Pipeline politics is the new Great Game

We're always told that Russia is using its economic resources to achieve foreign policy aims, ' President Putin told journalists recently. But, he went on, it is 'ill-wishers' in the Western press who paint Russia as a threat to European energy security. 'That is not the case.' Yet within minutes of this assurance, Putin issued a bald threat to one of the EU's newest members that was a textbook example of how Russia has bullied its way to energy dominance. If Bulgaria did not accept Russia's terms for the planned pipeline from its Black Sea port of Bourgas to the Greek port of Alexandroupolis, Putin warned, it risked losing decades of revenues from shipping supplies of Russian oil. A week later, Bulgaria dropped its objections to Russia's terms and signed a preliminary deal.

Europe's fear of the energy superpower to its east began in earnest when Russia cut gas supplies to Ukraine at the start of 2006. But it is in the Black Sea and the Caspian, where Russia competes head-to-head with rival suppliers, that the game of pipeline politics is being played most aggressively today. At stake is Europe's ability to pipe in oil and gas from the Caspian region and the Middle East -- bypassing Russia. 'It's like the Great Game between Russia and Britain in the 19th century, ' one Western executive in the region claims, 'but rather than India being the target, Western markets are the targets.

The Bosphorus Straits rather than mountain passes are the bottleneck. Rather than silk and opium, it's about oil.' The EU used to let the United States do the worrying over its energy dependence on Russia, but it is now for the first time playing a role. Energy commissioner Andris Piebalgs is lobbying hard for three new routes. He wants to reverse the Odessa-Brody pipeline, which stretches from Ukraine's Black Sea coast towards the Polish border, to bring oil from the Caspian into Central and Eastern Europe. He wants to revive a Trans-Caspian pipeline that would bring gas from Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan directly across the Caspian and down to Turkey. And he has declared the $5.8 billion Nabucco pipeline project from Turkey to Austria to be of overriding strategic importance. Approved last June, Nabucco could bring gas from Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and even Iraq.

Piebalgs is working tirelessly. In October he signed a deal with Ukraine; in November he visited Kazakhstan to push for the TransCaspian. But Russia has fought back. 'They just don't like the idea of crude oil that isn't under their control getting to Eastern Europe, ' explains an oil consultant in Ukraine.

For starters, the Russian government demanded control of the BourgasAlexandroupolis consortium. Originally Russian, Bulgarian and Greek partners were to take a third each. In November, Russia demanded 51 per cent. Semyon Vainshtok, president of the Russian state-owned pipeline operator Transneft, declared bluntly: 'It was a wrong understanding and there will be no compensation.' The Russians also squeezed out other foreign participation. In April 2005, TNK-BP (of which BP owns half) was appointed co-ordinator of the project. But the Russians announced that only Russian-owned companies would be offered part of the Russian stake. 'The flavour has changed over the past three months, ' says one well-informed watcher. 'The Kremlin initially mooted the idea of inviting in foreign companies. . . . Now they seem to have gone for complete control.' This complex story goes back to the early 1990s, when the US oil company Chevron, which controls Kazakhstan's Tengiz oil field, successfully negotiated the construction of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) through Russia to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiisk. It remains the only oil pipeline on Russian soil which is not wholly owned by Transneft. Now Chevron is paying the price. It wants almost to double production from Tengiz by 2009. But Russia's energy ministry, after years of negotiations, has refused Chevron's request to increase the pipeline's capacity.

John Roberts, an energy security specialist at Platts Energy, says, 'The toughest stance being taken by Russia anywhere is the stance it is currently taking on expansion of the CPC. They're being incredibly difficult. This is a genuine piece of Russian bullying.' Meanwhile, as big new fields such as Kashagan in Kazakhstan begin producing, a new pipeline is needed to bypass the Bosphorus Straits, one of the choke points for exports of crude from Russia and the Caspian. There are three alternatives: the Samsun-Ceyhan route across the Asian side of Turkey, the TransThracian route across the European side, and Bourgas-Alexandroupolis. As Putin made abundantly clear, in the short term only one is commercially viable. Russia aims to make sure the one that is built is the one it controls.

This is where the CPC negotiation comes in. Transneft is refusing to agree to the expansion unless the additional crude arriving at Novorossiisk is then shipped to Bourgas to enter the Russian-controlled pipeline -- not only justifying BourgasAlexandroupolis commercially, but probably killing off the alternatives.

In the past, such heavy-handed tactics have backfired. The headaches endured by Chevron in negotiating the CPC deal convinced BP to build the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline across Georgia to Turkey's Mediterranean coast -- reducing Russia's energy grip on Georgia and Azerbaijan.

Similarly, Chevron recently said it would ship oil by tanker across the Caspian to the BTC, in which it owns a stake. At the same time, TNK-BP has begun negotiations with the Samsun-Ceyhan consortium.

Russia, though, has other cards to play. In the past it has been adept at luring Western oil companies into its strategy. BP, for example, helped the Russians ensure that the Odessa-Brody oil pipeline never brought Caspian oil into Central and Eastern Europe.

Keen to ingratiate itself with Moscow, TNKBP helped convince Ukraine to reverse the pipeline, promising to ship 9 million tons a year of Russian crude through it to the Black Sea. It has barely shipped a third of that amount. 'If you were a cynic, ' the executive in Ukraine says, 'you'd argue that they just did it to plug the pipeline.' Likewise, in 2000, the Italian energy giant Eni helped kill off a Trans-Caspian pipeline from Turkmenistan across the Caspian to Turkey. PSG, a consortium involving Shell and Bechtel, was close to signing the deal.

But Gazprom teamed up with Eni to build the rival Blue Stream pipeline bringing Russian gas to Turkey, wrecking the economics of the Trans-Caspian. Russia has unveiled a similar ploy to block Nabucco -- floating the idea of a rival pipeline to bring Russian gas from Turkey to Europe.

The Caspian battle is set to become even more heated. The death in December of Turkmenistan's crazed dictator, Saparmurat Niyazov, has thrown open the chance of new routes for his country's vast gas supplies.

The new Turkmen president, Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, said at his inauguration last month that he was open to new international negotiations over gas. His promises of multi-party democracy should be taken with a pinch of the free salt received by the country's oppressed citizens. But a less rapacious and more rational ruler than Niyazov is sure to be courted assiduously by both sides. The Kremlin and the Russian state energy giants will already be positioning themselves. As John Roberts of Platt Energy says, 'In the end they want control -- with things that they can't control, it's not just that they don't trust them, they're positively afraid of them.'

The New Great Game
Why the Bush administration has embraced India.



New Delhi

Three recent events illuminate the contours and fault lines of Asia's emerging strategic landscape, amid the lengthening shadows cast by China's growing power.

First, the United States and India consolidated a wide-ranging military, economic, and diplomatic partnership on December 9, when Congress passed legislation enabling U.S.-Indian civilian nuclear cooperation. Then, at a summit in Tokyo on December 15, the leaders of India and Japan declared their ambition for a strategic and economic entente between Asia's leading democracies. This stands in sharp contrast to the intensifying rivalry between India and China: Tensions over territory and Tibet simmered at a summit on November 21, where Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh's assertion that "there is enough [geopolitical] space for the two countries to develop together" sounded more like hope than conviction.

As its relationships with the United States, Japan, and China show, India has reemerged as a geopolitical swing state after decades of marginalization as a consequence of the Cold War, its own crippling underdevelopment, and regional conflict in South Asia. Although its status as a heavyweight in the globalized world of the 21st century is new, India's identity as a great power is not: It was for centuries one of the world's largest economies and, under British rule, a preeminent power in Asia. Today, a rising India flush with self-confidence from its growing prosperity is determined not to be left behind by China's economic and military ascent. "The [Indian] elephant," says an admiring Japanese official, "is about to gallop."

The United States has an enormous stake in the success of a rich, confident, democratic India that shares American ambitions to manage Chinese power, protect Indian Ocean sea lanes, safeguard an open international economy, stabilize a volatile region encompassing the heartland of jihadist extremism in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and prove to all those enamored of the Chinese model of authoritarian development that democracy is the firmest foundation for the achievement of humankind's most basic aspirations.

India is the world's biggest democracy, a nuclear power with the world's largest volunteer armed forces, and the world's second-fastest-growing major economy. Few countries will be more important to American security interests and American prosperity in the coming decades, as five centuries of Western management of the international system give way to a new economic and security order centered in the rimlands of the Indian and Pacific oceans.

India has been a factor in the global balance of power since at least 1510, when the establishment of a Portuguese trading colony at Goa broke a seven-century monopoly on the Indian Ocean spice trade by Muslim empires, unlocking the wealth of the East to European maritime states, which used it to build global empires. Possession of India propelled Britain to the peak of world power in the 19th century. "[T]he master of India," argued Britain's Lord Curzon, "must, under modern conditions, be the greatest power in the Asiatic Continent, and therefore . . . in the world."

During World War II, an Indian army under British command halted the Japanese army's relentless march across Asia, inflicting on Imperial Japan its first military defeat. India's location as an Indian Ocean and Himalayan power, its massive production of armaments, and its armed forces--which fought in Europe, North Africa, and Southeast Asia--contributed decisively to the Allied victory over the Axis powers.

Lord Curzon celebrated India's importance in The Place of India in the Empire (1909):

The central position of India, its magnificent resources, its teeming multitude of men, its great trading harbors, its reserve of military strength, supplying an army always in a high state of efficiency and capable of being hurled at a moment's notice upon any point either of Asia or Africa--all these are assets of precious value. On the West, India must exercise a predominant influence over the destinies of Persia and Afghanistan; on the north, it can veto any rival in Tibet; on the north-east . . . it can exert great pressure upon China, and it is one of the guardians of the autonomous existence of Siam.

Possession of India gave the British Empire its global reach. Britain lost its status as a world power when it lost India.

Independent India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, shared Curzon's expansive vision, declaring India "the pivot round which the defense problems of the Middle East, the Indian Ocean, and Southeast Asia revolve." Wary Chinese strategists perceive a continuity of strategic design from Curzon to the Congress party today, accusing Nehru at that time of harboring ambitions for a "greater Indian empire," and more recently criticizing India's aspirations for "global military power."

"China and India," writes the Carnegie Endowment's Ashley Tellis, "appeared destined for competition almost from the moment of their creation as modern states."

The taproots of modern Sino-Indian conflict, argues historian John Garver, are found in the overlapping claims of traditional Indian and Chinese spheres of influence in Asia, and in "conflicting nationalist narratives that lead patriots of the two sides to look to the same arenas in attempting to realize their nations' modern greatness." These conflicts create acute security dilemmas as India and China compete for influence across Central, South, and Southeast Asia, where strategic gains by one power magnify the vulnerabilities of the other.

Indian officials perceive a Chinese design to box India into its subregion, curbing India's ability to project power beyond its borders. China's 1950 invasion of Tibet, traditionally the buffer between China and British India, established the trend. Beijing maintains pressure on New Delhi by politely declining to resolve their 2,500-mile border dispute, a legacy of the 1962 Sino-Indian war. China has deployed nuclear weapons along its disputed border with India in Tibet. "The potential political and psychological impact" of nuclear-armed missiles "literally a few miles from India's border . . . cannot be underestimated," argues political scientist Amitabh Mattoo. China has refused to extend its nuclear "no first use" doctrine to include India.

China's military assistance to Pakistan, including the extensive transfer of nuclear and missile components, inflates the power of a state with which India has fought three wars, enabling Pakistan to challenge Indian primacy in South Asia. Since the 1990s, China has pursued a consistent policy of encircling India by supplying military assistance and training to its neighbors. The top three recipients of Chinese arms exports are Pakistan, Burma, and Bangladesh; China has also established military supply and exchange relationships with Nepal and Sri Lanka. China seeks to create "a string of anti-Indian influence around India" that is "designed to marginalize India in the long term," according to one Indian strategist. Prime Minister Singh laments "the desire of extraregional powers to keep us engaged in low-intensity conflicts and local problems, to weigh us down in a low-level equilibrium."

China is also expending money and manpower to construct strategic road and rail links in India's backyard. A high-altitude rail line linking Qinghai in China with Lhasa in Tibet, which began transporting Chinese military personnel in early December, reportedly features a planned southern spur leading to the disputed Sino-Indian border, enabling the rapid movement of Chinese military forces in the event of conflict. Beijing and Islamabad are conducting surveys for a rail line across the Karakoram mountains linking western China to northern Pakistan, which would tie up with Chinese-funded roads and railways leading to Pakistani ports on the Arabian Sea. China is reported to be considering construction of a rail link to Nepal, traditionally a buffer state under India's influence.

China has reportedly constructed 39 transport routes from its interior to its contested border with India--which Indian planners perceive as more of a military threat than a commercial opportunity, since much of the border is closed to trade. China's program of road and rail works along its border with the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which Beijing claims as Chinese territory, has led New Delhi to accelerate "strategically important" road construction in the region. China is also funding extensive road and rail projects in Burma, traditionally the land corridor for both commerce and armies between East and South Asia.

