THESE MEDIA GENERATED CONTRIBUTIONS ARE MY ATTEMPTS TO GET A DISCUSSION GOING ON THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN WHICH HAS BEEN PROMOTED FOR YEARS AS THE 'GOOD WAR' AS OPPOSED TO THE WAR IN IRAQ WHICH MOST OF THE WORLD HAS LABELLED A 'BAD (OR ILLEGAL) WAR. I HAVE MADE A ...
07-20-2008, 01:42 PM
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| Noob Independent 
| Afghanistan oil THESE MEDIA GENERATED CONTRIBUTIONS ARE MY ATTEMPTS TO GET A DISCUSSION GOING ON THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN WHICH HAS BEEN PROMOTED FOR YEARS AS THE 'GOOD WAR' AS OPPOSED TO THE WAR IN IRAQ WHICH MOST OF THE WORLD HAS LABELLED A 'BAD (OR ILLEGAL) WAR. I HAVE MADE A PERSONAL CONTRIBUTION AT THE END OF THE MEDIA ARTICLES, PLEASE READ AND REPLY WITH THOUGHFULNESS There has been scandalously little reporting of the war in Afghanistan, even though the 7,700 British and more than 40,000 NATO troops there are engaged in more intense fighting than in Iraq. When it is mentioned at all, the war in Afghanistan is presented as a humanitarian, nation-building operation. The reality is that the occupation is itself creating a humanitarian disaster. In the summer of 2007 the International Committee of the Red Cross reported that the situation in Afghanistan was becoming desperate: “Civilians suffer horribly from mounting threats to their security, such as increasing numbers of roadside bombs and suicide attacks, and regular aerial bombing raids…Thousands of people have fled their homes and are continuing to move in search of safer areas”. he Red Cross report said that the local population was suffering particularly badly in the south where the fighting has been heaviest and where most British troops are based. Afghanistan is now one of the poorest and most underdeveloped countries in the world. It stands at 174 out of the 178 countries on the UN’s world development index. More than one third of children suffer malnutrition. Seven per cent of under-fives die of hunger. Life expectancy is 44, health care is non-existent for the majority of Afghans and the country has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. The authoritative Senlis report says that only two countries in the world have worse child poverty rates and that poverty and fighting have led to the uncontrolled spread of refugee camps across the country. The report blames this situation directly on the NATO forces’ war against anti-government groups which has “rendered reconstruction efforts in the area obsolete” and on the shameful level of aid delivered “notwithstanding proclamations of commitments towards the people”. In the first year of occupation the US promised Afghanistan 1/ 40th of the aid promised to Iraq in 2003. Very little even of that has been delivered. Only 8 billion dollars of the 20 billion promised by the international community has materialised. All the indications are that over the last year the level of fighting has increased dramatically. There are now nearly twice as many foreign troops in Afghanistan as there were in 2006, and Oxfam estimates that last year there were four times as many aerial bombing raids on Afghanistan as Iraq. But a series of official reports out in January 2008 show that the military strategy is not working and that Afghanistan is on its way to becoming a failed state. It is not surprising that opposition to the occupation is growing. The Senlis report states that the Taliban has “increasing control of several parts of southern, south eastern and western Afghanistan”. In the past, it says, the Taliban was finding it difficult to retain control of terrain it had conquered.“That situation has now changed”. Anti-occupation forces now control much of Afghanistan’s key infrastructure. They regularly disrupt the ring road from Kabul to Herat, and have the capacity to close the other main roads to the capital. They run electricity substations in three key districts in Helmand, effectively giving them control over the region’s power supply. The resistance is not mainly inspired by religion. It is fuelled by a mixture of social and economic grievances which include the number of civilian deaths caused by the occupiers, lack of aid, forced crop eradication, lack of public services and the perception that the Karzai government is a puppet regime. No wonder that even US appointee, President Karzai, has recently criticised the occupation and refused to back Paddy Ashdown as ‘Viceroy’. Military commanders from Britain and the US have been warning it will take decades to ‘pacify’ Afghanistan. The disaster that is Iraq has made some semblance of success in Afghanistan vital for the western powers. But the truth is that the mission here too is failing, and recognition of failure is causing a crisis in NATO. Canada has served notice it will withdraw its troops unless there are significant reinforcements, and in defiance of the US, Germany has refused to send its troops to the combat zones in the south. In the meantime the occupation causes untold suffering for the Afghan people. It is time for the troops to leave. ( Written by Chris Nineham and Andrew Burgin Monday, 30 June 2008 ABRIDGED STATEMENT BY STOP THE WAR COALITON A report by the Senlis Commission has estimated that up to 50% of Afghanistan is now in the hands of the Taliban, giving the lie to recent comments