|
A long road from Kosovo to Kurdistan
28.2.2008
By Pepe Escobar
|
|
 |
February 28, 2008
The precedent of Kosovo is a terrible precedent,
which will de facto blow apart the whole system of
international relations, developed not over decades,
but over centuries. [The Americans] have not thought
through the results of what they are doing. At the
end of the day it is a two-ended stick and the
second end will come back and hit them in the face.
- Russian President Vladimir Putin
In myriad aspects, Kosovo is the new Kurdistan (and
the other way around), as much as Iraq is the new
Yugoslavia.
The unilateral independence of Kosovo has nothing to
do with "democracy". But then what's the point of
this North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) provocation towards
Vladimir Putin's Russia - a historic ally of Serbia?
The ongoing saga revolves around two crucial,
interrelated facts on the ground: Pipelineistan and
the empire of 737 (and counting) US military bases
in 130 countries operated by 350,000-plus Americans.
In short: it revolves around the trans-Balkan AMBO
pipeline and Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo, the the
largest US base built in Europe in a generation.
It also lays bare continuity from the Bill Clinton
to the George W Bush administrations - the US
dictating the rules of the game as if in a one-party
state.
Yugoslavia and Iraq also "taught" the world two
lessons. From Clinton's humanitarian imperialism to
Bush's "war on terror", it's all a matter of
exclusive Washington prerogative. Blowback, of
course, as Putin has warned, will be inevitable.
Albright's serpent
The 78-day, 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia, allegedly to
dislodge a "new Hitler" (Slobodan Milosevic) was
mirrored by the 2003 "shock and awe" bombing of
Iraq, to dislodge another "new Hitler" (Saddam
Hussein). Clinton, demonizing the Serbs, used NATO
to sidestep the lack of a United Nations mandate;
Bush, also without a UN mandate, demonized Iraqis
and went all the way with just an authorization by
the US Congress.
Clinton attacked the former Yugoslavia to expand the
post-Cold War NATO right up to the borders of the
former Soviet Union. Bush attacked Iraq to seize the
"big prize" in terms of energy resources.
Militarization and hegemonic control were at the
heart of both operations. Yugoslavia was devastated,
fragmented,www.ekurd.net
balkanized and
ethnically cleansed into mini-countries. Iraq was
devastated, fragmented, pushed towards balkanization
and towards ethnic cleansing along sectarian and
religious lines.
Senator Hillary Clinton considered Yugoslavia's
balkanization and now Kosovo's independence
(amputation of Serbia, rather) as "democracy" and a
"successful" accomplishment of US foreign policy.
This "model" new independent state saluted by the
US, Germany, France and Britain - and virtually no
one else - is, according to Vladimir Ovtchinky, a
criminologist and former head of Interpol's Russia
bureau during the 1990s, "a mafia state in the heart
of Europe". It's basically run by Hashim Thaci, a
former Marxist who then embraced a nationalist
socialism with criminal overtones as one of the
youngest chiefs of the UCK (the Kosovo Liberation
Army), operating under the codename "The Serpent".
Madeleine Albright, then US secretary of state,
pushed "The Serpent" into the limelight when she
attributed to him "the brightest future" among those
Kosovars who were "fighting for democracy". Albright
is nowadays one of Hillary Clintons' top foreign
policy advisers. The UCK was roughly a sort of
Balkan al-Qaeda on heavy drugs - propped up
enthusiastically by US and British intelligence.
British special forces trained the UCK in northern
Albania while Turkish and Afghan military
instructors taught them guerrilla tactics. Even
Osama bin Laden had been in Albania, in 1994;
al-Qaeda had a solid UCK connection.
Writing in the Russian daily Ogoniok, Ovtchinky
describes how Albanian Kosovar clans always
controlled opium and then heroin trafficking from
Afghanistan and Pakistan through the Balkans towards
Western Europe; then during the late 1990s a 3% tax
started to finance all UCK operations. The UCK
benefited from more than 750 million euros (US$1.1
billion) in drug money to buy weapons, he wrote.
According to Interpol and Europol, just in 1999 and
2000, these Kosovar mafias made no less than 7.5
billion euros - also by diversifying from narco-smuggling
into human trafficking and large-scale prostitution.
In Germany, they made a killing in Kalashnikov
trafficking and fake euro banknotes. And as late as
in 2007, Italy's top three mafias - the Cosa Nostra,
the Camorra and "Ndrangheta" - were seriously
thinking of creating a unified cartel to face the
ultra-heavy Albanian Kosovar mafia.
