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Introduction: The Missing Link
Why did the US support the separatist and terrorist so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA, or UCK in Shqip), which sought to create an ethnically pure Albanian Kosovo based on ethnicity? Why did the US sponsor a criminal and illegal separatist movement that sought to ethnically cleanse non-Albanians and create an independent state of Kosova? Why was the US supporting and sponsoring the re-establishment of a fascist-Nazi Greater Albania that Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini had initially created?
When did the US begin to play a role in Kosovo? Did the US role in Kosovo begin with the arming and training of the KLA terrorist group which began a separatist war for the creation of a Greater Albania in 1998? Did the US role in Kosovo begin in 1989 when the Yugoslavian government curtailed Albanian control and domination of the province because Kosovo Serbs and other non-Albanians were being murdered and driven out of the province? Did US involvement in Kosovo begin with the death of Yugoslav Communist leader Josip Broz Tito in 1980? Did it begin in 1981 following Albanian riots in Kosovo that sought to create an ethnically pure Albanian Kosova “Republic”?
Did US support for the terrorist KLA emerge sui generis in 1998 as a response to the alleged genocide and ethnic cleansing perpetrated against Albanians by the Slobodan Milosevic regime? What is the missing link or connection between the Greater Albania created by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini and US support for the KLA/UCK?
The recruitment of the former Nazi-fascist members of the Balli Kombetar by the CIA and MI6 in 1948 in order to engineer a regime change in Albania provides the origins and roots for US involvement in Kosovo and the creation of a Greater Albania or Ethnic Albania. The Balli Kombetar had been an ultra-nationalist, right-wing Greater Albania movement that had been created specifically to retain Kosovo as part of a Greater Albania. The issue of Kosovo and a Greater Albania was central to the Balli Kombetar movement. Operation Valuable/Fiend established the US government and CIA connections to the former Nazi/fascist leaders of Greater Albania, the Balli Kombetar, who are the forebears and precursors of the KLA Movement. Operation Valuable/Fiend by the CIA and MI6 provides the missing link between the Greater Albania of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini and the Greater Albania created by the US, NATO and EU in the 1990s.
Regime Change in Albania
The first major paramilitary operation by the CIA in the Cold War took place in Albania. The secret CIA operation was conducted in conjunction with British MI6 and was known by the codename Operation Valuable, or as BG/FIEND by the CIA. The operation was conceived by British intelligence to depose the Communist regime of Enver Hoxha. It was one of the first attempts at “regime change” during the Cold War in the “denied areas” or “captive nations”.
There were several reasons why the UK sought to achieve a regime change in Tirana. It was meant as a “rollback” action, to deprive the Soviet Union of a client state. Strategically, Britain sought to deny the USSR naval bases on the Adriatic coast, which threatened British and US control of the Mediterranean. Britain was a naval power and securing sea lanes was of paramount concern. The operation was to consist of inserting UK and US trained commandos into Albania to organize guerrilla groups who would mount a coup that would overthrow Enver Hoxha. For the CIA, it would be “a clinical experiment to see whether large roll-back operations would be feasible elsewhere.”
Direct British and American involvement in Albania and the Balkans began with their support of anti-German and anti-Italian resistance and guerrilla groups during World War II. The goal was to undermine the German and Italian occupations. This necessitated supporting Communist resistance groups. In Albania, the US and UK supported the Communist movement headed by Enver Hoxha. Why did the US and UK support Communist groups which were determined to set-up Communist regimes? The policy was: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Winston Churchill stated that the only criteria of support was whether the guerrillas were killing German soldiers.
During the war, the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) had armed and advised Enver Hoxha and his guerrilla forces. Now they were determined to overthrow the very regime they had put into power. The first British SOE liaison officers sent into Albania were Lt. Col. David Smiley and Neil “Billy” McLean. Along with Julian Amery, Alan Hare, Peter Kemp, John Hibberdine, and Tony Neel, they were known as “the musketeers”, who backed the Balli Kombetar. They all were right-wing, upper echelon apparatchiks of the British Empire who disdained any progressive or democratic movement. In their own words, they detested anyone or anything that smacked of “progressive ideas.” It was natural that they were the principal backers of the ultra-nationalist, right-wing Balli Kombetar movement.
Ironically and quixotically, they were forced to arm and support the Communist LNC Movement and Enver Hoxha. This was an absurd result. But the game was all about power. British and American intelligence operations in the Balkans make sense on the rationale that they were based on realpolitik, or power politics. The US and UK objective was to obtain pliant puppets and satellites and stooges in the Balkans. During the war, it was only the Communist forces that were perceived as fighting the German and Italian occupation forces. Part of this misperception was due to Communist sympathizers and double-agents such as H.A.R. “Kim” Philby who consciously and purposefully sought to create this image of the Communist resistance as the only genuine resistance against the Germans. So absurdly the US and UK were forced to support the very Communists that they later would attempt to overthrow through regime change. It was a short-term marriage of convenience necessitated by the fact that the major enemy that the US and UK faced at the time was Germany. It was a matter of priority.
