Welcome to Kosovo! The World's Newest Narco State

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8182

CENTRE FOR RESEARCH ON GLOBALIZATION (CANADA)

Welcome to Kosovo! The World's Newest Narco State
by Tom Burghardt

Global Research, February 29, 2008
Antifascist-calling.blogspot.com - 2008-02-23

The unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo's Prime Minister Hashim
Thaci, former warlord/commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), heralds
the birth of a new European narco state.

The illegal dismemberment of Serbia, completing the U.S./EU/NATO destruction
of Yugoslavia, is proclaimed by ruling elites and their sycophants as an
exemplary means to bring "peace and stability" to the region. This
provocative move, outside the framework of international law, threatens any
sovereign state with similar treatment should they deviate from the
"Washington consensus."

Far from bringing "peace" let alone "stability," an "independent" Kosovo
will serve as a militarized outpost for Western capitalist powers intent on
spreading their tentacles East, further encircling Russia by penetrating the
former spheres of influence of the Soviet Union.

Led by dodgy characters and war criminals such as Hashim Thaci and Agim
Ceku, "independent" Kosovo is a gangster state governed by thugs with ties
to Albanian drug trafficking syndicates and al-Qaeda.

Al-Qaeda, the KLA and Western Intelligence

Al-Qaeda's service to the CIA and other Western intelligence services is
well-documented. Beginning in 1998 and perhaps earlier, the London-based
cleric Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, the "emir" of the al-Qaeda-linked
Islamist group al-Muhajiroun began a recruitment drive for aspiring
mujahideen for the "holy war" in Kosovo at London's notorious Finsbury Park
Mosque.

On Friday, March 13, 1998 a London rally for the jihad was backed by some 50
local Islamist organizations. According to Christopher Deliso,

...the Albanian Islamic Society of London, headed by Kosovar Sheik
Muhammed Stubla, was lobbying and raising money for the KLA's campaign. ...
In contradiction to the KLA leadership's claims about secularism, the
Kosovar sheik specifically defined the militant group as "an Albanian
Islamic organisation which is determined to defend itself, its people, its
homeland, and its religion with all its capabilities and by all means." ...
The chief bank account for fundraising was in the London branch of
terrorist-linked Habibsons Bank of Pakistan. (The Coming Balkan Caliphate,
Westport: Praeger Security International, 2007, p. 43)

In 2005, in the wake of the July 7, 2005 terrorist attacks in London, it was
revealed that Bakri, a probable asset of Britain's MI6, was the "spiritual"
force behind the deadly attacks.

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed reports that,

The reluctance to take decisive action against the leadership of the
extremist network in the UK has a long history. According to John Loftus, a
former Justice Department prosecutor, Omar Bakri and Abu Hamza, as well as
the suspected mastermind of the London bombings Haroon Aswat, were all
recruited by MI6 in the mid-1990s to draft up British Muslims to fight in
Kosovo. American and French security sources corroborate the revelation. The
MI6 connection raises questions about Bakri's relationship with British
authorities today. Exiled to Lebanon and outside British jurisdiction, he is
effectively immune to prosecution. ("Sources: August terror plot is a
'fiction' underscoring police failures," The Raw Story, Monday, September
18, 2006)

Before fleeing, Bakri defended the actions of his young dupes by
proclaiming, "We don't make a distinction between civilians and
non-civilians, innocents and non-innocents. Only between Muslims and
unbelievers. And the life of an unbeliever has no value. It has no
sanctity."

The current "secular" Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, when he served as KLA
warlord was identified in media reports as having operational links to the
al-Qaeda network. Such reports are not surprising when one considers that
for earlier U.S./NATO "service" in Bosnia, bin Laden himself was rewarded a
Bosnian passport by the "democratic" government of former Nazi and Islamist
ideologue, Alija Izetbegovic.

As the Afghan-Arab database of disposable intelligence assets streamed into
Kosovo, often from Albania with the active assistance of narcotrafficking
gangsters under NATO supervision, they replenished the ranks of Thaci's
terrorist army.

