Camp Bondsteel and America’s plans to control Caspian oil

Camp Bondsteel and America’s plans to control Caspian oil
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Camp Bondsteel
The United States agreed to provide a force of approximately 7,000 US personnel as part of the NATO KFOR to help maintain a capable military force in Kosovo
and to ensure the safe return of Kosovar refugees. The US supports KFOR by providing the headquarters and troops for one of the four NATO sectors. The US
also provides personnel, units and equipment to other components of the KFOR organization.
Camp Bondsteel [CBS] is quite large: 955 acres or 360,000 square meters. If you were to run the outer perimeter, it is about 7 miles. Bondsteel is located on rolling
hills and farmland near the city of Ferizaj/Urosevac. There are two dining facilities at Camp Bondsteel: one in North town and one in South town. The food is very
well prepared and there are always a variety of main and side dishes to choose from. There are also salad bars, potato bars and multiple dessert offerings. Due to
General Order #1, only alcohol-free beer is served, but it is better than nothing! There are set hours for meals, but each dining facility also has a 24-hour section for
sandwiches, coffee, fruit, and continental breakfast items.
Soldiers live in SEA (Southeast Asia) Huts. There are about 250 SEA Huts for living quarters and offices. The buildings have five living areas that house up to six
soldiers each. Each building has one large bathroom with multiple shower and bathroom stalls. A few buildings have smaller bathroom facilities as well. Female and
male sea huts are separate. The beds are comfortable and each room has its own heating/air conditioning unit. Soldiers get their own wall-locker for personal storage,
and most opt to purchase a small set of plastic bins for additional storage. You can buy almost anything from the PX to make your living space more comfortable,
such as TVs, DVD players, coffee makers and sound systems. Rooms are routinely inspected to make sure they adhere to fire and safety codes. The best way to
improve the safety of your room is to purchase an approved surge protector for European voltage, and plug all of your lights and equipment into that. Adaptors are
also available so you can plug your 220-compatible devices, like laptops, into the European outlets.
The Bondsteel PX offers soldiers the latest CDs, DVDs, electronics, souvenirs, clothing, uniforms and everything to make your stay in Kosovo comfortable. With
two stories of merchandise, the PX draws lots of multinational soldiers from throughout Kosovo. Also located at CBS are Burger King, Anthony’s Pizza and a
Cappuccino bar.
There are Morale Welfare and Recreation (MWR) buildings in North town and South town. The facilities offer billiards, ping-pong, video games, interenet access
and a video teleconference room. They also offer movies to check out and watch on several TVs in the MWR facilities. There are a total of three gyms at CBS. Two
gyms (north and south) have basketball/volleyball courts, exercise equipment, weight machines and free weights. The third gym is strictly a weight room.
There are two chapels on Bondsteel, North and South, and one on Camp Monteith. All Chapels offer services in several denominations. The Laura Bush education
center offers a variety of college courses to suit your needs. Want to learn Albanian, Serbian, or German? Improve your computer skills? The variety of college credit
and certificate courses is staggering. There are two colleges represented at US base camps: the University of Maryland and Chicago University. For those with easy
access to the Internet, online courses are offered too.
The US sector is in southeast Kosovo. Headquarters for US forces is located at Camp Bondsteel, built on 750 acres of former farmland near Urosevic. Bondsteel
has about a 6-mile perimeter. The 1,000-acre camp was built from the ground up on a former field. Basecamps Bondsteel and Monteith were established in June
1999 in Kosovo to be used as staging points for the bulk of US forces stationed in the Multi National Brigade-East. About 4,000 US service members were
stationed at Camp Bondsteel in the farm fields near Urosevac, and another 2,000 were at Camp Montieth, near Gnjilane. Both camps are named after medal of
honor recipients, Army Staff Sgt. James L. Bondsteel, honored for heroism in Vietnam, and Army 1st Lt. Jimmie W. Montieth Jr, honored for heroism in France
during World War II. Camp Able Sentry, located near the Skopje Airport, Macedonia, serves as a point of entry for supplies and personnel into Kosovo. Another
500 Americans support the operation from Camp Able Sentry in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. The US contingent is known as Task Force Falcon.
There are a number of locations within Kosovo, other than the base camps, at which US soldiers maintain a presence.
US forces entered Kosovo in June 1999 following NATO Operation Allied Force. Since then, military officials worked to rapidly improve service members' quality
of life. 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.
Because of uncertainty about the Bosnian mission’s duration, when the Army moved across the Sava River into Bosnia in 1995, soldiers were housed first in tents –
in the winter! Only years later were they moved to semipermanent Southeast Asia (SEA) huts (a theater-of-operations design that first made its debut in Vietnam) on
base camps. Engineer planners knew it was much more cost effective to forego this gradual approach in Kosovo in favor of building end-state SEA huts right away,
and operational commanders agreed with this approach.
In contrast to the Bosnia peacekeeping mission where troops lived in tents for many months before moving into hardened structures, DoD decided to erect the
SEAhuts from the start. The single-story SEAhut wooden structures were first used in Southeast Asia and then in Bosnia. The military redesigned the SEAhuts
specifically for Kosovo. Each wooden structure has a male and a female latrine and six rooms housing six service members each. The huts have heat, hot water, air
conditioning, plumbing, electricity and telephones.
