Camp Bondsteel

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Place.png Camp Bondsteel
(Military Base, Black site)
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Camp bondsteel.png
Camp Bondsteel is known as the “grand dame” in a network of US bases running both sides of the border between Kosovo and Macedonia.

Dominating the Balkans peninsula and the self-declared independent state of Kosovo, Camp Bondsteel is the main base of the United States Army under KFOR command in Kosovo. Founded in 1999, it is the biggest US base outside the United States by area.

History

Immediately after the bombing of Serbia in 1999 the Pentagon seized a 1000 acre large parcel of land in Kosovo at Uresevic near the border to Macedonia, and awarded a contract to Halliburton when Dick Cheney was CEO there, to build one of the largest US overseas military bases in the world, with more than 7000 troops today.[1]

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.”[2]


Other uses

  • Amongst its other uses is as secret 'black site' torture prison[3]
  • It is possibly a transit point in the old Kosovo Liberation Army drug smuggling networks from Afghanistan and Turkey through Kosovo to the market in Europe, which was given a new boost in 2001, after the occupation of Afghanistan.
  • The base is possibly also a transit node for the Islamic jihadists who in unexplained ways travel between the Western Balkans, the Middle East and Afghanistan, seemingly at will.


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References