Around India, China is constructing deep-water port facilities capable of berthing warships at Gwadar in Pakistan, on the Arabian Sea; at Rangoon, Kyaukpyu, and other harbors in Burma; at Chittagong in Bangladesh; and at Sihanoukville in Cambodia. Chinese engineers are dredging Burma's Irrawaddy River, which will give China a usable waterway connecting Yunnan province to the Bay of Bengal. China operates naval and radar facilities on Burma's Coco Islands, just 30 miles from Indian territory and strategically situated near the Straits of Malacca, through which pass half of all world oil shipments and one-third of all ship-borne cargo. India recently used its influence with the government of the Maldives to veto a Chinese request for naval access rights just off India's south coast.

The Pentagon has highlighted Beijing's design to construct a "string of pearls" of naval facilities stretching from Southeast Asia to the Persian Gulf--a project that will help China protect seaborne trade and, potentially, contain the Indian Navy's projection of power in what it considers its home seas. China's construction of transport infrastructure and port facilities that encircle India, says analyst Vikram Sood, is "designed to put India in pincers."

Amidst the drama of Washington's opening to Beijing in 1971, Henry Kissinger told President Nixon that no country in the world, with the possible exception of Great Britain, shared a greater convergence of strategic interests with America than Mao's China. Modern India's democratic identity, and a striking congruence of interests between Washington and New Delhi after the Cold War, give India the stronger claim to be America's "natural ally" in Asia.

As Prime Minister Singh has said, "If there is an 'idea of India' that the world should remember us by and regard us for, it is the idea of an inclusive and open society, a multicultural, multiethnic, multilingual society. All countries of the world will evolve in this direction as we move forward into the 21st century. Liberal democracy is the natural order of social and political organization in today's world. All alternate systems, authoritarian and majoritarian in varying degrees, are an aberration."

Former ambassador to India Robert Blackwill argues convincingly that New Delhi may more closely share America's core foreign policy goals and perception of threat than any of our traditional allies. More people have been killed by terrorists in India over the past 15 years than in any other country. This makes India a natural partner to America in the campaign against terror, centered in the Pakistan-Afghanistan nexus in India's backyard. Facing an acute missile threat from China and Pakistan, India embraced President Bush's missile defense plans when, in 2001, the president dismayed many traditional allies by withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. India was among the first countries to offer America the use of its military facilities after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

India is encircled by failed and potentially failing states--including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, Burma, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. New Delhi shares Washington's interest in helping these countries develop durable democratic institutions. "India would like the whole of South Asia to emerge as a community of flourishing democracies," said Indian foreign secretary Shyam Saran in 2005.

America is India's largest trading partner. Continued annual economic growth of 8-9 percent depends on partnership with the world's largest economic power in trade, investment, technology, and market access. India's dependence on imported energy--and its intense competition with China for control of oil and gas supplies, from Ecuador to Angola--gives it an abiding interest in energy cooperation with America and Japan, including protecting the sea lanes linking the Persian Gulf to Asian waters.

India is committed to balancing Chinese power in Asia. "India has never waited for American permission to balance China," says Indian strategist Raja Mohan. "I tell the Americans: You balanced China from 1949 to 1971, but then allied with Beijing from 1971 to 1989. India has been balancing China since the day the Chinese invaded Tibet in 1950. We have always balanced China--and that's what we'll continue to do." India, Mohan insists, "will never play second fiddle to the Chinese."

The challenge posed to India's security and its identity as a democratic Asian power by the rise of authoritarian China is fueling the new warmth in India's relations with Washington and Tokyo.

"[T]here is a major realignment of forces taking place in Asia," explained India's foreign secretary in 2005. "There is the emergence of China as a global economic powerhouse. There will be increased capabilities that China will be able to bring to bear in this region and even beyond. India also is going to be a major player in Asia. . . . I think India and the United States can contribute to a much better balance in the Asian region."

India, according to Indian Express editor in chief Shekhar Gupta, faces a strategic choice between building economic and military power in partnership with America and playing underdog to China in a global anti-American axis. "Is it a good or bad thing for India that the Cold War is over and that, in a resultant unipolar world, it has a mutually beneficial relationship with the only superpower?" he asks. The alternative is for India "to be to tomorrow's China what Cuba was to yesterday's Soviet Union. . . . [G]o seek a referendum from the people of India on that."

Although Chinese military strategists worry less about India than about America and Japan, the prospect of an enduring Indo-U.S. military partnership attracts Beijing's full attention. Indian strategist Brahma Chellaney recounts, "On my visits to China, I have found as an Indian that the only time the Chinese sit up and listen is when the U.S.-India relationship comes up. India and the United States ganging up militarily is China's worst nightmare."

So, too, could be an emerging strategic entente between India and Japan. Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe has said, "It is of crucial importance to Japan's national interest that we further strengthen our ties with India," which he calls "the most important bilateral relationship in the world."

Since assuming office in September, Abe has enthusiastically backed the concept of a quadrilateral security partnership among Japan, India, Australia, and the United States. Abe says the values of "freedom, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law" are central to Japan's identity as an Asian great power. "I believe Japan should play a role in trying to spread such values, for example in the Asian region," he recently told the Washington Post's Fred Hiatt. This makes democratic India a natural strategic partner.

Indian officials are enthusiastic about what Abe calls the development of a "new Asian order" based on strategic cooperation among Asian democracies. As Japan's ambassador in New Delhi, Yasukuni Enoki, recently put it, an Indo-Japanese strategic partnership could become "the driving force behind an emerging Asia," creating what Prime Minister Singh calls "an arc of advantage and prosperity" that will "enhance peace and stability in the Asian region and beyond."

Japan is expected to join India and the United States next year in high-profile naval exercises in the South China Sea. The two countries are pursuing a comprehensive economic partnership that includes Japanese provision of advanced technology to India to accelerate its rise. "India is the key counterweight to China in Asia, along with Vietnam," says one senior Japanese official. According to India's Mohan, "You'll see the India-Japan relationship change more over the next few years than any of our other key relationships. India-Japan is the next big game."

Such cooperation between a rising India and a more muscular Japan raises the prospect of what Chellaney, in his Asian Juggernaut: The Rise of China, India, and Japan, calls the emergence of an Asian "constellation of democracies" dedicated to preserving what the State Department's Nicholas Burns calls "a stable balance of power in all of the Asia-Pacific region--one that favors peace through the presence of strong democratic nations enjoying friendly relations with the United States."

To foster an Asian balance that safeguards its liberal principles, India will need to wield the appeal of its democratic values as a strategic asset. India played a key role in brokering Nepal's recent agreement to hold democratic elections, but it continues to appease Burma's military junta in ways that alienate its natural allies, the Burmese people. They voted overwhelmingly for the democratic, pro-Indian opposition in the country's last free elections.

"India's regional grand strategy must be based on our belief that what is good for us is also good for our neighbors; in other words, pluralistic political systems, the rule of law, the rights of the individual," argues Hindustan Times columnist Manoj Joshi. From Rawalpindi to Rangoon, Indian leaders will find that democrats make better neighbors than military dictators.

India's quest for strategic autonomy and its identity as a great civilization mean that it will never be the kind of subordinate ally the United States cultivated during the Cold War. The closest historical model for America's ambition to accelerate India's rise to world power may be France's decision to invest in Russia's economic and military modernization in the late 19th century. France's goal was to build Russia up as an equal partner to help manage the rise of German power in Europe--just as the United States today hopes to construct friendly centers of power in Asia to limit China's ultimate ambitions.

"We're fully willing and ready to assist in th[e] growth of India's global power, . . . which we see as largely positive," says Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Turning the caricature of ally-bashing unilateralism on its head, in India, the Bush administration is working concertedly, writes journalist Edward Luce, "to play midwife to the birth of a new great power."

Now the enactment in Washington of legislation enabling Indo-American civilian nuclear cooperation is a compelling riposte to leaders on the left and right of Indian politics who remain skeptical of Secretary Rice's commitment that America will be "a reliable partner for India as it makes its move as a global power." Senator Richard Lugar calls the agreement "the most important strategic diplomatic initiative undertaken by President Bush." India's "normalization" as a nuclear power through agreements with the United States, the Nuclear Suppliers Group, and the International Atomic Energy Agency will encourage it to remain a responsible nuclear state committed to upholding a global nuclear order from which it had previously been excluded.

Civilian nuclear cooperation with Washington gives India even greater incentives to maintain India's "impeccable" (Prime Minister Singh) and "excellent" (Secretary Rice) nonproliferation record. It should also encourage Indian cooperation containing Iran's nuclear weapons program: In February, India voted with the United States to refer Iran to the United Nations Security Council for possible sanctions.

The notion of a Sino-American partnership to contain India's rise as a nuclear power, as suggested by President Clinton's joint condemnation of India's nuclear tests with Chinese president Jiang Zemin in Beijing in 1998--and more recently by American critics of the U.S.-India nuclear deal--rankles Indian elites. They are confused by the determination of U.S. critics to hold India to a far higher proliferation standard than China has displayed in its transfer of nuclear technology to Pakistan. They are surprised that some American experts believe excluding India from the legitimate nuclear order is more faithful to the cause of nonproliferation than enmeshing India in the rules of the nuclear club. And they are baffled that the West would want to entrench a balance of terror between democratic India and authoritarian China that permanently favors the latter.

Economic dynamism is fueling India's geopolitical ambitions. This new vigor is somewhat mystifying when judged against the bureaucratic incompetence of the Indian state. Despite scandalous underinvestment in education, sanitation, health, and infrastructure, India's economy is growing at an annual rate of 8-9 percent and is forecast to surpass China as the world's fastest-growing major economy next year. India remains burdened by acute poverty, yet possesses an expanding middle class already larger than the entire population of the United States. It suffers from stifling and corrupt government, yet boasts world-beating companies with global reach. Its dizzying politics--which currently pit a profoundly reformist prime minister against old-fashioned Marxists and caste-based populists within his own governing coalition--do not lend themselves to the kind of strategic economic liberalization China's leaders have managed since 1978.

"To race China, first let's get our feet off the brakes," implores the former editor of the reformist Indian Express, Arun Shourie. If and when this happens, Indian power, prosperity, and culture could change the world.

India's rapidly expanding middle class is expected to constitute 60 percent of its billion-plus population by 2020. India is expected to surpass Japan in the 2020s as the world's third-largest economy at market exchange rates, and to surpass China around 2032 as the world's most populous country. India's relative youthfulness should produce a "demographic dividend": While its 400 million-strong labor force today is only half that of China, by 2025 those figures will reverse as China's population rapidly ages.

India's economic growth may be more sustainable than China's. Domestic consumption accounts for nearly two-thirds of India's GDP but only 42 percent of China's, making India's growth "better balanced" than that of China's export-dependent economy, according to Morgan Stanley's Stephen Roach. India's combination of private-sector dynamism and state incompetence means that "India is rising despite the state," in the words of economist Gurcharan Das. It is "an organic success from below" rather than one directed by government planners, and is therefore "more likely to endure."

Conventional wisdom that Indian democracy constrains economic growth, and is inferior to the ruthless efficiency of China's authoritarian development model, is wrong. India's curse--like China's until quite recently--has been an overweening state that squeezes out private investment and creates massive opportunities for corruption. "India's problem isn't too much democracy, it's too much socialism," says Prannoy Roy, the founder of India's NDTV.

This is rapidly changing as economic reform transforms India's economic landscape, fueling a vast domestic consumer market and providing a launching pad for Indian companies like Infosys, recently listed on the NASDAQ-100. More fundamentally, its democratic political foundation gives India a long-term comparative advantage by rendering less likely the kind of revolutionary unrest that has regularly knocked China's growth off course throughout that country's long history.

Infused with the missionary spirit and the ideology of the Open Door, Americans have long held a fascination with the prospect of changing China in our own image. Yet authoritarian China's rise and growing nationalism raise questions about when and whether China will embrace political liberalism.

India may be a better template against which to judge the appeal of democratic values on Asian soil--and a surer partner in managing security challenges, from Chinese power to global terrorism, whose threat lies in their lack of democratic control. A durable Indo-American partnership of values promises higher dividends than a century of failed attempts to forge an enduring Sino-American alliance in Asia.

The United States is strangely popular in India. Polling regularly shows Indians to be among the most pro-American people anywhere--sometimes registering warmer sentiments towards the United States than Americans themselves do. But this is not so strange: India and America are the world's biggest and oldest democracies. Both are multiethnic, continental empires with strong cultural-religious identities. Each inherited the rule of law from Britain. Indian and American foreign policies appear equally animated by a self-regarding exceptionalism and a habit of moralizing in international affairs.

Both India and America are revisionist powers intent on peacefully recasting the contemporary international order and ensuring themselves a prominent place in it. America's rise to world power in the 19th and 20th centuries is, in some respects, a model for India's own ambitions. As Indian analyst Pratap Bhanu Mehta told the New York Times, Indians have "great admiration for U.S. power" and want their country to "replicate" it, not oppose it. How many of America's European allies share such sentiments?

