Nigeria, Oil and the Global War on Terror Redux.

"This is not just a Nigerian issue, it is a global issue,..There are extreme Islamists around our world who are against education, against progress, against equality and we must fight them and take them on wherever they are." -David Cameron, British Prime Minister, Wednesday May 7 2014

"As the mother of two young daughters, Mrs Obama is taking up the opportunity to express outrage and heartbreak the president and she share over the kidnapping,"-White House deputy spokesman Eric Schultz

..the security council should act quickly to designate Boko Haram as a terrorist group."We're working with Nigeria in the security council to secure urgently needed UN sanctions (on) Boko Haram,"Must hold its murderous leaders to account."-Samathan Power on Twitter.

The abduction of 267 girls has been spun into a chorus of denunciation from Western leaders and diplomats is intended as 'public diplomacy' to enable the Western powers to intervene with military aid to shore up the Nigerian state which looks as though it is losing control of the country.

Nigeria provided around 10% of the USA's crude oil imports. Yet the amount of oil imported by the barrel has rapidly diminished since 2011 and plummeted in the latter part of 2013. The start of 2014 saw an upsurge in Boko Haram violence in the north of Nigeria which it has threatened to bring south.

The falling imports of Nigerian crude to the US, due to the exploitation of shale oil, do not mean that Obama's administration is any less concerned about the spread of Al Qaida affiliated terror groups across sub Saharan Africa in what US geopolitical experts term an 'arc of instability'.

For a start, Boko Haram could bring chaos to a nation whose oil still provides a significant proportion of the oil imports of the US's main trading partners in the EU states, especially Britain and France. European demand for Nigerian oil has actually increased between 2011 and 2012.

Sola Tayo, a Nigeria analyst at the London-based think tank Chatham House, has claimed that the effects of Boko Haram attacks spreading south would be "catastrophic" for Africa's leading economy and add to the already damaging attacks from other insurgent group's on pipelines in the Niger Delta.

One reason for the rising conflict in northern Nigeria, of which the abduction of the girls in Chibok is a consequence, is the ruthless determination of the government in Abuja to exploit huge reserves of oil in the Chad Basin and so secure a reduction of its over-dependence on the oil of the Niger Delta.

Should oil in Northern Nigeria be exploited successfully, Nigeria's foreign exchange earnings would increase and it is claimed oil revenue could be used to improve the social and economic welfare of the vastly poorer Nigerians in the region, something that did not happen in the case of the Niger Delta.

In any case, tensions between the predominantly Muslim north and the Christian South are widening and set to widen further with the question of who is going to benefit from northern Nigeria's oil. The Nigerian Joint Task Force units are venal and inept, and have attempted to crack down on insurgents heavy handedly.

Before the global media made a cause celebre out of the abducted girls, the JTF was found to have employed extrajudicial execution and torture in some villages where 'terror suspects' from Boko Haram were believed to operate. The danger is now that the West could get drawn in to the struggle.

Indeed, none of this chaos seems to have abated the willingness of the US, Britain and France to try and step up the 'war on terror' and add their assistance and military aid. As President Hollande said in Abuja in January after 43 boys were murdered in a dormitory school 'Your struggle is our struggle'.

Britain and France have strong bilateral ties with Nigeria. Oil revenues and investments in infrastructure and banking are very important for both of their economies, not to mention the role crude oil imports have on keeeping petrol prices for British and French consumers lower.

The need for stable oil prices and foreign export earnings from the sale of oil makes exploration of the oil in northern Nigeria ever more necessary. Yet in March 2014 the Nigerial oil corporation's head declared that Boko Haram is increasingly stalling all possibilities of it being tapped.

So expect further moves towards intervention from the Western Powers in Nigeria in the coming weeks and months and years.

The Schizoid Realpolitik of The British National Security State.

The Gibson Enquiry will prove merely be another cover up of the scale of the collusion between the British government under Tony Blair and Foreign Secretary Milliband and the CIA and Gaddafi regime in the use of torture as part of the "war on terror". Hence this,

Kim Howells, former Labour foreign minister and chairman of the intelligence and security committee (ISC) of MPs and peers tasked with monitoring the activities of MI5 and MI6, told the BBC he was "absolutely satisfied there was no involvement in the illegal rendition of detainees".