Michel Chossudovsky writes,

Mercenaries financed by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait had been fighting in
Bosnia. And the Bosnian pattern was replicated in Kosovo: Mujahadeen
mercenaries from various Islamic countries are reported to be fighting
alongside the KLA in Kosovo. German, Turkish and Afghan instructors were
reported to be training the KLA in guerrilla and diversion tactics. ...
According to a Deutsche Press-Agentur report, financial support from Islamic
countries to the KLA had been channelled through the former Albanian chief
of the National Information Service (NIS), Bashkim Gazidede. "Gazidede,
reportedly a devout Moslem who fled Albania in March of last year [1997], is
presently [1998] being investigated for his contacts with Islamic terrorist
organizations." ("Kosovo 'freedom fighters' financed by organised crime,"
World Socialist Web Site, 10 April 1999)

These links are hardly casual. On the contrary, as Peter Dale Scott avers,

The closeness of the KLA to al-Qaeda was acknowledged again in the Western
press, after Afghan-connected KLA guerrillas proceeded in 2001 to conduct
guerrilla warfare in Macedonia. Press accounts included an Interpol report
containing the allegation that one of bin Laden's senior lieutenants was the
commander of an elite KLA unit operating in Kosovo in 1999. This was
probably Mohammed al-Zawahiri. (The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the
Future of America, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007, p. 169)

Agim Ceku another "Prime Minister," committed massive war crimes in the
Croatian region of Krajina when employed by the Croatian army as a brigadier
general. As a key planner of Operation Storm, Ceku's forces massacred Serbs
and presided over the largest ethnic cleansing during NATO's Yugoslavian
destabilization campaign. Some 250,000 Serbs fled for their lives as Ceku's
black-uniformed shock troops, many adorned with symbols of the Nazi Ustasha
puppet regime during World War II were driven from Croatia.

According to Gregory Elich,

The invasion of Krajina was preceded by a thorough CIA and DIA analysis of
the region. According to Balkan specialist Ivo Banac, this "tactical and
intelligence support" was furnished to the Croatian Army at the beginning of
its offensive. ... Two months earlier, the Pentagon contracted Military
Professional Resources, Inc (MPRI) to train the Croatian military. According
to a Croatian officer, MPRI advisors "lecture us on tactics and big war
operations on the level of brigades, which is why we needed them for
Operation Storm when we took the Krajina." Croatian sources claim that U.S.
satellite intelligence was furnished to the Croatian military. Following the
invasion of Krajina, the U.S. rewarded Croatia with an agreement "broadening
existing cooperation" between MPRI and the Croatian military. U.S. advisors
assisted in the reorganization of the Croatian Army. Referring to this
reorganization in an interview with the newspaper Vecernji List, Croatian
General Tihomir Blaskic said, "We are building the foundations of our
organization on the traditions of the Croatian home guard" -- pro-Nazi
troops in World War II. ("The Invasion of Serbian Krajina," Emperors
Clothes, no date)

Following on the heels of this sterling "victory," Ceku became KLA commander
in 1999 and "Prime Minister" in 2006. There is an outstanding Interpol
warrant for his arrest according to Michel Chossudovsky.

The KLA: "Trained-up fierce" by Germany's KSK

As in Bosnia Herzegovina and Croatia, the Kosovo Liberation Army was
secretly armed by America and Germany and remains what it has always been, a
creature of Western intelligence services.

Christopher Deliso observes,

In 1996, Germany's BND established a major station in Tirana...and another
in Rome to select and train future KLA fighters. According to Le Monde
Diplomatique, "special forces in Berlin provided the operational training
and supplied arms and transmission equipment from ex-East German Stasi
stocks as well as Black uniforms." The Italian headquarters recruited
Albanian immigrants passing through ports such as Brindisi and Trieste,
while German military intelligence, the Militaramschirmdienst, and the
Kommando Spezialkräfte Special Forces (KSK), offered military training and
provisions to the KLA in the remote Mirdita Mountains of northern Albania
controlled by the deposed president, Sali Berisha.

In 1996, BND Chief Geiger's deputy, Rainer Kesselring, the son of the Nazi
Luftwaffe general responsible for the bombing of Belgrade in 1941 that left
17,000 dead, oversaw KSK training of Albanian recruits at a Turkish military
base near Izmir. (The Coming Balkan Caliphate, Westport: Praeger Security
International, 2007, pp. 37-38)

Hypocritically, while Washington had officially designated the KLA a
"terrorist organization" funded by the heroin trade, the Clinton
administration was complicit with their German allies in the division of the
Serb province along ethnic and religious lines.

