UÇK

The coat of arms of the UÇK

UÇK memorial in Deçan

The UÇK [ ˌuː.ʧeːˈkaː ] (short for Albanian Ushtria Çlirimtare e Kosovës , "Kosovo Liberation Army") was an Albanian paramilitary organization that fought for Kosovo's independence .

It was created in 1994 and first appeared publicly in 1996. Their goal was the independence of Kosovo, their means was armed struggle. In this way, parts of the UÇK also sought to unite all areas in Serbia , Macedonia , Montenegro and Greece with the majority of ethnic Albanians with the motherland Albania. Co-founder and leader was Adem Jashari until his death in 1998 , then Hashim Thaçi until the dissolution of the KLA in 1999 .

history

Emergence

In February 1992, founded Kosovo Albanians in Germany the party Lëvizja Popullore e Kosovës ( LPK , Alb. For about People's Movement of Kosovo ) as a rival organization to the pacifist-oriented party LDK of Ibrahim Rugova . The LPK advocated the armed struggle against the Serbian armed forces from the start. In May 1993 the Lëvizja Kombëtare për Çlirimin e Kosovës ( LKÇK , Alb. For National Movement for the Liberation of Kosovo ) was founded in Pristina as a split from the LDK, it was also active among Kosovar Albanians in Germany. This new party also tried to create a military department.

The two parties tended to be supported by younger Albanians and Kosovar Albanians in western countries. Rugova's LDK had its support above all in the Albanian ruling class of Kosovo, which was shaped by communist Yugoslavia in the 1960s and 1970s.

An estimated 5000 ethnic Albanians fought against the Serbs in the Yugoslav Wars on the side of Croatia or the Muslim-Croatian Federation of Bosnia . Some of them later joined the UÇK.

The connections between these different groups when the KLA was founded have not yet been adequately researched. What is certain is that in 1994 various underground armed groups joined together to form the UÇK, according to the former UÇK leader Ramush Haradinaj . In the same year the KLA began to systematically buy weapons and train their fighters.

First attacks and public appearances

From 1996 to the beginning of 1998 the KLA committed itself to 21 assassinations: five (Serbian) police officers, five Serbian civilians and eleven Albanians who were described as collaborators . According to the Serbian Interior Ministry, she was responsible for the murder of 10 Serbian police officers and 24 civilians during this period.

It was first mentioned in the international press in May 1997. For the first time UÇK members appeared in public in uniform on November 28, 1997 at the funeral of Kosovar Halit Gecaj. He was killed in a crossfire in a UÇK attack on a Serbian police station. The funeral took place in the village of Laus / Llaushe in the large municipality of Srbica / Skenderaj and was attended by 20,000 Kosovar Albanians. During this phase of its activity, the UÇK was perceived by the Kosovar Albanians less as a national army than as an organization in the tradition of the Basque ETA or the Irish IRA . This changed in the course of the spring of 1998.

1998: offensive and setback

The fighting lasted roughly from February to October in 1998. The UÇK initially went on the offensive and controlled about a third of Kosovo by the beginning of July; these regions were declared as "liberated areas". From August on, the Serbian forces retaliated and gradually conquered most of the territories held by the UÇK. The UÇK was only able to counter the overwhelming power of its opponent in open conflict. It faced 13,000 members of the Serbian (paramilitary) special police, 6500 members of the Yugoslav army and 400 Serbian paramilitaries led by Željko Ražnatović (so-called Tiger, Serbian - Cyrillic Tigrovi ).

As a result of the fighting, Kosovar-Albanian settlements were largely destroyed; in the summer of 1998, the UN aid organizations registered around 50,000 to 60,000 people displaced by the war in Kosovo.

1999: UÇK and NATO in the Kosovo war

KLA members hand over firearms to US Marines (June 1999)

At the latest with the beginning of the Kosovo War on March 24, 1999, the UÇK became a de facto ally of NATO . During the war, NATO kept in constant contact with the KLA with regard to the aims of its bombing. This probably went through the Albanian army and unofficial channels such as the CIA or the western military instructors on site. KLA members who had been trained by the British SAS were smuggled into Kosovo equipped with NATO communications equipment and helped guide the NATO bombers to their target.