Obviously, there was no "involvement" in that government ministers were not directly involved in the transporting of detainees to places where they were tortured, as this is what the CIA, in fact, did. That does not mean MI6 were not involved in supporting that policy all along and 'knew nothing' or ministers did not too.

The Orwellian nature of this growing "national security state" more generally is clear. MI6 exists not so much to protect British citizens from terrorism but to play a dirty covert war in which the 'war on terror" could be used as a pretext to advance British geopolitical interests and control over oil.

For a start there is the issue of whether Abdul Hakim Belhaj, leader of the Islamist Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) was ever aligned to Al Qaida plots in Britain and the USA or whether he was merely an enemy of Gaddafi that the British government was committed to buttressing.

It is an absurdity that in 2009 the British security services were involved in having the SAS train Gaddafi's troops to counter the very Islamists who now in 2011 are rebranded as heroic rebels fighting tyranny and whose military contribution to toppling Gaddafi was backed by Britain.

This either means that the LIFG were not a particular threat after 2004 when Blair affected a rapprochement with Gaddafi in order to advance BP's interests there and sell arms, or that they were and somehow have had a change of heart and are committed to democracy in Libya.

Interestingly at the beginning of 2009, the then Foreign Secretary David Miliband proclaimed the 'war on terror' was no longer a useful phrase and just months later the SAS were sent in to help combat the Islamists who are now supposed to be allies in the war against Gaddafi's dictatorship (with it's history of supporting terror).

Belhadj was not part of Al Qaida's brand of' global jihad but connected only to Islamists in Afghanistan whose ideology is more akin to the Taliban alongside which he fought with until capture by the US ( after previously having been part of the mujahadeen in the 1980 against the Soviet Union ).

So Belhadj went from ally of the US and Britain against the Communists to the enemy under the Taliban during the 'war of terror' and has become an asset once more now that he was willing to aid the removal of Gaddafi and is a major leader of the military council of the NTC.

Such shoddy realpolitik by the US and UK and the collusion in dirty tactics shows the only consistency in Anglo-US geopolitical interests concerning oil and gas supplies in a way that is both ruthless and ineffective in ensuring British security.

Even weirder is the fact that Belhadj, who is already treated with suspicion by the other NTC rebels, owes his life, when released from death row in 2010, to none other than-Saif Gaddafi. The dictator's son, who disappeared as Tripoli fell, then re-emerged proclaiming his radical Islamist credentials.

The liberals will escape or be killed...We will do it together... Libya will look like Saudi Arabia, like Iran. So what?”

If the transition fails to be effective, then the radical Islamists being frozen out of the process might have no reason not to ally with remnant Gaddafi forces. Unless, the West starts to reduce dependence upon oil and the US/UK stop playing these power games, the result will always be blowback.

And this is what is supposed to be known as the operations of British "intelligence".

The Significance of 9/11 One Decade On.

Journalists, hacks and 'thinker' are expending much time on the significance of 9/11 one decade after the spectacular and devastating attack on the Twin Towers in New York.

One commentator, Gary Young, writes in The Guardian today with regards 9/11 that it acted as a pretext for the administration of George Bush II to embark on a unilateral and imperialist foreign policy that was disproportionate to the threat of Al Qaida and counter-productive.

A decade on the US ability to crush al-Qaida still depends almost entirely on its ability to negotiate with Pakistan and doing a deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan, where last month there was the highest US military death toll since the war began.

The Taliban have had very little to do with Al Qaida since 2001 and the US only last week attempted to negotiate with the Taliban in secret talks. These were stymied by Hamid Karzai who is afraid of being sidelined by any rapprochement between the Taliban and the US.

The war in Afghanistan was never merely about some "war on terror". More it was and has remained part of the geopolitical strategy contemplated throughout the 1990s, that is, the construction a pipeline through it, one now called the TAPI pipeline.

The completion date for the TAPI pipeline, finally sealed and signed with US approval in 2010, has been repeatedly put back but it co-incides with the withdrawal date of 2014. The construction of a New Silk Route is a major Western gambit to integrate the regional economies under the auspices of US/NATO.

