http://globalresearch.ca/articles/MEN307A.html
Oil Pipelines and Transport Corridors
Balkans Crisis supports US Corporate Interests
By Alfred John Mendes
www.globalresearch.ca 29 July 2003
The URL of this article is:
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/MEN307A.html
This article is primarily concerned with the Balkan crisis, which, on
the face of it, may seem a somewhat untimely divergence of attention
from the more exigent crisis in Iraq - but, with a little patience on
the part of the reader, it will become apparent that there are basic,
causal factors common to both. And given the dominant rôle played by
one country, America, in both these crises, this should hardly be
surprising.
This Balkan crisis - now over a decade old - differs from the region’s
previous, numerous crises (in the past invariably referred to as ‘That
Balkan Problem!’) in that it is now playing a pivotal rôle in a
scenario of global dimensions, due, primarily, to the fact that the
main protagonist in this crisis is also by far the world’s most
economically powerful state - namely, Corporate America, a state
embarked upon world domination under the banner of ‘Profit’.
To determine why America/NATO became involved in this region it is, of
course, necessary to view its actions within a wider historical
context, but insofar as this is covered in this author’s previous
article, ‘An Alternative View of The Yugoslav Crisis’, this article
will concern itself with the situation in the aftermath of the collapse
of the Soviet Union (As a result of which, it must be kept in mind,
Yugoslavia was no longer a useful foil for the West in its stand-off
with the USSR), with particular emphasis on the role that oil has
played in determining the strategy of the US in the region. The big oil
corporations had wasted little time in buying their way into the vast
ex-Soviet oil & gas reserves - especially those in Kazakhstan, and the
enormous potential for profit that lay in this Caucasus region would
play an important part in determining US strategy in the Balkans.
The Trade & Development Agency (TDA - now known as the USTDA) was given
the task of overseeing this project, known as the South Balkan
Development Initiative (SBDI) of 1996. This was an agency which had
been set up in 1981 to deal with just such a situation. Following are
some of its aims, quoted from its reports of the years 2000 & 2001:
(italics are the authors’)
(a) “It provides funding for US companies to conduct feasibility
studies on major projects in developing & middle-income countries”;
(b) “It promotes economic development while helping the US private
sector get involved in projects that offer significant US export
opportunities... Exports of US goods and services related specifically
to those projects already total over $1.2 billion”;
(c) “TDA’s strategy is to identify those areas in which US companies
are highly competitive - rail, aviation, power, and oil & gas”; and
(d) “The longest lasting impact we can have is to bring US technology &
investment to the Balkans through our private sector” (1). It is worthy
of note that the TDA describes itself as “ an independent US government
agency”. Equivocal phraseology, to say the least - but it is a token of
the clonal relationship between the government and the so-called
independent (corporate) establishment.
Understandably, the problem of transporting oil & gas from the Caucasus
to its markets featured early on in the deliberations between the TDA
and the oil corporations, one of the factors taken into consideration
being that there was already a Russian plan on the table: a pipeline
from the Bulgarian port of Burgas on the Black Sea to the Greek port of
Alexandropolous on the Aegean Sea (thus by-passing the heavily
trafficked Bosphorous). The TDA settled for a different plan: they
would run a 900 kilometer trans-Balkan pipeline, called Corridor 8,
from Burgas - via Skopje in Macedonia - to the Albanian port of Vlore
on the Adriatic Sea at an estimated cost originally estimated to be
$825 million, but later imcreased to $1.13 billion. On the face of it,
this would seem to have been a strange choice for the Americans to have
made in view of the fact that the US and Russia were already partners
in the Caspian pipeline project, and could have continued this
partnership in the latter’s Burgas to Alexandropolous project. After
all, the latter was - at 280 kms. - a much shorter route and presented
far fewer topographical problems. The American’s main objection to it
- and it was a valid one - was that the Albanian port of Vlore, with
its deeper water could accomodate larger tankers, and was more
accessible to the oil markets than Alexandropolous. However, other
factors of a more political nature played a more crucial role in the
American’s choice.
