By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Service
Paris, Wednesday, October 6, 1999
CAMP BONDSTEEL, Yugoslavia – The United States is building a bunker community here in south-central Kosovo, at a cost of tens of millions of dollars, to house its peacekeeping troops in a little bit of home – complete with fast food and American candy bars.
The purpose of the installation is to safeguard the bulk of the U.S. military stationed in Kosovo in a sealed environment with as much comfort as possible and maximum protection against terrorist attack.
The scale of the 775-acre (314-hectare) site and the substantial construction under way, which raises immense clouds of dust over the war-damaged surroundings, suggest that the United States plans to have its troops hunkered down in Kosovo for a long time.
The base, east of Urosevac, seems to do justice to the American military’s reputation for ”going in heavy and making a large footprint.”
It is already drawing gibes from officers in European brigades deployed here as part of the NATO-led peacekeeping force. They have dubbed the base ”Disneyland” and suggest that the concentration of so many soldiers in a single, isolated location will hinder the soldiers’ ability to perform peacekeeping tasks.
An estimated 4,860 U.S. soldiers, or roughly 77 percent of those deployed in Kosovo, reside at the camp behind dozens of earthen barriers, barbed wire, 11 guard towers and countless concrete road obstacles. The base is meant to create a homelike atmosphere within a wall of impenetrable security, separating the troops from Kosovo’s ruins, anguish and hazards.
”It is an obvious sign that the Americans are making a major commitment to the Balkan region and plan to stay,” said a senior British officer. ”But their desire to drive the risk of casualties to an absolute zero can be a major distraction.”
When they are not on duty, the soldiers can visit a chapel, fitness center or hospital. Soon they will also have three recreation centers, a library and a food court rivaling those in American shopping malls.
”This was a wheat field,” said Major Jimmie Kennan, the hospital’s chief nurse. ”Now, it’s a metropolis.”
American officers said construction, which began in late July, will cost more than $32 million in its initial phase. They said the base offered a sensible and efficient way to house U.S. forces here and to maintain morale. But it is also a symbol of the Clinton administration’s concern with security in peacekeeping operations, sometimes at the expense of other objectives.
U.S. officers said the preoccupation arose from the killing of U.S. Army Rangers in a botched operation in 1993 during a peacekeeping mission in Somalia, which led Congress to demand the withdrawal of U.S. troops.
Since then, U.S. officials have worried that even a few U.S. casualties might endanger the political consensus supporting intervention in Kosovo, even though opinion polls suggest the American people are less bothered than politicians by such deaths.
In Kosovo, self-protection is listed in the mission statement as the foremost objective of the U.S. military brigade responsible for a quarter of the province’s territory.
Peacekeeping tasks, such as maintaining ”a safe and secure environment” and supporting the United Nations in building a civil society, receive lesser priority.
This translates into a welter of military rules that limit how U.S. soldiers operate in Kosovo. For example, any soldier who ventures outside Camp Bondsteel must first don 35 pounds (16 kilograms) of body armor and a thick Kevlar helmet.
Moreover, the troops must travel either by helicopter or in convoys of armored vehicles because the site is too remote to make foot patrols feasible.
Conducting such ”mounted patrols” puts distance between the soldiers and the Kosovo citizens they are obliged to protect, many U.S. soldiers acknowledge.
Moreover, even when U.S. foot patrols are conducted elsewhere in Kosovo, such as in the tense city of Gnjilane, platoons do not always take interpreters with them.
These tactics contrast with methods used here by British troops. The British forces are widely dispersed within north-central Kosovo, often in bases cordoned by mere white plastic tape instead of barbed wire, concrete and sandbags.
In urban areas, most British soldiers live in apartments and houses in tense neighborhoods, six to a unit. They patrol on foot in small numbers without helmets and often without heavy body armor, projecting a more relaxed style that they say puts them in closer touch with local residents.
”To wear body armor and a helmet is the wrong psychological approach,” said a British officer who commands a company of 100 soldiers in Pristina, the Kosovo capital. ”It also makes you tired so you can’t concentrate. And a helmet makes you look down, instead of up. It’s like being behind a desk.”
None of the 5,400 British troops or 6,295 U.S. troops in Kosovo have died in attacks by hostile forces since the UN-authorized peacekeeping mission began in mid-June, although some have been shot at, stabbed or attacked with grenades. Two U.S. soldiers were slightly wounded in the first month, and an American died last week when his parachute failed to open during a training jump.
Colonel Michael Ellerbe of Fayetteville, North Carolina, commander of the 3d Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment in Urosevac, favors the protective measures, saying: ”If you have the equipment, why not use it?”
The city where his troops live was once ethnically mixed and tense. But it has calmed since all but 40 Serbs fled in the face of violence by ethnic Albanians after the war. Colonel Ellerbe said he, nonetheless, keeps the blinds closed on the front of the former police station where his troops are quartered.
When he moves outside the gate, it is frequently in a convoy with a dozen or so men carrying automatic weapons.
© International herald Tribune 1999