by British ministers that Britain is winning the war in Afghanistan. Reconstruction has been virtually non-existent, and where it has taken place it has mainly involved the building of roads, as these are necessary for the movement of US and allies' armaments and equipment. This is why Stop the War is calling for Troops Out of Afghanistan. Only an end to this war will see peace in Afghanistan. Thursday, 23 August 2007 The fighting in the south has driven 80,000 from their homes, and the civilian casualty rate has doubled over the past year: more than 200 were killed by US and other Nato troops in June alone - far more than are estimated to have been killed in the Taliban attacks. . Seumas Milne How can this bloody failure be regarded as a good war? The western occupation of Afghanistan has brought neither peace nor development - and it fuels the terror threat Seumas Milne Thursday August 23, 2007 The Guardian Enthusiasts for the catastrophe that is the Iraq war may be hard to come by these days, but Afghanistan is another matter. The invasion and occupation that opened George Bush's war on terror are still championed by powerful voices in the occupying states as - in the words of the New York Times this week - "the good war" that can still be won. While speculation intensifies about British withdrawal from Basra, there's no such talk about a retreat from Kabul or Kandahar. On the contrary, the plan is to increase British troop numbers from the current 7,000, and ministers, commanders and officials have been hammering home the message all summer that Britain is in Afghanistan, as the foreign secretary, David Miliband, insisted, for the long haul. "We should be thinking in terms of decades," the British ambassador, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, declared; Brigadier John Lorimer, British commander in Helmand province, thought the military occupation might last more than Northern Ireland's 38 years; and the defence secretary, Des Browne, last week confirmed that the government had made a "long-term commitment" to stay in Afghanistan to prevent it reverting to a terrorist training ground. Even allowing for the Brown government's need for political cover if it is indeed to run down its forces in Iraq, that all amounts to a pretty clear policy of indefinite occupation - one on which it has not thought necessary to consult the British people, let alone the Afghans. All this follows the escalation of Britain's involvement in Afghanistan last year, when Browne's predecessor, John Reid, sent thousands of extra troops to the south to "help reconstruction", hoping they would be a able to leave "without firing a single shot". Two million rounds of ammunition later, what was supposed to be a peacekeeping mission is now an all-out war against a resurgent Taliban that has become an umbrella for Pashtun nationalists, jihadists and all those determined to fight foreign occupation. British casualties have risen sharply - seven have been killed in the past month - along with those of other western forces, while the public at home is increasingly fed a media diet of Kiplingesque deeds of derring-do by "our boys" on the front line. And in a telling echo of the claims that have punctuated each phase of the Iraq disaster, Browne last week said he detected a "turning point" in the British campaign to "bring stability" to Afghanistan. For Afghans, six years after they were supposed to have been liberated, life is getting worse. As the International Committee of the Red Cross reported two months ago, the humanitarian situation is deteriorating and civilians are suffering "horribly" from growing insecurity and violence in an increasingly dirty war. The fighting in the south has driven 80,000 from their homes, and the civilian casualty rate has doubled over the past year: more than 200 were killed by US and other Nato troops in June alone - far more than are estimated to have been killed in Taliban attacks. The savagery of indiscriminate US aerial bombardments provoked violent demonstrations and is widely seen as having increased support for the Taliban's armed campaign. Given the manifest failure of the occupation to bring either peace or development to Afghanistan, it's not immediately obvious why it's still considered by some to be a good war - though a majority of Britons, Canadians, Italians and Germans, it should be said, want their troops withdrawn. Partly it must be the fact that the original invasion was launched in response to the 9/11 attacks - which turned out to have been at least partly coordinated from al-Qaida's Afghan camps - and had some measure of UN acquiescence (even if the relevant resolutions didn't actually mention Afghanistan). Added to that is the oppressive and obscurantist record of the Taliban regime and the elite fear that military failure will fatally undermine the projection of western power in future. But by intervening on one side of an ethnically charged civil war to overthrow the Taliban - rather than, say, targeting special forces against al-Qaida - the US and its allies ended up exchanging warlords for theocrats and turning most of the country into a collection of lawless and brutal fiefdoms. Instead of al-Qaida terror networks being rooted out, they were allowed to migrate to the borderlands, Pakistan and Iraq; Osama bin Laden, whose capture was