Afghanistan: The Dollar Line

This article was first published in Chimes of Freedom in December 2007. With the current controversy of mortalities in the occupation forces I felt it an appropriate time to re-publish it along with some small additions:

The Battle of Musa Kala is supposedly over and the city is once more in the hands of NATO forces. There has been a virtual news blackout about the manner in which the city was taken but, listening to the BBC World Service yesterday, I picked up snippets about a heavy aerial bombardment by the US Air Force, using B1 and Stealth bombers in what appeared to be a Shock & Awe blitzkrieg. Phosphorous bombs may have been used. Thousands of civilians may have been killed. We just don’t know.

Nor do we know just what the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is doing in South Central Asia. It is a question that after six years still goes unanswered. If pressed, we are given vague assurances about a continued “War against Terrorism”, the catch-all justification the USUK regimes give their public for just about whatever they wish to do, either domestically or abroad.

In fact the much-vaunted “War against Terrorism” is really the ongoing World War of western capitalism that replaced the Cold War, a time during which “hot” wars were exported to places like Korea and Vietnam, with the idea of “Endless War”, which is really an unending war based on geostrategic needs to grab as much of the Planet’s mineral resources as possible.

And in this scenario, Afghanistan, rich in Gas, Oil and Coal, sits neatly in the middle of the Great Game, currently occupied by the western economic bloc but neighboured by the opposing bloc of the countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

SCO

Indeed, looking at the history of US involvement in the area since the early days of its use of the Taleban as anti-Russian insurgents, it may be seen how Afghanistan has played the part of a significant chess-piece in the Great Game of geostrategic politics and war. And the entire fake operation of 911 as the window of opportunity which provided, amongst much else, the excuse for the US along with its dogged ally the UK, to occupy in perpetuo this strategic cross-roads, hence ensuring that it would never fall into the hegemony of the opposing powers.

The argument for a pipeline through Afghanistan was made before the US Congress in 1998 by John Maresca of the Unocal Oil Company in testimony to the House Sub-Committee on Asia and the Pacific:

Maresca concluded his Congressional testimony with this peroration. “Developing cost-effective, profitable and efficient export routes for Central Asia resources is a formidable, but not impossible, task. It has been accomplished before. A commercial corridor, a “new” Silk Road, can link the Central Asia supply with the demand — once again making Central Asia the crossroads between Europe and Asia.”

Gas, Oil and Afghanistan by Jon Flanders

The area includes a huge field of natural resources, predominantly Gas, Oil and Coal. Since the ‘nineties the Texas-based Unocal company was negotiating with the Taleban to build pipelines south to the Arabian Gulf. But these negotiations were brought to a halt by events in a highly destabilized part of the Great Game.

Yet, even were the US oil monopolies temporarily unable to secure the required conditions to pipe the resources, they could still hold a stake in the area’s oil-fields for future exploitation, particularly if the area concerned remained under US occupation. After Unocal pulled-out of the Central Asian Gas Pipeline (Centgas) the company’s chief shareholder became the Saudi Arabian Delta Oil Company.

Unocal’s defection did not end pipeline plans. According to the VOA’s Sarah Horner “But the pipeline dreams have surfaced again. In May 2000 there were reports of discussions of the issue involving Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Iran and Turkmenistan. And the Taliban newspaper, the Kabul Times, recently reported that the mine and industries minister, Mullah Mohammed Isa Akhond, met representatives of the Central Asia-based US company, Central Asia Oil and Gas Industry. The newspaper quoted company representative, Rafiq Yadgar as saying: “Central Asia Oil and Gas Industry is ready to invest in Afghanistan in the field of oil and gas extraction and meanwhile is willing to build an gas and oil refinery in Afghanistan.” He added that Turkmen authorities are ready to cooperate with his company.”

ibid

Now it is the US-puppet Karzai regime which runs Afghanistan, not the Taleban. So if anyone is going to exploit Afghanistan’s rich resources they would come from the western bloc, not the SCO. Hence the importance of Afghanistan remaining under the permanent occupation of the USUK and a fragmented NATO reborn as a ‘Coalition of the Willing.’ And why the UK Government has built in Kabul a huge, new fortified Embassy, signifying plans for a long-term occupation.

The present Bush junta represents nothing less than a coup d’état against the US people by oil interests.

As most of us know, the Bush-Cheney team that took control of the US Government in January, 2001, was heavily influenced by the oil industry. Bush himself is a veteran of a number of mostly failed oil enterprises. Condolezza Rice, Bush’s assistant to the president for national security affairs, was on the board of Chevron. Vice President Dick Cheney was the CEO of Halliburton, a major player in the downstream oil industry.

ibid

The hot spot for where the business is is the Caspian.