By 1998, the KLA took control of between 25 to 40 percent of the province
before Serb forces wrested the KLA-held areas back. Facing imminent defeat,
the Kosovo Liberation Army and allied mujahideen fighters appealed to
Washington, citing the imminent danger of "ethnic cleansing" by the Serbs.
Laughable on the face of it, Albanians constitute fully 90 percent of
Kosovo's population, and in fact, it was the Serbs, Roma and Jews who were
being brutalized by KLA hit squads, their homes torched, their churches and
synagogues sacked. It was the dismantling of the KLA's terrorist
infrastructure by the Yugoslav People's Army that was the trigger that
prompted direct military intervention by NATO in 1999.

As in Iraq, the 78 day U.S. bombing campaign targeted critical civilian
infrastructure in Serbia: bridges, factories, power plants, electrical
transmission hubs, communications centers. Throughout Serbia and Kosovo
itself, the U.S. scattered tons of radioactive depleted uranium munitions
and tens of thousands of cluster bombs. The U.S. attack, ostensibly to
"protect" Kosovo's population from Serb depredations caused some 800,000
civilians to flee NATO's devastating raids.

For Washington, drunk on the illusion that its policies had hastened the
collapse of a bureaucratized and rotten Soviet system, the dismemberment of
Yugoslavia would again represent the triumph of the so-called "free market"
and "democracy" under the umbrella of a new international order administered
by World Bank/IMF "reforms": Francis Fukuyama's short-lived "end of
history." While on the opposite pole of the same ideological dead end,
political Islam's tactical alliance with the West was a means to establish a
bridgehead for penetration into Europe via dodgy Saudi, Kuwaiti and Gulf
"charities" in pursuit of their quixotic quest of establishing a "divine"
(Islamicized) capitalist order rising from the ashes of a decadent West.

Two heads, same poisonous snake.

The KLA's Links to the International Heroin Trade

In Kosovo, Hashim Thaci's KLA served as the militarized vanguard for the
Albanian mafia whose "15 Families" control virtually every facet of the
Balkan heroin trade. Kosovar traffickers ship heroin originating exclusively
from Asia's Golden Crescent. At one end lies Afghanistan where poppy is
harvested for transshipment through Iran and Turkey; as morphine base it is
then refined into "product" for worldwide consumption. From there it passes
into the hands of the Albanian syndicates who control the Balkan Route.

As the San Francisco Chronicle reported,

Until the war intervened, Kosovars were the acknowledged masters of the
trade, credited with shoving aside the Turkish gangs that had long dominated
narcotics trafficking along the Balkan Route, and effectively directing the
ethnic Albanian network.

Kosovar bosses "orchestrated the traffic, regulated the rate and set the
prices," according to journalist Leonardo Coen, who covers racketeering and
organized crime in the Balkans for the Italian daily La Repubblica.

"The Kosovars had a 10-year head start on their cousins across the border,
simply because their Yugoslav passports allowed them to travel earlier and
much more widely than someone from communist Albania," said Michel
Koutouzis, a senior researcher at Geopolitical Drug Watch who is regarded as
Europe's leading expert on the Balkan Route.

"That allowed them to establish very efficient overseas networks through
the worldwide Albanian diaspora -- and in the process, to forge ties with
other underworld groups involved in the heroin trade, such as Chinese triads
in Vancouver and Vietnamese in Australia," Koutouzis told The Chronicle.
(Frank Viviano, "KLA Linked to Enormous Heroin Trade," Wednesday, May 5,
1999, Page A-1)

It is hardly an accident that the meteoric rise of the Kosovar families to
the top of the narcotrafficking hierarchy coincided with the KLA's sudden
appearance in the area in 1997.