The CIA has labeled India the key "swing state" in international politics. It predicts that India will emerge by 2015 as the fourth most important power in the international system. Goldman Sachs predicts that, by 2040, the largest economies on earth will be China, the United States, India, and Japan. A strategic partnership of values among the last three, naturally encompassing the European Union, may defy predictions of a coming "Chinese century"--and set a standard of democratic cooperation and prosperity China itself might ultimately embrace on its own path to greatness.

Daniel Twining, a former adviser to Senator John McCain, is a fellow of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, based in Oxford and New Delhi, and the Fulbright/Oxford Scholar at the University of Oxford.

__________________
Work until your idols become your rivals.

Pipeline Geopolitics. Betting and Bluffing in the New Great Game

by Pepe Escobar


Future historians may well agree that the 21st century Silk Road first opened for business on December 14, 2009. That was the day a crucial stretch of pipeline officially went into operation, linking the fabulously energy-rich state of Turkmenistan (via Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan) to Xinjiang province in China's far west. Hyperbole did not deter the spectacularly named Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, Turkmenistan's president, from bragging: "This project has not only commercial or economic value. It is also political. China, through its wise and farsighted policy, has become one of the key guarantors of global security."

The bottom line is that, by 2013, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hong Kong will be cruising to ever more dizzying economic heights courtesy of natural gas supplied by the 1,833-kilometer Central

Asian pipeline, then projected to be operating at full capacity. And to think that, in a few more years, China's big cities will undoubtedly also be getting a taste of Iraq's fabulous, barely tapped oil reserves: conservatively estimated at 115 billion barrels, but possibly closer to 143 billion barrels – which would put it ahead of Iran. When the George W Bush administration's armchair generals launched their "war on terror", this was not exactly what they had in mind.

China's economy is thirsty, and so it's drinking deeply and planning more deeply yet. It craves Iraq's oil and Turkmenistan's natural gas, as well as oil from Kazakhstan. Yet instead of spending more than a trillion dollars on an illegal war in Iraq or setting up military bases all over the greater Middle East and Central Asia, China used its state oil companies to get some of the energy it needed simply by bidding for it in a perfectly legal Iraqi oil auction.

Meanwhile, in the new Great Game in Eurasia, China had the good sense not to send a soldier anywhere or get bogged down in an infinite quagmire in Afghanistan. Instead, the Chinese simply made a direct commercial deal with Turkmenistan and, profiting from that country's disagreements with Moscow, built itself a pipeline that will provide much of the natural gas it needs.

No wonder the Barack Obama administration's Eurasian energy czar, Richard Morningstar, was forced to admit at a congressional hearing that the US simply cannot compete with China when it comes to Central Asia's energy wealth. If only he had delivered the same message to the Pentagon.

That Iranian equation

In Beijing, they take the matter of diversifying oil supplies very, very seriously. When oil reached US$150 a barrel in 2008 - before the US-unleashed global financial meltdown hit - Chinese state media had taken to calling foreign Big Oil "international petroleum crocodiles", with the implication that the West's hidden agenda was ultimately to stop China's relentless development dead in its tracks.

More than a quarter of what's left of the world's proven oil reserves are in the Arab world. China could easily gobble it all up. Few may know that China itself is actually the world's fifth-largest oil producer, at 3.7 million barrels per day (bpd), just below Iran and slightly above Mexico. In 1980, China consumed only 3% of the world's oil. Now, its take is around 10%, making it the planet's second largest consumer.

It has already surpassed Japan in that category, even if it's still way behind the US, which eats up 27% of global oil each year. According to the International Energy Agency, China will account for over 40% of the increase in global oil demand until 2030. And that's assuming China will grow at "only" a 6% annual rate which, based on present growth, seems unlikely.

Saudi Arabia controls 13% of world oil production. At the moment, it is the only swing producer - one, that is, that can move the amount of oil being pumped up or down at will - capable of substantially increasing output. It's no accident, then, that, pumping 10.9 million barrels per day (bpd), it has become one of Beijing's major oil suppliers.

The top three, according to China's Ministry of Commerce, are Saudi Arabia, Iran and Angola. By 2013-2014, if all goes well, the Chinese expect to add Iraq to that list in a big way, but first that troubled country's oil production needs to start cranking up. In the meantime, it's the Iranian part of the Eurasian energy equation that's really nerve-racking for China's leaders.

Chinese companies have invested a staggering $120 billion in Iran's energy sector over the past five years. Already, Iran is China's number two oil supplier, accounting for up to 14% of its imports, and the Chinese energy giant Sinopec has committed an additional $6.5 billion to building oil refineries there.

Due to harsh United Nations-imposed American sanctions and years of economic mismanagement, however, the country lacks the high-tech know-how to provide for itself, and its industrial structure is in a shambles. The head of the National Iranian Oil Company, Ahmad Ghalebani, has publicly admitted that machinery and parts used in Iran's oil production still have to be imported from China.

Sanctions can be a killer, slowing investment, increasing the cost of trade by over 20%, and severely constricting Tehran's ability to borrow in global markets. Nonetheless, trade between China and Iran grew by 35% in 2009 to $27 billion. So while the West has been slamming Iran with sanctions, embargoes, and blockades, Iran has been slowly evolving as a crucial trade corridor for China - as well as Russia and energy-poor India.

Unlike the West, they are all investing like crazy there because it's easy to get concessions from the government; it's easy and relatively cheap to build infrastructure; and being on the inside when it comes to Iranian energy reserves is a necessity for any country that wants to be a crucial player in Pipelineistan, that contested chessboard of crucial energy pipelines over which much of the new great game in Eurasia takes place. Undoubtedly, the leaders of all three countries are offering thanks to whatever gods they care to worship that Washington continues to make it so easy (and lucrative) for them.

Few in the US may know that last year Saudi Arabia - now (re)arming to the teeth, courtesy of Washington, and little short of paranoid about the Iranian nuclear program - offered to supply the Chinese with the same amount of oil the country currently imports from Iran at a much cheaper price. But Beijing, for whom Iran is a key, long-term strategic ally, scotched the deal.

As if Iran's structural problems weren't enough, the country has done little to diversify its economy beyond oil and natural-gas exports in the past 30 years: inflation's running at more than 20%; unemployment at more than 20%; and young, well-educated people are fleeing abroad, a major brain drain for that embattled land. And don't think that's the end of its litany of problems.

It would like to be a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) - the multi-layered economic/military cooperation union that is a sort of Asian response to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization - but is only an official SCO observer because the group does not admit any country under UN sanctions.

Tehran, in other words, would like some great-power protection against the possibility of an attack from the US or Israel. As much as Iran may be on the verge of becoming a far more influential player in the Central Asian energy game thanks to Russian and Chinese investment, it's extremely unlikely that either of those countries would actually risk war against the US to "save" the Iranian regime.

The great escape

From Beijing's point of view, the title of the movie version of the intractable US v Iran conflict and a simmering US v China strategic competition in Pipelineistan could be: "Escape from Hormuz and Malacca."

The Strait of Hormuz is the definition of a potential strategic bottleneck. It is, after all, the only entryway to the Persian Gulf and through it now flow roughly 20% of China's oil imports. At its narrowest, it is only 36 kilometers wide, with Iran to the north and Oman to the south. China's leaders fret about the constant presence of US aircraft-carrier battle groups on station and patrolling nearby.

With Singapore to the north and Indonesia to the south, the Strait of Malacca is another potential bottleneck if ever there was one - and through it flow as much as 80% of China's oil imports. At its narrowest, it is only 54 kilometers wide and like the Strait of Hormuz, its security is also of the made-in-USA variety. In a future face-off with Washington, both straits could quickly be closed or controlled by the US Navy.



Hence, China's increasing emphasis on developing a land-based Central Asian energy strategy could be summed up as: Bye-bye, Hormuz! Bye-bye, Malacca! And a hearty welcome to a pipeline-driven new Silk Road from the Caspian Sea to China's far west in Xinjiang.

Kazakhstan has 3% of the world's proven oil reserves, but its largest oil fields are not far from the Chinese border. China sees that country as a key alternative oil supplier via future pipelines that would link the Kazakh oil fields to Chinese oil refineries in its far west. In fact, China's first transnational Pipelineistan adventure is already in place: the 2005 China-Kazakhstan oil project, financed by Chinese energy giant CNPC.

Much more is to come, and Chinese leaders expect energy-rich

Russia to play a significant part in China's escape-hatch planning as well. Strategically, this represents a crucial step in regional energy integration, tightening the Russia/China partnership inside the SCO as well as at the UN Security Council.

When it comes to oil, the name of the game is the immense Eastern Siberia-Pacific Ocean (ESPO) pipeline. Last August, a 4,000-kilometer-long Russian section from Taishet in eastern Siberia to Nakhodka, still inside Russian territory, was begun. Russian Premier Vladimir Putin hailed ESPO as "a really comprehensive project that has strengthened our energy cooperation." And in late September, the Russians and the Chinese inaugurated a 999-kilometer pipeline from Skovorodino in Russia's Amur region to the petrochemical hub Daqing in northeast China.

Russia is currently delivering up to 130 million tons of Russian oil a year to Europe. Soon, no less than 50 million tons may be heading to China and the Pacific region as well.

There are, however, hidden tensions between the Russians and the Chinese when it comes to energy matters. The Russian leadership is understandably wary of China's startling strides in Central Asia, the former Soviet Union's former "near abroad." After all – as the Chinese have been doing in Africa in their search for energy – in Central Asia the Chinese are building railways and introducing high-tech trains, among other modern wonders, in exchange for oil and gas concessions.

Despite the simmering tensions between China, Russia, and the US, it's too early to be sure just who is likely to emerge as the victor in the new Great Game in Central Asia, but one thing is clear enough. The Central Asian "stans" are becoming ever more powerful poker players in their own right as Russia tries not to lose its hegemony there, Washington places all its chips on pipelines meant to bypass Russia (including the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline that pumps oil from Azerbaijan to Turkey via Georgia) and China antes up big time for its Central Asian future. Whoever loses, this is a game that the "stans" cannot but profit from.

Recently, our man Gurbanguly, the Turkmen leader, chose China as his go-to country for an extra $4.18 billion loan for the development of South Yolotan, his country's largest gas field. (The Chinese had already shelled out $3 billion to help develop it.) Energy bureaucrats in Brussels were devastated. With estimated reserves of up to 14 trillion cubic meters of natural gas, the field has the potential to flood the energy-starved European Union with gas for more than 20 years. Goodbye to all that?

In 2009, Turkmenistan's proven gas reserves were estimated at a staggering 8.1 trillion cubic meters, fourth largest in the world after Russia, Iran, and Qatar. Not surprisingly, from the point of view of Ashgabat, the country's capital, it invariably seems to be raining gas. Nonetheless, experts doubt that the landlocked, idiosyncratic Central Asian republic actually has enough blue gold to supply Russia (which absorbed 70% of Turkmenistan's supply before the pipeline to China opened), China, Western Europe and Iran, all at the same time.

Currently, Turkmenistan sells its gas to: China via the world's largest gas pipeline, 7,000 kilometers long and designed for a capacity of 40 billion cubic meters per year; Russia (10 billion cubic meters per year, down from 30 billion per year until 2008); and Iran (14 billion cubic meters per year). Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad always gets a red-carpet welcome from Gurbanguly, and the Russian energy giant Gazprom, thanks to an improved pricing policy, is treated as a preferred customer.

At present, however, the Chinese are atop the heap, and more generally, whatever happens, there can be little question that Central Asia will be China's major foreign supplier of natural gas. On the other hand, the fact that Turkmenistan has, in practice, committed all of its future gas exports to China, Russia, and Iran means the virtual death of various trans-Caspian Sea pipeline plans long favored by Washington and the European Union.

IPI vs TAPI all over again

On the oil front, even if all the "stans" sold China every barrel of oil they currently pump, less than half of China's daily import needs would be met. Ultimately, only the Middle East can quench China's thirst for oil. According to the International Energy Agency, China's overall oil needs will rise to 11.3 million barrels per day by 2015, even with domestic production peaking at 4 million bpd. Compare that to what some of China's alternative suppliers are now producing: Angola, 1.4 million bpd; Kazakhstan, 1.4 million as well; and Sudan, 400,000.

On the other hand, Saudi Arabia produces 10.9 million bpd, Iran around 4 million, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) 3 million, Kuwait 2.7 million - and then there's Iraq, presently at 2.5 million and likely to reach at least 4 million by 2015. Still, Beijing has yet to be fully convinced that this is a safe supply, especially given all those US "forward operating sites" in the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Oman, plus those roaming naval battle groups in the Persian Gulf.

On the gas front, China definitely counts on a South Asian game changer. Beijing has already spent $200 million on the first phase in the construction of a deepwater port at Gwadar in Pakistan's Balochistan province. It wanted, and got from Islamabad, "sovereign guarantees to the port's facilities." Gwadar is only 400 kilometers from Hormuz. With Gwadar, the Chinese Navy would have a homeport that would easily allow it to monitor traffic in the strait and someday perhaps even thwart the US Navy's expansionist designs in the Indian Ocean.

