A new drug route is traced to the old Balkans anarchy
By Brian Whitmore, Globe Correspondent, 6/3/2001
LZEN, Czech Republic - When Czech police busted Lubomir Fiala at the German border with two kilos of heroin stuffed into juice cartons, they suspected the 52-year-old carpenter of being a small hired hand in a large drug-smuggling operation.
They suspected right.
Fiala turned out to be a courier for two Kosovo Albanian brothers, Nisret and Armend Uka, who paid Fiala $800 to deliver the drugs to their accomplices in Germany.
The Uka brothers' smuggling ring, the details of which came out in their trial here in March, reflected an increasingly common trend in Europe, in which Kosovo Albanians have come to dominate the heroin trade.
Similar operations have been found in cities across the continent; each, officials say, is a link in a sprawling network that stretches from Turkey to Scandinavia.
Kosovar drug traffickers, once bit players, have prospered from the war and the chaos of the Balkans, which culminated in NATO's bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999. Moreover, police say, the Kosovo Liberation Army, NATO's ally in that war, helped to fund its separatist uprising with proceeds from the heroin trade.
''Kosovo Albanian drug smugglers have become a major phenomenon,'' said Jiri Komorous, head of the Czech Republic's national narcotics police, who added that his heroin division ''spends about 80 percent of its time'' on Kosovar drug gangs.
Bordering Germany and Austria, the Czech Republic is a principal gateway to Western Europe's lucrative narcotics markets, and is on the front lines of the continent's war on drug trafficking.
Last month, Czech police seized 1.5 kilograms of pure heroin and 83 kilograms of chemicals that could have turned the pure drug into 110 kilos of street product. All of it was tied to a gang headed by Kosovo Albanians.
Police in Solothurn, Switzerland, arrested a gang of Kosovo Albanians they accused of smuggling ''tens of kilograms'' of heroin into the country from Hungary and the Czech Republic.
Interpol estimates that Kosovo Albanians may control 40 percent of the European heroin trade. In Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic, they may have as much as 70 percent of the market, according to the estimates.
Kosovars became Europe's heroin kingpins by dominating the ''Balkan route,'' a series of roundabout highways that run from Turkey through Bulgaria, the former Yugoslavia, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Germany, and then, it is said, into Austria. Four to six tons of heroin move along this route annually, generating about $400 billion in revenues.
At the top of the drug-smuggling hierarchy, according to Interpol, is a group of gangsters known as ''The Fifteen Families,'' who are based in northern Albania, near the Yugoslav border.
Opium from Afghanistan and Pakistan is exported to Turkey, where it is refined into heroin, and then moved by Turkish gangs to the Balkans.
There, lieutenants of the Fifteen Families, operating from anarchic border towns around ill-defined Balkan borders, take over and administer the drugs' movement across the continent.
In cities across Europe, smaller Kosovo Albanian gangs oversee storage, sale and distribution. To avoid risk, they hire local couriers, called donkeys or horses, to move the drugs across borders.
''Heroin networks are usually made up of groups of fewer than 100 members, consisting of extended families residing along the Balkan route from Eastern Turkey to Western Europe,'' Ralf Mutschke, assistant director of Interpol's Criminal Intelligence Directorate, said in December, in testimony to the US House of Representatives.
The large numbers of Albanian immigrants and refugees in Europe provide fertile ground for drug gangs to recruit members.
''For those emigrants ... the temptation to engage in criminal activity is very high, as most of them are young Albanian males, in their 20s and 30s, who are unskilled workers and have difficulties finding a job,'' Mutschke said.
Some Albanians say the drug gangs have tainted their nation's reputation, and have led to widespread prejudice against them.
''As an honest Albanian this hurts me,'' said Saimir Bajo, a 29-year-old film director who has lived in Prague for five years. ''It gives us a bad image with the Europeans. We are normal like any other nation, not better, not worse.''
But Kosovar involvement in the drug trade, he said, fuels anti-Albanian discrimination, creating ''invisible walls which we cannot escape.''
In 1997, Albania descended into chaos when the collapse of a pyramid savings scheme brought down the government and led to rioting and looting.
From January to March 1997, according to Interpol, outlaw groups seized hundreds of thousands of assault rifles, machine guns, and rocket launchers from military armories.
The organized crime groups mobilized to support the national cause during the war in Kosovo, and that gave them so much political cover that they were able to operate with near impunity.
''Albanian organized crime groups are hybrid organizations, often involved both in criminal activity of an organized nature, and in political activities, mainly relating to Kosovo,'' Mutschke said. He added that half of the estimated $400 million that came into Kosovo from 1996 and 1999 is believed to be illegal drug money.
Vera Brazdova, chief prosecutor in the Uka brothers' case, said telephone taps revealed the two ''discussing the collection of money for Kosovo.''
Likewise, Petr Liska, the narcotics detective who investigated the case, said he was ''100 percent certain'' the two were sending money to the Kosovo Liberation Army, although he added that the allegation was difficult to prove.
The Uka brothers had been operating out of the western Czech city of Plzen for years. But when Fiala cooperated with prosecutors in exchange for a lighter sentence, police were able to shut them down. In March, all three were convicted of heroin smuggling. The Ukas deny the charges and are appealing the verdict.
In February 1999, months before the Ukas were arrested, police in Prague scored one of their biggest heroin busts to date, arresting Princ Dobroshi, a high-level Albanian drug lord. In Dobrosi's apartment investigators found evidence that he had placed orders for light-infantry weapons and rocket systems.
Police said Dobroshi, who was extradited to Norway where he had escaped from prison, planned to purchase the weapons for the KLA.
Despite such victories, Czech police say they feel outgunned by the drug smugglers.
''We are only catching little pieces,'' Liska said. ''They are a step ahead of us.''
This story ran on page A14 of the Boston Globe on 6/3/2001.
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