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Beware Kosovo independence

In the well-written Commentary column regarding the global metastasis of al Qaeda ("Reconnecting al Qaeda dots," Wednesday), Arnaud de Borchgrave omits one important regional milestone: the Balkans. Today, while America's and the world's attention is focused on Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, the establishment of a rogue Islamic terrorist state in the belly of Europe is nearing enactment by misguided moves to create an independent Kosovo controlled by terrorist and organized-crime elements.

A Wall Street Journal (European edition) article of Nov. 1, 2001, headlined "Al Qaeda's Balkan Links," states: "For the past 10 years, the most senior leaders of al Qaeda have visited the Balkans, including [Osama] bin Laden himself on three occasions between 1994 and 1996. The Egyptian surgeon turned terrorist leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri has operated terrorist training camps, weapons of mass destruction factories and money-laundering and drug-training networks throughout Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia (FYROM), Bulgaria, Turkey and Bosnia. This has gone on for a decade."

The Washington Times' own Jerry Seper wrote as far back as 1999: "Some members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which has financed its war effort through the sale of heroin, were trained in terrorist camps run by international fugitive Osama bin Laden." Since then, Kosovo has become Europe's center for drug trafficking, sex slavery and terrorism.

According to Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily (Oct. 25, 2005): "Deeply placed sources within the Islamist community in Kosovo have identified the source and type of the explosives used in the jihadist terrorist bombings in London on July 7, 2005, and the Madrid commuter railway bombings of March 11, 2004.

"The man at the center of the provision of the explosives in both instances was an Albanian, operating mostly out of Kosovo (with links into Bosnia) who is a second-ranking leader in the Kosovo Liberation Army."

Only firm action by the United States can stop another U.N. fiasco: Kosovo independence.

COL. GEORGE JATRAS

Air Force (retired)