"A Chess Game in Afghanistan".

An interesting recent perspective on the role Afghianistan plays in the calculations of the Great Powers in the New Great Game for hegemony in Central Asia has been written by Ashfaqur Rahman ( A Chess Game in Afghanistan, Daily Star, October 2 2011 ),

A look at the map of Afghanistan and a little knowledge of the region will make things clear. The real reason for military involvement of the West now, especially USA, is largely hidden.

Afghanistan sits next to the Middle East. The countries there are rich in oil and natural gas. Afghanistan itself has little of these resources. However, it borders Iran and Turkmenistan. Iran has the second largest gas reserves in the world, while Turkmenistan has the third largest. So what has that to do with Afghanistan?

Till 1991, Turkmenistan was a part of the Soviet Union, so all gas from there was piped only north through Soviet pipelines. The Russians are now working on another new pipeline to funnel Turkmenistan gas to their territory to the north. The Chinese in the meantime have contracted with Turkmenistan to take natural gas out towards them.

But the US is unhappy. It wants a share of this vital resource too. It is pushing for multiple oil and gas export routes. The US already has envoys working on Euro-Asian energy diplomacy.

Now this competition for pipeline routes and energy resources is the major cause for the struggle for power and control in the region. Pipelines it is said, like railways in the past, connect trading partners and have a bearing on the regional balance of power.

Afghanistan stands astride the path of this geo-political struggle. It has unknowingly, like our Kabuliwala, been caught up in the bigger chess move for power and dominance in the region.

Recall the statement of Richard Boucher, US Assistant Secretary of State in 2007: "One of our goals is to stabilise Afghanistan and to link South and Central Asia, so that energy can flow to the South."

The American pipeline is called TAPI as it involves four countries, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. The Asian Development Bank is aware of and has participated in many planning meetings. The actual work may begin next year.

Iran in the meantime is also looking at building another pipeline to sell gas to Pakistan and India. This alternative pipeline to the one from Turkmenistan will rival the one sponsored by the USA. It will give Iran a geo-strategic leverage in the region. This pipeline will pierce Afghanistan and move from west to east to reach Pakistan. The US is reluctant to see the Iranian pipeline become a reality.

Amidst all this the US president, because of political pressure at home, had to announce phased withdrawal of US troops now stationed in Afghanistan. This will mean leaving much of the oversight of routing these pipelines in Afghan hands.

Add to this, the porous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Militants from across the Afghan border in Pakistan swoop down into Afghanistan and create security problems. The US is already quite unpopular as it uses unmanned drone aircraft to take out these militants with missiles. Many innocent people who are not militants also die due to collateral damage. This angers the Pakistanis as well as the people residing along the eastern Afghan border adjoining Pakistan.

The recent bombing of the US embassy in Kabul as well as incidents of violence and death are suspected by the US as the work of an extremist group called the Haqqani network based in Pakistan. It thinks that the network has connections with Pakistan's security and intelligence units.

The US is therefore angry. There are now serious moves within US Congress and in the US administration to find out the exact nature of this connection. The US is also reported to be contemplating to take unilateral military action against the perpetrators inside Pakistan.

Last week the Pakistan government, alarmed by the developing situation, conferred with all political parties to show a semblance of unity against any US designs.

The pipeline diplomacy will become anfractuous and the US may lose out if the militants rule the roost in Afghanistan and western Pakistan.

But do not forget that inside Afghanistan there are other elements besides the Taliban who also do not support the US plans. They are mainly from the Pashtun tribes. The recent assassination of the former president of Afghanistan Burhanuddin Rabbani, who was mediating peace between the government of Karzai and the Taliban, was to sabotage the talks and to show the US that any of their plans could be easily derailed. These elements are also aligned politically and militarily with tribes living in the northwest of Pakistan and in the Waziristan part of that country.

However, just as there are supporters for Pakistan operating inside Afghanistan there are people and tribes who largely look with favour on the interest of India. They are elements within the Uzbeks and the Tajiks living in Afghanistan. Once they belonged to the "Northern Alliance." They would not oppose the proposed Turkmenistan gas pipeline if it becomes a reality.

The jockeying for position in Afghanistan is however a cause of great concern for the government in Kabul. It needs the US to further its own internal security interest and support development work. But it is not ready to give in to any foreign interest, be it Pakistan or India or Iran or even the USA, which will jeopardise the sovereignty of Afghanistan in the long run.

John Gray on Afghanistan.

John Gray has written an impressive piece on the delusions of Western foreign policy in the decade following the terrorist attack by Islamists on September 11 2001. In the New Statesman ( Perpetual Warfare ) he writes that the USA blundered into Afghanistan and conflated the threat of Al Qaida with the Taliban.

The conflicts triggered by 9/11 have all been fought on false premises. Bombing al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan was a legitimate act of self-defence and, in the context of US politics, may have been inevitable, but it was not the only option. The relationship between the Taliban and al-Qaeda has never been simple or unproblematic, and there is evidence that the Taliban may have been considering expelling al-Qaeda from Afghanistan when the bombing campaign got under way.

Gray is right that ever since the war has been justified according to a series of 'shifting goals'-from installing democracy, promoting social and economic development to defending women's rights. Moreover, he is scathing about the validity of the so-called "war on drugs",

Linking the Afghan mission with the nonsensical "war on drugs" has been predictably counterproductive. Destroying drug production - the Americans at one point thinking of spraying the whole of Helmand Valley with weedkiller to wipe out the opium fields - would also have destroyed much of the Afghan economy. There is constant talk of preparing government forces to take over responsibility for security, Bamiyan being the first province handed over, on 17 July. But where government is weak and lacking in legitimacy, and where allegiance to any authority has long been a tradable commodity, it should be obvious that improving the training of local forces will not ensure their loyalty. Presiding over a territory that has never been ruled by a modern state, the Afghan government is not much more than a funnel for endemic corruption. In the event of a full-scale pull-out of US-led forces, it would be lucky to survive for more than 48 hours.

Where Gray gets it slightly wrong is in adhering too rigidly to the idea of the West bungling into Afghanistan because they had no coherent policy at all.

There are some who see the entire war on terror as a cover for neo-colonialism. Behind all the pro­clamations about democracy and human rights, they say, the real goal was building pipelines in Afghanistan and seizing oilfields in Iraq. In fact, the course of events has been much more absurd. There is no evidence of consecutive thought of the kind required to make any conspiracy theory credible. Certainly there has been disinformation - plenty of it - but rather than concealing any covert strategy, it masked the lack of any strategy at all.

