World

Albania's Illegal Exports

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

November 18, 1999 / 10:34 AM EST / CBS

NATOÂ's air war may have forced Serbian troops from Kosovo and allowed the Kosovar Albanians to return home. But the allianceÂ's reversal of Serb ethnic cleansing was not the only consequence of the war, reports CBS News Correspondent Bill Plante.

In the case of Kosovo, some of those consequences were to be found in neighboring Albania.

Gangs of Albanian mobsters control smuggling routes. Heroin travels those routes into Turkey. From there it is funneled through the Balkans, including Bulgaria and Greece, and then into the European Union and the United States.

Â"The Albanian Mafia, were, in my eyes, the greatest beneficiaries of the recent air campaignÂ" said Frank Cilluffo, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Â"The Albanian Mafia has, for all intents and purposes, usurped any legitimate authority in that country. They are basically running the country,Â" Cilluffo said.

The gangs also smuggle human traffic. During the Kosovo crisis, human smuggling was the issue of the day, with the Italian Mafia, they were smuggling people to Italy, to England, as well as to Germany.

Those same routes are being used to smuggle drugs.

Human smuggling was a $3 billion-a-year business even before the NATO bombing of Serbia. During the war, as many as 10,000 people per month were smuggled out to other parts of Europe and to the East Coast of the United States.

Not all of those smuggled into the U.S. were model citizens. The FBI knows the criminal element from the Balkans as Â"yaks.Â"

Â"We have seen them in the United States, particularly in the Northeast. They have become very adept at violent crimes,Â" said FBI Deputy Director Thomas Pickard.

The rapid rise of the Albanian Mafia and its ability to use technology to coordinate with other criminal groups across ethnic lines highlights law enforcement's latest nightmare: organized crime gangs operating without regard to national borders or geography.

ItÂ's a threat the FBI takes seriously.

Â"They have adopted the idea of profit, no matter what the criminal activity. They don't discriminate against anybody,Â" said Pickard. Â"Russians will deal with Nigerians in the drug trade, Bulgarians will deal with Egyptians in the smuggling of aliens.Â"

The FBIÂ's budget has doubled in the last few years. Much of the new money is to combat terrorists that threaten national security. But the fight against crime is also a fight that will take political will.

Â"Â… the political people have a need to also assure that this becomes a priority in our diplomatic relations with other countries,Â" said Cilluffo.

Law enforcement officials are saying that cross-border crime is going to be the problem in the next century. On Thursday, First Lady Hillary Clinton was speaking of a grant to target one of the problems: the smuggling of women into prostitution.