One clue to this was hinted at by the Director of TDA, J. Joseph
Grandmaison, when, in a press release he described TDA’s $588,000
feasibility grant for the project as “..a significant step forward for
this policy and for US business interests in the Caspian region”. What
he did not mention was that the company which TDA had chosen to run the
Corridor 8 pipeline had obtained “exclusive right” so to do at a
meeting with the three countries involved in the project, and that one
of the three, Bulgaria, had also granted Russia “exclusive right” to
run its line through Bulgaria! A very strange interpretation of the
term “exclusive”. Further clues can be found by a brief look at how
these TDA grants were distributed throughout the Balkan region as
stated in their 2001 report: It reveals that there was a bias in the
distribution thereof. Total grants to the countries through which
Corridor 8 would run, Bulgaria, Macedonia & Albania, (countries, it
should be noted, not directly involved in the disastrous Yugoslav civil
war), were - respectively -$14,636,555; $10,030,285; and $9,161,856 -
whereas Bosnia-Herzogovina, which had suffered heavily in the war,
received $7,929,309 (2). It should be stressed here that the above
grants were for feasibility studies only. Other, much larger grants
were being supplied by other US government bodies. For instance, when,
in 1998, the Bulgarian President Petar Stoyanov met Clinton in
Washington, their joint statement at the conclusion of the meeting
contained the following items of pertinent interest:
(a) “Over the past 7 years, the United States has provided Bulgaria
with over $235 million in assistance under the Support for East
European Democracy Program (SEED) to advance fundamental economic
reforms”, and
(b) also provided a $3.2 million Foreign Military Financing program
..and a US “military liaison team resident in the Bulgarian Ministry of
Defense to organize staff & information exchanges” (3). This would be
but one more stride of America’s military march eastwards (details of
which, more later).
As can be seen from the foregoing facts and quotes, the Corridor 8
project, accompanied as it would be by linked facilities such as roads,
telecommunications, rail and security, would act as the thin end of the
wedge, opening up the prospect of further lucrative contracts for other
US businesses - thus leading to the influx of American exports,
capital, and eventual economic domination of the region. Or, as TDA
puts it in their Annual Report 2000: “...we always knew Corridor 8 was
far more than just a road (sic). As the links among the economies and
cultures of the three countries continue to grow, Corridor 8 will
become a vital economic Corridor as well” (4). What they could have
added was that it would also provide a reason for maintaining a strong
military presence (NATO) in the region for security.
In 1996 TDA gave the Albanian Macedonian Bulgarian Oil Corporation
(AMBO) the exclusive right to run the Corridor 8 pipeline. Once again,
a somewhat puzzling choice. AMBO was/is a company founded by one Vuko
Tashkovikj, an immigrant to the USA from Macedonia who became an
architect and set up an architectural firm in Pond Ridge, NY. How did
an architect become an oilman? The answer to this is, for now, veiled
in mystery. The feasibility study for this pipeline project was
contracted out - by the TDA - to the prestigious oil/construction
company Brown & Root (the CEO of whose parent company, Halliburton, had
been Dick Cheney - now Vice-President under Bush jnr.); the economic
analysis sub-contracted to Credit Suisse First Boston (of which Richard
Holbrooke,. the much-publicised Balkan ‘peace-maker’, was
Vice-Chairman); the legal aspects overseen by the New York law firm,
White & Case (which President Clinton joined on losing his presidency).
But perhaps the most fortuitous ‘coincidence’ occurred in January 1997
when Edward Ferguson, Director of Oil & Gas Development in Brown &
Root, was appointed President & CEO of AMBO.
Brown & Root Services (BRS), of Texas, is one of the many American
companies involved in high-profile projects in the Balkans, and it is a
company that bears all the hallmarks of membership of Corporate
America, demonstrated by its clonal relationship with the US
Administration over the years. It certainly benefitted from
fellow-Texan LBJ’s presidency - and will just as surely benefit from
George W. Bush’s presidency (after all, Halliburton had donated one
quarter of a million dollars to his election campaign). Brown & Root’s
entry into the Balkans was no ‘shot in the dark’, as a brief resumé of
its recent, pertinent history reveals (by Robert Bryce in the Austin
Chronicle of August 2nd 2000): (a) From 1962 to 1972, Brown & Root
built roads, landing strips, harbors & military bases in South Vietnam;
(b) In 1992, when Dick Cheney was US Secretary of State for Defense
under Bush Snr., the Pentagon “paid BRS $3.9 million to produce a
classified report detailing how private companies - like itself - could
help provide logistics for American troops in potential war zones
around the world”. Later that same year giving BRS “an additional $5
million to update its report”; (c) “Between 1992 and 1999, the Pentagon
paid BRS more than $1.2 billion for its work in trouble spots around
the globe. In May of 1999, the US Corps of Army Engineers re-enlisted
the company’s help in the Balkans, giving it a new 5-year contract
worth $731 million” (5).
Brown & Root’s most important Balkan project, begun in the immediate
aftermath of NATO’s bombing of Kosovo and Serbia, was almost certainly
the $36.6 million US military base Camp Bondsteel, near Urosevac in
Gnjilane county in southeastern Kosovo. As the OSCE Mission in Kosovo
(OMIK) noted in their report in the aftermath of the Kosovo conflict -
and after the arrival of NATO in the area - this was an area in which
the Serbs were the majority ethnic group, and it had remained
relatively calm during the conflict. “Since the end of the conflict,
however, the situation has been startlingly different.” For instance,
whereas in June 1999 “..only one house in Gnjilane had been destroyed”
- by October of that same year “the number had risen to 280!”. And the
KLA was now in the area in force. The Serbs and Romas (Gypsies) had
fled, and the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), the party of the
liberal Albanian, Ibrahim Rugova, was also being targeted by the KLA.
