http://www.serbianna.com/columns/deliso/043.shtml
Serbianna
November 10, 2005
Kosovo and Macedonia: Strategic Wars for Natural Resources?
By Christopher Deliso
Are the intractable conflicts of the West Balkans merely, as is often
said, reducible simply to the alleged inabilities of different ethnic
groups to get along, or are they driven by other factors as well?
In 2001, George Monbiot argued that the Kosovo war had been sparked by
a desire to tame all the wild places of the Balkans in order to secure
the route for the "trans-Balkan pipeline," or AMBO. He cited the
following:
"…on 9th December 1998, the Albanian president attended a meeting
about the scheme in Sofia, and linked it inextricably to Kosovo. 'It
is my personal opinion,' he noted, 'that no solution confined within
Serbian borders will bring lasting peace.' The message could scarcely
have been blunter: if you want Albanian consent for the Trans-Balkan
Pipeline, you had better wrest Kosovo out of the hands of the Serbs."
Actually, if there was such a conspiracy, it probably worked the other
way: if you want us to bomb the Serbs, you'd better support the
pipeline. Albania is not and never was in a position to make such
threats as Monbiot would have it doing.
That said, he and others have probably gotten it wrong when they
argued that the wars in Macedonia and Kosovo were fought for securing
the (oil) realm. This is because there has simply been no progress on
that front. Why?
First of all, there is no single, dominant American governmental/oil
juggernaut, at least not in this region, and no one has gone full
steam ahead on the project. If there were, the AMBO pipeline would
have been financed a decade ago. The truth is, as I've repeatedly
argued (some links here), the industry had other priorities at various
times, such as the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, completed only this
year at a cost of around $3 billion. More recently, the war in Iraq
and increased focus on the Middle East have only further ebbed away at
international interest in the Balkans. Second of all, by supporting
armed secessionists in wars that any clear-headed person could foresee
as having a destabilizing influence on the region, the US acted
contrary to any supposed "war for oil stability" motive.
Kosovo: Nickel, Coal and Unsolved Dilemmas
Yet while there's no oil in Kosovo, as Robin Cook snidely put it once,
the province has other sub-surface riches, ones which are far easier
to extract and transport. The recent rushed privatization of a nickel
mine in Kosovo drove home the high stakes at work in the region's
worst remaining conflict zone. At the end of October, the Kosovo Trust
Agency sold the Feronikeli plant in central Kosovo for $40 million to
Alferon/IMR, part of Eurasian Natural Resources Group, "which is among
the world's largest private mining and metals groups," according to
the AP.
The news agency adds that the plant "…was badly damaged during NATO
bombing of Serb forces in the disputed province in 1999…the
privatization of Feronikeli is the most important sell-off of socially
owned enterprises, a term used for enterprises owned by the workers
and managers under a system set up under communist-era Yugoslavia."
Of course, the Serbian government opposed the deal, claiming that
Kosovo should remain a part of Serbia and therefore that Belgrade
should be consulted before any such deals can be conducted. After all,
despite Albanian demands for independence, Belgrade is still footing
the bill for Kosovo's international debt to the International Monetary
Fund and the World Bank. The bill amounts to a total of $1.4 billion,
reports B-92, "and Serbia puts aside 250 million dollars every year in
order to pay these debts back."
The Serbian news agency adds that resource claims – and not ethnic or
historical - will be the major motivating factor in the upcoming
negotiations over Kosovo's future status. The chief example is Trepca,
the dilapidated mine in Serb-inhabited northern Kosovo with its
"...reserve of seventeen billion tons of coal, which is enough to
sustain the region for the next two hundred years."
So far, the UN-administered Kosovar government has fairly well ignored
Belgrade's concerns. According to B-92, it's already sold off 120 of
the province's 540 "active companies." However, until the Albanians
can wrest hold of northern Kosovo, Trepca will elude their grasp- and
perhaps that of deep-pocketed Western vultures like the Eurasian
Natural Resources Group.
The Director of the Serbian Chamber of Commerce, Slobodan
Milosavljevic, told B-92 that Serbian economic interests of Serbia
require safeguarding and that worldwide chambers of commerce must be
advised to warn their companies against participating in Kosovo
privatization deals, so long as the province's status remains
undetermined.
At the same time, local economic analyst Milivoje Mihajlovic stated
that the Serbian Government has a "serious argument" in the
negotiations, a strong card to play, regarding the volatile issue of
property rights. "That is what the Albanians are afraid of, stated
Mihajlovic, "because they have no rights of ownership." The Albanians,
of course, beg to differ.
On 18 October, it was revealed that 4 international heavyweights are
interested in building a necessary new power plant in Kosovo:
AES-General Electronics, Siemens, Rusall, and Basic Element. The
UN-controlled province has since 1999 failed to rebuild damaged or
dilapidated energy grids, or squandered electricity through corrupt
dealings, meaning that this former exporter of electricity remains an
energy invalid- one of the reasons for local frustration with the
UNMIK administration.