But Gwadar has another infinitely juicier future role. It could prove the pivot in a competition between two long-discussed pipelines: TAPI and IPI. TAPI stands for the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline, which can never be built as long as US and NATO occupation forces are fighting the resistance umbrella conveniently labeled "Taliban" in Afghanistan. IPI, however, is the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline, also known as the "peace pipeline" (which would make TAPI the "war pipeline"). To Washington's immeasurable distress, last June, Iran and Pakistan finally closed the deal to build the "IP" part of IPI, with Pakistan assuring Iran that either India or China could later be brought into the project.

Whether it's IP, IPI or IPC, Gwadar will be a key node. If, under pressure from Washington, which treats Tehran like the plague, India is forced to pull out of the project, China already has made it clear that it wants in. The Chinese would then build a Pipelineistan link from Gwadar along the Karakorum highway in Pakistan to China via the Khunjerab Pass - another overland corridor that would prove immune to US interference. It would have the added benefit of radically cutting down the 20,000-kilometer tanker route around the southern rim of Asia.

Arguably, for the Indians it would be a strategically sound move to align with IPI, trumping a deep suspicion that the Chinese will move to outflank them in the search for foreign energy with a "string of pearls" strategy: the setting up of a series of "home ports" along its key oil supply routes from Pakistan to Myanmar. In that case, Gwadar would no longer simply be a "Chinese" port.

As for Washington, it still believes that if TAPI is built, it will help keep India from fully breaking the US-enforced embargo on Iran. Energy-starved Pakistan obviously prefers its "all-weather" ally China, which might commit itself to building all sorts of energy infrastructure within that flood-devastated country. In a nutshell, if the unprecedented energy cooperation between Iran, Pakistan, and China goes forward, it will signal a major defeat for Washington in the new Great Game in Eurasia, with enormous geopolitical and geo-economic repercussions.

For the moment, Beijing's strategic priority has been to carefully develop a remarkably diverse set of energy suppliers - a flow of energy that covers Russia, the South China Sea, Central Asia, the East China Sea, the Middle East, Africa, and South America. (China's forays into Africa and South America will be dealt with in a future installment of our tour of the globe's energy hotspots.) If China has so far proven masterly in the way it has played its cards in its Pipelineistan "war," the US hand - bypass Russia, elbow out China, isolate Iran - may soon be called for what it is: a bluff.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

__________________
Work until your idols become your rivals.

Afghanistan and the new great game


John Foster

Why is Afghanistan so important?

A glance at a map and a little knowledge of the region suggest that the real reasons for Western military involvement may be largely hidden.

Afghanistan is adjacent to Middle Eastern countries that are rich in oil and natural gas. And though Afghanistan may have little petroleum itself, it borders both Iran and Turkmenistan, countries with the second and third largest natural gas reserves in the world. (Russia is first.)

Turkmenistan is the country nobody talks about. Its huge reserves of natural gas can only get to market through pipelines. Until 1991, it was part of the Soviet Union and its gas flowed only north through Soviet pipelines. Now the Russians plan a new pipeline north. The Chinese are building a new pipeline east. The U.S. is pushing for "multiple oil and gas export routes." High-level Russian, Chinese and American delegations visit Turkmenistan frequently to discuss energy. The U.S. even has a special envoy for Eurasian energy diplomacy.

Rivalry for pipeline routes and energy resources reflects competition for power and control in the region. Pipelines are important today in the same way that railway building was important in the 19th century. They connect trading partners and influence the regional balance of power. Afghanistan is a strategic piece of real estate in the geopolitical struggle for power and dominance in the region.

Since the 1990s, Washington has promoted a natural gas pipeline south through Afghanistan. The route would pass through Kandahar province. In 2007, Richard Boucher, U.S. assistant secretary of state, said: "One of our goals is to stabilize Afghanistan," and to link South and Central Asia "so that energy can flow to the south." Oil and gas have motivated U.S. involvement in the Middle East for decades. Unwittingly or willingly, Canadian forces are supporting American goals.

The proposed pipeline is called TAPI, after the initials of the four participating countries (Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India). Eleven high-level planning meetings have been held during the past seven years, with Asian Development Bank sponsorship and multilateral support (including Canada's). Construction is planned to start next year.

The pipeline project was documented at three donor conferences on Afghanistan in the past three years and is referenced in the 2008 Afghan Development Plan. Canada was represented at these conferences at the ministerial level. Thus, our leaders must know. Yet they avoid discussion of the planned pipeline through Afghanistan.

The 2008 Manley Report, a foundation for extending the Canadian mission to 2011, ignored energy issues. It talked about Afghanistan as if it were an island, albeit with a porous Pakistani border. Prime Minister Stephen Harper says he "will withdraw the bulk of the military forces" in 2011. The remaining troops will focus mostly on "reconstruction and development." Does that include the pipeline?

Pipeline rivalry is slightly more visible in Europe. Ukraine is the main gateway for gas from Russia to Europe. The United States has pushed for alternate pipelines and encouraged European countries to diversify their sources of supply. Recently built pipelines for oil and gas originate in Azerbaijan and extend through Georgia to Turkey. They are the jewels in the crown of U.S. strategy to bypass Russia and Iran.

The rivalry continues with plans for new gas pipelines to Europe from Russia and the Caspian region. The Russians plan South Stream – a pipeline under the Black Sea to Bulgaria. The European Union and U.S. are backing a pipeline called Nabucco that would supply gas to Europe via Turkey. Nabucco would get some gas from Azerbaijan, but that country doesn't have enough. Additional supply could come from Turkmenistan, but Russia is blocking a link across the Caspian Sea. Iran offers another source, but the U.S. is blocking the use of Iranian gas.

Meanwhile, Iran is planning a pipeline to deliver gas east to Pakistan and India. Pakistan has agreed in principle, but India has yet to do so. It's an alternative to the long-planned, U.S.-supported pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan and India.

A very big game is underway, with geopolitics intruding everywhere. U.S. journalist Steven LeVine describes American policy in the region as "pipeline-driven." Other countries are pushing for pipeline routes, too. The energy game remains largely hidden; the focus is on humanitarian, development and national security concerns. In Canada, Afghanistan has been avoided in the past two elections.

With the U.S. surge underway and the British ambassador to Washington predicting a decades-long commitment, it's reasonable to ask: Why are the U.S. and NATO in Afghanistan? Could the motivation be power, a permanent military bridgehead, access to energy resources?

Militarizing energy has a high price in dollars, lives and morality. There are long-term consequences for everyone. Canadian voters want to know: Why is Afghanistan so important?

__________________
Work until your idols become your rivals.

The New Great Game: Oil Politics in Central Asia


Nursultan Nazarbayev has a terrible problem. He's the president and former Communist Party boss of Kazakhstan, the second-largest republic of the former Soviet Union. A few years ago, the giant country struck oil in the eastern portion of the Caspian Sea. Geologists estimate that sitting beneath the wind-blown steppes of Kazakhstan are 50 billion barrels of oil -- by far the biggest untapped reserves in the world. (Saudi Arabia, currently the world's largest oil producer, is believed to have about 30 billion barrels remaining.)

Kazakhstan's Soviet-subsidized economy collapsed immediately after independence in 1991. When I visited the then-capital, Almaty, in 1997, I was struck by the utter absence of elderly people. One after another, people confided that their parents had died of malnutrition during the brutal winters of 1993 and 1994. Middle-class residents of a superpower had been reduced to abject poverty virtually overnight; thirtysomething women who appeared sixtysomething hocked their wedding silver in underpasses next to reps for the Kazakh state art museum trying to move enough socialist realist paintings for a dollar each to keep the lights on. The average Kazakh earned $20 a month; those unwilling or unable to steal died of gangrene adjacent to long-winded tales of woe written on cardboard.

Autocrats tend to die badly during periods of downward mobility. Nazarbayev, therefore, has spent most of the last decade trying to get his land-locked oil out to sea. Once the oil starts flowing, it won't take long before Kazakhstan replaces Kuwait as the land of Benzes and ugly gold jewelry. But the longer the pipeline, the more expensive and vulnerable to sabotage it is. The shortest route runs through Iran, but Kazakhstan is too closely aligned with the U.S. to offend it by cutting a deal with Teheran. Russia has helpfully offered to build a line connecting Kazakh oil rigs to the Black Sea, but neighboring Turkmenistan has experienced trouble with the Russians: they tend to divert the oil for their own uses without paying for it. There's even a plan to run crude out through China, but the proposed 5,300-mile line would be far too long to prove profitable.

The logical alternative, then, is Unocal's plan, which is to extend Turkmenistan's existing system west to the Kazakh field on the Caspian and southeast to the Pakistani port of Karachi on the Arabian Sea. That project runs through Afghanistan.

As Central Asian expert Ahmed Rashid describes in his 2000 book "Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia," the U.S. and Pakistan decided to install a stable regime in Afghanistan around 1994 -- a regime that would end the country's civil war and thus ensure the safety of the Unocal pipeline project. Impressed by the ruthlessness and willingness of the then-emerging Taliban to cut a pipeline deal, the U.S. State Department and Pakistan's ISI intelligence service agreed to funnel arms and funding to the Taliban in their war against the ethnically Tajik Northern Alliance. It has been reported that as recently as 1999, U.S. taxpayers paid the entire annual salary of every single Taliban government official, all in the hopes of returning to the days of dollar-a-gallon gas. Pakistan, naturally, would pick up revenues from a Karachi oil port facility. Harkening to 19th century power politics between Russia and British India, Rashid dubbed the struggle for control of post-Soviet Central Asia "the new Great Game."

Predictably, the Taliban Frankenstein got out of control. The regime's unholy alliance with Osama bin Laden's terror network, their penchant for invading their neighbors and their production of 50 percent of the world's opium made them unlikely partners for the desired oil deal. Then-President Bill Clinton's 1998 cruise missile attack on Afghanistan briefly brought the Taliban back into line; they even eradicated opium poppy cultivation in less than a year, but they nonetheless continued supporting countless militant Islamic groups. When an Egyptian group whose members had trained in Afghanistan hijacked four airplanes and used them to kill more than 6,000 Americans on September 11, Washington's patience with its former client finally expired.

Finally the Bushies had the perfect excuse to do what the U.S. had wanted all along: invade and/or install an old-school puppet regime in Kabul. Realpolitik no more cares about the 6,000 dead than it concerns itself with oppressed women in Afghanistan; this ersatz war by a phony president is solely about getting the Unocal deal done without interference from annoying local middlemen.

Central Asian politics, however, is a house of cards: every time you remove one element, the whole thing comes crashing down. Muslim extremists in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, for instance, will support additional terror attacks on the U.S. to avenge the elimination of the Taliban. A U.S.-installed Northern Alliance can't hold Kabul without an army of occupation because Afghan legitimacy hinges on capturing the capital on your own. And even if we do this the right way by funding and training the Northern Alliance so that they can seize power themselves, Pakistan's ethnic Pashtun government will never tolerate the replacement of their Pashtun brothers in the Taliban by Northern Alliance Tajiks. Without Pakistani cooperation, there's no getting the oil out and there's no chance for stability in Afghanistan.

As Bush would say, make no mistake: this is about oil. It's always about oil. And to twist a late '90s cliché, it's only boring because it's true.

__________________
Work until your idols become your rivals.

Afghanistan, the TAPI Pipeline, and Energy Geopolitics


As Western powers look for an end game in Afghanistan, that country’s role as a planned transit route for natural gas from Turkmenistan deserves scrutiny. The long-planned pipeline, named TAPI after the initials of the four participating countries (Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India), has been prominently discussed in the Asian press but rarely mentioned in the West. The TAPI pipeline is geopolitically significant, but has major challenges that have not been widely discussed.

A Gas Pipeline Framework Agreement, signed by representatives of the four participating nations on April 25, 2008 in Islamabad, envisaged construction to start in 2010, supplying gas by 2015. The announced 1,000-mile route would follow the ancient trading route from Central to South Asia, extending from the Dauletabad gas field in Turkmenistan along the highway through Herat, Helmand and Kandahar in Afghanistan, to Quetta and Multan in Pakistan, and on to Fazilka in India. Participating countries have held numerous high-level planning meetings during the past eight years, with Asian Development Bank (ADB) sponsorship and multilateral support. When construction will start is uncertain because security in Afghanistan and the tribal areas of Pakistan remains a problem.

Afghanistan and the TAPI pipeline

The TAPI project has been documented at major conferences on Afghanistan. In 2006, at a donor meeting in New Delhi, countries promised to accelerate planning of the pipeline and to help Afghanistan become an energy bridge. In 2008, at a meeting in Paris, Afghanistan’s National Development Strategy (2009-2013) was presented to donors. This strategy mentions ongoing planning for the TAPI gas pipeline and Afghanistan's central role as a land bridge connecting energy-rich Central Asia to energy-deficient South Asia. In 2009, the Afghan government referred to the proposed pipeline again in documents relating to the First Afghan Hydrocarbon Bidding Round. The invitation to foreign companies to bid for exploration in the north of the country stated that “the TAPI project ... could be one of the export routes.”