This OMIK report preceeded the construction of the base, for which the
Americans had no mandate - other than their own. It involved the
seizure and flattening of two hills of cultivated land of some 800
acres (the largest foreign-based camp since Vietnam). This could only
have meant that the Americans intended to remain there for a long time.
Were the reasons for establishing Camp Bondsteel in this autocratic
manner ‘humanitarian’? (If there is one thing to be said in favour of
the feudal barons as they built their walled, impregnable castles
throughout Europe, it is that at least they made no bones about why
they were doing so!). Be that as it may, Camp Bondsteel is also
strategically placed near the Kosovo-Macedonia border, giving it easy
access southwards. So easy, in fact, that the KLA used it for their
subsequent incursions into Macedonia - unhindered! Could it be that the
security of Corridor 8 was/is of prime importance to the US, to the
exclusion of much else - at least, for now? And with the above in mind,
is it not rational to assume that, at the very least, NATO was
deliberately not preventing the KLA's incursions into Macedonia because
the ensuing friction there accomplished two things:
(a) it justified the need for NATO’s presence in the region (and this
includes Macedonia), and
(b) it ensured that the latter ‘played ball’ over Corridor 8? Why else
had the ‘peacekeepers’ in the stand-off between the Serbs and Albanians
in Macedonia included such men as Solana (who had been NATO General
Secretary through much of the crisis), and James Pardew (the Pentagon
representive sent to persuade the Bosnians to use the mercenary MPRI’s
services in the aftermath of the Dayton Accord)? Indeed, the early
reaction of distrust evinced by the Macedonian Slavs to America’s
“peace-keeping” moves in the region was surely understandable in view
of the fact that their Army was concurrently being
advised/trained/aided by that prestigious group of ‘privatised’ retired
US Generals known as the Military Professional Resources Inc. (MPRI) -
under the command of ex-General Richard Griffiths (as admitted by Major
General Metodi Stamboliski of the Macedonian Army General Staff in the
Macedonian magazine “Defence” no.60 April 2001) (6).
After all, this is an organisation which: (a) assisted/trained the
Croatian Army in preparation for the latter’s attack on the Serbs in
West Krajina; (b) aided & assisted in the reformation of the Bosnian
Army after the Dayton Accord; and (c) aided and assisted the KLA after
NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia in ‘99. This was all under the command of
the self-same General Richard Griffiths who, from ‘89 to ‘91 had been
US Assistant Commander in Europe for Intelligence - in Frankfurt. In
Croatia, he, naturally, had had a close relationship with Brigadier
Agim Ceku, a Kosovan, who was then serving with the Croatian Army - but
had later left to become Commander of the KLA in Kosovo. To cap it all,
it transpires that when the then Chief of Staff of the Macedonian Army,
General Jovan Andrejevski attended Military School in the US, Richard
Griffiths had been his tutor!
On September 11th 2001 - with G.W.Bush jnr. now President - the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked, causing severe civilian
and military casualities. With surprising alacrity the US laid the
blame for this event at the door of the Afghan Taliban and its
al-Quaeda cohorts - and decided to invade Afghanistan. But the fact
that for years there had been a close relationship between the US (its
Intelligence Services in particular) and the Taliban - to say nothing
of the Pakistan ISI - immediately posed a question, best expressed by
Paul JosephWatson in his article ‘The End Justifies the Means’: “When
one considers the voluminous evidence derived from official sources,
domestic and foreign mainstream media, and alternative media, the only
logical conclusion is that elements within the US Government had
specific foreknowledge of the events of September 11th and allowed the
attacks to take place when preventative measures could and should have
been taken to prevent them..”. He intriguingly added: “What is also
patently clear is that a New World Order has been fuelled and
accelerated by September 11th”. (7)
America invaded Afghanistan and a ‘War on Terrorism’ was now the
clarion call-of-the-day. The US Central Command (CENTCOM - which had
led the ‘allies’ in the Gulf War of ‘91), led the invasion, and using
Bulgaria’s and Romania’s prospective membership of NATO as an incentive
(to say nothing of grants, etc.), the Americans, in return, gained
from those two countries: (a) contracts to improve their military bases
and Black Sea ports - and use of same for possible interventions in the
Middle East; (b) permission to overfly their countries using military
aircraft. This cooperation resulted in Bulgarian and Romanian troops
serving with the peace-keeping force in post-war Afghanistan. (8)
In the spring of 2003, the Americans, again using their strike force
CENTCOM, invaded Iraq with Britain as its only ally. They had planned
on using their old NATO ally Turkey as a jumping off point for moving
their troops in a pincer movement into northern (Kurdish) Iraq, but the
Turks balked at this and refused permission. The conveniently-placed
Balkan countries, Bulgaria and Romania, were used instead, and 3000 US
troops (including ‘special operations units’) - and weapons - were
flown to the frontline in Iraq during the invasion (9). Apparently, a
North Atlantic Treaty Organisation was now involved/participating in
this Middle East fracas. Disorienting, to say the least - but not if it
is recalled that
(a) both NATO and CENTCOM were/are American-controlled forces, and
(b) both had been formed in order to protect and propagate the
socio-economic system of its Corporate capitalist masters. Indeed, it
would seem that the present secretary-general of NATO, Lord Robertson,
agrees with this: to quote the Independent on Sunday dated July 6th ‘03
“Last week Cable & Wireless announced that Lord Robertson, the
secretary-general of NATO, will join the company in December as
executive deputy chairman. His role will be to foster relations with
overseas governments. A meeting with the Japenese administration is
likely to be at the top of his agenda”. In any case, the term NATO is
today certainly a misnomer, and thus it would not be surprising if its
title were to be changed in the near future.
