It's All in the Pipeline for Afghanistan.

The more events unfold in Afghanistan. the more the original mantra of a "humanitarian war" is stripped away to reveal a dogged determination to "stay the course" in Afghanistan despite the futility of this crusade and mounting casualty levels amongst British soldiers. The reason for this has to lie in Afghanistan being valuable and useful to the West.

Reports coming out from Afghanistan that reveal the level of carnage, such as the Wikileaks, seem to confirm that this is a war being fought to the bitter end because there is something more at stake that fighting Al Qaida, most of whose operatives are now in Pakistan, and that the "war on terror" is a mendacious lie.

It was an interesting revelation from PM Cameron recently that the deadline for Iraq is now 2015 which is, of course, the same time Obama has lined up as regards it's timing-2012-which in both cases precedes their presumed and desired re-election. Either one of them is not telling the truth about Afghanistan or both are not.

For the point is that Afghanistan will persist until the West gets the TAPI pipeline, negotiated by the Asian Development Bank in 2008 and which is now a major objective of the war. To leave without it's construction would mean none of the US, UK's, or indeed, NATO's aims had been met.

To pull out before the construction succeeds would mean a loss of blood and treasure that could not be justified on cost and benefit analysis or the supposed delusion that this was a war of enlightened self interest. Now it's just a war for straightforward geopolitical hegemony in Central Asia.

The TAPI Pipeline will be built through Kandahar and thus the Helmand area must be secured if this pipeline taking LNG from the Turkmenistani Dauletabad gas fields is to go ahead as scheduled to Karachi whence it can be shipped to Western nations. Not least, those such as Britain which experienced Peak Oil production in the North Sea by 1999.

Moreover, the TAPI Pipeline further NATO's strategical aims by cancelling out the threat from a rival pipeline that would bypass Afghanistan -the IPI- and upgrade both Iran and China leaving NATO with a failed state without any use value to Western nations.

More details can be found in the Canadian petro-economist expert John Foster's analysis Pipeline Through a Troubled Land ( he worked many years for BP ) or Arial Cohen's forthright justification for the Afghanistan War produced for The Heritage Foundation. The centrality of the construction of the TAPI pipeline accounts for the investment of capital in war zones by NGO's.

As James Denselow has written in the Observer,

The chaos of a war zone combined with the financial attraction of an invasion led by the world's remaining superpower has proved a potent mix for a multitude of NGOs to flock to the country.

Aid agencies have been accused of chasing contracts – which has resulted in a geographic imbalance of aid with resources focused on those areas suffering from actual conflict while ignoring areas with the security to benefit from sustainable development.

This has meant that aid has often failed to adjust to Afghan needs, for example 10-15% of all Afghan land is arable to farming yet despite 80% of Afghans relying upon agriculture only 5% of international aid goes to that sector

The reason NGOs have become part of the US military-humanitarian complex lies in an ideology of "enlightened self interest", whereby the USA and it's allies get access to pipeline transit routes in return for investments in areas torn apart by war and where reconstruction is in accordance with key geopolitical ambitions.

The reason the NGOs have not invested in areas where Taliban insurgents are not so prevalent is because there is no need to waste money on people who can already be counted on, it is supposed, and belies the notion that this war is a humanitarian one. It is only in so far as the lives of Afghans are considered a cheap investment if the West gets the TAPI pipeline.

Hence the "humanitarian" effort of NGOs has been geared towards "pacifying" areas like Helmand through which the TAPI will run. Only the Western media has retained a conspiracy of silence on that, though most people from India I speak to in London know that this is the purpose as if it's obvious.

Increasingly, it becomes obvious that the pipeline that journalists dare not speak of accounts for the what's really at stake in Afghanistan. It explains why NATO, now explicitly devoted to "energy security" and why investment is going into the war zones-it is considered a better investment.

Self regarding notions of enlightened self interest are nothing more that ideological rationalisations that can be at least partially believed in, not least by PR savvy politicians like Blair and Cameron and those too craven to challenge the consensus. It is about time people in Britain were explicitly told the truth about the TAPI and why people are dying in Afghanistan.

That is what is so depressing about Afghanistan. The military-humanitarian complex is a reality that can be figured out by putting the pieces together and going on the Internet to see just who is funding these NGOs. As Denselow puts it,

We should be clear that the third sector is simply one of a multitude of international actors whose work is being compromised by greater militarisation. Academics (human terrain teams), journalists (embeds) and diplomats (Hilary Clinton has demanded 7,000 fully armed security operatives to protect the US embassy in Iraq) are all experiencing a similar trend.