the first aim of the war, escaped; and the limited expansion of women's and girls' freedoms in Kabul and a few other urban areas was offset by an eruption of rape and violence against women. Western politicians like to describe the Afghan government as democratically elected, when in fact the elections were marked by large-scale fraud and intimidation in polls that gave regional warlords pride of place, while political parties were not allowed to take part. In real life, occupied Afghanistan is, as the UN warned last year, a failed state, which now produces 90% of the world's opium and where corruption and insecurity have sunk reconstruction. Of course there was a time, in the 1970s and 1980s, when girls were encouraged to go to school and university in Afghanistan, women accounted for almost half the country's teachers and civil servants and the government redistributed land to the rural poor. But the US spent billions of dollars to destroy it in a cold war coup de grace and laid the foundations for the jihadist Frankenstein of al-Qaida in the process. Gordon Brown now claims Afghanistan is "the frontline against terrorism". In reality, the key to the al-Qaida threat lies in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and the dictatorial regimes the west sponsors there, while its support is fuelled by the occupations of Iraq, Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories. Britain is now fighting its fourth war in Afghanistan in 170 years, and might have learned by now that you cannot impose a government from outside against a people's will. Earlier this summer the Afghan senate called for a date to be set for the withdrawal of foreign troops and negotiations with the Taliban, as did the Pakistani foreign minister, Khurshid Kasuri, this month. There will be no peace or stability in Afghanistan while foreign troops remain, and a wider settlement will surely have to include the Taliban and regional powers such as Iran and Pakistan. Unfortunately, politics dictates that a great deal more blood is likely to be shed on both sides before that comes to be accepted. s.milne@guardian.co.uk Francis Fukuyama posed the basic Afghan dilemma as the supposed triumph of western invasion began to fall apart. Afghanistan has never been "modern", he observed, chillingly. "Under the monarchy that existed until the beginning of its political troubles in the 1970s, it largely remained a tribal confederation with minimal state penetration outside Kabul". And the subsequent years "of communist misrule and civil war eliminated everything that was left" of that feeble entity. History wasn't dead, in short; Afghans were dead. And now, many killing fields later, we can put that even more starkly. Afghanistan isn't a "failed" state, because Afghanistan has never been a successful one. Afghanistan is a crossroads, a traffic island, a war zone, a drug den, an exotic doormat, and an eternal victim. But it is not, in any coherent sense, a nation. We cannot see peace, harmony and freedom "restored" there, because such concepts have no roots in its essentially medieval past, or present. Afghanistan has always been a disaster waiting to happen, again and again. Did John Reid, (FORMER British Defence Minister) pausing briefly at the Ministry of Defence on his route march through Whitehall, know this when he vowed that we would "be perfectly happy to leave in three years without firing one shot, because our job is reconstruction"? One hundred body bags back at Brize Norton,(British RAF Base) that question answers itself. Of course, he didn't know. Nobody who ordered the troops in to flush out al-Qaida knew. Nobody dreamed that Kabul and Kandahar would be tougher nuts to crack than Baghdad and Basra. But they ought to realise it now. Reid thought that the American mission was "chasing the terrorists who did so much to destroy the twin towers", while our happy boys could get by with a little road building. Which delusion seems greater today? Osama bin Laden is still somewhere out there, chased but uncaught. Even Mullah Omar, leader of the Taliban government, hasn't been brought to book. And Helmand province, these past few days, has seen only roadside bombs blowing up our boys (and one natural front-page girl). You couldn't have a greater failure of intelligence, or expectation. What's gone wrong? See the official excuses pour in. Of course the porous border with ungovernable Waziristan and Baluchistan doesn't help. Of course, Iran can be blamed for almost anything too. And, of course, corruption, both central and local, weighs everything down. (Guess which one world commodity crop isn't shrinking ...) But the crippling difficulty, nullifying all efforts, seldom breaks cover. You'd suppose, from press and ministerial briefings, that the Taliban and al-Qaida were somehow synonymous - alien forces implanted among loyal, struggling Afghans. It's a convenient delusion, one that chimes with a similar yarn in Iraq (where bombings and kidnappings are blamed on stray Saudis or Egyptians, not indigenous Iraqis). But that's clearly rubbish as the suicide attacks proliferate. Taliban patrols do, indeed, pass back and forth across Pakistan's non-frontier. But they are also an Afghan presence with Afghan support. They are part of the Afghan scenery (just as they were when Mullah Omar ruled). This isn't a war