It was now evident that there was a change in US military strategy. As
Will Dunham (of Reuters) reported on June 13th 2003: “The United States
has begun a dramatic realignment of its military forces abroad, making
key changes in the Middle East and Asia and preparing a restructuring
in Europe to confront emerging 21st century threats” (10). This was
confirmation of a previous report by George Jahn (of Associated Press)
written on April 1st 2002: “Even before September 11th, Caspian Sea oil
and gas - and planned pipelines for deliveries of those energy sources
- had dictated a re-evaluation of Western strategic interests” (11). As
evidence of this new strategy, Dunham (see above) notes
(a) in the aftermath of its invasion of Iraq, the US is pulling out
5000 of its troops from Saudi Arabia;
(b) it intends moving its troops from the vulnerable demilitarized zone
in Korea to ‘hub bases’ further south;
(c) it will reduce its forces based in Germany quite drastically - but
its Ramstein airbase will remain; and
(d) if (and it is a big ‘if’) the US manages to set up military bases
in Iraq, the deteriorating relationship with Turkey could result in the
US removing all troops from that latter country - even the Incirlik
airbase. (However, their Intelligence Base outside Diyarbakir would
pose a serious problem!)
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s statement in June of this year sums it all
up concisely (again quoting Dunham): “We have been reviewing our
presence around the world, in every portion of the globe”, adding that
“US forces are still deployed as if the USSR still existed” - a
statement which, on the face of it, would seem to be just another
non-sequitur from the lips of an Administration somewhat prone to such.
But, on reflection, it transpires that Rumsfeld, a veteran of the ‘Cold
War’, meant what he said, knowing full well that the creed of Marxism
(in his eyes, ‘The USSR’) did not die away with the collapse of that
régime - and is still very much alive, and thus a threat to its
antithesis, Capitalism. NATO is confirmation of that.
The rapidly increasing, insidious encroachment of corporations of vast
wealth and influence into the military arena - in the form of mercenary
groups such as the MPRI (above) does not augur well for the future,
inasmuch as it reflects the sinister trend towards what is, in effect,
the privatisation of military tasks, which leads, inevitably, to the
demise of democratic accountability in this field.
That oil has played an important role in determining the
policies/actions of the US (NATO) in the Balkan crisis was clearly, if
inadvertently, spelt out by the then Bulgarian President, Petar
Stoyanov, at an international conference on Europe-Caucas-Asia
transport corridor held in Bulgaria in September 1998, mainly to
discuss the Trans-Balkan pipeline. When asked whether regional
conflicts - particularly in Kosovo - would hinder these infrastructural
projects, he replied: “Economic profit is a significant tool in
political decision-making” (12). Never were truer words spoken!
ENDNOTES
(1) www.tda.gov/region/europe.html
(2) ibid
(3) www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3793a582649e.htm
(4) www.tda.gov/abouttda/report2000/promoting.html
(5) www.mojones.com/news_wire/cheney.html
(6) www.morm.gov.mk/2001/odbrana/odb60e.htm
(7) www.propagandamatrix.com/end justifies means 2 text only.html
(8) www.geocities.com/joshkatem/spring02/nato2.htm
(9) www.timesstar.com/Stories/0,1413,125~10859~1434497,00.html
(10) www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2003/030613-military-suhffle01.htm
(11) www.geocities.com/joshkatem/spring02/nato2.htm
(12) www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3793a582649e.htm
© Copyright Alfred John Mendes 2003 For fair use only/ pour usage
équitable seulement .
