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