NOVANEWS
(Part three of a five-part series excerpted from Chapter 15: Yugoslavia Bad, Greater Albania Good: Big Oil & Their Bankers…)
by Dean Henderson
Al Qaeda to the Rescue
Even as President Clinton was hailing an outbreak of peace in the region, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John Shalikashvili – now a director at Carlyle Group – was meeting with Croat military commanders in Zaghreb to coordinate the deployment of 25,000 US troops to back the breakaway armies in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Islamic fundamentalists poured into Bosnia. They were trained by ex-Afghan mujahadeen leaders, including Osama bin Laden. Iranian mullahs were also sending fighters, with blessings from the Clinton Administration. Bin Laden’s al Qaeda operatives trained a cell of Bosnian fighters known as Takfir wal Hijra (Expiration and Exile). Some in the Clinton State Department were nervous about the growing ranks of Islamists in Bosnia, but CIA argued against the expulsion of al-Qaeda. [1] They even arranged to have certain terrorist groups deleted from a State Department watch list so that members could travel freely to the Balkans to take part in the war.
Across the Adriatic Sea in Italy, Imam Anwar Shaban was recruiting fighters for Bosnia at the Islamic Center in Milan. Shaban was a follower of the radical Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, whom the CIA had brought to the US during the 1980’s to recruit mujahadeen fighters for the Afghan War. Rahman was spiritual leader of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, an offshoot of the secret society Muslim Brotherhood that holds sway in the House of Saud. The Milan Islamic Center was funded by Ahmed Idris Nasreddin, a wealthy Kuwaiti who served as Kuwait’s Honorary Consul to Italy. Nasreddin founded Al Taqwa, a Swiss Bahamas-based company which changed its name to Nada Management to honor Chairman Youssef Nada, a prominent leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. Nada Management has recently come under investigation for its role in funding global terrorism. [2]
In 1995 as the government of CIA-protege Gulbuddin Hekmatyar stepped aside in Afghanistan giving way to the Taliban regime, the Taliban handed over its training camps on the Pakistan border to the Pakistani Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI), which had supported the rise of the Taliban in close cooperation with Pakistani ISI intelligence. The JUI recruited and trained volunteers to fight in Bosnia and later in Kosovo. The Bosnian Army, whose MPRI training was being funded by the Saudis and Kuwaitis, was also being bankrolled by the Golden Crescent heroin trade, whose traffickers were now establishing smuggling routes to Europe through Bosnia. [3]
Some in the Clinton State Department were nervous about the growing ranks of Islamists inBosnia, but CIA argued against the expulsion of al-Qaeda. [1] They even arranged to have certain terrorist groups deleted from a State Department watch list so that members could travel freely to the Balkans to take part in the war.
The CIA arranged safe passage for Islamic Jihad members wanted in Egypt and for Armed Islamic Group (AIG) terrorists on the run in Algeria, where they had toppled the nationalist government of Chadli Benjladid, who had refused to pass the Hydrocarbon Law for the Four Horsemen. On January 18, 2002 an AIG cell of six operatives was nabbed planning to blow up the US Embassy in Sarajevo. The embassy’s locksmith was a father-in-law of one of the suspects. He had given AIG keys and access codes to carry out their planned mission. Thousands of angry Bosnian Muslims protested as the Saudi-backed terrorists were handed over to the US. [4]
Suddenly the US corporate media sounded a less than sympathetic tone towards the Bosnian Muslims, who a few years earlier had been electronically engineered to bring tears to the eyes of every American household.
Ethnic Cleansing in Reverse
Thousands of Bosnian Serbs gathered daily in the Sarajevo suburb of Ilijas to protest the handing over of predominantly Serb suburbs of the city to the Muslim/Croat Federation via the Dayton Accords. French General Jean-Rene Bachelet, who commanded UN troops in Sarajevo, termed the deal “ethnic cleansing”, the phrase which the US used against the Serbs throughout the war. Bachelet initially refused to have his troops enforce the Dayton Accord provisions, but eventually bowed under pressure from Paris.