The reason that Karzai is potentially expendable lies not merely in his failure to rein in corruption but also the way he has allowed Russian interests in the TAPI pipeline to develop. One reason why Andrew Mitchell's memorandum, photographed as he left Downing Street, revealed that the UK government is not concerned with Karzai's departure.

The need to negotiate with the Taliban lies in their ability to control regions such as Helmland in the south where many troops have perished and through which the pipeline is set to run and the increased revenues from opium caused by the futile poppy eradication schemes.

Yet the "war on drugs" as with the war for a pipeline is less about imperialism and more about the decadence of Western consumer democracies,sections of which are addicted to heroin and certainly on the use of fossil fuels that these nations are seeking to control in Central Asia and the Middle East.

Without that context, few in the USA or in Britain are able to understand why the 'war on terror' was a term which could be useful in conflating a multitude of enemies together who stood in the way of the access and control of oil-the lifeblood of advanced consumer freedom and car use.

The TAPI pipeline was supported by NATO because it removed control of gas pipelines ( which can be liquefied natural gas ) away from Russia and would ensure that the rival IPI pipeline that would bypass Afghanistan would no longer be as attractive nor freeze out Western influence.

If completed the TAPI would unite the regional economies of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India together more closely and prevent collusion between Russia, China and Iran to the exclusion of NATO from controlling Central Asia and its oil and gas wealth.

This is less do with straightforward imperial greed, as all regional powers are competing in this New Great Game. The fact is that the USA and Europe are dangerously overdependent upon oil and gas from lands far away to maintain their wealth and lifestyles.

Long before 9/11, Zbiginiew Brzezinski was aware of the importance of Central Asia and the danger that the West was becoming decadent as far back as 1993 when he wrote 'Out of Control' in relation to 'hedonistic cornucopia' that could erode the will to maintain Western global hegemony.

In fact, the truth is starker: the NATO powers need to invest in alternatives in oil and gas, develop public transport far more and live within their means far more. The failure to connect the consumer lifestyles, that even Gary Younge might enjoy, to the presence of NATO troops in far away lands is now dangerous

Propaganda Needs to be Explained and not seen as Mere Media Manipulation.

Adam Curtis who produced the film The Power of Nightmares writes,

The horrific thing about Osama bin Laden was that he helped to kill thousands of innocent people throughout the world. But he was also in a strange way a godsend to the west. He simplified the world. When communism collapsed in 1989, the big story that had been hardwired into citizens of western countries – that of the global battle against a distant dark and evil force – came to an abrupt end.

Understanding the world became much more complicated until, amid the confusion of a global economic crisis in 1998 and the hysterical spectacle of the Monica Lewinsky affair, Bin Laden emerged as the mastermind behind the bombings of embassies in east Africa.

Bin Laden's demise was but one event that justifies the continual war on terror. As a media event, it bolsters the notion the war in Afghanistan is about defeating Al Qaeda. Despite the fact Bin Laden was already a has been as regards the global operation of this "network of networks".

The continuation of war in Afghanistan is inextricably bound up with the New Great Game for control over the pipeline routes from the Central Asian republics. The TAPI pipeline runs through Helmand where the Taliban is still fighting. The completion of the mission depends on this geopolitical aim being fulfilled.

This is precisely why Cameron, Clinton keep going on about finishing the global war on terror as it provides a rationale for the quest for hegemony in Eurasia. This stark fact is never analysed even by the likes of Adam Curtis, though he is good on the mechanisms of propaganda.

The reality that the Afghan War is a resource struggle through trying to gain hegemony over oil and gas pipeline routes is one few want to face. Yet almost every day the reality is there in the 'back pages' of the FT and business pages of Indian English language media such as this,

Construction of the pipeline is due to start in 2013 and is targeted to be completed and operational by the end of 2016. For this, all the four nations will form a consortium that will build and operate the pipeline.TAPI is being pushed by the US as an alternative to the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline, while the Asian Development Bank (ADB) is the Lead Development Partner of the project.

