The Trouble with Afghanistan: Pipelineistan, the Taleban, and China

Yesterday, Tuesday, 01 September 2009, Michael Fletcher wrote in the Washington Post that ‘President Obama will receive the report assessing the war in Afghanistan from his top commander there [Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal] on Wednesday [02 September], and will take it with him to Camp David as he continues his vacation over the extended Labor Day weekend’.[ii] At present, the ‘US has some 62,000 troops in Afghanistan and will have 68,000 by the end of the year, while the British contingent is 9000. In total, there are more than 100,000 US and Nato troops in the country’.[iii] But it is a numbers’ game, and totals are likely to go up some more in time to come. Back in 2001, the whole world followed the Bush lead into Afghanistan to defeat and destroy the perfidious Taleban -- oppressors of women and growers of beards. But, was that really the whole story??? As long ago as 1997, the Taleban sent a delegation to Texas to talk about money: a ‘senior delegation of Afghanistan's Taleban movement has gone to the United States for talks. The delegation is to meet officials of the company which wants to build a pipeline to export gas from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to Pakistan. A spokesman for the company -- Unocal in Texas -- said it had agreed with Turkmenistan to sell its gas’.[iv] Would this report from the last century indicate that the current NATO-led occupation of Afghanistan is all about “Pipelineistan”, to use Pepe Escobar's coinage; and, not about either Talebanistan, Pashtunistan or Any-other-stan??? Back in 1997, a ‘BBC regional correspondent [said that] the proposal to build a pipeline across Afghanistan is part of an international scramble to profit from developing the rich energy resources of the Caspian Sea’.[v] A scramble, which I referred to a long long time ago as the “New Great Game”, relying on Ahmed Rashid. The BBC also added the following disingenuous proviso: ‘the Afghan economy has been devastated by 20 years of civil war. A deal to go ahead with the pipeline project could give it a desperately-needed boost’.[vi] Back in the waning years of the last century, two companies were vying for Taleban attention: the above-mentioned Texas-based Unocal and the Argentinian Bridas. Rather than any concern for the Afghan economy or bearded and/or beardless Afghan men and oppressed or liberated Afghan women, it is all about access to energy resources. By means of this projected pipeline project, China, the new superpower-in-the-making, will be sidelined and denied access. Whereas, India and Pakistan, as U.S. allies, and thus deserving of access, would enable U.S.-owned companies to buy and sell even more oil and gas. Because, at the end of the day, just like the Clinton speechwriter informed his boss in 1992, "It's the economy, stupid". One could thus argue that the so-called “9/11” attacks provided the right pretext for the U.S. to publicly intervene and insure that the pipeline would be built and benefits and profits accrue . . . or, would that be an assessment too cynical to contemplate??? The Canadian economist John Foster recently wrote that ‘Afghanistan is adjacent to Middle Eastern countries that are rich in oil and natural gas. And though Afghanistan may have little petroleum itself, it borders both Iran and Turkmenistan, countries with the second and third largest natural gas reserves in the world. (Russia is first)’, continuing that ‘Washington has promoted a natural gas pipeline south through Afghanistan [(s)ince the 1990s]. The route would pass through Kandahar province. In 2007, Richard Boucher, U.S. assistant secretary of state, said: "One of our goals is to stabilize Afghanistan," and to link South and Central Asia "so that energy can flow to the south." Oil and gas have motivated U.S. involvement in the Middle East for decades . . . The proposed pipeline is called TAPI, after the initials of the four participating countries (Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India). Eleven high-level planning meetings have been held during the past seven years, with Asian Development Bank sponsorship and multilateral support . . . Construction is planned to start next year [2010]’.[vii]

In case you were wondering about Turkmenistan and its sudden importance, let me remind you that the well-respected news organisation Reuters habitually refers to the country as ‘Central Asia's largest gas producer’[viii] and that it has been months, nearly a year actually, since the British consultancy firm Gaffney, Cline & Associates (GCA) announced Turkmenistan’s staggering gas reserves (14 trillion cubic meters).[ix]