against invaders. This is a war pitting Afghan against Afghan, as usual, as ever: an uncivil conflict. Which is why it is a war we cannot win. If there is no structure, no authority beyond ad hoc tribalism, then there is no victory that can last. The past few decades here, like the centuries that went before as the Mongols and Genghis Khan stormed by, have been years of splitting and slaughtering: one tribe against another, one warlord against his neighbour, one communist against another, the peripheries against Kabul. The irony is that, left alone to stew, the Taliban would have gone the way of the Parcham and the Khalq before. There was no need to try to destroy them: Afghan anarchy would have done that in time. Afghanistan is a nation yet unbuilt, a black hole of hope defying calculation. It kills outsiders; it kills the insiders who seek to rule it. Its great game, over generations, knows only failure; and the only way not to become a loser is to resolve - at last - not to play. END In recent years, THE WESTERN WORLD has been concerned about genocide in Rwanda, yet nothing was done to stop it until it was over - by itself - in the not too distant , the US, Colin Powell specifically accused Sudan of practicing genocide in Darfur. But nothing was done. Most recently of course the ICC has indicted the Sudanese President of War Crimes. With furhter testimony, which I believe is forthcoming, they will be able to issue an arrest warrant. Nigeria is posing a problem with oil supply because villagers in the Niger Delata region (where the iol fields are based) are disrupting operations because they have recived no compensation for the destruction of their lives due to oil drilling, exploration and exploitation. Indeed in Nigeria, the people of this region are amonst the poorest and most deprived in the country. Hundreds of thousands of acres of land (and lakes and rivers) have been so polluted by oil spills that the land is no longer arable, the lakes and rivers no longer fishable. Most recently the British Governemnt has said they will give aid to the Nigerian Government to help quell the 'lawlessness' in the area.. My point is Afghanistan. The West would not still be there if it were not for oil. This is a landlocked country which has huge oil deposits to the north, in Tajikistan. The US would like to build an oil and gas pipeline from Tajikistan that would of neccisssity have to pass through Afghanistan and Pakistan to reach an open port outlet in the south through India. The only other route is through Iran!! Surprise. Why are US trroops still in Afghanistan ? - for the oil. Make no mistake.. As long as they can bring sufficent peace to the country to secure their oil pipeline, they raally don't care who rules the place or whether it is the world's no. I producer of heroin. The American Govt are well araare of who in the Afghan Govt are helping to promote and control this trade, but they do nothing to hinder it. That is not their main interest. Oil and the pipeline is. | ||||
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07-20-2008, 04:48 PM
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| Lurker  Republican
| For oil? Afghanistan is not an arena we need to be in neither strategically, nor for oil. The Taliban came to power giving sanctuary to AQ following the defeat and expulsion of Soviet Russia. The Taliban protected al-Qaeda declared war on us, attacked us several times without reaction, and finally brought our twin towers and Pentagon walls down on our unworthy heads. Congress then authorized war against Afghanistan and the United States with other allies attacked Afghanistan. I don't remember oil being in the authorization from Congress...I didn't realize their output was that significant, please explain.  | ||||
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07-20-2008, 05:29 PM
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| I wonder Independent San Antonio, Texas
| It may just be that they are so backward that they just cannot handle a modern democratic government. Iraq was fairly advanced for a emerging country, but it still took a strong dictator like Sadaam to bring the country together, and is a reason they are doing better than Afghanistan. Afghanistan is even less developed. It is still a war lord country. How do you take a country that is in the dark ages and bring it to the present. It will take forever and require great resources and intelligence to accomplish. First of all I wonder if the troops who are over there show respect for the people and really care about their future. That you must have from the very beginning. I am not saying they don't, but I don't know. We can leave and let the war lords have it out, and maybe that is the only thing that is possible in that country. We the US cannot keep throwing away our resouces over there. We are not as rich as we used to be. We must think about our survival. You Europeans have always been good about thinking only about what is good for their own country. You never wanted to get involved with Somolia, Bosnia or even Kosovo, now maybe we will have to feel the same. | ||||
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07-21-2008, 05:57 AM
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| Noob Independent