Oil Pipelines and Transport Corridors
Balkans Crisis supports US Corporate Interests
By Alfred John Mendes
www.globalresearch.ca 29 July 2003
The URL of this article is:
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/MEN307A.html
This article is primarily concerned with the Balkan crisis, which, on
the face of it, may seem a somewhat untimely divergence of attention
from the more exigent crisis in Iraq - but, with a little patience on
the part of the reader, it will become apparent that there are basic,
causal factors common to both. And given the dominant rôle played by
one country, America, in both these crises, this should hardly be
surprising.
This Balkan crisis - now over a decade old - differs from the region’s
previous, numerous crises (in the past invariably referred to as ‘That
Balkan Problem!’) in that it is now playing a pivotal rôle in a
scenario of global dimensions, due, primarily, to the fact that the
main protagonist in this crisis is also by far the world’s most
economically powerful state - namely, Corporate America, a state
embarked upon world domination under the banner of ‘Profit’.
To determine why America/NATO became involved in this region it is, of
course, necessary to view its actions within a wider historical
context, but insofar as this is covered in this author’s previous
article, ‘An Alternative View of The Yugoslav Crisis’, this article
will concern itself with the situation in the aftermath of the collapse
of the Soviet Union (As a result of which, it must be kept in mind,
Yugoslavia was no longer a useful foil for the West in its stand-off
with the USSR), with particular emphasis on the role that oil has
played in determining the strategy of the US in the region. The big oil
corporations had wasted little time in buying their way into the vast
ex-Soviet oil & gas reserves - especially those in Kazakhstan, and the
enormous potential for profit that lay in this Caucasus region would
play an important part in determining US strategy in the Balkans.
The Trade & Development Agency (TDA - now known as the USTDA) was given
the task of overseeing this project, known as the South Balkan
Development Initiative (SBDI) of 1996. This was an agency which had
been set up in 1981 to deal with just such a situation. Following are
some of its aims, quoted from its reports of the years 2000 & 2001:
(italics are the authors’)
(a) “It provides funding for US companies to conduct feasibility
studies on major projects in developing & middle-income countries”;
(b) “It promotes economic development while helping the US private
sector get involved in projects that offer significant US export
opportunities... Exports of US goods and services related specifically
to those projects already total over $1.2 billion”;
(c) “TDA’s strategy is to identify those areas in which US companies
are highly competitive - rail, aviation, power, and oil & gas”; and
(d) “The longest lasting impact we can have is to bring US technology &
investment to the Balkans through our private sector” (1). It is worthy
of note that the TDA describes itself as “ an independent US government
agency”. Equivocal phraseology, to say the least - but it is a token of
the clonal relationship between the government and the so-called
independent (corporate) establishment.
Understandably, the problem of transporting oil & gas from the Caucasus
to its markets featured early on in the deliberations between the TDA
and the oil corporations, one of the factors taken into consideration
being that there was already a Russian plan on the table: a pipeline
from the Bulgarian port of Burgas on the Black Sea to the Greek port of
Alexandropolous on the Aegean Sea (thus by-passing the heavily
trafficked Bosphorous). The TDA settled for a different plan: they
would run a 900 kilometer trans-Balkan pipeline, called Corridor 8,
from Burgas - via Skopje in Macedonia - to the Albanian port of Vlore
on the Adriatic Sea at an estimated cost originally estimated to be
$825 million, but later imcreased to $1.13 billion. On the face of it,
this would seem to have been a strange choice for the Americans to have
made in view of the fact that the US and Russia were already partners
in the Caspian pipeline project, and could have continued this
partnership in the latter’s Burgas to Alexandropolous project. After
all, the latter was - at 280 kms. - a much shorter route and presented
far fewer topographical problems. The American’s main objection to it
- and it was a valid one - was that the Albanian port of Vlore, with
its deeper water could accomodate larger tankers, and was more
accessible to the oil markets than Alexandropolous. However, other
factors of a more political nature played a more crucial role in the
American’s choice.