On the contrary, there is quite a lot of evidence that pipelines are held to be the key to stabilising Afghanistan by bringing in transit fees and uniting the regional powers that are signatories to the TAPI pipeline together under Western auspices. The fact that this aim of creating an energy corridor is, as Gray suggests, a delusion does not mean it has not played a central role.

Clearly, no war, least of all Afghanistan, is "all about a pipeline". Yet that does not mean that now the other justifications for "staying the course" for a decade have been revealed as a utopian mirage , that the completion of the TAPI pipeline does not remain the one sole consolation prize to be attained there.

The Schizoid Realpolitik of The British National Security State.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Significance of 9/11 One Decade On.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Britain's "Ethical Foreign Policy" In Libya.

More information about the Britain's dealings with Gaddafi under Tony Blair has emerged into the public domain today.

'Secret files have been unearthed by The Independent in Tripoli that reveal the astonishingly close links that existed between British and American governments and Muammar Gaddafi.

The documents chart how prisoners were offered to the Libyans for brutal interrogation by the Tripoli regime under the highly controversial "rendition" programme, and also how details of exiled opponents of the Libyan dictator in the UK were passed on to the regime by MI6'.

So there it is. Britain's ethical foreign policy under Tony Blair-supporting dictatorship when it's strong enough to survive, colluding with CIA rendition and torture, oil deals for BP, giving information to Gaddafi about Libyan dissidents in Britain to enhance the oil interests.

Despite British Foreign Secretary William Hague's attempts to distance himself from the machinations of the New Labour government's involvement, even though the opposition then did not challenge this collusion with Gaddafi, the fact is that there is obvious continuity. As The Independent reports,

The revelations by The Independent will lead to questions about whether Mr Koussa, who has long been accused of human rights abuses, was allowed to escape because he held a 'smoking gun'. The official is known to have copied and taken away dozens of files with him when he left Libya.

When Koussa defected to Britain in April 2 2011, Hague made statements that he could be put on trial as demanded by the NTC. However, Koussa then left Britain soon after he had 'defected' again to Qatar by April 15.

Obviously, Koussa had no reason to return as he had been conveniently removed from a European Union sanctions list, This gave someone involved in torture free access to financial assets held in European banks. Not wanting him to reveal the truth of Britain and other states collusion with Gaddafi could have been part of that.

As the Independent article implies, the reason could have been to avoid bad "public diplomacy" about Britain's collusion with Gaddafi in the "war on terror".

The Tripoli regime was a highly useful partner in the 'rendition' process under which prisoners were sent by the US for 'enhanced interrogation', a euphemism, say human rights groups, for torture.

One US administration document, marked secret, says "Our service is in a position to deliver Shaykh Musa to your physical custody similar to what we have done with other senior LIFG (Libyan Islamic Fighting Group) members in the past. We respectfully request an expression of interest from your service regarding taking custody of Musa".
The British too were dealing with the Libyans about opposition activists, passing on information to the regime. This was taking place despite the fact that Colonel Gaddafi's agents had assassinated opponents in the campaign to eliminate so-called "stray dogs" abroad, including the streets of London. The murders had, at the time, led to protests and condemnation by the UK government.

The supposed pragmatism in now trying to remove Gaddafi is more akin to the schizoid realpolitik of the sort Orwell lampooned in 1984.

Consistently until 2009 when Milliband opined that the 'war on terror' was a name to be dropped, Afghanistan was put forth as part of that. Long after 2004 when Gaddafi thought that he might be next for 'regime change' after Iraq and moved towards the West by cancelling a non-existent WMD programme.

The notion that the Arab Spring in Libya means that there is a possibility of a liberal democratic alternative to either secular dictatorship or Islamist dictatorship remains dubious.

Indeed, the Islamist Abdel-Hakim Belhaj who two years before in 2009 was the leader of the enemy, associated with Al Qaida, and who had been tortured by the CIA, as part of the 'war on terror 'now pops back up in 2011 as an important part of the NTC. So the SAS armed jihadists to finish of Gaddafi when two years before they were aiding him to combat them.

With the potential for breakdown of authority and a humanitarian crisis can it be seriously suggested that the Islamists will not try to stage a power grab ? Or that they won't turn against the West, as their ideology is similar to that of the Taliban ? The idea of a liberal secular democracy emerging to order is a fantasy.

The idea that governments can just change tack overnight almost and install pliant or friendly pro-Western governments is simply not realistic. There is no history of democracy in Libya. Outside a small circle of academics and city based liberals, it is the Islamists and nationalists who dominate.

If the NATO intervention was so pragmatic and founded on "enlightened self interest" how is it going to "pragmatically" extricate itself from a descent into further civil war and conflict if a stable government cannot be formed ? The cliched soundbite about "no boots on the ground" has already proved false, as evidenced by the presence of the SAS from the outset of the conflict.

Libya as a Resource War.

Terry Macalister reports in The Guardian today on the issue of Libya ( So, was this a war for oil ? September 2 2011 ),

The Libyan conflict has been a war about oil if not "for" oil. The country's economy is almost totally dependent on hydrocarbons and a key objective for the transitional government will be to get the wells up and running again as soon as possible.

The British and French, meanwhile, are worried about future energy supplies. They are already pushing and shoving over who should get what of the energy proceeds before the political dust has even settled in Tripoli (just as BP and Shell are once again sitting pretty in Iraq following western military intervention there).

The UK government has been working hand in glove with parts of the oil industry to bring about regime change in Libya. London crude trader, Vitol, held meetings with international development minister Alan Duncan (a former consultant to the firm) and played a key role in keeping the rebels well-supplied with petrol while others tried to starve Muammar Gaddafi's troops of fuel. Was this a practical operation to
undermine Gaddafi's military logistics or a potent symbol that western politics and oil are so closely intermeshed that the agendas of both are indistinguishable?

....The British have not been so public about their expectations but we know that BP has already held talks with the new opposition leaders and are preparing to re-enter the country. Clearly, the role of Vitol, never mind the RAF jets, will require some recognition in the new Libya that emerges – at least in the eyes of the UK political and oil establishment.

A good and far more informative article about what is at stake with regards Libya. However this is a little questionable,

The Libyan conflict has been a war about oil if not "for" oil.

This is mere semantics. The intervention by France, Britain and the USA is not "all about oil" as no conflict is strictly about one thing. Yet it is a key objective of the "intervention" to secure oil supply from Libya in a way that was hardly guaranteed when Gaddafi lost de facto control of Libya.

