The Strategic Value of Afghanistan to the US in the New Great Game.

With the prisoner exchange of a US soldier for five top Taliban commanders, there has been a lot of talk about whether Bergdahl was a deserter, if trading him for five seasoned 'terrorists' could be worth it and whether they could possibly pose a threat to the US and US citzens.

One thing that remains uncontested is the claim that Obama is committed to withdrawal of  the US military presence by 2016. This is quite clearly not the case.

Obama is only winding down the conventional US military forces in Afghanistan. But many US contracted mercenaries are set to stay. in 2013 it was estimated that out of 110,404 contractors still working in Afghanistan, some 33,444 are American. Hence the use of the term 'drawdown'.

The US is not withdrawing from Afghanistan until its geopolitical ambitions to create a state stable enough to ensure the construction of the TAPI pipeline is ensured. As outlined in visits to Central Asia and India in 2011 by Hillary Clinton, the New Silk Road strategy is considered a vital US interest.

The construction of the TAPI pipeline is essential if Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India are to be integrated into an economic community of interest and aligned to the US more than towards global competitors such as China and regional powers that threaten US interests such as Iran.

The value of the TAPI pipeline is that it would supply gas from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India as a substitute for Iran's rival IP pipeline. The war aims of the US in Afghanistan dovetail with the policy of isolating and imposing sanctions upon Iran so as to curtail its influence in both Asia and the Middle East.

Though 'nation building' was dropped in around 2011, the emphasis has shifted towards trying to forge a deal between the Taliban and Kabul so as to facilitate the removal of US ground troops and push forward the New Silk Road strategy (the TAPI could not be built if the Taliban threatened it ).

The prisoner swap reflects the new calculation that if the Taliban continues to offer a threat to US interests in Afghanistan, then drones can be used against them and US troops are going to be removed from Afghanistan anyway and replaced with US trained Afghan troops.

One reason the Obama administration has focused on getting Bergdahl and US soldiers home is that it does not want to be seen as doing deals with the Taliban, a group often conflated with Al Qaida so as to provide a justification for 'staying the course' in Afghanistan as part of the global 'war on terror'.

The war in Afghanistan was never only about counter-terrorism and for the best part of the last decade it was about realising other war aims that have never been clearly outlined in public. But only the credulous believe that the US fought the war for the official reasons given or that it won't retain a military presence.

In fact, as part of the new Pivot to Asia strategy, the US is bound to preserve a substantial military presence in Afghanistan so as to counter China's rival new Silk route strategies. With China now rejecting the IP pipeline and backing TAPI, there is the danger that it could increase its influence in the 'AfPak' zone.

China's 'march west' indicates a strategy of being the dominant power on the Eurasian 'World Island' so as to gain access to energy and as a counter to the US Pivot To Asia which is mostly concerned about controlling the sea lanes and oil tanker routes from the Middle East to China.

With the US finding problems finding a base in Central Asia ( Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan have not wanted US bases in recent years), Afghanistan, with its "supersized" Bagram Air Base, will continue to be vital to check China's plans to expand its influence west.

Enclosed within Bagram, US and NATO service personnel should be relatively safe and the drones would be doing the work in attacking targets and monitoring the region from the Bagram, Kandahar, Jalalabad and Salerno bases, ones that the US has no intention of closing.

Syria : The Danger of Energy Geopolitics.

Back in September military action by the US and France over the alleged chemical weapons attack by Assad's forces on a suburb of Damascus seemed inevitable. Dossiers were being produced and ministers were waxing indignant about the need to 'punish' Assad.

The rapid climbdown by the US was forced upon it by  Russia's brilliantly timed diplomatic intervention when they struck a deal in which Assad would allow both  Russia and the US to oversee the destruction of the chemical weapons arsenal. The US was thereby allowed  to save face and claim its coercive diplomacy had worked.

War was averted. Yet the issue, of course, was never completely about chemical weapons, though the hardline on 'weapons of mass destruction' was also designed to send out a message to Iran that their alleged programme to build a nuclear bomb was of a piece with the dangerous rogue state of Syria which is its stalwart ally.

The reason why the US and France were drawn to the brink of intervening with missile strikes and aircraft carriers had been sent to the Eastern Mediterranean was the dangerous New Great Game over gas resources and pipeline routes, one that explains Western double standards over Syria and Egypt.

After the Egyptian army had mown down protesters and their barricades with bullets and bulldozers  in the streets of Cairo who were against the military coup, Western diplomats made weasel comments about the need for dialogue. When Assad was alleged to have used poison gas in Syria, the call was to remove him.

From the US perspective, there was far less to gain in intervening to try and put pressure on Assad than certain EU powers such as Britain and France. The US felt it needed to act because it was tied to the rhetoric about Assad's use of chemical weapons being a 'red line' that once, when crossed, necessitated action.

True, the US still has energy interests in the Middle East better served by shoring up the regional powers that are backing the Sunni insurgents seeking to overthrow Assad's Shia regime, most obviously Saudi Arabia and Turkey. But the shale gas 'revolution' in the US reduced dependence upon the other enemy of Assad-Qatar.

All three external powers backing and funding the insurgents against Assad decided to do so in order to get a new regime that would not oppose their energy interests, in particular the plan to build more gas pipelines to EU states, to export Qatari liquefied natural gas ( LNG ) and reduce dependence on Iran and Russia.

Energy geopolitics is a prime determiner of  the relations between states in the early twenty first century as the race is on to control supplies that are not keeping pace with the burgeoning demand. States haunted by the prospect of their decline such as Britain and France have been the most aggressive in struggling to retain influence.

Part of this is post-imperial hubris but that ties together with both these states role as large arms providers to Middle Eastern states such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The BG group has major interests in exploiting Egyptian gas reserves ( hence the mealy mouthed denunciations of SCAF for their bloody coup d' etat ).

The problem with Syria, from France and Britain's perspective, is that he occupies a piece of strategic land through which Iran wants to extend its energy interests no less than Russia which has leased a naval port in Tarsous through which it can protect its energy interests in the Levant with new discoveries of undersea gas.

But Russia also seeks to guarantee the potential "Islamic pipeline' that would, in any post-civil war Syria, be built from the South Pars gas field that Iran shares with Qatar through Iraq and Syria to the Mediterranean. That would cut the power of Qatar and Turkey as energy providers to the EU.

Despite the immediate crisis having diminished since September 2013, the longer term potential for intractable conflict remains. More than that, there is evidence that radicalised Muslims are going to and fro from Western nations to Syria to become hardened jihadists and who might carry out attacks there.

There is evidence that the secret services have been prepared to use these jihadists as 'assets' in the past from Afghanistan, to Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Kosovo in order to further energy interests. The prospect of 'blowback' being visited upon Britain and France is a lethal consequence of this New Great Game.

Syria: The New Great Game for Gas.

