On Tuesday, PBS airs the U.S. broadcast
premiere of the positively chilling documentary, "The Brooklyn
Connection," by Netherlands native Klaartje Quirijns.
The film’s subtitle is "How to Build a Guerrilla Army."
The film is about a charismatic husband and father living in
Bay Ridge, Florin Krasniqi, who has successfully negotiated U.S.
gun laws in order to create and supply a guerrilla army in Kosovo
(a province of old Yugoslavia). According to the documentary,
which is based in part on Stacy Sullivan’s book "Be Not
Afraid, For You Have Sons in America," this roofer has raised
and spent $30 million to arm and supply his "Kosovo Liberation
Army."
In one scene, he and his family attend an event at Micali Terrace,
on 86th Street. They look like any other glitzy, sequined Brooklyn
clan heading off to a family affair – a Sweet 16 or engagement
party perhaps?
No, it’s a fundraiser for the KLA.
Krasniqi cheerfully escorts the film crew on visits to his suppliers,
such as Sunset Park’s Schwarzman army surplus warehouse, where
he rolls a banal shopping cart – filled with more than 100 military
uniforms – down the aisle; and a gun dealer in Pennsylvania who
seems to swallow Krasniqi’s story that he needs a sniper rifle
to go elephant hunting (pictured at left).
Although Quirijns is heard asking the tough questions, several
times off-camera, about the fatal consequences of his buying
and smuggling the guns, she also captures Krasniqi’s gut-wrenching
side of the story through interviews with him and footage of
him in his Brooklyn home, which seems to be the American dream
come true.
Although he’s seen flipping meat on his barbecue and splashing
around in his pool with his children, Krasniqi is still very
tied to his ancestral home in Kosovo, which has been burned down
several times in the last hundred years by Serbs.
After his cousin was killed attacking a Serb police station in
1997, he decided to help Kosovo’s Albanians achieve their freedom
more quickly, by starting an army.
The film raises tough questions about America’s role in fueling
overseas conflicts with our limited regulation of guns – and
access to airplanes. In one disturbing segment, Krasniqi said
he was able to rent a cargo plane to move 25 tons of guns. "Brooklyn
Connection" is evidence of both an enormous armed conflict
about to erupt again in Kosovo (unless politicians move faster
to negotiate a peace), and of the ease with which deadly weapons
can be purchased in this country and turned on Americans at home
and abroad.
POV presents "The Brooklyn Connection" July 19 at 10
pm on channel 13/WNET.