Western powers could not see one of the largest supplies of high grade oil with little sulphur content that is used in numerous household consumer goods and for energy fall into limbo or fuel a conflict that could have led to regional instability if forces hostile to the West gained control over it.

Intervention in Libya is not about oil if it is seen as only about corporate profits, though that to will be a beneficial spin off. Primarly it is about diversification of supplies in a world of growing oil demand and diminishing global supplies. If one state collapses, there must be other oil reserves always on tap.

Given that many oil producing states have authoritarian regimes or dictatorships and ethnic and sectarian problems, the need to control ever more supplies of oil is now the main driving force of geopolitics in the 21st century. Any discussion that fails to mention oil is footling irrelevance.

Those in the West wanting to understand the importance of fossil fuels need only read the business section of newspapers and online editions of newspapers from other nations. Then the reason for Afghanistan too becomes clear: the construction of the TAPI pipeline.

Such interventions are often rationalised as "enlightened self interest". In fact, the new epoch of history unfolding now in the two decades since the end of the Cold War is more obviously one of resource wars and the New Great Game for control of supplies of oil and gas.

The problem is that this frightens many people so they refuse to face these facts. They want to believe in liberal intervention without seeing that the impact of such foreign policies can often make the conflicts they seek to solve even more entrenched.

Libya could develop into another Iraq fairly quickly. Gaddafi can still cause a humanitarian crisis from the south in the Fezzan by curring off the water to Tripoli. As in Iraq, the chaos could lead to the NTC failing to restore order in Libya and it's authority will not be recognised.

Should that occur, the West will be in a terrible quandary: it has to face the situation of having invested colossal sums of money in aiding the anti-Gaddafi forces and a lack of stability as bad and destructive as when Gaddafi threatened to cause bloodshed in Benghazi.

Unless Western states deeply technology to find alternatives to overdependence upon oil and governments stop such absurdities as low budget airlines, then the blowback will be increased migration, terrorist threats and decivilisation.

A dilemma that could be considered as a consumer choice.

The important point about thee interventions is that they have proved ineffective. Afghanistan, Iraq and now Libya are resource wars. The previous two have proved futile. The abstract arguments about 'humanitarian intervention' ignore the fact that moral crusades founder when the reality on the ground intrudes.

Wherever there are resouces such as oil at stake the conflict to control them breeds corruption, greed, and ethnic and tribal enmities with that state, not least in lands where it barely functions as such. Statesmen in the West need to start reading Hobbes again instead of clinging to utopian liberal internationalism.

The amount of money spent on weapons and military reactions to securing energy supplies would be better spent in thinking of national survival through a total strategy that involves reduction of dependence upon fossil fuels as a national emergency.

The idea of a continued toxic growth utopia is flawed progressive thinking. The need with forthcoming resource shortages should be to protect and survive and oil cannot be squandered as if the relatively low cost of petrol in the West means there is no conflicting need here with the high prices oil producers need.

The burgeoning populations in Arab Muslim nations mean that such control over their oil, and forcing up prices to diversify their economies, clashes with the need for the senescent low birth consumer utopias of the West to have lower oil prices to make consumers happy and re-elect politicians.

Remember that the oil tanker drivers who blockaded the ports and went on strike in 2000 nearly brought down Blair's government. The strikers were supported by most Britons who demand low prices for oil whilst not realising that Iraq was a necessary consequence of their high octane lifestyles.

It was that which led Blair to support the US invasion of Iraq and support a realignment with Gaddafi soon after. Again as Iraq's supply failed to increase after it fell into anarchy, Gaddafi was courted to make up the shortfall. That is demonstrated by the news just today that MI6 collaborated with Gaddafi.

That wars in the 21st are for resources is obvious. The question is this : what are we going to do about it ?

Oil Price, Secure Supplies and Libya's Impact

That the centrality of oil in the economies of Europe and the USA is shown in the reactions of the oil market to news that indicated the importance of the NATO intervention in getting Libyan oil flowing again. The shortfall in Libyan oil production was made up by the other OPEC nations increasing their supply.

Data produced by the journal United Explorations ( Oil Price and the Effect of the Libya War August 29 2011 ),

'The conflict in Libya started in protests against Gadafi’s regime in the eastern port city of Benghazi, and spread to Zintan, al Bayda and Quba. Since then, the oil price evolved from US$99 to a maximum of US$120.91 in April 28. A 21% oil price increase might seem big, but in fact it is huge.

Taking into account that the daily supply from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ 12 members rose to 30.05 million barrels a day in July from 29.94 million in June, it means that the acquisition cost of OPEC’s daily oil production (responsible for 40% of world’s oil production) increased over US$657 million in just a couple of months. But as Gaddafi’s regime is closer to an end the oil price is having a small rest, with a 5% fall in August'

The NATO support for anti-Gaddafi forces was more concerned with stabilising Libya, one of the closet main suppliers of oil to European nations, and part of the geopolitical struggle for diversification. So that when one regime is destabilised, then others can step in to up production of this black engine blood of developed Western consumer economies.

Even so, at a time when the economies of the USA and Europe are faltering on the brink of a double dip recession, lower oil prices are a main objective of Western governments if economic growth is to be stimulated and "consumer confidence" and spending resumed to pre-2008 levels.

The impact of lower oil prices was cited as important In US News ( End of Libyan War Could Mean Lower Oil Prices August 22 2011 ) this was reported,

The turmoil in Libya greatly disrupted that country's substantial oil production and exports. Before the country's civil war erupted in February, Libya produced 1.6 million barrels of oil per day and exported 2 percent of global oil supplies. The conflict curtailed that supply by more than 90 percent. But with rebel forces apparently on their way to seizing control of Tripoli, the civil war appears to be in its final throes.

That could mean a boost to the U.S. economy in the form of new consumer spending. According to the American Automobile Association, gasoline is currently more than 85 cents per gallon more expensive than it was one year ago. For a person buying 10 gallons of gasoline per week, that is more than $440 extra spent on gasoline over the course of a year. A decrease in prices could significantly free up money for other parts of the U.S. economy.

Again, in the short term, lower prices alone will not regenerate economic activity. In the longer term they are an essential prerequisite of continued Western consumer activity and of global economic growth. The danger of the collapse of a leading oil producing state, as seems possible in any state in the Arab World at this moment, only further the quest for diverse supplies.

By use of military force and covert operations to be rid of regimes that oppose Western oil interests in ways that could prove this addiction to cheap petrol to be a rather lethal one.