'US defense secretary Chuck Hagel says US forces are now ready to act on any order by President Barack Obama to strike Syria. The US navy has four destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean sea within range of targets inside Syria. The US also has warplanes in the region'.

It seems that the point of no return has been reached with the prospect of cruise missile strikes against the Syrian government being launched. The propaganda machine is in full spin, the media is focusing on the 'implementation' of a military attack that has been

This is despite the work of the UN inspectors in trying to find solid evidence chemical weapon use and this concern has been eclipsed. The YouTube clips and instantaneous images from social media sites of dying children believed to be casualties of a 'heinous' attack by 'the 'Assad regime' are a propaganda coup.

There are token nods towards the UN inspectors finding the facts first but the momentum towards military action is in full swing in order to maintain Western 'credibility', the same position held by Madelaine Albright with regards the 78 day bombardment of Serbia during the Kosovo Conflict in 1999.

But Syria is not Kosovo and the potential for the conflict to spin out of control as the result of military action far greater. The aim of the West has been 'regime change' from the outset of the civil war. Iran was not engaged with diplomatically and Assad's removal the precondition for negotiations.

Regime change is about the geopolitics and the control of energy supplies. Qatar supported the Muslim Brotherhood and Saudi Arabia other Wahhabi Islamist militias to remove Assad because he signed a deal to construct a rival gas pipeline from Iranian sector of the South Pars gas field in the Persian Gulf.

The New Great Game for gas is a vital interest for the West which has become increasingly dependent upon LNG from Egypt and Qatar in the last decade, not least Britain whose North Sea gas reserves have depleted at an alarming rate since 1999. The EU consumes 25% of the world's gas. It produces 2%.

Iran is warning the West about its attack on the Syrian state because this geopolitical gas export route through Iraq and Syria to the Mediterranean is another way to assert its standing as a global player with whom the West would need to negotiate rather than threaten with violence.

With gas export routes to the east through the Iran-Pakistan pipeline blocked off by Western manoeuvres to keep Pakistan onside ready for the construction of the Trans-Afghan pipeline-the central war aim in Afghanistan-Iran will be bound to try and back Hizbollah in Syria all the more as it becomes encircled.

If US missile strikes from its warships in the Mediterranean cause damage to Assad's regime without defeating it it can only put the backers of Syria's proxy armies further at odds in a way that could create the potential for all out regional conflict with lethal global ramifications.

For Russia has vital interests in backing Assad because a huge new gas field was discovered in April 2011 by the Syrians near the border with Lebanon and Tartus-the home of the Russian Mediterranean naval base and a potential export base of gas to the EU. Russia's Gazprom is also interested in gas deposits off Cyprus.

Unilateral US missile attacks, aided by willing European states increasingly desperate to be independent of Russian gas, is bound to be responded to by Russia should it lead to the real prospect of the Assad government collapsing because it could destabilise Chechnya. 

The decision to threaten missile strikes as a substitute for diplomacy or as an attempt to force the Assad government to step down could literally backfire if it fails to achieve that ( which is likely ) but only steps up the regional instability that could create an even worse situation to deal with in future.

Egypt: A Cockpit of Domestic and International Power Politics.

On the Washington's reaction to the Egyptian coup, Jonathan Steele writes,

'It was taken aback by the anti-Mubarak protests in 2011 and hesitated for days before persuading General Hussein Tantawi, the top military man of the time, to tell Mubarak to resign. It supported Morsi's removal after the event (and perhaps in advance), claiming the army is "restoring democracy" in John Kerry's phrase'.

Is there really any evidence, however, that Washington was not taken by surprise by the coup ? Or plotted it ? The reason that Washington has not cut the funding to the Egyptian military is more because it has to depend on it to preserve 'stability' against any threat from radicalised Islamists that come from the nature of the coup.

The Egyptian military has been armed and trained by the US since the 1979s to protect the state against threats from jihadists, including the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1980s and 1990s, and secure the Suez Canal, the border with Israel and strong relations with Saudi Arabia.

SCAF knew it could crush the Muslim Brotherhood without Washington being able to do anything to stop it even it it wanted. The overdependence upon oil and Egypt's geostrategic significance to the Western powers, as well as the potential threat of Cairo moving towards closer ties with China, ensure that.

As, unfortunately, do the lucrative multi-billion dollar arms deals that Washington has with Egypt. The $1.3 billion given to the Egyptian military is a form of subsidy to the US arms industry and firms such as Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics to boost sales, one that 'preserves jobs' and US manufacturing.

However, even if Washington did cut aid, the Egyptian military is a power in its own right and can use revenue from its own vast business empire in Egypt and money from Saudi Arabia to buy weapons in order to preseve 'stability'. Moreover, Egypt bought $800 million in Chinese weapons after 2003 and $600 million from Russia.

Egypt is now the focus of an arms race that is tied to geopolitical rivalry in the oil and gas rich Middle East. Indeed, the US itself has sought in the last decade to boost arms exports to Egypt so that the vital sea route to the Gulf of Aden, Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean is maintained against threats.

With China making inroads into Saudi Arabia and developing oil and trade deals, Washington is going to be wary of losing influence should Egypt turn towards the east as well as it has shown signs of doing not only under the old regime but under Morsi as well.

Morsi Lost a Brutal Power Struggle.

Steele goes on to claim of US statesmen that,

'They seem to have forgotten that Mohamed Morsi was elected president by millions of people in a free vote..... Morsi's rhetoric was often crudely partisan but his actions were not so one‑sided or narrow, given that he tried to appease the military by appointing several Mubarak-era technocrats to his cabinet'

Morsi was elected with 51% of the vote in a presidential election against a rival candidate he narrowly beat on a turnout of 43%. This came after the lower house of the Egyptian Parliament was dissolved after the Supreme Court decreed there has been electoral irregularities in Muslim Brotherhood seats.

Essentially, what has happened since the 'Arab Spring' of 2011 is a brutal power struggle between the old regime and the Muslim Brotherhood that has sidelined the more secular democrats and liberals and presented Egypt with a choice of either supporting the old regime again or identifying with the 'martyrs'.

The electoral turnouts prior to the coup in elections were dwindling as Egyptians saw they had no real choice. After the People's Assembly was dissolved in June 2012, there seemed to be few safeguards against Morsi's attempt to ram through a constitution that did not have popular support.

Apart, that is, from the Egyptian army which got rid of Morsi and a new constitution that had been approved of just above 60% of voters in a referendum in December 2012 in which only 37% of voters bothered with. No checks and balances on the president's authority has been guaranteed before his election.

By failing to try to rule for all Egyptians and, ironically, by thinking he had put the army on his side ( they retained a direct role in politics even under his new constitution ) at a time of economic collapse which any new government would have faced problems with, Morsi sealed his and his party's fate.