| There is no oil in Afghanistan. There are huge oil and gas fields in Tajikistan which cannot be exploited and an oil and gas pipieline run from there to the nearest port outlet without it being run through Afghanistan. Of necessity (look at a map) this would be a very long pipeline, extremely vulnerable to attack and cannot be built and kept safe until Afghanistan is well secured. The fact that AQ used the Taleban to shelter them while they attacked the Twin Towers is a separate metter. AQ are virtually gone, the Taleban hold most of the country outside of Kabul. The rest is governerd by Warlords who pay tithe to the Taleban, corrupt Warlords, many of whom sit in the Parliament. Don't forget that America funded Osama Bin Laden and his mujahadin in the first place to help them expel the Russians from Afghanistan. The British have invaded Afghanistan 3 times going back to the 1800 on all occassions they were roundly defeated. On one occasion I believe only one man survived the massacre of the British garrison. There is a memorial to those who died right in the middle of Kabul. i believe it is sited on the spot where the garrison used to stand. | ||||
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07-21-2008, 06:06 AM
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| Noob Independent
| I agree, it is a backwards and almost totally undeveloped country. Having virtually wiped out AQ during the initial attack the US would very likley have taken no further notice of the place except that they want to exploit the oil and gas fields in Tajikistan and this cannot be down unless Afghanistan is subdued. I suspect this will take a very long time, will require far more troops and vastly more money than anyone can conceive of and I suspect will end in failure as the americqn people will get tired of having body bags pile up over years. US governmnets on the other hand see Aghanistan as being fairly stretegic to their various and nefarious endeavours. It is next door to Iran for one thing, quite apart from the prize of getting acess to the virtually undeveloped oil fields of Tajikistan. | ||||
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07-21-2008, 09:55 AM
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| Lurker Republican
| Originally Posted by Shads71 ...I'm still confused, I apologize. You're saying the reason we're occupying Afghanistan is because we want the huge gas and oil reserves and exploit them by building a pipeline from Tajikistan through AF?
And you're earlier point mentioned AQ being virtually gone, it seems this time Afghanistan was roundly defeated. | ||||
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07-21-2008, 01:42 PM
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| Member  libertarian Kutztown PA
| Originally Posted by Shads71 The Taliban is gaining in Afghanistan, so lets leave? The reason we're in Afghanistan in the first place is to get rid of the Taliban, now granted we haven't done a good job securing the victories we had early in the war, but that, to me, doesn't seem like a good reason to just call it quits. We do a better job in Afghanistan, not abandon it to the same chaos which forged Al-queda in the first place
Originally Posted by Shads71 Don't get me wrong, we fucked that up. Arming the jihadists was a terrible idea, but c'mon Russia definitely gets the lions share of the blame for fucking up the stability Afghanistan enjoyed in the 70s and 80s.
Originally Posted by Shads71 So Afghanistan will always be a terrible hellhole full of death and war and nothing can change this? I'd say thats selling the Afghani people short.
Originally Posted by Shads71 Really? Spending billions of dollars to invade Afghanistan (a country with no actual oil) was the best idea America could think up to get oil? Sounds far-fetched to me.
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07-21-2008, 02:15 PM
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| Lurker Republican
| Originally Posted by Smull This one confused me as well. I can field questions concerning oil when it's about Iraq, I see many reasons why oil would be the bottom line discussion regarding Iraq. But Afghanistan? This assumes we would want oil and gas from elsewhere and then wish to pipe it out via Afghanistan.......?
Ain't we got oil and gas by the billions right under OUR continental shelf? | ||||
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07-22-2008, 01:28 AM
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| Lurker  Conservative Party
| Ain't we got oil and gas by the billions right under OUR continental shelf? THANK YOU! I really fail to see why the U.S government would invade a country for the sole purpose of gaining access to its oil when we could accomplish the same thing by simply expanding oil exploration on our own land and territorial waters. And besides that, war is definitely not the easiest or cheapest way to gain access to oil. Politics is. If all we wanted was Iraqi oil, we could have simply restored relations with Saddam and negotiated an oil deal. | ||||
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07-26-2008, 06:55 AM
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| minor irritant &/or non-entity News Moderator Contrarian Birmingham, UK
| Originally Posted by C4Casey Although I dont think that oil was the primary concern in the decision to invade A'stan I would like to point out a few things.
