What Are We Doing in Afghanistan?: Surveying Euro-American Pipeline Interests

Afghanistan has always been considered “the centre of great empires” by imperial powers,1serving as a “buffer” between Persia, Russia, and India (Britain’s greatest colonial prize).2 Lord Curzon, viceroy of India, referred to the countries as “pieces on a chessboard upon which is being played out a game for the domination of the world.”3 A century later, the long-time geostrategist and energy investor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, authored The Grand Chessboard (1997) in which he called Eurasia “the center of world power,” adding that fragmentation will “keep the barbarians from coming together.”4

Collapse of the Soviet Union and Control of the Caspian Sea

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left a question mark over the Caspian Sea and its energy reserves, with Iran, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and Russia claiming sovereignty. Bruce R. Kuniholm explained that “Brzezinski believed that how Russia responds to Ukraine’s closer relationship with Europe and to Azerbaijan’s desires to pipe its oil through Turkey will be the bellwethers for its imperial ambitions.”5As the Soviet Empire began to crumble, Britain established half a dozen embassies in the newly independent, energy-rich countries such as Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan, working on behalf of BP to overthrow the Azerbaijani leader and install a Western-friendly government.6

Russia: In 1994, Russia formally approached the UN Secretary-general, stating “that Russia would take all necessary measures to restore [what it deemed to be] the legal order of the Caspian,” according to Kamyar Medhiyoun’s scholarly study. “Given the importance of the Caspian energy reserves to the world’s economy,” Medhiyoun continued, “a replay of the nineteenth-century “great game”—with different players and some new rules—is not a surprising spectacle.”7 Indeed, the situation became so serious that in 1996 a UN meeting was held and attended by delegates from Italy, Germany, Japan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, India, Turkey, and, of course, Britain.8

British Occupations: The events resurrected the ghosts of the 1930s, when Zahir Shah, the British puppet ruler of Afghanistan, “sought help from Japanese, Italian, and German advisers, who laid plans for a modern network of communications and roads,” fostering “economic modernization [as] German engineers built textile mills, power plants, and carpet and furniture factories to be run by monopolies under royal license,” according to Nick Cullather’s history. “These efforts met with sporadic—and occasionally bloody—resistance,” but the international theft continued unabated, just like today

The imposition of a centralised, pro-Western government with the PR-friendly appellation “democracy” is also an old plan anathema to the genuine democratic (if flawed) systems offered by tribalism. In 1881, two years into Britain’s second occupation of Afghanistan, Captain T.H. Holdich pointed out that “not in free England has the private individual so strong a voice in the government of his country as he has in Afghanistan.” Holdich discovered that “even the most apparently unimportant provincial chief must have his opinion consulted before any great political move can be made.”

Other British colonialists came to similar conclusions about their global “subjects,” be they Australians or Nigerians. Holdich concluded that:

The House of Commons Defence Committee reported a similar finding during Britain’s fourth occupation in 2007: “We were told that many Afghans had no experience of central government and were used to government by local elders at shuras, or meetings,”11 a system which has to be destroyed as resource wealth may otherwise be shared equally.

Euro-American Intrusions: Returning to the 1996 crisis, it was essential from the psychopathic elites’ perspective to ensure Euro-American control of the region, and the world in general. That is why the US Space Command announced shortly afterwards America’s intention to achieve Full Spectrum Dominance by 2020, “to close the ever-widening gap between diminishing resources and increasing military commitments.”12

Fronting for the John M. Olin and Smith Richardson Foundations, Samuel P. Huntington told the world to prepare for “a clash of civilizations,” as Euro-American powers sought to exploit “international institutions, military power and economic resources to run the world in ways that will maintain Western predominance, protect Western interests and promote Western political and economic values.”13 In his eponymous book, Huntington went some way to admit that during the late 1970s and particularly into the 1980s, radical Islam was fomented in Central Asian states by US clients as a way to damage the secular Soviet Union.

Once it had collapsed, the US and Britain were free to move into the region, fighting and often pretending to fight, the very “stirred up Muslims” they had created (Brzezinski). What was needed to put this massive plan into action was “a catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor” – which would ensure a new American century.14

U.S. and the Taliban: Milton Bearden, the former CIA agent for Pakistan, explained how prior to 9/11, America “saw the Taliban as the source of a new order and a possible tool in yet another replay of the Great Game—the race for the energy riches of Central Asia.”15

Sure enough, after the Taliban failed to construct the pipeline, “the great game” continued. In 2010, Britain’s unelected “coalition” government published its Strategic Defence and Security Review, which stated that Britain will “deepen engagement with energy producers … ensuring that business and political conditions support key infrastructure projects, including pipelines to bring gas from the Caspian region.”16

Two House of Commons Library analysts explained that in 1991, “The new-found independence of the Soviet successor states and the world’s future energy needs came together by the mid 1990s to provide the opportunity to renew the exploitation of rich sources of gas and oil in the Caspian basin.” Consequently, “the fuel needs of Pakistan, India and China with their rapidly growing economies, could be addressed.”17Translation: made dependent upon Anglo-American pipeline hegemony, which has been achieved by occupying Afghanistan, the “buffer” state.

