the American Council for Kosovo

Synaxis of the Holy Archangel Gabriel; St. Stephen of St. Sabbas' Monastery (794)

26 July 2006

About American Council for Kosovo
About Council
Advisory Board
Council Officers The American Council for Kosovo is a U.S. nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting a better American understanding of the Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija and of the critical American stake in the province's future. The Council's mission is to make accurate information and analysis about Kosovo available to officials of the Executive and Legislative branches of the U.S. Government; to think tanks, media, NGOs, religious and advocacy organizations; and to the general public. In particular, the Council’s educational activities will generate a heightened American awareness that an independent Kosovo – forcibly and illegally detached from Serbia, as is now being contemplated by the international community – would be harmful to U.S. national interests and to European and global security.Since the 1999 war against Serbia, the province of Kosovo has been under United Nations administration and NATO military control. Seven years later, Kosovo is just as lawless and unstable as it was when the international administration began. Criminal and jihad terrorist elements of the supposedly disbanded “Kosovo Liberation Army" (KLA) dominate the province’s civil administration (under U.N. authority) and maintain a reign of terror over Kosovo’s still-dwindling Christian Serb population. Churches and monasteries that have not already been desecrated, blown up, or burned by mobs of Muslim Albanians exist under tenuous protection from NATO. Kosovo remains Europe’s black hole of organized crime activities – drugs (heroin derived from Afghan opium), sex slaves, weapons – and the criminal gateway to the rest of the continent. Even more dangerously, of major KLA figures have documented links to of jihad terrorist sponsors such as the government of Iran and al-Qaeda – including to Osama bin Laden personally. Personnel, money, and explosives tied to terrorist actions in Europe have been traced back to Kosovo. (See of Kosovo: Questions and Answers.)Incredibly, elements of the international community – including some sectors of the U.S. government and important voices in Congress – have accepted the idea that the only “solution" for Kosovo is to detach it formally from Serbia and to make it an independent state. This would mean officially handing power to the criminal and jihad terrorist KLA leadership, who would then be empowered as a “sovereign" government. The terrorist and organized crime menace emanating from Kosovo would increase. The last Christian Serb elements (and all other non-Albanians, such as the Roma) would be eradicated. Kosovo independence also would violate every principle of the international system by forcibly and illegally detaching Kosovo from a recognized state, Serbia, to which the government of that country justifiably insists it will not agree.It is the position of the American Council for Kosovo that the United States must not support a misguided course of detaching Kosovo from Serbia to create an independent Muslim Albanian state dominated by terrorist and criminal elements. Doing so would –Lead to the elimination of the remaining Christian Serb population;Strengthen global jihad terrorism and organized crime; and Fatally undermine the rule of law in international affairs.This outcome is not inevitable: Kosovo independence and the creation of an independent state controlled by criminals and terrorists would require the United States to ram it through the Contact Group (the U.S., the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Russia) and the United Nations Security Council. But that is what may happen unless this misguided agenda is reconsidered very soon. The Council believes that a reconsideration can and will occur if accurate information and analysis is made available to the American government and people regarding what is at stake in Kosovo and why U.S. policymakers should reject the option of Kosovo independence. The Council is a 501(c)(4) organization. In addition to its Officers, the Council also relies heavily on the contributions of members of a separate Advisory Board composed of distinguished authorities with experience and expertise in relevant fields – government, military, politics, journalism, religion, academia, and others. The Council’s Advisory Board members might not agree on everything about American policy to date in the Balkan region or about what would be best future course among the many possible options. But they do agree on what course should not be taken: Kosovo independence is the wrong choice for America.