The Yugoslavs were also protesting the presence in their country of 60,000 NATO troops. [5] Pale Television reported that “NATO forces used low-intensity nuclear weapons when they conducted air strikes on Serb positions around Sarajevo, Gorazde and Majevica in August and September 1995. Experts have concluded that some people show signs of being contaminated by radiation.” Pale also reported that “Yugoslav General Djordje Djukic had been tortured by the International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague.” Shortly after the court released the general he died. As he struggled for his life, Djukic condemned Tribunal Chief Justice Richard Goldstone as a “murderer with a child’s face and a hater of Serbs”. [6]
Pale aired another program titled Genocide, which documented al Qaeda terror against Serbs and featured Borvivoje Sendic, Deputy Chair of the Serb Democratic Party, who commented of the upcoming Yugoslav elections, “The international community will try to intervene in the forthcoming elections. But the Serbs will not allow themselves to be cheated this time out of respect for all the victims who have fallen…” Mirjana Markovic, wife of President Milosevic and head of the United Left Party, which is allied with her husband’s Socialist Party, said in 1996 that protestors in Belgrade were fomenting civil war, many carrying US and German flags. Markovic denounced both nations as “dark powers” behind the tumult.
US interference in Belgrade continued into the new millennium. On February 7, 2000 Yugoslav Defense Minister Pavle Bula was assassinated at his cousin’s Belgrade restaurant. Yugoslavia’s Information Minister issued a statement saying “foreign intelligence services” were responsible. Vojoslav Seselj, leader of the Serbian Radical Party, said the assassination had been carried out by “either US, British or French operatives”. [7]
Milosevic, who was re-elected head of the Socialist Party in November 2000 carrying 86.55% of the vote, was handed over to the War Crimes Tribunal in return for an IMF aid package to the new Belgrade government. Milosevic was defiant in The Hague, saying he didn’t have to answer questions because the court had no legitimacy or jurisdiction. He called the Tribunal “the new Gestapo in the Hague”, and said “genocide had been carried out against the Serbs by part of the international community”.
Peter Finn, the Washington Post journalist who had led the attacks on the Milosevic, uncritically spewing out the CIA-fabricated charges of ethnic cleansing by Serbs, spent the year 2000 admitting he had been hoodwinked regarding alleged Serb atrocities. Finn wrote in the January 17, 2000 issue of the Post, “Western accusations that there were Serb-run rape camps…and poorly sourced allegations in some publications that the Serbs were engaging in mutilations of the dead and the living…all proved false.”
Yugoslav children had their own way of protesting the hijacking of their country. At Peter Petrovic Nyegos primary school students were asked to lend their artistic talents to help summarize the war being waged on their country. One child drew a picture of a fat American prostitute walking a little dog named “Europe”, another portrayed the Ku Klux Klan lynching Serb soldiers, while a third depicted UNICEF airplanes bombing Serb children.
The Brown & Root of the Problem
The Croatian Army bought many weapons from German arms dealer Ernst Werner Glatt, a favorite CIA supplier to both the Nicaraguan contras and the Afghan mujahadeen. At one point Glatt was shipping the Croats $200 million worth of arms per year, with much of the tab picked up by the Saudis. Glatt did so well for himself that he was able to retire on a Virginia estate that he calls Black Eagle. The black eagle was the official emblem of the German Nazi government and had been Oliver North’s code-name for the contra-cocaine operations being overseen by Panamanian General Manuel Noriega on behalf of his CIA and Mossad bosses. [8]
Military contracts were being doled out like candy throughout the Balkans conflict, but no firm received more than did Brown & Root, which later merged with construction giant MW Kellogg to become KBR. KBR is a subsidiary of Houston-based Halliburton, where Dick Cheney was at the helm. Halliburton also owns Dresser Industries, where Lawrence Eagleburger was on the board of directors. The firm is a global octopus with operations in 130 countries and over 100,000 employees. Cheney wasn’t particular about his firm’s customers, doing brisk business with Nigerian dictators, Saddam Hussein and the military junta of Myanmar alike. [9]
“Western accusations that there were Serb-run rape camps…and poorly sourced allegations in some publications that the Serbs were engaging in mutilations of the dead and the living…all proved false.”
Brown & Root was paid $546 million to build latrines, barracks and other infrastructure necessary to maintain NATO and UN troops occupying Yugoslavia. Three years later the company was paid another $400 million for logistical support in Bosnia, Croatia and Hungary, where a Brown & Root subsidiary known as International American Products provided troop support. Its Hungarian kitchen workers accused US troops who frequented their workplace of constant sexual harassment and exploitation.
