Given that conflicts across the globe often have complex origins, one of the besetting mental vices of progressive politicians in the West has been the tendency to believe that "humanitarian intervention" ( military action ) in nations from Afghanistan to Iraq and Libya can make the situation better rather than worse.
The additionally unfortunate fact is that groups that are supposedly claim to be maintaining an organised opposition to such military adventures consist of a narrow coterie of propagandists and ideologues. The Stop the War Coalition is just such a group think a simplistically anti-Western line somehow adds up to a coherent opposition.
Of course, the StWC is not one coherent organisation. It is, as the name suggests, a "coalition" of people who claim to be anti-war. The main thing their leading lights and members all have in common is that they are broadly "anti-imperialist". But this has often not turned out to be quite the case in practice.
For some leading formerly associated with showing admiration and sympathy for the Soviet Union, the largest Land Empire in history until it collapsed in 1991. George Galloway, a current Vice President called the end of the Soviet Union "the saddest day of his life". Well, he must have had a limited experience of life beyond his bleak and emotive viseral political rants.
Andrew Murray, who was the Chairman until 2011, was a card carrying member of the British Communist Party. By advocating a "Stop the War" they believe they are halting Western Imperialism and by "the West" it is largely the USA, and any nations that side with it. But he seems to be a rather simple minded ideologue with a sense of overinflated self importance.
Consequently, in the light of the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War since October 2011, the StWC has had problems in trying to "take a position" or "a stance" on a situation where Arab revolutionary militias have sought to overthrow President Assad's dictatorship because it was never backed by the West.
In a very botched and confused way the Guardian's Jonathan Freedland attempted to criticise the StWC on these lines. Freedland claimed that the STWC were only interested in Arab casualties when the West could be blamed but had nothing to offer on Assad's forces slaughtering civilians.This was because there was no Western intervention in Syria.
This led StWC's Lindsey German to opine,
"Contrary to Freedland's claims that western intervention is nigh on impossible, the west and its supporters – Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar – are already directly intervening, providing arms and other military support"
This is not quite factually correct. The USA and Britain ( which is not "the West"-is Germany part of this policy of intervention) is not directly providing arms. It is Saudi Arabia and Qatar that are doing that as part of their proxy struggle against Iran. Whilst the US and Britain does nothing to prevent that it is untrue that it directly supplies arms as tet.
So whilst that foreign policy entails a tacit backing for a Saudi regime which has an undoubtedly far worse human rights record than Iran, that Saudi policy reflects its own geopolitical enmity towards Iran and less something "directly" created by "the West". The conflicts have their own long standing historical origins.
German goes on to write,
'The wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya were all portrayedas helping the peoples of those countries. They have caused untold misery and extremely high death tolls. Stop the War campaigns to prevent the people of Syria suffering the same fate'
The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq clearly made things worse. Yet if the STWC is to vaunt its "internationalist" stance, it can not ascribe the violence in Syria wholly to "Western intervention". For a start, the USA is not responsible for what Assad has done to his people: these conflicts have their own sectarian and ethnic origins prior to US involvement in the Middle East.
The regional realities of the Middle East have a dynamic of their own that exists independently of Britain and the USA.This is not something that comes out in what can only be termed the crude propaganda of the StWC which comes across as the ourpouring of those sorts of anorak clad neurotics who have most like frustrating jobs in high schools.
There are plenty of intelligent criticisms of the futility of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq that do not dovetail with the hard left totalitarian school of cliched agitprop positions advocated by Murray and German. The most formibible comes from writers and intellectuals such as John Gray in his Black Mass
German moans "Freedland is wrong to say that Stop the War is "not active on Syria". We have held a number of public meetings and demonstrations on Syria and Iran, including a well attended fringe meeting at the Labour party conference which he seems to have overlooked". Well since they know little about the conflict who cares about what one hack thinks of another hack propagandist?
Anyway, hat does not add up to any position on Syria that takes into account the dynamics of the conflict as it is in Syria. The standard reflex of fitting the facts to fit a position already decided upon. That we shall go against any faction or movement in Syria that the USA could see as serving its interests ( i.e removing Assad ) if it benefits the USA
It is clear that Clinton and Hague's foreign policy is both messianic and bungling, calling for "Assad to go" ( effectively meaning "regime change" ) whilst threatening Russia and China that they will "pay a price" for not backing a policy of removing Assad, as is presumed to be the 'democratic will of the Syrian people'.
Yet the StWC offer nothing but platitudes and slogans on Syria as it is simply not interested in the fate of Syrians. That is fine if an isolationist stance is being taken in the way some anti-war conservatives do on the principle that it is a matter of indifference whether one group of foreigners slaughters another in a far off place.
But German does not take that line. She was at pains to deny that the StWC had been "active on Syria".
But the StWC theme is against western intervention in those countries, rather than taking a position about what is happening domestically. We take the view that it is for Syrians to decide what happens in Syria.
Yet if a military intervention is purely hypothetical, then the claim that Syrians can decide what happens in Syria amounts only amount to copping out of actually having any opinion on the crisis in Syria. In which case, until Britain does actively intervene, they should just be quit and try to learn some history.
The problem that SWP ideologues such as German are going to have with trying to "take a position" on Syria is that President Assad and his regime is Allawite and against the sunni Muslim Brotherhood. Yet the Muslim Brotherhood has been anti-imperialist elsewhere and supported by the SWP.
In turn, the SWP via the StWC and Respect ( at least until 2007 when it split from Galloway ) have all aligned themselves in solidarity with Hizbollah's struggle against Israel. Unfortunately for the Party Line, it gets complicated as Hizbollah is an ally of Iran which is supported by Assad's Syria.The absurdity is manifest in these muddled headed diatribes.
The Galloway line was always tripe anyway. For the Leader of the "Bradford Spring" is a great admirer of Colonel Nasser of Egypt and yet courted British Islamists ( including the MAB ) who were favourable to the Muslim Brotherhood which Nasser had crushed in 1966 having executed leading members.
If British foreign policy is going to be criticised ( as it must for the follies, errors and bungling idiocy of it as regards Afghanista, the "War on Terror" and Iraq ) it should come, at least, come from organised groups of intelligent critics as opposed ot cranks, pinheads, fanatics, zealots and platform demagogues.
German writes 'Their interests are hardly humanitarian...' This is hypocritical coming from someone who lauds the liberating role played by Leon Trotsky in the Russian Revolution. and who himself condemned the "slug humanitarianism' of Western liberals and those who rejected the possibility that any Workers Opposition in Russia could now remove Stalin's consolidated dictatorship.
So can German fails to explain how criticising the Western Powers for their lack of humanitarianism dovetails with the SWP venerating Leon Trotsky, a commissar responsible for mass bloodshed, eulogising terror, savagely crushing independent bloodshed, eulogising terror, savagely crushing independent workers organisations and helping to found the world's first totalitarian state.
When the StWC jettisons ideologues and cranks who are terminally incapable of admitting the Bolshevik Revolution was a a total catastrophe, and drops this doublethink version of "imperialism" in looking at the world simplistically in accordance with whether rebellions are 'objectively' pro-US or not, more might listen.
Britain stands in need of what AJP Taylor once termed The Troublemakers, those who challenged Establishment Foreign policy. But the opposition has to be based not on a one dimensional hatred of the USA as if that alone were the only basis for forming any sort of opinion about international relations.
Regrettably, only the cranks have a prominent platform to criticise British foreign policy, at least as far as organised protest movements are concerned. It is to be hoped a new generation of principled opponents to foreign misdaventures can emerge. These people, to borrow their hero's phrase, should be dumped in the "dustbin of history"
Wednesday, 27 March 2013
On Syria and Western Military Intervention
Despite the appalling loss of 70,000 lives in the Syrain Civil War, it is important to eschew the rhetoric of humanitarian intervention in explaining how the the causes of the conflict have been escalated by the Great Powers. No external Power comes out of this civil war with clean hands. Yet the US, Britain and France are set to make things worse.
The decision by Britain under PM Cameron and President Hollande to advocate lifting the EU embargo on arms to support the Free Syria Army is yet another bungled and incompetent foreign policy initiative. But there is a longer term messianic logic behind it as with the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
If, as is claimed, Russia and Iran are arming Assad (and where is the concrete evidence of Russia currently arming the Syrian leader ? ) , then Britain and France, by arming the "rebels" officially would, logically, only justify the other backers of Assad arming him more effectively. China and Russia are simply not going to be sidelined on Syria
Arming the Free Syrian Army will only lead to even more civilian casualties as predicted by Amnesty International. This is all about geopolitics and tilting the balance of power in the Middle East away from Iran. It has nothing to do with "humanitarian intervention". Broader Great Power interests are being calculated.
Syria is one of the 'dominos' that was meant to fall on the removal of Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime in 2003. The notion, supported by neoconservative politicians and 'think tanks', would be that a successful restoration of a oil producing state adjacent to Syria would stimulate reform in its neighbour.
The removal of the Assad regime is a foreign policy continuation of the remodeling of the Middle East to accord with Western oil concerns are control of strategic resources. As the Iraq War backfired and empowered the Shia and led to Chinese control over oil fields, Iran is the target now as it controls one third of the globes gas.
The Great Power game being played by the West in Syria is designed to break the arc of power exercised by Iran through Iraq, Syria and thence to Hezbollah into Lebanon. To take out Assad would diminish Hezbollah's power and supplies of arms from Iran via Syria. As well as buttressing the power of Israel in the Middle East.
From the east, the pressure being put on Pakistan by US diplomats such as Richard Olsen not to go ahead with co-operating with Iran on the IP pipeline dovetails with the protracted NATO effort in Afghanistan to secure the route for the rival TAPI Pipeline route. Which is the unstated, yet factual basis, for the war there.
The overarching strategy to encircle and degrade the Iranian economy to the point where domestic discontent provided the material for a revolution against what is crudely referred to as a theocratic dictatorship when it is a "theodemocracy", an illiberal democracy but not a totalitarian state and with the capacity to reform into a more benign power.
The drive to arm the Free Syria Army is about destroying Iran in its having any regional interests in the Middle East and, ultimately, prizing it open for "regime change" and privatisation control of its resources by the West. This is the ultimate geopolitical game plan for Washington, London and Paris.Already former Iranian terrorist organisations are being rebranded as US backed freedom fighters.
Yet, as Lutz Kleveman emphasised in The New Great Game, even moderate Iranians opposing the rule of the mullahs, do not want US meddling in their internal affairs as they remember the 1953 coup against a democratically elected government organised by the USA. Iranians have a proud history of independence as Persians as opposed to artificially carved out Aran statelets.
For Iran, greater freedom is bound up with sovereignty and its national interests. With it's history as Persia, a regional Great Power, not even the removal of the Islamist government would change it's fundamental interests that are at odd with the West's overdependence upon oil and gas. With or without the Ayatollah's in power, it will not surrender control over strategic resources.
Since Hillary Clinton claimed Russia was arming the Assad regime, there has been a creeping propaganda towards supposedly matching this supposed regular supply of arms ( where is the evidence Russia is currently arming the Assad regime ?) . It has done since the Cold War but no arms have been shipped to Assad's regime during the Civil War.
By arming the insurgents, that could actually ignite a greater conflict of interests with Russia and China which oppose the strategy of tilting the balance of power in the Middle East away from Iran and leaving the gateway open for Western domination of Central Asia-which is what the New Great Game is all about
This has been a foreign policy continuity in the USA since the Carter Doctrine of 1980 and was influenced by Zbigniew Brzezinski who believed that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1978 and the Iranian Revolution were a direct threat to US control over the oil supply routes from the Persian Gulf.