The irony is that the Muslim Brotherhood tried in November 2012 to strip civilian courts such as the SCC of their power while having done nothing to restrain the power of the military courts whose position was actually protected under the new constitution promulgated by the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Muslim Brotherhood's failure to restrain the power of the Egyptian military and to end the military trials that Mubarak introduced, precisely because civilian courts were not effective enough in imprisoning Muslim Brotherhood members, will now be used against them.

By failing to work with those who wanted to restain the power of the Egyptian army, while consistely alienating other groups who had participated in the struggle to be rid of Mubarak's dictatorship, the Muslim Brotherhood helped to expedite the rule of the army.

Patrick Cockburn got it right in The Independent ( Egypt on the brink of a new dark age, as the generals close in for the kill )

'Right up to the giant rallies in Egypt on 30 June Morsi believed the mass petition against his rule was "absurd and unconstitutional". He convinced himself, against compelling evidence to the contrary, that the Egyptian armed forces had accepted a subsidiary role so long as their interests were protected. By policies of sustained ineptitude Morsi and the Brotherhood forced together a strange and awkward alliance against themselves of officials from Mubarak's police state, the military establishment, anti-Mubarak leftists and liberals, businessmen, Copts, intelligentsia and even Salafists'

Egypt: The New Great Game and Global Arms Race

'The EU's top diplomat...Lady Ashton ( a Labour Peer ) is in Cairo to try to negotiate an unlikely settlement between Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood and the army, but demands and recent behaviour from both sides mean reconciliation is far from likely.'

So reports the Guardian's Patrick Kingsley. Lady Ashton has reported from an undisclosed location after having been escorted there by the Egyptian army that ex-president Morsi is doing 'well', knows what is going on in the world and that she would not comment on her visit as "I was not going to represent his views".

It is hard to see what bargaining power Ashton actually has and whether this is mere 'public diplomacy' to make it appear as though the EU is in the business of 'democracy promotion' as opposed to promoting its business interests over democracy in the name of 'stability'.

The two, business interests and democracy, are not necessarily incompatible. Yet the military takeover is not very likely to promote democracy as the old Mubarak era elites in the 'deep state' are only prepared to tolerate a measure of it provided they can stave off any threats to their hegemony in Egypt.

The only thing Ashton seems to have offered is vacuous platitudes about the need for a "fully inclusive transition process, taking in all political groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood". That will impress neither the Muslim Brotherhood not the Egyptian army which is backed directly by Washington.

The reason the US will not remove its $1.3bn funding is that an authoritarian regime is favoured by strategic partners and major suppliers of oil to the US such as Saudi Arabia. The kingdom fears the spread of Muslim Brotherhood ideas in the region and a weak regime in which terrorists can thrive.

Indeed, after Mubarak fell in 2011 and the US switched to supporting a democratic transition in Egypt, Saudi Arabia indicated that it could draw closer to new emerging energy hungry industrial powers such as India and China. This is poses a threat to US hegemony over the Gulf region.

Moreover, Egyptian generals have long indicated that the $1.3 billion US military aid, which has not changed since 1978, is not substantial enough. There has been resistance to the army downscaling its military capacity to act only as a rapid deployment force to defend Western oil interest in the Gulf.

Given Egypt's global geostrategic significance occupying the land bridge between North Africa and the Middle East, and with the Suez Canal and the SUMED pipeline, the Egyptian military and the 'deep state' have every interest in playing off rival suitors vying for influence in the region.

Ultimately, Washington will not want to sacrifice influence both in Egypt and Saudi Arabia against China's and Russia's attempt to make strategical inroads into the Middle East. There is an arms race now on with both Great Powers which are eager to gain a foothold and diplomatic leverage.

A Congressional Service Report in late 2011 revealed that Egypt purchased $800 million in Chinese weapons since 2003 and $600 million from Russia. That led to the US increasing its sales of weapons to Egypt from $4.5 billion between 2003 and 2007 to $7.8 billion from 2007 to 2011.

Compared to these broader trends and the feared decline of the US as a world empire, the delay in delivering four F-16 fighter jets to Egypt is a mere diplomatic token gesture no less than Lady Ashton's show of concern about the democratic transition being placed back on track through being 'inclusive'.

Egypt is the site of a brutal power struggle in which the army can ramp up the the stakes by executing a military coup in the name of preserving 'stability' . Then, as General Sisi has indicated, the consequent rise of terrorist threats as all the more reason why those interested in regional stability should support it.

These are the realities of the West being far too dependent upon oil and gas to fuel their high octane economies. The EU state's representatives will warble on about human rights and democracy but are always prepared to do that while leaving the real business of energy geopolitics to the US and NATO.

Both in the Middle East and in Central Asia a New Great Game is on between the major powers for control over oil supplies and the pipeline routes that ensure hegemony. Egypt is squarely in the middle of that global contest as is Syria, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, the latter being another pipeline transit state.

The Geopolitical Factors Behind the Syrian Crisis.

It's now official. The US has announced, in response to what it regards as confirmation that the Assad regime is using chemical weapons, that it will now arm the 'rebels' in Syria. This morning the Guardian newspaper headline reported 'US says it will arm Syrian rebels following chemical weapons test'.

The US was positively itching to arm 'the rebels' for some time. The chemical weapons pretext was one needed to convince them that could conceal a cynical strategy that had already covertly been promoting via the CIA in arming jihadists just as they did in Afghanistan during the 1980s.

The secular Syrian democrats who initiated protests against President Assad are no longer influential and the 'rebels' are better now term insurgents as they were in Iraq when Sunni militias with similar ideologies fought against the US and then the Shia guerillas that were allowed by the US to defeat them.

The willingness of the US, UK and France to back Sunni militias in Syria is a consequence of the fact that it backed majority Shia dominance in Iraq, and turned a blind eye to sectarian and ethnic cleansing after 2006, as the price of getting a stable government in Baghdad and being eventually able to withdraw troops.

Having supported a Shia government in Iraq, the US and UK now find themselves fearing Shia dominance promoted by Iran spreading in to Syria in a way that would upset the balance of power in the Middle East. Added to that, if Assad wins, Syria, Iraq and Iran would potentially move closer.

This poses a threat to Western geopolitical strategies for containing Iran which, in effect, means imposing punitive sanctions to destabilise the government, politicising the IAEA to find Iran guilty of trying to create a nuclear bomb and continuing the war in Afghanistan to hem it in from the east.

Control over pipeline supply routes are part of this lethal New Great Game, one becoming more dangerous with the growth of the Indian and Chinese super economies and the Western attempt to compete in Central Asia and the Middle East for access to fossil fuel resources.

The Afghanistan War, set to continue by covert means and by supporting US contractors after troop 'drawdown' ( i.e. not withdrawal ) by 2014, is crucially concerned with blocking off Iranian gas exports east through the partially completed IP pipeline to Pakistan. The US favours the TAPI pipeline.