The ADB completed a feasibility study in 2005 that was updated in 2008. Details were outlined at the April 2008 meeting of the four participating countries. The ADB reported that the estimated capital cost was $7.6 billion, and said it would consider financing for the project. Turkmenistan promised independent certification of the gas available for the pipeline. Plans called for the line to be built and operated by a consortium of national oil companies from the four countries. A special-purpose financial vehicle would be floated, and international companies would likely join in laying and operating the pipeline. According to press reports, the Afghan delegation informed the meeting that more than 1,000 industrial units were planned near the pipeline route in Afghanistan and would need gas for their operation. They said 300 industrial units near the pipeline route had already been established, and the project's early implementation was essential to meet their requirements.

Several bilateral meetings took place in 2009. In April, a Pakistani delegation visiting Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, suggested a new TAPI route that would skirt the war-torn area and add a spur to Gwadar, a Pakistani deep-water port. Turkmen officials stated they would offer gas from the Yasrak field, instead of the planned Dauletabad field, and they provided a reserves certification for Yasrak. In September 2009, the foreign minister of India, S M Krishna, visited President Berdimuhamedov of Turkmenistan for discussions that included terms of the TAPI pipeline project.

If the pipeline goes ahead successfully, it could be Afghanistan's largest development project. According to the Ambassador of Afghanistan to Canada, transit revenue could amount to US$300 million per year. That would represent about one-third of the domestic revenue (US$887 million in 2008/09) budgeted for development efforts. Transit fees could help pay for teachers and infrastructure. Even so, Afghanistan's domestic revenue is dwarfed by aid. Foreign donors contribute about 90 percent of total funding for the development budget, and they call the shots.

TAPI is expected to boost the economies of all four countries. In 2008, Pakistan's Prime Minister described the pipeline as a vital project for the development and progress of the region. Further, pipelines are potentially good for peace. As President Berdimuhamedov of Turkmenistan said: “The pipeline between Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India will be a weighty contribution to the positive cooperation on this continent.”

US policy recognizes the importance of Central Asia’s energy resources and the economic possibilities they offer in world markets and in the region itself. Richard Boucher, US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, said in 2007: “One of our goals is to stabilize Afghanistan,” and to link South and Central Asia “so that energy can flow to the south.” In December 2009, George Krol, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, told Congress that one US priority in Central Asia is “to increase development and diversification of the region’s energy resources and supply routes.” He said, “Central Asia plays a vital role in our Afghanistan strategy.”

The TAPI Pipeline: Long in Planning

The US has promoted the TAPI pipeline since the 1990s. When the Taliban was governing Afghanistan, two consortia vied for the right to take on the project, one led by Unocal (an American firm) and the other by Bridas (an Argentinean firm). The US government supported the Unocal consortium. US negotiators participated in the Six-plus-Two conferences (the six countries bordering Afghanistan plus the US and Russia) from 1997 to 2001. The aim was to convince the Taliban to form a government of national unity.

At the time, the Taliban controlled 90 percent of Afghanistan but not the area held by the Afghan Northern Alliance. Unocal testified to Congress that the pipeline "cannot begin construction until an internationally recognized Afghanistan government is in place. For the project to advance, it must have international financing, government-to-government agreements and government-to-consortium agreements." The Bush Administration urged the Taliban regime to form a government of national unity that would include the northern tribes. Bridas took a different approach—they negotiated separately with different tribes. The president of Bridas spent eight months visiting tribes along the pipeline route and reportedly had secured their cooperation for the venture.

Negotiations with the Taliban broke down in July 2001, just before the attacks of September 11. In October, the US ousted the Taliban, with the assistance of the Northern Alliance. The Pashtun—roughly 40 percent of the population—are a major source of Taliban insurgents, and the pipeline route goes through the Pashtun area in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. There are about 30 million Pashtuns on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border. It’s an artificial border—the so-called Durand Line that was imposed by British India in 1893. It was drawn intentionally to break up the Pashtun tribes. In fact, Pashtuns in Kandahar were independent from Kabul for ages, and, until recently, Pashtuns in Pakistan were relatively independent from Islamabad.

After the 2001 invasion, planning of the pipeline continued. Interim President Karzai met with President Musharraf in Islamabad in February 2002, where they announced their agreement to cooperate on the proposed pipeline. In May 2002, the heads of state of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan agreed to cooperate on the project, and a steering committee of oil and gas ministers was established to oversee project development. In July 2002, the steering committee requested the ADB to finance project-related studies through the provision of regional technical assistance. In subsequent years, steering committee meetings were held at frequent intervals. India participated in the tenth meeting in 2008, and the four countries signed the Gas Pipeline Framework Agreement.

The next steering committee meeting was scheduled for November 2008 in New Delhi. The agenda was important. Price negotiations were to be advanced. Afghanistan was to report on physical security along the pipeline route, including the clearing of landmines and Taliban activity. Turkmenistan was to present the gas reserves certification. However, the meeting’s timing coincided with the Mumbai bombing, and was thus postponed. It was rescheduled for April 2009, though there was no subsequent press announcement to show it took place. This was hardly surprising, with the US surge underway in Afghanistan and animosity prevailing between India and Pakistan.

Turkmenistan: How Much Gas?

Understanding the significance of the TAPI pipeline requires shining the spotlight on Turkmenistan, the source of the gas. Turkmenistan is one of five Central Asian states that became independent in 1991 when the Soviet Union broke up.

Disagreement exists on how much gas the country actually holds. According to the BP Statistical Review 2009, Turkmenistan has the world’s fourth largest reserves of natural gas, 7.94 trillion cubic meters (TCM), exceeded only by Russia, Iran and Qatar. Turkmenistan’s 2009 ranking represents a sharp upgrade from 2008 (2.43 TCM). The new estimate follows the 2008 audit of the huge South Yolotan-Osman field in western Turkmenistan, conducted by the UK auditing firm Gaffney, Cline & Associates. The audit estimated the reserves of this field alone to be between 4 and 14 TCM of gas, making it the world's fourth or fifth largest field.

Other fields remain to be audited, and Turkmen officials predicted in 2008 that the final results would be much higher. Since then, two publications have cast doubt on the audit results, relying on information obtained from unnamed Russian and Turkmen sources who suggest that Turkmen officials may have provided false data to exaggerate the size of the reserves. Gaffney, Cline & Associates refutes these allegations. Meanwhile, President Berdymukhamedov has dismissed various top energy officials. Whatever the truth of the matter, Turkmenistan’s gas reserves are huge and there is a titanic struggle underway. The geopolitical stakes are high.

Turkmenistan and Pipeline Politics

Turkmenistan is far from the world’s oceans, so it must rely on pipelines to get its gas to market. Like railway lines in the 19th century, pipeline routes are important because they connect trading partners and influence the regional balance of power. Until recently, Turkmenistan’s gas flowed only north through Russia. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, competing world powers have vied to move the gas in other directions. The rivalry is sometimes called the New Great Game, an update of the 19th century Great Game in Central Asia between the Russian and British Empires. Turkmenistan offers a hub for pipelines to export natural gas in all directions. President Berdimuhamedov is committed to multiple export routes: north to Russia, east to China, south to Pakistan and India via Afghanistan, and possibly west to Europe via the Caspian Sea. Significantly, in April 2008 at the NATO Summit in Bucharest, Romania, he met with President Bush to discuss gas export policy, and with President Karzai to review the TAPI project.

Turkmenistan is concerned about pipeline security. It co-sponsored a Resolution on Reliable Energy Transit (63/210) that was passed by the UN General Assembly on December 19, 2008. The Resolution recognized the need for international cooperation to ensure “the reliable transportation of energy to international markets through pipelines and other transportation systems.” In April 2009, Turkmenistan convened a high-level conference on the topic, where President Berdimuhamedov re-iterated his position on multiple export routes.

Russia remains a key player today. In 2007, it signed an agreement with Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan to build a new gas pipeline that would parallel an older one and add to its pipeline network. Russia is the world’s largest producer of natural gas and is a major supplier of gas to Europe. Currently, Russia is building pipelines (South Stream and North Stream) that would link its network to various points in Europe. From Russia’s viewpoint, they provide diversity, adding to the existing pipeline through Ukraine.

In December 2009, China tapped into Turkmenistan’s gas reserves, opening a new pipeline from Turkmenistan that travels 1,833 km through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to reach western China. There it connects with the Chinese line east to Shanghai. Pipelines allow Turkmenistan’s gas to flow all the way to western Europe via Russia and east across China to Shanghai—enormous distances.

The US and European Union support Turkmenistan’s policy of multiple export routes. They promote a pipeline project under the Caspian Sea to bring Turkmen gas west to Azerbaijan, where it would connect with the recently-built South Caucasus pipeline to Turkey. In Turkey, it would link with Nabucco, a planned pipeline to Austria. Russia, a littoral country on the Caspian Sea, objects to construction of the trans-Caspian link. Since Azerbaijan doesn’t have enough gas to fill the Nabucco pipeline, Turkey is exploring alternatives, including gas from Iran. The US objects to supplies from Iran.

Iran has its own interest in gas from Turkmenistan. It imports Turkmen gas into northern Iran to supply local markets that are far from its own gas fields. In 2009, a second pipeline was completed to augment existing imports. That raises the question: Could this pipeline be used to route gas from Turkmenistan to Turkey—and on to Europe through the Nabucco line?

Iran Offers an Alternative to TAPI

For several years, India and Pakistan have been negotiating with Iran for another pipeline project to bring Iranian gas to their countries. With an estimated capital cost of $7.5 billion, the pipeline would be similar in cost to the TAPI project. Petroleum ministers of India and Pakistan met in Islamabad in April 2008 (just after the TAPI meeting) to resolve a pricing issue and clear the way for signing agreements; and President Ahmadinejad of Iran visited Islamabad and New Delhi the following week for talks on the pipeline. Since then, India has oscillated on the project and has stayed largely on the sidelines following a period of tense India-Pakistan relations. However, in December 2009, India’s petroleum minister, Murli Deora, said his country was discussing important issues relating to the pipeline with other participating countries.

In May 2009, Iran and Pakistan went ahead and signed an initial agreement, without India. Russia’s Gazprom expressed willingness to help build the line, most recently in January 2010. The same month, US Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke met with Pakistan’s petroleum minister Syed Naveed Qamar, and, according to a Pakistani newspaper, he offered incentives to Pakistan to abandon the Iranian project. Subsequently, the petroleum minister told journalists that Pakistan and Iran would sign a technical agreement soon; he had met with the US ambassador and officials of US Overseas Private Investment Corporation who had expressed no objection to the project.

In 2008, Iran and Pakistan proposed that China join the project. The foreign minister of China, Yong Jiechi, informed Pakistan’s foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, that China was seriously studying this proposal. Iran’s foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, affirmed in February 2010 that China is keen to join the project.

The demand for energy imports is strong and the stakes are high. Moves by various countries to gain access or control are closely watched—The Grand Chessboard, as Zbigniew Brzezinski called it.

TAPI and Security Concerns

After the TAPI agreement was signed in April 2008, the Afghan government reportedly told the steering committee that, within two years, the pipeline route would be cleared of landmines and Taliban influence. Whatever may have been anticipated then, the planned route remained insecure at the beginning of 2010. Companies are unlikely to make investments within a war zone. The prospect of building the pipeline under armed guard and then defending it for decades is formidable, in terms of both manpower and cost. How many NATO countries would be willing to make long-term commitments to support pipeline security in Afghanistan?

In Western countries, official comments on the TAPI pipeline are few. One exception is Canada. In June 2008, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives released a report entitled “A Pipeline Through a Troubled Land: Afghanistan, Canada and the New Great Game.” The report received widespread attention, including front-page headlines in the Globe and Mail newspaper. Reporters followed up by asking questions about the role of Canadian forces in Afghanistan. A senior government official—who spoke on the condition of anonymity—told The Globe and Mail that Canada broadly supports the Afghan effort to build a legitimate and stable economy, including projects like the TAPI pipeline, but “Canada has not been promoting the pipeline as part of a broader geopolitical agenda, as the Americans have.”

Canada’s Minister of National Defence, Peter MacKay, observed that Canadian troops were “not there specifically to protect a pipeline across Afghanistan,” but added, “If the Taliban were attacking certain places in the country or certain projects, then yes we will play a role.”

In January 2009, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, then NATO Secretary General, said, “Protecting pipelines is first and foremost a national responsibility. And it should stay like that. NATO is not in the business of protecting pipelines. But when there's a crisis, or if a certain nation asks for assistance, NATO could, I think, be instrumental in protecting pipelines on land.” These comments suggest that NATO troops could be called upon to assist Afghanistan in protecting the pipeline. Since pipelines last 50 years or more, this could auger a very long commitment in Afghanistan.

In 2008, when the pipeline came to light in Canada, the Afghan Ambassador, Omar Samad, asserted that TAPI is a project of the four participating countries, and is not seen as falling within the framework of the Canadian mission to his country. His statement ignores the reality that several countries with troops in Afghanistan—including the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and Norway—are also active members of the Asian Development Bank, the sponsor of the TAPI project. Any Bank financing for the project would require the approval of member countries, and a project as sensitive as this would require the early blessing of the US and Japan, the two major shareholders. As well, with such a heavy military presence, US/NATO influence on Kabul is obvious. Discussions of NATO support for TAPI pipeline security raise questions about the links between military and development decisions.