In a column dated Thursday, August 10, 2000 in the Chicago Tribune, Marjorie Cohn, a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego [wrote] … “Because of the instability in the Persian Gulf, Cheney and his fellow oilmen have zeroed in on the world’s other major source of oil –the Caspian Sea. Its rich oil and gas resources are estimated at $4 trillion by US News and World Report. The Washington-based American Petroleum Institute, voice of the major US oil companies, called the Caspian region, “the area of greatest resource potential outside of the Middle East.” Cheney told a gaggle of oil industry executives in 1998, “I can’t think of a time when we’ve had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian.” Halliburton’s Caspian investments include Turkmenistan.

ibid

And in this revealing paper, written in 2001, its author goes on to note,

P.V. Vivekanand, chief editor of The Gulf Today in the United Arab Emirates sums up the pipeline picture in the Caspian/Central Asia region in this way…”There are dozens of oil and gas pipeline projects in Central Asia, some estimated to cost billions of dollars and almost all sparking transborder disputes and controversies. Most of the projects have been discussed for decades as the oil giants wait for the right political conditions to move in. Because pipelines are the best method to transport oil and gas over land, the efficiency of such a delivery system is too tempting for energy exporters and importers to let go of plans in a hurry. And for many potential exporters and pipeline hosts, the realization of such projects can mean economic survival.”

ibid

and finally concludes,

I think the evidence is overwhelming. The Bush administration plans to use the WTC attack as an opportunity to use the US military as pipeline police, with the current goal of splitting the government of Pakistan and the Taliban from the Islamic militants led by Bin Laden. If they can accomplish this, and this is a big if, the way might be cleared for the Afghanistan pipeline project, and the basis for further penetration into the oil rich former Soviet republics established, as part of a general rollback of Russian influence in the Caspian and Central Asia.

ibid

Six years on we can see how this analysis has been borne out. It underscores the vital role played by the false-flag events of 911 which are now being increasingly exposed as having been a CIA-Mossad operation. And it reveals the skeleton-in-the-cupboard behind a nonsensical war, not so much against terror but of ongoing terror by the USUK-led capitalist West against the people of our Planet.

Richard Behan, in his Alternet article, The Mega-Lie called the War on Terror: A Masterpiece of Propaganda, provides a useful synopsis of events leading up to the bombing of Afghanistan.

At the final meeting with the Taliban, on Aug. 2, 2001, State Department negotiator Christine Rocca, clarified the options: “Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs.” With the futility of negotiations apparent, “President Bush promptly informed Pakistan and India the U.S. would launch a military mission into Afghanistan before the end of October.”

This was five weeks before the events of 9/11.

The Mega-Lie called the War on Terror: A Masterpiece of Propaganda

Afghanistan is an early example of a 21st Century Resource War. For obvious reasons the public must be kept in the dark. We have seen how in these wars the deaths of millions are just written-off as “collateral damage”, of no significance in contrast to the profitable purposes to be achieved by the constant playing-out of a hell on earth. Hells which are carefully kept out of the view of consumer target audiences and where war crimes are repeated so often that the concept itself begins to seem meaningless.

All wars are ruthless. But when the very survival of the New World Order lies at stake, as it now does, we can be sure that their horror and intensity will only grow, foreshadowing a great, planetary showdown in the interests of the Dollar Line.

Britain’s propaganda offensive on behalf of Afghan war

The speech by Foreign Secretary David Miliband at the NATO headquarters in Brussels makes clear that Britain intends to deepen its collaboration with the United States in Afghanistan.

There is growing public concern that Afghanistan is fast becoming a worse and more intractable debacle than Iraq, fueling opposition to the war and demands for an exit strategy. Despite Miliband’s statement that he accepted the public “wanted to know whether and how we can succeed” in Afghanistan, he demonstrated the government’s willingness to defy anti-war sentiment and press ahead with the neo-colonial war.

More…

Full Spectrum Dominance

William Engdahl on his book Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order.

Was the recent uprising in Iran a “colored revolution,” a genuine movement for democracy – or both?

How many more will die in vain before we withdraw?

By Seumas Milne, Guardian columnist speaking at a packed meeting on 13 July 2009, organised by Stop the War Coalition and Media Workers Against War, and titled The Good War? Afghanistan in the Media.