It could well lead to both sides arming their proxy forces and ,along with the protracted break up of Syria along ethnic and sectarian lines, create a "Balkanisation" effect in the Middle East, After all, the cockpit of conflict lies in the southernmost lands of the Ottoman Empire carved out after the end of World War One in 1918
Comparisons with the Spanish Civil War are simply fallacious, though they appeal to those wanting an ideological battleground between liberation fighters and a national sococialt ( Baathist ) dictatorship. That suits to sort of delusional remoulding of reality that often accompanies that slipper concept of "Democratic Geopolitics"
The contemporary crisis in Syria and the will to contend battle over control of the oil and gas supply routes is more reminiscent of the run up to war in 1914.And it is worrying for those who know their history. Should Syria descend into greater violence and foreign involvement, the result could be catastrophic.
The decision by Britain under PM Cameron and President Hollande to advocate lifting the EU embargo on arms to support the Free Syria Army is yet another bungled and incompetent foreign policy initiative. But there is a longer term messianic logic behind it as with the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
If, as is claimed, Russia and Iran are arming Assad (and where is the concrete evidence of Russia currently arming the Syrian leader ? ) , then Britain and France, by arming the "rebels" officially would, logically, only justify the other backers of Assad arming him more effectively. China and Russia are simply not going to be sidelined on Syria
Arming the Free Syrian Army will only lead to even more civilian casualties as predicted by Amnesty International. This is all about geopolitics and tilting the balance of power in the Middle East away from Iran. It has nothing to do with "humanitarian intervention". Broader Great Power interests are being calculated.
Syria is one of the 'dominos' that was meant to fall on the removal of Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime in 2003. The notion, supported by neoconservative politicians and 'think tanks', would be that a successful restoration of a oil producing state adjacent to Syria would stimulate reform in its neighbour.
The removal of the Assad regime is a foreign policy continuation of the remodeling of the Middle East to accord with Western oil concerns are control of strategic resources. As the Iraq War backfired and empowered the Shia and led to Chinese control over oil fields, Iran is the target now as it controls one third of the globes gas.
The Great Power game being played by the West in Syria is designed to break the arc of power exercised by Iran through Iraq, Syria and thence to Hezbollah into Lebanon. To take out Assad would diminish Hezbollah's power and supplies of arms from Iran via Syria. As well as buttressing the power of Israel in the Middle East.
From the east, the pressure being put on Pakistan by US diplomats such as Richard Olsen not to go ahead with co-operating with Iran on the IP pipeline dovetails with the protracted NATO effort in Afghanistan to secure the route for the rival TAPI Pipeline route. Which is the unstated, yet factual basis, for the war there.
The overarching strategy to encircle and degrade the Iranian economy to the point where domestic discontent provided the material for a revolution against what is crudely referred to as a theocratic dictatorship when it is a "theodemocracy", an illiberal democracy but not a totalitarian state and with the capacity to reform into a more benign power.
The drive to arm the Free Syria Army is about destroying Iran in its having any regional interests in the Middle East and, ultimately, prizing it open for "regime change" and privatisation control of its resources by the West. This is the ultimate geopolitical game plan for Washington, London and Paris.Already former Iranian terrorist organisations are being rebranded as US backed freedom fighters.
Yet, as Lutz Kleveman emphasised in The New Great Game, even moderate Iranians opposing the rule of the mullahs, do not want US meddling in their internal affairs as they remember the 1953 coup against a democratically elected government organised by the USA. Iranians have a proud history of independence as Persians as opposed to artificially carved out Aran statelets.
For Iran, greater freedom is bound up with sovereignty and its national interests. With it's history as Persia, a regional Great Power, not even the removal of the Islamist government would change it's fundamental interests that are at odd with the West's overdependence upon oil and gas. With or without the Ayatollah's in power, it will not surrender control over strategic resources.
Since Hillary Clinton claimed Russia was arming the Assad regime, there has been a creeping propaganda towards supposedly matching this supposed regular supply of arms ( where is the evidence Russia is currently arming the Assad regime ?) . It has done since the Cold War but no arms have been shipped to Assad's regime during the Civil War.
By arming the insurgents, that could actually ignite a greater conflict of interests with Russia and China which oppose the strategy of tilting the balance of power in the Middle East away from Iran and leaving the gateway open for Western domination of Central Asia-which is what the New Great Game is all about
This has been a foreign policy continuity in the USA since the Carter Doctrine of 1980 and was influenced by Zbigniew Brzezinski who believed that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1978 and the Iranian Revolution were a direct threat to US control over the oil supply routes from the Persian Gulf.
It could well lead to both sides arming their proxy forces and ,along with the protracted break up of Syria along ethnic and sectarian lines, create a "Balkanisation" effect in the Middle East, After all, the cockpit of conflict lies in the southernmost lands of the Ottoman Empire carved out after the end of World War One in 1918
Comparisons with the Spanish Civil War are simply fallacious, though they appeal to those wanting an ideological battleground between liberation fighters and a national sococialt ( Baathist ) dictatorship. That suits to sort of delusional remoulding of reality that often accompanies that slipper concept of "Democratic Geopolitics"
The contemporary crisis in Syria and the will to contend battle over control of the oil and gas supply routes is more reminiscent of the run up to war in 1914.And it is worrying for those who know their history. Should Syria descend into greater violence and foreign involvement, the result could be catastrophic.
Western Foreign Policy on Syria-Continuity over "Contradictions"
Journalist Clare Ridley has written The Guardian
..."the tragedy of Syria lies as much in the fragility of the coalition supporting the rebels as in the inconclusiveness of the rebels' own political and military battles. Since the Russian and Chinese vetoes at the UN in early 2011, there has been no single "international community" voice on Syria"
First, in response to this, many of the rag bag militias are actually better termed 'insurgents' just as they were in Iraq were they were fighting the US installed Iraqi government or, as the country descended into chaos, other rival sectarian militias, either sunni or shia.
The secondly, "the international community" has operated as a term for the USA, Britain and France whose Great Power ambitions for the Middle East have from the outset included demanding "regime change" in Syria as opposed to a negotiated settlement.
The foreign policy of the US and Britain may appear to be "riddled with contradictions". Yet , in fact, it is the continuities in foreign polict strecthing back to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 that are more apparent than the idea the West is now dithering over Syria.
so called "diplomacy" regarding Syria is all about about a broader geopolitical strategy and tilting the balance of power in the Middle East away from Iran. It has nothing to do with "humanitarian intervention". Broader Power interests are being calculated.
Syria is one of the dominos that was meant to fall on the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003. The notion, supported by neoconservative politicians and think tank "experts". would be that a succesful resoration of a oil producing state adjacent to Syria would ramp up reform there.
The removal of the Assad regime is foreign policy continuation designed to break the arc of power exercised by Iran through a Shia dominated Iraq, its ally Syria and through Hezbollah into Lebanon. To take out Assad would diminish Hizbollah's power and supplies of arms from Iran via Syria.
Even before the push to life the EU arms embargo on supply of lethal weapons to Syria, the US had granted $60 of "non lethal aid" to promote the "rebel" cause to make it popular amongst ordinary civilians who are not necessarily more supportive of the "rebels" than the Assad regime.
As John Laughland has written,
From the east, the pressure being put on Pakistan by US diplomats not to go ahead with co-operating with Iran on the IP pipeline dovetails with the protracted NATO effort in Afghanistan to secure the route for the rival TAPI Pipeline route ( the unstated war aim of the US & Britain in Afghanistan )
By installing a pro-US Syrian government no matter what the humanitarian cost, Iran will be effecively encircled on both sides by US military presence, an aim that goes back to the Carter Doctrine of 1980s about removing potential threats to the supply of oil through the Persian Gulf.
By blocking off lucrative Iranian gas exports east to Pakistan, the overarching strategy to encircle and degrade the Iran economy to the point where domestic discontent provide the material for a a revolution against what is simplistically referred to as a 'theocratic dictatorship' .
The drive to arm the Free Syria Army is about destroying Iran as having any regional interests in the Middle Est and, ultimately, prizing it open for regime change. This is the ultimate geopolitical game plan from Washington, London and Paris-control of the oil and gas supply routes in Central Asia.
The West's foreign policy is hence not "riddled with inconsistencies" when the broader geostrategical context is understood. This is part of the New Great Game for the oil and gas resources of Central Asia. And it's a messianic strategy that could ignite and trigger off even more war and carnage.
..."the tragedy of Syria lies as much in the fragility of the coalition supporting the rebels as in the inconclusiveness of the rebels' own political and military battles. Since the Russian and Chinese vetoes at the UN in early 2011, there has been no single "international community" voice on Syria"
First, in response to this, many of the rag bag militias are actually better termed 'insurgents' just as they were in Iraq were they were fighting the US installed Iraqi government or, as the country descended into chaos, other rival sectarian militias, either sunni or shia.
The secondly, "the international community" has operated as a term for the USA, Britain and France whose Great Power ambitions for the Middle East have from the outset included demanding "regime change" in Syria as opposed to a negotiated settlement.
The foreign policy of the US and Britain may appear to be "riddled with contradictions". Yet , in fact, it is the continuities in foreign polict strecthing back to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 that are more apparent than the idea the West is now dithering over Syria.
so called "diplomacy" regarding Syria is all about about a broader geopolitical strategy and tilting the balance of power in the Middle East away from Iran. It has nothing to do with "humanitarian intervention". Broader Power interests are being calculated.
Syria is one of the dominos that was meant to fall on the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003. The notion, supported by neoconservative politicians and think tank "experts". would be that a succesful resoration of a oil producing state adjacent to Syria would ramp up reform there.
The removal of the Assad regime is foreign policy continuation designed to break the arc of power exercised by Iran through a Shia dominated Iraq, its ally Syria and through Hezbollah into Lebanon. To take out Assad would diminish Hizbollah's power and supplies of arms from Iran via Syria.
Even before the push to life the EU arms embargo on supply of lethal weapons to Syria, the US had granted $60 of "non lethal aid" to promote the "rebel" cause to make it popular amongst ordinary civilians who are not necessarily more supportive of the "rebels" than the Assad regime.
As John Laughland has written,
'the ordinary Syrian population is suffering very greatly from this opposition, from this so-called liberation. These paramilitary groups cannot provide any basic services, they are not the state. They don’t run hospitals, they don’t run the police, they don’t run the water supply and so on. People are fleeing from the areas where these rebels are located. So as I say, this is an attempt to prop an opposition which is failing on its own terms. It’s an attempt to make it popular among the civilian population. And I am sure that many Syrians who watched the meeting in Rome, and who have seen al-Khatib and many others hobnobbing with John Kerry will draw the conclusion that the opposition is a Western puppet, and that will surely not be good for its image back home in Syria'Far from "hand wringing" the policy towards Syria fits into a remodelling the Middle East according to Western energy security. For by removing Assad, Iran's regional ambitions would be severely curtailed to the West. And the strategy fits in with the policy to the east of Iran too.
From the east, the pressure being put on Pakistan by US diplomats not to go ahead with co-operating with Iran on the IP pipeline dovetails with the protracted NATO effort in Afghanistan to secure the route for the rival TAPI Pipeline route ( the unstated war aim of the US & Britain in Afghanistan )
By installing a pro-US Syrian government no matter what the humanitarian cost, Iran will be effecively encircled on both sides by US military presence, an aim that goes back to the Carter Doctrine of 1980s about removing potential threats to the supply of oil through the Persian Gulf.