The Iran-India-China Project

Barnett Rubin’s Chatham House study noted the surrounding states’ perception of “a US strategy to encircle and contain Iran”, a country with huge oil and gas reserves coveted by India and China.18 The perception is accurate. A 2005 Strategic Studies Institute report noted that “the most attractive long-term strategy for Iran is traditional containment,” military and economic, “which would emphasize breaking Iran’s ties to China,”19 hence Britain and America have surrounded Iran, either with occupation forces in neighbouring nations or by supporting client states, such as Azerbaijan. A Congressional report revealed Iran’s plans for “the construction of a gas pipeline from Iran to India, through Pakistan, with a possible extension to China.”20 There were, however, long-standing Anglo-American plans to do the same thing, starting from Turkmenistan.

Anglo-American $2.5 Billion Pipeline

In 1998, around the time that Iran was considering an invasion of Afghanistan, America’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that “Unocal suspends plans for the construction of a $2 billion natural gas pipeline that would run from Turkmenistan to Pakistan via Afghanistan. Unocal has stressed that the gas pipeline project will not proceed until an internationally recognized government is in place.”21 In 2002, after the “catastrophic and catalyzing event” of 9/11, EIA wrote that:

In 2006, the USAID- and World Bank-sponsored Afghanistan Investment Support Agency—of which the former Unocal employee and Afghan puppet President Hamid Karzai is a member—issued a formal statement on the pipeline.

As well as resurrecting the ghosts of the 1930s, the international thievery fulfilled the principles of the 1996 UN Summit, this time with Britain and America—not Russia—in the driver’s seat (with Tony Blair sitting on George Bush’s lap). Two pipeline routes are being designed by the UK company Penspen. According to Penspen, the project will cost $2.5 billion and will carry 30 billion cubic metres of gas per year from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan on to Pakistan and India, in association with Nippon Koei UK.24Consequently, a path must be cleared in the relevant regions. The upper route of the proposed pipeline corresponds to the increase in Anglo-American drone attacks in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.

 Penspen’s Gas Pipeline Route

 BBC Map of Drone Attacks 

US/UK/NATO Military Aggression: Currently testing Watchkeepers, UK occupation forces are operating Desert Hawk and Hermes 450 spy drones, as well as Reapers armed with Anglo-American-produced Hellfire and GBU-12 missiles. Under Project Morrigan, the UK has been quietly using the first fully autonomous drone, HERTI, produced by BAE Systems.25 Its functions include “Border patrol … Infantry/front line support … Pipeline surveillance.”26 The BBC enthused that, as part of a new breed of autonomous systems, “Herti can think for itself,”27 whereas the Ministry of Defence thinks that artificial intelligence may lead to “a doomsday scenario, ultimately meaning the end of the world, or at least of humanity.”28 The drones are supporting NATO forces in the region, whose goal was explained by then-Secretary-general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer in 2009:

Dissolving Civilized Order

Exemplifying the hypocrisy of Anglo-American imperial attitudes, the Western-backed rebels who have torn Libya to shreds are granted civilian status by the British government because they do not abide by the Geneva Conventions (they don’t wear uniforms, carry arms openly, etc). Consequently, they were protected under UN Resolution 1973. This means that Gaddafi had to sit back and let Western-armed thugs destroy Libya as NATO bombs cleared a path for them.30

Alleged Taliban and “al-Qaeda” suspects who are destroyed with Anglo-American drones on the other hand are not considered civilians according to Anglo-American policy, even though they too do not abide by the Geneva Conventions. The notion, however, that “the entire world is a battleground in which the laws of war are applicable undermines the protections of international law,” Human Rights Watch noted,31 also suspecting that Blackwater (Xe Services) mercenaries are engaged in killing alleged Taliban and “al-Qaeda” suspects by launching drone attacks.32 The Times (London) reported that:

Racist Roots: Rewind a hundred years, and you’ll find similar statements. In 1919, when Royal Air Force pilots were strafing Afghans in support of Britain’s third occupation, Sir John Maffrey asked, “What are the rules for this kind of cricket?” His commanders answered that international law did not apply “against savage tribes who do not conform to codes of civilized warfare.”34 Old wine, old bottles. (In the oxymoron sweepstakes, “civilized warfare” vies with “business ethics” and “military intelligence”). The primary difference today is that the selection of weapons being tested against humans in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Libya, and elsewhere, threaten the survival of the species.

Psychotics with New Weapons

Such weapons range from the weaponisation of the weather by electromagnetic pulses (“crossed beams”)35 to schizophrenic voice-to-skull technologies,36 which according to Congressman Dennis Kucinich may soon be mounted to space platforms and targeted at individuals, or, should the Pentagon desire it, wider populations.37 The hi-tech plans were first laid out by Brzezinski in Between Two Ages (1976). Commenting on such weapons, which are currently stationed in the Polar regions—where the Earth’s electromagnetic energies can be amplified—the Russian State Duma announced in 2002 that:

The reason for the lack of “global community” control is because a European Parliament call to investigate the weapon system in 199939 was stalled before being rejected in 2003, eliciting no mainstream media reaction.40 The system is currently being used to look for subterranean silos in Iran, and was probably used to “x-ray” Afghanistan for mineral resources,41 all a tiny fraction of the Full Spectrum Dominance underway.

First Published at Axis of Logic.

Notes