According to Hedges, «The sprawling state-owned Trepca mining complex, the most valuable piece of real estate in the Balkans, is worth at least $5 billion.»
According to the mine's director, Novak Bjelic, «The war in Kosovo is about the mines, nothing else. This is Serbia's Kuwait-the heart of Kosovo. ... In addition to all this, Kosovo has 17 billion tons of coal reserves.» The whole world knows and observed firsthand in the war against Iraq to what horrendous extent the Pentagon was willing to go in order to guarantee control of the oil wealth of Kuwait.
But the enormous mineral wealth of Kosovo is never publicly discussed by U.S. United Nations Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, President Bill Clinton or the Pentagon generals. They speak only of «self-determination» of the Albanian population of Kosovo. Of course, they never mention what U.S.-imposed «self-determination» means. It means colonization under the guise of «liberation,» like what the U.S. did to Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines a hundred years ago.
An Internet search for reports on the mines of Kosovo-the Trepca mining complex or Stari Trg-turned up only the one article by Hedges and a small piece in the June 22 Wall Street Journal. All other mentions are in metallurgical journals.
<snip>
Hedges describes the mining complex: «The Stari Trg mine, with its warehouses, is ringed with smelting plants, 17 metal treatment sites, freight yards, railroad lines, a power plant and the country's largest battery plant.» The labor power of millions of workers throughout socialist Yugoslavia built this mining complex into the powerhouse it is today. It was their wealth that was invested in developing the complex. It belongs not just to those who live in Kosovo, but to the workers of all Yugoslavia.
The Yugoslav web site www.yugo slavia.com describes Trepca as the «richest lead and zinc mines in Europe.» Lignite deposits in the Kosovo mines are, according to experts, sufficient for the next 13 centuries. The capacityof the lead and zinc refineries ranks third in the world. Miners work round the clock, day and night, in six-hour shifts. According to the mine director, «In the last three years we have mined 2,538,124 tons of lead and zinc crude ore and produced 286,502 tons of lead and zinc and 139,789 tons of pure lead, zinc, cadmium, silver and gold.» Although the average person watching the news in the evening has never heard of Stari Trg, it has been a prize changing hands for two thousand years.
The wealth of Stari Trg is legendary. Precious metals were mined there more than 2,000 years ago, first by the Greeks, then by the Romans. These mines were the grand prize in the Nazi occupation of the Balkans after Germany grabbed control from the British. The mines have great industrial and military importance. The Nazis used batteries produced there to power their U-boats. Today submarine batteries are still made there. Profits from these mines are helping to keep the Yugoslav Federation afloat. U.S. and UN sanctions imposed on Serbia and Montenegro, the two remaining republics of Yugoslavia, have taken an enormous toll
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The progressive movement in the U.S. and throughout Western Europe must be at the forefront in explaining that the billions of dollars spent on the U.S./NATO occupation of the region is not in the interests of any of the people of the Balkans. Nor is it in the interests of poor and working people in the U.S. or Europe. The war is destroying all that was built through collective ownership and collaboration in the Balkans. This war will mean higher taxes and even more cuts in social programs in the U.S and Europe.
But the billions of dollars in profit will go to a few wealthy stockholders in the U.S. or in Western Europe.
http://www.eroj.org/urbiorbi/Yugoslavia/mines.htm
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