The Fezzan: "A Bulwark of the Gaddafi Regime"

This somewhat flipant cartoon by Phil Disley has the hour glass in the wrong hand. It is, in fact, Gaddafi and his clan that have control over the time it will take for the NTC to establish a functioning state that can ensure the supply of water from the large reserves in the Fezzan that flows to Tripoli.

The Fezzan is still under Gaddafi's control. So too is his large grand project of bringing freshwater to the cities on the coast of Libya, one of his main infrastructural projects that he termed "The Eighth Wonder of the World". Gaddafi's power base remains strong in the south in his ancestral tribal city of Sabha.

Gaddafi's stated willingness to negotiate is not based only on his last attempt to ensure his legacy in bequeathing bloodshed as the cartoon here indicates. Nor is it a symptom of his time of killing in the civil war running out compared with the blood on the hands of the insurgent factions.
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As John Simpson of the BBC reported the water supply to Tripoli has been cut off and it will be very difficult for the NTC to avert a humanitarian catastrophe in the hot weather conditions. This is most likely part of Gaddafi's last gambit to cause chaos and thwart the NATO backed 'transition'.

As Martin L Lewis wrote ( Libya's Fezzan, A Bulwark of the Gaddafi Regime ),

'As of March 1, 2011, Fezzan remained firmly under the control of the Gaddafi regime, with no indication of rebel activity in any of its cities or towns. The region’s loyalty to Gadaffi is linked to its relative isolation, as well as to the development funds that have been lavished upon it. But parts of Fezzan have also been singled out as bulwarks of the regime. Gaddafi attended secondary school in Sabha, the metropolis of the region (population 130,000). Many members of his own tribe, the Qaddadfa, subsequently relocated to the city, even though the tribe is based on the north coast. Sabha also supports a Libyan air base, which was linked to the country’s discontinued nuclear program, and has been used for rocket testing. The city is noted for its numerous migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, whose presence has been encouraged by Gaddafi and whose future in the country may be jeopardized by a regime change'.
That situation has not changed since and is as significant as the NTC rebels taking Tripoli, a city less firmly under Gaddafi's control that either he or the West liked to think. The violence meted out to black Sub-Saharan Africans,who are collectively seen as 'pro-Gaddafi', could well exacerbate existing ethnic tensions.

Gaddafi seems to be written off as a joke now that his regime has crumbled. Yet the dictator is no idiot. He's a cunning tactician who retains a number of cards up his sleeve. Destroying Tripoli's water supply in the desert regions south of the urban areas is one such guerrilla tactic this "leader of the Bedouins" could yet perform.

Libya: A Template for Future Resource Wars.

The fact that Gaddafi's forces have retreated in to the Fezzan to the south of the two northern coastal provinces of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica now under nominal NTC control and have cut of the water supply to Tripoli is in line with the way more wars are set to be pathological struggles over ever scarcer resources.

Gaddafi's last gambit is to cause a humanitarian crisis by controlling water supplies from the south in order to sabotage the new government.

An EU Times piece in March 2011 spelt out the stakes now being played for drawing on an WSJ that states,

...that a Global Resource War has now begun between the East and West, with the Middle East being the “first battleground”, specifically the vast oil and water resources belonging to Libya.

The distinguished American Professor and Human Rights Watch board member Michael T. Klare first coined the term “resource wars” in his 2001 book “Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict” wherein he warned that our World was on the cusp of a century of warfare over access to the dwindling supplies of oil and fresh water every Nation needs, but there is not enough of to go around.

....British Defense Secretary John Reid who, likewise, in 2006 warned that Global weather changes and dwindling natural resources were combining to increase the likelihood of violent conflict over land, water and energy.

Most important to note about Reid’s 2006 warning was that it came at a time that the United States was securing its own energy future by taking the vast oil wealth of Iraq in covert partnership with Iran, but since that time has been moving away from its traditional European and Middle Eastern allies as it further retrenches into its own hemisphere.

Being left out in the cold, so to speak, with America’s retrenchment, the British, under their former Prime Minister Tony Blair, began actively courting Libya dictator Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi, in 2007, allowing the release of Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence agent and the only man convicted in the Lockerbie Bombing, in exchange for oil drilling rights for British Petroleum (BP).

The New York Times News Service further reported about this “deal” between Blair and el-Qaddafi: “A senior British official, Sir Gus O’Donnell, formally acknowledged that BP had lobbied the British government in pursuit of its oil interests and the British government, in turn, resolved to “do all it could to facilitate an appeal by the Libyans to the Scottish government” for Mr. Megrahi’s release.”

Not just to Libya’s oil were the British after either, as in the early 1980’s, drilling teams in this North African Nations southern parts discovered one of the largest water systems in the World in four major underground basins, these being the Kufra basin, the Sirt basin, the Morzuk basin and the Hamada basin.

In order to utilize this massive underground water wealth the Libyan’s began construction of the “Great Man-Made River”, which aside from being the largest water transport project ever undertaken on our Planet has, also, been described as the “Eighth Wonder of the World.”

In late August, 1991, “turned on the tap” of their Great Man-Made River in a ceremony attended by nearly all Middle Eastern leaders, including former Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak who encouraged his countrymen to “go to Libya” to begin growing food for the entire region.

Important for the reader to note about Libya’s Great Man-Made River is that with a population of barely 6.4 million people, the food resources being grown since the early 1990’s (estimated that by 2012 could feed 50 million) could only be done so with the importation of over 1 million migrant workers, many of whom the UN now reports are either trapped or now fleeing.

Most important of these migrant workers were the nearly 40,000 Chinese who were saved by their Nation’s “epic evacuation” and who were working on vastly improving Libya’s ability to market grains and fresh foods to Asia and various other projects, and by far posed the West’s biggest threat to their “claim” over Libya’s vast oil and water wealth.

Unfortunately for el-Qaddafi, however, was that instead of cementing firm defense relations with either Russia or China he became a “ripened plum” ready to be picked off by the West....

So, with the Middle East now seeing its greatest turmoil since the early part of last century when the Arab people began throwing off the yoke of colonial repression, and with Libya being the “main prize” because of its vast oil and water wealth, it was no wonder that the new British Prime Minister, David Cameron, became the first Western leader to visit Egypt, a visit that was quickly followed by Egyptian Special Forces troops storming into Libya to aid the rebels.

Those Egyptian Special Forces troops were then quickly followed into Libya by British Special Air Services (SAS) troops and MI6 agents who arrived “in the dead of night, armed with weapons, maps and explosives while dressed in plain black clothing”, but “not to worry” said the British, “they were just looking for hotel rooms”.

