Turkmen Gas is the Strategic Prize at Stake in Afghanistan

Turkmenistan, which holds more than 4 percent of the world's natural gas reserves, expects within the next few months to host a new round of talks with participants in the U.S.-backed TAPI project to link Turkmen gas fields with India...

This fact is something Reuters of London fails to link with the fact that there is a war going on in Afghanistan, as if the TAPI Pipeline was wholly divorced from the strategic interests that NATO nations have in being in this benighted land. 

....BP data show Turkmenistan's natural gas reserves equal to those of Saudi Arabia and behind only Russia, Iran and Qatar. The Central Asian state supports the pipeline as part of its plans to diversify sales from Soviet-era master Russia.

It aims to supply natural gas from its Galkynysh field, better known by its previous name, South Iolotan, to Pakistan and India. British auditor Gaffney, Cline & Associates has said the gas field is the world's second-largest.  

What Reuters fail to mention is that the diversification of supplies away from Russia also has as it's aim the blocking off of the rival proposed Iranian-Pakistan-India (  IPI  ) Pipeline that would deliver gas to energy hungry Pakistan some four times cheaper than TAPI. 

The reality is that NATO is in Afghanistan to provide the security environment for the construction of the pipeline as the failure to achieve this would ensure a decade of war would end with no tangible benefit to the West. 

With Afghanistan linked to other regional economies such as India, Iran can be excluded from expanding its interests in Central Asia and encircled and contained. With major markets in India and China blocked, Iran can be weakened economically along with the sanctions policy and "regime change" promoted.

These are the strategic realities seldom mentioned by politicians when the Afghanistan War is mentioned. Whether the TAPI Pipeline can ever be built, and the stakes are very high, is open to doubt. Yet the fact remains that it is a goal for which British soldiers are dying and in which money is being spent.

It's unlikely that these realities will be openly discussed. Only so much reality can be borne when the reality of conflicts over the supply of resources and the power politics connected with it is understood. And it is not meant to be one the electorates in the West, i.e. the children, are to be informed about.

"The Importance of Regional Projects"-The Chicago Summit and the TAPI Pipeline.

The Western nations after 2014 will maintain a military presence there even if front line soldiers have been withdrawn. Most will be in a security and training role so as to ensure the construction of the TAPI Pipeline, the real geopolitical interest NATO has in being in Afghanistan. It's not about corporate profit only, but about diversifying supply away from Russia and Iran.

Trend Magazine gave some indication as to the real stakes making a complete withdrawal improbable ( TAPI pipeline project to greatly contribute to stability in region 13 April 2012 )

The implementation of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline construction project will make a significant contribution to the stability in the region, expert on energy policy and security, Baku State University (BSU) teacher Bakhtiar Aslanbayli said at the conference "Chicago Summit - new opportunities for Euro-Atlantic Partnership" in Baku today.

Speaking about the contribution of NATO member states and partners in the security and stability in Afghanistan, he emphasized the importance of regional projects.

He added that the intergovernmental agreement in connection with the TAPI pipeline was signed by official representatives of four countries on December 1, 2010.He stressed that in the case of the TAPI implementation, the prospects of the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline will be zero.

He underscored that the close strengthening of economic and political ties between Central Asia and South Asia will lead to further weakening of Russia's position in the region.

He said that TAPI regional energy project, having geo-economic advantages, can seriously affect Afghanistan's economic development and energy supply, the future format of the Pakistani-Indian relations and the settlement of regional conflicts.

The base document for the TAPI project promotion is the Ashgabat interstate agreement of the member-states about the beginning of the practical implementation of the TAPI project signed in late 2010. The agenda has a key issue of gas pipeline security which will pass through turbulent Afghanistan.

The TAPI Pipeline is never mentioned as the real reason for NATO being in Afghanistan as invading nations to secure natural resources is illegal. Plus the idea is that the war was for moral and humanitarian reasons only. Hence the use of euphemisms such as "security", "Development" and "stability".

Why Won't the Guardian Talk About the Geopolitics of The Afghanistan War

Here's an idea for the Guardian's Online "Comment is Free" site, one I've advocated many times before without success. In response to it's question about "what you would like us to cover" I wrote,

Before another British soldier gets killed in Afghanistan and self important opinion formers appear to advise Obama what he 'could', should or must do, why not report on the actual reality of the war which is crucially concerned with NATO providing the security environment for the TAPI Pipeline and trying to force Pakistan to accept it over Iran's planned alternative ?

Put simply, NATO is in Afghanistan to secure goals, such as the TAPI Pipeline and access to resources, that are never publicly talked about as the reasons for "staying the course". As Joshua Kucera reported on EurasiaNet in March, there was a meeting ( not mentioned in The Guardian ) which is actually quite significant,

Dushanbe hosted the fifth meeting of the Regional Economic Cooperation Conference on Afghanistan, and the U.S., as expected, used the occasion to promote its "New Silk Road" vision of a future in which Afghanistan is a hub of commerce between Central and South Asia.