One clue to this was hinted at by the Director of TDA, J. Joseph
Grandmaison, when, in a press release he described TDA’s $588,000
feasibility grant for the project as “..a significant step forward for
this policy and for US business interests in the Caspian region”. What
he did not mention was that the company which TDA had chosen to run the
Corridor 8 pipeline had obtained “exclusive right” so to do at a
meeting with the three countries involved in the project, and that one
of the three, Bulgaria, had also granted Russia “exclusive right” to
run its line through Bulgaria! A very strange interpretation of the
term “exclusive”. Further clues can be found by a brief look at how
these TDA grants were distributed throughout the Balkan region as
stated in their 2001 report: It reveals that there was a bias in the
distribution thereof. Total grants to the countries through which
Corridor 8 would run, Bulgaria, Macedonia & Albania, (countries, it
should be noted, not directly involved in the disastrous Yugoslav civil
war), were - respectively -$14,636,555; $10,030,285; and $9,161,856 -
whereas Bosnia-Herzogovina, which had suffered heavily in the war,
received $7,929,309 (2). It should be stressed here that the above
grants were for feasibility studies only. Other, much larger grants
were being supplied by other US government bodies. For instance, when,
in 1998, the Bulgarian President Petar Stoyanov met Clinton in
Washington, their joint statement at the conclusion of the meeting
contained the following items of pertinent interest:
(a) “Over the past 7 years, the United States has provided Bulgaria
with over $235 million in assistance under the Support for East
European Democracy Program (SEED) to advance fundamental economic
reforms”, and
(b) also provided a $3.2 million Foreign Military Financing program
..and a US “military liaison team resident in the Bulgarian Ministry of
Defense to organize staff & information exchanges” (3). This would be
but one more stride of America’s military march eastwards (details of
which, more later).
As can be seen from the foregoing facts and quotes, the Corridor 8
project, accompanied as it would be by linked facilities such as roads,
telecommunications, rail and security, would act as the thin end of the
wedge, opening up the prospect of further lucrative contracts for other
US businesses - thus leading to the influx of American exports,
capital, and eventual economic domination of the region. Or, as TDA
puts it in their Annual Report 2000: “...we always knew Corridor 8 was
far more than just a road (sic). As the links among the economies and
cultures of the three countries continue to grow, Corridor 8 will
become a vital economic Corridor as well” (4). What they could have
added was that it would also provide a reason for maintaining a strong
military presence (NATO) in the region for security.
In 1996 TDA gave the Albanian Macedonian Bulgarian Oil Corporation
(AMBO) the exclusive right to run the Corridor 8 pipeline. Once again,
a somewhat puzzling choice. AMBO was/is a company founded by one Vuko
Tashkovikj, an immigrant to the USA from Macedonia who became an
architect and set up an architectural firm in Pond Ridge, NY. How did
an architect become an oilman? The answer to this is, for now, veiled
in mystery. The feasibility study for this pipeline project was
contracted out - by the TDA - to the prestigious oil/construction
company Brown & Root (the CEO of whose parent company, Halliburton, had
been Dick Cheney - now Vice-President under Bush jnr.); the economic
analysis sub-contracted to Credit Suisse First Boston (of which Richard
Holbrooke,. the much-publicised Balkan ‘peace-maker’, was
Vice-Chairman); the legal aspects overseen by the New York law firm,
White & Case (which President Clinton joined on losing his presidency).
But perhaps the most fortuitous ‘coincidence’ occurred in January 1997
when Edward Ferguson, Director of Oil & Gas Development in Brown &
Root, was appointed President & CEO of AMBO.
Brown & Root Services (BRS), of Texas, is one of the many American
companies involved in high-profile projects in the Balkans, and it is a
company that bears all the hallmarks of membership of Corporate
America, demonstrated by its clonal relationship with the US
Administration over the years. It certainly benefitted from
fellow-Texan LBJ’s presidency - and will just as surely benefit from
George W. Bush’s presidency (after all, Halliburton had donated one
quarter of a million dollars to his election campaign). Brown & Root’s
entry into the Balkans was no ‘shot in the dark’, as a brief resumé of
its recent, pertinent history reveals (by Robert Bryce in the Austin
Chronicle of August 2nd 2000): (a) From 1962 to 1972, Brown & Root
built roads, landing strips, harbors & military bases in South Vietnam;
(b) In 1992, when Dick Cheney was US Secretary of State for Defense
under Bush Snr., the Pentagon “paid BRS $3.9 million to produce a
classified report detailing how private companies - like itself - could
help provide logistics for American troops in potential war zones
around the world”. Later that same year giving BRS “an additional $5
million to update its report”; (c) “Between 1992 and 1999, the Pentagon
paid BRS more than $1.2 billion for its work in trouble spots around
the globe. In May of 1999, the US Corps of Army Engineers re-enlisted
the company’s help in the Balkans, giving it a new 5-year contract
worth $731 million” (5).
Brown & Root’s most important Balkan project, begun in the immediate
aftermath of NATO’s bombing of Kosovo and Serbia, was almost certainly
the $36.6 million US military base Camp Bondsteel, near Urosevac in
Gnjilane county in southeastern Kosovo. As the OSCE Mission in Kosovo
(OMIK) noted in their report in the aftermath of the Kosovo conflict -
and after the arrival of NATO in the area - this was an area in which
the Serbs were the majority ethnic group, and it had remained
relatively calm during the conflict. “Since the end of the conflict,
however, the situation has been startlingly different.” For instance,
whereas in June 1999 “..only one house in Gnjilane had been destroyed”
- by October of that same year “the number had risen to 280!”. And the
KLA was now in the area in force. The Serbs and Romas (Gypsies) had
fled, and the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), the party of the
liberal Albanian, Ibrahim Rugova, was also being targeted by the KLA.
