A contributor to the beograd.com web site has written that Croatian Army Colonel Agim Ceku has been made the military commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army. The contributor also alleges that the West has acknowledged that a Croatian general helped found the KLA. While STRATFOR has found reference to an Agim Ceku as a senior KLA official in the company of Hashim Thaci in mid-April, we have found no reference to Ceku being affiliated with the Croatian Army. We also have not been able to verify this new appointment. But valid or not, the allegations are worthy of comment, as they have a long history and potentially serious implications.

When the KLA launched its offensive in the summer of 1998, temporarily winning control of 40 percent of Kosovo, Reuters’ Serbia correspondent Jovan Kovacevic reported that the KLA had been founded and was being led by an unnamed Croatian general. It was assumed at the time that the general in question was Brigadier General Rahim Ademi, the highest ranking ethnic Albanian in the Croatian Army. Ademi reportedly took part in Operation Storm, the Croatian offensive in the summer of 1995 that drove some 100,000-350,000 ethnic Serbs out of Krajina and Western Slavonia and, according to Western analysts, played a major role in forcing Serb acceptance of the Dayton Accords. At the time, General Wesley Clark cited the allegations when he warned Croatia not to get involved in the fighting in Kosovo. However, Ademi denied he was involved with the KLA, as did the Croatian Defense Ministry and Albanian organizations in Croatia, and Ademi was seen performing his regular duties as deputy commander of the Croatian Army’s third military district in Knin.

While Ademi’s role in the KLA is questionable, all sides agree that lower-ranking ethnic Albanian veterans of the Croatian Army serve in the KLA. Ton Marku, chairman of the Democratic Union of Albanians in Croatia and head of the Union of Albanian Communities last June confirmed that several hundred ethnic Albanians from Croatia, including many with military experience, were fighting as volunteers in Kosovo. Marku said that many ethnic Croats, including Croatian Armed Forces officers, had volunteered but were not fighting on the front lines in Kosovo. Some specific Croatian Army veterans have been reported in Kosovo. Belgrade’s Beta news agency reported in September 1998 that one of several factions in Kosovo, operating under the name KLA but not recognizing the political leadership of any Kosovar Albanian, was headed by former Yugoslav People’s Army Captain and Croatian Army Colonel Naim Maloku. According to Jane’s Intelligence Review, Maloku is currently assistant commander of the KLA’s Second Operational Zone in Llap. Croatian Army officer Fehmi Ladrovci was reportedly killed in Kosovo last September. Other reports claim that KLA soldiers have received arms, equipment, uniforms, and training from Croatia.

It is doubtful that Zagreb pulls the KLA’s strings, but there are certainly stronger ties between the two than just an active expatriate Albanian community in Croatia. This is interesting, in large part due to the role played by Croatia in 1991 and 1995. Marku said that Albanians in Croatia had organized military units at the very beginning of Croatia’s war of secession, and had modeled their plans for Kosovo after those of Croatian National Guard commander Martin Spegelj. Many ethnic Albanians fought the Serbs on the side of the Croats and the Bosnian Moslems, in anticipation of the future conflict in Kosovo. The model this experience laid out for Kosovo apparently extended to the end of the Bosnian and Croatian wars, when the combination of a NATO bombing campaign and an offensive by the American and German trained, backed, and armed Croatian Army forced the Serbs to the bargaining table in Dayton. As recently as April 15, Defense Secretary William Cohen pointed out the success of this combination of bombing and proxy ground war to the Senate Armed Services Committee, during testimony on U.S. relations with the KLA. The U.S. insists it is neither arming nor training the KLA, but it has said nothing about the possibility that some of the instruction and aid it gave Croatia may be trickling down.