“The only way to end the war is the withdrawal of foreign troops as part of a wider political settlement negotiated with all significant Afghan forces on the ground, including the Taliban – and guaranteed by regional powers and neighbouring states: Pakistan, Iran, China and India.

Such a process is bound to take place eventually – whether or not the British government has the guts to follow the example of Canada and The Netherlands and announce plans to pull out earlier.

But the assumption must be that a strategic US decision to accept the inevitable, turn its back on the wreckage of the war on terror and withdraw from Afghanistan is going to be a slow and painful process. In the meantime, many more people – mostly Afghans – will shamefully die in vain.”

More…

Malalai Joya – Afghan MP Calls for Troops out of Afghanistan

The inspirational anti-war Afghan MP Malalai Joya was joined on the platform by Lance Corporal Joe Glenton, a serving British soldier who was speaking in public for the first time against the horror caused by the war in Afghanistan.

Malalai Joya really is one of the bravest women in Afghanistan. She told the 300-strong audience at Conway Hall in central London that she’s survived five assassination attempts and is still not safe with personal security guards or by wearing a burkha to cover her identity. Yet she continues to campaign against foreign occupation and fundamentalist warlords, and for women’s rights and education. She believes all NATO troops must leave Afghanistan immediately.

Luke, MEDIALENS

World Prepares to Dump the Dollar

What do China, India, Brazil, Russia, France and Germany have in common? These countries most often can’t agree on anything. But they are united in one strange—and ominous—way. They blame the United States for wrecking the global economy. And they think the dollar is the wrecking ball.

more…

Michael Hudson’s ‘Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire’

Early in the war, US officials and economists knew America would prevail and emerge as the world’s dominant power. However, transitioning from war to peace needed large export volumes to stimulate economic growth and full employment. “This in turn required that foreign countries be able to earn or borrow dollars to pay” for what they got. So America supplied them through government loans and private investment.

more…

American soldier: “I killed innocent people”

This American soldier is speaking out against the brutality and horror of the occupation of Iraq. But we know that the war-crimes being committed daily by USUK forces in Afghanistan are of a similar nature. We need more of these courageous individuals to speak out against the atrocities being committed under the guise of a phoney War on Terror. A war, actually, of terror being committed by the USUK.

British soldier refuses to return to Afghanistan

Serving soldier Joe Glenton spoke at a Stop the War rally last Thursday night about why he thinks the war in Afghanistan is wrong and why he’s not going back. Also on the platform was Malalai Joya the courageous Afghan MP who spoke out about the domination of the parliament by warlords, drug traffickers and fundamentalists.

The old warning of international socialists still rings true: workers should not allow themselves to be dragged into capitalist wars where they will slaughter each other over and over again. The only reason that our capitalist rulers succeed in recruiting us is because of a deep tribalism that affects many humans and which they mistake for patriotism.

Only a few will question the sanity of war. Joe Glenton is one of those. And for having the courage to do so he should earn all our support. Please email him your support c/o office@stopwar.org.uk
(Tel +44…, 231 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 1EH, England).

http://www.stopwar.org.uk/

Black Hole

by Martin Rowson, The Guardian

Click on cartoon to enlarge

Pipelineistan and the end of Empire

As the number of deaths of British service-people mounts and the British MSM focuses on the mounting mortality rates the BBC’s Question Time was bound to discuss the topic. Normally, Question Time is so tightly controlled by David Dimbleby’s team that there is very little likelihood that either the panel or the audience might express a view challenging the right-wing establishment status quo. The panel speakers themselves are carefully picked in a way where anyone resembling a leftie has little or no chance of getting on.

But it’s difficult to control everyone all the time and more so a bolshy audience. And on the subject of Afghanistan, last Thursday night’s audience was bordering on the bolshy. The celebrity Trisha Goddard surprised me with saying some sensible things about Afghanistan and even going so far as to conclude that it had become our Vietnam. The Libdems’ Lembit Opik cut in saying that maybe we shouldn’t have trained Osama Bin Laden in the first place to which Dimbelby could only reply “That’s hindsight for you.”

As usual, the discussion was initiated by a question from the audience about whether British forces should be given more helicopters in order to reduce road-side casualties. The essential question about what Britain is doing there in the first place was studiously avoided. Along with our rulers the British MSM takes it as a given what it has been told about the threat to British security from ghostly Al Qaeda terrorists who would take over Afghanistan if ‘our brave heroes’ weren’t out there. The real, geostrategic reasons about the need to safeguard Pipelineistan’s oil and gas in the interests of the multinationals (ie “western security”) is taboo. For that the reader needs to look around carefully on the Internet for articles by William Engdahl and the like. Or read Brzezinski’s The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives.