This OMIK report preceeded the construction of the base, for which the
Americans had no mandate - other than their own. It involved the
seizure and flattening of two hills of cultivated land of some 800
acres (the largest foreign-based camp since Vietnam). This could only
have meant that the Americans intended to remain there for a long time.
Were the reasons for establishing Camp Bondsteel in this autocratic
manner ‘humanitarian’? (If there is one thing to be said in favour of
the feudal barons as they built their walled, impregnable castles
throughout Europe, it is that at least they made no bones about why
they were doing so!). Be that as it may, Camp Bondsteel is also
strategically placed near the Kosovo-Macedonia border, giving it easy
access southwards. So easy, in fact, that the KLA used it for their
subsequent incursions into Macedonia - unhindered! Could it be that the
security of Corridor 8 was/is of prime importance to the US, to the
exclusion of much else - at least, for now? And with the above in mind,
is it not rational to assume that, at the very least, NATO was
deliberately not preventing the KLA's incursions into Macedonia because
the ensuing friction there accomplished two things:
(a) it justified the need for NATO’s presence in the region (and this
includes Macedonia), and
(b) it ensured that the latter ‘played ball’ over Corridor 8? Why else
had the ‘peacekeepers’ in the stand-off between the Serbs and Albanians
in Macedonia included such men as Solana (who had been NATO General
Secretary through much of the crisis), and James Pardew (the Pentagon
representive sent to persuade the Bosnians to use the mercenary MPRI’s
services in the aftermath of the Dayton Accord)? Indeed, the early
reaction of distrust evinced by the Macedonian Slavs to America’s
“peace-keeping” moves in the region was surely understandable in view
of the fact that their Army was concurrently being
advised/trained/aided by that prestigious group of ‘privatised’ retired
US Generals known as the Military Professional Resources Inc. (MPRI) -
under the command of ex-General Richard Griffiths (as admitted by Major
General Metodi Stamboliski of the Macedonian Army General Staff in the
Macedonian magazine “Defence” no.60 April 2001) (6).
After all, this is an organisation which: (a) assisted/trained the
Croatian Army in preparation for the latter’s attack on the Serbs in
West Krajina; (b) aided & assisted in the reformation of the Bosnian
Army after the Dayton Accord; and (c) aided and assisted the KLA after
NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia in ‘99. This was all under the command of
the self-same General Richard Griffiths who, from ‘89 to ‘91 had been
US Assistant Commander in Europe for Intelligence - in Frankfurt. In
Croatia, he, naturally, had had a close relationship with Brigadier
Agim Ceku, a Kosovan, who was then serving with the Croatian Army - but
had later left to become Commander of the KLA in Kosovo. To cap it all,
it transpires that when the then Chief of Staff of the Macedonian Army,
General Jovan Andrejevski attended Military School in the US, Richard
Griffiths had been his tutor!
On September 11th 2001 - with G.W.Bush jnr. now President - the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked, causing severe civilian
and military casualities. With surprising alacrity the US laid the
blame for this event at the door of the Afghan Taliban and its
al-Quaeda cohorts - and decided to invade Afghanistan. But the fact
that for years there had been a close relationship between the US (its
Intelligence Services in particular) and the Taliban - to say nothing
of the Pakistan ISI - immediately posed a question, best expressed by
Paul JosephWatson in his article ‘The End Justifies the Means’: “When
one considers the voluminous evidence derived from official sources,
domestic and foreign mainstream media, and alternative media, the only
logical conclusion is that elements within the US Government had
specific foreknowledge of the events of September 11th and allowed the
attacks to take place when preventative measures could and should have
been taken to prevent them..”. He intriguingly added: “What is also
patently clear is that a New World Order has been fuelled and
accelerated by September 11th”. (7)
America invaded Afghanistan and a ‘War on Terrorism’ was now the
clarion call-of-the-day. The US Central Command (CENTCOM - which had
led the ‘allies’ in the Gulf War of ‘91), led the invasion, and using
Bulgaria’s and Romania’s prospective membership of NATO as an incentive
(to say nothing of grants, etc.), the Americans, in return, gained
from those two countries: (a) contracts to improve their military bases
and Black Sea ports - and use of same for possible interventions in the
Middle East; (b) permission to overfly their countries using military
aircraft. This cooperation resulted in Bulgarian and Romanian troops
serving with the peace-keeping force in post-war Afghanistan. (8)
In the spring of 2003, the Americans, again using their strike force
CENTCOM, invaded Iraq with Britain as its only ally. They had planned
on using their old NATO ally Turkey as a jumping off point for moving
their troops in a pincer movement into northern (Kurdish) Iraq, but the
Turks balked at this and refused permission. The conveniently-placed
Balkan countries, Bulgaria and Romania, were used instead, and 3000 US
troops (including ‘special operations units’) - and weapons - were
flown to the frontline in Iraq during the invasion (9). Apparently, a
North Atlantic Treaty Organisation was now involved/participating in
this Middle East fracas. Disorienting, to say the least - but not if it
is recalled that
(a) both NATO and CENTCOM were/are American-controlled forces, and
(b) both had been formed in order to protect and propagate the
socio-economic system of its Corporate capitalist masters. Indeed, it
would seem that the present secretary-general of NATO, Lord Robertson,
agrees with this: to quote the Independent on Sunday dated July 6th ‘03
“Last week Cable & Wireless announced that Lord Robertson, the
secretary-general of NATO, will join the company in December as
executive deputy chairman. His role will be to foster relations with
overseas governments. A meeting with the Japenese administration is
likely to be at the top of his agenda”. In any case, the term NATO is
today certainly a misnomer, and thus it would not be surprising if its
title were to be changed in the near future.
