Afghanistan's Economic Development is in the Pipeline

With the new government of David Cameron's Tories and the Lib-Dems, there seems to be no fundamental change from the foreign policy of New Labour. This is hardly surprising when cross party think tanks like the neoconservative Henry Jackson Society are influential and include those like Michael Gove and Denis MacShane.

Nothing has changed since Gordon Brown made a speech last year outlining his commitment to Afghanistan and why it was all so worth it. Most of it was ridden with cliche, making the usual token reference to World War Two, as if Afghanistan was remotely comparable when any historian knows it is not.

In the week we commemorate the seventieth anniversary of the beginning of the Second World War, it is impossible not to feel an overwhelming sense of awe and humility at the scale of achievements and the record of service and sacrifice that has defined our British armed forces for generations.

The reason the Second World War is thrown in is to insinuate the usual propaganda about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq being part of some seamless moral crusade against Fascist totalitarians which directly threaten our way of life.

The wars that are forgotten, of course, are the three wars that Britain fought and lost in the nineteeth century for control of Afghanistan. The reason for which was to control trade routes and block of Russian threats to vital areas of strategic value to the British Empire.

The 'New Great Game' for control over pipeline routes and over what Sir Halford Mackinder called 'the World Island' is central to the USA's gamble to preserve its hegemony and the economic interests and energy security of the states of the European peninsula.

The reality of Afghanistan's strategic importance in providing and energy bridge that diverts oil and gas from Turkmenistan's Dauletabad field away from rival China and Russia is never mentioned. It is known as the TAPI pipeline. Most British people will never have heard ot it.

Instead Brown talks in oblique and indefinite language, using abstract nouns like 'security' and 'stability' repetitively and then throwing in the supposed resurgent threat of Al Qaida.

Each time I have to ask myself if we are doing the right thing by being in Afghanistan. Each time I have to ask myself if we can justify sending our young men and women to fight for this cause…And my answer has always been yes.

For when the security of our country is at stake we can not walk away. When the stability of this volatile region, spanning the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, has such a profound impact on the security of Britain and the rest of the international community we cannot just do nothing and leave the peoples of Pakistan and Afghanistan to struggle with these global problems on their own.

There is no doubt that the TAPI pipeline is what Brown refers to when he mentions 'economic development' and that the pipeline runs directly through the region where British troops are fighting and dying.

It is precisely Afghanistan's unconquerability in the past that leads liberal interventionists like Brown to laud NATO's involvement as different: the pipeline and the regional development will decisively modernise Afghanistan.

The mistake for Brown is that previous interventions did not win over the population nor develop the nation economically. NATO states offer a new vision based on mutually beneficial partnership in which enlightened self-interest is paramount.

The TAPI pipeline is central to realising this goal, though it is never mentioned because it would be difficult for Brown to mention the pipeline without critics accusing the government of using British lives to prop up business interests.

That's why Brown has to connect Afghanistan with terrorism because it is easier to manipulate fear and pretend we are fighting some imminent existential terror threat than to outline clearly what Britain's contribution to NATO's geostrategy is.

Of course, Britain's energy security is an existential one. Those who point out with superior sneers that the war is about the pipeline, greedy elites and profiteers fail to understand that without energy they will not be able to fly EasyJet, drive cars when desired or eat out of season strawberries.

In fact, the case for Britain's future energy security is of vital importance for every citizen or consumer. It just is not thought wise to perturb the minds of the people by expecting them to understand how Afghanistan fits in with energy policy.

The pipeline runs through states whose interests coincide with NATO's and their own. It is about control rather than profitsas the search for reliable sources of oil, gas and electricity is a top priority of many national capitals.

Increasingly since the 1970s when Afghanistan became the battleground between the Soviet Union and the USA in vying for control of the Middle East and Asia it has been a vitalto have reliable supplies of energy.

This is known as energy diversification, so that should one oil supplier be cut off or suffer a drastic reduction due to political instability, then other can be relied upon to increase production to stave off an oil price shock like that of 1973.

Developing tentacle like pipeline infrastructures from Europe to Central Asia that avoids Russian and Chinese control is essential to preserve Western hegemony against the rising challenge posed by this rapidly industrialising and energy hungry state.

This explains why there is the geostrategic imperative to expand NATO into Ukraine and Georgia and to turn the Black Sea into a NATO dominated lake. At the 2008 Summit in Bucharest, NATOs leaders claimed,

The Alliance will continue to consultation on the most immediate risks in the field of energy security. NATO will engage in… supporting the protection of critical energy infrastructure.

