Ever since they recognized Kosovo’s independence in 2008, the US and its European Union allies have been under no illusions about the malign influence of high-level corruption and organized crime in the former Serbian province. A former US ambassador to Pristina has observed that unless blatantly corrupt, high-ranking officials are arrested, Kosovo’s people will conclude that “the government is little more than a kleptocracy”.
Western countries have nevertheless proved singularly reluctant to investigate allegations that trafficking in human organs took place soon after Kosovo’s 1998-99 war of independence. According to these claims, gangs of Kosovo Liberation Army fighters and their associates abducted Serb prisoners to Albania, murdered them, extracted their kidneys and sold them to private foreign clinics. Any official inquiry, it is feared in Washington and Brussels, would play into the hands of Serbia, which was angered by Kosovo’s secession and will seize on all available material to discredit Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian authorities.
There is no longer any excuse for delaying an investigation. On Tuesday the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe – the 47-nation body charged with upholding democracy and human rights in Europe – voted to endorse a report that backs the charges of organ-trafficking and describes the alleged involvement of KLA ringleaders. Authorities in Kosovo and Albania have denounced the report and labeled Dick Marty, its main author, a pro-Serb propagandist. Neither the circumstances nor the contents of his report justify these attacks.
For one thing, the allegations were first aired in 2008 by none other than Carla Del Ponte, once the chief prosecutor of the United Nations war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia. For another, Mr. Marty’s balanced report unequivocally condemns Serbian war crimes, noting that Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians “suffered horrendous violence” as a result of the “insane ethnic cleansing policy” of the dictatorial Slobodan Milosevic.
Stability in former Yugoslavia requires the painful truth to be told about all wartime atrocities. The Marty report contains enough disturbing testimony to justify an independent inquiry. The US and EU must not impede it by withholding or filleting sensitive files. Kosovo and Albania must keep their promise of full co-operation. Lastly, Serbia must not exploit the affair to destabilize Kosovo – whose independence remains in the region’s best long-term interests.
Published: January 27 2011 22:31
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