This then brings us to China. TAPI would effectively deny Chinese access to a slice of the Turkmen gas pie. But, not to worry, the Chinese have already thought about this and devised an alternative, which is why the recent troubles in Xinjiang (or East Turkestan) went by largely unnoticed by the rest of the world. China efficiently suppressed the news from leaking out too far. But Xinjiang as well as Tibet are important pieces in China's future energy policy goals. I have hinted at the petroleum, gas, and coal-driven agendas of the Chinese in their own Wild West, but Robert Cutler, a Senior Research Fellow in the Institute of European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, Carleton University, is able to explain the whole interaction in much more detail and colour: the area of Xinjiang or East Turkestan has seen 15 years of development and investment aimed at turning it into a ‘geo-economic springboard for projecting influence into Central Asia and the Caspian region in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union’, in addition to being ‘increasingly important as a transit route for fuel pipelines from neighboring countries’, while also playing a ‘role as an important supplier of its own energy and mineral resources to the industrial east of the country’. Cutler continues his account by saying that ‘[n]ew highways throughout the region's western hinterland are helping to promote international trade flows while strengthening the government's grip. Western Xinjiang borders on Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and both sides of the Indo-Pakistani Line of Control in Kashmir (as well as the Chinese Line of Control lying across Kashmiri territory claimed by India). Other parts of Xinjiang border on Mongolia, Russia and the Tibet Autonomous Region’. China’s Wild West or Xinjiang is reputed to have ‘17.4 trillion cubic feet of proven gas reserves’. And, rather unsurprisingly, Cutler continues that the ‘West-East Gas Pipeline (WEGP) [another part of the ever-expanding Pipelineistan], using resources in Xinjiang's Tarim Basin and running 4,000 kilometers to terminate in Shanghai, was opened in 2005’, explaining further that the ‘WEGP was opened with a volume of 12 bcm a year, a figure projected to increase to 17 bcm/y. Construction of a second pipeline to run 9,000 kilometers (including its projected eight sub-lines) from northwest Xinjiang began in early 2008. It will run parallel to the first WEGP and be interconnected with it up to Gansu before diverging to Guangzhou. The volume of the second WEGP is projected at 30 bcm/y and will be supplied largely by the Turkmenistan-China pipeline now under construction across Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan . . . There are further plans to build a third and a fourth WEGP and possibly even a fifth’. In 1999, Beijing announced its “Go West” programme, which ‘seeks to build up not only Xinjiang but also Tibet, whose plateau holds astounding mineral resources and to which a rail line was opened last year, and provinces further east but away from the better-developed coast. This could make them the driving forces of the country's economic development over the next few decades’.[x] The Dalai Lama and his brain-washed minions as well as Rebiya Kadeer and her World Uyghur Congress are just out of luck . . . the likelihood of China giving up on either territory is as remote as ever.

So, why is it important for the U.S. to pursue Obama’s War??? The defeat of a terrorist network with sophisticated cave hideouts in inaccessible regions, the obliteration of the Taleban movement, bent on putting barbers out of business and women out of rights, the victory of democracy in a mountainous region with age-old tribal institutions and customs, the strengthening of the regime led by the infamous Mister 10%, also known as Mister Benazir Bhutto . . . or to put the U.S. in control of access to energy resources vital to the survival of the world as we know it???

As it happens, today, Wednesday, 02 September, the BBC reports that ‘Abdullah Laghmani and at least 21 other people were killed in the attack in the town of Mehtar Lam. A Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, told AP news agency a suicide bomber had targeted Mr Laghmani. The attack came after the UN released a report saying opium cultivation had dropped significantly in Afghanistan. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime said poppy cultivation had dropped by 22% in a year and opium production by 10%. Meanwhile, European and US officials are meeting in Paris to discuss a new strategy in Afghanistan’.[xi] A new Afghan strategy is needed now that the situation here today begins to resemble yesterday’s state of affairs in Iraq

The propaganda broadcaster Radio Free Europe reports on its website that ‘[s]enior officials from Afghanistan, its neighboring countries, and world powers have met in the French capital, Paris, to discuss ways of ending the Afghan conflict and helping the country rebuild’. The report continues that ‘envoys from Pakistan, China, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and India gathered at French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner's official residence in Saint Cloud, a leafy Paris suburb, for a day of closed-door talks. Senior European Union officials and representatives from UN Security Council members Russia, the United States, and Britain were also in attendance. A statement released after the meeting said there can be no long-term security and peace in the region without a stable, secure, prosperous, and democratic Afghanistan’.[xii] The goal of a secure, prosperous, and democratic Afghanistan seems very lofty and worthwhile, but to what extent do these words correspond to other motives for the continuation of armed conflict in the Af-Pak theatre discussed behind other closed doors???

MAJOR ATTACKS IN PAST MONTH

25 Aug: At least 43 killed in massive car bombing in Kandahar city

18 Aug: Nine Afghans and a Nato soldier die and more than 50 are injured in Kabul

15 Aug: Suicide bomb outside Nato HQ in Kabul kills seven and injures 90

13 Aug: Twin blasts in Helmand and Kandahar kill 14, including several children

6 Aug: Five American and three UK soldiers, five civilians and five policemen killed by roadside bombs mainly in Helmand

3 Aug: Bomb in Herat kills 12

1-2 Aug: Nine foreign soldiers killed over weekend

(If anybody is interested in the exact source references, just send me a message and I will forward them to you)