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[quote]Horrors of KLA prison camps revealed
Michael Montgomery
BBC Radio 4, Crossing Continents

The man spoke plainly as he explained the horrors he lived through in a Kosovo Liberation Army prison camp 10 years ago. He told me about how he watched people beaten with steel pipes, cut with knives, left for days without food, and shot and killed.

"What can you feel when you see those things?" he said. "It's something that is stuck in my mind for the rest of my life. You cannot do those things to people, not even to animals."

As the man talked, his mother paced nervously in the nearby kitchen. She was panicked and tears were streaming down her face.

"They'll kill him, they'll kill him," she moaned, clutching one of her grandchildren.

But her son persisted. We spent hours in the family's sitting room as our source detailed allegations of possible war crimes by KLA officers in a military camp in the Albanian border town of Kukes.

It was a crucial interview for a delicate story I have been investigating for years.

Mystery of the missing

Soon after the war ended in Kosovo, I started looking into the thousands of civilians who disappeared during and after the conflict. Many Albanian victims were dumped in wells or transported to mass graves as far away as Belgrade.
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But others - mainly Serbs - simply vanished without a trace. There were no demands for ransom, no news of any kind.

I had met sources who spoke vaguely about secret camps in Albania where Kosovo Serbs, Albanians and Roma were interrogated, tortured and in most cases killed.

I met another source who agreed to share important details about KLA prison camps. This man cut a very different profile.

He had returned from a successful career abroad to join the KLA in its fight for Kosovo's independence from Serbia.

The man was still proud of the goals he fought for, but he had become haunted by the treatment of civilians he had seen at a KLA prison camp. More than that, he said he felt angry and betrayed by KLA commanders who tolerated and even ordered the abuses.

"It didn't seem strange at the time," he told me as he described seeing desperate civilians locked in a filthy agricultural shed.
“ Now, looking back, I know that some of the things that were done to innocent civilians were wrong â€

Kosovo's not a member of NATO, Fgalkin.

Moreover are we supposed to be shocked and appalled that an ethnic war turned ugly? Or should we have left Kosovo in the tender hands of the Serbs?

Albania is. And guess where these camps were located?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

I really don't see what Albania's being a part of NATO has to do with this, as I stated before, ethnic wars have a tendency to do this. Perhaps we should not try and artificially cobble states like Yugoslavia together if we don't want to see them occur.

NATO is a military alliance, not a United Nations NGO. I see no reason to throw an entire country out of it because there exist people within said country who have done bad things. Should we evict Turkey from NATO because of the Kurdish thing? Or perhaps Spain because of the Basque?

Have a very nice day yourself,
- General Havoc

General Havoc wrote:I really don't see what Albania's being a part of NATO has to do with this, as I stated before, ethnic wars have a tendency to do this. Perhaps we should not try and artificially cobble states like Yugoslavia together if we don't want to see them occur.

Please define "we".

NATO is a military alliance, not a United Nations NGO. I see no reason to throw an entire country out of it because there exist people within said country who have done bad things. Should we evict Turkey from NATO because of the Kurdish thing? Or perhaps Spain because of the Basque?

Are either Turkey or Spain supporting an armed terrorist group operating outside its own borders which is actively trying to destabilize a region? Which, I remind you, contains Russian peacekeepers- remember what happened the last time someone tried shooting at them? A country that can possibly provoke a major international crisis should not be a NATO member.

Not to mention that Albania is a third-world shithole ruled by gangs. Their value to NATO is minimal, at best. If NATO has rejected Georgia and Ukraine because of internal instability, the same goes tenfold for Albania.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

My understanding was that "internal stability" was an excuse NATO gave so as to reject Ukraine and Georgia without giving the real reason, which was "Because Russia will throw a fucking fit". I'm not in favor of not doing things because Russia will throw a fit if we do them, but with the Ukraine and Georgia, at least the fit they would throw would be reasonable. However if Russia is going to throw a fit over Albania's inclusion into NATO, then I say they are welcome to throw one. NATO does not exist with the permission of Russia.

And incidentally, Turkey is supporting armed terrorist groups outside their borders actively trying to destabilize parts Russia itself (at least according to some sources). Not to mention that when we brought Spain into NATO, they were still ruled by Franco.

Albania is neither third world, nor a shithole, nor ruled by gangs, facts I can attest to having been there. That it is a small country with little to contribute is not the point. Denmark, Estonia, Luxemburg, and Iceland contribute relatively little to NATO as well.

Now if Albania were actively about to start a war with Russia, or Serbia, or threatening to do such things, that would be one thing, but under no possible interpretation of the above article or any other I have seen is Albania preparing to do that. We offered membership to Slovenia despite their chequered record in the Yugoslavian breakup, and to Poland despite Russia's "historical" interest in the region and their general antipathy towards the Russians. Granted that all cases are different, but I don't see it as being at all unreasonable to bring in Albania.