As Peter Klebnikov observed,

As the war in Kosovo heated up, the drug traffickers began supplying the
KLA with weapons procured from Eastern European and Italian crime groups in
exchange for heroin. The 15 Families also lent their private armies to fight
alongside the KLA. Clad in new Swiss uniforms and equipped with modern
weaponry, these troops stood out among the ragtag irregulars of the KLA. In
all, this was a formidable aid package. It's therefore not surprising, say
European law enforcement officials, that the faction that ultimately seized
power in Kosovo -- the KLA under Hashim Thaci -- was the group that
maintained the closest links to traffickers. "As the biggest contributors,
the drug traffickers may have gotten the most influence in running the
country," says Koutouzis. ("Heroin Heroes," Mother Jones, January/February
2000)

As is well-known, U.S. destabilization programs and covert operations rely
on far-right provocateurs and drug lords (often interchangeable players) to
facilitate the dirty work. Throughout its Balkan operations the CIA made
liberal use of these preexisting narcotics networks to arm the KLA and
provide them with targets.

The rest is history, as they say.

Kosovo Today

Has anything changed in the intervening years? Hardly. In fact, the
vise-like grip of the Albanian mafia over narcotics, human trafficking and
arms smuggling has cemented the "15 Families" place atop Europe's hierarchy
of crime, an essential arm of the capitalist deep state.

Considering NATO and the UN's lofty mandate to bring "peace and stability"
to the region through "democracy promotion" and "institution building," what
does the balance sheet reveal?

According to regional experts the outlook for Kosovo is grim. The economy is
in shambles, unemployment hovers near 50 percent, a population of young
people with "criminality as the sole career choice" populate a society
tottering on the brink of collapse where the state is dominated by organized
crime.

According to former New York Times reporter David Binder, citing a 124-page
investigation by the Institute for European Policy commissioned by the
German Bundeswehr,

"It is a Mafia society" based on "capture of the state" by criminal
elements. ("State capture" is a term coined in 2000 by a group of World Bank
analysts to describe countries where government structures have been seized
by corrupt financial oligarchies. This study applied the term to
Montenegro's Milo Djukanovic, by way of his cigarette smuggling and to
Slovenia, with the arms smuggling conducted by Janez Jansa). In Kosovo, it
says, "There is a need for thorough change of the elite."

Fat chance that happening anytime soon! Binder reports:

In the authors' definition, Kosovan organized crime "consists of
multimillion-Euro organizations with guerrilla experience and espionage
expertise." They quote a German intelligence service report of "closest ties
between leading political decision makers and the dominant criminal class"
and name Ramush Haradinaj, Hashim Thaci and Xhavit Haliti as compromised
leaders who are "internally protected by parliamentary immunity and abroad
by international law." They scornfully quote the UNMIK chief from 2004-2006,
Soeren Jessen Petersen, calling Haradinaj "a close and personal friend."
UNMIK, they add "is in many respects an element of the local problem scene."

The study sharply criticizes the United States for "abetting the escape of
criminals" in Kosovo as well as "preventing European investigators from
working." This has made Americans "vulnerable to blackmail." It notes
"secret CIA detention centers" at Camp Bondsteel and assails American
military training for Kosovo (Albanian) police by Dyncorp, authorized by the
Pentagon. ("Kosovo Auf Deutsch," Balkan Analysis, November 18, 2007)
As we can readily observe in other climes, the interpenetration of the state
by criminal elites serve as the preferred mechanism to cement a
"public-private partnership" founded on corruption, maintained by brute
force solely for purposes of resource extraction, pipeline politics,
military bases and the geopolitical advantage gained over "market" rivals.

As the U.S. Embassy burns in Belgrade, all in all, its another "Mission
Accomplished" moment for the United States.

Tom Burghardt is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Mass resistance to U.S. NATO role

http://www.workers.org/2008/world/serbia_0306/

WORKERS WORLD (USA)

In Serbia
Mass resistance to U.S. NATO role

By Sara Flounders

Published Feb 28, 2008 10:25 PM

In the final analysis, history is never decided by resolutions, laws or
proclamations.

It is decided by explosive mass movements that churn up from below in
response to intolerable conditions and outrageous events.