Get me to my pipeline on time
Washington and the three European Union heavyweights
(France, Germany and Britain) have applauded
Kosovo's independence. But this core of the
self-described "international community" is caught
in silent scream mode when confronted with the
possibility of independence for Flanders in Belgium,
northern Cyprus, the Serbian Republic of Bosnia, the
Basque country in Spain, Gibraltar - not to mention
Indian Kashmir (the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front,
JKLF, is already making some rumblings), Tibet,
Taiwan, Abkahzia and South Ossetia (both in Georgia
and both Russia-friendly), Palestine and Kurdistan.
Northern Kosovo itself - totally Serbian-populated -
and western Macedonia also don't qualify to become
independent. So why Kosovo? Enter the AMBO pipeline
and Camp Bondsteel.
AMBO is short for Albanian Macedonian Bulgarian Oil
Corp, an entity registered in the US. The $1.1
billion AMBO pipeline (also known as the
Trans-Balkan), supposed to be finished by 2011, will
get oil brought from the Caspian Sea to a terminal
in Georgia and then by tanker through the Black Sea
to the Bulgarian port of Burgas, and relay it
through Macedonia to the Albanian port of Vlora.
Clinton's NATO war against Yugoslavia and
pro-Albania was thus crucial to secure Vlora's
strategic location. The oil will then be shipped to
Rotterdam in the Netherlands and refineries on the
US West Coast, thus bypassing the ultra-congested
Bosphorus Strait and the Aegean and the
Mediterranean seas.
The original AMBO feasibility study, as early as
1995, and then updated in 1999, is by a British
subsidiary of Halliburton, Brown and Root Energy
Services. AMBO fits into Vice President Dick
Cheney's (and before him, Clinton's energy secretary
Bill Richardson's) US energy security grid. It's all
about go-for-broke militarization of the crucial
energy corridor from the Caspian through the
Balkans, and about trying to isolate or sabotage
both Russia and Iran.
Halliburton had to have a deeper hand in the whole
scheme, and that's where Camp Bondsteel fits in -
the largest overseas US military base built since
the Vietnam War. Bondsteel, built by Halliburton
subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root on 400 hectares
of farmland near the Macedonian border in southern
Kosovo, is a sort of smaller - and friendlier -
five-star Guantanamo, with perks like Thai massage
and loads of junk food. According to Chalmers
Johnson in The Sorrows of Empire, "army wags say
facetiously that there are only two man-made objects
that can be seen from outer space - the Great Wall
of China and Camp Bondsteel". Bondsteel will also
double as Kosovo's Abu Ghraib - the largest prison
in the independent entity, where prisoners can be
held indefinitely without charges pressed and
without defense attorneys. Taxi to the Dark Side,
which has just won an Oscar for best documentary,
applies not only to Bagram in Afghanistan but also
to Bondsteel in Kosovo.
Protection racket
Kosovo's "independence" has been brewing since 1999.
A single 1999 photo tells the whole story -
establishing beyond doubt those elusive
"international community" ties. The photo unites
Hashim Thaci, then head of terrorist outfit UCK and
current prime minister of Kosovo; Bernard Kouchner,
then UN administrator of Kosovo and current French
foreign minister in the Nicolas Sarkozy
administration; Sir Mike Jackson, then commander of
NATO's occupying force and current consultant for a
Blackwater-style mercenary outfit; and general
Wesley Clark, then NATO supreme commander and now
military adviser to Hillary Clinton.
Kosovo's "internationally supervised independence",
which was due to be outlined in a meeting in Vienna
this Thursday, has nothing to do with autonomy. Exit
the UN, enter the European Union. Amputated from
Serbia, Kosovo will be no more than an EU (and NATO)
protectorate. EU officials in Brussels confirm that
thousands of bureaucrats, along with police
officers, will be deployed to Kosovo, to live
alongside more than 17,000 NATO military personnel
already in place.
Neo-colonialism is alive and well in "liberated"
Kosovo - which will have to put up with a viceroy
and will have no say whatsoever in foreign policy.
Think of "liberated" Iraq under the infamous
Coalition Provisional Authority run by viceroy L
Paul Bremer.
An array of European analysts, not to mention
Russians, has compared the current, dangerous state
of play in the Balkans to Sarajevo in 1914 that led
to the outbreak of World War II. Blowback, in the
short term, will include Serbs refusing to be part
of this "independent" state and Albania not
recognizing the current Albania/Serbia/Macedonia
borders. Just like a century ago, Central Europe,
Russia and the Muslim world are clashing in the
Balkans, but this time subjected to a US screenplay.