By blocking off lucrative Iranian gas exports east to Pakistan, the overarching strategy to encircle and degrade the Iran economy to the point where domestic discontent provide the material for a a revolution against what is simplistically referred to as a 'theocratic dictatorship' .
The drive to arm the Free Syria Army is about destroying Iran as having any regional interests in the Middle Est and, ultimately, prizing it open for regime change. This is the ultimate geopolitical game plan from Washington, London and Paris-control of the oil and gas supply routes in Central Asia.
The West's foreign policy is hence not "riddled with inconsistencies" when the broader geostrategical context is understood. This is part of the New Great Game for the oil and gas resources of Central Asia. And it's a messianic strategy that could ignite and trigger off even more war and carnage.
Wednesday, 13 March 2013
A Tale of Two Pipelines and Pakistan's Geopolitical Significance
A report for The Australian ( Pakistan risks wrath of US in pipeline push ) contains much illuminating information on the geopolitical stakes in the New Great Game over pipeline routes and the contest for the oil and gas of Eurasia.
The reason NATO has "stayed the course" in neighbouring Afghanistan, and why western special forces and advisers will remain after what is now called in public diplomacy troop "drawdown" as opposed to withdrawal, is that it needs to ensure the potential viability of the TAPI pipeline.
Pakistan is facing several energy blackouts per day and is heavily dependent upon gas. As demand grows on the Indian subcontinent, the supply has to come either from Iran via the IP pipeline or Turkmenistan via TAPI.
Consequently, President Asif Ali Zardari has decided to finalise an agreement with Iran that has annoyed the US which has consistently put pressure on Pakistan to only accept future gas supplies via Afghanistan.
The report states,
'Nobody has the power to halt this project,” President Zardari said this week, adding Pakistan had a sovereign right to tackle its energy crisis however it saw fit.
It was a terse - and no doubt electorally popular - response to the latest round of warnings from the US State Department that the pipeline violated US sanctions against Iran (designed to persuade Iran to abandon its nuclear weapons development) and could bring punishing consequences for Pakistan.
Four days after Monday’s ceremony Zardari is tipped to dissolve parliament and appoint a caretaker government in preparation for national polls, thereby absolving his administration of responsibility for ensuring pipeline work continues.
Yet Pakistan’s energy crisis is real and the Iran gas project has widespread public and political support, notwithstanding Washington’s threats of economic sanctions.
The US seems oddly bemused by Pakistan’s pursuit of the pipeline, despite the political and economic crisis the country faces as a result of its critical energy shortfall.
Residents suffer an average six hours of power cuts a day, often more during Pakistan’s bitter winters and searing summers. The shortages routinely drive thousands of protestors onto the streets.
US ambassador to Islamabad Richard Olson did his best this week to put a positive spin on the intense pressure Washington is putting on Pakistan to pull out of the so-called Peace Pipeline, so named because it was originally to extend into India.
New Delhi quit the project in 2009, a sacrifice sweetened by the US civilian nuclear materials supply deal with India that violated a previously strictly-observed ban on the sale of nuclear materials to nations outside the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. (India continues to buy oil from Iran).
A similar nuclear deal with Pakistan is not an option for the US, which is still seeking access to Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan over the sale of nuclear technology and materials during the 1990s to Libya and, it is strongly suspected, Iran, which is believed to be close to developing its own nuclear arsenal.
At a press conference this week Ambassador Olsen pointed to the millions of US dollars being spent to rehabilitate hydroelectric power projects in Pakistan, which he said would add an extra 900 megawatts of power by the end of this year and plug 20 per cent of existing energy shortfalls.
But the US projects cannot compete with the Peace Pipeline which is expected to deliver 21.5 million cubic metres of natural gas to Pakistan every day by mid-2015.
Pakistan relies heavily on natural gas not just for energy but also motor vehicles, and the Iran project would go a lot further towards meeting its massive energy shortfall and turning around its moribund economy.
The US has also been working hard to lure Pakistani into an alternative Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline, bypassing Iran. But even the most optimistic observers put its completion date at around 2018.
And TAPI will be every bit as vulnerable to security issues as the Peace Pipeline which will run through Balochistan, a province plagued with rising sectarian and separatist violence.
Many in Pakistan believe recent, large-scale attacks on Shiite Muslims, particularly in Balochistan’s Quetta City, are sponsored by Wahabist Sunni Muslim elements in Saudia Arabia that hope to derail the pipeline and prevent Shiite Iran from profiting from the deal.
But Iran has already completed its side of the pipeline and, if work goes as planned, Pakistan’s section is scheduled for completion in just 15 months.
Despite Pakistan’s defiant tone, not everyone believes the pipeline will go ahead.
British think tank Chatham House’s senior energy research fellow Paul Stephens, who has tracked the proposed project’s shifting fortunes over almost two decades, rates its likely completion as “extremely low”.
“The Pakistanis are under huge pressure not to go ahead with this. I find it inconceivable in the current circumstances the pipeline would go ahead,” he told The Weekend Australian, citing supply problems in sanction-hit Iran as an extra obstacle.
Many regional analysts disagree and say the US will cannot risk upsetting Pakistan, which provides the US and Nato’s main military supply route into Afghanistan and, more crucially, a key exit path for equipment ahead of the December 2014 withdrawal.
“It would be inconceivable (the US will impose sanctions on Pakistan) and that’s the calculation Mr Zardari has made,” says Imran Ahmad Khan, a British Pakistani strategist and director of the Transnational Crisis Group.
“It would be monumentally stupid of the US to take any action that would further inflame anti-US feeling.”
Beyond Pakistan’s immediate need for energy, the obvious geostrategic benefits from the Iran deal, which will cement regional alliances with China, Russia and Iran at a time when the US is preparing to exit the region, is an undeniable motivator.
Pakistan wants its Gwadar Port to become a regional hydrocarbon transit hub and the proposed gas pipeline and oil refinery will help realise that ambition.
The deal offers an energy and trade corridor that would connect China to the Arabian Sea and Strait of Hormuz, a gateway for a third of the world’s traded oil, and significantly reduce the distance oil and gas imports must travel from Africa and the Middle East to China.
Announcing China’s lease agreement for the Gwadar port last month President Zardari said the port “gives new impetus to Pakistan-China relations”.
“I have a strong feeling it will be very, very difficult to take Pakistan out of this deal,” says Islamabad-based energy expert Abdul Hameed Nayyar.
“Pakistan sees sanctions as something that come and go but if it doesn’t pursue this deal it stands to lose a lot more.”
The reason NATO has "stayed the course" in neighbouring Afghanistan, and why western special forces and advisers will remain after what is now called in public diplomacy troop "drawdown" as opposed to withdrawal, is that it needs to ensure the potential viability of the TAPI pipeline.
Pakistan is facing several energy blackouts per day and is heavily dependent upon gas. As demand grows on the Indian subcontinent, the supply has to come either from Iran via the IP pipeline or Turkmenistan via TAPI.
Consequently, President Asif Ali Zardari has decided to finalise an agreement with Iran that has annoyed the US which has consistently put pressure on Pakistan to only accept future gas supplies via Afghanistan.
The report states,
'Nobody has the power to halt this project,” President Zardari said this week, adding Pakistan had a sovereign right to tackle its energy crisis however it saw fit.
It was a terse - and no doubt electorally popular - response to the latest round of warnings from the US State Department that the pipeline violated US sanctions against Iran (designed to persuade Iran to abandon its nuclear weapons development) and could bring punishing consequences for Pakistan.
Four days after Monday’s ceremony Zardari is tipped to dissolve parliament and appoint a caretaker government in preparation for national polls, thereby absolving his administration of responsibility for ensuring pipeline work continues.
Yet Pakistan’s energy crisis is real and the Iran gas project has widespread public and political support, notwithstanding Washington’s threats of economic sanctions.
The US seems oddly bemused by Pakistan’s pursuit of the pipeline, despite the political and economic crisis the country faces as a result of its critical energy shortfall.
Residents suffer an average six hours of power cuts a day, often more during Pakistan’s bitter winters and searing summers. The shortages routinely drive thousands of protestors onto the streets.
US ambassador to Islamabad Richard Olson did his best this week to put a positive spin on the intense pressure Washington is putting on Pakistan to pull out of the so-called Peace Pipeline, so named because it was originally to extend into India.
New Delhi quit the project in 2009, a sacrifice sweetened by the US civilian nuclear materials supply deal with India that violated a previously strictly-observed ban on the sale of nuclear materials to nations outside the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. (India continues to buy oil from Iran).
A similar nuclear deal with Pakistan is not an option for the US, which is still seeking access to Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan over the sale of nuclear technology and materials during the 1990s to Libya and, it is strongly suspected, Iran, which is believed to be close to developing its own nuclear arsenal.
At a press conference this week Ambassador Olsen pointed to the millions of US dollars being spent to rehabilitate hydroelectric power projects in Pakistan, which he said would add an extra 900 megawatts of power by the end of this year and plug 20 per cent of existing energy shortfalls.
But the US projects cannot compete with the Peace Pipeline which is expected to deliver 21.5 million cubic metres of natural gas to Pakistan every day by mid-2015.
Pakistan relies heavily on natural gas not just for energy but also motor vehicles, and the Iran project would go a lot further towards meeting its massive energy shortfall and turning around its moribund economy.
The US has also been working hard to lure Pakistani into an alternative Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline, bypassing Iran. But even the most optimistic observers put its completion date at around 2018.
And TAPI will be every bit as vulnerable to security issues as the Peace Pipeline which will run through Balochistan, a province plagued with rising sectarian and separatist violence.
Many in Pakistan believe recent, large-scale attacks on Shiite Muslims, particularly in Balochistan’s Quetta City, are sponsored by Wahabist Sunni Muslim elements in Saudia Arabia that hope to derail the pipeline and prevent Shiite Iran from profiting from the deal.
But Iran has already completed its side of the pipeline and, if work goes as planned, Pakistan’s section is scheduled for completion in just 15 months.
Despite Pakistan’s defiant tone, not everyone believes the pipeline will go ahead.
British think tank Chatham House’s senior energy research fellow Paul Stephens, who has tracked the proposed project’s shifting fortunes over almost two decades, rates its likely completion as “extremely low”.
“The Pakistanis are under huge pressure not to go ahead with this. I find it inconceivable in the current circumstances the pipeline would go ahead,” he told The Weekend Australian, citing supply problems in sanction-hit Iran as an extra obstacle.
Many regional analysts disagree and say the US will cannot risk upsetting Pakistan, which provides the US and Nato’s main military supply route into Afghanistan and, more crucially, a key exit path for equipment ahead of the December 2014 withdrawal.
“It would be inconceivable (the US will impose sanctions on Pakistan) and that’s the calculation Mr Zardari has made,” says Imran Ahmad Khan, a British Pakistani strategist and director of the Transnational Crisis Group.
“It would be monumentally stupid of the US to take any action that would further inflame anti-US feeling.”
Beyond Pakistan’s immediate need for energy, the obvious geostrategic benefits from the Iran deal, which will cement regional alliances with China, Russia and Iran at a time when the US is preparing to exit the region, is an undeniable motivator.
Pakistan wants its Gwadar Port to become a regional hydrocarbon transit hub and the proposed gas pipeline and oil refinery will help realise that ambition.
