A Meta-Group Managing Drugs, Violence, and the State
The Khashoggi Villa Meeting, Kosovo, and the “Pristina Dash” / Part VI
Peter Dale Scott - Dunlop ignores the implications of the drug backgrounds of Davidovich and Kosman. For example, he acknowledges the presence of four Abkhazians at the meeting – Kosman, “a certain Tsveiba,” Sultan Sosnaliev, and Surikov -- and yet offers no explanation for their presence. (A map will show that Abkhazia is irrelevant to the subsequent events in Dagestan and Chechnya.)
It seems likely that a drug-route was discussed involving Abkhazia, which now “has become a key heroin transiting point.” (1) Its drug-trafficking importance is noted by none other than Surikov himself: “In general then, the Chechen [drug-trafficking] group has allotted a very important place to Abkhazia in its plans….Abkhazia today is one of the most criminalised areas of the former Soviet Union.” (2) The London paper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat has written that Basaev controlled the “Abkhaz heroin road,” used by the Taliban as a transit route to Europe. (3) And (whether or not Basaev was at the Beaulieu meeting) it is certain that Basaev and Surikov were both leaders in the Russian-backed Abkhazian revolt from Georgia in 1991.
9/11 & American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out, edited by David Ray Griffin and Peter Dale Scott, is scheduled to appear in August 2006
The Beaulieu meeting allegedly took place on July 4, 1999, or shortly after the unexpected entry of Russian troops into Kosovo. On June 11, 200 Russian troops drove unexpectedly from Bosnia to Pristina and secured Slatina airport. Gen Wesley Clark then ordered British Gen. Sir Mike Jackson (who was at the scene) “to seize the airport. Jackson responded, famously, that he would not start World War Three for him” (4)
Instead there followed weeks of “protracted negotiations on Russia’s role in the Kosovo peacekeeping mission.” (5) In the end, under circumstances still not fully understood, the United States and NATO agreed that the Russians could stay.
The Russian troops finally withdrew from the airport in July 2003. (6) Significantly, a chart of Russian drug-trafficking prepared by one of Surikov’s partners, Sergei Petrov, indicates that in 2003 Kosovo ceased to be a main point of export for Russian drugs, its place being taken by the Black Sea oil port of Novorossiysk. (7)
Within a year of the troops’ arrival, by 2000, according to DEA statistics, Afghan heroin accounted for almost 20 percent of the heroin seized in the United States – nearly double the percentage taken four years earlier. Much of it was now distributed in America by Kosovar Albanians. (8)
It is significant therefore that, according to Lilia Shevtsova,
The `Pristina dash’ by Russian parachutists in 1999 during the Kosovo crisis (the purpose of the `dash’ was to force NATO to guarantee for Russia a separate sector of responsibility in Kosovo) was organized by the head of the General Staff, Anatoly Kvashnin, and his deputy, Leonid Ivashov, without the knowledge of minister of defense Igor Sergeyev and most likely without Yeltsin’s knowledge. (9)
Yasenev says nothing about this, but does assert that Kvashnin was the Russian Army connection of the two leading drug traffickers (Vladimir Ilyich Filin and Alexey Likhvintsev) in the Saidov-Surikov group, Far West.
In February 2006 Anton Surikov himself confirmed that the Pristina dash had been prepared for by his meta-group colleague Filin:
When V. I. Filin, who was at that time in Belgrade, learned about the advance of [Russian] peace keepers towards Pristina, he, together with Colonel V. S. Kovalchuk, went to Kosovo on their own risk, unarmed and without bodyguards. They arrived there several hours before our paratroopers. They used this time to get in touch with the field commanders of KLA and received personal guarantees from Hashim Thaci and Ramush Haradinaj that there would be no provocations against the Russian peacekeepers on the part of Albanians. (10)
This was possible because Hashim Thaçi, as we have seen, was advised by Filin’s meta-group partner Yakov Kosman.
