Byzantine Blog

Kosovo Albanian Mafia Holds International Community Hostage

All the reports analyzing situation in southern Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija confirm this region is run by the criminal clans and gangs, while the "international community" limits itself to the role of an impotent observer of the events, assessed German weekly Der Spiegel in its latest edition.

"The analysis of the situation in Kosovo have a common tread — they are all describing a clan-based society, where a handful of the crime lords is holding their own people hostage, which is being tolerated by the European and world bureaucrats, who are acting under the banner of enlightenment," Spiegel writes.

The author asserts that in the Serbian province "power is not in the hands of the people, but in the hands of the crime clans and gangs" and that, nine years after the end of the war, Kosovo is ruled by corruption and by the mafia.

According to the Spiegel report, the UN's organized crime special investigator can't hope to achieve anything, since the UN is "wielding a wooden sword against the heavily armed opponent".

"Since 2005 and 2006, when the local administrators joined Kosovo police, all of a sudden we weren't able to find a single gram of heroin any longer. Our agents and infiltrated investigators have given up. Since then, we literally know nothing any more," German magazine quotes one organized crime foreign investigator.

The report reiterated the United Nations' assessment that Kosovo province is the heart of the Balkan drug route, even though it has been in the plain view of the international police since 1999.

According to the European Police (Europol), Kosovo Albanian mafia controls over 80 percent of the illegal drug trade in the northern European countries, and over 40 percent in the western Europe.

Financing Mafia State Requires Extra-Deep Pockets

German weekly reminds that the international community had spent more than 33 billion Euros on Kosovo province since 1999, or around €1,750 per person annually — an amount 160 times greater than the average assistance given to any and all the developing countries in the world.