Newsgroup: it.cultura.militare
Titolo: Camp Bondsteel, Kosovo (x zommantik)

dai una occhiata alle foto.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/camp-bondsteel.htm
Hanno speso i soldini dei contribuenti USA solo per far fare campeggio in
Kosovo ai soldatini americani?
Oppure.....
Camp Bondsteel and America’s plans to control Caspian oil
By Paul Stuart
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.”
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Inviato via 
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 construction, such as the US sponsored Trans-Balkan oil pipeline. As a
una delle cose più tristi dopo l'ottusità di certi ngusers!
-- 
Winter.
Tessera #9 comitato anti-pennivendoli
Club "NO Martins, NO party"