The US even sent aid and weapons to a Communist country. Following the 1948 split between Joseph Stalin and Josip Broz Tito, the Yugoslav government requested through CIA channels that the US provide arms to Yugoslavia, fearing an invasion by the USSR. Frank Lindsay, the Office of Policy Co-ordination (OPC) deputy to Frank Wisner, recalled: “Tito was the man for the West to back… We sent him five shiploads of weapons.”
The US and UK were also determined to keep the Communist guerrillas in Greece from taking power. Operation Valuable/Fiend was also a diversionary operation meant to deny bases for Greek Communist insurgents and to divert Soviet or Communist resources away from Greece.
In Italy, the first successful CIA operation was to sabotage the national elections in 1948 where the Communists were favored to win. The US and UK supported “democracy’ only when it meant that anti- or non-Communists would win.
A primary concern for both the British and US governments was the presence of Soviet advisers and potential Soviet naval and submarine bases on the Albanian coast. For Britain, always a colonial and imperialist sea power, securing sea lanes to British colonies, such as India, was paramount. Soviet submarines and destroyers in the Albanian port of Valona threatened British control of the Mediterranean, an important sea route to India, the largest British colony, and to the Suez Canal and the oil of the Middle East. Albania under Hoxha established close ties with the Soviet Union and neighboring Yugoslavia following the war. There were even plans to form a Balkan federation which would have included Yugoslavia, Albania, and Bulgaria. Soviet advisers were reported to have arrived in Albania at this time.
Outright military clashes between Albanian and British forces began on October 22, 1946 when two British navy destroyers, Saumarez and Volafge, were damaged by mines in the three-mile-wide Corfu channel. The British destroyers sustained heavy damage while 43 men on board the vessels were killed. Britain retaliated by retaining ten million pounds of gold which the Albanian government had deposited in the Bank of England during the war. In April, 1946, the International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled against Albania, but the Albanian government refused to accept the judgment. There was unrelenting hostility between Albania and the UK that preceded the launch of Operation Valuable.
Operation Valuable/Fiend
British foreign secretary Ernest Bevin approved the MI6 operation to overthrow the Hoxha regime in February, 1949. The chief of MI6, Stewart Menzies, was not enthusiastic about the paramilitary operation but saw it as a way to appease the former SOE “stinks and bangs people.” The Albanian regime change was a rollback operation meant to “detach” Albania, a “captive nation”, from the Soviet bloc. Strategically, the UK and US objective was to establish a strategic presence on the Balkan peninsula. The British wanted the US to finance the operation and to provide bases. Senior British intelligence officer William Hayter, who chaired the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), came to Washington in March with a group of Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) members and Foreign Office staff that included Gladwyn Jebb, Earl Jellicoe, and Peter Dwyer of MI6 and a Balkans specialist. They met with Robert Joyce of the US State Department’s Policy and Planning Staff (PPS) and Frank Wisner, who was the head of the Office of Policy Co-ordination (OPC), which was administered by the CIA. Wisner had been an attorney who had represented the financial interests of wealthy Albanian refugees who had been members of the Nazi-fascist collaborative group, the Balli Kombetar. So there had also been a monetary connection between US intelligence and the former Nazi/fascist Albanian Balli Kombetar members.
The strategic goal was to establish a foothold on the Balkan peninsula. Before this could occur, the Soviet-backed Hoxha regime had to be overthrown. According to Wisner, the Albanian operation was to be “a clinical experiment to see whether larger rollback operations would be feasible elsewhere.” Amery revealed that the British planned to recruit Balli Kombetar insurgents in the regime change against the Hoxha government. He outlined his plans for the proposed operation to the military commander of the Balli Kombetar, Abas Ermenji.
On May 20, 1949, Harold Perkins, the director of the Special Operations Branch, Neil McLean and Ermenji flew to Rome to meet with Midhat Frasheri, the wartime leader and founder of the Nazi/fascist Balli Kombetar, to discuss the operation. Frasheri was supportive of the operation. Amery believed that “clandestine operations directed at Hoxha would lead to a major uprising” the success of which would “depend on the million odd Albanians living in the Yugoslav Kosovo region.” So Kosovo was always crucial to the planners and organizers of Operation Valuable/Fiend.