Ramush Haradinaj became known as a leading KLA terrorist, war criminal, and drug trafficker. Nevertheless, according to the London Observer, he was also “the key US military and intelligence asset in Kosovo during the civil war.” The Observer also reported UN investigators’ charges that American officials in Kosovo were interfering with an investigation into his war crimes. (11) Today Haradinaj is an indicted war criminal awaiting trial at the Hague War Crimes Tribunal. (12)
It may be relevant that Rusham Haradinaj’s brother Daut, another alleged drug trafficker, is said to have been placed by their KLA faction
in charge of coordinating operations with the Islamic terrorist organization Al Qaeda. In that capacity, he organized a meeting with Muhamed Al Zawahiri, brother of the ideological leader of the aforementioned organization Dr. Ayman Al Zawahiri, in Sofia in October 2001. (13)
The meeting probably concerned the KLA offshoot fighting in Macedonia, the NLA, which was led by Muhamed al-Zawahiri and overseen by former KLA leader Agim Ceku, another U.S. ally and indicted war criminal, (14) later chief of the KLA’s successor, the KPC (where Daut Haradinaj was his deputy). In 2001 the Washington Times reported, "Osama bin Laden is the biggest financial supporter of the National Liberation Army (NLA) in Macedonia." (15) Other sources claimed that the American company Military Professional Resources Incorporated (MPRI), which had trained Ceku in first Croatia and then Bosnia, provided the 17 American instructors which (according to the Hamburger Abendblatt) were training and assisting the NLA in Macedonia. (16)
Daut and Ramush Haradinaj are accused of using their smuggling activities to finance the flow of arms to the NLA in Macedonia, and Daut of participating personally in NLA attacks. (17) Though they profit from other smuggled commodities, notably cigarettes, it would appear that the Pristina Dash may have helped provide narco-financing for Islamist insurrection in Macedonia.
This possibility is reinforced by the Yasenev version of the meta-group’s politics, which he portrays as Islamist and anti-Russian, rather than pro-Putin.
Footnotes:
1: SIDA/Cornell Caspian Consulting, “The South Caucasus: A Regional Overview,” 2002.
2: Anton Surikov, Crime in Russia, 38-39.
3: Paul Murphy, The Wolves of Islam: Russia and the Faces of Chechen Terror (Washington: Brassey’s Inc., 2004), 136.
4: Tim Judah, Kosovo: War and Revenge (New Haven: Yale UP, 2002), 279, 284-85.
5: Toronto Sun, 6/27/99.
6: Pravda.ru, 7/3/03.
7: The map was allegedly shown by Surikov’s partner Sergei Petrov to a Russian businessman in Geneva while discussing a drug deal
8: Peter Klebnikov, “Heroin Heroes,” Mother Jones, January/February 2000, Peter Dale Scott, “Deep Politics: Drugs, Oil, Covert Operations and Terrorism,”
9: Shevtsova, Putin’s Russia, 285, fn. 11. That Yeltsin was ignorant has been disputed. But a Sky journalist heard in Kosovo, from “a man who `freelances’ as a go-between for Moscow,” that “the army took the decision to move without consulting the politicians” (Tim Marshall, Shadowplay [Beograd : Samizdat B92, 2003], 153)
10: Anton Surikov, Pravda-info, 2/8/06,
11:
Nick Wood, “US 'covered up' for Kosovo ally,” Observer, 9/10/00,: Cf. Agence France Presse - English, 10/25/00.
12: Baltimore Sun, 5/10/06.
13: “Daut Haradinaj,” in “Kosovo's 156 lawless: Biographies of the men in the Albanian-dominated Serbian province of Kosovo,” Serbianna.. Daut Haradinaj was blacklisted by President Bush as an Albanian terrorist in an Executive Order of July 1, 2001. See “The US Black List of Albanian Terrorists,”
14: Halifax Herald, 9/10/01.
15: Washington Times, 7/22/01.
16: Christopher Deliso, “US Betrayed Us In Macedonia,” Antiwar.com, 6/26/02. Cf. London Times, 9/3/01. In Croatia, Agim Ceku and other MPRI trainees were accused of ethnic cleansing in the forced Serbian evacuation of the Krajina.
17: “Ramush Haradinaj,” in “Kosovo's 156 lawless: Biographies of the men in the Albanian-dominated Serbian province of Kosovo,” Serbianna..
Part I: History and the Political Requirements of the Global Drug Traffic
Part II: The Meta-Group, West, and East
Part III: The Meta-Group, BCCI, and Adnan Khashoggi
Part IV: Dunlop’s Account of the Beaulieu Meeting’s Purpose: The “Russian 9/11” in 1999
Part V: Dunlop’s Redactions of His Source Yasenev
Part VI: The Khashoggi Villa Meeting, Kosovo, and the “Pristina Dash”
Part VII: The Role of Anton Surikov: The Dunlop and Yasenev Versions
Part VIII: Saidov, Surikov, Muslim Insurrectionism, and Drug Trafficking
Part IX: Allegations of Drug-Trafficking and Far West Ltd.
Part X: Far West Ltd, Halliburton, Diligence LLC, New Bridge, and Neil Bush
Part XI: The U.S. Contribution to the Afghan-Kosovo Drug Traffic.
Last Part XII: Concluding Remarks: Meta-Groups and Transpolitics.