With the withdrawal of the Serbian armed forces at the beginning of June 1999 and the subsequent invasion of Kosovo by NATO, the end of the KLA began: the UN and the NATO-led KFOR demanded disarmament and dissolution and did not want to allow the formation of an army in Kosovo. The UÇK was officially dissolved on September 20, 1999; In fact, it was transformed into various successor organizations.

organization

The KLA's strength, armament and level of organization varied widely at different stages of its development and in different regions. In the beginning, the armament consisted essentially of Kalashnikovs of Chinese, Yugoslav and Soviet production, in addition there were probably mines. On the one hand, the information on strength strongly depends on the time. On the other hand, quality also plays a role: if you only take into account the militarily well-trained fighters, the number is significantly lower than if you include every Kosovar Albanian who wore a Kalashnikov and felt himself to be a UÇK fighter.

Strength

According to Belgrade media, in 1997 the KLA had between one and two thousand fighters. Because of the armed conflict in 1998 and the Kosovo war, as well as the related expulsions, a large number of volunteers were added - through recruitment abroad, in Kosovo and in refugee camps. According to KFOR estimates, there were around 15,000 KLA members in 1998; at the end of the fighting there were probably around 20,000. The historian James Pettifer assumes a number of 18,000 members at the height of the fighting in the spring of 1999, only a small part of them combatants; he names around 3,000 people who would have fought against Serbian troops.

When the UÇK was demobilized at the end of 1999 / beginning of 2000, which was linked to the chance of former UÇK members joining the newly formed security forces , 25,000 Kosovar Albanians registered as former UÇK members. In 2018, 40,000 " veterans " were believed to have received a pension , while a further 66,000 had applied for one, which was seen as a result of an expanding clientele system .

Armament

In the fight with the Serbs in Kosovo, the KLA was only able to use weapons which, in terms of size and weight , could be transported with mules over the Albanian mountains into Kosovo. Larger equipment was therefore hardly available to her. To arm the KLA counted at the beginning mainly assault rifles of the type Kalashnikov AK-47 . In addition, it later had rifle grenades and a few armor-piercing weapons, as well as anti-tank weapons of the type RPG-7 and RPG-8, mortars and mines. Most of the weapons came from Albania, where over half a million weapons have been in circulation since the March 1997 lottery uprising. Another source was the holdings of the former Yugoslav People's Army (bought in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Macedonia ). There were also weapons from the former Soviet Union , China , Singapore , the Czech Republic , Hungary , Romania and Bulgaria .

Some of the armament also came from NATO countries. According to a dpa report on April 12, 1999, the Italian police dug up an extensive arsenal which - according to the report - “was intended for the UÇK. About 30 tons of military equipment , including anti- aircraft and anti-tank missiles , grenade launchers and machine guns ”. The weapons were hidden in trucks with Bosnian license plates from Germany and declared as Caritas aid deliveries for war refugees in Albania. It remained unclear where the trucks had loaded the weapons - among which were over 1,000 grenades stolen from a NATO arsenal in Germany.

The Albanian government played a central role in arms deliveries to the KLA. Hashim Thaçi said that NATO did not supply any weapons, but neither did they prevent them.

education

Training by the Albanian Army began in 1996. From 1998 onwards, instructors from the private US company Military Professional Resources Incorporated and members of British and German private security companies trained the UÇK. Between 1998 and July 1999 UÇK members were supported and trained in Italy, Turkey, Germany and Kosovo. German and British trainers were unofficially active in the training camps in Albania during the Kosovo war.

CIA advisors have been helping the KLA since 1999 at the latest with military training manuals and advice on combating Serbian police and army units. It is unclear when exactly such support was granted.

Outline and command structure

From February 1999 there was a general staff headed by Suleyman Selimi . He was replaced on May 1, 1999 by Agim Çeku . Around the same time, Hashim Thaçi's political directorate came into being, but it appears to have had little influence on the military command level. Kosovo was divided into seven operational areas. De facto, the individual - sometimes rival - regional groups acted essentially independently of one another. There was no consistent vertical command structure (from top to bottom).

The KLA was divided into a hard core of several hundred professional commandos, which also included members of the former Yugoslav security forces (police and army). There was also the broad mass of the local home guards.

logistics

If at all, only the ammunition supply should have been centrally regulated. The members of the troops lived on donated, confiscated or otherwise organized food. In the summer of 1998 there were three field hospitals, but no organized first aid for the wounded.

financing

Naturally, there is no verifiable information about the financing of the UÇK; the numbers are often contradictory. In summary, one can say that the vast majority of the funds for the KLA came from Kosovar Albanians living in the west ( Germany , Switzerland , Austria , USA ) and that this also included funds from illegal activities to a considerable extent. By early 1999, the revenues of the KLA from legal and illegal sources to a sum between 500 and 900 million will be Deutschmark appreciated.

donate

The pacifist-oriented shadow government under Ibrahim Rugova , half tacitly tolerated by the Serbs, collected three percent of the income of the Kosovars abroad as a donation in the 1990s. At the end of 1997, the UÇK asked its Prime Minister to hand over the money that had been collected. As a result, there were bitter disputes over these funds.