The Scramble for Libya's Oil Wealth.

Here's some excerpts from brilliant article from journalist Rachel Shabi for Al Jazeera ( NATO nations set to reap spoils of Libya war 25 August 2011 )

It looks like the more telling news on Libya has migrated to the business pages. With jubilant reporting of Gaddafi's imminent downfall seizing headlines, it's the financial pages that have the clinical analysis. So, for instance, it is in this section that the Independent reports a "dash for profit in the post-war Libya carve up".

Similarly, Reuters, under the headline, "Investors eye promise, pitfalls in post-Gaddafi Libya" noted that a new government in that country could "herald a bonanza for Western companies and investors".

Before Tripoli has completely fallen, before Gaddafi and his supporters have stepped down and before the blood dries on the bodies that have yet to be counted, Western powers are already eyeing up what they view us just rewards for the intervention.

There are no more illusions over how far NATO forces exceeded the UN security resolution that mandated its campaign. For months, NATO officials insisted it was operating within brief - an air campaign, designed to protect civilians under threat of attack. But now it is described as an "open secret" that NATO countries were operating undercover, on the ground.

Add to that the reluctance to broker a negotiated exit, the practice of advising, arming and training the rebels, and the spearheading of an escalation in violence and it looks like NATO's job morphed from protecting civilians to regime change.

.....Gaddafi's demise is welcome; the courage of Libyans who fought his regime is staggering and only a stone would fail to be moved by their celebration of freedom now.

But it does not negate those factors to point out that NATO countries have not previously seemed bothered by the bloodiness of this dictator's 42-year-rule - or that the striking feature of the West's relationship to the Middle East has been its cynical alliances with repressive rulers, propped up to shut down their populations while opening up resources to foreign access.

It is exactly this track record - of being a corrosive influence and a self-interested broker - that has made Middle Eastern countries wary of any Western intervention in the tide of revolutions now sweeping the region.

Libyan rebels asked for help, but were wary of what was viewed as a necessary alliance with Western forces. It does the flow of Arab uprisings a disservice to now glorify NATO's mission. A liberal intervention for humanitarian ends may be the comfortable hook; but securing assets and resources, as usual, is the real goal.

Libya and Black Africa.

Adekeye Adebajo looks at the neglected black African dimension to Gaddafi's rule ( Gaddafi: The man who would be king of Africa, The Guardian August 26 2011 ),

...while Gaddafi became increasingly isolated in his bid to lead Africa, his status as an international pariah appeared to have ended with the unilateral dismantling of his weapons of mass destruction programme in 2003. He subsequently co-operated with European governments to deter African migrants seeking to reach Europe. Salivating western leaders from Italy, Britain and the US (now among Nato countries seeking to topple his regime) queued up outside his tent in Tripoli to sign lucrative oil contracts

Colonel Gaddafi's pan-African pose was about realpolitik, of course, no less than Mandela's embracing of the dictator who bestowed one of South Africa’s highest honours, the Order of Good Hope, on Gaddafi in 1997. For all the cynicism of Western states, no state conferred such a distinction.

The "anti-imperialist" propaganda and attempt to portray himself a "King of Kings" was a ploy to shore up support amongst the sub Saharan migrants that entered Libya and the support Gaddafi has with Africans has provided him with a rival sore of support in the poorest third southern province of Fezzan.

It might have been better for Adebayo to focus more on that fact than make snipes at the West given that the pan-Africanist ideology Gaddafi espoused could lead to an ethnic revanchism against black Africans in Libya that exists irrespective of the machinations of "Western imperialists".

There is a history of Arab racism against blacks in Libya that has resulted in such violence as was visited upon Ghanian migrant workers back in 2000, leaving 135 dead, a year after Mandela conferred the South Africa's on Gaddafi who likewise maintained prestige in South Africa akin to Fidel Castro.

Both Castro and Gaddafi supported the ANC in the struggle against Apartheid. As Mandela said “Those who say I should not be here are without morals. This man helped us at a time when we were all alone, when those who say we should not come here were helping the enemy.”

Such anti-imperialist rhetoric ignored the fact the growing ethnic enmity that has resulted now in blacks being seen as all mercenaries shoring up Gaddafi's regime, something that , of course, he was aiming at back to the time of the publication of the Green Book when he mused,

Now comes the black race's turn to prevail. The black race is now in a very backward social situation. But such backwardness helps to bring about numerical superiority of the blacks because their low standard of living has protected them from getting to know the means and ways of birth control and family planning.

Also their backward social traditions are a reason why there is no limit to marriage, leading to their unlimited growth, while the population of otherraces has decreased because of birth control, restrictions on marriage and continuous occupation in work, unlike the blacks who are sluggish in a climate which is always hot.

The removal of Gaddafi and the transition period could lead to much brutality against blacks who defended them against what he termed "hidden hostile hands" that wanted to destroy his Pan-African "ideals". Many black migrants hoping to get to Tripoli also aimed eventually at entering the EU.

In turn, a good number of black African supported Gaddafi. In conditions of chaos where there are squabbles about how gets control over Libya's oil assets, the black minority could well think it has no reason other than to support Gaddafi or anti-NTC forces.

This history of enmity between Arabs and Blacks dates back to the slave trade and has origins independent of the West. So it is hardly credible to see other states in Africa as having absolved themselves for having supported Gaddafi as though it was only the West that played cynical realpolitik.

The Oil Scramble and Divvying Up the Spoils of War.

The announcement today of an official NTC government in Tripoli by the Minister for Finance and Oil, Ali Tarhouni ( a University of Washington in Seattle economics professor ) has been accompanied by promises that the West will be favoured for its support for anti-Gaddafi insurgents.

In the West, Tarhouni is said to be favoured as a future leader of Libya.He has already indicated that existing contracts will be honoured, the endgame is for those nations that explicitly backed the 'rebels' to get a larger slice of the drilling rights and concessions.

As a CNN report confirms (Oil companies ready to jockey for position in new Libya, August 26 2011),

However unpredictable the current situation, European oil companies are gearing up for battle. The major players from there before the uprising began were Italy's Eni, Total of France and Repsol. British giant BP is also trying to get a larger slice of Libyan exploration projects. It concluded a $900 million deal with the Gadhafi regime three years ago to explore for gas. Other players include OMV of Austria and Marathon. China, through its state-owned CNPC, had begun exploring off the Libyan coast to help feed its insatiable appetite for Africa's mineral wealth but recently terminated several contracts because of the unrest.