A Rationalisation of Bin Laden's Terrorism.

Let that be it. The killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan is a fork in the road of world politics.

One way lies a fundamental rethink of US and British policy towards the Arab and Muslim worlds, a chance to drain the swamp that bred 9/11.

That way is the end of the "war on terror" launched in the aftermath of Bin Laden's atrocious crimes of September 2011. His act of violence became first the cause and rapidly the pretext for many more such acts, vastly more costly in terms of lives lost.

Andrew Murray, ( Bin Laden's death is a fork in the road The Guardian, 2 May 2011 )

Murray, chairman of the "Stop the War Coalition" in Britain has used the killing of Bin Laden to trot out the usual line that Al Qaeda terrorism is merely a reflex action to US and British foreign policy. Despite the fact Al Qaeda fighters have been active in places outside the Arab and Muslim World such as Indonesia and Chechnya.

There is no need to take the propaganda claims of the Bush administration and the "war on terror" at face value, for if 9/11 was a pretext to go in to Afghanistan and, partly, into Iraq, Al Qaeda's commitment to terrorism and the USA/UK's quest for energy security pre dates both what are essentially resource wars.

The same is true of Russia's role in the war against Chechen insurgents with connections to Al Qaeda. In fact, the assassination of 'Moganned', Al Qaeda's main Saudi born militant in Chechnya occurred recently on April 22nd 2011 and who had entered the Northern Caucasus since 1999 and by 2005 emerged as the handler of foreign funds for the jihad.

Hence Andrew Murray's crude "either-or" interpretation of the relationship between "the West" and "the Muslim World" is an inversion of the clash of civilisations idea: that Al Qaeda is simply the most extreme and violent form of reaction against Western Imperialism in Arab and Muslim lands.

This crude Leninist propaganda line denies the agency of Arab peoples themselves unless they fit into the notion that they are anti-Western as opposed to against the autocrats that dominate them e.g decayed secular dictatorship of Egypt was created by military power under those such as Colonel Nasser.

The absurdity is that one of the greatest admirers of Nasser is none other than George Galloway, an erstwhile ally of Murray in the myriad of groupuscules that try to hi-jack anti-war sentiment amongst British people into support for fanatical ideological agendas-including that of Respect.

Galloway's hero in Nasser executed Sayyid Qutb, the intellectual progenitor of modern militant Islamism in 1966, one reason the alliance between the hard left and the MAB, influenced very much by Qutb, is based only on hatred of the West as opposed to a principled criticism of Western foreign policy.

Al Qaeda has its own history and agenda: it's original raison d'etre under Bin Laden was less to do with Western foreign policy as such but with antagonism to the corruption of the Saudi regime and not being permitted to fight in the First Gulf War of 1991 against Saddam Hussein and which was blamed later on the US and it's 'occupation' of the Holy Land.

Murray is active in campaigning against the governments cuts: but the British economy and hence living standards would collapse without a steady and secure supply of oil from Saudi Arabia, one reason why the British government simply cannot give decisive public backing to democracy activists in Bahrain.

Obviously, as Malise Ruthven wrote in A Fury for God on 9/11 the long term interests of the Western powers are in having stable democratic regimes across the Middle East. The Arab Uprisings at least provide an opportunity that this could be brought about.

Ruthven also sensibly argued that Islamist solidarity always works negatively: the interests of Arab nations and the political groups within them from Bahrain to Libya and Saudi Arabia to Palestine and Lebanon are diverse and to yoke them all as "anti-Western" is to accept precisely the narrative of Al Qaeda.

This narrative accepts the concept of an Islamic hyper identity in which "the Muslim World" and the ummah is largely united in opposing Western "crusades", a term used repeatedly by neurotic and self promoting radical journalists such as John Pilger who want to motivate Muslim youths as new force for militant challenge to Western power from within.

The rationalisation of terrorism that has continually been offered since 9/11, whether by Pilger, Milne or Galloway, has acted as a ruse to ramp up militancy against the system in Britain as a substitute for the decline of the forward march of the labour movement which has petered out and fragmented.

