The Occupation of Kosovo

[Mark Pavlick]

>
>According to leaked comments to the press, European politicians now
>believe that the US used the bombing of Yugoslavia specifically in order
>to establish Camp
>Bondsteel. Before the start of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999,
>the Washington Post insisted, ìWith the Middle-East increasingly
>fragile, we will need bases
>and fly over rights in the Balkans to protect Caspian Sea oil.î
>
>
>
>http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/apr2002/oil-a29.shtml
>Camp Bondsteel and Americaís plans to control Caspian oil
>
>By Paul Stuart
>29 April 2002
>
>
>Camp Bondsteel, the biggest ìfrom scratchî foreign US military base
>since the Vietnam War is near completion in the Yugoslav province of
>Kosovo. It is located close
>to vital oil pipelines and energy corridors presently under
>construction, such as the US sponsored Trans-Balkan oil pipeline. As a
>result defence contractorsóin
>particular Halliburton Oil subsidiary Brown & Root Servicesóare making a
>fortune.
>
>In June 1999, in the immediate aftermath of the bombing of Yugoslavia,
>US forces seized 1,000 acres of farmland in southeast Kosovo at
>Uresevic, near the
>Macedonian border, and began the construction of a camp.
>
>Camp Bondsteel is known as the ìgrand dameî in a network of US bases
>running both sides of the border between Kosovo and Macedonia. In less
>than three years it
>has been transformed from an encampment of tents to a self sufficient,
>high tech base-camp housing nearly 7,000 troopsóthree quarters of all
>the US troops stationed
>in Kosovo.
>
>There are 25 kilometres of roads and over 300 buildings at Camp
>Bondsteel, surrounded by 14 kilometres of earth and concrete barriers,
>84 kilometres of concertina
>wire and 11 watch towers. It is so big that it has downtown, midtown and
>uptown districts, retail outlets, 24-hour sports halls, a chapel,
>library and the best-equipped
>hospital anywhere in Europe. At present there are 55 Black Hawk and
>Apache helicopters based at Bondsteel and although it has no aircraft
>landing strip the location
>was chosen for its capacity to expand. There are suggestions that it
>could replace the US airforce base at Aviano in Italy.
>
>According to Colonel Robert L. McClure, writing in the engineers
>professional Bulletin, ìEngineer planning for operations in Kosovo began
>months before the first bomb
>was dropped. At the outset, planners wanted to use the lessons learned
>in Bosnia and convinced decision makers to reach base-camp ëend stateí
>as quickly as possible.î
>
>Initially US military engineers took control of 320 kilometres of roads
>and 75 bridges in the surrounding area for military use and laid out a
>base camp template involving
>soldiers living quarters, helicopter flight paths, ammunition holding
>areas and so on.
>
>McClure explains how the Engineer Brigade were instructed ìto merge
>construction assets and integrate them with the contractor, Brown & Root
>Services Corporation,
>to build not one but two base camps [the other is Camp Monteith] for a
>total of 7,000 troops.î
>
>According to McClure, ìAt the height of the effort, about 1,000 former
>US military personnel, hired by Brown & Root, along with more than 7,000
>Albanian local
>nationals, joined the 1,700 military engineers. From early July and into
>October [1999], construction at both camps continued 24 hours a day,
>seven days a week.î
>
>Brown & Root Services provides all the support services to Camp
>Bondsteel. This includes 600,000 gallons of water per-day, enough
>electricity to supply a city of
>25,000 and a supply centre with 14,000 product lines. It washes 1,200
>bags of laundry, supplies 18,000 meals per day and operates 95 percent
>of the rail and airfield
>facilities. It also provides the camps firefighting service. Brown &
>Root are now the largest employers in Kosovo, with more than 5,000 local
>Kosovan Albanians and
>another 15,000 on its books.
>
>Staff at Camp Bondsteel rarely venture outside the compound and their
>activities are secretive. Whilst other KFOR patrols are small and mobile
>with soldiers wearing
>soft caps and instructed to integrate with the local population, US
>military personnel leave Bondsteel in either helicopters or as part of
>infrequent but large heavily armed
>convoys.
>
>In unnamed interviews US troops complain that hostility to their
>presence is growing as local inhabitants compare the investment in Camp
>Bondsteel with the continuing
>decline in their own living standards.
