Kosovo: US Oil Hegemony, Blood and Independence

March 30, 2008 · No Comments

by Khadija Sharife

Modern-day “civil” wars reveal that the real struggle lies not in the perpetuation of so-called civilisational clashes but rather in the facade that nationalised constructs, as homogenous entities, have been blessed by those ethnic minorities trapped within boundaries. The reality is that nationalism as an ideology is virulent by its very nature; depending on the vilification of the “other” in order to promote the collective historical amnesia akin to concept of one nation/one state.

Such is with Kosovo — certainly, the country should have received its independence way back when; however, the timing lends itself to a great deal of suspicion. Why, for instance, had Nato and the US occupied Kosovo since 1999, masking the assistance of several oil companies that had conducted regional hydrocarbon explorations?

Why — on the cusp of several US military campaigns propagated as a war against “militant Islam” initiated by the execution and manufacturing of 9/11 as the pretext of the Afghan invasion — did the US establish what is one of the largest military bases in the world, known as Camp Bondsteel, in Kosovo, armed by 7 000 strong special forces and extending to 360 000 square metres?

Why does the establishment of US headquarters at Bondsteel coincide with the five-tiered “Operation Enduring Freedom” military campaigns, executed across 79 countries in total, militarising those regions with vast oil reserves such as Nigeria, the Niger Delta, Sudan and Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan — but especially the Caspian Region, the basin of which holds 39% of the world’s proven oil reserves?

As with Israel, the US appears to have established a military base on a region “holy” to European Muslims — if you are not familiar with the concept or demographics of Islam in Europe, it’s probably because the bulk of Eastern Europe, leading to Asia, the Caspian and Turkey, have not been “officially” acknowledged by Western Europe as a part of the European cultural canvas.

Earlier this year, on January 10, the Swiss-based Manas Petroleum Corporation quietly informed interested parties of large oil and gas reserves in blocks regionally extending from “780 000 acres along the northwest to southeast trending (geological) fold belt of north-western Albania”.

Gustavson Associates Resource Evaluation stated: “The probability of success is relatively high [because] it is in a structurally favourable area [and] proven hydrocarbon source and analogous production exists only 20km to 30km away.”

Kosovo is a region comprised mainly of Albanians; the territory itself historically belongs to those whose ethnicity has given birth to more than two million Albanian Kosovars (92% of population) — with minority Serbs (4%)Turks (1%), Bosniaks and Romanians (2.5%) living on the land.

It seems to me that, once again, the US has taken a course of military unilateralism inextricably tied to energy concerns, for its own vested interests. Caught up in this complicated web are a people that have been fighting for their independence, but who have now been compromised by the shift in policy concerning the nature of Kosovo’s past imprisonment and the open-air prison yet to come. Freedom in this case appears to have come packaged with a price tag that ensures the non-negotiable — indeed, invisible — sale of a far more precious entity: regional, intra-national and continental freedom from US foreign policy, directly implying control over Caspian oil.

This, of course, was the sole reason why the US hastened its occupation of the Middle East, establishing a 25-country presence; why Unocal’s Karzai is now the head of Afghanistan; why Iraq has the largest US embassy on Earth, housing corporations such as Chevron and Halliburton; and why after September 11 — a proven case of controlled demolition — the only companies to shoot up on Wall Street were entities such as Lockheed Martin and Halliburton.

The independence of Kosovo, which was a necessity considering the demographic historicity of the region, evokes sinister intentions of hegemony when we consider the nature of “liberation” — it appears that the US has successfully exported democracy and “freedom” to Kosovars, as it has done to Iraq and Afghanistan. The timing of Kosovo’s independence may well be its Trojan Horse.

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