Source: http://byzantinesacredart.com/blog/2006/09/
Kosovo, a Corporate Undertaking
(PHOTO: Aerial photo of Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo and Metohija, Serbia)
In the article Camp Bondsteel and America's plans to control Caspian oil, written in April
2002 ( http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/STU205A.html - COPIED BELOW ), Paul
Stuart offers a detailed tour of the biggest US military base since the Vietnam War, built in
southern Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija.
Pointing out that the blueprints for this monster were prepared way ahead the first missile
on Serbia was launched in the spring of 1999, Stuart explains that American overwhelming
military presence in Serbia has nothing to do with humanitarian reasons as Clinton
administration trumpeted all over -- American troops are not there to protect the lives of
Kosovo residents, they are there to help American corporate giants get bigger and richer,
even if the last non-Albanian gets cut into pieces in the shadow of one of Bondsteel's 11
watch towers.
Making a Fortune for Halliburton
Camp Bondsteel, the biggest "from scratch" 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 contractors - in particular Halliburton Oil
subsidiary Brown & Root Services - are 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 Urosevac, near the Macedonian border,
and began the construction of a camp.
Camp Bondsteel is known as the "grand dame" 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 troops -- three quarters of all the US troops stationed in Kosovo.
Downtown Military Camp
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,
"Engineer 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 `end state' as quickly as possible."
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 "to 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."
According to McClure, "At 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."
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 Kosovo Albanians and another 15,000 on its books.
Journey Through Time
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 Kosovo
workers between $1 and $3 per hour. The local manager said wages were so low because,
"We can't inflate the wages because we don't want to over inflate the local economy."
Terrorist KLA Rules in the US Sector
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
children's 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), "Army peace keepers joke
that they're missing a patch on their camouflage fatigues. `We need one that says
Sponsored by Brown & Root,' 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."
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.
Mother of All Contracts
In 1992 Dick Cheney, as Secretary of Defence in the senior Bush administration, awarded
the company a contract providing support for the US army's 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 "the mother of all contracts" by the Washington based Contract Services
Association of America. There, "We do everything that does not require us to carry a gun,"
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: "Only those functions that must
be done at DoD should be kept at DoD."
Great Wall of China in Kosovo
In sectors controlled by other Western powers, KFOR soldiers who are living in bombed out
apartment blocks and old factories joke, "What are the two things that can be seen from
space? One is the Great Wall of China, the other is Camp Bondsteel."
More seriously a senior British military officer told the Washington Post, "It is an obvious
sign that the Americans are making a major commitment to the Balkan region and plan to
stay." 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.
US Army, the Foundation for Economy Growth
On June 5, 2001 US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld explained to troops at Camp
Bondsteel what role they played in the new administration's economic strategy. He
declared, "How much should we spend on the armed services? ...My view is we don't 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. You're not a burden on our economy, you are
the critical foundation for growth."
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 `retrenching' of the US in
Europe, he insisted that US troops were in Kosovo to stay, had gone in together and would
"leave together". 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.
Bondsteel - the Reason for Bombardment
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, "With
the Middle-East increasingly fragile, we will need bases and fly over rights in the Balkans
to protect Caspian Sea oil."
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,
"The 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."
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 Straits - the 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 US's main ally in the region.
According to the Reagan Information Interchange, "While the United States is making an
advantageous economic decision, it is overlooking its crucial strategic relationship with
Turkey."
Securing the Energy Corridors
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 "Today, 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."
The newspaper added, "It 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,
don't want to be excluded from the settling of scores that will take place over the next few
months in the Balkans."
Posted by Svetlana at 04:56 PM
---
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/STU205A.html
Camp Bondsteel and America's plans to control Caspian oil
by Paul Stuart
World Socialist Web Site 29 April 2002
Camp Bondsteel, the biggest "from scratch" 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 contractors - in particular Halliburton Oil
subsidiary Brown & Root Services - are 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 "grand dame" 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 troops - three 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,
"Engineer 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 'end state' as quickly as possible."
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 "to 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."
According to McClure, "At 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."
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,
"We can't inflate the wages because we don't want to over inflate the local economy."
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
children's 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), "Army peace keepers joke
that they're missing a patch on their camouflage fatigues. 'We need one that says
Sponsored by Brown & Root,' 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."
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 army's 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 "the mother of all contracts" by the Washington based Contract
Services Association of America. There, "We do everything that does not require us to carry
a gun," 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: "Only those functions that must
be done at DoD should be kept at DoD."
In sectors controlled by other Western powers, KFOR soldiers who are living in bombed
out apartment blocks and old factories joke, "What are the two things that can be seen
from space? One is the Great Wall of China, the other is Camp Bondsteel."
More seriously a senior British military officer told the Washington Post, "It is an obvious
sign that the Americans are making a major commitment to the Balkan region and plan to
stay." 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 administration's economic strategy. He
declared, "How much should we spend on the armed services? ...My view is we don't 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. You're not a burden on our economy, you are
the critical foundation for growth."
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 "retrenching" of the US in
Europe, he insisted that US troops were in Kosovo to stay, had gone in together and would
"leave together". 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, "With the Middle-East increasingly fragile, we will need bases and fly over rights
in the Balkans to protect Caspian Sea oil."
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,
"The 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."
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 Straits - the 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 US's main ally in the region.
According to the Reagan Information Interchange, "While the United States is making an
advantageous economic decision, it is overlooking its crucial strategic relationship with
Turkey."
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 "Today, 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."
The newspaper added, "It 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,
don't want to be excluded from the settling of scores that will take place over the next few
months in the Balkans."
Copyright 1998-2002 World Socialist Web Site All rights reserved. Reprinted for fair use
only.