"The region’s wealth of natural resources, nascent trade agreements, and a burgeoning network of transport and energy connections underscore the great economic promise of a more integrated South and Central Asia," said Robert Blake, assistant secretary of State for Central and South Asia, the U.S.'s senior representative at the meeting. "but achieving greater economic cooperation – the essence of the New Silk Road vision – will not be easy or happen overnight. It will require strong buy-in and coordination by governments in the region, its international partners, and investment from the private sector."

In other words, Western troops could be in Afghanistan for longer, indeed have been already, than politicians have said they would as the withdrawal date has consistently been pushed back. and to achieve goals that are never mentioned in the mainstream media.

The fact that securing the integration of south and central Asia is connected to the sanctions policy on Iran is worthy of mention as it broadens the perspective that obsessively focuses on Iran's purported nuclear weapons programme. The endgame in Afghanistan is about blocking off Iranian influence from the west and the rival IPI Pipeline that would deliver gas cheaper to Pakistan and India.

These strategic realities, ones that would shine fresh light on both Western involvement in Afghanistan and the tensions with Iran, are being screened out of the discussion. Perhaps CiF editors could be brave enough to commission a piece that looks at this angle on events in Central Asia. Instead of the tedious humbug that clutters up these opinion pages every day.

The Flaw in Chomsky's Worldview

The flaw in most "anti-war" spokesmen as regards global politics comes with the idea that Western policy somehow is formed in isolation or that non aligned regimes somehow necessarily act better or more morally.

In this respect, notice can be taken of radical journalist John Pilger's laudatory backing for Hugo Chavez's Venezuela whilst ignoring his support for the tyrannies of Mugabe in Zimbabwe and Castro's Cuba.

As regards Chomsky, Gray ( who is himself an opponent of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq) writes, in a review of Chomsky's latest work Making the Future,

For Chomsky, it seems there can be no place for error or mixed motives in American policies. The war was not a mistake that might have been avoided if its opponents had been better organised and more effective. Invading Iraq was just one more example of American imperialism, an expression of a regime that is quintessentially criminal and evil.

Reading these articles, published between April 2007 and October 2011, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that, for Chomsky, America is virtually the sole obstacle to peace in the world. Crimes committed by other powers are mentioned occasionally, but only in passing. Nowhere does he acknowledge the fact that many regions have intractable conflicts of their own, which will persist whatever the US does.

For Chomsky, conflict in the Middle East is exclusively the work of America and Israel. There is no struggle for hegemony between Saudi Arabia and Iran, or if any such struggle does exist it can be easily resolved so long as the US is ready to alter its policies. Again, unending war in Afghanistan does not reflect that unfortunate country's internal divisions and its long history as a focal point of geopolitical rivalry, which now includes a stalemate between India and Pakistan in Kashmir. War in Afghanistan could be ended very simply, if only the US withdrew its forces and brokered a grand diplomatic bargain.

The most formidible part of this demolition job of a much overrated thinker for thinking the world can be made better if only the US did not pursue the policies it did, as if China were not pursuing goals of Empire far more ruthlessly in Africa, for example, and that the US alone is uniquely responsible for global evil. Gray comments,

The picture Chomsky presents of the US is, in effect, a negative version of exceptionalism. For him as much as for the neocons, America is the centre of the world. Chomsky views global politics through the same Manichean lens: you are either for America or against it. The fact that much of humankind has aspirations that have nothing to do with America is not even considered. Anti-Americanism is fading along with American power, but Chomsky hasn't noticed.

Robert Blake, TAPI and Afghanistan's Geopolitical Value.

Further evidence of what is really at stake in Afghanistan was elucidated in a piece by Joshua Kucera for EurasiaNet ( US-We're for the New Silk Road if it Bypasses Iran, March 29 2012 ),

This week, Dushanbe hosted the fifth meeting of the Regional Economic Cooperation Conference on Afghanistan, and the U.S., as expected, used the occasion to promote its "New Silk Road" vision of a future in which Afghanistan is a hub of commerce between Central and South Asia.

"The region’s wealth of natural resources, nascent trade agreements, and a burgeoning network of transport and energy connections underscore the great economic promise of a more integrated South and Central Asia," said Robert Blake, assistant secretary of State for Central and South Asia, the U.S.'s senior representative at the meeting. "but achieving greater economic cooperation – the essence of the New Silk Road vision – will not be easy or happen overnight. It will require strong buy-in and coordination by governments in the region, its international partners, and investment from the private sector.

Hence Blake outlines precisely what the US's interests are in Afghanistan, even if this is always curiously disconnected to the fact that NATO is in Afghanistan to provide the necessary security for such projects to come to fruition.