On Feb. 24 hundreds gathered in front of the White house to
oppose the latest U.S. attack on Serbia, organized by the STOP (Stop
Terrorizing Orthodox Peoples) Coalition. Major protest demonstrations were
held in Geneva and Zurich, Switzerland; Vienna, Austria; Athens, Greece;
Vicenza, Italy; Montreal and Toronto; Cleveland and Chicago. This week
demonstrations will continue, including a major demonstration in front of
the U.N. on March 2 from 2 to 4 p.m.
WW photo: Sara Flounders

An angry and enormous demonstration-estimates range from a half million to
well over a million people-in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, on Feb. 21
has changed the terms of the debate about Kosovo.

Following this colossal outpouring in opposition to Washington's theft of
the Serbian province of Kosovo, thousands of people in Belgrade stormed the
U.S. Embassy and set fires in it. The British, German, Croatian, Belgian and
Turkish embassies were also attacked. Western franchises, including 10
McDonalds plus Nike stores and 50 other outlets, along with bank windows,
were targeted by angry youths. There were nights of running street battles
with riot police.

Thousands demonstrated at border crossings between Serbia proper and Kosovo.
Two border crossings were destroyed, one by fire, the other in an explosion.
All these actions sent a sharp message-that the U.S. decision to establish a
direct colony in Kosovo by recognizing its "independence" would be
challenged by an explosive movement that has gone much further than just the
official Serbian government statement of opposition.

An article in the New York Times of Feb. 25 worried that Washington may have
underestimated the Serbian response. It said that policy makers in
Washington and Brussels fear that the angry opposition may be "destabilizing
for the entire region." Entitled "Serbian Rage in Kosovo: Last Gasp or First
Breath?" the article reflected many other news commentaries: "The world is
waiting to see whether the riots on Thursday were the final spasm of anger
in Serbia or the first tremor in a new Balkan earthquake."

Of course, it is the danger of a new Balkan earthquake that U.S. corporate
power fears.

It certainly appears that the U.S. government has once again underestimated
opposition to its criminal policies. Washington had considered that its
long-announced decision to recognize a new mini-state in the Balkans could
not be opposed. It was considered a fait accompli.

Although Kosovo might for a time lack official U.N. endorsement, it was
thought that quick recognition by the U.S. and European Union, along with
funding and continued stationing of international forces, would overwhelm
Serbian opposition.

Washington is so used to having its arrogant way and violating international
agreements-even the terms that the U.S. itself dictated on NATO expansion,
borders and national sovereignty-that it is shocked to find serious
opposition.

Certainly many politicians in Serbia, anxious for Serbia to join the EU,
were not disposed to make more than a symbolic opposition. But the angry
response of the entire Serbian population has changed the very ground under
this latest imperialist land grab.

Struggle heating up

EU staff and other forces are now withdrawing from the northern part of
Kosovo, around the town of Mitrovica, which has been divided between areas
that are either majority ethnic Serbs or majority ethnic Albanians. Other
national groupings also live in Kosovo. All have been historically
oppressed, recently by Western European and U.S. imperialists, earlier by
feudal empires.

At the bridge over the Ibar River in Mitrovica, there has been a weeklong
standoff between the Kosovo Police Service, a multi-ethnic force, and U.N.
police. The KPS police have refused to serve under the new Kosovo-declared
state. Dozens of busloads of protesters have come to the border of the
province to support rallies against Kosovo's separation.

Meanwhile U.S./NATO forces, called KFOR, have moved to seal the border with
armored vehicles and tanks to halt an influx of potential protesters.

Once again the challenge in Europe to the crushing backward drag of U.S.
imperialism, whose threats and pressures have undone numerous socialist
states, including Yugoslavia, has come from the Serbian mass movement.

Solidarity demonstrations all across Europe, Canada and the U.S. were held
on Feb. 24, and were to continue through the week.

For many the very hypocrisy of the U.S. position alerted them to its having
a more sinister motive than wanting to grant independence to Kosovo. After
all, the U.S. has refused to allow the independence of Puerto Rico despite
more than 100 years of struggle, yet it was the first country to recognize
Kosovo's independence from Serbia-on the very day that the unilateral
declaration was made.

International opposition

Both Russia and China, which hold veto power on the U.N. Security Council,
made it clear that they would not allow the U.N. to endorse the forcible
theft of Kosovo from Serbia. They expressed grave concern about the
dangerous precedent it set in further fracturing nation states around the
world that are targeted by imperialist intervention.

