Albanians supply 80% of heroin to EU countries

Now lets see what EU has to say about poor Albanians who are being denied human rights by nasty Serbs, Macedonians and Greeks.
Lets start from the English. This is taken from BBC news:
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Europe's drug gangs
When Ray Kendall, the British outgoing Secretary General of Interpol, visited Albania in the early 1990s, he was shocked by the untrained state of the local police.
Forget computers. There were hardly any typewriters either. 
The 'Albanian mafia' has acquired a fearsome reputation
Much has been done since, with Western help. But after renewed political and social upheavals, the Albanian government's control over large parts of the country remains precarious.
Last year's war over Kosovo has provided another opportunity for criminals to prosper.
According to Ray Kendall, at least 80 percent of the heroin entering Western Europe does so through Turkey and the Balkans - with Albanian gangs playing an increasingly important role.
Former Secretary Genrral of Interpol Raymond Kendall
Ray Kendall: Albanian drug gangs are on the rise
The "Albanian mafia" has acquired a fearsome reputation. It has now established itself within the European Union as well - reportedly wresting control of the criminal underworld in north Italian cities like Milan and Turin from gangs linked to the Italian mafia.
The Western media has written extensively about the "clan structure" of Albanian society; of the traditional code of silence known as "besa"; of the difficulty of penetrating tight-knit family structures.
In a way, they are behaving like any successful company adapting to market conditions.
But Albanian observers say this is largely a myth. The clan tradition is stronger in the north, but the drug trade is more active in the south of Albania. Family clans are stronger in the villages, but the drug traffic goes on mainly in the cities.
Nonetheless, they acknowledge the difficulty of imposing Western notions of an impartial, equal and nationwide system of justice on a society in which the state has not been respected and where many people have traditionally governed themselves by a medieval code based on strict loyalty to the local community.
Where there is demand - and Europe by some estimates accounts for about one third of the world market in illegal drugs - there will also be those willing to supply it: farmers growing opium poppies in countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan; criminal gangs controlling the transit trade; local dealers; and legions of "mules" - obscure individuals who help in the smuggling.
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Now, lets see what Guardian has to say:
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Kosovo drug mafia supply heroin to Europe
International agencies fighting the drug trade are warning that Kosovo has become a "smugglers' paradise" supplying up to 40% of the heroin sold in Europe and North America.
Nato-led forces, struggling to keep peace in the province a year after the war, have no mandate to fight drug traffickers; and - with the expulsion from Kosovo of the Serb police, including the "4th unit" narcotics squad - the smugglers are running the "Balkan route" with complete freedom.
The peacekeepers of K-For "may as well be coming from another planet when it comes to tackling these guys," said Marko Nicovic, a lawyer and vice-president of the international narcotics enforcement officers association, based in New York.
"It's the hardest narcotics ring to crack because it is all run by families and they even have their own language. Kosovo is set to become the cancer centre of Europe, as western Europe will soon discover," he said.
He estimates that the province's traffickers are now handling between 4.5 and five tonnes of heroin a month and growing fast, compared to the two tonnes they were shifting before the Kosovo war of March-June last year, when Nato bombing forced Serbia's regime to pull out of the largely ethnic-Albanian province.
"It's coming through easier and cheaper - and there's much more of it. The price is going down and if this goes on we are predicting a heroin boom in western Europe as there was in the early 80s."
A heroin trafficker in Belgrade confirmed to the Guardian that since the war the Kosovo heroin dealers, most of them from four main families, are concentrating on the western Europe and US markets.
A kilo of heroin that is worth £10,000 in Kosovo or £20,000 in Belgrade can make £40,000 on the British, Italian or Swiss markets, said that 24-year-old heroin middleman. He expected the Kosovo route to grow: "There's nobody to stop them."
