History is the annals of irony. The break-up of the KLA'a role model
- led to the resurgence of its intellectual progeny. The KLA
absorbed thousands of weapons from the looted armouries of the
Albanian military and police. Angry mobs attacked these ordnances
following the collapse of pyramid investment schemes that robbed one
third of the population of all their savings. The arms ended up in
the trigger-happy hands of drug lords, mafiosi, pimps, smugglers and
freedom fighters from Tetovo in Macedonia to Durres in Albania and
from Pristina in Kosovo to the Sandzak in Serbia. The KLA was so
ill-equipped to cope with this fortuitous cornucopia - that it began
to trade weapons, a gainful avocation it found hard to dislodge ever
since. The convulsive dissolution of Albania led to changes in high
places. Sali Berisha was deposed and replaced by Rexhep Mejdani, an
even more sympathetic ear to separatist demands. Berisha himself
later allowed the KLA to use his property (around Tropoja) as
staging grounds and supported the cause (though not the "Marxist-
Leninist" KLA or its self-appointed government) unequivocally.
At a certain stage, he even accused Fatos Nano, his rival and the
Prime Minister of Albania of being the enemy of the Albanian people
for not displaying the same unmitigated loyalty to the idea of an
independent Kosovo, under Rugova and Bujar Bukoshi, Rugova's money
man (and Prime Minister in exile).
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