Effective force protection is critical for Camp Bondsteel, which is situated on a series of rolling hills with nearby woods on several boundaries. After the 9th Engineer
Battalion (Mechanized) used its armored combat earthmovers to create a hasty perimeter, the 94th ECB(H) and Brown & Root Services Corporation jointly
completed a 2.5-meter-high earthen berm around the entire perimeter. They removed trees to allow sufficient fields of fire and built nine wooden guard towers around
the perimeter. Due to soil, pests, and line-of-sight requirements, the battalion modified the towers by placing each on a concrete pad and adding safer and more
accessible entrance ladders. Five of the nine towers were placed on two MILVANS welded together to allow greater visibility. The added elevation enables soldiers
to view the area from 18 feet aboveground rather than from the usual eight feet.
Because of the topography and population of the camp, it eventually had two independently serviced life-support areas, with semipermanent wooden buildings known
as Davidson-style Southeast Asian huts (SEA huts) (see article). The battalion also created SOCCE huts (modified for the Special Operations Command and
Control Element) and officer/senior noncommissioned officer SEA huts that have 10 rooms with separate latrine facilities for each pair of rooms.
The 94th ECB(H) created Camp Bondsteel's road system, which was critical to alleviate blinding dust storms and enable mobility when torrential rains made the clay
soil impassable. They built the hardstand for the camp's hospital, created the road to the military and civilian materials yard, and laid a double-base surface of bitumen
on the camp's eastern access road. The battalion upgraded the main briefing room and other areas throughout Task Force Falcon's command center. It also created a
storage system for confiscated weapons and built floors for 200 tents, so soldiers would be out of the mud while SEA huts were being constructed.
To create life-support areas, the 94th ECB(H) transformed the topography of Camp Bondsteel to maximize use of the ground. The primary earthmoving mission,
dubbed Operation Wolverine Mountain after the battalion's mascot, required that more than 150,000 cubic meters of earth be moved and redistributed. That is
equivalent to the area of one football field that is 100 feet deep. To save time, the battalion lowered the two major hills in Camp Bondsteel and simultaneously filled
the large ravine between them. Combining the efforts of all four organic companies, the battalion worked two shifts totaling 20 hours per day. At times twelve 621B
scrapers, eight D7G dozers, three 130G graders, and six vibratory and sheepsfoot compactors operated on the hills. In 30 days, the battalion widened the life-
support areas, created areas for the camp's wash rack and more than half of the camp's motor pools, and built a foundation for the northern access road.
Simultaneously, the battalion created the hardstand for the American logistical supply support activity. This 600- by 160-meter area, which required 70,000 cubic
meters of earthen cut-and-fill operations, will eventually include a chapel, a morale and welfare tent, the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, and a barbershop.
Equipment and operators from nine Wolverine platoons worked around the clock to complete the project.
Shortly after site preparation began at Camp Bondsteel, a 36-inch natural-gas pipeline was discovered under the camp – right where we wanted to make a 3-foot
cut! It was easier to redesign the camp around the pipeline than dig it out, and that’s why today a “no-construction” strip of land runs northwest to southeast among
the SEA huts. The total absence of civilian sewage-treatment facilities in Kosovo forced early diversion of critical horizontal equipment to build sewage lagoons. This
project is environmentally critical since there were no sewage-treatment plants in Kosovo, and local people (including those serving military units) emptied raw
sewage into streams. The lagoon is a technically challenging mission that requires all four of the 200- by 300-meter areas to have depth deviations from final design
grade of no more than 3 inches. Led by the 535th and 568th Engineer Companies (CSE), the first area completed has a maximum deviation of only two inches across
its entire 60,000-square-meter area.
Camp Bondsteel has an improved detention facility, with a 250 by 350 foot temporary structure composed of tents with plywood sidewalls and floors, electricity,
heat, and lights. The project also includes a separate shower point and security measures - perimeter fencing, triple-standard concertina wire, locking gates, and an
upgraded guard tower. The facility replaced an interim holding cell at Bondsteel and provides space for persons detained in incidents throughout the US sector in
Kosovo.
In August 1999 the 9th Combat Engineer Battalion (Mechanized) at Camp Bondsteel altered the southwest perimeter at Camp Bondsteel to make room for the new
helicopter landing zone. Engineers reworked triple-standard concertina wire to pull it out farther from the area targeted for landings. To make this change to the
perimeter, engineers first had to cut down several trees both to make room and to afford proper line of sight from the guard tower. They worked with Civil Affairs to
coordinate the tree removal with local villagers whose property adjoins the area.
In August 1999 the helicopter landing area used since Camp Bondsteel opened moved from the command operations area to a site on the post's south perimeter.
Five new helipads made of AM2 aluminum matting handled helicopter landings for a few months until an expanded aviation area was completed with 52 helipads. The
94th Engineer Battalion also completed separate areas for landing sling loads and Chinooks (CH47s). The vacated landing site allowed engineers to expand the main
access road and prepare the ground for erecting four clamshells, which are temporary frame-and-fabric structures. The plan was to transition all aircraft from Camp
Able Sentry, Macedonia, to Camp Bondsteel as a home base.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/camp-bondsteel.htm
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Camp Bondsteel and America’s plans to control Caspian oil
By Paul Stuart29 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.”
source: wsws