While the focus has been on whether NATO countries are willing to support pipeline security in Afghanistan, an equally valid question is: Are the Afghan people willing to have foreign troops in their country in perpetuity? Development cannot take place at the end of a gun. As a noted Canadian, Claude Castonguay, observed: “No society changes because of an outside pressure, and certainly not by force of arms.” Conventional thinking around the pipeline may include long-term US bases in Afghanistan, and assistance in training the Afghan National Army to defend the pipeline route. Is the Afghan National Army a viable protection force inasmuch as 70 percent of its officers are Tajik and most of its troops are northerners? It too may be seen by the Pashtun as a “foreign” army. Indefinite occupation is a recipe for ongoing bloodshed and disruption in a country that has long been hostile to occupiers.

Geopolitical Significance

The planned TAPI pipeline offers benefits to all four participating countries and would promote cooperation. For Turkmenistan, it would provide revenue and diversification of export routes. For Pakistan and India, it would address energy deficits. In Afghanistan, it would provide revenue for development and gas for industrial enterprises. The potential for export to other countries through the Pakistani port of Gwadar is a further advantage. TAPI is consistent with the US declared policy of linking Central and South Asia and diversifying export routes for Turkmen gas. For a number of countries, TAPI could provide business opportunities in construction and operation of the pipeline.

Since the TAPI route passes through areas with major insurgencies, security is clearly an issue. In both Afghanistan and the tribal area of Pakistan, people along the route have long histories of independence from central and foreign powers. Unless their cooperation is sought and the benefits to them are clear, pipeline security will be an expensive nightmare for years to come.

Peace is essential. Pipeline construction cannot begin until the killing stops and all stakeholders, including the Pashtun, participate in the project. Both Afghanistan and Pakistan are complex countries. Their mix of ethnic groups, long-standing tribal traditions, and history of minimal governance create major challenges. Such challenges require political, not military solutions. The strategy of national reconciliation offered at the London conference on Afghanistan in January 2010 is a beginning. TAPI is geopolitically significant, but encumbered with many difficulties that will challenge all participants in the years ahead.

__________________
Work until your idols become your rivals.

JIHAD: The Great CIA Game: Part 1

GLOBAL ISLAMIC JIHAD

OR A STRATEGIC ASSET OF THE CIA?


This is a rather lengthy article, and I was delaying publishing it for this very reason. Yet I see that terrorism is on the rise in India too.

Unfortunately my frequent predictions that after Afghanistan and Pakistan, India because of it again getting involved in Afghanistan, would soon itself become a hot bed of terrorism, appear to be coming true.

This article is therefore being published to give a bird eyes view of the issues to the general public who blame Islam and Pakistan for the rise of global terrorism. Unfortunately the subject is such that despite my best efforts I could not make it any shorter.

In the series already published under Part-1, we studied the background to the US involvement in Afghanistan. Essentially Curzon’s great game of containment of Russia had been turned on its head by India. It decided that its interests would best be served by allying with the Russians.

The resulting rise in Afghan militancy against Pakistan supported both by Russia and India, invited the ire of the Shah of Iran as well as the Saudi’s who viewed Russian interference as an attempt to reach the warm waters and oilfields of the Persian gulf.

We also saw how Alexandre de Marenches head of French Intelligence exercised central influence on development of events in this region. His creations, the Safari Club along with the BCCI, took on the load of containment of world wide Soviet penetration at a time when CIA was ‘castrated’ due to Congressional inquiries. He too was convinced Russia wanted access to the warm waters of the Gulf through Afghanistan. Just three weeks before the Russian Invasion of Afghanistan when Arnaud De Bochgrave of Newsweek asked for advise where to go to in order to get the best breaking news story he replied,” If I were you, I would go to Kabul’!

Finally we saw how building up on this, Brzezinski conceived the idea of trapping and ‘bleeding’ the Russians in a Vietnam of their own – using Islamic militants. In this article we will see exactly how – after having drawn the USSR into Afghanistan – the USA went about achieving this objective.

It is important to note here that till the time of this US involvement, the suicide bomber was an unknown phenomena in Pakistan but had been discovered and first used by the Tamil rebels of Sri Lanka. Also the rest of the Muslim world, specially the Arabs had not been involved in Pakistan’s war with Afghanistan – hence global radical Islamic Jehad was an un invented commodity.

FROM ‘COLD WAR’ TO ‘DÉTENTE’ TO ‘GLOBAL JIHAD’

Even in the early stages of the cold war the US had realized that religion was the most potent foe of the atheistic communist doctrine; and that the dynamic and fast growing religion of Islam was much more anti-communistic than even the Christianity. Since WW2 it sought to contain communism using Muslim allies.

Nevertheless the division of US ally Pakistan into two by Russian backed ally India in 1971 – made US helplessness apparent – world wide. The perception gained ground – within US government itself as well as – around the world, that the USSR had achieved nuclear parity while the US had been seriously weakened by Vietnam. To counter this, the US decided to use its relations with Pakistan as a bridge to improve relations with China and thus contain the USSR.

Following on the heels of a secret visit to China by Kissinger, in February 1972 Richard Nixon met with Mao Zedong and Chou En-Lai at Beijing to announce a stunning rapprochement. A fear of encirclement by adversaries, lead the Soviets towards détente. Strategic Arms Limitation Talks started in May 1972, resulting in the signing of the SALT II treaty, on June 18, 1979. With this the ‘cold war’ came to an end.

But the post Watergate functioning of the Safari Club awakened the Americans to the possibility of re-energizing their fading dreams for a Pax-Americana. The work already done by The Safari Club in Afghanistan; Pakistan’s visible determination to avenge their recent defeat in East Pakistan (1971) through a defeat of the Russo/Indian axis in Afghanistan; as well as Carter’s keenness to avoid the stigma of direct US involvement; enamored Brzezinski with plans of drowning the USSR in a flood of Jihadi fighters drawn from around and within the USSR. He started taking just enough interest to provoke a Soviet Invasion.

The successful enticement of Soviet troops into Afghanistan raised the love affair another notch into a marriage of convenience.

US President Jimmy Carter withdrew the SALT II treaty from the Senate, describing the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan as “the most serious threat to the peace since the Second World War”. In 1980, Ronald Reagan went further vowing to increase military spending and confront the Soviets everywhere. After getting elected he revived the B-1 bomber program, installed US cruise missiles in Europe, and announced his experimental Strategic Defense Initiative, i.e. “Star Wars”. Also he dramatically increased support for Afghan War, while Richard Pipes the head of the NWG at the time, predicted that with the right encouragement Soviet Muslims will “explode into genocidal fury” against Moscow.

It would turn out to be a marriage in which the willing bride ‘Pakistan’ –as well as other Muslim in-laws – would be wooed with all sorts of enticing visions, heedless of the consequences! Meanwhile much had to be done before the marriage could be consummated-and so Brzezinski set about the task of arranging the party.

The guests would include China, Egypt, Saudi Arabia –and but for the fiasco of the Shah having been allowed permission for medical treatment in USA –even Khomeini’s Iran. The plan involved their co-operation with the west in assembling, training, equipping and raising against Russia; the largest, most efficient and most motivated guerilla force the world had ever seen.


JIHAD: The Great CIA Game: Part 2

PAKISTAN IS THE LAUNCHING PAD

THE OUTLINE PLAN


Brzezinski came up with a plan to recruit Muslim fighters not only from Islamic countries around the globe, but also from Muslim minorities in other countries including the west. They would be motivated by the concept of Islamic Jihad; believing that God had ordered them to defeat the Godless Russians invaders. Their earthly reward would be glory, good pay and massive earnings through drug trade for the leaders; while in case of death they would be Shaheeds (martyrs) and would gain paradise!

The CIA would co-ordinate the global effort and provide special forces (green berets and SEALs/SAS) to train Islamic Jihadi leaders and instructors all over the globe; and along with Saudi and Egyptian help recruit and dispatch these Islamic fighters to Pakistan’s ISI .The USA and Saudi Arabia would also finance and equip the entire war effort. Pakistan’s ISI (along with its special forces SSG) would be responsible for the recruitment and training of local Jihadi fighters, as well as the training of those arriving from outside. Moreover Pakistan would serve as the sole pipeline for the operational control, re-supply and logistics including payments to all fighters within the theatre of operations.

It will be revealing at this stage to see which particular countries were relevant to this US plan; and why?

EGYPT

Anwer Sadat, a close ally of the Americans had been isolated in the Muslim world ever since he made his peace treaty with Israel. The Al Azhar University in Cairo was recognized throughout the Muslim world as the foremost religious institution. The Muslim Brotherhood also had branches throughout the world, and like Pakistan’s Jamat-e-Islami advocated the establishment of an ideal Islamic state based on the teachings of the Holy Quran. The support of Anwer Sadat was vital for gaining access to Egyptian bases as regional collection and dispatch points of arms and equipment to Mujahideen in Afghanistan; while the support of two above mentioned institutions was the key to raising a huge army of Egyptian fighters for the envisioned global Jihad. In addition it was hoped that Anwer Sadat’s identification with the Global Jihad might serve to end his isolation in the Muslim world.

PAKISTAN

It was the bride Brzezinski must woo at all costs if his global Jihad was to succeed. Already engaged in covert operations against Afghanistan for the last five years, it had the required intelligence already in place. Moreover being the country most jeopardized by the Russian invasion, it could be counted on to be the most zealous in the fight. The Jamat-e-Islami founded by Maulana Mahdoodi had a wide following in Pakistan –and had also branches world wide. The Jamat also advocated the use of militancy for the achievement of its aims if necessary, and had prepared many of its followers to fight in Afghanistan as well as Kashmir. Enlisting its support would greatly facilitate the recruitment drive both in Pakistan as well as globally.

SAUDI ARBAIA

We have already discussed the important role it played in the Safari Club both with regards to spreading of the teachings of Wahabi radicalism world wide, as well as the financing of covert operations. It enjoyed enormous respect as an ally amongst all sections of Pakistanis. Moreover as the custodians of the Holy Kaaba it commanded respect throughout the Muslim world. Its importance both as financers as well as enablers of massive recruitment worldwide, in support of global Jihad could never be under estimated.

CHINA

Both as a regional power, as well as a country with which Pakistan had close ties, getting China on board for any major undertaking was unavoidable. Moreover its large Muslim population and Russian origin weaponry would be invaluable in provision of both recruits and equipment which could not be pinned on the Americans.

But US relations with Pakistan were at low ebb because of a US anti-nuclear proliferation embargo.

So Assistant secretary of State Warren Christopher was sent on a mission to woo the bride, soon Brzezinski would follow with the formal proposal. He would go first to Egypt then Pakistan; while US Defense secretary Harold Brown would go to China.

THE INITIAL US EFFORT

Soon after Warren Christopher’s wooing mission to Pakistan; in January 1980 Brzezinski visited Egypt.

From that date the airbase at Qena- already in US use for reconnaissance flights against Iran – was also made available for airlifting supplies to Pakistan. Later Aswan was also made available, and Egypt started sending it’s own out of date surplus Russian equipment for use by the Mujahideen. An old arms factory near Halwan was converted to produce copies of Russian weapons for dispatch.

Later Representative Charlie Wilson would travel to Israel to meet W. Zvi Rafiah; and Israel would also feed captured Egyptian, Syrian and PLO equipment-including T-55 tanks- into this supply route.

Over time much useful equipment including artillery and mortar shells and even Strela missiles were sent. By summer of 1980 Cairo west airbase was also made available; and by end of 1980 US special warfare troops (SEALs) were based in Egypt to impart training to Egyptian instructors-including Al-Zawahari- who in turn would train the Egyptian recruits.

From Egypt Brzezinski flew straight to Pakistan. Pakistan viewed the Russian invasion of Afghanistan as a God sent opportunity to strike a tough bargaining position. The ISI chief Akhtar A. Rehman was keenly in favor of using Afghanistan as a Vietnam for the Russians, yet Zia was determined to strike a tough deal. He asked for and got the US to turn a blind eye to Pakistan’s perusal of its nuclear ambitions.

He also got the US to accept that all arms, supplies, finance and training must be provided through Pakistan and not directly by CIA.

Later when US coordinated aid started flowing Zia insisted on absolute adherence to this condition. He further specified that the countries supporting must maintain absolute secrecy and repeatedly deny if necessary any shipment. Second the arms were to start immediately and be sent to Pakistan by fastest means available, but not less then two plane loads per week. Third the remaining supplies must be regular, and could come overland (China and Iran) or via sea from others (USA, UK, France, Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia etc.)


JIHAD: The Great CIA Game: Part 3

BIN LADEN AND THE INTERNATIONAL JIHAD


Henry Kissinger had already used the close ties between Pentagon and Pakistan military to build a link with China. Now after Brzezinski’s visit to Pakistan, US defense secretary Harold Brown flew to China where he secured Chinese assent and active help for the global Jihad.