In place of Dwight D Eisenhower's concerns over a military-industrial complex we may be heading toward a military-industrial-academic-media-diplomatic-NGO complex whose eventual hegemony could prove unchangeable.

The IAM that Dr Karen Woo worked with when she was murdered by the Taliban was typical in this respect of the way that "non-political" NGOs are, in fact, political. For the IAM worked with was linked closely to groups like SenterNovem which worked closely with the Icelandic government and the Dutch government.

As usual some research on the Internet brings it up. IAM does not mention who its "corporate sponsors" are. So much for "Transparency". Yet finding out who funds them and that their role in Afghanistan goes beyond medical care into helping to install renewable energy. It works with governments and that means, of course, politicians.

As the 2009 IAM report reveals,

RESAP expanded its work last year to include Faryab province where it works closely with IAM’s Community Development Project.. However, in Badakhshan Province, RESAP is working with a private company that will take over RESAP’s work in Faizabad.

RESAP has also begun to scale down and move its Kabul workshop in preparation for transferring its work and responsibility to Afghan businesses. RESAP is grateful for the support of SenterNovem, Operation Agri, the Icelandic Government, ACDI/VOCA, Tearfund Switzerland and Afghan Bureau for Reconstruction during 2009.

The claim that IAM is "non-profit" and "non-political" cannot be sustained as it does work to further Western political goals in Afghanistan. There is a thin line between humanitarian aid, something which should be wholly divorced from governments and politics, and backing the war effort and Western hegemony.

But for those willing to pore through texts there is some information on page 25 on the supporters and where the funds come from,

Our thanks go out to our Member Agencies and numerous personal donors
as well as the following external donors:

ACDI/VOCA
Afghan Bureau of Reconstruction
Cargill International
Commune of Bernex
Commune of Meinier
Commune of Grand Saxony
Commune of Veyrier
Embassy of Japan
Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Handicap International
Icelandic Government
Irish Government
Islamic Relief
Kiwanis
NORAD – Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation
SenterNovem
SIDA – Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency
Standard Chartered Bank (Kabul)
Tear Fund Switzerland

SenterNovum on its website contains the following information that backs Denselow's point up that a military-humanitarian complex is emerging,

NL Agency came about through a merger of EVD, The Netherlands Patent Office (Octrooicentrum Nederland) and SenterNovem...NL Agency also works on behalf of international organisations such as the European Union, the International Energy Agency (IEA) and foreign governments.

Cargill International is a Minnesota based corporation with a history of human rights abuses , unethical business practices and in buying cotton in neighbouring Uzbekistan from workers without rights i.e slave labour and children.

To further reiterate the point that IAM ( International Assistance Mission ) was bound up with politics and the projection of US power, one of its main donors listed is ADCI/VOCA. According to its website,

ACDI/VOCA receives funding from USAID, USDA, the World Bank, UNDP, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the Asian Development Bank, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and other development funders, and is partnering with a growing number of private sector corporations such as Mars, Inc., H.J. Heinz Company and Nestlé.

This is the very Asian Development Bank that in 2008 brokered with US approval the TAPI pipeline which will carry gas from the Dauletabad gasfields in Turkmenistan and which is a major geostrategic ambition of the US in its drive to control the oil and gas of Central Asia.

This is not to say that those working for NGOs do not have humanitarian intentions nor that they might well sincerely believe that the spin offs from NATO's hegemony over Afghanistan are worth the war and occupation. Yet such obvious links to US power will comprimise its claim to be "non-political".

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Appeal to the Guardian "What do you Want us to Talk About ? "

I wrote, most likely in vain,

How about a real look at the centrality of the TAPI pipeline in the continued conflict in Iraq and a serious assessment of the threat to civilisation caused by being overdependent upon diminishing fossil fuels such as oil and gas and the New Great Game.' ?

The omission of this makes much of the tittle tattle about 'what "we" should, could or might do' in Afghanistan mere propaganda. Unless what is really at stake in Afghanistan is understood, the war will not be or why Western governments, not least Britain's, is so obsessed with "staying the course".

With regards Iraq the journalist David Strahan in his The Last Oil Shock has documented how geostrategic desperation and oil dependency drove the USA and UK to invading Iraq in 2003. More work that explicitly sets out how most conflicts today are about pipelines and resources is vital for civilisation.

Yet in the Guardian and most mainstream media it is generally neglected. Perhaps as Freud said, people can only bear so much uncertainty to make reality bearable. But it might be better if we faced facts immediately and saw that our high octane lifestyles are contributing directly to terrorism and war.