The proposals for a Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline from Iran's South Pars gas field which is shares with rival Qatar, who is backing Sunni Muslim Brotherhood Islamist militias in Syria, has created consternation in Saudi Arabia and, of course, in Turkey, the main 'East-West pipeline transit country after Russia.

Destroying Iranian power is the key to hegemony over both the Middle East and Central Asia which is why the US and UK have repeatedly made Iran the most demonised nation in the region, even if it's government commits far fewer human rights abuses than Saudi Arabia, an outright despotism.

The fact is that the three permanent security council members that 'represent' the West are not prepared to see the insurgents lose , as they have been after the defeat in Qusair because the ultimate game plan is to curtail and roll back Iranian influence in Syria.

With a Shia dominated government favourable in Iraq, the balance of power has tilted towards Iran. That threatens the interests of Saudi Arabia and the stability of certain other minority Sunni regimes such as Bahrain that faced uprisings in the wake of the Arab Spring by Shia Muslims this time.

It will be interesting to see how Iran and Russia will react to the US decision. to arm the 'rebels' The only certainty is an intensification of the war, regional instability and a potentially very dangerous clash of interests together with an arms race by outside powers to back 'their side'.

This is a very, very dangerous situation. It has all the elements in place for a potential escalation into an all out regional war and major diplomatic crisis with global ramifications. For those in Britain interested in averting catastrophe, energy security needs to be looked as a matter of emergency.

The New Great Game: Reflection on The Emerging Geopolitics of the 2st Century.

This essay by John Gray in the New Great Game shines some light on the geopolitical context surrounding the increased stakes that are there with regards 'regime change' in Syria and involve the Great Powers.

'Alongside new sorts of warfare, older kinds of conflict have resumed. With India and China at odds over Pakistan, Afghan­istan and control of the South China Sea, the world’s rising powers are locked into strategic competition with one another – and also with the west. Whatever the upshot of French intervention in Mali, it will not be the last such neocolonial incursion. Africa is being remilitarised by western powers in what seems to be a response to China’s economic expansion into the continent. The case of the Democratic Republic of Congo – where millions of non-combatants have died as a result of decades-long warfare – shows the damage this kind of conflict can wreak. The terrifying destructive potential of nuclear weapons has altered the modes of warfare without necessarily reducing the human costs of war.

Further afield, significant reserves of natural gas have been identified off the coasts of Egypt, Israel, Lebanon and Syria, all already involved in long-running conflicts.

Many will resist the suggestion that the coming century will be shaped by geopolitical competition. Like Norman Angell, they will insist that war is no longer a rational method of acquiring resources; production and trade are so much more efficient. From an economic point of view this may be true, but it is not economic calculation that determines the behaviour of states.The Gulf war of 1990-91 was a pure resource conflict, and oil was a vital factor in triggering the 2003 invasion of Iraq. As the polar ice melts from global warming, the Arctic may become a site in the next round of the New Great Game. In turn, as changes in the planetary environment become more disruptive, governments are likely to resort to geo-engineering and future wars may feature climate modification being deployed as a weapon. Great powers will co-operate in many areas but against a background of continued rivalry and heightened risks'.

The Syrian Civil War;From National to Regional Conflict.

The reason the Syrian Civil was has been exacerbated, as argued by Oxford University's Dr Mark Almond, is that from the outset the UK and USA demanded "Assad Must Go" without thinking about the consequences and chaos that could cause.

The reason Russia and Chia are have blocked all US decisions in the security council is that the Western powers lied about only imposing a "no fly zone" to protect the civilians as opposed to backing the insurgents into overthrowing Gaddafi.

Then they proceeded to funnel arms and material aid to factions in the Libyan opposition to Gaddafi whose brutality was often as bad as the Libyan regime.Now the new government in Liya, some of whom defected from Gaddafi, some of who are close to the US is facing a 'Second Revolution".

The point being here that the Western Powers continued interference and refusal to negotiate diplomatic solutions to complicated problems merely "ups the ante" and makes regional wars that could have been contained into even worse and wider conflgrations ( as with Libya's conflict spilling into Mali).

As Syria, unlike Libya, has no massive oil reserves, it's unlike a ground intervention willl occur. Yet the same tactic of arming "the right insurgents", has continuously led to the absurdity of "blowback" as British born jihadists jet off to Turkey fight proxy wars then return angry and aggressive.

In Syria the impasse has been partly cause by the catastrophic diplomacy of so-called Western "statesmen" and the failure to put pressure on the Saudi regime to stop arming and channelling billions of dollars to the Syrian insurgents.

With Russia and China unable to trust a duplitous US and UK, still trying to train the "right sunni insurgents" on the ground within Syria, a negotiated settlement that much include Assad is receding. Evidently, Assad is poeerful enough to resist the Sunni insurgents.

And the the way Gaddafi was brutally murdered without a trial, gives Assad every reason to not concede an inch unless the insurgents lay down their arms. And the insurgents have rejected every UN request for a negotiated settlement.

The announcement from Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel that the USA is seriously considering directly arming the insurgents is a stratwegy that is akin to insanity. If they arm the sunni insurgents, the US will inflame the sunni and shia divide across the Middle East.

Iran will step up its provision of arms as might Russia. A civil war could spread across the region leading to a collapse in oil production and global economic chaos. As in many rentier regimes from Bahrain to Saudi Arabia, sunni elites actively repress shia Muslims.

Israel's bombing of Hezbollah's positions proves that, though it will claim self defence, that the ultimate game plan is "regime change" not only in Syria but in Iran too which uses Hezbollah as a proxy in its attempt to maintain regional power and influence.

Stepping up the war by arming the insurgents is part of a plan to destroy Iranian influence to the west. Just as the Afghanistan War remains crucially concerned with securing the TAPI Pipeline as the alternative to the preferred Iranian-Pakistan rival and so destroying Iran's revenue from gas exports.

The target is clear: this is all part of the New Great Game for hegemony over the Middle East in the Middle East and Central Asia in which Iran is the main obstacle. The conflict is driven by energy geopolitics and US over dependence upon oil in these dangerous and volatile lands.

The urgent need is to find alternatives to oil and gas in Central Asia and the Middle East and restructure the economy so that high octane consumerism is replaced with a saner and more sustainable use of finite natural resources. The alternative is war, chaos and economic collapse

Why the Afghanistan War is about Great Power Geopolitics and the TAPI Pipeline.