OSAMA BIN LADEN

It will be worthwhile at this stage to focus on the role of Osama bin Laden-the man who was to be painted post 9/11 as the maniacal leader of Al-Qaeda Islamic terrorist network.

In his book CIA’s Beardman claims that Osama bin Laden was never aware of the role he was playing on behalf of Washington. This is likely an attempt at distancing the CIA from Osama as a result of 9/11, for enough evidence is available to prove that not only was Osama aware of US effort in support of the Afghan war, but also that he was closely involved in routing it to the Arab fighters.

What is certain is that Osama Bin Laden appeared on the scene immediately after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Leaving Saudi Arabia together with a group of supporters and heavy engineering equipment he arrived in Pakistan in 1979. According to Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, Osama was 22 years old in 1979, when he was trained in an ISI sponsored guerilla training camp near Peshawar, Pakistan. It is said that the ISI wanted a Saudi prince to head the Saudi contingent as proof of the Saudi commitment for the anti-Soviet effort. They failed to get royalty, but a person from the influential bin Laden clan was considered good enough.

Richard Clarke, counter terrorism head during the Clinton and Bush administrations, believes Osama was handpicked for the job by the head of Saudi intelligence (Turki). The Saudis deny he was ever their agent, but it is known that he regularly met with Prince Turki and Saudi Interior Minister Prince Naif. Turki’s chief of staff Ahmed Badeeb one of bin Laden’s teachers in high school even said: “I loved Osama and considered him a good citizen of Saudi Arabia.” Badeeb will later say bin Laden developed “strong relations with the Saudi intelligence and with our embassy in Pakistan. We were happy with him. He was our man”.

It seems clear therefore that Osama was hand picked soon after the Soviet invasion to play a middleman’s role between Saudi intelligence and ISI. More over the status of his relations with the CIA though cloudy, are also thus clearly established.

The truth is that although Osama was neither recruited by the CIA, nor was their agent; once the US had decided to come in a big way; as the middleman between Saudi intelligence and ISI it was inevitable that he would get closely involved with the CIA too.

Numerous charities and foundations coordinated by Saudi intelligence in close liaison with Safari Club were already in existence and financing covert operations world wide. In addition as per Indian claims Pakistan had already set up 37 training camps in Pakistan ,49 in Azad Kashmir, and 22 camps in Afghanistan to supply fighters for Afghanistan and Kashmir. Now that the USA had also committed the CIA to globalization of the covert fight in a big way, it too would have to set up front organizations for undertaking the required financial and recruitment drive.

The CIA would be the main coordinator globally and the ISI would co-ordinate everything within Pakistan. Staying within this arrangement, Osama was possibly placed in charge of co-coordinating and marrying up the existing Arab global effort with the one to be set up by the CIA/ISI.

Soon after his training in Pakistan Osama left for a visit to the USA in 1980, and also reportedly was seen in the UK in 1981.Nothing is certain about the reasons for the visit. Barnett Rubin, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations claims that about this time in the USA, – a man “enlisted” by the CIA who had “close connections to the Muslim Brotherhood, Saudi intelligence, and the Muslim World League.” – was given the role of looking after the financing and recruitment of foreign JIhad.

Slate writes, “Azzam trotted the globe during the 1980s to promote the Afghan jihad against the Soviets”.

Now this Azzam also later became known as Osama’s mentor. Was Osama also trotting alongside him on the same

mission? It would appear to be so, for in 1984 Azzam set up the Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK), also known as Al-Kifah in Peshawar, a Pakistani town bordering Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden soon took it over from him.

Azzam moved back to the US to set up its first American branch in New York – known as the Al-Kifah Refugee Center.

As we shall see in a later part of the article Azzam then enlarged the network to 30 branches! All US branches were CIA backed, and served both as financial as well as recruitment centers.

It becomes obvious that the office at Peshawar was a set up for tying in the CIA effort with the effort already in place in Pakistan. Thus the MAK center at Peshawar is in a position to receive –through Pakistan’s ISI- not only the money of private Arab charities, but also all CIA funds and equipment for Arab fighters. It would become the main center for funneling foreign funds and fighters from all over the globe into the Afghan war. In fact back in 1982 the CIA had become unhappy with the ‘Afghan native’ fighters due to rivalry ridden infighting, and wants more Arab fighters as Arab were easier to ‘read’ and also ‘one-dimensionally anti-Soviet ’.

CIA Director William Casey visited Pakistan to sign an agreement committing CIA’s support for recruitment of Muslims from around the world. In addition to Gulf States, this would include Turkey, the Philippines, USA, UK and China.

Azzam and Osama were probably tasked after this by their respective handlers to set up a suitable funnel for the purpose. They came up with the MAK center at Peshawar. From here Osama could keep a tab on and control the financing and feeding of all foreign fighters into the Afghan Jihad.

The entire initial data base was initially also held by him. Researcher Kurt Nimmo writes:” This database of Islamic fighters was labeled in Arabic, ‘Q eidat ilmu’ti’aat’, which is the exact translation of the English word database. But the Arabs commonly used the short word ‘Al Qaeda” which is the Arabic word for ‘base.’” Robin Cook, British Foreign Secretary from 1997 to 2003, also confirms this: “al-Qaeda was originally the computer file of the thousands of Mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians.”

Thus starting soon after the Russian Invasion in 1979, US efforts had by 1984 laid the foundations for converting the discordant Pakistani covert war against the Soviets, into a global Jihad- code named ‘Operation Cyclone’. Even by end of 1982 the rate of flow of equipment would rise to 10,000 ton annually, and the flow of foreign fighters also increases.

OPERATION CYCLONE-THE US LED GLOBAL JIHAD AGAINST RUSSIA

NSDD 166

In March 1985, President Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 166, (NSDD 166). William Casey director of CIA described it as the largest covert operation in history. It authorized stepped-up covert military aid to the Mujahideen, and laid down a new goal for the Afghan war: Total defeat of Soviet troops in Afghanistan through covert action leading to a Soviet withdrawal.

The new covert U.S. assistance began with a dramatic increase in arms supplies — a steady rise to 65,000 tons annually by 1987.”

In addition to arms, it provided very specialized training, state of the art military equipment including surface to air missiles, military satellite maps and latest communications equipment.
The U.S. supplied support package had three essential components-organization and logistics, military technology, and ideological support for sustaining and encouraging the Afghan resistance.

The ISI increased its staff to over 150,000 military and intelligence officers, bureaucrats, undercover agents and informers. In the final stages U.S. counter insurgency experts worked closely with the Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) even in organizing Mujahideen groups and in planning operations inside Afghanistan.

Eventually the entire Afghan nation, supported by tens of thousands of Pakistani Jihadis and some 35,000 Muslim radical Jehadis from 40 countries would join the fight.

Most of the funding would be from the United States and Saudi Arabia with a significant part generated from the Golden Crescent drug trade


JIHAD: The Great CIA Game: Part 4

GRAND STYLE RECRUITMENTS & INDOCTRINATION


We have already seen how Abdullah Azzam, a CIA agent mentored Osama in setting up his financial and recruitment fronts; and also the main funnel at Peshawer. Azzam also followed this up by expanding the US network to 30 branches. For this reason Slate calls him “the Lenin of international jihad.”

The war lords in Afghanistan recruited their own followers. These were reinforced by fighters from all over the world. In Pakistan the Jamat-e-Islami set up recruitment centers all over the country-including Kashmir.

Recruitment centers were also opened in many other countries including the Middle East, Turkey, UK, Philippines and China. These were funded by MAK (through CIA and ISI) but operated and run through mosques and Islamic centers in respective countries.

TRAINING

Initially key Pakistani officers and some Afghan Mujahideen leaders were trained by Navy Seals and Green Beret officers at Camp Peary, near Williamsburg, Virginia, which is said to be the CIA’s main location for training spies and assets.Other training took place at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Harvey Point, North Carolina, and Fort A. P. Hill, Virginia. US consular official Michael Springmann reports fighters from many Middle Eastern nations were getting US visas, apparently to train in the US for the Afghan war.

Training was imparted in how to detect explosives, surveillance, how to recruit new agents, how to run paramilitary operations, and more. They are taught to use different weapons, including rockets, mortars, missiles, remote-controlled mines and bombs, and sophisticated timers and explosives.

Guerrilla training was integrated with inspirational Jihad lectures, featuring CIA sponsored speakers. They could be CIA-trained Afghan fighters traveling on a CIA-issued visa; or clean-cut Arabic-speaking Green Beret lecturing on the glory of being ‘warriors of the Lord.’

People like Azzam, Abdul-Rahman, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, could often turn up as star guest speakers to deliver fiery sermons on themes like ‘Blood and martyrdom are the only way to create a Muslim society’ or ‘the world opposes our objectives, because it is the enemy of Muslims.’ # Predominant themes were that Islam was a complete socio-political ideology, and that this was being violated by the atheistic Soviet invaders who must be killed, and that the Islamic people in Afghanistan are warriors of Allah through Jihad.

Instructor’s training centers staffed by Green Berets and SEALs were set up in 1980 both in Egypt and Pakistan. Fearing a diplomatic incident, US and British troops rarely ventured into Afghanistan, but up to 1982 the British SAS did provide weapons training even in Afghanistan. After Russian soldiers found the passports of two British instructors in a training camp this was discontinued; and UK enrolled Mujahideen were trained in secret camps in remote parts of Scotland.

The instructors thus trained were used in turn to train tens of thousands more in camps set up by ISI in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

RADICAL INDOCTRINATION

Under NSDD 166, Washington also supported and financed the process of religious indoctrination. The CIA spent $ 51million to create and supply Afghan school children with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings, part of covert attempts to breed radicalism from the grass roots. Nebraska academic Thomas Gouttierre led the textbook project.

These were filled with talk of Jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, violent images and militant Wahabi teachings. Children were even taught to count with illustrations showing tanks, missiles, and land mines. Mathematics involved posing the children with problems like how many second would it take for a bullet aimed by a Jihadi to crack open the head of an infidel Russian, given the velocity. The primers are so radical that even the Taliban regime would continue using these American-produced books!

FINANCING THE JIHAD THROUGH DRUG TRADE

The history of the drug trade in Central Asia is closely connected to the CIA’s operations. Prior to the covert operations opium production in Afghanistan and Pakistan was small- and directed to regional markets. There was no local production of heroin, but within two years of the onslaught of the CIA operation in Afghanistan, “the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands became the world’s top heroin producer.” (Alfred McCoy, Drug Fallout: the CIA’s Forty Year Complicity in the Narcotics Trade. The Progressive, 1 August 1997).

OPERATION MOSQUITO

CIA involvement started with a small suggestion in1981. Alexandre de Marenches head of the Safari Club met President Reagan at the White House. He proposed ‘Operation Mosquito’ a joint French-American-ISI operation to produce fake Russian newspapers with articles designed to demoralize Soviet troops. He also suggested US supply of drugs to Soviet soldiers. It is claimed that the idea was rejected, but soon after fake issues of the Soviet army newspaper did appear in Kabul; and also large qualities of cocaine, hashish, opium, and heroin become available to Soviet troops. At that time cocaine was only grown in South America!

In 1982, a secret memo will exempt the CIA from reporting on drug smuggling conducted by CIA officers or assets. Obviously the CIA wished to use the proceeds of the Afghan drug trade to finance its operations. Alfred McCoy’s study confirms that” Under CIA and ISI protection, Afghan resistance opened heroin labs on the Afghan and Pakistani border. Among the leading heroin manufacturers were Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an Afghan leader who received about half of the covert arms that the CIA shipped to Pakistan.

In 1995 the former CIA Director of this Afghan operation, Mr. Charles Cogan, admitted sacrificing the drug war to fight the Cold War.

“Our main mission was to do as much damage to the Soviets. There was fallout in terms of drugs, yes, but the main objective was accomplished. The Soviets left Afghanistan.” (Alfred McCoy, Testimony before the Special Seminar focusing on allegations linking CIA secret operations and drug trafficking-convened February 13, 1997, by Rep. John Conyers, Dean of the Congressional Black Caucus)

The Pakistan backed Taliban government which came to power in 1996 virtually eliminated this trade, with opium production declining by more than 90 percent.

But in the immediate wake of the US led invasion of Afghanistan, opium production has again increased 33 fold from 185 tons in 2001 under the Taliban to 6100 tons in 2006. In 2007, this was approximately 93% of the global supply of heroin, and valued in excess of 190 billion dollars a year. (Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 6 January 2006)


JIHAD: The Great CIA Game: Part 5

THE OPERATIONAL STRUCTURE OF JIHADI GROUPS


The entire Jihadi fighting force was united under the banner of Islamic Unity of Afghanistan Mujahideen, which was an alliance of seven Afghan parties fighting against the Soviets : Islamic Party (Khalis), Islamic Party (Hekmatyar), Islamic Society (Rabbani), Islamic Union for the Liberation of Afghanistan (Sayyaf), National Islamic Front for Afghanistan (Gailani), Afghanistan National Liberation Front (Mojaddedi), and Revolutionary Islamic Movement (Mohammadi).