Libya is the site for a scramble for resources as oil and gas that is set to become more pathological during the course of the 21st century. across the globe from Africa, to the Middle East and Central Asia. Whether Libya's NTC will be able to acheive what was not in Iraq is by no means certain.

What is dangerous would be the sort of shock therapt approach to privatising Libya's oil companies far too quickly so that the NTC presides over squabbling and a widening of ethnic and tribal divisions, not least as Islamist militants played a role in overthrowing Gaddafi.

Whilst the NTC is seeking reconciliation with some in Gaddafi's regime plus investment from the West to a tune of $2.5 dollars to rebuild Libya and prevent the state apparatus crumbling, if Gaddafi is not quickly defeated, then the resulting instability could lead to discontent.

Not least if the emigres in the NTC fail to ensure transparency in the privatisation deals and Western nations put short term greed and the need for 'fast track' oil production at the expense of a process of breaking up the stranglehold Gaddafi's cronies have over the state LNOC.

The need to get Libya's high quality crude oil flowing again is important not only to the reconstruction of the Libyan economy after six months of conflict but also to the Western states reeling from the prospect of a double dip recession and a need for falling petrol prices.

The question is whether Tarhouni is the man to carry out these refoms successfully without the kind of catastrophic doctrinnaire approach taken after 2003 by Chalabi. Tarhouni has been in exile since 1973 and has been described by an academic colleague as "fundamentally American".

Tarhouni, like almost all of the NTC hails from Benghazi, the capital of the former Ottoman and then Italian colony of Cyrenaica, which only became united with Tripolitania and Fezzam to make the new libyan state in 1951.

Tripoli was stormed primarly, however, by Western Libyans with a great deal of help from forces aided and guided by the CIA, MI6 and both French and British special forces, a covert operation that has helped flood Libya with angry young men with access to arms.

This includes those in the east in areas like Dernah whose defences have been led by Abdelkarim al-Hasadi of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group who previously had been a jihadist arrested by US forces in Afghanistan in 2002, and now claims he opposes Taliban style theocratic regimes.

The absurdity of empowering Islamist jihadi warriors after having previous backed Gaddafi after 2003 for renouncing non existent WMDs in return for Western oil companies investments and repressing Al Qaida elements is stark. So much for the 'war on terror' against 'jihadists now.

The very SAS that was used to train Gaddafi's forces to fight against jihadists based on their experience in Afghanistan as recent as 2009 was just two years later being used to train militias with jihadist tendencies in places such as Misrata.

The NTC will need to act rapidly if those with guns as part of independent militias as opposed to organised rebel forces more under their control are not tempted to turn their weapons on them should their tribal leaders be excluded from the benefit of Libya's oil privatisation by Tarhouni.

Britain's Covert Support for Anti-Gaddafi Insurgents ( The "rebels" )

The nature of Britain's covert support for the Lbya insurgent rebels fighting Gaddafi's regime. With the onset of a new epoch of resource wars, this manner of bringing about "regime change" now seems to offer the template for such operation.

The Independent ran this report, ( Rebels claim the victory – but did the Brits win it? August 23 2011 ).

Since 19 March – when the Royal Navy launched cruise missiles on Libyan air-defence targets, followed the next day by attacks by Royal Air Force Tornado jets – Britain has placed itself in the front ranks of Western powers enforcing the United Nations resolution protecting civilians from Colonel Gaddafi's forces and simultaneously pursuing the Brother Leader's removal from power.

While the Ministry of Defence has been diligent in providing daily updates on the progress of "Operation Ellamy", the British codename for its £250m part in the Nato campaign in Libya, a quieter London-sponsored offensive has been taking place on the ground for six months, involving an army of diplomats, spooks, military advisers and former members of the special forces.

One British intelligence operative in the Nafusa Mountains had previously been deployed elsewhere in Libya, including the besieged city of Misrata, part of attempts by London to influence events in Libya beyond the activities of warplanes and naval vessels.

It is a clandestine operation that got off to a spectacularly inauspicious start in March when seven SAS soldiers and an MI6 officer were detained by militia members outside the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, during a botched mission to make contact with anti-Gaddafi leaders. Since then, the British auxiliary efforts have been conducted more clandestinely.

A British diplomatic source said: "From quite an early stage there has been a view that Gaddafi's stranglehold would only be broken if there were practical measures on the ground as well as the air campaign. We are not talking legions of SAS crawling through the undergrowth. What we are talking about is offering expertise, diplomatic support and allowing others to be helpful."

The "others" in question are the small groups of former special forces operatives, many with British accents, working for private security firms who have been seen regularly by reporters in the vanguard of the rebels' haphazard journey from Benghazi towards Tripoli.

These small detachments of Caucasian males, equipped with sunglasses, 4x4 vehicles and locally acquired weaponry, do not welcome prying eyes, not least because their presence threatened to give credence to the Gaddafi regime's claims that the rebel assault was being directed by Western fifth-columnists.

Amid frustration and even disdain in British and Allied circles about the ragtag nature of much of the Libyan rebel army – whose reputation as fair-weather fighters proved to be literal in April when two days of rainfall halted their offensive – London has been content for the Benghazi-based National Transitional Council to use funds to buy in ex-SAS men and others with a British military background to help train and advise anti-Gaddafi forces.

The Independent understands that the contracts for the security companies, often signed in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, have involved funds provided by Western countries to the NTC, although much of the money has come from previously frozen regime bank accounts and assets.

The coalition, including Britain, France and Italy, has also funded high-tech equipment used by rebel fighters to communicate their position to Nato commanders as they plot the air strikes that have helped to tilt the balance against Colonel Gaddafi's demoralised military forces. Since March, British forces have destroyed 890 targets in Libya, including 180 tanks or armoured vehicles and 395 buildings.

But it is arguably in the arena of post-conflict planning that the British have been most active. In the wake of last month's decision by London to recognise the NTC as the de facto government of Libya, expelling pro-Gaddafi diplomats in London, the UK mission to Benghazi is now the second largest in North Africa.

Diplomats have been engaged in drawing up a blueprint for a post-Gaddafi Libya, including humanitarian aid, help with policing, governance and reform of the military. The prize of being seen as a "friend" in a stable, oil-rich Libya is considerable.

The Parallel between Iraq and Libya-Robert Fisk.

The parallels between Libya and Iraq are not, as yet, that direct. Yet according to Robert Fisk, correspondent for The Independent, this could change rather quickly as he writes here ( History repeats itself, with mistakes of Iraq rehearsed afresh. With Gaddafi at large, a guerrilla war eroding the new powers is inevitable August 25 2011 ).

