The Connection between Serbia and Afghanistan .

The case that Afghanistan is part of an ethical foreign policy or ,at least, can be seen specifically as a Just War no matter what happens elsewhere, depends on abstracting it from its larger context as part of 'The Long War' of NATO's expansion into Eurasia.

That began as Yugoslavia broke up at the same time as the Soviet Union amidst ethnic tensions and nationalist conflicts from the Transdnistria to the Caucasus and into Central Asia.

This was seen as crisis by some in which 'stability' was considered prime goal for 'realists' whilst to others a historical opportunity for the USA and the promotion of Western 'reforms' and democracy was offered.

The problem has been that the grubby realpolitik has merely been overlain with doctrines of humanitarian intervention and which are difficult to disentangle. The danger comes when those like Blair are not even clear as to the difference.

It is possible that Blair 'believed' Afghanistan was about humanitarian intervention. But what he 'believes' is irrelevant and is nothing less than the kind of blind faith that strength and moral righteousness must prevail.

What Blair knew or what others 'know' is far more relevant. Organised hypocrisy and doublethink requires at some level that political and military leaders know that wars from Serbia and Afghanistan are about energy security, pipeline maps and geopolitical ambitions.

It also requires them to 'believe' that the opposite is also true: that it really is possible to combine humanitarian goals with our interests because the ultimate victory of our vision of a world of interdependent liberal democracies is the right one.

Jock Stirrup used the word 'believe' repeatedly in his effort at propaganda uplift. As Freud put it in The Future of an Illusion "psychical mastering is a preperation for physical mastering".

I believe that what we're doing in Afghanistan is of strategic importance to the UK; I believe that, although very difficult, it is possible. I believe that the strategy is the right one, although I think that General McChrystal will have some important things to say about what is required to implement the strategy effectively. But I do not think the outcome is a foregone conclusion.

Notice he 'believes' in the humanitarian mission and 'believes' it is of strategic importance' but only thinks in terms of how to deliver a military strategy that will be able to suit the US which essentially dominates NATO.

It also shows that the UK implements the strategies of the US command or Centcom, the command set up in 1983 by Reagan to meet the stipulations of the Carter Doctrine of 1980.

The Carter Doctrine is by far the most important in the late twentieth century and stated that any thereat to the USA's 'vital interests' in the Middle East or Central Asia justified military intervention.

It was the work of Brzezinski whose role as Obama's foreign policy advisor shows the essential continuities of US foreign policy that exists irrespective of whether the President is Republican or Democrat.

The ethical foreign policy trope only holds in Afghanistan can be seen as a break with the realpolitik of the Cold War and all the evidence points to it decisively not being so. The facts do not support it.

The occupation of Afghanistan was a continuity with the NATO operation against Serbia and like that it was put into effect by backing one repellent ethnic or tribalist faction against another to do the fighting on the ground whilst bombing from above.

It was based on a continuity both in time and space as NATO power is projected along the pipeline routes and through micromanaged client states along the route. Whether the KLA or the regime of Karzai, both involved in narcotics.

For along this axis of influence runs not only the proposed pipeline routes but also the the main C21st 'Silk Road' along which narcotics and sex slaves are trafficked. This axis was established by botched Western foreign policy.

It was created in the 1990s and is the main route through which heroin comes into Britain. It was one that allowed the mujahadeen to be imported into Europe from Afghanistan to fight the Serbs in Bosnia with CIA and MI6 connivance.

It was from the Balkans that the explosives used for the 7/7 bombs were imported as AQ operatives were allowed free movement into the UK as part of a cat and mouse power game.

It was in reaction to the NATO operation in Serbia that Russia and China saw NATO's encroachment through the Balkans into the Caucasus as a threat serious enough to form the SCO Treaty to collude to thwart US interests in June 2001.

The Bush administration saw that as a direct threat to their interests in Central Asia. The Al Qaida attack of September 11th 2001 provided Bush and Cheney with the pretext to go into Afghanistan.

By occupying Afghanistan they could fulfil a number of foreign policy objectives. Firstly, contruction contracts for US companies and and the military industrial complex. Secondly, to block Chinese designs for a pipeline.

That's reason the TAPI pipeline was agreed with Turkemenistan with US support to carry gas from the Dauletabad Gas Field down through Afghanistan bypassing Iran and Russia and taking it down to Pakistan and India.

The pipeline has to go through the south, that is, Kandihar, where British troops are fighting and dying right now. Once that region is 'stabilised' the pipeline construction is due to start for 2010 with troops then only remaining to guard it.

The Taliban, with whom negotiations were first opened up in the 1990s with regards the feasibility of the TAPI, are fighting so hard because like all factions and groups whether opposed or pro-West want to control the transit fees.

According to John Foster in a Pipeline through a Troubled Land (2009) the transit fees could amount to $160 million per year which would be an enormous contribution to Afghanistans economy.

If the Taliban do not have a stake in the transit fees then they have to turn to opium. If other warlords and factions do not control the pipeline transit fees then they will turn to opium and the cycle of violence is potentially unending.

Foster argues that America plans to turn Afghanistan into an energy bridge and that is why troops will remain long beyond 2011 when the intention is to withdraw them. It is US policy.

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."

As Foster commented on August 12th 2009,

"The pipeline project was documented at three donor conferences on Afghanistan in the past three years and is referenced in the 2008 Afghan Development Plan. Canada was represented at these conferences at the ministerial level.

Thus, our leaders must know. Yet they avoid discussion of the planned pipeline through Afghanistan.

The 2008 Manley Report, a foundation for extending the Canadian mission to 2011, ignored energy issues. It talked about Afghanistan as if it were an island, albeit with a porous Pakistani border.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper says he "will withdraw the bulk of the military forces" in 2011. The remaining troops will focus mostly on "reconstruction and development."

Does that include the pipeline?

( Sources and Notes available on Request ).