The deal offers an energy and trade corridor that would connect China to the Arabian Sea and Strait of Hormuz, a gateway for a third of the world’s traded oil, and significantly reduce the distance oil and gas imports must travel from Africa and the Middle East to China.
Announcing China’s lease agreement for the Gwadar port last month President Zardari said the port “gives new impetus to Pakistan-China relations”.
“I have a strong feeling it will be very, very difficult to take Pakistan out of this deal,” says Islamabad-based energy expert Abdul Hameed Nayyar.
“Pakistan sees sanctions as something that come and go but if it doesn’t pursue this deal it stands to lose a lot more.”
Iraq and Blair Ten Years On
On the tenth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, Tony Blair is still trying to justify his decision to join George W Bush in what proved to be the most disastrous foreign policy decision in recent British history.
More concerned with his place in History than the Blair's spurious grasp of events merely seems to be a concocted series of 'what ifs' and prely hypothetical conjecture. He stated on Iraq,
“If we hadn’t removed Saddam from power just think, for example, what would be happening if these Arab revolutions were continuing now and Saddam, who’s probably 20 times as bad as Assad in Syria, was trying to suppress an uprising in Iraq. Think of the consequences of leaving that regime in power".
It's amazing how Blair has a clairvoyant talent to know what "would have" happened if he "hadn't" invaded. It may help him to sleep a bit better at night but it is not persuasive as an argument to anyone who isn't Blair or a fanatic acolyte of this deranged creature.
Not least if you lie to yourself about the sum total of dead being 100,000 as opposed to the real figure which is about 600,000 or even over 1 million dead according to the peer reviewed Lancet Report. And then ignore real statistical facts by conjuring up one about Saddam being '20 times' worse than Assad.
'I’ve long since given up in trying to persuade people it was the right decision. In a sense what I try to persuade people of now is to understand how complex and difficult a decision it was...Because I think if we don’t understand that, we won’t take the right decision about what I think will be a series of these types of problems that will arise over the next few years....You’ve got one in Syria right now, you’ve got one in Iran to come. The issue is how do you make the world a safer place?"
How can Blair claim it was a "complex decision" when it was quite clear from the evidence he had already made up his mind to join the US invasion of Iraq as far back as 2002 when he met Bush at Crawford and looked at maps of Iraq's oil wealth ? ( see Strachan's The Last Oil Shock )
Blair kept repeating he invaded because "it was the right thing to do" when quite clearly the decision has led to more deaths than otherwise would have happened. So he has had to give up justifying the war and shifted to an attempt to justify being in the position of having to make a decision.
Instead of being asked to look at evidence and facts, the public, even presuming many even bother listening to this has-been, are being asked to empathise with his anxiety over the war, even if one "disagrees" with it, an attempt to accrue to himself a form of integrity he never had at any time in his wretched failed career.
Blairs words are not the words of a leader with a grasp of complexity nor even any substantial knowledge of the history of Iraq and the sectarian and ethnic tensions that were always likely to emerge on getting rid of this dictator and, as it turned out, having no coherent plan for a post-Saddam Iraq.
If the decision was so "complex" you would have though he'd have taken consideration of that. Yet, as with everything Blair says, the point is all about how he would be able to put the point across because he would be bound to be misunderstood.
Yet Blair, who now in 2013 wants to portray the decision as agonising and complex, presented the decision back in 2003 to invade Iraq as a stark binary choice: "either" we get rid of Saddam Hussein "or" he poses a real threat to us and his peopl ( hence the misinformation about WMD's, the 45 minute warning ).
Blair's career is entirely one of bad acting and wish thinking. His political line tends to shift and change according to the message he wishes to convey. A decade on, and he has learnt nothing. As is clear from the threat to Iran embedded in the line it is a 'problem' that is to 'come'.
Blair's entire "career" since he left office has been one long post ex-facto rationalisation for his role in unleashing carnage in Iraq. His hyperactive fidgety inability to clear off the global stage is possibly due to his colossal vanity.
The interesting question is whether Blair has a conscience over Iraq or whether he's even faking that in order to preserve his public image as a 'statesman'. From the contrived speech after Princess Diana's death in 1997 and his use of 'the people', from the outset Blair was a dangerous fraud.
More concerned with his place in History than the Blair's spurious grasp of events merely seems to be a concocted series of 'what ifs' and prely hypothetical conjecture. He stated on Iraq,
“If we hadn’t removed Saddam from power just think, for example, what would be happening if these Arab revolutions were continuing now and Saddam, who’s probably 20 times as bad as Assad in Syria, was trying to suppress an uprising in Iraq. Think of the consequences of leaving that regime in power".
It's amazing how Blair has a clairvoyant talent to know what "would have" happened if he "hadn't" invaded. It may help him to sleep a bit better at night but it is not persuasive as an argument to anyone who isn't Blair or a fanatic acolyte of this deranged creature.
Not least if you lie to yourself about the sum total of dead being 100,000 as opposed to the real figure which is about 600,000 or even over 1 million dead according to the peer reviewed Lancet Report. And then ignore real statistical facts by conjuring up one about Saddam being '20 times' worse than Assad.
'I’ve long since given up in trying to persuade people it was the right decision. In a sense what I try to persuade people of now is to understand how complex and difficult a decision it was...Because I think if we don’t understand that, we won’t take the right decision about what I think will be a series of these types of problems that will arise over the next few years....You’ve got one in Syria right now, you’ve got one in Iran to come. The issue is how do you make the world a safer place?"
How can Blair claim it was a "complex decision" when it was quite clear from the evidence he had already made up his mind to join the US invasion of Iraq as far back as 2002 when he met Bush at Crawford and looked at maps of Iraq's oil wealth ? ( see Strachan's The Last Oil Shock )
Blair kept repeating he invaded because "it was the right thing to do" when quite clearly the decision has led to more deaths than otherwise would have happened. So he has had to give up justifying the war and shifted to an attempt to justify being in the position of having to make a decision.
Instead of being asked to look at evidence and facts, the public, even presuming many even bother listening to this has-been, are being asked to empathise with his anxiety over the war, even if one "disagrees" with it, an attempt to accrue to himself a form of integrity he never had at any time in his wretched failed career.
Blairs words are not the words of a leader with a grasp of complexity nor even any substantial knowledge of the history of Iraq and the sectarian and ethnic tensions that were always likely to emerge on getting rid of this dictator and, as it turned out, having no coherent plan for a post-Saddam Iraq.
If the decision was so "complex" you would have though he'd have taken consideration of that. Yet, as with everything Blair says, the point is all about how he would be able to put the point across because he would be bound to be misunderstood.
Yet Blair, who now in 2013 wants to portray the decision as agonising and complex, presented the decision back in 2003 to invade Iraq as a stark binary choice: "either" we get rid of Saddam Hussein "or" he poses a real threat to us and his peopl ( hence the misinformation about WMD's, the 45 minute warning ).
Blair's career is entirely one of bad acting and wish thinking. His political line tends to shift and change according to the message he wishes to convey. A decade on, and he has learnt nothing. As is clear from the threat to Iran embedded in the line it is a 'problem' that is to 'come'.
Blair's entire "career" since he left office has been one long post ex-facto rationalisation for his role in unleashing carnage in Iraq. His hyperactive fidgety inability to clear off the global stage is possibly due to his colossal vanity.
The interesting question is whether Blair has a conscience over Iraq or whether he's even faking that in order to preserve his public image as a 'statesman'. From the contrived speech after Princess Diana's death in 1997 and his use of 'the people', from the outset Blair was a dangerous fraud.
Friday, 21 December 2012
War of Pipelines
British Prime Minister Cameron is visiting the troops in Afghanistan just before Christmas. Still the British public is routinely lied to about the real geopolitical ambitions in this war to build a rival pipeline as part of a plan to blockade Iran and it's regional ambitions.
Dr Ikramul Haq has, however, written a piece for Pakistan's The International News which sets the war in context in a way absent from Western media,
"US Ambassador to Pakistan Richard Olson’s statement on December 10 against the Pakistan-Iran gas pipeline (IP) was not a mere reiteration of the economic interests of the United States and its allies; it has serious political connotations, in an area that has always been the battlefield in the Great Game. The expression of concern by Olson came just two days after President Asif Ali Zardari skipped his scheduled visit to Tehran to finalise the project with his Iranian counterpart. The US has been opposing the pipeline since its inception and favouring the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (Tapi)"
Dr Ikramul Haq has, however, written a piece for Pakistan's The International News which sets the war in context in a way absent from Western media,
"US Ambassador to Pakistan Richard Olson’s statement on December 10 against the Pakistan-Iran gas pipeline (IP) was not a mere reiteration of the economic interests of the United States and its allies; it has serious political connotations, in an area that has always been the battlefield in the Great Game. The expression of concern by Olson came just two days after President Asif Ali Zardari skipped his scheduled visit to Tehran to finalise the project with his Iranian counterpart. The US has been opposing the pipeline since its inception and favouring the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (Tapi)"
The IP, a $1.2 billion project, has been lingering since 1995 when a memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed between Iran and Pakistan. The Iran-Pakistan Working Group was formed in 2003 to move the project forward. Islamabad told Tehran that in case India was unwilling to join in, the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline would be pursued as an independent project. But in 2005, a memorandum of understanding was signed to include India. In 2007, India and Pakistan provisionally agreed to pay Iran $4.93 per million British thermal units, but India subsequently withdrew from the deal, ostensibly over concerns about the price and security but in fact due to opposition from the US. Under the accord signed in June 2010, Iran was to provide about 21.5 million cubic metres of gas a day to Pakistan for 25 years. The deal is extendable by five years and volumes can rise to 30 million cubic metres a day. The project is now in doldrums.
The projected 1,680-kilometre Tapi gas pipeline is backed by the Asian Development Bank (ADB). It has the potential to bring 3.2 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day (bcfd) from Turkmenistan’s gas fields passing near the cities of Herat and Kandahar, crossing into Pakistan near Quetta and linking with existing pipelines at Multan.
After India’s withdrawal from the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline project, China showed interest in it. In October 2011 Dr Asim Hussain said, “Our dependence on Pak-Iran pipeline is very high and there is no other substitute at present to meet the growing demand of the energy.” This statement irritated the US, which has been pleading the case for Tapi since the 1990s. Tapi was initially designed to provide Turkmen gas to Pakistan through Afghanistan. In April 2008, India was also invited to join in. Pakistan’s cabinet gave approval to the Gas Pipeline Framework Agreement (GPFA) for Tapi in its meeting on October 27, 2010. On November 13, 2011, Pakistan and Turkmenistan initiated the Gas Sales and Purchase Agreement (GSPA), which is likely to make the multi-nation project operational by 2016.
From the very beginning, the US and its allies wanted Pakistan to abandon the project with Iran, which wants to diversify gas sales to Asian markets. Tehran’s projection of IP as a “peace pipeline” has the support of Russia and China. While regional powers desire to find a stable, reliable source of gas supplies, America and allies want to destabilise the entire region using militancy as a tool. The tussle over the Iran-Pakistan gas project and Tapi is not a mere economic battle but has far-reaching geopolitical dimensions.
It is a matter of record that the US and its Nato allies had decided to invade Afghanistan much before 9/11. The decision to this effect was taken in Berlin during the joint meeting of the council of ministers held in November 2000 in the wake of apprehensions regarding Tapi, in which powerful corporate entities, which actually rule the US and other capitalist countries, had financial interests. George W Bush appointed Afghan-born Zalmay Khalilzad, former aide to the American oil company Unocal, as special envoy to Afghanistan, nine days after the US-backed interim government of Hamid Karzai took office in Kabul. This appointment underscored the real economic and financial interests at stake in the US military intervention in Central Asia.
