Law enforcement officials in Europe have suspected for years that ties existed between Kosovar rebels and Balkan drug smugglers. But in the six months since Washington enthroned the Kosovo Liberation Army in that Yugoslav province, drug traffickers have cemented their influence and used their new status to increase heroin trafficking and forge links with other nationalist rebel groups and drug cartels.

The benefits of the drug trade are evident around Pristina, more so than Western aid. "The new buildings, the better roads, and the sophisticated weapons -- these have been bought by drugs," says Michel Koutouzis, the Balkans region expert for the Global Drugs Monitor, a Paris-based think tank. The repercussions of this drug connection are only now emerging, and many Kosovo observers fear that the province could be evolving into a virtual narco-state under the noses of 49,000 peacekeeping troops.

For hundreds of years, Kosovar Albanian smugglers have been among the world's most accomplished dealers in contraband, aided by a propitious geography of isolated ports and mountainous villages. Virtually every stage of the Balkan heroin business, from refining to end-point distribution, is directed by a loosely knit hierarchy known as "The 15 Families," who answer to the regional clans that run every aspect of Albanian life.

The Albanian traffickers are so successful, says a senior U.S. State Department official, "because Albanians are organized in very close-knit groups, linked by their ethnicity and extended family connections."

The clans maintained an armed brigade that gradually evolved into the KLA. In the early 1990s, as the Kosovar uprising in Yugoslavia grew, ethnic Albanians there faced increased financial needs. The 15 Families responded by boosting drug trafficking and channeling money and weapons to their clans. As traffickers started taking bigger risks, drug seizures by police across Europe skyrocketed from a kilo or two in the early 1980s to multimillion-dollar hauls, culminating in the spectacular 1996 arrest at Gradina, Yugoslavia, of two truckers running a load of more than half a ton of heroin worth $50 million.

German Federal Police now say that Kosovar Albanians import 80 percent of Europe's heroin. So dominant is the Kosovar presence in trafficking that many European users refer to illicit drugs in general as "Albanka," or Albanian lady.

The Kosovar traffickers ship heroin exclusively from Asia's Golden Crescent. It's an apparently inexhaustible source. At one end of the crescent lies Afghanistan, which in 1999 surpassed Burma as the world's largest producer of opium poppies. From there, the heroin base passes through Iran to Turkey, where it is refined, and then into the hands of the 15 Families, which operate out of the lawless border towns linking Macedonia, Albania, and Serbia. Not surprisingly, the KLA has also flourished there. According to the State Department, four to six tons of heroin move through Turkey every month. "Not very much is stopped," says one official. "We get just a fraction of the total."

Initially, the Kosovar traffickers used the direct Balkan route, carrying goods overland by truck from Turkey and Yugoslavia into Europe. With the Bosnian war, the direct route was shut down and two splinter routes developed to bypass Yugoslavia.

As the war in Kosovo heated up, the drug traffickers began supplying the KLA with weapons procured from Eastern European and Italian crime groups in exchange for heroin. The 15 Families also lent their private armies to fight alongside the KLA. Clad in new Swiss uniforms and equipped with modern weaponry, these troops stood out among the ragtag irregulars of the KLA. In all, this was a formidable aid package. It's therefore not surprising that the faction that ultimately seized power in Kosovo, the KLA under Hashim Thaci, was the group that maintained the closest links to traffickers. "As the biggest contributors, the drug traffickers may have gotten the most influence in running the country," says Koutouzis.

The KLA's dependence on the drug lords is difficult to prove, but the evidence is impossible to overlook:

* In 1998, German Federal Police froze two bank accounts of the "United Kosovo" organization in a DYsseldorf bank after they discovered deposits totaling several hundred thousand dollars from a convicted Kosovar drug trafficker. According to at least one published report, the accounts were controlled by Bujar Bukoshi, prime minister of the Kosovo government in exile.