The question of northern Kosovo is especially significant to the rich
multinationals and to the Albanians and Serbian government. If Kosovo
becomes independent, but the Serbian north autonomous, the Albanians
will most likely be deprived of the cash windfall (or at least primary
control of Trepca) deriving from the area's natural resources. The
same would happen were Kosovo to remain, as Belgrade demands, a part
of Serbia. And if Kosovo becomes independent with no autonomy for the
north, the Serbs will lose out.
For Kosovo's southern neighbor, at least, that would be the safer
option. Macedonia's fate is inextricably tied up with the future of
Kosovo, as politicians and commentators from the Albanian minority in
the former country have reiterated that any division of Kosovo would
give them precedent to divide Macedonia. Were they to do this, what
would it mean from the point of view of natural resources?
Macedonia: Water Wars?
Was Macedonia's civil war of 2001 provoked merely by the stated desire
of the Albanian insurgents for more civil rights, or for their alleged
desire to hack off the western part of that country? Was it merely a
matter of ethnic hatreds, or were other strategic interests involved?
A few years ago, Sam Vaknin painted a general picture of the emerging
water crisis around the world and how future conflicts might be at
least surreptitiously shaped by rich nations' common need to acquire
and control water supply as lakes and rivers dry up or become
salinated. In this context, the Macedonian conflict takes on new
dimensions.
The evidence is striking. The country's largest river, the Vardar,
begins in the west of the country, near Albanian-majority Gostivar,
before it snakes eastwards and then south through Skopje, Veles and on
to Greece. Macedonia's major snowfall accumulation also occurs
primarily in the west, in the spine of mountains that also serve as
the border (at least on paper) with Albania, in turn feeding local
rivers and streams.
The country's most important lakes and waterways exist in its lush
western half. Mavrovo and Debar are the two most important lakes one
finds before reaching the enormous, 3-million year old Lake Ohrid,
which is connected to the latter by the River Crn Drim that flows out
of the lake from Struga and northwards. North of Struga, the
Macedonian village of Vevchani has important springs that a future
hydro project might well tap. And there are other smaller rivers and
lakes in the west. And all of these significant bodies of water have
sizeable Albanian populations either directly nearby or in close
proximity.
But nothing is simple here. Lake Ohrid is shared with Albania itself.
And the steadily receding Great Prespa Lake is again unfortunately
shared with both Albania and Greece. Even in the best case scenario,
even if Macedonia can hold on to its sovereignty and territory, its
ability to control water resources, environmental standards,
endangered fish, etc., have already been compromised.
By contrast, the agriculture-focused central and southern plains,
inhabited almost entirely by Macedonians, face chronic drought
situations each summer. Water rationing is the norm in towns like
Negotino during the hot summer months. In the dry southeast, little
Lake Dojran, the third lake that Macedonia is forced to share with a
neighboring state, has had to be continually refilled due to
large-scale theft of the water for irrigation by Greek farmers on the
other side of the lake.
The situation for Macedonia's major population center, Skopje, is
potentially precarious. On the western side of the city, the River
Treska and impressive Matka Canyon also run through Albanian-majority
territory. Several lakes north of the city, on the Skopska Crna Gora
mountainside, are under the same ownership.
An early test of Vaknin's theory came in 2001, when Albanian
paramilitaries turned off the water supply for one month to the city
of Kumanovo by blocking the flow from one of these lakes, Lipkovo,
near the Serbian border. In the sweltering summer heat, homes and
hospitals went without water, which led to sanitary problems and
suffering, especially for infants and the elderly.
Four years later, the water wars tactic were employed again by armed
Albanians. But this time it was used on the other side of Skopje. A
shadowy local militant group threatened to bomb the Rasce water
pipeline, which supplies the capital with water, if the referendum on
territorial decentralization was passed.
In a typically Balkan bout of black irony, almost one year ago,
Macedonia's entire water resources were turned over to Sadula Duraku -
the very man who had masterminded the 2001 water shut-off in Lipkovo.
Duraku was nominated to be the Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and
Water Economy by the jury-rigged coalition government of SDSM-DUI. It
seems likely that his appointment was made at least partially because
Duraku could, through his ethnicity and party affiliation, exercise
some degree of control over future water mischief-makers as had
emerged a month earlier in Rasce.
It also seems likely that Macedonia's "frozen conflict" will have to
thaw out someday, with control of the ensuing flow being an item of
top importance for the enemy sides. The stakes will be high, not only
for Macedonia's inhabitants but for international investors from
high-water usage industries, who will be eager to be on the winning
side.
Serbian News Network - SNN
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http://www.antic.org/