Khalilzad was intimately involved in the long-running US efforts to obtain direct access to the oil and gas resources of the region, largely unexploited but believed to be the second-largest in the world after those of the Persian Gulf. During the Bush government the state department was exploring the potential for post-Taliban energy projects in the region, having more than six percent of the world’s proven oil reserves and almost 40 percent of its gas reserves. On December 15, 2001, in an article titled ‘As the war shifts alliances, oil deals follow,’ the New York Times reported that during a visit in early December to this region, Secretary of State Colin L Powell said he was particularly impressed with the money that American oil companies were investing there. He estimated that $200 billion could flow into this region within the following decade.
As an advisor for Unocal, Khalilzad drew up the risk analysis of a proposed gas pipeline from the former Soviet republic of Turkmenistan across Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Indian Ocean. He participated in talks between Unocal and Taliban officials in 1997, which were aimed at implementing a 1995 agreement to build the pipeline across western Afghanistan. Unocal was the lead company in the formation of the CentGas consortium behind Tapi.
The Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline and Tapi are symbols of the New Great Game – the main goal of which is gaining control of oil and gas reserves in this region. As Frank Viviano wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle on September 26, 2001: ‘’The hidden stakes in the war against terrorism can be summed up in a single word: oil/gas. The map of terrorist sanctuaries and targets in the Middle East and Central Asia is also, to an extraordinary degree, a map of the world’s principal energy sources in the 21st century. It is inevitable that the war against terrorism will be seen by many as a war on behalf of America’s Chevron, Exxon, and Arco; France’s TotalFinaElf; British Petroleum; Royal Dutch Shell and other multinational giants, which have hundreds of billions of dollars of investment in the region.’’
This is the ugly reality of the ongoing war over gas pipelines in our region – US and its allies want to grab oil and gas resources for their economic interests benefiting huge multinational corporations in which the western ruling elites have substantial interest. In an article in Global Research, ‘Balochistan: Crossroads of Proxy War,’ Eric Draitser wrote on July 1: “China’s insatiable thirst for oil and gas makes the development of pipelines from Central Asia, Iran, and elsewhere invaluable to them. The Iran-Pakistan pipeline, the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (Tapi) pipeline, and other projects all serve to increase the importance of Balochistan in the eyes of the Chinese. Additionally, the Chinese-funded Pakistani Gwadar Port is the access point for Chinese commercial shipping to the Indian Ocean and on to Africa. With all of this as a backdrop, one can begin to see just why Balochistan is so significant to the Chinese and, conversely, why the United States and its western puppets seek to destabilise it.”
Tuesday, 30 October 2012
One Year On: Chaos in Libya
With news of civilians being massacred in Bani Walid in Libya, there has been a resounding silence on human rights abuses and lawless militias. This is despite the intervention being justified by the USA, France and UK governments on 'humanitarian' grounds.
Vijay Prashad has written an interest article in The Hindu on the current situation in Libya a year on,
'Hanging over the Libyan security situation is the lack of accountability for war crimes during the February-October revolution of 2011. On May 2, 2012, the Libyan National Transitional Council granted blanket amnesty to those who committed crimes during the revolution, including murder and forced displacement. Law 38 (On Some Procedures for the Transitional Period) essentially allowed the militias the confidence of impunity. It emboldened them to disregard the war crimes conducted last year, and to consider that their actions in the present will also be similarly forgiven. The danger of “victor’s justice” is that it creates a political grammar that affects the new terrain, allowing the militias institutional support for their lawless behaviour.
Rights report on militias
Rights report on militias
A new report from Human Rights Watch (Death of a Dictator: Bloody Vengeance in Sirte, October 2012) details how the main Misrata-based militias (al-Nimer, Tiger Brigade, al-Isnad, Support Brigade, al-Fahad, Jaguar Brigade, al-Asad, Lion Brigade, al-Qasba, Citadel Brigade and Ussoud al-Walid, the Lions of the Valley Brigade) not only conducted extrajudicial assassinations of Muammar Qadhafi and his son Mutassim, but also killed over 66 prisoners in the Mahari hotel in Sirte on October 20, 2011. Two NATO air strikes had already killed about 103 members of Qadhafi’s convoy (many of them wounded patients from the Ibn Sina hospital, trying to flee the scene of the battle). Cellphone images and photographs, as well as interviews with survivors, showed the investigators that the dead were killed in custody. Human Rights Watch’s investigation is clear that war crimes had been committed at Sirte. The Misrata chief prosecutor balked at an inquiry, saying that it would be too “dangerous” to “carry out an investigation in Sirte at the time,” a situation that seems unchanged.
The Misrata militias are particularly prone to lawlessness. They are accused of the forcible displacement of the 30,000 dark-skinned residents of the town of Tawergha, and in the cellphone images from Sirte, their members routinely use racist epithets (“black snake,” for example) against their prisoners. There has been little attempt to resettle Tawergha.
The Misrata militia has laid siege to the city of Bani Walid, where there has been less enthusiasm for the new Libya, and whose citizens have been accused of kidnapping and killing Omar Bin Shaaban, a 22-year-old Misratan credited with the murder of Qadhafi. Misrata’s militias are acting with the authority of the government, which passed Resolution 7 on September 25 to allow them to go in and capture those who killed Bin Shaaban. The militias are not constrained to simply go and arrest the accused. They want to subdue Bani Walid. As Mohammed el-Gandus, a spokesperson for the militias put it, “If we win this fight, Libya will finally be free.”
The atmosphere of impunity does not only shroud the activities of the militias. The passage of Resolution 7 and Law 38 demonstrate that the Libyan government has not taken the regime of human rights seriously. The International Criminal Court (ICC), so eager to enter the conflict in February 2011, has also taken a back seat. U.N. Security Council Resolution 1970 gives the ICC jurisdiction over the Libyan theatre at least during the conflict phase; it has utterly failed to honour these obligations. Furthermore, NATO entered the Libyan conflict to protect civilians in the name of the human rights regime. Nevertheless, NATO and the Atlantic powers have refused to allow any evaluation of their use of firepower against Libya with resulting civilian casualties whose numbers are unaccountable (as I showed in “When Protector Turned Killer,” The Hindu, June 11, 2012). NATO’s casualties include the dead in Sirte. Its drones struck the convoy, leaving them at the will of the Misrata militias'.
Friday, 19 October 2012
Iran is Targeted for Regime Change.
'And think what a regime change in Tehran would mean: no more threat of a nuclear-armed Iran. Instead, there would be a democratic state to oppose rather than support the Assad regime in Syria, and to give Iraq a chance to find the democracy that tens of thousands died for'
Opines Alex Carlile, Liberal Democrat peer in The Guardian, on news that the US has removed the Iranian opposition party the MEK from its status as a terrorist organisation. In accordance with Orwellian doublethink, the movement that once backed Saddam Hussein is now a beacon of freedom.
Iit is interesting that the response to the Iraq debacle,in which the deaths run into hundreds of thousands , if not a million( not tens of thousands ) , is to shift the blame for that on to Iran and to propose the same approach to Iran as was done with Iraq in the run up to war in 2003.
Sanctions are already affecting the civilian population badly. The idea will be to impoverish Iranians so that the degree of popular support the current government in Tehran has will be sapped and then a popular momentum for "regime change" can be hijacked by the US for its benefit ( enter the MEK ).
Such strategies seem doomed to backfire. One reason Iran could be developing nuclear weapons is that it fears what happened to Iraq. And yet Iran is a semi-democratic autocracy and not a dictatorship.
Potentially the situation could be very dangerous if Tehran reacts to the collapse of Assad's regime in Syria by intensifying its backing for Shia movements in countries where they form a majority whilst governed by undemocratic Sunni elites such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
This is the view, moreover, of leading Iranian-Americans who think the delisting is insane and counter-productive. Presumably, they may well have more knowledge of this than the witless Lord Carlile. The National Iranian American Council (NIAC) states it,
...deplores the decision to remove the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) from the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations. The decision opens the door to Congressional funding of the MEK to conduct terrorist attacks in Iran, makes war with Iran far more likely, and will seriously damage Iran’s peaceful pro-democracy movement as well as America’s standing among ordinary Iranians.
"The biggest winner today is the Iranian regime, which has claimed for a long time that the U.S. is out to destroy Iran and is the enemy of the Iranian people. This decision will be portrayed as proof that the U.S. is cozying up with a reviled terrorist group and will create greater receptivity for that false argument,” said NIAC Policy Director Jamal Abdi.
Opines Alex Carlile, Liberal Democrat peer in The Guardian, on news that the US has removed the Iranian opposition party the MEK from its status as a terrorist organisation. In accordance with Orwellian doublethink, the movement that once backed Saddam Hussein is now a beacon of freedom.
Iit is interesting that the response to the Iraq debacle,in which the deaths run into hundreds of thousands , if not a million( not tens of thousands ) , is to shift the blame for that on to Iran and to propose the same approach to Iran as was done with Iraq in the run up to war in 2003.
Sanctions are already affecting the civilian population badly. The idea will be to impoverish Iranians so that the degree of popular support the current government in Tehran has will be sapped and then a popular momentum for "regime change" can be hijacked by the US for its benefit ( enter the MEK ).
Such strategies seem doomed to backfire. One reason Iran could be developing nuclear weapons is that it fears what happened to Iraq. And yet Iran is a semi-democratic autocracy and not a dictatorship.
Potentially the situation could be very dangerous if Tehran reacts to the collapse of Assad's regime in Syria by intensifying its backing for Shia movements in countries where they form a majority whilst governed by undemocratic Sunni elites such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
This is the view, moreover, of leading Iranian-Americans who think the delisting is insane and counter-productive. Presumably, they may well have more knowledge of this than the witless Lord Carlile. The National Iranian American Council (NIAC) states it,
...deplores the decision to remove the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) from the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations. The decision opens the door to Congressional funding of the MEK to conduct terrorist attacks in Iran, makes war with Iran far more likely, and will seriously damage Iran’s peaceful pro-democracy movement as well as America’s standing among ordinary Iranians.
"The biggest winner today is the Iranian regime, which has claimed for a long time that the U.S. is out to destroy Iran and is the enemy of the Iranian people. This decision will be portrayed as proof that the U.S. is cozying up with a reviled terrorist group and will create greater receptivity for that false argument,” said NIAC Policy Director Jamal Abdi.
A Note on Iran and The Media
Glenn Greenwald wrote last week in The Guardian,
Both presidents aim to compete on how tough they are on Iran in order to get votes and get into office. And it is in neither of their interests nor that of major TV networks to ask fundamental questions about foreign policy nor to understand the basis of what is driving it in the Middle East and Central Asia.
One of the main reasons , of course, is that the plan to encircle and throttle Iran is part of the USA's ambition to gain hegemony over the region in order to control the oil and gas. This is something necessitated by the USA's overdependence upon it to fuel a high octane car based consumer economy.
The fact that Iran has, in Greenwald's words, 'shown no propensity to launch attacks on US soil' is, therefore, largely irrelevant. It stands in the way as the only Power that can challenge US hegemony in both the Middle East to the west of Iran ( through the support of Syria and backing Hezbollah ) and in Central Asia to the east.
