Posted on 02/27/2008 3:05:35 AM PST by canuck_conservative
On February 17, Kosovo broke away from Serbia and declared its independence. Not surprisingly it was instantly recognized as a state by the U.S., Germany, Britain and France. With 4203 square miles area, Kosovo may be a tiny territory but in the great game of oil politics it holds great importance which is in inverse proportion to its size.
Kosovo does not have oil but its location is strategic as the trans-Balkan pipeline - known as AMBO pipeline after its builder and operator the US-registered Albanian Macedonian Bulgarian Oil Corporation - will pass through it.
The pipeline will pump Caspian oil from the Bulgarian port of Burgas via Macedonia to the Albanian port of Vlora, for transport to European countries and the United States. Specifically, the 1.1 billion dollar AMBO pipeline will permit oil companies operating in the Caspian Sea to ship their oil to Rotterdam and the East Coast of the USA at substantially less cost than they are experiencing today.
When operational by 2011, the pipeline will become a part of the region's critical East-West corridor infrastructure which includes highway, railway, gas and fiber optic telecommunications lines. This pipeline will bring oil directly to the European market by eliminating tanker traffic through the ecologically sensitive waters of the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas.
In 2000, the United States Government’s Trade and Development Agency financed a feasibility study of pipeline which updated and enlarged the project's original feasibility study dating from early 1996. Brown & Root Energy Services, a wholly-owned British subsidiary of Halliburton completed the original feasibility study for this project.
The US Trade and Development Agency's paper published May 2000, which assesses that the pipeline is a US strategic interest. According to the paper, the pipeline will provide oil and gas to the US market worth $600m a month, adding that the pipeline is necessary because the oil coming from the Caspian sea will quickly surpass the safe capacity of the Bosphorus.
The project is necessary, according to a paper, because the oil coming from the Caspian sea "will quickly surpass the safe capacity of the Bosphorus as a shipping lane". The scheme, the agency notes, will "provide a consistent source of crude oil to American refineries", "provide American companies with a key role in developing the vital east-west corridor", "advance the privatisation aspirations of the US government in the region" and "facilitate rapid integration" of the Balkans "with western Europe".
The pipeline itself, the agency says, has also been formally supported "since 1994". The first feasibility study, backed by the US, was conducted in 1996.
In November 1998, Bill Richardson, the then US energy secretary, spelt out his policy on the extraction and transport of Caspian oil. "This is about America's energy security," he explained. "It's also about preventing strategic inroads by those who don't share our values. We're trying to move these newly independent countries toward the west.
"We would like to see them reliant on western commercial and political interests rather than going another way. We've made a substantial political investment in the Caspian, and it's very important to us that both the pipeline map and the politics come out right."
Professor Michel Chossudovsky, author of America at War in Macedonia, provides a deep insight into the Albanian-Macedonian-Bulgarian-Oil Pipeline project:
"The US based AMBO pipeline consortium is directly linked to the seat of political and military power in the United States and Vice President Dick Cheney's firm Halliburton Energy. The feasibility study for AMBO's Trans-Balkan Oil Pipeline, conducted by the international engineering company of Brown & Root Ltd. [Halliburton's British subsidiary] has determined that this pipeline will become a part of the region's critical East-West corridor infrastructure which includes highway, railway, gas and fibre optic telecommunications lines.
"Coincidentally, White and Case LLT, the New York law firm that President William J. Clinton joined when he left the White House also has a stake in the AMBO pipeline deal.
"And upon completion of the feasibility study by Halliburton, a senior executive of Halliburton was appointed CEO of AMBO. Halliburton was also granted a contract to service US troops in the Balkans and build "Bondsteel" in Kosovo, which now constitutes "the largest American foreign military base constructed since Vietnam".
"The AMBO Trans-Balkans pipeline project would link up with the pipeline corridors between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea basin, which lies at the hub of the World's largest unexplored oil reserves. The militarization of these various corridors is an integral part of Washington's design.
"The US policy of "protecting the pipeline routes" out of the Caspian Sea basin (and across the Balkans) was spelled out by Clinton's Energy Secretary Bill Richardson barely a few months prior to the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia: This is about America's energy security. It's also about preventing strategic inroads by those who don't share our values. We're trying to move these newly independent countries toward the west. We would like to see them reliant on western commercial and political interests rather than going another way. We've made a substantial political investment in the Caspian, and it's very important to us that both the pipeline map and the politics come out right.
"In favour of the AMBO pipeline negotiations, the U.S. Government has been directly supportive through its Trade and Development Agency (TDA) and the South Balkan Development Initiative (SBDI). The TDI suggested the need for Albania, Macedonia, and Bulgaria to "use regional synergies to leverage new public and private capital [from U.S. companies]" while also asserting responsibility of the U.S. Government "for implementing the initiative."
