The Reason for the "Deadine" for UK and US Troop Withdrawal from Afghanistan

Matthew Partridge writes in the Guardian today,

President Obama's decision to replace General Stanley McChrystal with General David Petraeus as commander of the American effort in Afghanistan has again prompted a lot of discussion about whether the mission in Afghanistan is worthwhile.

Although there are some positive signs, such as the large number of Taliban commanders who have died in the past year, a consensus seems to be emerging that the war is essentially lost.

Senior members of Obama's own party such as Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives, are demanding substantial troop withdrawals next year, while David Cameron has committed himself to a complete withdrawal of British troops before the next election.

So, is there a strategy that can reverse the tide and deal a decisive blow to the Taliban within a politically acceptable timeframe? Why hasn't the surge of troops worked as well as it did in Iraq?

The emerging consensus is that Obama's promise last December to "begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011" and his public rejection of "open-ended escalation of our war effort" is partially responsible.

To his credit, Obama has tried to re-brand the July deadline as "a transition phase that would allow the Afghan government to take more and more responsibility".

Whether this attempt to finesse his self-imposed deadline is credible or not, the perception that the main American objective is manufacturing a face-saving agreement though negotiations with the Taliban may be equally damaging...

Yet again there is no willingness from mainstream messengers of Western geostrategy to honestly look at the key driving force behind the Afghanistan War. Without that citizens in a democracy are being denied their right to any attempt objective journalism that mentions the costs and dangers of oil dependency in dangerous far off lands.

The reason for that deadline of 2011, with a further line being expanded beyond which more Afghans and US and NATO troops will be killed in a futile war if it goes on, is seldom mentioned. It is the construction of the TAPI pipeline which was not the sole reason for going into Afghanistan, though plans were mooted for it as far back as 1996.

Yet is still the reason especially British troops are stationed around Kandahar where the pipeline will pass through if the security situation is stabilised. NATO grandees and US think tanks like the Heritage Foundation have repeatedly insisted that this is the remaining justification: it's the Great Game.

This is not a position simply held by Marxoid radicals trying to simplistically prove wars are always based on sinister Imperial Ambitions of the USA. The Chinese are at it to in Central Asia, only they remain less hypocritical in being ruthless in their realpolitik in getting what they want.

China is no hampered by such considerations as human rights, a major reason touted for the "humanitarian intervention in Afghanistan back in 2001, though the Bush administration's need to retaliate against the Taliban for shielding Al Qaida was a pretext as well. But Al Qaida and the Taliban were never the same and there were always tensions between them.

Then again human rights were hardly evident in the oil and gas deals struck in the neighnoring "stans" such as Uzbekhistan were Islam Karimov has the charming habit of dealing with political oppents by boiling them alive. Human rights will always be sacrificed where the goal is to maintain a high octane consumer economy overdependent upon oil.

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. To bind them in a community of fate with regards Central Asia.

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 in the Guardian, with the exception of David Cronin. Nor the fact that TAPI blocks off rival IPI pipeline from Iran to India, thus tightening the noose around this "rogue state".

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. Sententious waffle about human rights and so on does not change this.

As John Foster, a Cambridge academic and expert in the oil industry having worked for BP 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 despite the Obama surge it cannot work as creating a pipeline state whilst having the contradictory goal of a War on Drugs to destroy opium impoverishes poor farmers and lead then to support the Taliban

That is not helped by the reliance on the early stages in particular but also under Obama of trying to blow up enemy targets from B 52's or fighter jet attacks which kill, injure and maim Afgans. No war, apart from Iraq, has been fought with such delusional aims.

Yet it should come of no surprise if Afghanistan drags on. Brzezinski has claimed the War is in danger of becoming another Vietnam. Democratic statesmen and their advisers are trying to square circles. If the pipeline is to be built , a deal with the Taliban will have to be struck.

This will be humiliating for the US and UK and their NATO partners but there is no realistic alternative. Apart from perpetual war, more body bags going through Wooten Basset and more obfucation about the reasons for the war which never mention the problem of energy security. In an open democracy, this silence in the media is a cause for great concern.