Peter Dale Scott, a former Canadian diplomat and English Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, is a poet, writer, and researcher.
Peter Dale Scott - Dunlop ignores the implications of the drug backgrounds of Davidovich and Kosman. For example, he acknowledges the presence of four Abkhazians at the meeting – Kosman, “a certain Tsveiba,” Sultan Sosnaliev, and Surikov -- and yet offers no explanation for their presence. (A map will show that Abkhazia is irrelevant to the subsequent events in Dagestan and Chechnya.)It seems likely that a drug-route was discussed involving Abkhazia, which now “has become a key heroin transiting point.” (1) Its drug-trafficking importance is noted by none other than Surikov himself: “In general then, the Chechen [drug-trafficking] group has allotted a very important place to Abkhazia in its plans….Abkhazia today is one of the most criminalised areas of the former Soviet Union.” (2) The London paper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat has written that Basaev controlled the “Abkhaz heroin road,” used by the Taliban as a transit route to Europe. (3) And (whether or not Basaev was at the Beaulieu meeting) it is certain that Basaev and Surikov were both leaders in the Russian-backed Abkhazian revolt from Georgia in 1991.
9/11 & American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out, edited by David Ray Griffin and Peter Dale Scott, is scheduled to appear in August 2006
The Beaulieu meeting allegedly took place on July 4, 1999, or shortly after the unexpected entry of Russian troops into Kosovo. On June 11, 200 Russian troops drove unexpectedly from Bosnia to Pristina and secured Slatina airport. Gen Wesley Clark then ordered British Gen. Sir Mike Jackson (who was at the scene) “to seize the airport. Jackson responded, famously, that he would not start World War Three for him” (4)
Instead there followed weeks of “protracted negotiations on Russia’s role in the Kosovo peacekeeping mission.” (5) In the end, under circumstances still not fully understood, the United States and NATO agreed that the Russians could stay.
The Russian troops finally withdrew from the airport in July 2003. (6) Significantly, a chart of Russian drug-trafficking prepared by one of Surikov’s partners, Sergei Petrov, indicates that in 2003 Kosovo ceased to be a main point of export for Russian drugs, its place being taken by the Black Sea oil port of Novorossiysk. (7)
Within a year of the troops’ arrival, by 2000, according to DEA statistics, Afghan heroin accounted for almost 20 percent of the heroin seized in the United States – nearly double the percentage taken four years earlier. Much of it was now distributed in America by Kosovar Albanians. (8)
It is significant therefore that, according to Lilia Shevtsova,
The `Pristina dash’ by Russian parachutists in 1999 during the Kosovo crisis (the purpose of the `dash’ was to force NATO to guarantee for Russia a separate sector of responsibility in Kosovo) was organized by the head of the General Staff, Anatoly Kvashnin, and his deputy, Leonid Ivashov, without the knowledge of minister of defense Igor Sergeyev and most likely without Yeltsin’s knowledge. (9)
Yasenev says nothing about this, but does assert that Kvashnin was the Russian Army connection of the two leading drug traffickers (Vladimir Ilyich Filin and Alexey Likhvintsev) in the Saidov-Surikov group, Far West.
In February 2006 Anton Surikov himself confirmed that the Pristina dash had been prepared for by his meta-group colleague Filin:
When V. I. Filin, who was at that time in Belgrade, learned about the advance of [Russian] peace keepers towards Pristina, he, together with Colonel V. S. Kovalchuk, went to Kosovo on their own risk, unarmed and without bodyguards. They arrived there several hours before our paratroopers. They used this time to get in touch with the field commanders of KLA and received personal guarantees from Hashim Thaci and Ramush Haradinaj that there would be no provocations against the Russian peacekeepers on the part of Albanians. (10)
This was possible because Hashim Thaçi, as we have seen, was advised by Filin’s meta-group partner Yakov Kosman.
