Pipelineistan
War against terrorism? Not really. It's all about oil.
Pepe Escobar
It’s no coincidence that the map of terror in the Middle East and Central Asia is practically interchangeable with the map of oil. There’s Infinite Justice, En-during Freedom—and Everlasting Profits to be made: not only by the American industrial-military complex, but especially by American and European oil giants.
Where is the realm these days of former US secretary of state James Baker, former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, former White House chief of staff John Sununu and former defense secretary and current VP Dick Cheney? They are all happily dreaming of, and working for, the establishment of “Pipelineistan.”
Pipelineistan is the golden future: a paradise of opportunity in the form of $5 trillion of oil and gas in the Caspian basin and the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, and a promise of the end of America’s oil dependence on the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). This is the heart of the matter in the New Great Game.
Afghanistan, ultra-strategic in its position between the Middle East, Central Asia and South Asia, between Turkmenistan and the avid markets of the Indian subcontinent, China and Japan, is at the core of Pipelineistan.
The Caspian states hold at least 200 billion barrels of oil, and Central Asia has 6.6 trillion cubic meters of natural gas just begging to be exploited. Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are two major producers. The only export routes, for the moment, are through Russia. So most of the game consists of building alternative pipelines to Turkey and Western Europe, and to the east toward the Asian markets. India will be a key player. India, Iran, Russia and Israel are all planning to supply oil and gas to South and Southeast Asia through India.
It’s enlightening to note that all countries or regions which happen to be an impediment to Pipelineistan routes towards the West have been subjected either to a direct interference or to all-out war: Chechnya, Georgia, Kurdistan, Yugoslavia, Macedonia, and now, Afghanistan.
More, much more than Afghanistan is involved. What’s at stake is Eurasia, described by Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, as “Seventy-five percent of the world population, most of its material riches, 60 percent of the world’s GNP, 75 percent of sources of energy, and behind the US, the six most prosperous economies and the six largest military budgets.” Brzezinski is on record stressing that the US would have to make sure “no other power would take possession of this geopolitical space.”
The numbers are clear. According to the United States Energy Information Administration, in 2001 America imported an average of 9.1 million barrels per day—over 60 percent of its crude oil needs. In 2020, the US is projected to require almost 26 million barrels per day in imports. So Pipelineistan must be the strategic/military number one goal.
In this geo-strategic grand design, the Taliban were the proverbial fly in the ointment. An Afghan war and plans to destroy the Taliban had been the subject of international diplomatic and not-so-diplomatic discussions for months before September 11. There was a crucial meeting in Geneva in May 2001 between US State Department, Iranian, German and Italian officials, where the main topic was a strategy to topple the Taliban and replace the theocracy with a “broad-based government.” The topic was raised again in full force at the Group of Eight (G-8) summit in Genoa, Italy, in July 2001.
Pipelineistan was also the central topic in secret negotiations in a Berlin hotel a few days after the G-8 summit, between American, Russian, German and Pakistani officials. And Pakistani high officials, on condition of anonymity, have extensively described a plan set up by the end of July 2001 by American advisers, consisting of military strikes against the Taliban from bases in Tajikistan, to be launched before mid-October.
The recent choice of a special envoy to Afghanistan came as no surprise—Afghan-American Zalmay Khalilzad is a former aide to Californian energy giant UNOCAL, who in 1997, led an international consortium (Centgas) that planned to build a $2 billion natural-gas pipeline from southern Turkmenistan to Pakistan, via the Afghan cities of Herat and Kandahar, crossing into Pakistan near Quetta. The Centgas dealings with the Taliban were facilitated by the Clinton administration and the Pakistani Inter Services Agency (ISI). But the civil war in Afghanistan would simply not go away, and UNOCAL had to pull out.