It is true that it is both vital and justified to criticise the foreign policy and the dangerous over dependence upon the oil that fuels Western high octane car and supermarket societies and that leads to contradictory and botched entanglement and meddling in the Middle East.

But equally so, it is necessary to understand that Al Qaeda was not caused wholly by "the West" but as a spin off from the dysfunctional Saudi regime's investment in the Arab Afghan campaigns against the Soviet Union and an ideology that has an existence in its own right, one rejected in the recent Arab Uprisings.

Bin Laden's Demise, Afghanistan and the War.

Jonathan Steele has written on Bin Laden's assassination by the CIA and US special forces that,

Osama bin Laden's killing is a huge victory for the Obama administration and it will go a long way towards giving closure to Americans. But will it also revive the 10-year-old question about the wisdom of the war in Afghanistan, in which half as many Americans have already died as Bin Laden killed on 9/11, not to mention the many more Afghan civilians who have lost their lives in the attack that George W Bush launched on their country in October 2001?

Bin Laden's haven in Taliban country was a short-term marriage of convenience, which the Bush administration made no real effort to break other than by its rhetorical demand that the Taliban hand him over or else they would be punished.

Al Qaeda and the Taliban were never always so tied together and often hostile to each other. Now that Bin Laden has been disappeared into the depths of the ocean or "buried at sea", the "war on terror" pretext for continuing involvement in Afghanistan is going to be harder to maintain.

Though the Taliban have sought to use Bin Laden's liquidation as a reason to up the ante with its struggle with the USA and NATO in Afghanistan, the continued killing of civilians by drone bombers and continuation of a futile war that cannot be won will continue to give the Taliban a level of support.

The need to defeat the Taliban permanently in Helmand and the dogged struggle against NATO in areas such as Helmand reflects the underlying geopolitics of the Afghan War: the need to secure the region in order to facilitate the construction of the TAPI pipeline.

In recent months Mullah Omar and other Taliban leaders have given numerous hints that they would be willing to break formally with al-Qaida as part of a peace deal that involved a full departure of US troops from Afghanistan. Will Barack Obama now finally put his weight behind exploring that option?

This is unlikely precisely because US troops will not depart until the Afghan security forces are trained to guard the pipeline agreed between the regional powers which will bring gas from Turkmenistan through to India and forms part of the US strategy of hemming in Iranian influence from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is not exactly a "war of choice": it is a geostrategic imperative if the West is to gain a commanding stake in controlling the supplies of oil and gas from Eurasia. The fact is that whilst Iraq was a oil grab, Afghanistan is a more sophisticated gambit in the New Great Game.A recent update from the Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis states,

Despite problems, if the pipeline does succeed in being constructed, it will be due to the US’ uncompromising support for the project. While Washington’s raison d’etre is that it will help stabilise Afghanistan as well as assist the country in its development, not least by allowing it to earn around USD 300 million per annum in transit fees, it would also allow the Central Asian countries to find an alternate market in the east and thereby lessen their dependence on Russia as well as feed the energy-starved South Asian nations.

However, the US’ main objective is to ensure that the IPI project is effectively killed, thus denying Tehran much-needed revenues for its nuclear programme that will accrue from selling gas to an expanding South Asian market. This is not the first time that the US has pushed through a pipeline project which had appeared unfeasible both from political and business perspectives.

In 2005, despite substantial opposition by business and political circles in both the US and the Caspian states, the hugely expensive and logistically challenging BTC pipeline from Baku in Azerbaijan to Ceyhan in Turkey, transiting a fractious Georgia, was built by a 11-member consortium led by BP under pressure from the US government.

The reason: Washington was seeking to provide a route that would not only circumvent transiting through Russian territory and break Moscow’s stranglehold over the European gas market, but would also assist in diminishing Russia’s strategic hold over the Caspian region.To overcome the reluctance of business in underwriting such a costly project and whose economic viability was questionable, the US government made financing from government agencies, such as the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) and the US Export-Import Development Bank, available.

Naturally, the reading public in the UK watching body bags of troops coming home to Wootton Bassett are never allowed to get any real sense of why Britain and NATO are out there and will not be as the electorate, that is the children, must be fed easily digestible sound bites about wars on terror and opium"

Loners, Terrorists and Sting Operations.