In Afghanistan, the war has been mostly about the geopolitical advantages of securing the construction of the TAPI pipeline, one that will block off the rival IPI project and ratchet up the pressure on Iran's economy and society by reducing the revenue from gas exports to Pakistan and India.
If Greenwald is going to criticise Establishment journalism for not probing on foreign policy, then there should be at least some alternative attempt to understand why the USA has become so fixated on targeting Iran as the main threat to its interests in the Middle East and Central Asia. And that is something those opposed to Us foreign policy seldom often dwell on.
Populist journalism can be as tedious as Establishment journalism as it allows radical critics of US foreign policy to feel a frisson of superiority to the people in power without any recognition that if American consumer lifestyles, even of "anti-war" protesters, are to be preserved, then this foreign policy is inevitable.
The problem with those complaining about the US or Britain meddling in the Middle East and Central Asia is that, even when they criticise the US for invading Iraq for oil or targeting Iran to get 'regime change' ( also ultimately about control and protection of oil supplies ) , they seem oblivious to what actually powers their economy.
That is not to state that US foreign policy is "right" but to present in stark terms the nature of what US foreign policy has really been increasingly concerned with since the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, increased competition with Russia and China and, with the opening up of the post Soviet "stans" to investment and oil development, a New Great Game.
The US has Iran virtually encircled militarily. Even with the highly implausible fear-mongering claims earlier this year about Tehran's planned increases in military spending, that nation's total military expenditures is a tiny fraction of what the US spends. Iran has demonstrated no propensity to launch attacks on US soil, has no meaningful capability to do so, and would be instantly damaged, if not (as Hillary Clinton once put it) "totally obliterated" if they tried. Even the Israelis are clear that Iran has not even committed itself to building a nuclear weapon.It is evident that mainstream US TV journalists are not going to challenge the bi-partisan consensus on American Foreign policy. Firstly, in the context of presidential elections foreign policy is not considered that important by most American citizens. Secondly, the idea is to get a mere statement of their position.
Both presidents aim to compete on how tough they are on Iran in order to get votes and get into office. And it is in neither of their interests nor that of major TV networks to ask fundamental questions about foreign policy nor to understand the basis of what is driving it in the Middle East and Central Asia.
One of the main reasons , of course, is that the plan to encircle and throttle Iran is part of the USA's ambition to gain hegemony over the region in order to control the oil and gas. This is something necessitated by the USA's overdependence upon it to fuel a high octane car based consumer economy.
The fact that Iran has, in Greenwald's words, 'shown no propensity to launch attacks on US soil' is, therefore, largely irrelevant. It stands in the way as the only Power that can challenge US hegemony in both the Middle East to the west of Iran ( through the support of Syria and backing Hezbollah ) and in Central Asia to the east.
In Afghanistan, the war has been mostly about the geopolitical advantages of securing the construction of the TAPI pipeline, one that will block off the rival IPI project and ratchet up the pressure on Iran's economy and society by reducing the revenue from gas exports to Pakistan and India.
If Greenwald is going to criticise Establishment journalism for not probing on foreign policy, then there should be at least some alternative attempt to understand why the USA has become so fixated on targeting Iran as the main threat to its interests in the Middle East and Central Asia. And that is something those opposed to Us foreign policy seldom often dwell on.
Populist journalism can be as tedious as Establishment journalism as it allows radical critics of US foreign policy to feel a frisson of superiority to the people in power without any recognition that if American consumer lifestyles, even of "anti-war" protesters, are to be preserved, then this foreign policy is inevitable.
The problem with those complaining about the US or Britain meddling in the Middle East and Central Asia is that, even when they criticise the US for invading Iraq for oil or targeting Iran to get 'regime change' ( also ultimately about control and protection of oil supplies ) , they seem oblivious to what actually powers their economy.
That is not to state that US foreign policy is "right" but to present in stark terms the nature of what US foreign policy has really been increasingly concerned with since the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, increased competition with Russia and China and, with the opening up of the post Soviet "stans" to investment and oil development, a New Great Game.
Friday, 12 October 2012
A Note on the Term "Islamophobia"
David Miller of SpinWatch has written in The Guardian ,
The problem with "Islamophobia" is that it fails to distinguish between criticism of politicised versions of a particular, and often apocalyptic reading of the Qu'ran, and those who hold only to the religion without any belief in the Islamism of ideologues such as Qutb or Maududi.
There is, of course, hatred of Muslims which can be concealed behind the idea that Muslims as some lumpen mass consist of a potential enemy within" all believing that Islam must dominate and control any land where Muslims are present.
In which case, the term has to be 'anti-Muslim sentiment'. Words and their meaning matter. Which is why "Islamophobia" is so hopeless as a catch all description of anyone who is deemed , in some way, to be hostile to Islam.
Few would describe Richard Dawkins as "Christianophobic" for his dislike of Christian doctrines and dogmas. Likewise, it is wrong to term somebody "Islamophobic" for criticising the history and practice and dogmas of Islam. The best term would be "critic of Islam" or "anti-Islamic".
Even those hostile to Islam or anti-Islamic are not "Islamophobic" , a term that implies the person has some sort of pathological hatred for both Islam as a belief system and necessarily those who believe in Islam or are born into a family and background that is Muslim.
The term for those who oppose Islamist ideology should be anti-Islamist. Even better, for clarification, it would simply be better to describe those who oppose certain forms of Islamism precisely. A Palestinian secular Arab hostile to Hamas would be simply be described as anti-Hamas.
If the notion of some essential "clash of civilisations" is to be avoided, then these sort of nuances are essential to take into account. Otherwise, the danger is that fanatics, zealots and those who believe they are eternally victimised, the better to advance power hungry agendas and mendacious propaganda will win.
There seems to be some suggestion that the review of the BBC may also examine religion in general, and Islamophobia in particular. No shortage of material there. A variety of academic studies has examined how the BBC and other media have covered Islam, especially since September 2001. One found that "the framing of Islam as a security threat can be inferred from the very large numbers of news items in which Muslim political and military or paramilitary actors have been shown in postures of hostility towards aspects of [western] societies".On the notion of spin and framing, the term "Islamophobia" is one that itself makes no distinction between Islamism as a political ideology or trend, Islam as a religion and Muslims as individuals, estimated some 1.6 billion of whom live on the planet and are as diverse in outlook.
The authors contend that "while distinctions are made between dangerous, fanatical, politically driven Islamism and Islam as a religion, these distinctions are not always made clear, so there is a persistent danger of conveying the issues in terms of an all-embracing clash of civilisations". Not a lot of support in these studies for the contention in a Daily Mail leader column last week that the BBC "consistently attacks Christianity (though never Islam)".
The problem with "Islamophobia" is that it fails to distinguish between criticism of politicised versions of a particular, and often apocalyptic reading of the Qu'ran, and those who hold only to the religion without any belief in the Islamism of ideologues such as Qutb or Maududi.
There is, of course, hatred of Muslims which can be concealed behind the idea that Muslims as some lumpen mass consist of a potential enemy within" all believing that Islam must dominate and control any land where Muslims are present.
In which case, the term has to be 'anti-Muslim sentiment'. Words and their meaning matter. Which is why "Islamophobia" is so hopeless as a catch all description of anyone who is deemed , in some way, to be hostile to Islam.
Few would describe Richard Dawkins as "Christianophobic" for his dislike of Christian doctrines and dogmas. Likewise, it is wrong to term somebody "Islamophobic" for criticising the history and practice and dogmas of Islam. The best term would be "critic of Islam" or "anti-Islamic".
Even those hostile to Islam or anti-Islamic are not "Islamophobic" , a term that implies the person has some sort of pathological hatred for both Islam as a belief system and necessarily those who believe in Islam or are born into a family and background that is Muslim.
The term for those who oppose Islamist ideology should be anti-Islamist. Even better, for clarification, it would simply be better to describe those who oppose certain forms of Islamism precisely. A Palestinian secular Arab hostile to Hamas would be simply be described as anti-Hamas.
If the notion of some essential "clash of civilisations" is to be avoided, then these sort of nuances are essential to take into account. Otherwise, the danger is that fanatics, zealots and those who believe they are eternally victimised, the better to advance power hungry agendas and mendacious propaganda will win.
Fool Britannia.
As David Cameron announces financial commitment to commemorating World War One by 2014 on the hundredth anniversary of its outbreak, the hard-left Richard Seymour has commented,
Whilst the reality underpinning historic Britishness has largely vanished with a vote on Scottish Independence coming, he wants to stress it as a consumer brand.
Not only that, it is connected to this notion of Britain as a Global Player. With both New Labour and the Conservatives still committed to "staying the course" in Afghanistan till 2014, a flourish of kitschy nationalism is, of course, helpful in that ties in with the notion that Britain actual has an independent foreign policy and that the sacrifice has been somehow 'worth it'.
The problem is that a considerable number of British people were left cold by the Olympics and disturbed by the fact that this kitschfest involved a massive military presence in London ( one that saw more troops deployed than in the entire Afghanistan War ) . The media and politicians insist on pushing the spurious drivel over "The Legacy".
This is despite the fact it created around 10,000 jobs for local inhabitants after spending £9bn on the Olympic Village, the Stadium and a grotesque piece of architectural computer aided design trash called ArcelrMittal Tower. The Olympic Venue and related construction projects also ramped up house prices and, along with racketeering, driving out Eastenders from areas as Hackney.
The hysteria over the Olympics and it tenuous connection to sense of "Britishness" that we can all somehow be "Team GB" shows a disturbing symbiosis between sport and propaganda, where those who challenged the Olympic Project were seen as un-British or "out of touch". Where a man was arrested whilst watching the Olympic cycling event for 'not smiling'.
The idea that a nation's worth can be assessed on its sporting acheivements is, ironically, similar to that of the Soviet Union.
The problem with this PR version of Britishness is that the ersatz nationalism it conjures up is a form of collective media induced hallucination that is actually at odds with a more rigourous patriotism. For this would involve looking at Britain, and the nations that consist this decayed remnant of a multi-national dynastic state, far more realistically.
For a start, England in 2012 consists largely of retail outlet clone towns as documented brilliantly by Paul Kingsnorth in Real England. The main obessive preoccupation is with consumerism and shopping. There is little sense of higher purpose that visiting huge out of town shopping centres and yelling and screaming at pub telescreened football after four pints of industrially produced lager.
Britain has become weirdly deracinated and denaturalised. It seems that people are so terminally bored, that they are awaiting some collective experience that will unite them, whether sports fanaticism, anti-paedophile outrage, baying EDL flashmob crowds, fanatical Islamism, carnival style anti-capitalist activism with slogans that will be smoothly absorbed into next years T shirt range.
Britishness has a residual appeal to those supporting the military in Afghanistan as that blends with the 'entertainment and sport economy' through the paralympics, ITN's Night of Heroes, the ex-Tv soap opera star and actor Ross Kemp's posturing on Sky TV and numerous macho-war books such as Bullet Magnet by a certain Andy McNab.
The fact the war is about securing the TAPI pipeline as part of a geostrategic plan to control oil and gas is not mentioned as it does not fit the "patriotic" notion of benevolent sacrifice which is being put forth as a way of rationalising the deaths of British troops in a war that has nothing at all to do with national defence
The institutions that defined Britishness have crumbled. the Westminster Parliament is full of bland careerist nonentities and there is little real political debate between two ideologically similar parties that indulge in political cross dressing. Real debates over the War aims in Afghanistan do not happen. There is no attempt to probe or ask forensic questions about the reason for the war.