The idea of hegemonizing the European Heartlands came first from Halford Mackinder and was adopted as a key strategy in British imperial foreign policy in the early 1900’s. US historian Guido Giacomo Preparata, in his eye-opener of a book, Conjuring Hitler, illustrates how the British used the Heartlands geostrategic blueprint as a diplomatic weapon to draw Germany into two wars against the Anglo-Americans. Brzezinski went on to develop the blueprint for the inheritors of the British Empire, the USA, in its misnamed ‘Pax Americana’ and it is clearly a key aspect of the Neocons’ Project for the New American Century, total world domination.

The Project (or PNAC) is what Bush II and his sidekick, Tony Blair, enthused about so much. And through understanding how the Bush II regime was so influenced by the Neocons we can see how 911 was used to justify an entirely fake ‘War on Terrorism’ and the subsequent occupation of both Afghanistan and Iraq. To be explicit: the fake War on Terror was never more than a cover for Anglo-American ambitions for global domination through military force.

Neither the invasion of Iraq or Afghanistan were wars in the sense of two roughly equal nations fighting each other. Instead they were invasions which led to the massacre of what now amounts to millions of civilians. These were never intended as wars to be won. Their purpose, as we can see now eight years later, is to be long-term military occupations intended to keep both countries tightly under the control of the US. That is why we are constantly told to expect a rise in the death toll of military personnel in an endless war.

You’ll never hear this version of events spoken of on the MSM and for obvious reasons. The prospect of an endless list of mortalities in a war that goes on forever is intolerable and would not be accepted by any public. Instead, the MSM dons a fake face of concern that the problem is really about a lack of helicopters!

As a result of the long-term Anglo-American relationship, both British governments and the military find themselves in an unhealthy symbiosis with the Americans. Britain is no longer a global power but its rulers hang on desperately to an imperialist past. A series of incompetent British governments have found it all too easy to hang onto the ’special relationship’ because of the supposed advantages that this brings to Britain at the international top table. Only with disasters like Iraq and Afghanistan does it become clear that far from any advantages to be had that both the British people and their rulers are having to pay a high price for what is in effect a one-sided relationship where when the Americans say ‘Jump’ the British have no choice but to jump.

British governments are terrified of upsetting their American bosses. Recently, on a BBC News 24 interview, Paul Rogers from the Bradford University Department of Peace Studies said as much. The live interview was not repeated in later BBC newscasts!

Significantly, on a recent Radio 4 interview, military chief Sir Richard Dannatt confirmed that fear:

“say what would happen if the United Kingdom was to leave this operation unilaterally or indeed if the coalition, if the alliance was to leave this operation. Then we would face, in the circumstances of the UK leaving, I think any relationship we have with the United States – special, interesting or otherwise, I think we would sever. I think we would severely prejudice the future structure and well-being, even existence of Nato. And if the coalition was to leave, or the alliance was to leave precipitately then I think we’d be handing an um enormous, um, propaganda information victory if you like to… well, how do we want to describe it? Al qaeda, islamist extremists, those who were behind the attacks that were manifested in 9-11 and perhaps even in the UK in.. in 7-7. So when we say we must succeed, we will succeed, actually the possibility of failure here is really unthinkable”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00ljmmn/Today_17_07_2009/

It was a long time coming but now most accept that Britain has become a puppet of the Americans. More than any other leaders’ it has been the servility of Blair and Brown that has brought this about. Why is it that when the vast majority of Brits opposed their government’s occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan that British service-people continue to fight and die in those countries? Typically, serving the interests of a foreign power vastly eclipse the need to serve those of their people. Is this not treason?

It appears that the public continues to be at a loss to why we are in Afghanistan at all. A few, just a few, seem to have sniffed the rotting carcass of British imperialism beneath it. Instead the focus has been on an incompetent government that has let down its soldiers and we see British generals running to Downing Street with a shopping list of weaponry as if that is going to solve the dilemma.

The dilemma will never be solved outside of the total withdrawal of British forces. But even that would be only the first step, the second being a fundamental re-drawing of British foreign policy which looks to the reality of a multipolar world beyond the mirage of the neocons’ desire for global domination.

Just as the Nazi defeat at Stalingrad marked the final folly of Hitler’s attempt to dominate Eurasia it looks like Afghanistan will mark the end of the Anglo-American empires of evil.