The New Silk Route includes the TAPI Pipeline as well as the railroads. There is ample evidence, cited by Afghan energy ministers going back to 2003 ( as revealed in Lutz Kleveman's The New Great Game, that the West was in Afghanistan to secure the construction of the pipeline.
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Facts are facts. All beneficiaries of the TAPI pipeline have signed up to it: it is a stated intention to get it built and is regularly lauded by US diplomats and State Department officials.
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One document from 2011 makes this long term continuity in policy clear.
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The pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan through Afghanistan was first proposed in the mid-1990s with the now defunct American energy company Unocal-led consortium and the Argentine company Bridas vying for signing a deal with the then Taliban regime in Kabul. However, security considerations combined with international condemnation of the Taliban regimes on women and human rights had led both the companies to pull out, leaving the project in a lurch. The idea was revived after the Taliban were unseated from Kabul. At the end of 2002, three countries (Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkmenistan) signed a new agreement. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) conducted a feasibility study and rendered the project possible in 2005. Following an approval by the Indian cabinet, India became the fourth country to join the project in 2008.

 The same document goes on to state, contrary to the unfounded and ignorant claim that TAPI was a "dead duck" by 1998 or part of some leftist "conspiracy theory"

The United States (US), for example, is propounding the project as ‘magic glue’ that will bind the warring factions and their regional proxies into an interdependent cooperative framework.The US hopes that TAPI will in all likelihood wean India away from the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline from Iran’s South Pars gas complex in the Persian Gulf. In addition to further isolating Iran,the resultant interdependence and benefits of cooperation might act as a catalyst for peace between India and Pakistan.

Now no foreign policy decision, such as NATO's involvement in Afghanistan is ever only "all about" one thing: there are multiple policy objectives, something that's difficult to explain to those who think the pipeline is about profits as opposed to energy geopolitics.

The IP Pipeline became a reality this week: yet it faces the same problems that the TAPI Pipeline faces in being the target of enemy guerilla forces ( in the IP case it's Balochistani seperatists ). So it's no more a reality until it's built than TAPI is not a mere stated intention.

The point not grasped by those who see themselves as involved in 'infrastructure projects'  and , therefore, in the know, remain ignorant about howt they dovetail with foreign policy strategies about which mere engineers may well not be well educated about.

The four governments have until this year been in dialogue about the TAPI pipeline: Pakistan has not even reneged on it's desire to remain part of the project. It has simply rejected US intimidation about accepting the IP as a violation of the sanctions policy on Iran

Intelligent Pakistani analysts who know the history of the Great Game understand the new revived one. The US is still deeply engaged in Afghanistan due to the geostrategic benefits of the TAPI Pipeline and hemming in Iranian regional influence via gas exports.

As Salman Rafi Sheikh asserts,

Dominant military presence in Afghanistan is, therefore, regarded by the Americans as vitally important for actualising US’ interests. It provides the platform through which US can threaten its potential regional rivals as well as dominate gas and oil export routes emanating from Eurasian landmass. Also, Afghanistan lies along a proposed pipe line route from the Caspian Sea oil fields to the Indian Ocean; therefore, its importance in US’ 21st century grand strategy is critical. To be realistic, therefore, US’ invasion of Afghanistan has to be analysed from the perspective of US’ geo-strategic and geo-energy objectives, rather than from the US’ projected perspective of ‘elimination of global terrorists’.

The successful implementation of Silk Road Act required huge military presence in the region as well as controlled militarization of the Eurasian region as a means to securing control over oil and energy reserves and protecting pipeline routes and trade corridors.

Again, the hard evidence is there. It is possible to interpret the facts in a different manner. Yet ignorance is no basis upon which to have an intelligent discussion. Every bogus claim that raising the stegic significance of the TAPI Pipeline theory is a "conspiracy theory" is a product of a reaction to those who really do think TAPI is only about corporate profits.

A Tale of Two Pipelines Part II

Global media now consists of mutual partisanships where objective journalism is becoming increasingly more scarce. Simon Tisdall, the Guardian's "World Correspondent", seldom seems to break out of repeating what is Western government "Public Diplomacy" as opposed to working out what the contending sides interests are in global conflicts.

Today he opines,

"The US is urging alternative energy solutions on Islamabad, including a notional and, given the security issues involved, rather fanciful plan for a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to India via Afghanistan and Pakistan",

The name for it is the TAPI Pipeline and it has been consistently the option the US is trying to force Pakistan to accept over the rival IP Pipeline. Tisdall completely omits the centrality of this project in the determination of NATO to "stay the course" in Afghanistan.

The TAPI Pipeline was termed "The New Silk Route" by Hilary Clinton. It is a prime war objective in Afghanistan that is routinely omitted from Western media discussion , including The Guardian. As it seems to undermine the "Public Diplomacy" that the war is about "humanitarian intervention".

The problem with Western geostrategy in Afghanistan is that building this alternative to the IP Pipeline is obviously hampered by Taliban guerrilla activity in areas such as Helmland through which TAPI would have to pass ( it has to skirt around the Afghan mountain ranges).

The reason Zadari is resisting US pressure is due to the fact that gas from the IP pipeline is four times cheaper than via the TAPI Pipeline and he has to react to the reality that Pakistan has recently suffered from numerous energy blackouts several times a day.

This reality is the pressing one that Pakistan has to deal with, so it is not a reaction based on simple "Anti-Americanism". The hostility to the USA come from its energy interests taking second place to the US strategy of encircling and hemming in Iranian regional ambitions.

The idea that US and British troops will be "withdrawn" in 2014, which Tisdall repeats as if mere fact, is not factual. Public Diplomacy noe emphasises troop "drawdown", which means troops will remain in substantial numbers after 2014.

The British public has been routinely told half truths about the Afghanistan War. The major war objective was and always has been strongly about the benefits of the TAPI Pipeline. This was discussed in detail by Lutz Klevemann in his The New Great Game.

While the Taliban where prepared to host Al Qaida, the war in Afghanistan, which has now fanned across the porous borders with northern Pakistan, the war was about removing Bin Laden and his terrorists. But the recent move by the US to do a deal with the Taliban proves two things.

Firstly, the war was only partly about removing Al Qaida. Before that in the 1990s it was also US geostrategy to to a deal with the Taliban in order to facilitate the building of the pipeline. The attacks of 9/11 meant the Taliban were no longer regional allies ( they were also conveniently anti-Iranian )

Secondly, the Afghanistan War was only concerned with "humanitarian intervention" as part of a doctrine of "liberal interventionism" ( believed in by armchair advocates with no grasp of geopolitics ) as a secondary aim. It was a rationalisation for the "infrastructure projects" ( i.e the TAPI Pipeline ).

Anatol Lieven has commented in the Pakistani Times ( where information on what these wars are really about ) that NATO will not withdraw by 2014. So the war will continue apace, not least with this deal between Iran and Pakistan over the IP Pipeline.

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,

'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.

The TAPI Pipeline: How to use "Public Diplomacy" to dress up a Resource War as a "Regional Infrstructure Project"

It is curious the way that Washington's representatives often try to downplay the role of the TAPI pipeline as a central part of their geopolitical strategy for Afghanistan, as though it had arisen as a welcome initiative from the region only. As if that had nothing intentional in it as part of the USA's foreign policy.