It does, from a certain POV, make sense to burn others oil before burning one's own Again there is a position that sees an advantage to be had in controling access to oil not simply for ones own end-use but in order to deny others the geo-political lever that control of access to oil allows The size of US offshore fields isnt definitively known & their development is going to be lengthy & expensive. Iraqi known reserves are huge & already partially developed. Its almost certainly the case that the cost of the war was massively underestimated by the dimwits who promoted it. Additionally in either scenario there was profit to be made by MIC interests & given that ultimately US offshore development was always going to happen the extra actvity in Iraq might'ver been seen as a bonus Restoring relations with Saddam wouldnt ensure US access to Iraqi oil, ..., tho' of course its impact on world markets/prices might be seen as advantageous. Either way restoring relations with Saddam would have been a major loss of face & prestige for the US & the sanctions were UN ones anyway & so it wasnt up to the US/CoW to nullify them, ..., tho given that the oil embargo wasnt that complete & given that CoW moved without clear UN backing then perhaps this is all more than a little moot Sorry to be a bit off the stated A'stan point of this thread | ||||
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07-26-2008, 01:09 PM
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| Noob Independent
| I agree, oil certainly wasn't the primary reason for going to war in Afghanistan. On the other hand, it most certainly was in the case of Iraq. Saddam would never have done an oil deal with the US that would have been satisfactory to the US. I am certain he would have hedged it around with all sorts of unacceptable conditions and it absolutly would have resulted in massive worldwide loss of face for the US. Since the Iraq invasion was so very badly conceived, the victorius outcome of a welcome with flowers and kisses all round was just as badly misjudged. Pumping someone else's oil at favourable rates, under favourable conditions is far better than pumping your oil. You can a)save your fown or a rainy day b)pollute your own country less and as one correspondent says, if you control the oil fields, (abroad) you deny access to others and thus are politically advantaged. Afghanistan was revenge. The rout of the Taleban was complete but the US did not stay to try to complete the task in anyway. They did not even bother putting sufficient boots on the ground to rout a guerrila army, notoriously difficult to defeat just from an areial bombing campaigns where all you do is decimate the innocent civilan population and turn them against you. It was never envisaged that the Taleban would regroup in the way that they have, that AQ leadership would remain alive and active and the area may again become a threat to US security in the form of further attacks against US mainland territory or US interests abroad. I believe the idea was 'Shock and Awe 'em' that will show the world we mean business, subdue them to the extent they don't get up again. Break their legs, then they can keep until later.' Which is when the US government went on to Iraq, not for one moment expecting things to turn out they way they have done. I am sure the plan was for Iraq (and it's oil) to be brought under control 'into line' and then, for the oil companies and others in the oil business to go into Afghnaistan in a big but controlled way (don't forget this is a country which was expected to have been "shocked and awed" into submission) to start building a safe and secure pipeline from the the oil and gas fileds of Tajikistan - the business of Tajikistan's fields have long been under discussion, but under the radar, who knew where Tajikistan was? Would anyone have been interested? No. It all only came to light because by unfortunate chance, AQ took refuge with the Taleban government of Afghanistan - down to a sea outlet which of necessity would have to travel through Afghanistan and Pakistan (why do you think the US government has been SO anxious to retain good relations with Pakistan?) People who don't think these deep and complex relationships with foreign countries - mostly under the radar - don't exist should start reading a little more contermporary history, looking through released government documents relating to relationships with some of these countries in terms of economic, trade, agricultural etc type relationships. Look at some of the old newspaper headlines, and then read the stories. Most of these countries have an Englaish language newspaper and most of these have now placed their archived files on line. You can learn a great deal and then come to the debate in an informed fashion. | ||||
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07-27-2008, 01:58 AM
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| ..... your a worthless poster  Realist
| Originally Posted by Shads71 No, it most certainly wasn't. You can throw around the "People who don't think these deep and complex relationships with foreign countries - mostly under the radar - don't exist should start" logical fallacy all you want but all you've really got for proof is "because I say so." There's no pipeline, there's no oil coming our way, there's no price stability, there's no (increased) US involvement in their oil fields..........you got nothing.
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07-27-2008, 08:44 PM
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| Lurker Republican
| Originally Posted by Shads71 Of course it wasn't.