Doomed always to fight the last war, we are recommitting the same old sin in Libya.

Muammar Gaddafi vanishes after promising to fight to the death. Isn't that just what Saddam Hussein did? And of course, when Saddam disappeared and US troops suffered the very first losses from the Iraqi insurgency in 2003, we were told – by the US proconsul Paul Bremer, the generals, diplomats and the decaying television "experts" – that the gunmen of the resistance were "die-hards", "dead-enders" who didn't realise that the war was over.

The West's real fear – right now, and this could change overnight – should be the possibility that the author of the Green Book has made it safely through to his old stomping ground in Sirte, where tribal loyalty might prove stronger than fear of a Nato-backed Libyan force.

Sirte, where Gaddafi, at the very start of his dictatorship, turned the region's oil fields into the first big up-for-grabs international dividend for foreign investors after his 1969 revolution, is no Tikrit. It is the site of his first big African Union conference, scarcely 16 miles from the place of his own birth, a city and region that benefited hugely from his 41-year rule. Strabo, the Greek geographer, described how the dots of desert settlements due south of Sirte made Libya into a leopard skin. Gaddafi must have liked the metaphor. Almost 2,000 years later, Sirte was pretty much the hinge between the two Italian colonies of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica.

And in Sirte the "rebels" were defeated by the "loyalists" in this year's six-month war; we shall soon, no doubt, have to swap these preposterous labels – when those who support the pro-Western Transitional National Council will have to be called loyalists, and pro-Gaddafi rebels turn into the "terrorists" who may attack our new Western-friendly Libyan administration. Either way, Sirte, whose inhabitants are now supposedly negotiating with Gaddafi's enemies, may soon be among the most interesting cities in Libya.

Human Rights in Libya and Britain.

In Michel Houellebecq's novel Platform the world weary narrator Michel Renault says that when considering the bombing by NATO of Kosovo, as part of a campaign for human rights, that he thinks the term human rights is based on irony. It is not difficult to see why many are becoming cynical every time the word is used

The idea that human rights can be enshrined in a 'fast track' manner through war and 'liberal intervention' is seen as idealistic. A selfless moral crusade that seamlessly binds a truly enlightened domestic policy with a foreign policy agenda no less.

The bland deputy PM of Britain, "Nick" Clegg, has had an article in The Guardian published that may even well have been actually written by him, that neverthesless asserts this,

'Libya stands on the brink of a new future, one that holds out the promise of democracy and freedom after 40 years of oppression. One of the most important tasks facing the interim government is the prevention of reprisals.

That is why David Cameron and I have urged the National Transitional Council to exercise restraint and respect for human rights.

...something strange has happened in recent years: while governments have continued the call for greater rights abroad, they have belittled the relevance of rights at home'.
Something strange has indeed occurred.

The harsh truth is that the invasion and intervention in lands valued for their potential in supplying oil and gas tends to conflict with the notion that the human right to infinitely consume the world's resources is easily reconciliable with the promotion of liberal democracy.

The curtailment of civil liberties under New Labour was bound together with Anti-Terrorist legislation and absurdities such as the bill to introduce 'incitement to religious hatred' as a form of criminal activity in fear of some supposed monolithic 'the Muslim Community' feeling victimised.

This followed increased tensions over the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and the groundswell of opinion, hardly restricted to British Muslims, that these wars for resources that had as their aim the control of ever scarcer supplies of oil and gas.

These resources are essential to underpin the infinite growth utopia that liberal progressives consider the way to integrate citizens living in a "globalised world", benefitting the consumers of lands as Britain no less than those lands from which thousands of displaced migrants are intent on claiming asylum in. As compensation.

Western Europe is dominated by hubristic politicians and a substantial public opinion that is motivated by a combination of the continued greed for increased comfort and material luxury and the guilt that comes from governments intervening in resource rich lands to acheive this. This indicates a civilisation heading for disintegration and decline..

European nations as part of the EU are considered a power bloc based on a liberal vision different to that of the global hegemon across the Atlantic that in reality provides most of the finance and military hardware to fight the resource wars that the USA considers necessary for its national interests.

The difference between the EU and the USA is that the latter happens to be across the Atlantic and not the Mediterranean. So the conflict and potential for chaos in Libya will affect the EU far more than the USA. But the intervention in Libya is connected inherently to Iraq and Afghanistan-control of fossil fuels.

This means that investment in alternatives to petrol fuelled consumerism is more important to maintain world peace than sententious hypocritical grandstanding upon human rights that would be far better promoted by the committment to a civilisation not based on profligate oil based consumption.

Else the coming future is going to resemble something akin to the dystopia portrayed in the film Children of Men. Where relations between and within states are pared down to pathological hatreds over who retains what in material terms and human rights become 'our right' to survive against the 'barbarians at the gate'.

An "Iron Mountain" of Arms in Afghanistan. A Mound of Corpses.

The strategy of arming those to fight for Western geopolitical interests and, it has been hoped, to promote democracy in strategically valuable lands, is a common thread that links the struggle in Libya with that in Afghanistan.

Michael Breen opines, courtesy of The Guardian,

In the continuing struggle for Afghanistan's future, Nato hopes that a massive transfer of weapons and equipment will finally tip the balance in its favour. Over the next eight months, Afghanistan's security forces look forward to receiving a series of arms shipments worth $2.7bn that Nato planners have dubbed the "iron mountain".

This is what is termed termed Afghanistanisation . The idea is to reduce NATO deaths in regions such as Helmland, through which the TAPI pipeline will run, by getting the Afghans to do the work of securing this grand project that will subsequently accrue large transit fees for Kabul to complete 'nation building'.

The omission of any consideration of this central key geopolitical stategy of NATO in Afghanistan, whether it is thought that it is a good or bad idea, is a derleliction of duty amongst journalists in free democratic nations.

The news in the media in those nations directly concerned with the TAPI pipeline regularly mention its importance. The Guardian should deal with the centrality of the TAPI pipeline if it is to remain a source of objective journalism and discussion in Britain.

The reason billions are pouring into Afghanistan were set out clearly by Hillary Clinton.

CentralAsia newswire reports, this,

Thursday, July 21, 2011 - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday promoted the planned Turkmenistan-to-India natural gas pipeline while in the Indian capital New Delhi, but did not speak about the proposed ‘peace’ pipeline from Iran to India, The Hindu news agency noted Thursday.

Participating countries should continue with efforts to lay the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline “both for improved energy security in the subcontinent and the relatively clean energy natural gas that it would provide,” Clinton told an energy security meeting.