And the U.S. Government has fulfilled its role in promoting the AMBO project, granting several contracts to Halliburton for servicing U.S. troops in the Balkans, including a five year contract authorized in June of 2005 by the U.S. Army at a value of $1.25 billion, despite criminal allegations made against Halliburton that are currently being probed by the F.B.I., according to Craig A. Brannagan author of On the Political Executive: Public or Private?
This leaves little doubt that the war in the former Yugoslavia was fought solely in order to secure access to oil from new and biddable states in central Asia. It is obvious that the former Yugoslavia, especially Serbia, was a serious problem for the realization of the plan. The intervention in Kosovo and Metohija was carried out in order to please Albania, whose port of Vlore is the ultimate destination of the pipeline.
In 1998, fighting breaks out between Serbian forces and ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. President Milosevic sends in troops, and atrocities were committed. This opens the door for NATO’s Operation Allied Force, occupying Kosovo in 1999 and then handing it over to the UN, with a huge American presence in the area. UN resolution 1244 is drafted stipulating that Kosovo is Serbian land, and at the same time gives Kosovars governance autonomy.
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 Camp Bondsteel which is the biggest construction project of a US military base since the war in Vietnam. Now, why would the United States build such a massive camp in Kosovo?
In evaluating Kosovo’s independence, it is also important to know that Kosovo is not gaining independence or even minimal self-government.
It will be run by an appointed High Representative and bodies appointed by the U.S., European Union and NATO. An old-style colonial viceroy and imperialist administrators will have control over foreign and domestic policy. It is similar to the absolute power held by L. Paul Bremer in the first two years of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. U.S. has merely consolidated its direct control of a totally dependent colony in the heart of the Balkans.
An International Civilian Representative (ICR) will be appointed by U.S. and E.U. officials to oversee Kosovo. This appointed official can overrule any measures, annul any laws and remove anyone from office in Kosovo. The ICR will have full and final control over the departments of Customs, Taxation, Treasury and Banking.
The E.U. will establish a European Security and Defense Policy Mission (ESDP) and NATO will establish an International Military Presence. Both these appointed bodies will have control over foreign policy, security, police, judiciary, all courts and prisons.
These bodies and the ICR will have final say over what crimes can be prosecuted and against whom; they can reverse or annul any decision made. The largest prison in Kosovo is at the U.S. base, Camp Bondsteel, where prisoners are held without charges, judicial overview or representation.
US has argued the case of Kosovo is unique and that separatists in other states in Europe and the Balkans will not receive aid and welcome from major powers. "It is incorrect to view this as a precedent and it doesn't serve any purpose to view it as a precedent," said Alejandro Wolff, US deputy permanent representative to the UN. He may be right because other separatists may not have any attraction for the oil giants.
However, the Kosovo independence bolsters hopes of militants in the Indian-controlled Kashmir to achieve the same status for the disputed territory. "The world community, the European Union in particular, should play a Kosovo-like role in getting the dispute resolved in Kashmir," says Yasin Malik, chairman of pro-independence group Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front.
Although several countries have recognized Kosovo as a new state but India said it was studying the legal ramifications. India is wary of recognizing Kosovo as an independent state because of its potential implications for Kashmir, racked by a nearly two-decade freedom struggle against New Delhi’s occupation that has left more than 43,000 people dead.
FR was all over this one years ago, during the Kosovo intervention.
I heard about the oil connection a few years ago, too. However, why do we need an Islamic nation to put a pipeline through Kosovo? Why do we not just deal with Serbia? The Serbs have been our friends for 700 years.
Notice the Richardson quote:
“This is about America’s energy security. It’s also about preventing strategic inroads by those who don’t share our values.”
There’s probably several interpretations you could put on that one.
All the West has to do is sell their collective souls to the mad moon rock cult.
Is the pipeline going directly to Rotterdam or is it going to the Albanian port of Vlora -- in which case it still has to be pumped onto tankers and sent through the "ecologically sensitive waters of the ... Mediterranean Sea"????
Excellent detailed map!
Is there any country in the world uninvolved in the energy business?
Globalism’s first victim : Yugoslavia annoys NATO because it rejects the New World Order
News/Current Events Opinion (Published)
Source: http://www.nationalpost.com/printer.asp?f=990623/11773
Published: Wednesday, June 23, 1999 Author: David Orchard
Posted on 06/24/1999 11:42:31 PDT by FISHHOG
In March, the most powerful military force in history attacked tiny Yugoslavia and after 79 days of flagrantly illegal bombing, forced an occupation of Kosovo. Admitting its intention was to break Yugoslavia’s spirit, NATO targeted civilian structures, dropping over 23,000 bombs and cruise missiles in a campaign of terror, described recently by Aleksander Solzhenitsyn: “I don’t see any difference in the behaviour of NATO and of Hitler.