The unilateral declaration was a direct violation of the U.N. Charter, other
international law and even the terms of U.N. Security Council Resolution
1244, drafted by the U.S. after 78 days of bombing Serbia in 1999. Despite
the lack of U.N. approval, the U.S., Germany, France and Britain recklessly
went ahead with the recognition of Kosovo.

Opposed to the recognition are Serbia, Russia, China, Spain, Greece,
Venezuela, Bolivia, Portugal, Slovakia, Malta, Bulgaria, Romania, Cyprus,
Sri Lanka and Armenia. A number of other countries have not yet made a
decision, despite intense U.S. pressure.

President Hugo Chávez said Venezuela would join other countries in
condemning the declaration. "This cannot be accepted. It's a very dangerous
precedent for the entire world," he said.

Bolivia also refused to recognize Kosovo's independence. President Evo
Morales compared Kosovo separatists to the leaders of four eastern
resource-rich Bolivian states who have U.S. encouragement in demanding
greater autonomy, in an effort to fracture and halt progressive changes
coming from the federal government.

On Feb. 22, Russian envoy to NATO Dmitry Rogozin said on state-run Vesti-24
television that Kosovo's split from Serbia was the result of an
"imperialistic American effort to divide and rule."

Rogozin made an ominous warning that could hardly be ignored. He said that
the Russian military might get involved if all the EU nations recognize
Kosovo as independent with U.N. agreement. If that happens, Russia "will
proceed from the assumption that to be respected, we have to use brute
military force."

On Feb. 24 Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was in Belgrade with
current Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev, who is Vladimir Putin's
likely successor as president. They came to make Russia's position clear.

Medvedev said, "It is unacceptable that for the first time in the post-war
history, a country which is a member of the United Nations has been divided
in violation of all principles used in resolving territorial conflicts.

"We proceed from the understanding that Serbia is a single state with its
jurisdiction spanning its entire territory and we will stick to this
principled stance in the future.

"It is absolutely obvious that the crisis that has happened and is the
responsibility of those who have made the illegal decision will
unfortunately have long-term consequences for peace on the European
continent."

Medvedev signed an agreement to build a section of South Stream gas pipeline
through Serbia. The line will carry Russian gas through the Balkans to the
Mediterranean Sea. A business agreement between Serbia's national oil
company, NIS, and OAO Gazprom, the Russian energy giant, was also
consolidated.

Kosovo is not independent

It is essential to explain again and again when discussing this issue of
U.S. recognition of Kosovo's "independence" that Kosovo has not gained a
shred of self-determination or even minimal self-rule, even on paper.

Unless this is continually explained and repeated, many political activists
who defend self-determination for oppressed nations might naively support
"independence" for Kosovo.

The plan under which Kosovo becomes "independent" establishes an old-style
colonial structure in its rawest form. Kosovo will actually be run by an
appointed High Representative and by administrative bodies appointed by the
U.S., the EU and NATO-the U.S.-commanded military alliance.

Imperialist administrators will have direct control over all aspects of
foreign and domestic policy. They have control over the departments of
Customs, Taxation, Treasury and Banking. They control foreign policy,
security, police, judiciary, all courts and prisons. These appointed Western
officials can overrule any measure, annul any law, and remove anyone from
office in Kosovo.

Several possible schemes are at the root of this latest flagrant U.S.
violation of international law. Separating Kosovo from Serbia further
fractures the entire region. This has been U.S. policy toward the Balkans,
Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Republics since the 1991 collapse of
the Soviet Union. As weak, divided, warring mini-states, their opposition to
U.S. corporate domination becomes more difficult.

The recognition of Kosovo also divides and frays relations in the EU
Washington is certainly not opposed to sowing dissension among forces that
are both allies and imperialist competitors. The U.S. has fractured the EU
over this, because one-third of its 27 members are against this move.

Setting up a government in Kosovo where the U.S. has full authority to write
the laws and treaties also consolidates the Pentagon's continued hold on a
major new military base in Kosovo-Camp Bondsteel. It also provides unlimited
access and, most important, a transfer of ownership of the rich resources of
the region, including oil and gas which has just been discovered.