Iran and Pakistan announced plans to begin work on laying the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline before the end of this year. Iran has already completed 679 miles of pipeline on its territory, according to Pakistan’s petroleum and natural resources minister.

Washington sees its policy of containing the Tehran government as a way of stabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan, as it blames Iran for the uptick in violence in both states.

Clinton also encouraged Asian countries to work together on creating a new Silk Road of transnational networks of transit and economic connections to boost development in the volatile region.

"That means building more rail lines, highways, energy infrastructure, like the proposed (natural gas) pipeline to run from Turkmenistan, through Afghanistan, through Pakistan into India," the United Press International (UPI) news agency reported Clinton as saying.

There ought really to be a real and sensible discussion of this. Unless the political classes in the West regard the children, .i.e the public, to be too uninformed to even consider why 379 British troops have been killed there, as well as thousands of Afghan villagers.

Supporting Arab Revolution in Libya Defeats The Arab Revolution.

The facts are that in any Arab Revolution, Libya or elsewhere, the West has had and retains vital geostrategic interests primarily concerning the stability of the supply of oil. Even so, Seumas Milne, Guardian columnist and Stop the War Coalition activist believes NATO)'s backing of The Libyan rebels is an imperialist hijack".

With devastating logic Milne writes,

"Nato's intervention in Libya is a threat to the Arab revolution, but the forces that have been unleashed in the region won't be turned back so easily"

By intervening in Libya to hold back Gaddafi from "turning back the forces that have been unleashed in the region", NATO has in fact 'turned back' the revolution. By preventing the uprising from from being wiped out, any NATO backed government now threatens to be destroyed by the they revolution backed.

If NATO had let Gaddafi wipe out the rebels, then the anti-Gaddafi forces would have succeeded. But Milne is clear this was not the case,

In Libya, the basis for foreign military intervention has been the claim that Muammar Gaddafi's forces were about to carry out a massacre of civilians in Benghazi after he threatened to hunt down armed rebels "house to house". Violent repression was certainly meted out against a popular uprising, but once insurrection had morphed into war there's little evidence that the regime's troops were in a position to overrun an armed and hostile city of 700,000 people.

Yet according to Milne, there was, therefore, no real way Gaddafi could have crushed the rebels in any case, meaning that either that no bloodshed would have happened or that it would and it is of no business of the West if it had.

Yet what evidence is there that Gaddafi was not in a position six months ago to cause a bloodbath in Benghazi before the insurrection mysteriously "morphed" into a civil war that predated NATO intervention ?

Western oil interests had been served fairly well by Gaddafi prior to the outbreak of violence, though there had been increasing concern that Russia and China had been making inroads with Gaddafi's regime in gaining new oil concessions.

The truth is that once Gaddafi lost de facto control over Libya a civil war would have ensued irrespective of the West. Certainly Gaddafi could not have overrun Benghazi in the way that rebel militias are doing now courtesy of the involvement of NATO and the CIA and MI6.

From the perspective of energy hungry Western states, something was needed to have been done to ensure the world's supply of the best crude oil was not left in limbo, precisely after the debacle following the invasion of Iraq made it all the more important to secure the supply from Libya.

Even if Milne's predictable loathing of the intervention in Libya is a result of his Leninist 'anti-imperialist' stance, as opposed to any interest in the predicament of the Libyan's who wanted an end to dictatorship, his idea that the NTC elites will sell out to Western interests over that of most Libyans is not unfounded.

Libya, like all Arab states wil oil wealth, has a huge burgeoning population consisting of young people, often angry men who want to be rid of unaccountable power often supported by the West as a means of ensuring "stability" and the flow of cheap oil.

Yet new governments beholden to the NATO investment in overthrowing Gaddafi will have a problem with creating a new order that will ensure enough oil revenue will be used to invest in providing work for those who will not be fast tracked into well paid jobs in a revived oil sector.

The situation is as it is now and if the new NTC does not preside over a smooth transition in which not only the emigres and former members of Gaddafi's regime benefit, then the period of transition could well see new infighting and violence.

If the Libyans who fought for the TNC fail to see any benefits from Libyan oil somewhat quickly then resentment will follow. As a Guardian report stated just today that Global Witness campaign group has emphasised,

"Any deals at this time could raise concerns within Libya that international support for the NTC is driven by a desire for access to oil rather than for the benefit of the Libyan people. The NTC is likely to have to honour Gaddafi-era contracts in order to get oil revenues flowing. But no new deals for the exploration or exploitation of oilfields should be considered until an elected government can review existing rules and laws to ensure robust transparency and accountability."

Brendan O'Donnell, senior oil campaigner at Global Witness stated,

"By drawing a line under Gaddafi-era corruption and the mismanagement of public wealth, the NTC could champion resource justice in the transitional constitution and set a great precedent for Libya's future."

The group called for transparency provisions to be written into the transitional constitution that require public disclosure of how Libya manages its oil sector, and disclosure of all revenues associated with it. It also said terms of existing oil contracts should be disclosed, and details of agreements made by the NTC with governments and companies involving sovereign funds or the exchange of cash, crude oil or "IOUs" secured against frozen assets should be made public – and open to scrutiny.

"A transparently managed oil sector could prove the catalyst for much-needed development and stability in the country," said Global Witness. "But any perception that the rebels or Nato countries have their own designs on Libya's oil could stir further division and conflict."

The danger is the NTC fail to do this due to unrestrained greed and ethnic and tribal factions seeking to put their interests before the common good of Libya, which is hardly a nation state but an artificial unity cobbled out of provinces out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire.

As much as supporters of 'liberal intervention' might see Milne as a cynical commentator who opposes the Western states as "imperialist" from an ideological perspective, the unpleasant reality is that his gloom laden apocalyptic view of further violence could well prove true.

Sane people do not hold to the Leninist position of "the worse, the better" as so-called 'anti-war' fanatics who have hijacked the mood of unease over these wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Libya hold to, those who are more concerned with their post-Soviet hatred of the USA for having won the Cold War than anything else.

However, the West needs to invest far more money in alternatives to being overdependent upon the oil that fuels Western consumerism. The Sun was more candid about the stakes as far as Britons are concerned when it claimed that the Mad Dog's overthrow meant 4p off petrol prices.

As the Western economies falter on the brink of a double dip recession, access to diverse oll supplies have become of more importance. Yet populist anti-war types never point out the fact that even the poorer members of a consumer society as Britain depend on cheap oil to maintain their living standards.