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07-29-2008, 11:39 AM
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| Noob Independent
| OK. Here is some background reading, dating back to 2001 - some of it now out of date of course, but a general background to current events.i.e needing to keep Afghanistan stable so that the West can build an oil and gas pipeline to take oil from the deposits to the north, all those 'stans' in that area, not to mention the Caspian Sea. It is only by knowing about and understanding the background that you can make informed comment. It's a lot, but you can get the gist, just by scanning the various articles. The Great Game - The War For Caspian Oil And Gas By Christopher Bollyn bollyn@enteract.com American Free Press.net President Bush's "crusade against the Taliban of Afghanistan has more to do with control of the immense oil and gas resources of the Caspian Basin than it does with "rooting out terrorism.Once again an American president from the Bush family is leading Americans down an oil-rich Middle Eastern warpath against "enemies of freedom and democracy. President George W. Bush, whose family is well connected to oil and energy companies, has called for an international crusade against Islamic terrorists, who he says hate Americans simply because we are "the brightest beacon of freedom. The focus on religion-based terrorism serves to conceal important aspects of the Central Asian conflict. President Bush's noble rhetoric about fighting for justice and democracy is masking a less noble struggle for control of an estimated $5 trillion of oil and gas resources from the Caspian Basin. One of the material results of the elder Bush's Desert Storm military campaign in 1991 was to secure access to the huge Rumaila oil field of southern Iraq, which was accomplished by expanding the boundaries of Kuwait after the war. This allowed Kuwait, a former British protectorate where American and British oil companies are heavily invested, to double its prewar oil output. The Trep?a mine complex in Kosovo, one of the richest mines of Europe, was seized last year by George Soros and Bernard Kouchner. A similar geopolitical strategy, influenced by Zionist planners, to control the valuable mineral resources of the Caspian Basin underlies the planned aggression against Afghanistan, a Central Asian nation that occupies a strategic position sandwiched between the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. Central Asia has enormous quantities of undeveloped oil resources, including some 6.6 trillion cubic meters of natural gas, waiting to be exploited. The former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are the two major gas producers in Central Asia. Today, the only existing export routes from the area lead through Russia. Investors in Caspian oil and gas are interested in building alternative pipelines to Turkey and Europe, and especially to the rapidly growing Asian markets. India, Iran, Russia, and Israel, are working on a plan to supply oil and gas to south and southeast Asia through India but instability in Afghanistan is "posing a great threat to this effort. Afghanistan lies squarely between Turkmenistan, home to the world's third-largest natural gas reserves, and the lucrative markets of the Indian subcontinent, China and Japan. A memorandum of understanding has been signed to build a 900-mile natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan via Afghanistan, but the ongoing civil war and absence of a stable government in Afghanistan have prevented the project from going forward. Afghanistan was at the center of the so-called "Great Game in the 19th century when Imperial Russia and the British Empire in India vied for influence. Today, its geographical position as a potential transit route for oil and natural gas pipelines, makes Afghanistan an extremely important piece of a global strategy by energy magnates to obtain control over these precious resources. Enron, a Texas-based gas and energy company, together with Amoco, British Petroleum, Chevron, Exxon, Mobil and Unocal are all engaged in a multi-billion dollar frenzy to extract the reserves of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan, the three newly independent Soviet republics that border on the Caspian Sea. On behalf of the oil companies, an array of former cabinet members from the elder Bush administration have been actively involved in negotiations with the former Soviet republics. The dealmakers include James Baker, Brent Scowcroft, Dick Cheney, and John Sununu. Turkmenistan and Azerbijan are also both closely allied with Israeli commercial interests and Israeli military intelligence. In Turkmenistan, a "former Israeli intelligence agent, Yosef A. Maiman, president of Merhav Group of Israel, is the official negotiator and policy maker responsible for developing the energy resources of Turkmenistan. "This is the Great Game all over, Maiman told The Wall Street Journal about his role in furthering the "geopolitical goals of both the U.S. and Israel in Central Asia. "We are doing what U.S. and Israeli policy could not achieve, he said, "Controlling the transport route is controlling the product. "Those that control the oil routes out of Central Asia will impact all future direction and quantities of flow and the distribution of revenues from new production, said energy expert James Dorian recently in Oil & Gas Journal on September 10. Foreign business in Turkmenistan is dominated by Maiman's Merhav Group, according to The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA). Maiman, who