>
>Those visiting Camp Bondsteel describe it as a journey through 100 years
>in time. The area surrounding the camp is extremely poor with an
>unemployment rate of 80
>percent. Then Bondsteel appears on the horizon with its mass of
>communication satellites, antennae and menacing attack helicopters
>circling above. Brown & Root pay
>Kosova workers between $1 and $3 per hour. The local manager said wages
>were so low because, ìWe canít inflate the wages because we donít want
>to over inflate
>the local economy.î
>
>The escalating US presence at Bondsteel was accompanied by increased
>activity by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Since its appearance most
>Serbs, Roma and
>Albanians opposed to the KLA have been murdered or driven out. Those
>remaining dare not leave their houses to buy food at the local stores
>and the need for military
>escorts stretch from childrenís swimming pools to tractors taken away
>for repair. According to observers the KLA continue to act with virtual
>impunity in the US sector
>despite the high tech military intelligence facilities at Bondsteel.
>
>When US troops arrive at Camp Bondsteel, they are more likely to be met
>by a Brown & Root employee directing them to their accommodation and
>equipment areas.
>According to G. Cahlink in Government Executive Magazine (February
>2002), ìArmy peace keepers joke that theyíre missing a patch on their
>camouflage fatigues.
>ëWe need one that says Sponsored by Brown & Root,í says a staff
>sergeant, who, like more than nearly 10,000 soldiers in the region, has
>come to rely on Brown and
>Root Services, a Houston based contractor, for everything from breakfast
>to spare parts for armoured Humvees.î
>
>The contract to service Camp Bondsteel is the latest in a string of
>military contracts awarded to Brown & Root Services. Its fortunes have
>grown as US militarism has
>escalated. The company is part of the Halliburton Corporation, the
>largest supplier of products and services to the oil industry.
>
>In 1992 Dick Cheney, as Secretary of Defence in the senior Bush
>administration, awarded the company a contract providing support for the
>US armyís global
>operations. Cheney left politics and joined Halliburton as CEO between
>1995 and 2000. He is now US vice president in the junior Bush
>administration. In 1992 Brown &
>Root built and maintained US army bases in Somalia earning $62 million.
>In 1994 Brown & Root built bases and support systems for 18,000 troops
>in Haiti doubling its
>earnings to $133 million. The company received a five-year support
>contract in 1999 worth $180 million per-year to build military
>facilities in Hungary, Croatia and
>Bosnia. It was Camp Bondsteel, however, that was dubbed ìthe mother of
>all contractsî by the Washington based Contract Services Association of
>America. There,
>ìWe do everything that does not require us to carry a gun,î said Brown &
>Roots director David Capouya.
>
>The aim of outsourcing military support and services to private
>contractors has been to free up more soldiers for combat duties. A US
>Department of Defence (DoD)
>review in 2001 insisted that the use of contractors would escalate:
>ìOnly those functions that must be done at DoD should be kept at DoD.î
>
>In sectors controlled by other Western powers, KFOR soldiers who are
>living in bombed out apartment blocks and old factories joke, ìWhat are
>the two things that can
>be seen from space? One is the Great Wall of China, the other is Camp
>Bondsteel.î
>
>More seriously a senior British military officer told the Washington
>Post, ìIt is an obvious sign that the Americans are making a major
>commitment to the Balkan region
>and plan to stay.î One analyst described the US as having taken
>advantage of favourable circumstances to create a base that would be
>large enough to accommodate
>future military plans.
>
>Camp Bondsteel has become a key venue for important policy speeches by
>leading officials of the Bush administration.
>
>On June 5, 2001 US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld explained to
>troops at Camp Bondsteel what role they played in the new
>administrationís economic
>strategy. He declared, ìHow much should we spend on the armed services?
>...My view is we donít spend on you, we invest in you. The men and women
>in the armed
>services are not a drain on our economic strength. Indeed you safeguard
>it. Youíre not a burden on our economy, you are the critical foundation
>for growth.î
>
>One month later, President George W. Bush made his first trip abroad to
>see US troops at the camp. He traveled directly from the Rome G8 summit,
>where tensions
>with European governments had come to the fore. In a speech described as
>a ìretrenchingî of the US in Europe, he insisted that US troops were in
>Kosovo to stay, had
>gone in together and would ìleave togetherî. In a break from normal
>procedure, in front of cheering troops, Bush signed into law a
>Congress-approved increase in
>military spending of $1.9 billion.