Camp Bondsteel

A massive new U.S. military base-Halliburton-built Camp Bondsteel-is the
Pentagon anchor in the region. Near the Macedonian border, it covers more
than 1,000 acres and comprises more than 300 buildings. It overwhelms tiny
Kosovo, a province smaller than the state of Connecticut.

The location was chosen for its capacity to expand. There are suggestions
that it could replace the U.S. Air Force base at Aviano in Italy.

Thousands of U.S./NATO troops can be comfortably stationed there. The base
can easily house its 7,000 U.S. military forces, along with thousands of
private contractors. U.S. military personnel leave Bondsteel in helicopters
or large heavily armed convoys.

The camp is located close to vital oil pipelines and energy corridors that
are now under construction, such as the U.S.-sponsored Trans-Balkan oil
pipeline and what is known as energy Corridor 8.

The U.S. began planning the building of Camp Bondsteel long before its
bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, according to Col. Robert L. McClure, writing
in Engineer: The Professional Bulletin for Army Engineers. Another document,
"U.S. Army Engineers in the Balkans 1995-2002," is available online and
contains photos and descriptions of the base plans. (web.mst.edu)

At Camp Bondsteel there is the most advanced hospital in Europe, theaters,
restaurants, a water purification plant, laundries and shops along with a
mass of communication satellites, antennae and menacing attack helicopters.

The people who live in the area surrounding the camp suffer from 80 percent
unemployment. Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root pays Kosovo
workers, when it hires them, a meager $1 to $3 per hour. More than 25
percent of the Albanian Kosovo population has been forced to emigrate abroad
in order to send home remittances to their families.

Under the U.S. occupation, more than 250,000 Serbs, Roma, Turks, Goranies
and other peoples of this rich, multi-ethnic province have been forced out
of Kosovo and are not permitted to return.

Rich resources in Kosovo

U.S. corporations are well aware of the rich resources of Kosovo. There are
extensive mines for lead, zinc, cadmium, lignite, gold and silver at Stari
Trg, along with 17 billion tons of coal reserves. The once state-owned
Trepca mining complex was described by the New York Times of July 8, 1998,
as "the most valuable piece of real estate in the Balkans." It included
warehouses, smelting plants, refineries, metal treatment sites, freight
yards, railroad lines and power plants. Before the 1999 U.S./NATO bombing,
followed by the occupation of Kosovo, it was the largest uncontested piece
of wealth in Eastern Europe not yet in the hands of U.S. or European
capitalists.

And they are still fighting over who will get to exploit it. Since NATO
forces occupied Kosovo, almost this entire mining and refining center has
been closed down. It sits idle while the many nationalities who once worked
there have been dispersed.

Now an even greater source of newly discovered wealth is making Western
corporations anxious to have an uncontested grip on the province.

On Jan. 10 Reuters reported that Swiss-based Manas Petroleum Corp. had
announced that Gustavson Associates LLC's Resource Evaluation had identified
large prospects of oil and gas reserves in Albania, close to Kosovo. The
assigned estimates of the find are up to 2.987 billion barrels of oil and
3.014 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Clearly U.S. corporations feel they have a big stake in the region. They
have made many backroom deals and secret promises to Germany, France and
Britain to gain their acquiescence.

But this is a good time to remember how ripe for the picking Iraq looked to
Halliburton and Exxon in 2003. It seemed easy to get the compliance of many
countries, even if Washington couldn't secure a U.N. Security Council vote
despite its lies to that body.

The U.S. is hardly the first empire to underestimate the power of an aroused
mass movement to overturn its plans. Imperialist arrogance and overreach can
lead to serious miscalculations.

People in every struggle for full rights and national sovereignty have an
interest in defending and standing in solidarity with the heroic resistance
that the people of Serbia have shown in the past week. This struggle could
open a new day of resistance to U.S. corporate rule across Eastern Europe
and the Balkans.

Sara Flounders was in Yugoslavia during the 1999 U.S./NATO bombing to expose
these devastating attacks on the civilian population. She is a co-author and
editor of "NATO in the Balkans" and "Hidden Agenda: U.S./NATO Takeover of
Yugoslavia," available at Leftbooks.com.