All this is set out in Michael Klare's Blood and Oil and in Rising Powers Shrinking Planet: the New Geopolitics of Energy, where he writes that "global competition over energy will be a pivotal, if not central, feature of world affairs for the remainder of the century".

Oil supplies are expected to peak at precisely the time of increasing global demand and control of energy supply is thus the key to maintaining global hegemony. That Afghanistan is central to this has been made clear by leading US figures.

Richard Boucher, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, said in September 2007:

One of our goals is to stabilize Afghanistan, so it can become a conduit and a hub between South and Central Asia so that energy can flow to the south. . . . and so that the countries of Central Asia are no longer bottled up between two enormous powers of China and Russia, but rather they have outlets to the south as well as to the north and the east and the west.

Richard Boucher asserts that energy security as not being dependent “on any one route, on any one customer, or on any one investor.” He argues that European energy security is important to the United States and also to Europeans and that it “is based on having multiple sources."

U.S. Ambassador Thomas Pickering of the Afghanistan Study Group in Washington, D.C. when Interviewed on CBCs As It Happens (January 30, 2008),said:

Afghanistan is of strategic importance, a failed state in the middle of a delicate and sensitive region that borders on a number of producers of critical energy.

Any assessment of what Afghanistan is really about is hardly worth bothering with unless statements about 'interests'. 'economic development and 'stability' are interpreted in the light of such hard facts.

The influence of the TAPI pipeline is central to understanding what is really at stake in Afghanistan. It gets next to no mention in the mainstream media. It is almost unmentionable and when it is is never connected to Britain's presence.

As John Foster, a Cambridge academic and expert in the oil industry writes in Pipeline Through a Troubled Land,

'The proposed TAPI pipeline follows an ancient trading route from Central to South Asia. It will run from the Dauletabad gas field in Turkmenistan along the main highway through Herat, Helmand and Kandahar in Afghanistan; through Quetta and Multan in Pakistan; to Fazilka in India, near theborder between Pakistan and India. Helmand and Kandaharare the provinces where safety and security are problemsand where British and Canadian forces, under the NATO umbrella, are involved in combat alongside U.S. forces.

Foster is in no doubt that the pipeline is central to Afghanistan's economic development.

Yet, if the pipeline goes ahead successfully, it could be Afghanistan's largest development project. According to the Interim National Development Strategy for Afghanistan (2005), transit revenue could amount to US$160 million per year, or about half of the Afghan governments domestic revenue.

These revenues are important to sustain development efforts. The benefits of construction jobs and transit fees could provide revenue to help pay for teachers and infrastructure.

Afghanistans new National Development Strategy (2009-2013) – presented at a donors conference on June 12,2008, in Paris – refers briefly to ongoing planning for the TAPI gas pipeline and to Afghanistans central role as a land bridge connecting land-locked, energy-rich Central Asia to energy-deficient South Asia.

Construction is due to start in 2010 but the surge in NATO activity also has something to do with providing a secure environment lest leaders plump for the rival IPI pipeline which would go directly from Iran to Pakistan and India.

Leaders in Pakistan and India speak publicly about their concerns regarding pipeline safety and security. The former prime minister of Pakistan admitted in February 2007 that the Afghan pipeline would have to pass through strifetorn Kandahar.According to the Pakistani press (June 7,2008), Afghanistan has informed stakeholders that all landmines will be cleared from the pipeline route within twoyears, and the route will be freed from Taliban influence.

Foster is British but has lived in Canada for many years and so directs his criticism at the Harper government. Yet what he says directly relates to Britain and the Brown speech.

The TAPI pipeline proposal could have positive or negative impacts on Canada's role in the country. Yet, during parliamentary deliberations over whether to extend the Canadian mission in Kandahar to 2011, the debate focused on how many troops to send and how long they should stay there– details rather than the big picture. It ignored regional geopolitics and energy issues.

Afghanistan must be seen in its geopolitical setting and interms of the rivalry for the energy of Central Asia. Since Afghanistan is perceived to be an energy bridge, why dont our leaders say so? Our troops, our citizens and our democracy deserve an explanation.

The same is true of Britain. Why aren't journalists pressing Brown on this? Why the silence ? Why the craven acceptence of the message on it's own terms, the hand wringing about "Brown's dilemma" ?