From this point in time at the latest, the UÇK began to collect funds independently - for example from the Albanian community in New York . As a UÇK official later stated, it was left to the Kosovars in the diaspora whether they donate the donation to Rugova or to the UÇK. According to information provided by Kosovars to the Croatian and American media, for example, it is said to have been 4 million Deutschmarks in Croatia and ten million US dollars in the USA .

Drug trafficking

On March 4, 1999, the Berliner Zeitung cited the findings of Western secret services that half of the UÇK funds came from drug trafficking .

“As the Berliner Zeitung found out in Brussels, the secret services estimate the previous income of the UÇK alone to be over 900 million marks. At least half of this comes from profits from the illegal drug trade; the rest is collected in funds with names like “The Fatherland is calling” or “The Homeland asks for your help”. "Dark or laundered money makes up a large part of the funds for the KLA," it said. Drug smuggling extends from the source country Afghanistan to Western Europe. The European police authority Europol in The Hague is also aware that a large part of drug sales in the European Union is in the hands of Kosovar Albanians. "

- Berliner Zeitung

The transformation of the UÇK

A street in Pristina named after the UÇK

The UÇK was officially dissolved on September 20, 1999. At the same time, a kind of national guard called the Kosovo Protection Corps ( Albanian Trupat e Mbrojtjes se Kosovës , TMK ) was founded under the leadership of Agim Çeku , which the UÇK leadership viewed as the core of a new army in Kosovo.

Agim Çeku, UÇK Commander in Chief, outlined the UÇK's goals in the new Kosovo in 1999 as follows: “Part will become part of the police, part will become civil administration, part will become the Kosovar army, a defense force. And another part will form a political party. "

The members of the UÇK subsequently joined the Kosovo Protection Corps, went to the police , into politics, the economy, turned to organized crime or withdrew into private life. The individual fields of activity are not to be understood as strictly separated from one another.

disarmament

Confiscated weapons from the KLA (July 1999)

According to an agreement with KFOR entitled Undertaking of Demilitarization and Transformation by the KLA , which was signed in June 1999, the KLA was supposed to surrender its weapons. At that time, according to estimates by UN experts, she had around 32,000 to 40,000 weapons of various types. 8,500 firearms of various types were handed in, plus 200 mortars, 300 anti-tank weapons and less than 20 anti-aircraft weapons. There were also 27,000 shells and over 1,200 mines, as well as more than six million rounds of ammunition for light firearms. After ninety days, KFOR also seized over a thousand rifles, around 400 pistols and revolvers, as well as some machine guns, anti-tank weapons, grenades, mines and ammunition.

According to estimates by UN experts, there were around 22,000 to 30,000 weapons that were not surrendered. Some of them are likely to be in arms depots in Albania (in the Bucaj and Kruma regions ) and some in Kosovo itself. UN experts estimate that around 11,800 to 15,800 are owned by illegal paramilitary groups and around 8,000 to 18,000 are privately owned. Overall, the disarmament was only partially successful. Obviously, some of the more modern weapons that had just been purchased remained in arms stores in order to be prepared for the worst case from the UÇK perspective (reunification with Serbia). Another part was simply privatized.

Foundation of the Kosovo Protection Corps

In parallel to the attempted disarmament, the Kosovo Protection Corps was founded, in fact a successor organization to the UÇK. Uniforms and badges are similar to those of the UÇK. The core of the force consisted of 56 former UÇK officers who - like their commanders - were taken over directly by the UÇK into the protection corps; the division into regional commands largely corresponded to the UÇK division. Of around 18,000 applicants, 17,348 were former UÇK fighters. The former commander-in-chief Agim Ceku clearly emphasized this continuity in an interview in 1999: "We see the protection corps as a bridge between the UÇK, an organization in times of war, and a regular modern army in Kosovo."

In the summer of 2006 the protection corps had around 3,000 active members, around 70 percent of whom were former UÇK members.

The Kosovo Protection Corps was absorbed into the Kosovo security forces in 2009 .