It is true that all the states that stand to benefit from the TAPI pipeline have sought to develop 'energy independence' . What is seldom spelled out is that the independence is from Iran, one that costs far more than the dangers of building a pipeline through a war ravaged Afghanistan.

And that this has been the main strategic goal on the US and NATO in Afghanistan from the outset of war in 2001. Not women's rights. Not human rights. In so far as these were auxiliary humanitarian benefits of a successful war, they were spin offs from "nation building" and that could only be based upon recreating Afghanistan as an energy transit and transport hub.

An article from the Hindustan Times ( TAPI will support energy independence of regional countries: US, August 16 2012 ) that Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Robert Blake commented recently on a trip to Central Asia, 

"We see that the TAPI gas pipeline is particularly important because it's going to join two of the most important end-points in this regional connectivity that we talk about, Turkmenistan and India."

It is important, of course, because it runs through Afghanistan. To use plain English to spell that out, instead of using opaque power jargon about "end points" and "connectivity" , would mean coming to close to the taboo truth: the war in Afghanistan has the completion of the pipeline as a key strategic goal.

Instead of dwelling on the Afghan part of the geopolitical jigsaw, Blake talked up the benefits to the neighbouring state,

"India, of course, has gigantic energy needs because of its fast-growing economy. They need lots of gas. I think that is what really helped drive this project. There is now a real market in India and they can afford to pay for the gas. Turkmenistan has sufficient gas to fuel this pipeline" .

Public Diplomacy requires that when Afghanistan is mentioned in relation to the TAPI pipeline, it is only as an "infrastructure project" or as part of "nation building" or, more poetically, as a "New Silk Route".

"That is also quite important to this vision that I talked earlier about for Afghanistan. So, in terms of the pipeline I think there has been good progress on what they call gas sale-purchase agreements between these countries" .

Again the disinterested tone conceals the extent to which the USA has threatened Pakistan with the dangers of sanctions and reductions in aid if it dares to go against the TAPI pipeline and plump for the cheaper and easier option of Iran's IPI Pipeline. The TAPI Pipeline is a vital interest dressed up as an infrastructure project.

"The next milestone is that there will be a road show that will take place sometime in September, at which they will begin to have concrete discussions about who is going to form and lead this consortium to actually build this pipeline. This is a crucial series of discussions that will take place," he said, adding that the American companies would also be participating in the road show.

China Counters the NATO Pipeline Plan in Afghanistan.

After 11 years of conflict the futile US led invasion of Afghanistan may fail even to secure the consolation prize of the TAPI pipeline, a major interest for NATO "staying the course" as China moves in to propose an alternative that looks far more realistic than "The New Silk Route".

That could stymie the attempt to start TAPI's construction and revive the rival IPI Pipeline, a key interest for Tehran,  and that accounts for  the continued occupation of Afghanistan by NATO as part of the strategy of encircling and containing Iranian economic interests by curtailing its gas exports.

As Indian energy expert Shebonti Ray Dadwal makes clear here in IDSA Comment ( Now China may play spoiler to TAPI July 31 2012 ),

'Recent reports of a rival pipeline project being negotiated between China, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan have emerged. This project proposes to carry Turkmen gas to China through northern Afghanistan and Tajikistan, raising concerns that it may render TAPI a non-starter, akin to the manner in which TAPI played spoiler to the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline project

On June 6 and 8, 2012, on the sidelines of the SCO summit meeting in Beijing, Afghan President Hamid Karzai met with Chinese President Hu Jintao and China National Petroleum Corporation’s (CNPC) head Jiang Jiemin and discussed the proposal along with other issues. According to reports in the Chinese media, CNPC offered to conduct a technical and economic feasibility study for the proposed project on Afghan and Tajik territories. That the route for the proposed pipeline seeks to avoid the troubled Pashtun-dominated areas in Afghanistan—seen as one of the biggest hurdles for the TAPI project —would make it more attractive for the financiers'

It is not just China who is standing to benefit. As regards the revival of Russian influence in Central Asia, Dadwal comments,

'...TAPI’s demise could revive IPI. Pakistan, which is facing a severe energy crunch and is therefore reluctant to succumb to US pressure to abandon the Iranian pipeline, is now talking to the Russians as potential financiers of the IPI—now truncated to IP—project. Recently, a minister-level Russian working group was reported to have participated in meetings in Pakistan, with discussions focusing on Russia’s willingness to finance IPI.'

Robert Blake, TAPI and Afghanistan's Geopolitical Value.

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

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

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

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

Doublethink in the War for the New Silk Route and the TAPI Pipeline.

As news came through that, in reaction to the US drone bombing of Pakistani border, the Pakistani government had blocked NATO supply routes into Afghanistan, the futility of the "humanitarian war" was furthered when Human Rights Watch criticised NATO for ignoring human rights abuses in Uzbekistan-the alternative supply route into it's troubled neighbour.

In its first major report on Uzbekistan for four years, Human Rights Watch said Uzbek security forces beat people during interrogations and use electric shocks and rape to extract confessions.

But as Uzbekistan’s importance in the NATO supply chain to Afghanistan has grown, criticism of its abuses has melted away.

Steve Swerdlow, the Human Rights Watch Uzbekistan researcher, said the US and its allies know about these abuses.

“Being located next to Afghanistan should not give Uzbekistan a pass on its horrendous record of torture and repression”

Without Uzbekistan being onside, NATO would have strategic problems in withdrawing from Afghanistan

Uzbekistan was the Soviet Union’s regional transport hub and still has strong rail and road connections with Russia. This makes the country useful to Nato and it was able to switch its re-supply effort to Central Asia and Uzbekistan when US relations with Pakistan deteriorated over the past year.

Britain will also use this network to pull out equipment when it quits Afghanistan in 2014 and last month officials visited Tashkent, the Uzbek capital, for talks.

Since it became an ally, public criticism of Uzbekistan’s human rights record by NATO governments has dried up. The US has even publicly stated that human rights in Uzbekistan are improving.

The Human Rights Watch report disagreed with this assessment and gave detailed firsthand accounts of torture.

This came at the same time as Assistant Secretary of State Robert O. Blake, Jr discretely visited Ashgabat to meet with President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov before the conference on Afghanistan in Bonn regarding the future of Afghanistan some 10 years on after the "war on terror" was proclaimed.

At the meeting Blake mused on the subject of Can Virtue be Taught ? and emphasised the importance of adhering to human rights whilst fighting terrorism.

The Joint Plan of Action includes a commitment to abide by and uphold the core values, including respect for human rights and the rule of law, that are too often compromised in efforts to combat terrorism. This is a very important point, because counterterrorism efforts can best succeed when they place respect for human rights and the rule of law front and center. Abusive and extra-legal behavior often only make the terrorism situation worse in the long-term, and it is important in our zeal to protect our citizens that we do not weaken their legal rights and protections.