The decline of Britain into a listless consumer zone of colossal steel sheet warehouses complete with chain link fencing, CCTV cameras, legoland housing estates and motorway towns with flagpoles everywhere and the flag flying is actually, in historical terms, rather un-British. As civic participation and institutions have declined, this new form of demonstrating identity grows.
Flags used to fly from civic buildings and bunting would be put up on special occasions. Yet every second house seems to have a flagpole now. Much of this had to do with football fever and the hype over England's performance in either the World Cup or the European Championships. "Come on England" posters in windows of every retail outlet, even estate agents.
Whether the British or English St George flag is flown, the recent fetish for flagpoles seems to yet another import from the USA. Britishness now seems to have become a sort of Americanised version of Britishness, with the new trend towards school Prom Nights and special Landau Forte Academies, indeed many schools, flying the Union Jack outside.
The strange thing is that Britishness is, actually, increasingly more American than British in the old sense as Britain becomes a neo-liberal version of Orwell's Airstrip One.
.. 2014 is being scheduled as another zenith of nationalist pride. The government is investing £50m in commemorating the centenary of the first world war, and a further £5m in the redevelopment of the Imperial War Museums. At a time of deep spending cuts, it's instructive to see what cultural formations the Conservatives are interested in supporting.The attempt by PM David Cameron to keep this Olympian "feel good factor" going on a continuous stream, as well as the attempt to harness history as propaganda by bigging up this "Britishness" theme, is part of what is known these days as "Public Diplomacy". Cameron is, after all, a man who made his money in PR. Britain must sell itself.
Whilst the reality underpinning historic Britishness has largely vanished with a vote on Scottish Independence coming, he wants to stress it as a consumer brand.
Not only that, it is connected to this notion of Britain as a Global Player. With both New Labour and the Conservatives still committed to "staying the course" in Afghanistan till 2014, a flourish of kitschy nationalism is, of course, helpful in that ties in with the notion that Britain actual has an independent foreign policy and that the sacrifice has been somehow 'worth it'.
The problem is that a considerable number of British people were left cold by the Olympics and disturbed by the fact that this kitschfest involved a massive military presence in London ( one that saw more troops deployed than in the entire Afghanistan War ) . The media and politicians insist on pushing the spurious drivel over "The Legacy".
This is despite the fact it created around 10,000 jobs for local inhabitants after spending £9bn on the Olympic Village, the Stadium and a grotesque piece of architectural computer aided design trash called ArcelrMittal Tower. The Olympic Venue and related construction projects also ramped up house prices and, along with racketeering, driving out Eastenders from areas as Hackney.
The hysteria over the Olympics and it tenuous connection to sense of "Britishness" that we can all somehow be "Team GB" shows a disturbing symbiosis between sport and propaganda, where those who challenged the Olympic Project were seen as un-British or "out of touch". Where a man was arrested whilst watching the Olympic cycling event for 'not smiling'.
The idea that a nation's worth can be assessed on its sporting acheivements is, ironically, similar to that of the Soviet Union.
The problem with this PR version of Britishness is that the ersatz nationalism it conjures up is a form of collective media induced hallucination that is actually at odds with a more rigourous patriotism. For this would involve looking at Britain, and the nations that consist this decayed remnant of a multi-national dynastic state, far more realistically.
For a start, England in 2012 consists largely of retail outlet clone towns as documented brilliantly by Paul Kingsnorth in Real England. The main obessive preoccupation is with consumerism and shopping. There is little sense of higher purpose that visiting huge out of town shopping centres and yelling and screaming at pub telescreened football after four pints of industrially produced lager.
Britain has become weirdly deracinated and denaturalised. It seems that people are so terminally bored, that they are awaiting some collective experience that will unite them, whether sports fanaticism, anti-paedophile outrage, baying EDL flashmob crowds, fanatical Islamism, carnival style anti-capitalist activism with slogans that will be smoothly absorbed into next years T shirt range.
Britishness has a residual appeal to those supporting the military in Afghanistan as that blends with the 'entertainment and sport economy' through the paralympics, ITN's Night of Heroes, the ex-Tv soap opera star and actor Ross Kemp's posturing on Sky TV and numerous macho-war books such as Bullet Magnet by a certain Andy McNab.
The fact the war is about securing the TAPI pipeline as part of a geostrategic plan to control oil and gas is not mentioned as it does not fit the "patriotic" notion of benevolent sacrifice which is being put forth as a way of rationalising the deaths of British troops in a war that has nothing at all to do with national defence
The institutions that defined Britishness have crumbled. the Westminster Parliament is full of bland careerist nonentities and there is little real political debate between two ideologically similar parties that indulge in political cross dressing. Real debates over the War aims in Afghanistan do not happen. There is no attempt to probe or ask forensic questions about the reason for the war.
The decline of Britain into a listless consumer zone of colossal steel sheet warehouses complete with chain link fencing, CCTV cameras, legoland housing estates and motorway towns with flagpoles everywhere and the flag flying is actually, in historical terms, rather un-British. As civic participation and institutions have declined, this new form of demonstrating identity grows.
Flags used to fly from civic buildings and bunting would be put up on special occasions. Yet every second house seems to have a flagpole now. Much of this had to do with football fever and the hype over England's performance in either the World Cup or the European Championships. "Come on England" posters in windows of every retail outlet, even estate agents.
Whether the British or English St George flag is flown, the recent fetish for flagpoles seems to yet another import from the USA. Britishness now seems to have become a sort of Americanised version of Britishness, with the new trend towards school Prom Nights and special Landau Forte Academies, indeed many schools, flying the Union Jack outside.
The strange thing is that Britishness is, actually, increasingly more American than British in the old sense as Britain becomes a neo-liberal version of Orwell's Airstrip One.
Thursday, 11 October 2012
A Note on the Taliban.
The Taliban's shooting of Malala Yousafzai, for standing up for the right of girls to be educated in Pakistan's northern Swat region, has been denounced by Pakistani politicians and by human rights groups across the world. As repellent as such an attack is, the idea has been put forward that the attack is one of pure pathological woman hatred and is not political.
Unfortunately, the targeting of Malala Yousafzai is political in that she exemplifies what is regarded as part of the propaganda in what is sold as a 'humanitarian war' in Afghanistan as it fans across the borders into Pakistan. The Taliban does treat women as mere chattels and baby producers but that does not mean such vicious attacks are only psychotic outbursts of violence against what they hate.
The Taliban's aim is to thwart the West's geopolitical ambitions and to derail the project to construct the TAPI pipeline. The Taliban was backed by Pakistan as a means of actually advancing this essential energy project well into the 1990s ( some say there are shady elements in Pakistan's elites that still do ).
This, from Kamila Shamsie in The Guardian, is not quite true,
It cannot be emphasised enough that the instability on the Af-Pak frontier has been exacerbated by the pathological conflicts over these pipeline routes. There is even some evidence that Iran is funding the Taliban, after having been against it in the 1990s, because TAPI is meant as a substitute to the IPI pipeline.
Unfortunately, the targeting of Malala Yousafzai is political in that she exemplifies what is regarded as part of the propaganda in what is sold as a 'humanitarian war' in Afghanistan as it fans across the borders into Pakistan. The Taliban does treat women as mere chattels and baby producers but that does not mean such vicious attacks are only psychotic outbursts of violence against what they hate.
The Taliban's aim is to thwart the West's geopolitical ambitions and to derail the project to construct the TAPI pipeline. The Taliban was backed by Pakistan as a means of actually advancing this essential energy project well into the 1990s ( some say there are shady elements in Pakistan's elites that still do ).
This, from Kamila Shamsie in The Guardian, is not quite true,
Because the state of Pakistan allowed the Taliban to exist, and to grow in strength, Malala Yousafzai couldn't simply be a schoolgirl who displayed courage in facing down school bullies but one who, instead, appeared on talk shows in Pakistan less than a year ago to discuss the possibility of her own death at the hands of the Taliban...the Taliban exists because of political decisions dating back to the 1980s; and of course the mess that is the "war on terror" has only added to the TTP's ranks.The Taliban exists as a force in its own right that wants to protect its part of north Pakistan and South Afghanistan but it also is there to advance an agenda whereby, without having any political role in Afghanistan, it will use the most savage force to destroy 'nation building' funded by Western involvement.
There's no need for the Taliban to invent propaganda against the American and Pakistan state (although they do) – both governments supply an excess of recruitment material for those who hate them. So if you view the Taliban simply through the prism of the war on terror and Pakistan and the United States, it's possible to think the process can be reversed; policies can be changed; everyone can stop being murderous and duplicitousThe reason is because the US is continually Drone bombing the Af-Pak frontier and most of the political elite in Pakistan seem willing to accept that if they get the aid and investment. And a large part of that is about US realpolitik and the need to secure the region for the strategically vital TAPI pipeline.
It cannot be emphasised enough that the instability on the Af-Pak frontier has been exacerbated by the pathological conflicts over these pipeline routes. There is even some evidence that Iran is funding the Taliban, after having been against it in the 1990s, because TAPI is meant as a substitute to the IPI pipeline.
But then there's Malala Yousafzai, standing in for all the women attacked, oppressed, condemned by the Taliban. What role have women played in creating the Taliban?None. But shoddy US realpolitik, greed for resources, political corruption and fundamentalist ideas have all come together is a poisonous whirl in a region considered strategically vital for the US to control in order to advance its hegemonic goals in Central Asia and, through throttling Iran from the east, to harm civilians.
Monday, 8 October 2012
The Myth of the Western Powers "Doing Nothing" over Syria.
"Something must be done" is often the refrain of those who tend to use humanitarian catastrophes, such as that happening in Syria amidst a bloody and brutal civil war, to advocate military intervention or else to portray "the West" as not doing enough. On Syria, the Guardian's Simon Tisdall has written,
That aim is one in line with its geopolitical interests in removing Iran's main ally in the Middle East in Syria which Russia and China do not want. The US approach is not based on doing nothing ( that has been more Russia's and China's position ). The US and Britain want to steer the war to the pursuit of its interests by backing proxies on the ground.
Whether hundreds of thousands of ordinary Syrian civilians perish is of less interest other than as material for propaganda. As with British Foreign Secretaty William Hague, they will robotically repeat the same line "Assad must go". That was the game plan from the beginning and not a ceasefire that could have saved many lives.
The wider plan stretching from the Middle East into Central Asia is to curtail Iranian influence to the west by toppling the Assad regime and to the east by maintaining a Afghan client state and blocking off Iranian gas exports to Pakistan and India by getting the TAPI pipeline constructed. This dovetails with the sanctions policy.
Syria is a proxy war in the contest for hegemony over the oil and gas of the Middle East and Central Asia. Iran is the ultimate target for regime change and with the challenge posed by Russia and the growing power and wealth of China, they will pursue "pro-active" foreign policies to do so. This is the lethal consequence of overdependence upon oil to fuel high octane consumer economies.
.. the do-nothing, hand-wringing favoured by Turkey's international allies may not be politically sustainable much longer as the Syrian crisis inexorably expands not just into Turkey but into Iraq, Lebanon and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.The fact is that the USA is not taking a "do-nothing" approach to the Syrian Civil War. It already has tacitly allowed Saudi Arabia and Qatar to pour in weapons and finance for Sunni fundamentalists, has CIA advisers on the ground to co-ordinate them and has remained firm on the call for Assad's regime to be destroyed from the outset.