Bush and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in tandem,
gave the go-ahead to the Kosovo declaration of
independence weeks before the fact. Small,
contrarian EU countries like Slovakia, Romania and
Cyprus were imperially overlooked.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has
characterized Kosovo's independence as the beginning
of the end of contemporary Europe. As British
journalist John Laughland, manager of the British
Helsinki Human Rights Group stresses, "The current
status of the province is established by UN Security
Council resolution 1244," which determines that
Kosovo is part of Serbia. Thus the US and the EU
have - once again - made minced meat of
international law.
Why not us?
Kurds, especially those in Iraq, might be tempted to
believe Kosovo is a meaty precedent pointing to the
emergence of an independent Iraqi Kurdistan - their
dream, and Turkey's nightmare. Just as in Kosovo,
oil is in play (Kirkuk and its pipelines); and Iraqi
Kurdistan, since 1991, had been a sort of extended
Camp Bondsteel anyway, an American-protected enclave
in Saddam's Iraq and then a haven of stable
"democracy" in Bush-devastated Iraq.
But it's hard to dream about independence when Iraqi
Kurdistan has been de facto invaded by 10,000
Turkish troops with the help of US intelligence.
According to Baghdad's al-Mada daily, the president
of the Irbil-based Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG),
Massoud Barzani, sent an urgent letter to Bush for
him to personally stop the Turkish invasion. Barzani
flatly accuses the Turks of destroying his region's
infrastructure. Barzani's spokesman,www.ekurd.net
Falah Mustafa, has
placed all responsibility "on the US government".
Peshmerga (Kurdish militia) General Muhammad Mohsen
is also furious ("We think the United States is
making a big mistake"). This is as good an
intimation of inevitable blowback as any.
Dozens of thousands of Peshmerga are now stationed
very close to the Turkish-Iraqi border. According to
Mohsen, the red line is along the Mateen mountain
range. He said, "The Peshmergas told [the Turks] if
you go any further we will kill you." Also according
to Mohsen, Barzani theatrically told him, "I will be
the first to die in fighting the Turks."
The official KRG position, endlessly relayed on
Kurdish media, is that it has done everything to
"limit the activities" of Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK)
rebels in Iraqi Kurdistan. This has fallen as much
on (Turk) deaf ears as Baghdad's feeble official
protests. Iraqi Kurdish politician recite the same
mantra; the PKK is just an excuse for the Turks to
"prevent the establishment of a Kurdish state".
But then, in the thick of the action, KRG Prime
Minister Nechirvan Barzani struck quite a different
chord. He said the Turks did not attack Kurdish
civilians and only destroyed a few bridges in some
desolate mountain passes. Kurdish media though is
awash with reports and even video of damage to
Kurdish villages. So what's going on?
Turkey's invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan is a graphic
show of force - a sort of "shock and awe" in slow
motion, meaning this is a player to be reckoned with
in both the Middle East and Central Asia. Turkey -
with much more firepower than Serbia, and a NATO
member to boot - has set its objectives with
precision: to bomb the KRG's credibility, and to
imprint the extent of its reaction in case the
Kurdish go for autonomy, including control of the
oil-rich Kirkuk area in Iraq. At the same time, this
is a message to Washington (don't trample us or we
destabilize the only "stable" part of Iraq) and to
Baghdad (let's do business; we need some of your oil
and a lot of your water for our development).
So much for Kurdistan's dream of independence -
inside Iraq as much as for the 12 million Kurds
living in Turkey. They are left with a few
rumblings, an attempt at downplaying the whole
thing, and the obligation of facing the fact that
the US, once again, has sold them short. Not to
mention the Kurds, once again, they are sold short.
The KRG's Barzani and current Iraqi President Jalal
Talabani, eternal Iraqi Kurdish leaders, rival
warlords and wily opportunists, had already sold PKK
Kurds short 15 years ago during a joint offensive
with the Turkish army (See Double-crossing in
Kurdistan Asia Times Online, November 2, 2007). They
had vocally promised this would never happen again.
It's happening right now. Thus Turkey wins, hands
down - driving a wedge between Washington and Iraqi
Kurds.
Blowback, in this case, may be long in coming, but
Washington is bound to taste it. Turkey will clinch
an oil deal with Russia and will buy Iranian gas and
co-exploit Iranian oil in the Caspian. As for Iraqi
Kurds - seeing red against both Washington and
Ankara - more than ever they won't stop dreaming of
becoming the new Kosovo, on their own terms.
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How
the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War
(Nimble Books, 2007). He may be reached at
pepeasia(at)yahoo.com
atimes com
Top |
Kurd Net
does not take credit for and is not responsible for the content of news
information on this page
|
® 