Kosovo, a Corporate Undertaking
(PHOTO: Aerial photo of Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo and Metohija, Serbia)
In the article Camp Bondsteel and America's plans to control Caspian oil, written in April
2002 ( http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/STU205A.html - COPIED BELOW ), Paul
Stuart offers a detailed tour of the biggest US military base since the Vietnam War, built in
southern Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija.
Pointing out that the blueprints for this monster were prepared way ahead the first missile
on Serbia was launched in the spring of 1999, Stuart explains that American overwhelming
military presence in Serbia has nothing to do with humanitarian reasons as Clinton
administration trumpeted all over -- American troops are not there to protect the lives of
Kosovo residents, they are there to help American corporate giants get bigger and richer,
even if the last non-Albanian gets cut into pieces in the shadow of one of Bondsteel's 11
watch towers.
Making a Fortune for Halliburton
Camp Bondsteel, the biggest "from scratch" 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 contractors - in particular Halliburton Oil
subsidiary Brown & Root Services - are 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 Urosevac, near the Macedonian border,
and began the construction of a camp.
Camp Bondsteel is known as the "grand dame" 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 troops -- three quarters of all the US troops stationed in Kosovo.
Downtown Military Camp
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,
"Engineer 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 `end state' as quickly as possible."
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 "to 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."
According to McClure, "At 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."
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 Kosovo Albanians and another 15,000 on its books.
Journey Through Time
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 Kosovo
workers between $1 and $3 per hour. The local manager said wages were so low because,
"We can't inflate the wages because we don't want to over inflate the local economy."
Terrorist KLA Rules in the US Sector
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
children's 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), "Army peace keepers joke
that they're missing a patch on their camouflage fatigues. `We need one that says
Sponsored by Brown & Root,' 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."
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.
Mother of All Contracts
In 1992 Dick Cheney, as Secretary of Defence in the senior Bush administration, awarded
the company a contract providing support for the US army's 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 "the mother of all contracts" by the Washington based Contract Services
Association of America. There, "We do everything that does not require us to carry a gun,"
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: "Only those functions that must
be done at DoD should be kept at DoD."
Great Wall of China in Kosovo
In sectors controlled by other Western powers, KFOR soldiers who are living in bombed out
apartment blocks and old factories joke, "What are the two things that can be seen from
space? One is the Great Wall of China, the other is Camp Bondsteel."
More seriously a senior British military officer told the Washington Post, "It is an obvious
sign that the Americans are making a major commitment to the Balkan region and plan to
stay." 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.
US Army, the Foundation for Economy Growth
On June 5, 2001 US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld explained to troops at Camp
Bondsteel what role they played in the new administration's economic strategy. He
declared, "How much should we spend on the armed services? ...My view is we don't 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. You're not a burden on our economy, you are
the critical foundation for growth."
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 `retrenching' of the US in
Europe, he insisted that US troops were in Kosovo to stay, had gone in together and would
"leave together". 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.
Bondsteel - the Reason for Bombardment
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, "With
the Middle-East increasingly fragile, we will need bases and fly over rights in the Balkans
to protect Caspian Sea oil."
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,
"The 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."
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 Straits - the 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 US's main ally in the region.
According to the Reagan Information Interchange, "While the United States is making an
advantageous economic decision, it is overlooking its crucial strategic relationship with
Turkey."
Securing the Energy Corridors
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 "Today, 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."
The newspaper added, "It 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,
don't want to be excluded from the settling of scores that will take place over the next few
months in the Balkans."
Posted by Svetlana at 04:56 PM
---
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/STU205A.html
Camp Bondsteel and America's plans to control Caspian oil
by Paul Stuart
World Socialist Web Site 29 April 2002
Camp Bondsteel, the biggest "from scratch" 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 contractors - in particular Halliburton Oil
subsidiary Brown & Root Services - are 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 "grand dame" 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 troops - three 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,
"Engineer 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 'end state' as quickly as possible."
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 "to 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."
According to McClure, "At 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."
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,
"We can't inflate the wages because we don't want to over inflate the local economy."
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
children's 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), "Army peace keepers joke
that they're missing a patch on their camouflage fatigues. 'We need one that says
Sponsored by Brown & Root,' 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."
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 army's 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 "the mother of all contracts" by the Washington based Contract
Services Association of America. There, "We do everything that does not require us to carry
a gun," 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: "Only those functions that must
be done at DoD should be kept at DoD."
In sectors controlled by other Western powers, KFOR soldiers who are living in bombed
out apartment blocks and old factories joke, "What are the two things that can be seen
from space? One is the Great Wall of China, the other is Camp Bondsteel."
More seriously a senior British military officer told the Washington Post, "It is an obvious
sign that the Americans are making a major commitment to the Balkan region and plan to
stay." 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 administration's economic strategy. He
declared, "How much should we spend on the armed services? ...My view is we don't 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. You're not a burden on our economy, you are
the critical foundation for growth."
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 "retrenching" of the US in
Europe, he insisted that US troops were in Kosovo to stay, had gone in together and would
"leave together". 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, "With the Middle-East increasingly fragile, we will need bases and fly over rights
in the Balkans to protect Caspian Sea oil."
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,
"The 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."
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 Straits - the 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 US's main ally in the region.
According to the Reagan Information Interchange, "While the United States is making an
advantageous economic decision, it is overlooking its crucial strategic relationship with
Turkey."
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 "Today, 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."
The newspaper added, "It 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,
don't want to be excluded from the settling of scores that will take place over the next few
months in the Balkans."
Copyright 1998-2002 World Socialist Web Site All rights reserved. Reprinted for fair use
only.