Ghosts
of Kosovo

Friday,
Feb. 29, 2008 By SAMANTHA POWER

Kosovars hold flags as they
celebrate the independence of Kosovo in the capital Pristina on February 17,
2008

Dimitar Dilko / AFP / Getty

On Feb. 17,
after almost a decade of legal limbo and two years of unsuccessful
international mediation, Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia. The U.S.
moved swiftly to recognize the new country, and nearly 2 million ethnic
Albanians celebrated their long-awaited freedom, dancing in city streets,
releasing fireworks and waving flags. Having bristled under Serbian rule and
then U.N. administration, Kosovars were elated by the prospect of at last
controlling their own affairs.

The Serbs
weren't quite so thrilled. On Feb. 21, some 200,000 protested in Belgrade,
chanting "Kosovo is Serbia" and holding placards that read, RUSSIA,
HELP. Rioters set the U.S. embassy on fire; Russian President Vladimir Putin
vowed never to recognize Kosovo and threatened to support secessionist
movements in Georgia and Moldova.

Not so long
ago, the scenes of unrest would have inspired fears of the kind of ethnic
violence that devastated the Balkans in the '90s. But these are different
times. Kosovo's ethnic-Albanian leaders have belatedly tried to extend an olive
branch to the province's aggrieved 120,000 Serbs. In addition to allowing Serbs
in northern Kosovo to have their own police, schools and hospitals, Kosovo's
new Prime Minister, Hashim Thaci, did the unthinkable: he delivered part of his
inauguration speech in the hated Serbian language. Even in Serbia, whose
citizens feel genuine humiliation over losing Kosovo (which Serb nationalists
call their "Jerusalem"), the protests should abate. Prime Minister
Vojislav Kostunica has threatened to retaliate against Kosovo's becoming
independent by suspending talks with the European Union, but Kostunica can't
afford to cut ties with the West. The E.U. supplies 49% of Serbia's imports and
buys 56% of its exports--a far more valuable trade relationship than Serbia's
with Russia.

But Kosovo
matters to our future because it underscores three alarming features of the
current international system. First, it exposes the chill in relations between
the U.S. and Russia, which is making it difficult for the U.N. Security Council
to meet 21st century collective-security challenges. Putin has used the Kosovo
standoff as yet another excuse to flaunt his petro-powered invincibility,
sending his likely successor, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev, to
Belgrade to sign a gas agreement. If a firm international response is to be
mobilized toward Iran, Sudan or other trouble spots in the coming years, the
U.S. will have to find a way to persuade Russia to become a partner rather than
a rival in improving collective security.

Second, the
27-country E.U., which is bitterly divided over Kosovo, lacks an overarching
defense or security vision. After Kosovo declared independence, Britain, France
and other countries offered recognition, while Spain, Romania, Greece, Cyprus,
Bulgaria and Slovakia refused to do so. Keeping peace in Kosovo will require
European nations to put their citizens at risk. Unfortunately, the stated
desire of many European countries to reduce their commitments to the nato
effort in Afghanistan does little to bolster confidence in Europe's eagerness
to maintain international security.

Finally, the
disagreements over Kosovo expose the world's fickleness in determining which
secessionist movements deserve international recognition. If Kosovo's
supporters were more transparent about the factors that made Kosovo worthy of
recognition, they could help shape new guidelines. A claimant has a far
stronger claim if, like Kosovo, it is relatively homogeneous and not yet
self-governing, if it has been abused by the sovereign government and if its
quest for independence does not incite its kin in a neighboring country to make
comparable demands. Not all secessionists can clear that bar. Iraq's Kurds, for
instance, are clamoring for independence. But the Kurds are already exercising
self-government, and their independence could have the destabilizing effect of
causing the Kurdish population in Turkey to try to secede.

Western
countries will have to work hard in the coming months to ensure that Kosovo and
Serbia do not descend into violence. The larger problems highlighted by the
impasse aren't going away anytime soon. Unless they're resolved, a U.S. embassy
may not be all that goes up in flames during the next crisis.

TIME
columnist and Harvard professor Power also advises Senator Barack Obama on
foreign-policy issues