Cheney’s company also got contracts to beef up US military bases in Italy. Brown & Root, which has enjoyed a no-bid monopoly over the troop support business since the Gulf War, made over $260 million doing similar work during US military adventures in Haiti, Somalia and Rwanda. [10]
In 1999 it received a $900 million contract in the Balkans. In 2000, the year Cheney stepped down to become the running mate of candidate Bush Jr., Brown & Root was awarded a $300 million contract by the US Navy to improve overseas bases, a $100 million contract to improve US Embassy security around the world and a $40 million contract to maintain the National Institutes of Health. Cheney received a whopping $20 million retirement package from Halliburton. He kept $10 million in stock options. Cheney’s salary at Halliburton, where he was Chairman and CEO from 1995-2000, was $1.3 million/year. [11]
In 1996 US Commerce Secretary Mickey Kantor arrived in Zaghreb with representatives of 18 US multinationals. Kantor and his entourage negotiated an investment agreement to rebuild Croatia that would be a boon to the companies. Bechtel, never remiss to sniff out a government contract, got two to build power plants from the government of Croatia. Much of the Bosnian reconstruction effort was headed by the 353rd Civil Affairs Command, a Bronx Army Reserve Unit with big-time connections to corporate America. The unit was headed by US Army Colonel Michael Hess, who frequented the brand new World Bank office set up in Sarajevo.
In 2000, the year Cheney stepped down to become the running mate of candidate Bush Jr., Brown & Root was awarded a $300 million contract by the US Navy to improve overseas bases, a $100 million contract to improve US Embassy security around the world and a $40 million contract to maintain the National Institutes of Health. Cheney received a whopping $20 million retirement package from Halliburton.
Hess’ usual employer was Citigroup, where he served as Relationship Manager for Scandinavia, Finland and the Benelux nations. Another member of the 353rd was a vice-president at ABN Amro Holdings NV, the Dutch banking giant that in 1997 took over the failed British old-money Barings Bank and was later merged into Royal Bank of Scotland. The 353rd included an engineer for Schering-Plough, a broker for Merrill Lynch and a former AT&T executive. Other members worked with Texas Instruments, American Airlines, private Saudi military trainer BDM International and defense giant Lockheed Martin. ABN Amro banker Renato Bacci took charge of training Bosnia’s bankers in the transition from socialism to capitalism. 353rd Lieutenant Colonel Gerry Suchanek taught economics at the University of Iowa. He said of his job, “Everything I do at home is about teaching capitalism. Everything I do here is similar.”[12]
The CIA had completed its partition of most of Yugoslavia and the agents of international capital were taking over. Problem was, Yugoslavia still controlled Stari Trg mine, massive coal reserves and the Adriatic oilfields which Big Oil coveted. Gaining those assets would require the severing of one more chunk of territory from the unruly Belgrade central government.
Footnotes:
- [1] Bin Laden’s Invisible Network”. Evan Thomas. Newsweek. 10-29-01. p.42
- [2] “New Links in the bin Laden Money Chain”. Mark Hosenball. Newsweek. 11-12-01
- [3] “Who is Osama bin Laden?” Michel Chossudovsky. www.globalresearch.ca 11-2001
- [4] CNN Headline News. 1-18-02
- [5] “Serbs Will Never Give In, Military Chief Says”. AP. Great Falls Tribune. 12-3-95. p.1
- [6] “TV Station Feeds Serbs Exclusive Propaganda”. Chris Hedges. New York Times. 6-9-96
- [7] Cody. p.1
- [8] Silverstein
- [9] “The Roving Eye: Pipelineistan, Part I: The Rules of the Game”. Pepe Escobar. Asia Times Online. 1-25-02
- [10] “Bosnia Mission Enriches Firm Headed by Ex-Defense Official”. AP. Missoulian. 3-23-96
- [11] “Cheney’s Firm Profited from Military Roles Bush Attacked”. AP. St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 8-27-00. p.A1
- [12] “An Army Reserve Unit Guides Reconstruction of Postwar Bosnia”. Thomas Ricks. Wall Street Journal. 6-10-96. p.A1
