In 1998, New York Times war correspondent Chris Hedges found respite from the interethnic violence that raged across the small European state of Kosovo in an unlikely place: deep underground, among the country’s “glittering” mineral deposits.
Deep inside the Stari Tng mine, Hedges found “veins of lead, zinc, cadmium, gold and silver,” and he heard about Kosovo’s billions of tons of coal reserves.
“The war in Kosovo is about the mines, nothing else,” Stari Tng’s director told Hedges at the time.