Ramush Haradinaj became known as a leading KLA terrorist, war criminal, and drug trafficker. Nevertheless, according to the London Observer, he was also “the key US military and intelligence asset in Kosovo during the civil war.” The Observer also reported UN investigators’ charges that American officials in Kosovo were interfering with an investigation into his war crimes. (11) Today Haradinaj is an indicted war criminal awaiting trial at the Hague War Crimes Tribunal. (12)
It may be relevant that Rusham Haradinaj’s brother Daut, another alleged drug trafficker, is said to have been placed by their KLA faction
in charge of coordinating operations with the Islamic terrorist organization Al Qaeda. In that capacity, he organized a meeting with Muhamed Al Zawahiri, brother of the ideological leader of the aforementioned organization Dr. Ayman Al Zawahiri, in Sofia in October 2001. (13)
The meeting probably concerned the KLA offshoot fighting in Macedonia, the NLA, which was led by Muhamed al-Zawahiri and overseen by former KLA leader Agim Ceku, another U.S. ally and indicted war criminal, (14) later chief of the KLA’s successor, the KPC (where Daut Haradinaj was his deputy). In 2001 the Washington Times reported, "Osama bin Laden is the biggest financial supporter of the National Liberation Army (NLA) in Macedonia." (15) Other sources claimed that the American company Military Professional Resources Incorporated (MPRI), which had trained Ceku in first Croatia and then Bosnia, provided the 17 American instructors which (according to the Hamburger Abendblatt) were training and assisting the NLA in Macedonia. (16)
Daut and Ramush Haradinaj are accused of using their smuggling activities to finance the flow of arms to the NLA in Macedonia, and Daut of participating personally in NLA attacks. (17) Though they profit from other smuggled commodities, notably cigarettes, it would appear that the Pristina Dash may have helped provide narco-financing for Islamist insurrection in Macedonia.
This possibility is reinforced by the Yasenev version of the meta-group’s politics, which he portrays as Islamist and anti-Russian, rather than pro-Putin.
Footnotes:
1: SIDA/Cornell Caspian Consulting, “The South Caucasus: A Regional Overview,” 2002.
2: Anton Surikov, Crime in Russia, 38-39.
3: Paul Murphy, The Wolves of Islam: Russia and the Faces of Chechen Terror (Washington: Brassey’s Inc., 2004), 136.
4: Tim Judah, Kosovo: War and Revenge (New Haven: Yale UP, 2002), 279, 284-85.
5: Toronto Sun, 6/27/99.
6: Pravda.ru, 7/3/03.
7: The map was allegedly shown by Surikov’s partner Sergei Petrov to a Russian businessman in Geneva while discussing a drug deal
8: Peter Klebnikov, “Heroin Heroes,” Mother Jones, January/February 2000, Peter Dale Scott, “Deep Politics: Drugs, Oil, Covert Operations and Terrorism,”
9: Shevtsova, Putin’s Russia, 285, fn. 11. That Yeltsin was ignorant has been disputed. But a Sky journalist heard in Kosovo, from “a man who `freelances’ as a go-between for Moscow,” that “the army took the decision to move without consulting the politicians” (Tim Marshall, Shadowplay [Beograd : Samizdat B92, 2003], 153)
10: Anton Surikov, Pravda-info, 2/8/06,
11:
Nick Wood, “US 'covered up' for Kosovo ally,” Observer, 9/10/00,: Cf. Agence France Presse - English, 10/25/00.
12: Baltimore Sun, 5/10/06.
13: “Daut Haradinaj,” in “Kosovo's 156 lawless: Biographies of the men in the Albanian-dominated Serbian province of Kosovo,” Serbianna.. Daut Haradinaj was blacklisted by President Bush as an Albanian terrorist in an Executive Order of July 1, 2001. See “The US Black List of Albanian Terrorists,”
14: Halifax Herald, 9/10/01.
15: Washington Times, 7/22/01.
16: Christopher Deliso, “US Betrayed Us In Macedonia,” Antiwar.com, 6/26/02. Cf. London Times, 9/3/01. In Croatia, Agim Ceku and other MPRI trainees were accused of ethnic cleansing in the forced Serbian evacuation of the Krajina.
17: “Ramush Haradinaj,” in “Kosovo's 156 lawless: Biographies of the men in the Albanian-dominated Serbian province of Kosovo,” Serbianna..
Part I: History and the Political Requirements of the Global Drug TrafficPart II: The Meta-Group, West, and EastPart III: The Meta-Group, BCCI, and Adnan KhashoggiPart IV: Dunlop’s Account of the Beaulieu Meeting’s Purpose: The “Russian 9/11” in 1999Part V: Dunlop’s Redactions of His Source YasenevPart VI: The Khashoggi Villa Meeting, Kosovo, and the “Pristina Dash”Part VII: The Role of Anton Surikov: The Dunlop and Yasenev VersionsPart VIII: Saidov, Surikov, Muslim Insurrectionism, and Drug TraffickingPart IX: Allegations of Drug-Trafficking and Far West Ltd.Part X: Far West Ltd, Halliburton, Diligence LLC, New Bridge, and Neil BushPart XI: The U.S. Contribution to the Afghan-Kosovo Drug Traffic. Last Part XII: Concluding Remarks: Meta-Groups and Transpolitics. Peter Dale Scott, a former Canadian diplomat and English Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, is a poet, writer, and researcher. sfux - 2. Sep, 09:09 Article 12735x read