KLA members in the Kosovo police

Unlike the Kosovo Protection Corps, the Kosovo Police were not a de facto successor organization to the UÇK. However, when the police were founded, internal quotas for admission are said to have been set; Accordingly, the UÇK was entitled to fifty percent, and twenty percent should be provided by former members of the former Yugoslav police corps - essentially Kosovar Albanians who were police officers in Yugoslav times but had lost this post under the Milošević regime. According to a study by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, the quota for former UÇK members was almost reached in 2001 . Service in the police could lead to loyalty problems among former UÇK members. In the summer of 2006 the police had around 7,000 members, around 25 percent of whom were former members of the KLA.

Successor organizations outside of Kosovo

After the end of the war in Kosovo, successor organizations to the Kosovar UÇK emerged in southern Serbia and Macedonia, which continued the armed struggle in predominantly Albanian regions.

The Macedonian UÇK

1999 in Macedonia , the Ushtria Clirimtare Kombëtare founded (KLA). The troops, which see themselves as the “National Liberation Army” of the Albanian Macedonians, say they are fighting against the oppression of their compatriots.

She first appeared in raids in the north of the country in January 2001 and claimed responsibility for an attack on the Tearce police station . The UÇK proclaimed its first “liberated area” in Tanuševci in February and, according to its own statements, has meanwhile controlled large areas in the north-western mountains of the country. The government estimated the UÇK at around 500 rebels, the UÇK itself spoke of up to 4,500 fighters and 500,000 sympathizers in the population.

The relations between the Macedonian KLA and the disbanded underground army in Kosovo have not yet been clearly clarified. Although many fighters were recruited in Kosovo, the majority apparently came from Macedonia.

The political leader of the Macedonian UÇK was Ali Ahmeti , who had already fought in the Kosovo UÇK. Ahmeti comes from the western Macedonian Albanian area near Kičevo . Sentenced to prison by the Yugoslav authorities at the time in 1981, he first went to Switzerland after his release and later returned to Kosovo.

The military leader of the Macedonian UÇK, Chief of Staff Gëzim Ostreni , was once a Yugoslav army officer and had already belonged to the local UÇK in Kosovo and then to the Kosovo Protection Corps .

The UÇPMB in southern Serbia

The Liberation Army Preševo, Medveđa and Bujanovac (Ushtria Çlirimtare e Preshevës, Medvegjës dhe Bujanocit - UÇPMB) became active in the southern Serbian region of Preševo , which borders Kosovo and is mainly populated by Albanians .

The UÇK and the International Criminal Court

In the summer of 2000, the Swiss Carla Del Ponte , chief prosecutor of the ICTY , announced that she would also investigate crimes that had been committed by Albanian extremists in Kosovo, including former KLA members. According to the indictment, thousands of Serbian and non-Albanian civilians were forcibly evicted from their villages as early as 1998. The public prosecutor's office accuses the KLA units of having persecuted, ill-treated, raped, tortured and murdered civilians. The indictment against the most prominent defendant to date, the former Prime Minister and former UÇK district commander Ramush Haradinaj , classifies the UÇK as a “joint criminal enterprise”. Among the victims were also numerous Albanians who wanted to establish a good relationship with the Serbian authorities or who did not want to cooperate with the KLA or fight for them. Ramush Haradinaj was acquitted of all charges for lack of evidence, returned to Kosovo and resumed political activity. His case was resumed on July 21, 2010, as were the cases of Idriz Balaj and Lahi Brahimaj. On November 29, 2012, the International Criminal Court found the three KLA commanders Haradinaj, Balaj and Brahimaj not guilty.

According to Carla del Ponte, there are also indications that members of the UÇK allegedly forcibly abducted over 300 Serb civilians and members of other ethnic minorities in Kosovo and deported them to Northern Albania in 1999. Their organs, including vital ones, are said to have been removed from them against their will in order to sell them on the illegal organ market. None of the alleged victims returned to their families and they are still missing today. However, since there were only circumstantial evidence, the tribunal could not begin a process with further investigations in this direction.

In a two-year investigation by the Council of Europe , led by the Swiss Member of the Council of Europe Dick Marty , Hashim Thaçi and other former leaders of the Kosovar UÇK Liberation Army are accused of involvement in organ trafficking in Kosovo and Albania and involvement in contract killings and other crimes. The Council of Europe investigation was sparked by similar allegations by former Swiss chief prosecutor of the Hague UN Tribunal, Carla Del Ponte, in 2008.