Only half the promised 5,000 policemen have arrived to join the peace operation in the province, which is now the main route for heroin flowing through some of the world's most troubled countries, Afghanisatan, northern Iran, the southern states of the Russian Federation, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Kosovo and into western Europe and the US
"It is the Colombia of Europe," said Mr Nikovic, who was the chief of the Yugoslav narcotics force until 1996. "When Serb police were burning houses in Kosovo they were finding it [heroin] stuffed in the roof. As far as I know there has not been a single report in the last year of K-For seizing heroin. They are soldiers not criminal investigators."
The Kosovo Albanian mafia is almost untouchable. "Everything is worked out on the basis of the family or clan structure, the Fic (brotherhood), so it is impossible to plant informers," said Mr Nicovic.
"Their diaspora have been in Turkey and Germany since Tito's communist purges so the whole route is set up. Now they have found the one country between Asia and Europe which is not a member of Interpol."
To Britain, he said, there are two routes: "By truck through Germany, Belgium and France and then via Dover - and also through Budapest, Poland, the Netherlands, then to Britain."
Responsibility for organising police work in Kosovo "is a grey area", said the Nato official, but "if organised crime goes on thriving it will have intenational ramifications".
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Lets see what Telegraph learned about the Albanian "peaceful and oppressed flower breeders":
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Rebels spend drug millions on guns
EXTREMIST Albanian rebels seeking to start a new round of conflict in the southern Balkans have been buying millions of pounds worth of weapons with the proceeds of heroin smuggling from Afghanistan to the streets of a dozen European capitals.
Senior drug trade analysts from the United Nations Drug Control Programme in Vienna and Western police officials say much of the heroin being sold in countries such as Austria, Germany and Switzerland is starting to come from multi-billion pound stocks of Afghan heroin in Central Asia.
Much of it is controlled by al-Qa'eda and the former Taliban regime.
European drug squad officers say Albanian and Kosovar Albanian dealers are ruthlessly trying to seize control of the European heroin market, worth up to £12 billion a year, and have already taken over the trade in at least six European countries.
Western intelligence officials in Kosovo, Macedonia and Switzerland say Albanian gangs have used at least £3 million of their heroin profits since October last year to buy weapons to re-equip rebels in Macedonia who gave up their weapons to Nato troops last autumn.
But Dr Thomas Pietschmann, a senior researcher with the UNDCP in Vienna, says bumper opium harvests in Afghanistan in 1999 and 2000 mean that stockpiles of heroin and opium worth between £30 billion and £50 billion are still held by Afghan, Pakistani and other groups.
"This is enough to keep every addict in Europe supplied for three years, even if another poppy is not grown in Afghanistan, and leave some over for the increasing market in Russia," he said.
Police chiefs are particularly worried about the arrival of a new brand of heroin from Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is 80 per cent pure, known as Heroin No 4, or "white heroin".
The UNDCP says recent large seizures of drugs heading into the European Union across the eastern boundary that stretches from Poland, Germany and Finland southwards to Turkey have all proved to be white heroin that has come from Afghanistan and Pakistan via Central Asia.
Police say Albanian criminal gangs have taken over the heroin trade along this border, muscling in on gangland turf formally controlled by Russians, Ukrainians, Czechs and Turks.
"The rebels in Macedonia, former KLA freedom fighters in Kosovo, and extremist Albanians in southern Serbia are all part of the network of Albanian and Kosovar Albanian families who control criminal networks in Switzerland, Austria, Germany and elsewhere," said a Western intelligence official in the province.
"Albanians account for up to 90 per cent of our problems with drugs and drugs dealings," said Thomas Koeppel, a senior Swiss police official involved in the war against drugs.
Norwegian police made the country's largest heroin haul last month, arresting three ex-guerrillas from the Kosovo Liberation Army.
The Drugs Investigative Committee in Bavaria announced that seven Albanians at the centre of a drug ring that spanned Europe had been arrested in a multi-national operation this month. Group members were captured with 120lb of heroin, which they were smuggling from the Balkans to Scandinavia, via Italy, Austria and Switzerland and it is estimated that they had already moved at least 200lb of the drug to other suppliers.
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Last edited by AmusedToDeath; 06-07-2008 at 03:18 PM.
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