That aim is one in line with its geopolitical interests in removing Iran's main ally in the Middle East in Syria which Russia and China do not want. The US approach is not based on doing nothing ( that has been more Russia's and China's position ). The US and Britain want to steer the war to the pursuit of its interests by backing proxies on the ground.
Whether hundreds of thousands of ordinary Syrian civilians perish is of less interest other than as material for propaganda. As with British Foreign Secretaty William Hague, they will robotically repeat the same line "Assad must go". That was the game plan from the beginning and not a ceasefire that could have saved many lives.
The wider plan stretching from the Middle East into Central Asia is to curtail Iranian influence to the west by toppling the Assad regime and to the east by maintaining a Afghan client state and blocking off Iranian gas exports to Pakistan and India by getting the TAPI pipeline constructed. This dovetails with the sanctions policy.
Syria is a proxy war in the contest for hegemony over the oil and gas of the Middle East and Central Asia. Iran is the ultimate target for regime change and with the challenge posed by Russia and the growing power and wealth of China, they will pursue "pro-active" foreign policies to do so. This is the lethal consequence of overdependence upon oil to fuel high octane consumer economies.
Thursday, 4 October 2012
On Qatar by Mark Almond
LONDON’S newest landmark, the Shard, is more than Europe’s tallest building – it is a symbol of a dramatic shift in world power.
Owned by the tiny Gulf state of Qatar, the Shard is the tip of cash-rich Qatar’s investment iceberg in Britain.
With an income which makes Bob Diamond seem like a Big Issue seller, Qatar had enough cash to buy 20 per cent of Barclays while adding other blue chips to their portfolio.
...
In London alone, the Muslim emirate has been buying up everything from Chelsea Barracks to the new Olympic Village.
Qatar failed in its bid to stage the Olympics but it will be home to the World Cup in 2022. Its own teams haven’t made a mark on the world of soccer but sponsorship of Barcelona has made Qatar a global footie brand.
With billions in revenue from natural gas, Qatar’s ruling al-Thani family could have been just rich Arabs on a buying and bling spree.
Of course, like other rich Arabs in London, the Qataris go in for plenty of the “off with the chador” and foot down on the pedal of the Lamborghini but the tiny emirate punches above its weight in world politics. Britain used to “protect” the Persian Gulf state. Now the Emir helps our economy out in return for backing his foreign policy.
Owned by the tiny Gulf state of Qatar, the Shard is the tip of cash-rich Qatar’s investment iceberg in Britain.
With an income which makes Bob Diamond seem like a Big Issue seller, Qatar had enough cash to buy 20 per cent of Barclays while adding other blue chips to their portfolio.
...
In London alone, the Muslim emirate has been buying up everything from Chelsea Barracks to the new Olympic Village.
Qatar failed in its bid to stage the Olympics but it will be home to the World Cup in 2022. Its own teams haven’t made a mark on the world of soccer but sponsorship of Barcelona has made Qatar a global footie brand.
With billions in revenue from natural gas, Qatar’s ruling al-Thani family could have been just rich Arabs on a buying and bling spree.
Of course, like other rich Arabs in London, the Qataris go in for plenty of the “off with the chador” and foot down on the pedal of the Lamborghini but the tiny emirate punches above its weight in world politics. Britain used to “protect” the Persian Gulf state. Now the Emir helps our economy out in return for backing his foreign policy.
Read the rest of Mark Almond's piece on Qatar here
Bahrain, Britain and Strategic Interests.
Britain's co-operation in protecting the government in Bahrain has come under criticism for suppressing demonstrations for full democracy, whilst elsewhere it staunchly defends the rebels in their fight against dictatorships. Of course, Bahrain is not a dictatorship but a strong monarchy.
Even so, Louisa Luckless wrote recently in The Guardian,
The British government has supplied the security forces of Bahrain with crowd control weapons and British advisers have been co-opted into the abortive reform process. But British involvement doesn't there, our oldest institutions continue to train a steady stream of Bahraini nationals for active service.
According to The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, this training comes at a high cost to the British state. Although it costs £78,000 to train a single recruit, Bahrain only pays £48,400 an individual. The Ministry of Defence has therefore subsidised Bahraini military training with at least £380,000 in the past three years alone.
The reason is that Bahrain is of strategic importance to the USA and Britain due to the need to retain the regional balance of power in the Middle East and to support Saudi policy. That, in turn, is made necessary by the over dependence of Western nations upon oil.
Unless, the Western nations find an alternative to the oil of Saudi Arabia, it is far more convenient to shore up these undemocratic regimes with a profitable arms trade and lucrative defence deals. No amount of dissent in Britain is going to change that if the root cause of the foreign policy is not addressed.
The fear is that as both the King of Saudi Arabia and King Hamad of Bahrain rule in the name of Sunni Islam over territories were most are Shiite Muslims and, set against the growth of Iranian influence in the region, especially Bahrain of 1.2 million population approximately 70 per cent is Shiite.
With the Arab Revolutions, the Western powers have tried to tilt the balance of power their way ( for example in Libya and Syria ) but where democracy threatens to bring in a Shiite Islamist state based on "General Will" principles they will do everything to prevent the creation of states friendly to Iran.
The potential for Saudi Arabia to become destabilised was on the minds of Bush and Blair even before the Arab Revolutions and dates back to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 when strategic planners wanted to secure the oil of that nation and ensure a diversified supply of oil.
In addition, Bahrain accommodates the US Fifth Fleet to patrol the Gulf through which 40% of the world's oil is transported. Any collapse in the balance of power could lead to oil prices rocketing and to wreck the struggling economies of the West in the aftermath of the 2008 crash.
These are the strategic realities underlying the double standards of British foreign policy in the region. The pressing need is to find alternatives and to try to restructure the Western economies so as to retain a degree of energy independence and not get trapped into potential conflicts in the Middle East.
As Mark Almond puts the dilemma,
...if we remain unmoved while a brutal crackdown silences the Bahraini people’s demands for democracy and human rights, Iran will crow about Western hypocrisy...So we face a choice between our principles, and our security and economies.
Ultimately, dissent over foreign policy and its double standards are needed. Yet few of them seem to have any realistic notion of how the West can extricate itself from this lethal quagmire without there being a global oil price shock that would lead to even more poverty and unemployment.
The Afghanistan War: Pipeline, Energy Corporations and Baking Interests.
Why is the US and UK still in Afghanistan ? What are the real war objectives beneath the "Public Diplomacy" that spins this as a war of Defence" against international terrorism ? What geopolitical ambitions does the US have in Central Asia ?
The strategic significance in securing the construction of the TAPI pipeline is the ambition that underlies the West being in Afghanistan. A war to advance a pipeline seems less heroic than a war against terrorism and difficult to justify. Yet it is the reason US and British troops have stayed the course.
There is almost nothing in the Western media about this.It is not regarded as news but the TAPI pipeline is crucial to the nature of the USA's foreign policy in Central Asia and it has to be asked whether it is right that British troops be asked to die for a geostrategy that is about protecting energy supplies.
Western journalists need to set the Afghanistan War in context.Resource Struggles over access to oil and gas are set to become increasingly common with the rise of China and India and the need of the west to retain control of supplies against the competition.
Here are some facts.
1) The Aghanistan War is about energy diversification away from Russian and Chinese control of Turkmen gas.
2) The Afghanistan War is part of a strategy to block off a rival Iranian IPI pipeline by forcing the TAPI Pipeline on Pakistan.
3) The TAPI pipeline is strongly backed by the US as a way of integrating south Asian nations under Western auspices.
4) The TAPI pipeline is likely to benefit Western financial interests and energy corporations.
This is news in Asia. It is not news in Britain. It does not fit in with the narrative the public is to be fed, though many people in Britain are still at a loss to know what the war is about. Responsible journalism ought to be be probing into the TAPI pipeline and its role in the Western nation's decision to "stay the course".
The Nation reported today,
Clearly British newspapers do not think British people should know that.
The strategic significance in securing the construction of the TAPI pipeline is the ambition that underlies the West being in Afghanistan. A war to advance a pipeline seems less heroic than a war against terrorism and difficult to justify. Yet it is the reason US and British troops have stayed the course.
There is almost nothing in the Western media about this.It is not regarded as news but the TAPI pipeline is crucial to the nature of the USA's foreign policy in Central Asia and it has to be asked whether it is right that British troops be asked to die for a geostrategy that is about protecting energy supplies.
Western journalists need to set the Afghanistan War in context.Resource Struggles over access to oil and gas are set to become increasingly common with the rise of China and India and the need of the west to retain control of supplies against the competition.
Here are some facts.
1) The Aghanistan War is about energy diversification away from Russian and Chinese control of Turkmen gas.
2) The Afghanistan War is part of a strategy to block off a rival Iranian IPI pipeline by forcing the TAPI Pipeline on Pakistan.
3) The TAPI pipeline is strongly backed by the US as a way of integrating south Asian nations under Western auspices.
4) The TAPI pipeline is likely to benefit Western financial interests and energy corporations.
This is news in Asia. It is not news in Britain. It does not fit in with the narrative the public is to be fed, though many people in Britain are still at a loss to know what the war is about. Responsible journalism ought to be be probing into the TAPI pipeline and its role in the Western nation's decision to "stay the course".
The Nation reported today,
The Hindu/Business Line referred to sources close to the negotiations and Shell is amongst the companies that have expressed an interest in the project. According to reports, the project which has US backing had initially seen interest from Chinese and Russian firms. Road-shows were also held to invite financiers to the project.The Asian Development Bank is a cousin of the World Bank and predominantly it reflects the investments of Western nations ( despite its convenient title as an Asian bank ). The central role of the TAPI pipeline in the US and UK strategy in Afghanistan provides the missing explanation for why we are still there.
According to The Hindu/Business Line, the participants included amongst others, SBI, US EXIM, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and Macquarie Bank. The decision with regard to the consortium leader and investors which will be made jointly by member countries in consultation with the Asian Development Bank (ADB), is expected to be completed in a year’s time.
“The work on the network is expected to start in 2015,” The Hindu/Business Line said. ‘The pipeline is expected to be operational in 2018 and supply gas over a 30-year period.”
The Turkmen side conducted several international road shows for TAPI in September with the participation of the Asian Development Bank (ADB). It was reported that Chevron, Exxon Mobil, BP, BG Group, RWE, Petronas and other companies became familiarised with the main terms of the project implementation and expressed an intention to participate in it.
Clearly British newspapers do not think British people should know that.
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The way forward in struggles for control over pipeline routes and diversifying energy supplies globally is to have special advisers to train forces to protect them against sabotage. That interest remains the reason why British troops have "stayed the course".
As Tye Sundlee writes in Business Insider ( Everyone's Competing For Access To This Country's Natural Gas Reserves, Oct. 4, 2012),
The Afghanistan War has been fought as part of the New Great Game in Central Asia in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the race to exploit the oil and gas of the Central Asia "stans". Once this fact is recognised, then there can be a real discussion of what is at stake.
When Afghanistan is mentioned, it is always somehow in isolation from the regional struggle for control of oil and gas routes that drives an increasingly dangerous and pathological competition. The War in Afghanistan is to secure the TAPI Pipeline as part of it's strategy to throttle Iran.
The construction of the TAPI Pipeline is a vital war objective in Afghanistan and explains much as to why the remaining NATO powers have remained there eleven years. This geopolitical fact has, in Orwellian style, been simply airbrushed out of most attempt to provide reasons why Britain and the US is there.