>
>Since then Camp Bondsteel has continued to grow, as it spearheads the
>first phase in a realignment of US military bases in Europe and
>eastward. The Bondsteel
>template is now being applied in Afghanistan and the new bases in the
>former Soviet Republics.
>
>According to leaked comments to the press, European politicians now
>believe that the US used the bombing of Yugoslavia specifically in order
>to establish Camp
>Bondsteel. Before the start of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999,
>the Washington Post insisted, ìWith the Middle-East increasingly
>fragile, we will need bases
>and fly over rights in the Balkans to protect Caspian Sea oil.î
>
>The scale of US oil corporations investment in the exploitation of
>Caspian oil fields and the US government demand for the economy to be
>less dependent on imported
>oil, particularly from the Middle-East, demands a long term solution to
>the transportation of oil to European and US markets. The US Trade &
>Development Agency
>(TDA) has financed initial feasibility studies, with large grants, and
>more recently advanced technical studies for the New York based AMBO
>(Albania, Macedonia,
>Bulgaria Oil) Trans-Balkan pipeline.
>
>Announcing a grant for an advanced technical study in 1999 for the AMBO
>oil pipeline through Bulgaria, Macedonia and Albania, TDA director J.
>Joseph Grandmaison
>declared, ìThe competition is fierce to tap energy resources in the
>Caspian region....Over the last year [1999], TDA has been actively
>promoting the development of
>multiple pipelines to connect these vast resources with Western markets.
>This grant represents a significant step forward for this policy and for
>US business interests in
>the Caspian region.î
>
>The $1.3 billion trans-Balkan AMBO pipeline is one of the most important
>of these multiple pipelines. It will pump oil from the tankers that
>bring it across the Black Sea
>to the Bulgarian oil terminus at Burgas, through Macedonia to the
>Albanian Adriatic port of Vlore. From there it will be pumped on to huge
>300,000 ton tankers and sent
>on to Europe and the US, bypassing the Bosphorus Straitsóthe congested
>and only route out of the Black Sea where tankers are restricted to
>150,000 tons.
>
>The initial feasibility study for AMBO was conducted in 1995 by none
>other than Brown & Root, as was an updated feasibility study in 1999. In
>another twist, the
>former director of Oil & Gas Development for Europe and Africa for Brown
>& Root Energy Services, Ted Ferguson, was appointed as the new president
>of AMBO
>[1997] after the death of former president and founder of AMBO,
>Macedonian born Mr Vuko Tashkovikj.
>
>According to a recent Reuters article, Ferguson declared that
>Exxon-Mobil and Chevron, two of the worlds largest oil corporations, are
>preparing to finance the AMBO
>project.
>
>The building of AMBO risks antagonising Turkey, the USís main ally in
>the region. According to the Reagan Information Interchange, ìWhile the
>United States is
>making an advantageous economic decision, it is overlooking its crucial
>strategic relationship with Turkey.î
>
>The US is also antagonising its European allies and Russia with Camp
>Bondsteel and other smaller military bases run alongside the proposed
>AMBO pipeline route. It
>has been built near the mouth of the Presevo valley and energy Corridor
>8, which the European Union has sponsored since 1994 and regards as a
>strategic route
>east-west for global trade.
>
>In April 1999, British General Michael Jackson, the commander in
>Macedonia during the NATO bombing of Serbia, explained to the Italian
>paper Sole 24 Ore ìToday,
>the circumstances which we have created here have changed. Today, it is
>absolutely necessary to guarantee the stability of Macedonia and its
>entry into NATO. But
>we will certainly remain here a long time so that we can also guarantee
>the security of the energy corridors which traverse this country.î
>
>The newspaper added, ìIt is clear that Jackson is referring to the 8th
>corridor, the East-West axis which ought to be combined to the pipeline
>bringing energy resources
>from Central Asia to terminals in the Black Sea and in the Adriatic,
>connecting Europe with Central Asia. That explains why the great and
>medium sized powers, and
>first of all Russia, donít want to be excluded from the settling of
>scores that will take place over the next few months in the Balkans.î
>
>                   
>
>
>
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