Non-Subscriber Extract
NLA aims
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| 24 August 2001 |
With suspicions that their cause was about to be betrayed, many former KLA members with family roots in Macedonia therefore decided the time was ripe to stage their own revolution. This would fulfil two aims: freeing their countrymen from the rule of the Skopje government; and driving Albanians in Kosovo back to supporting the nationalist cause.
Members of the Homeland Calling organisation provided funding and allowed the NLA access to the covert arms dumps in Kosovo and Albania under their control. A few hundred former KLA fighters of Macedonian origin began training and organising in the summer of 2000, establishing training bases and arms caches along the mountainous border between Kosovo and Macedonia. Albanian villagers on both sides of the border have close family ties, and they proved to be a fertile source of recruits.
The group’s strategy was first to stage a series of hit-and-run attacks on Macedonian police and army bases to advertise their existence and attract recruits. Then a more widespread series of attacks would be launched to secure control of a ‘liberated zone’, which would became a haven for fighters battling to free ethnic Albanian regions of Macedonia.
Who are the NLA?
Origins
Leadership and structure
Control of territory
The NLA arsenal
Conclusion