Catherine Fitzpatrick mused on this subject,

Blake's remarks came on the eve of an unfortunate development at home tending to undercut his message, as the US Senate voted for the defense re-authorization act but failed to uphold the principle that American citizens arrested in the US in the war on terror shouldn't be subject to indefinite military detention on the president's order.

Just days before the meeting with Turkmenistan's president, Blake had returned to the real business of the USA and NATO in Afghanistan-the development of the TAPI pipeline. None of that is actually reported in the mainstream media in the West as being the reason for continuing the war in Afghanistan.

Blake stressed that

"The United States appreciates the leadership of Turkmenistan in ensuring stability and sustainable development in Central Asian region and, in particular, on supporting the socio-economic reconstruction of Afghanistan" He continued "the U.S. government welcomes Ashgabat's leading role in promoting the project of Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline".

At the same time "huge importance of the transnational project, designed to become a reliable link between the states of the region, to promote their effective economic integration and to contribute to recovery of the Afghan economy and improving the social situation in this country" .

The Afghan War is now solidly about the New Silk Route, excluding and diminishing Iran's regional interests and encircling it the better to cripple it economically and target it for "regime change", and developing Afghanistan's copious resources of lithium and cobalt through the Asian Development Bank.

In this New Great Game. human rights are entirely secondary and expendable as and where necessary.

The New Great Game and Afghanistan

News of two more deaths in Afghanistan of British troops in Helmland has still not yet led in the media in Britain to any public debate as to the real nature of the war aims. It is a fact that the war is crucially concerned with securing the route for the TAPI pipeline. This was evident as early as 2003 when Lutz Kleveman wrote his seminal The New Great Game.

His book, peer reviewed and praised by those such as respected journalist and historian Misha Glenny, sets out in tough and clear writing what is really at stake in Central Asia. Here is part of a review of it that appears on Kleveman's own website.

"The Great Game today is about access to the region’s substantial and largely underdeveloped reserves of petroleum and natural gas. The former Soviet Republics of the Caucasus region are also players in this story. Before the United States occupied Iraq and before Osama bin-Laden became a household dirty word, American foreign policy favored an economic plan to build an oil pipeline...

Lutz Kleveman’s interviews with Afghan, Russian, Uzbek, and other regional leaders indicate that something else is the primary motivation for American presence in the region. Such people believe that U.S.involvement in Afghanistan is neither about promoting democracy or stopping Al Queda. The Americans are believed to be in Central Asia for oil and, with respect to Afghanistan, the right of way for an oil pipeline. The United States’ supposed “democratic reconstruction” of the national government of Afghanistan appears shallow in Kleveman’s reporting. Local warlords lack the systematic brutality of the Taliban, but remain very much in charge of their regions. With one group of Islamic fundamentalist thugs gone, another group of political muscle men now seem to be in charge. These local bosses refer to Afghanistan’s President Karzai as the “Mayor of Kabul.”

Afghanistan: the Futility of Imposing Freedom Through Force

The existence of "kill teams" in Afghanistan and grisly photos revealing US troops murdering and carving up Afghan civilian's corpses have been published in, of all places, the Rolling Stone magazine. It reports,

During the first five months of last year, a platoon of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan went on a shooting spree, killing at least four unarmed civilians and mutilating several of the corpses.

The “kill team” – members of the 5th Stryker Brigade stationed near Kandahar – took scores of photos chronicling their kills and their time in Afghanistan. Even before the war crimes became public, the Pentagon went to extraordinary measures to suppress the photos, launching a massive effort to find every file and pull the pictures out of circulation before they could touch off a scandal on the scale of Abu Ghraib.

The images – more than 150 of which have been obtained by Rolling Stone – portray a front-line culture among U.S. troops in which killing innocent civilians is seen as a cause for celebration. “Most people within the unit disliked the Afghan people,” one of the soldiers told Army investigators. “Everyone would say they’re savages.”

Resentment against the NATO war in this benighted land can only increase. Afghan writer Malalai Joya wrote in The Guardian, ( Kill teams in Afghanistan: the truth Wednesday 30 March 2011 ).

All the PR about this war being about democracy and human rights melts into thin air with the pictures of US soldiers posing with the dead and mutilated bodies of innocent Afghan civilians.

We believe that the brutal actions of these "kill teams" reveal the aggression and racism which is part and parcel of the entire military occupation.

While these photos are new, the murder of innocents is not. Such crimes have sparked many protests in Afghanistan and have sharply raised anti-American sentiment among ordinary Afghans.

The occupying armies have tried to buy off the families of their victims, offering $2,000 for each one killed. Afghans' lives are cheap for the US and Nato, but no matter how much they offer, we don't want their blood money.

Once you know all this, and once you have seen the "kill team" photos, you will understand more clearly why Afghans have turned against this occupation. The Karzai regime is more hated than ever: it only rules through intimidation, corruption, and with the help of the occupying armies. Afghans deserve much better than this.

However, this does not mean more Afghans are supporting the reactionary so-called resistance of the Taliban. Instead we are seeing the growth, under very difficult conditions, of another resistance led by students, women and the ordinary poor people of Afghanistan. They are taking to the streets to protest against the massacre of civilians and to demand an end to the war. Demonstrations like this were recently held in Kabul, Marzar-e-Sharif, Jalalabad and Farah.

Naturally, the whole idea that the Afghanistan war is primarily about human rights and democracy is a rationalisation for a war that is crucially about the geopolitics of the New great Game and specifically the construction of the TAPI pipeline, a war aim seldom, if ever mentioned in the mainstream Western news.

The Afghanistan debacle is justified as an exercise in enlightened self interest and "liberal imperialism" when it is founded on the idea that should the country be stabilised sufficient to enable the TAPI pipeline to be built then it will unite the regional powers of Central Asia together to the benefit of the West.

The civilian victims are seen as a price worth paying as when the TAPI is built the economic regeneration of Afghanistan will proceed and then the victims will be forgotten. As Shantie Mariet D'Souza recently outlined the stakes in the Afghanistan War ( Business Standard March 20, 2011 )

Even while consensus eludes the end-game in Afghanistan, and regional rivalry continues to complicate even a remote possibility of establishing peace in this conflict-ridden country, the economic windfall from an oil pipeline may yet help stabilise Afghanistan. The projected gains from the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline still retain the potential to create a win-win deal among regional stakeholders in Afghanistan.

The TAPI project, expected to start in 2012 and be commissioned by 2016, envisages constructing 1,680 km of pipeline with a total gas capacity of 90 million standard cubic meters per day (mscmd).

The proposed pipeline would stretch from Turkmenistan’s Dauletabad gas field and travel 1650 km through Turkmenistan (145 km), Afghanistan (735 km) and Pakistan (800 km), before culminating at the Indian border town of Fazilka in Punjab. It would carry 33 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually to consumers.