NATO wants to erect its own order in the world and it needs Yugoslavia simply as an example: We’ll punish Yugoslavia and the whole rest of the planet will tremble.”
The idea that NATO attacked Yugoslavia to solve a humanitarian crisis is about as credible as Germany’s claim in 1939 that it was invading Poland to prevent “Polish atrocities.” The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported the first registered refugees out of Kosovo on March 27 — three days after the bombing began. Civilian casualties after 21 days of bombing exceeded all casualties on both sides in Kosovo in the three months before the war.
In an all out effort to convince public opinion that Yugoslavia deserved the onslaught, Western politicians and media are churning out endless accusations of Serb atrocities, while the proven and infinitely greater atrocities of NATO — launching an aggressive war, using internationally outlawed cluster bombs and firing depleted uranium ammunition into Yugoslavia — are buried.
Why did NATO attack Yugoslavia and why are Serbs — Canada’s staunch allies in both world wars, with 1.5 million dead resisting Hitler’s Nazis and Italian fascism — being demonized?
Most 19th-century wars were over trade. When the United States invaded Canada in 1812, Andrew Jackson declared, “We are going to . . . vindicate our right to a free trade, and open markets . . . and to carry the Republican standard to the Heights of Abraham.” In 1839, Britain demanded China accept its opium and attacked when China said no.
When Thailand refused British trading demands in 1849, Britain “found its presumption unbounded” and decided “a better disposed King [be] placed on the throne . . . and through him, we might, beyond doubt, gain all we desire.”
In 1999, NATO said it was attacking Yugoslavia to force it to sign the Rambouillet “peace agreement” (even though the Vienna Convention states that any treaty obtained by force or the threat of force is void).
Significantly, Rambouillet stipulated: “The economy of Kosovo shall function in accordance with free-market principles,” and “There shall be no impediments to the free movement of persons, goods, services and capital to and from Kosovo.”
During the war, Bill Clinton, the U.S. president, elaborated: “If we’re going to have a strong economic relationship that includes our ability to sell around the world, Europe has got to be the key; that’s what this Kosovo thing is all about . . . It’s globalism versus tribalism.”
“Tribalism” was the word used by 19th-century free-trade liberals to describe nationalism. And this war was all about threatening any nation that might have ideas of independence.
Yugoslavia had a domestically controlled economy, a strong publicly owned sector, a good (and free) health-care system and its own defence industry. It had many employee-owned factories — its population was resisting wholesale privatization. It produced its own pharmaceuticals, aircraft and Yugo automobile.
It refused to allow U.S. military bases on its soil. According to the speaker of the Russian Duma: “Yugoslavia annoys NATO because it conducts an independent policy, does not want to join NATO and has an attractive geographic position.”
Ottawa, cutting medicare, agricultural research, social housing and shelters for battered women, spent tens of millions of dollars to bomb Yugoslavia and is spending millions more occupying Kosovo, while abandoning its own sovereignty to U.S. demands, from magazines to fish, wheat and lumber.
It is expropriating part of British Columbia for the U.S. military and considering the U.S. dollar as North America’s currency. Now, the Liberals have thrown our reputation as a peacekeeper into the trash can, along with the rule of international law, by smashing a small country to pieces at the behest of Washington.
In a March 28 New York Times article, Thomas Friedman wrote: “For globalization to work, America can’t be afraid to act like the almighty superpower that it is . . . .The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist — McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.”
As NATO troops entered Kosovo, the same newspaper announced Kosovo’s new currency will be the U.S. dollar or German mark, currencies of the two countries most responsible for Yugoslavia’s break-up.
And after months of being told Slobodan Milosevic was the problem, we heard Washington Balkans expert, Daniel Serwer, explain as follows: “It’s not a single person that’s at issue, there’s a regime in place in Belgrade that is incompatible with the kind of economy that the World Bank . . . has to insist on . . .”
The Canadian government professes great interest in human rights. Globalization undermines both democracy and national sovereignty, the only guarantors of human rights. Unfortunately for Messrs. Clinton, Chretien et al, that message was not lost on millions around the world watching NATO bombs pulverize Yugoslavia.
David Orchard is the author of The Fight for Canada: Four Centuries of Resistance to American Expansionism.
From the looks of the map, it doesn’t seem as if much of the pipeline would have to pass through Kosovo itself, but could have passed mainly through the Macedonian corridor.
Serbia picked the wrong dog in this fight. They relied on their good relations and history with Russia, failing to recognize it's not much more than a third world nation with nuclear missiles. It's a shame. I think we would have been much better off with the Serbs (who are Christian) than Albania or Kosov (who are muslim).
It may be unpopular, but how does the west survive without oil? In the end it is in our national interest to insure the free flow of oil. It's not like we are making an effort to build nuclear power plants, drill in the Gulf of Mexico, or ANWAR and when was the last time we built a refinery.
Thanks for the ping, very interesting topic.
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