January 19, 2008 (the date of publication in Russian)
Alexander Rublev
BANAL CORRUPTION AND CRIME
The State Dept's asset in Kosovo befriended an Albanian terrorist, guilty of torturing and killing Serbian POWs
Preparing for a new stage of a grand geopolitical game in the Balkans, Washington is frantically trying to draw the curtain over numerous scandals involving US emissaries in Kosovo. On December 18, Gen. (Ret.) Steven Shuck, deputy chair of the international administration of the region, promptly withdrew from Pristina – two weeks before his contract with the United Nations was to expire. Shuck left Kosovo in an atmosphere of secrecy, without a traditional ceremony (farewell cocktails, banquettes etc.). This looked rather like flight than departure of a respectable diplomat. The Voice of America reported next day that Mr. Shuck had "erroneously" maintained too intimate contacts with Kosovo leaders.
It was true that during his earlier tenure of chair of KFOR staff, Steven Shuck gained a reputation of an odious political figure. In fact, he connived at massive ethnic cleansing, unleashed in Kosovo by local criminals in March 2004.
At that time, gangs of Kosovars completely cleansed the ancient towns of Prizren and Pec from ethnic Serbs; in Pristina, only several hundreds of Serbs reside today. In the process of the raid, the gangsters desecrated and burnt down thirty Orthodox churches and two monasteries. NATO peacekeepers were patiently watching the pogrom, with no attempt to intervene. Instead of protecting Serbs, KFOR's servicemen just evacuated them from the sites of their compact habitation, thus assisting Kosovars who occupied their houses. The ancient cities, once cradles of Serbian culture and statehood, were overtaken by fanatic vandals who exterminated unique frescoes, icons, and cultural relics.
Shuck's behavior raised eyebrows even in Washington, and he was eventually redeployed from Pristina to a similar appointment in Sarajevo. His first initiative in the new capacity of Commander of the international contingent in Bosnia and Herzegovina was to disband the military forces of Republika Srpska. To his view, the coexistence of three armies – Serbian, Croatian and Moslem – represented an obstacle for Bosnia's entry in NATO.
After a period of work in Sarajevo, Shuck returned to Pristina already as a civil official – as deputy head of the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMiK). In this function, he performed as a zealous propagandist of the region’s independence, preaching it up with no regard of the restrictions laid upon him by the status of an international official. In his high-level position, Mr. Shuck rather pursued his private interests than the authority of the United Nations.
The background of Mr. Shuck's flight from Kosovo is rather criminal than political. During his tenure in Kosovo, the US general befriended a number of former terrorists, including warlord Ramush Haradinaj, famous for his brutalities. Haradinaj's record includes mass murders of POWs (167 persons killed by his own hands), rape, torture, and kidnapping.
Mr. Shuck displayed astounding indifference to the background of his cronies. On the contrary, he provided personal protection to Kosovo Liberation Army's warlords, promoting them to leading positions in regional ad local authorities. In 2004, Haradinaj became Kosovo's Prime Minister but was later forced to resign and appear before the Hague Tribunal on Former Yugoslavia.
Still, Mr. Shuck did not bother to break his connections with Haradinaj. This fact irritated local Kosovars as well, as they were fed up enough with the former warlord's reign in the Premier's function. Eventually, not Serbs but Kosovars exposed Mr. Shuck, complaining of his practice of extorting bribes of local politicians and businessmen in distribution of contracts for construction of local heating systems.
Dirt was collected on some Shuck's operatives as well. According to Serbian media, they provided protection to firms specializing in laundering drug money. Part of this money was reportedly used for billion-scale bribes conveyed to Hague judges for suspending criminal persecution
of Kosovo warlords.
Only existence of this kind of schemes could explain the fact that Ramush Haradinaj was able to continue his political career in the periods between Hague interrogations, and to enjoy vacations that he spent in Kosovo. For the last time, he visited his native region between December 21 and January 4, officially in order to celebrate Christmas – though being a Moslem.
On his return to The Hague, Haradinaj was convinced that the court would sentence him a symbolically as his Bosnian countertype Naser Oric. However, that was a miscalculation. In an effort to assist their protégé Boris Tadic in the presidential elections in Serbia, the United States and the European Union undertook a propagandist flirt with Belgrade, displaying a "new approach" towards investigation of KLA's practice. On January 25, Ramush Haradinaj was unexpectedly sentenced to 25 years of custody.
The two decisions – on a serious punishment for Haradinaj and on Shuck's premature dismissal – were made synchronously in mid-December 2007.
Inconvenient leakages in both Serbian and Kosovo media forced State Dept officials to repatriate Mr. Shuck as soon as possible in order to shield him from looming charges. His patrons are obviously focused on a desperate effort to conceal the fact that Washington's strategy in Kosovo based itself rather upon banal corruption and crime than the geopolitical interests of the American superpower.
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