It is thus not altogether surprising that the US is propounding the project as ‘magic glue’ that will bind the warring factions and their regional proxies into an inter-dependent cooperative framework. The US also hopes that the TAPI pipeline will usher in economic interdependence among competing regional powers, thus making the costs of conflict too high and benefits of cooperation lucrative.

The strategy also fits in with containing and isolating Iran which would be encircled and hemmed in by a pro-US regime in Iraq to the west and Afghanistan to the east.

TAPI will in all likelihood wean India away from the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline from Iran’s South Pars gas complex in the Persian Gulf, one of the largest gas fields in the world. This would not only further isolate Iran, but the resultant interdependence and benefits of cooperation would possibly act as a catalyst for peace between India and Pakistan, narrowing differences between the two nuclear armed rivals in South Asia.

The problem has been that the Taliban has kept up its attacks in key areas such as Helmland, where British casualties continue to increase, as this lies squarely across the route of the TAPI pipeline. No attempt by politicians or the media has been made to explain this basic fact.

Think tanks and leading members of the US government have continually mentioned the TAPI pipeline as a strategic prize, though. D'Souza seems to suggest that it might be possible to get

A major factor, which will impinge directly on the fate of the project, would be political instability, issues of pricing and security considerations in the region. Since the birth of independent Central Asian states, the region has been plagued by political instability as witnessed by various ‘colour revolutions’.

Similarly, in Afghanistan, the near absence of an effective police force, providing security for the pipeline, could turn this project into a lucrative protection-racket or cash cow for insurgents, local warlords or simply more dependence on private security armies and contractors, with little being done to build on Afghanistan national security institutions.

In fact, there is little chance that the TAPI pipeline will have the intended effects of regional stability. For a start the objective is contradicted by the "War on Drugs" which makes opium production profitable and thus funds the Taliban insurgency.

Even in Georgia, the creation of a pipeline transit state has led to politics becoming a corrupt and pathological struggle between clans and interest groups vying for control over the transit fees. Pipelines in danger will always ratchet up the potential for the Western powers being dragged in to protect it.

The reason NATO has "stayed the course" in Afghanistan for a decade now shows how dangerous it is for the West to remain addicted to fossil fuels lying in dangerous and far off lands and to become embroiled in futile and farcical projects to impose freedom by force.

"Obama's Imperial War Presidency"

It is getting tedious having to read this or that criticism of President Obama for just not being the sort of president that progressives believed him to be, not least in foreign policy where he gained votes and support from being against the Iraq War ( though subsequently not removing all US troops from Iraq in 2009 ).

David Swanson writes today,

The president is expected to propose a larger military budget for the third year in a row next month. And he has thus far consistently used off-the-books supplemental bills to add more funding to his wars.

Progressive groups have made so much noise cheering for the elimination of this or that weapon, that the overall increase in the military budget each year has been missed, just as it will be missed by any casual viewer of this week's speech. But a group of hundreds of prominent activists, authors, and academics has recently released a statement outlining Obama's militarist record and committing to oppose his candidacy for the Democratic nomination next year unless he changes course.

Nearly two thirds of US citizens believe that our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq should be ended and that overall military spending should be dramatically reduced. Since he became president, Obama has had three opportunities to work with Congress to reduce military spending, but instead, has championed increases in that spending each time, despite the fact that this spending represents a clear threat to the economic future of our country.

The amount of self righteous twaddle peddled on Afghanistan and Iraq from those both for and against the "imperial wars" downplays the centrality of controlling oil and gas and that resource wars are made necessary by the sheer scale of consumption in societies such as the USA and EU.

Like it or not, for large numbers of Americans , democratic freedom is bound up not in politics but the freedom afforded by the mobile society, The Great Car Economy around which The American Dream was constructed in the twentieth century. The war against Iraq was to provide the secure supplies to fuel that dream.

Vast numbers of those who are against the war in Iraq need to start dealing not with populist outrage or that Obama has been derailed from progressive politics by the legacy of Bush's forthright imperialism. For Iraq was a war to preserve the USA's democracy as based on consumerism and delusive hopes of infinite growth.

Swanson has a book entitled War is A Lie which does not have one chapter devoted to the desperate search for secure supplies of diminishing fossil fuels. Any book that extrudes devoting a large part to considering energy security is not going to add much to what is already know nor ask difficult questions.

These have to be confronted but progressives want to believe that they can earn cheap popular points from condemning war ( as if most people in placid consumer democracies are going to actually like war as opposed to the pleasures of shopping malls, McDonald's Drive-Thrus and so on ).

For what large numbers cannot see is that their lifestyles necessitate these resource wars to be fought. Even Afghanistan is part of a colossal geopolitical project to get Afghanistan integrated into Central Asia and act as an "energy bridge" taking gas through the TAPI pipeline.

The criticism of war has to make it plain that it is the consequence of the failure of energy policy and conserving energy supplies. Not in ideological thrusts that claims that the West is uniquely imperialist when there is a New Great Game on in Central Asia that could be destabilising.

The alternative to controlling oil supplies is to reduce the USA's level of car use, reduce its living standards and hand control of the global economy to China, which has already made inroads into controlling natural resources in Africa and Central Asia but without war and hypocritical human rights prating.

War is not a Lie: its a reality today bred by conflict over precisely those resources that make large numbers of even anti-war activists, materially comfortable. Tell citizens in the USA that war is created by their prodigious fossil fuel use and that will be difficult to accept. But it's the truth nevertheless. Tell them its due to ideology and bad people and that is easier.

On January 29 2011 Rick Rozoff ( Washington Intensifies Push Into Central Asia ) writes of the expansion of military presence in the region. And this is connected to the pursuit of energy security through diversity of outlets, a point made by Michael T Klare in his Blood and Oil.

Rozoff writes,

The U.S. and Britain, with the support of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, invaded Afghanistan and fanned out into Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in October of 2001, less than four months after Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan founded the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) to foster expanding economic, security, transportation and energy cooperation and integration in and through Central Asia.

In 2005 India, Iran and Pakistan joined the SCO as observers and Afghan President Hamid Karzai has attended its last five annual heads of state summits. Now the U.S. and the NATO have over 150,000 troops planted directly south of three Central Asian nations.

The State Department's Blake delivered a speech at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston, Texas entitled "The Obama Administration's Priorities in South and Central Asia."

"Central Asia lies at a critical strategic crossroads, bordering Afghanistan, China, Russia and Iran, which is why the United States wants to continue to expand our engagement and our cooperation with this critical region."

In furtherance of U.S. designs in an area that not only abuts the four nations named, but if controlled by the U.S. would prevent regional cooperation between them except insofar as it is mediated by an outside power, Washington...

Blake's speech is given here.