was made a citizen of Turkmenistan by presidential decree, serves as Turkmenistan's "official negotiator for its gas pipeline, special ambassador, and "right-hand man for the "authoritarian President Saparmurad Atayevich Niyazov, a former Politburo member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Merhav Group of Israel officially represents the Turkmen government and has brokered all of the energy projects in Turkmenistan, contracts worth many billions of dollars. Merhav has been contracted to modernize existing natural gas infrastructure and will build new facilities in an oil refinery in the city of Turkmenbashi on the Caspian Sea. Merhav refuses to disclose its sources of financing. In keeping with Israeli political interests, Maiman's planned pipelines by pass Iran and Russia. Maiman has said that he would have no objection to dealing with Iran, "when and if Israeli policy allows it. Iran has accused the U.S. of trying to keep regional pipelines from passing through Iran. Creating a counterbalance to Iran's regional influence was a cornerstone of the Clinton administration, which was concerned that Iran could gain too much control over Caspian exports. "This is a common interest for the U.S. and Israel, said Dr. Nimrod Novik, vice president of Merhav, "The primary interest is to prevent the development of Turkish strategic dependence on Iran, given the unique emerging strategic relationship between Turkey and Israel. Russia and Turkmenistan are in a battle to conquer the Turkish gas market, the supplier that offers the best price for its gas will emerge as the winner. "This is a great race, Maiman says, "Whoever takes Turkey first wins. Whoever comes second will have lean years. Although the U.S. needs Russian assistance in its campaign against Afghanistan, when AFP asked Alex Chorine of Caspian Investor what kind of relationship existed between the Russian and Western/Israeli energy companies doing business in the Caspian Basin, Chorine said, "They act as enemies. One of Maiman's proposed pipelines would bring Turkmenistan's gas and oil to Turkey via Azerbaijan and Georgia. Maiman's Merhav Group is also involved in a $100 million project that would reduce the flow of water to Iraq by diverting water from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to southeastern Turkey. Israeli officials boast of having "excellent relations with Azerbaijan, where an Israeli company, Magal Security Systems, has a contract to provide security at Baku airport. Magal is one of several Israeli companies that will "turn Israel into a major player in Azerbaijan by providing security for the 1,200 mile pipeline taking oil from the Caspian to the Turkish port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean Sea. Enron, the biggest contributor to the Bush campaign of 2000, conducted the feasibility study for a $2.5 billion Trans-Caspian gas pipeline, which is being built under a joint venture agreement signed in February 1999 between Turkmenistan and two American companies, Bechtel and General Electric Capital Services. Maiman acted as the intermediary between the Turkmenis and the U.S. firms, but won,t discuss "his cut or whether he will receive a stake in the pipeline. The Merhav Group has hired a Washington lobbying firm, Cassidy & Associates, and spent several million dollars to "encourage U.S. officials to push for the Trans-Caspian pipeline. During the Clinton administration, Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson and "special adviser to the president, Richard Morningstar promoted the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline, calling it "critical to the economic survival of Turkmenistan. The relationship between Israel, Turkey, and the U.S. is the major factor for the selection of the Baku-Ceyhan route, which could be extended to bring oil directly to energy deficient Israel, however, energy experts question the wisdom and cost of this route. Companies are under pressure from the U.S. and Israel to invest in east-west pipelines, although most companies would prefer cheaper north-south pipelines through Iran, according to WRMEA. The U.S. firm Unocal was leading a pipeline project to bring Turkmenistan's abundant natural gas through Afghanistan to the growing markets of Pakistan and India, until the turmoil in Afghanistan led them to withdraw from the project in 1998. The planned pipeline would carry gas from the Turkmen Dauletabad fields, among the world's largest, to Multan in Pakistan, with a planned extension to India. The line from Dauletabad through Afghanistan is planned to transport 15 billion cubic feet of gas per year for 30 years. This pipeline is on hold until the political and military situations in Afghanistan improve. There is a second Unocal project to build a 1,030 mile oil pipeline called the Central Asian Oil Pipeline Project, which would start at Chardzhou in Turkmenistan linking Russia's Siberian oil field pipelines to Pakistan's Arabian coast. This line could transport 1 million barrels a day of oil from other areas of the Former Soviet Union. It would run parallel to the gas line route through Afghanistan and branch off in Pakistan to the Indian Ocean terminal in Ras Malan. ISRAEL's SOVIET DICTATORS IN CENTRAL ASIA Niyazov, the authoritarian president of the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic was elected in 1990, and remained in power when Turkmenistan declared independence in October 1991. In May 1992, Niyazov oversaw the passage of a new constitution giving the president extraordinary powers. Under the new constitution, |