Recruiting Albanian Nazis and Fascists
The recruitment for Operation Valuable/Fiend consisted of 40 per cent from the Balli Kombetar, 40 percent from the monarchist Legalite or Legaliteti, and the rest from other Albanian factions. Midhat Frasheri (1880-1949) was a founder and leader of the Balli Kombetar (National Front). He was a known Nazi and fascist collaborator committed to creating a Greater Albania that would include Kosovo-Metohija. He initially fled to Turkey after the war to escape war crimes charges and prosecution as a Nazi-fascist collaborator, then moved to Italy. He later settled as a refugee in London. He was brought to New York City by the US to lead the émigré Albanians. He died suddenly, however, on October 3, 1949 of a heart attack at the Lexington Hotel in New York.
Frasheri had initially approached the US Ambassador in Rome in 1947 proposing to bring 50 Albanian former pro-Nazi, pro-fascist refugee leaders to the US to allegedly combat Albanian Communist infiltrators in the United States. That same year, the Hoxha regime had made a request to the Italian government that Albanian collaborators and war criminals be extradited to Albania. Many of the Albanian BK leaders were interned in Italian camps at the time. Fearing extradition, Frasheri sought US help.
The plan was initially rejected by the US State Department because many on Frasheri’s list of 50 were on a 1948 publication by the Albanian government which identified them as major Nazi-fascist collaborators and war criminals. The State Department held that it did “not believe it would be appropriate” to allow the BK entry into the US because it would “sooner or later occasion embarrassment to this Government.” These BK members “had collaborated with the Germans and Italians in the war.”
The way the US government got around these restrictions was by creating “private organizations” and “fronts” which would provide “plausible deniability” because official sanction and connections could be concealed. The privatization ploy was effective in organizing former Nazi and fascist war criminals by the US and UK governments during the Cold War. It was part of a larger US government scheme known as Bloodstone which recruited “collaborators” and “war criminals” for covert operations, “émigré liberation projects”. Carmel Offie was one of the major organizers. Hasan Dosti was brought to the US in April, 1949, although he lacked a passport. Dosti was to set up an Albanian National Committee in Exile. On May 12, Robert Joyce obtained a passport for Midhat Frasheri to enter the US based on the rationale that it was in the “national interest”. So Frasheri was granted a US visa, due to the efforts of Robert Joyce, the US State Department liaison with the CIA.
Frasheri brought with him Mustafa Merlika-Kruja, the former fascist premier of Greater Albania from 1941 to 1943 who advocated the genocide of the Kosovo Serbs, Hasan Dosti, a Justice Minister in the fascist regime, and Kosovar Muslim Xhafer Deva, who had been instrumental in the creation of the Nazi Skanderbeg SS Division that systematically murdered Kosovo Serbs and which had rounded up Kosovo Jews who were subsequently murdered in the gas ovens at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The Kosovar Deva was directly responsible for the deportation of the Jews and their subsequent deaths. These former Albanian Nazis and fascists established the CIA-financed National Committee for a Free Albania. Among other things, this group recruited Albanian refugees who were sent on failed infiltration missions in Albania. The British double agent Kim Philby oversaw Operation Valuable/Fiend and kept the Soviets and the Hoxha regime apprised of the clandestine operations. Many of these Albanian recruits were captured and tried as spies and imprisoned or executed by the Communist Enver Hoxha regime.
One person’s war criminal is another person’s freedom fighter. This is clearly exemplified by the US and UK position on alleged Albanian war criminals and collaborators such as those of the Balli Kombetar. Enver Hoxha recalled making official requests that Albanian war criminals and collaborators be turned over for trial, but the US and UK refused his requests:
We made official requests to the British and American governments for the extradition of war criminals, not only Albanians, but also Italians and Germans, who had stained their hands with blood in Albania and were now under their jurisdiction. Contrary to the declarations and the joint commitments of the allies during the war and the decisions which were taken later on this question, they turned a deaf ear and did not hand them over to us. On the contrary, they kept the chiefs in luxury hotels, while they trained their ‘fighting men’ in Rome, Munich, London, Athens and elsewhere.
Xhafer Deva, who was from Kosovo, had been the Kosovar Albanian Muslim Minister of the Interior under the Italian fascist-sponsored Greater Albania. Deva lived in the United States after the war. He died in 1978 in Palo Alto, California. Hasan Dosti had been the Minister of Justice in the Italian-sponsored Greater Albania regime. He lived in Los Angeles, California in 1988. Mustafa Merlika-Kruja had been the Albanian premier of Greater Albania from 1941 to 1943. He died in 1958 in New York. Rexhep Mitrovica was an Albanian official in the Nazi German-sponsored Greater Albanian government in July 10, 1944, when Germany had re-occupied Kosovo and Albania..
The number of Jews killed in Greater Albania during the Holocaust is estimated at 591. Albanians played a major role in the Holocaust. Many of the leaders the CIA and MI6 recruited for Operation Valuable/Fiend were directly involved in the murder of the Jews of Greater Albania.
