[iwar] Oil, Afghanistan and America's pipe dream

From: Mohammad Ozair Rasheed (ozair_rasheed@geocities.com)
Date: 2001-10-24 22:34:11


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Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 10:34:11 +0500
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Subject: [iwar] Oil, Afghanistan and America's pipe dream
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http://www.dawn.com/2001/10/25/int15.htm
 
 
Oil, Afghanistan and America's pipe dream 

By George Monbiot 


LONDON: "Is there any man, is there any woman, let me say any child
here," Woodrow Wilson asked a year after the First World War ended,
"that does not know that the seed of war in the modern world is
industrial and commercial rivalry?" 

In 1919, as US citizens watched a shredded Europe scraping up its own
remains, the answer may well have been no. But the lessons of war never
last for long. 

The invasion of Afghanistan is certainly a campaign against terrorism,
but it may also be a late colonial adventure. British ministers have
warned British members of parliament (MPs) that opposing the war is the
moral equivalent of appeasing Hitler, but in some respects our moral
choices are closer to those of 1956 than those of 1938. Afghanistan is
as indispensable to the regional control and transport of oil in central
Asia as Egypt was in the Middle East. 

Afghanistan has some oil and gas of its own, but not enough to qualify
as a major strategic concern. Its northern neighbours, by contrast,
contain reserves which could be critical to future global supply. In
1998, Dick Cheney, now US vice-president but then chief executive of a
major oil services company, remarked: "I cannot think of a time when we
have had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically
significant as the Caspian." But the oil and gas there is worthless
until it is moved. The only route which makes both political and
economic sense is through Afghanistan. 

Transporting all the Caspian basin's fossil fuel through Russia or
Azerbaijan would greatly enhance Russia's political and economic control
over the central Asian republics, which is precisely what the west has
spent 10 years trying to prevent. Piping it through Iran would enrich a
regime which the US has been seeking to isolate. 

Sending it the long way round through China, quite aside from the
strategic considerations, would be prohibitively expensive. But
pipelines through Afghanistan would allow the US both to pursue its aim
of "diversifying energy supply" and to penetrate the world's most
lucrative markets. Growth in European oil consumption is slow and
competition is intense. 

In south Asia, by contrast, demand is booming and competitors are
scarce. Pumping oil south and selling it in Pakistan and India, in other
words, is far more profitable than pumping it west and selling it in
Europe. 

As the author Ahmed Rashid has documented, in 1995 the US oil company
Unocal started negotiating to build oil and gas pipelines from
Turkmenistan, through Afghanistan and into Pakistani ports on the
Arabian sea. The company's scheme required a single administration in
Afghanistan, which would guarantee safe passage for its goods. 

Soon after the Taliban took Kabul in September 1996, the London-based
Daily Telegraph newspaper reported that "oil industry insiders say the
dream of securing a pipeline across Afghanistan is the main reason why
Pakistan, a close political ally of America's, has been so supportive of
the Taliban, and why America has quietly acquiesced in its conquest of
Afghanistan". 

Unocal invited some of the leaders of the Taliban to Houston, where they
were royally entertained. The company suggested paying the guests 15
cents for every thousand cubic feet of gas it pumped through the land
they had conquered. 

For the first year of Taliban rule, US policy towards the regime appears
to have been determined principally by Unocal's interests. In 1997 a US
diplomat told Rashid "the Taliban will probably develop like the Saudis
did. There will be Aramco (the former US oil consortium in Saudi Arabia)
pipelines, an emir, no parliament and lots of Shariah law. We can live
with that." 

US policy began to change only when feminists and greens started
campaigning against both Unocal's plans and the government's covert
backing for Kabul. 

Even so, as a transcript of a Congress hearing now circulating among war
resisters shows, Unocal failed to get the message. In February 1998,
John Maresca, its head of international relations, told representatives
that the growth in demand for energy in Asia and sanctions against Iran
determined that Afghanistan remained "the only other possible route" for
Caspian oil. 

The company, once the Afghan government was recognized by foreign
diplomats and banks, still hoped to build a 1,000-mile pipeline, which
would carry a million barrels a day. Only in December 1998, four months
after the embassy bombings in east Africa, did Unocal drop its plans. 

But Afghanistan's strategic importance has not changed. In September, a
few days before the attack on New York, the US energy information
administration reported that "Afghanistan's significance from an energy
standpoint stems from its geographical position as a potential transit
route for oil and natural gas exports from central Asia to the Arabian
sea. 

This potential includes the possible construction of oil and natural gas
export pipelines through Afghanistan". Given that the US government is
dominated by former oil industry executives, we would be foolish to
suppose that such plans no longer figure in its strategic thinking. As
the researcher Keith Fisher has pointed out, the possible economic
outcomes of the war in Afghanistan mirror the possible economic outcomes
of the war in the Balkans, where the development of "Corridor 8", an
economic zone built around a pipeline carrying oil and gas from the
Caspian to Europe, is a critical allied concern. 

American foreign policy is governed by the doctrine of "full-spectrum
dominance", which means that the US should control military, economic
and political development worldwide. China has responded by seeking to
expand its interests in central Asia. The defence white paper Beijing
published last year argued that "China's fundamental interests lie in
... the establishment and maintenance of a new regional security order".


In June, China and Russia pulled four central Asian republics into a
"Shanghai cooperation organization". Its purpose, according to Jiang
Zemin, is to "foster world multi- polarization", by which he means
contesting US full-spectrum dominance. 

If the US succeeds in overthrowing the Taliban and replacing them with a
stable and grateful pro-western government and if the US then binds the
economies of central Asia to that of its ally Pakistan, it will have
crushed not only terrorism, but also the growing ambitions of both
Russia and China. Afghanistan, as ever, is the key to the western
domination of Asia. 

There have been arguments about whether terrorism is likely to be
deterred or encouraged by the invasion of Afghanistan, or whether the
plight of the starving there will be relieved or exacerbated by attempts
to destroy the Taliban. But neither of these considerations describes
the full scope and purpose of this war. 

As the American journalist and author John Flynn wrote in 1944: "The
enemy aggressor is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder, rapine
and barbarism. We are always moving forward with high mission, a destiny
imposed by the Deity to regenerate our victims while incidentally
capturing their markets, to civilize savage and senile and paranoid
peoples while blundering accidentally into their oil wells." I believe
that the US government is genuine in its attempt to stamp out terrorism
by military force in Afghanistan, however, misguided that may be. But we
would be naive to believe that this is all it is doing. -Dawn/The
Guardian News Service



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