Thaçi is said to have been the head of a group that is said to have controlled organized crime in the country. Organs were removed from prisoners in one clinic and then sold to foreign clinics on the international black market. The report of the Council of Europe, which appeared two days after Thaçi's re-election in December 2010, is based on intelligence and was rejected by Thaçi himself and his government. In response to the report, the Legal Affairs Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe requested further investigations into evidence of links between organized crime and political circles in Kosovo. The EU called on Marty to provide evidence to support the allegations made in his report.

In January 2011 Marty responded again to his report and defused his allegations against Thaçi. He did not say that Thaçi was involved in organ trafficking himself , but only from people who were very close to him. Therefore, it is difficult to imagine that Thaçi did not know about it. He also did not speak of hundreds of cases of illegal organ transplants, but "only a handful." Marty also stated that it was not his job to substantiate the allegations. Courts and investigative authorities are responsible for this.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted Marty's report on January 25, 2011. In a resolution, the MPs demanded a serious investigation into the incidents.

On January 24, 2011, the British newspaper The Guardian reported , citing secret NATO documents dated around 2004, that Thaçi was one of the country's criminal heavyweights. His close confidante Xhavit Haliti , former head of logistics of the KLA and one of the most important representatives of the ruling PDK party , is said to have had connections with the Albanian mafia and to have been involved in the arms and drug trade. A Kosovar government spokesman dismissed the allegations as false claims by the Serbian intelligence service.

literature

Tim Judah: Kosovo: War and Revenge. Yale University Press, New Haven, London 2000 ISBN 0-300-08313-0 .
Christian Jennings: Private US Firm Training Both Sides in the Balkans In: The Scotsman (Edinburgh) of March 3, 2001.
Jens Reuter: On the history of the UÇK In: Jens Reuter / Konrad Clewing (ed.): The Kosovo conflict. Causes - Course - Perspectives , Bavarian State Center for Political Education . Klagenfurt 2000, ISBN 3-85129-329-0 .
Tim Ripley: The UCK's Arsenal in: Jane's Intelligence Review, November 2000.
Norbert Mappes-Niediek : Balkan Mafia. States in the hands of crime - a threat to Europe. Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-86153-284-0 .

Web links

Commons : UÇK - collection of images, videos and audio files

Andreas Heinemann-Grüder and Wolf-Christian Paes: The Mobilization and Demobilization of the Kosovo Liberation Army . Bonn 2001 Study by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation , published by the Bonn International Conversion Center (PDF file; 2.2 MB)
Anna Khakee, Nicolas Florquin: Kosovo and the Gun: A Baseline Assessment of Small Arms and Light Weapons in Kosovo , published by UNDP June 2003 (PDF file; 784 kB)
Collection of articles of The Strategic Issues Research Institute of the United States to finance the KLA (English)

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b The army of war veterans is growing in Kosovo , NZZ, August 27, 2018

↑ International Crisis Group : An Army for Kosovo? Europe Report N ° 174, July 28, 2006 page 8

↑ dpa, April 12, 1999

↑ Bettina Vestring: UCK is financed from drug money. In: Berliner Zeitung . March 4, 1999, accessed June 19, 2015 .

^ ^A ^b International Crisis Group: An Army for Kosovo? page 8

^ The network of the Albanian Mafia in: Die Welt, March 25, 2001

^ ICTY indictments against UÇK leader Ramush Haradinaj

^ Resumption of the cases of three KLA commanders

↑ Acquittal for UÇK commanders Haradinaj, Balaj and Brahimaj (PDF; 159 kB)

↑ DiePresse.com about evidence of UÇK organ trade

↑ Hashim Thaci: Murderer and Organ Dealer? in: Tages-Anzeiger from December 15, 2010

↑ "The prisoners begged their tormentors to kill them immediately" in: Tages-Anzeiger of December 15, 2010

↑ Kosovo Prime Minister Thaçi is said to be involved in organ mafia in: Spiegel Online from December 15, 2010

↑ Inhuman treatment of people and illicit trafficking in organs in Kosovo (provisional version) in: Council of Europe , draft resolution and explanatory memorandum by Dick Marty , (English, PDF; 387 kB) of December 12, 2010, accessed on December 19, 2010; Appendix to the report: Map (PDF file; 750 kB)

↑ ^a ^b EU demands evidence of organ trafficking allegations. The Standard, December 15, 2010, archived from the original on December 20, 2010 .

^ Council of Europe calls for legal action in: sueddeutsche.de of December 16, 2010

↑ PACE Committee calls for investigations into organ trafficking and disappearances in Kosovo and Albania Council of Europe press release of 16 December 2010