Mehdi Hasan writes in comparing the media response to the shooting of a Democratic politician Gabrielle Gifford and her entourage,

Did you know that Jared Lee Loughner, the suspect in the Arizona shooting spree that left six dead and 14 wounded, including the US congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, had speculated beforehand on YouTube whether he would be labelled a "terrorist"? He needn't have worried. Loughner has yet to be described in such terms by the authorities or the media. "Loner"? Yes. "Extremist"? Yes. Terrorist? No.

Is it fair, then, to assume or pretend that terrorism is the sole or exclusive preserve of Muslims? Let's be clear: it would be foolish and dangerous to dismiss or downplay the threat from Islamist terrorism, to Europe or the US. There is a real and present danger from al-Qaida, its affiliates and self-radicalised fellow travellers such as Choudhry. And Islamist terrorists, unlike their separatist, far-right or anarchist counterparts, are bent on high-profile, mass-casualty "spectaculars".

But terrorism is a tactic and, as such, is agnostic: those who murder civilians to make a political point are called Joseph as well as Muhammad

.Hasan raises some important points here but the accusation of "double standards" does not really hold in comparing Loughners's case to Islamist terrorists.

There is no evidence that Loughner has been part of a terrorist network or was acting in accordance with furthering political goals through killing Democratic politicians. Nor was the Arizona killing designed to get a radical police clampdown on a "community" so as to radicalise them further.

The BBC carries and article on his profile that Loughner had,

....a deep distrust of the government and religion, describing US laws as "treasonous" and speaking repeatedly of his wish to create a new currency.

"The government is implying mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar," he wrote.

"No! I won't pay debt with a currency that's not backed by gold and silver! No! I won't trust in God!"

In a video dated 15 December, Mr Loughner describes himself as a "military recruit". The US Army has confirmed that Mr Loughner attempted to enlist but said he was rejected because he failed a drug.

There are a number of paranoid militia "patriots" in the USA who think the central government is a conspiracy against them by a usurping regime. Had a Muslim carried out such an outrage as gunning down a politician, the media courage might have tried to exploit it to suggest an Islamist threat.

But media coverage itself should not be taken as any necessary indication of the reality, not least in the USA given the way mainstream media acts too often as crude propaganda. But the description of Loughner as a "loner would appear to be borne out by the facts.

In any case, the propaganda that would portray a Muslim as part of a seamless threat is not to do with mere double standards, if that is meant as some indicator of hypocrisy or prejudice against Muslims.

It is due to the fact that the US media tends to support narratives such as the Global War on Terror in order to give legitimacy to any foreign policy or war that the USA embarks on in "the Muslim World". It is not about double standards but the manipulation of public sentiment.

In other words, the decision to portray attacks by Muslims as terrorist and attacks by loners as such is not even due to lazy stereotyping. It is more concerned with the way loners plotting Islamist terror acts are seen as acting in a cause even when not receiving higher direct orders.

The problem is that with Al Qaida and the proliferation of the Internet, any psychopath can tap into the world view and claim he is fighting for a global war. As a franchise operation, Al Qaida does not have a hierarchical structure with orders given by Bin Laden or his henchmen.

But what is also somewhat sinister is the way that the FBI have been ensnaring US Muslims into sting operations by faciliating what could be terrorist attacks by those who are given dummy bombs and detonators to carry out what the would be Islamist terrorist thinks are real bombs.

The most recent example was Faisal Shahzad who was convicted in October 2010 of an attempted car bomb attack in New York's Times Square and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

A BBC article states,

The motive for the failed attack remains unclear. The Pakistani Taliban appeared to claim responsibility in three videos, monitoring groups said. But New York police commissioner, Ray Kelly, and city mayor, Michael Bloomberg, have said there was "no evidence" to support that claim.

The vehicle was parked near offices of Viacom, which owns Comedy Central. The network recently aired an episode of the animated TV show South Park that the militant group Revolution Muslim had complained insulted the prophet Muhammad by depicting him in a bear costume.

There is something deeply amiss about the FBI using these sting operations on a regular basis.