* Last February 23, Czech police arrested Princ Dobroshi, the head of a Kosovar drug gang. While searching his apartment, they discovered evidence that he had placed orders for light infantry weapons and rocket systems. No one questioned what a small-time dealer would be doing with rockets. Only later did Czech police reveal he was shipping them to the KLA. The Czechs extradited Dobroshi to Norway, where he had escaped from prison in 1997 while serving a 14-year sentence for heroin trafficking.

It was the disparate structure of the KLA, Koutouzis says, that facilitated the drug-smuggling explosion. "It permitted a democratization of drug trafficking, where small-time people get involved, and everyone contributes a part of his profit to his clan leader in the KLA," he explains. "The more illegal the activity, the more money the clan gets from the traffickers. So it's in the interest of the clan to promote drug trafficking."

According to Marko Nicovic, the former chief of police in Belgrade, now an investigator who works closely with Interpol, the international police agency, 400 to 500 Kosovars move shipments in the 20-kilo range, while about 5,000 Kosovar Albanians are small-timers, handling shipments of less than two kilos. At one point in 1996, he says, more than 800 ethnic Albanians were in jail in Germany on narcotics charges.

In many places, Kosovar traffickers gained a foothold through raw violence. According to a 1999 German Federal Police report, "The ethnic Albanian gangs have been involved in drugs, weapons trafficking blackmail, and murder. They are increasingly prone to violence."

Tony White of the United Nations Drug Control Program agrees with this assessment. "They are more willing to use violence than any other group," he says. "They have confronted the established order throughout Europe and pushed out the Lebanese, Pakistani, and Italian cartels."

Few gangs are willing to tangle with the Kosovars. In January 1999, Kosovar Albanians killed nine people in Milan, Italy, during a two-week bloodbath between rival heroin groups.

Daut Kadriovski, the reputed boss of one of the 15 Families, embodies the tenacity of the top drug traffickers. A Yugoslav Interior Ministry report identifies him as one of Europe's biggest heroin dealers, and Nicovic calls him a "major financial resource for the KLA." Through his family links Kadriovski smuggled more than 100 kilos of heroin into New York and Philadelphia. He lived comfortably in Istanbul and specialized in creative trafficking solutions, once dispatching a shipment of heroin in the hollowed-out accordion cases of a traveling Albanian folk music group. German authorities eventually arrested him in 1985 with four kilos of heroin. They confiscated his yachts, cars, and villas, and sent him to prison.

But Kadriovski greased his way with narco-dollars. He escaped from prison by bribing guards, and in 1993 headed for the United States, where it's believed he continues to operate.

According to Nicovic, Kadriovski reportedly funneled money to the KLA from New York through a leading Kosovar businessman and declared KLA contributor. "Kadriovski feels more secure with his KLA friends in power," Nicovic says.

The U.S. representatives of four other heroin families are suspected by Interpol of having sent money for the uprising, according to Nicovic. These men typically maintain links with local distributors, he says, and move heroin through a network of small import-export companies in New York and Philadelphia.

Now free of the war and Yugoslav police, drug traffickers have reopened the old Balkan Road. With the KLA in power the top trafficking families have begun to seek relative respectability without decreasing their heroin shipments. "They are trying to position themselves in higher levels of trafficking," says the U.N.'s Tony White. "They want to get away from the violence of the streets and attract less attention. Criminals like to move up like any other business, and the Albanians are becoming business leaders. They have become equal partners with the Turks."

Italian national police discovered this new Kosovar outreach last year when they undertook "Operation Pristina." The carabinieri uncovered a chain of connections that originated in Kosovo and stretched through nine European countries, extending into Central Asia, South America, and the United States.

As their business reaches a saturation point in Europe, Albanian traffickers are looking more to the West. It's a smart business move. The United States has seen a marked shift from cocaine to heroin use. According to recent DEA statistics, Afghan heroin accounted for almost 20 percent of the smack seized in this country -- nearly double the percentage taken four years earlier. Much of it is distributed by Albanians.

"The KLA owes a lot of debts to the traffickers and holy warriors," says Koutouzis. "They are being pressured to assist other insurrections." Already, the OGD has reports of KLA weapons being routed to the newest Muslim holy war in Chechnya.