Although the alliance took its formal shape in the 1985, it had de facto existence as a political bloc since May 1979, when the Pakistani government decided to limit the flow of foreign financial aid, mainly from USA and Saudi Arabia, to the said seven organizations, thus limiting infighting amongst numerous smaller groups-while simultaneously cutting of the flow to doubtful and undesirable groups.

The seven parties between themselves controlled a number of affiliated commanders –the highest operational rank amongst the Jihadis. Significant commanders typically led 300 or more men, but there were many commanders with lesser number of fighters. Each commander controlled several bases to dominate a district or a sub-division of a province. Some of the legendary commanders of the Afghan war were:
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar the favored warlord of the ISI and CIA. Casey was said to be particularly fond of him as both shared a goal of extending the fighting beyond Afghanistan into the Soviet Union itself. He was a ruthless fighter, who also led several raids into USSR territory. He was also a major drug trafficker. Almost half of all the covert weapons directed at Afghanistan were sent to his group.

Another ISI and CIA favorite was Jalaluddin Haqqani. In the 1980s, he was cultivated as a “unilateral” asset of the CIA, helping to protect Osama bin Laden, who was building his own militia to fight the Soviet forces.
Originally a member of the Hezb-i-Islami, he was the first resistance leader to capture a city, Khost, from the Najibullah government. After the fall of Kabul to the Mujahideen in 1992, he was appointed justice minister in the first Mujahideen government. He attracted generous support from prosperous Arab countries compared to other resistance leaders.

Haqqani was not originally a member of the Taliban. In 1995, just prior to the Taliban’s occupation of Kabul, he switched his allegiance to them. In 1996-97, he served as a Taliban military commander north of Kabul, and was accused of ethnic cleansing against local Tajik populations. During the Taliban years in power, he served as the Minister of Borders and Tribal Affairs and governor of Paktia Province.

The GID’s (Saudi Intelligence Agency) favorite was Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, a Pashtun warlord. He was a member of Akhwan-ul-Muslimeen (Muslim Brotherhood), founded in 1969 by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Dr. Syed Burhanuddin Rabbani, which had strong links to The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
Fluent in Arabic, his tenure as an Ustad (Professor) at the Shariat faculty in Kabul ended in 1973 when he fled to Pakistan after an unsuccessful plot to overthrow President Daoud Khan . Sayyaf then headed the Islamic Union for the Liberation of Afghanistan, and fought against Soviet occupying forces in Afghanistan during the 1980s, forming a close relationship with Osama bin Laden .

Together in the Jalalabad area they established a training camp network, later used by Al-Qaeda personnel, with bunkers and emplacements. In 2001 he was the only Pashtun leader allied with the United Front (Northern Alliance) –and therefore the US – in its war against the governing Taliban prior to the fall of Kabul. In this period though wielding little clout as a military leader, he was able to maintain a small army paying men under his command with donations he received from his Arab benefactors. He is also the one who trained the dreaded Abu Sayyaf terrorist group of the Philippines.

Ahmed Shah Massoud of the Panjshir valley north of Kabul, was one of the most independent, charismatic and effective of Mujahideen commanders. He was also the most well read and certainly the most militarily proficient amongst them all. His tragedy was that in a land over which all sorts of powers vied for control he dreamed of a democratic and free Afghanistan, with the result that he was always relatively poorly supplied.

Opposed to both Russian as well as Pushtun domination, he is credited by some western writers of having caused over 60% of the Russian losses-but found little favour with the ISI or Saudis. By the end of the war he was leading at least 10,000 trained troops-the only semblance to an army amongst Mujahideen commanders- and had expanded his political control of Tajik dominated areas to Afghanistan’s northeastern provinces. His Northern alliance later also provided the base for the US invasion of Afghanistan. After the Russian withdrawal he remained the lone obstacle preventing Taliban and Pakistani domination of the country. However in this final stage, he was being supported by the Russians, Iranians and the Indians-and perhaps covertly even by the US.

The fighters under the warlords operated through over 4000 bases spread all over Afghanistan.

The bases served as sources of supply and control. Hierarchies of organization above the base level were attempted, but the results varied depending on regional, ethnic and sectarian considerations. In the Pashtun areas of the east, south and southwest; tribal structure, with its many rival sub-divisions, provided the basis for military organization and leadership. Mobilization depended on the traditional fighting allegiances to quickly raise a tribal lashkar (fighting force). In favorable circumstances such formations could quickly reach more than 10,000.

Normally they could be formed to besiege towns, but because of the independent nature of Pashtun , the Lashkar durability was necessarily short-and most sieges ended in failures. Despite the proven ability to cause fearfully unacceptable attrition in hit and run missions, such troops were woefully inadequate for purposes of capturing or holding any major cities and bases in operations against trained troops.

Mujahideen mobilization in non-Pashtun regions was very different. The Persian and Turkish speaking regions of Afghanistan lacked strong political representation in a state dominated by Pashtuns. Prior to the invasion, non-Pashtuns possessed very few firearms and little military tradition upon which to build an armed resistance. Here the leadership for mobilization was found from amongst pious learned or charismatically revered pirs (saints).The military leadership being closely tied to Islam helped avoid the infighting common amongst the Pashtun and led to some of the most effective mobilization during the war.

Thus Ahmed Shah Massoud of the Panjshir valley north of Kabul, one of the most charismatic and effective commanders, rose from within their ranks. By the end of the war he was leading at least 10,000 trained troops-the only semblance to an army amongst Mujahideen commanders- and had expanded his political control of Tajik dominated areas to Afghanistan’s northeastern provinces. His Northern alliance later also provided the base for the US invasion of Afghanistan.

The Mujahideen leaders were skilled at sabotage operations. They concentrated on both civilian and military targets, knocking out bridges, closing major roads, blowing up power lines, pipelines, radio stations, government office buildings, air terminals, hotels, cinemas, ambushing patrols, attacking convoys, disrupting the electric power system and industrial production, and attacking police stations and Soviet military installations and air bases. From 1985 through 1987, an average of over 600 “sabotage acts” a year were recorded. The Mujahideen would often launch 800 rockets per day. Between April 1985 and January 1987, they carried out over 23,500 shelling attacks on government targets. They also made heavy use of land mines.

MUJAHIDEEN ATTACKS WITHIN THE USSR

In 1985, the CIA, MI6 (Britain’s intelligence agency), and the Pakistani ISI agreed to launch guerrilla attacks from Afghanistan into then Soviet-controlled Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, attacking military installations, factories, and storage depots within Soviet territory. The task was given to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

According to, Mohammad Yousaf, a high-ranking ISI officer at the time. the attacks on the Soviet Union actually began in 1985:“These cross-border strikes were at their peak in 1986. Scores of attacks were made across the Amu (River)… Sometimes Soviet citizens joined in these operations, or came back into Afghanistan to join the Mujahideen. That we were hitting a sore spot was confirmed by the ferocity of the Soviets’ reaction. Virtually every incursion provoked massive aerial bombing and gunship attacks on all villages south of the river in the vicinity of our strike.”

THE SOVIET WITHDRAWAL

By 1987 the USSR decided it has had enough! Its Politburo decided that the Soviet-Afghan War must end “within a year” and by November 1987 both the CIA and the ISI were aware of this.

As a result of an agreement signed in Geneva, between Afghanistan and Pakistan the Soviet Union pledged to withdraw all of its troops from Afghanistan by February15, 1989. On that exact date the last of its soldiers were out of Afghanistan.

But they left a Soviet backed Communist regime holding the fort at Kabul. None of the players – including the USSR – expected this regime to survive for more then three months. Yet even though it was acceptable to neither the Mujahideen fighters nor even their principle backers – it would survive for three years!


JIHAD: The Great CIA Game: Part 6

CONCLUSION


This article conclusively proves that ‘Global Islamic Jihad’ was forged as an instrument for the pursuit of US strategic interests, and that it proved itself as a worthwhile CIA asset in Afghanistan. It’s very first operation – “Operation Cyclone” – the organizing and launching of the biggest covert operations the world had ever seen; proved a remarkable success; enabling the USA and it’s Jihadi allies to attain the stated goal of defeating and forcing the Soviet troops out of Afghanistan.

Yet as we have seen in some of the remarks of US officials it was an instrument forged to pursue goal stretching far beyond the immediate objective of defeating the Russian in Afghanistan. It is here that except for some success in Yugoslavia –Bosnia and Kosovo-and Chechnya; the idea backfired very badly.

In the first place the unexpected resistance of the Najeeb government upset US planning and forced the ISI as well as the CIA to continue funding the Mujaheddin for another three years. In the process the conflicting tactical and strategical compulsions of the many strange bed fellows in ‘Global Jihad’ started to surface.

Leadership at all levels –US, Pakistani, Afghan as well as Arab – failed to rise to the occasion. Obsessed by their own objectives -now that the common enemy was removed- each group would fail to show any unity of purpose, or even the flexibility and accommodation required to attain the fruits of their massive effort. This in turn would propel the war uncontrollably into unexpected and unchartered territory!

To begin with –amongst the various Afghan Mujahideen groups – the concept of ‘holy war’ seemed to give way immediately to an ethnic based struggle for leadership and control of the Afghan capital. Pakistan having a huge Pashtun population in it’s tribal area, and, also interested in retaining control over Afghanistan as a means of strategic depth as well as access to Central Asia; was increasingly drawn in on the side of Gulbadin Hikmatyar and the Pashtuns.

The USA aiming for quick stability in order to implement it’s greater game in Central Asian Republics and Yugoslavia – and also perhaps to lessen Pakistani and Pakhtun influence on Afghan issues – supported the concept of a more broad based government. This brought it into conflict the issue of Pakhtuns domination- an issue the US never seemed to be inclined to support. Nevertheless because of Pakistani hold on Pakhtun commanders, the US had little choice but to appear to go along with what Pakistan was doing, while continuing to do whatever was needed to pursue its own objectives.The death of General Zia in a mysterious plane crash tended to sabotage Pakistani influence on Pashtun commanders; however even if-as some say- engineered by CIA the crash proved counter productive, as for some time thereafter neither the US nor Pakistan had much control over the war lords in Afghanistan.

The uncontrolled Mujahideen parties now committed enormous atrocities on their own citizens, and, destroyed whatever infrastructure was left as they battled each other for control of Kabul and the major cities. The country was politically divided with warlords holding sway on ethnic basis; ruthlessly suppressing their own citizens-and eliminating their opponents. The rise of the Pashtun Taliban in 1994 – a Pakistani attempt to re assert control – was therefore tolerated for a while even by the US, in the hope that this would bring the required peace and stability in Afghanistan.

Similar differences also developed between Bin Laden and his mentor Azzam. We have already noted that Azzam was a CIA man, while bin Laden was an ISI/GID man; Bin Laden sided with the “Islamic Party” lead by the Pashtun Hekmatyar, while Azzam tried to impose the US option of peace between the Mujahideen faction and the Jama’a Al Islamiya faction under the leadership of Rabani and Masuod. Azzam even issued a Fatwa forbidding Jihadi fighters from participating in the power struggle in Afghanistan. These differences thus appear to be an early reflection of the differences between the outlook of the US and pro Pashtun parties to the conflict.

One early effect of this on the set up of Arab fighters within Afghanistan was that Bin Laden disengaged from Azzam and was forced to move to Sudan to begin ‘independent’ operations.

In November 1989 Azzam was murdered in New York under mysterious circumstances and Bin laden became the sole ideological leader of the organization of Arab fighters- Al-Qaeda. In 1990 Al-Zawahiri the leader of the Egyptian fighters in Afghanistan also moved to Sudan to join Bin Laden. But even at this stage both the ISI as well as Osama seems to have been part of the US operations involving the use of Al-Qaeda Jehadis in Chechnya and Yugoslavia.

Peace did not come even after the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan; Osama would return to Afghanistan-and Hikmatyar the CIA and ISI’s blue eyed boy would flee to Iran! Ahmed Shah Masud would form the Northern alliance and continue battling the Taliban. Osama allied with Al-Zawahiri, would announce that peace is not possible until Massoud is killed. Massouud in turn would speak to the EU parliament warning against terrorism and an imminent major terrorist attack in the near future. Soon Massoud would be assassinated by men posing as press photographers. Two days later 9/11 would occur. The USA would embark on its invasion of Afghanistan using the deceased Massoud’s Northern alliance as a base.

What are we to make of all this? Did the creation of an instrument of global Jihad have unforeseen and undesirable ramifications for the USA? Did Osama at some stage along the line develop major differences with the CIA – leading to 9/11 and his subsequent vilification as the leader of the terrorist organization al-Qaeda? Was the difference much deeper and involved a gradually widening chasm between the CIA and ISI itself?

In the next article God willing I propose to wind up the subject in the light of the events relating to the rise and fall of the Taliban – and culminating in 9/11 and the presence of US troops in Afghanistan.

Concluded.

H Rizvi

__________________
Work until your idols become your rivals.

main source is Google...others are

Pakistan News | Pakistan Daily

Global Issues : social, political, economic and environmental issues that affect us all ? Global Issues

and some research papers.

__________________
Work until your idols become your rivals.