It was now evident that there was a change in US military strategy. As
Will Dunham (of Reuters) reported on June 13th 2003: “The United States
has begun a dramatic realignment of its military forces abroad, making
key changes in the Middle East and Asia and preparing a restructuring
in Europe to confront emerging 21st century threats” (10). This was
confirmation of a previous report by George Jahn (of Associated Press)
written on April 1st 2002: “Even before September 11th, Caspian Sea oil
and gas - and planned pipelines for deliveries of those energy sources
- had dictated a re-evaluation of Western strategic interests” (11). As
evidence of this new strategy, Dunham (see above) notes
(a) in the aftermath of its invasion of Iraq, the US is pulling out
5000 of its troops from Saudi Arabia;
(b) it intends moving its troops from the vulnerable demilitarized zone
in Korea to ‘hub bases’ further south;
(c) it will reduce its forces based in Germany quite drastically - but
its Ramstein airbase will remain; and
(d) if (and it is a big ‘if’) the US manages to set up military bases
in Iraq, the deteriorating relationship with Turkey could result in the
US removing all troops from that latter country - even the Incirlik
airbase. (However, their Intelligence Base outside Diyarbakir would
pose a serious problem!)
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s statement in June of this year sums it all
up concisely (again quoting Dunham): “We have been reviewing our
presence around the world, in every portion of the globe”, adding that
“US forces are still deployed as if the USSR still existed” - a
statement which, on the face of it, would seem to be just another
non-sequitur from the lips of an Administration somewhat prone to such.
But, on reflection, it transpires that Rumsfeld, a veteran of the ‘Cold
War’, meant what he said, knowing full well that the creed of Marxism
(in his eyes, ‘The USSR’) did not die away with the collapse of that
régime - and is still very much alive, and thus a threat to its
antithesis, Capitalism. NATO is confirmation of that.
The rapidly increasing, insidious encroachment of corporations of vast
wealth and influence into the military arena - in the form of mercenary
groups such as the MPRI (above) does not augur well for the future,
inasmuch as it reflects the sinister trend towards what is, in effect,
the privatisation of military tasks, which leads, inevitably, to the
demise of democratic accountability in this field.
That oil has played an important role in determining the
policies/actions of the US (NATO) in the Balkan crisis was clearly, if
inadvertently, spelt out by the then Bulgarian President, Petar
Stoyanov, at an international conference on Europe-Caucas-Asia
transport corridor held in Bulgaria in September 1998, mainly to
discuss the Trans-Balkan pipeline. When asked whether regional
conflicts - particularly in Kosovo - would hinder these infrastructural
projects, he replied: “Economic profit is a significant tool in
political decision-making” (12). Never were truer words spoken!
ENDNOTES
(1) www.tda.gov/region/europe.html
(2) ibid
(3) www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3793a582649e.htm
(4) www.tda.gov/abouttda/report2000/promoting.html
(5) www.mojones.com/news_wire/cheney.html
(6) www.morm.gov.mk/2001/odbrana/odb60e.htm
(7) www.propagandamatrix.com/end justifies means 2 text only.html
(8) www.geocities.com/joshkatem/spring02/nato2.htm
(9) www.timesstar.com/Stories/0,1413,125~10859~1434497,00.html
(10) www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2003/030613-military-suhffle01.htm
(11) www.geocities.com/joshkatem/spring02/nato2.htm
(12) www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3793a582649e.htm
© Copyright Alfred John Mendes 2003 For fair use only/ pour usage
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