American energy conglomerates, through the American Overseas Private Investment Corp (OPIC), are now resuscitating this and other projects. Already last October, the UNOCAL-led project was discussed in Islamabad between Pakistani Petroleum Minister Usman Aminuddin and American Ambassador Wendy Chamber-lain. The exuberant official statement reads: “The pipeline opens up new avenues of multi-dimensional regional cooperation, particularly in view of the recent geopolitical developments in the region.”
UNOCAL also has a project to build the so-called Central Asian Oil Pipeline, almost 1,700km long, linking Chardzhou in Turkmenistan to Russian’s existing Siberian oil pipelines and also to the Pakistani Arabian Sea coast. This pipeline will carry 1 million barrels of oil a day from different areas of former Soviet republics, running parallel to the gas pipeline route through Afghanistan.
A special adviser to the State Department during the Reagan years, Khalilzad was a strident lobbyist for more US military aid to the mujahedeen during the anti-USSR jihad. He was also undersecretary of defense for Bush I, during the war against Iraq. After a stint at the Rand Corp think tank, he headed the Bush-Cheney transition team for the Defense Department and advised Donald Rumsfeld. He wasn’t rewarded with any promotions, the required Senate confirmation would raise extremely uncomfortable questions about his role as UNOCAL adviser and staunch Taliban defender, but was assigned instead to the National Security Council—no Senate confirmation required—where he reported to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
Rice herself is a former oil-company consultant. During Bush I, from 1989-92, she was on the board of directors of Chevron, and was its main expert on Kazakhstan. Chevron has invested more than $20 billion in Kazakhstan alone. As for Vice President Dick Cheney, he was for five years a director of Halliburton, one of the top companies rendering service to the oil industry.
Both Cheney and George W. Bush spent an important part of their careers in Arbusto, a small company directed by Cheney. Arbusto never made money, but was handsomely supported by very wealthy Saudis. Among the shareholders was James Bath, who was very cozy with Bush Sr. and chief money launderer for shady Gulf superstars, including Salem bin Laden, one of the 17 brothers of Osama bin Laden.
All American secretaries of state since World War II have been connected with the oil industry—except two: one of them is Colin Powell, but in his case the president, vice president and national security adviser are all part of the oil industry. Everybody in the ruling plutocracy knows the rules of the ruthless game: Central Asia is crucial to Washington’s worldwide petro-strategy.
The Games Nations Play
The first new pipeline of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium—a joint venture including Russia, Kazakhstan, Oman, ChevronTexaco, ExxonMobil and a few other minor players—links the enormous Tengiz oilfield in northwestern Kazakhstan to the Russian port of Novorossiysk on the Black Sea: from there, the sky—i.e. the world market—is the limit.
The US is now developing a network of Caspian pipelines that use Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, key nodes in the American petro-strategy. The pipeline consortium for one of these, the Baku-Ceyhan, is led by British Petroleum, represented by the law firm Baker & Botts. The principal attorney is none other than Texan James Baker—secretary of state under Bush Sr. and chief spokesman for the Bush 2000 campaign when all gloves were off to shut down the Florida vote recount.
Texas-based, scandal-prone Enron, together with Amoco, Chevron, Mobil, UNOCAL and British Petroleum, were all spending billions of dollars to pump the reserves of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. Baker, Scowcroft, Sununu and Cheney have all closed major deals directly and indirectly on behalf of the oil companies.
Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan have intimate relations with Israeli military intelligence. A so-called “former” Israeli intelligence agent, Yousef Maiman, president of the Mehrav Group of Israel, is nothing less than “Special Ambassador,” official negotiatior and even policymaker responsible for developing the enormous energy resources of Turkmenistan. Maiman is a citizen of the gas republic by presidential decree, and according to the Wall Street Journal, is actively involved in advancing the “geopolitical goals of both the US and Israel” in Central Asia. He certainly does not beat around the bush: “Controlling the transport route is controlling the product.” Nobody knows where Mehrav’s money comes from.
Enron—the largest donor to the Bush campaign of 2000—conducted the feasibility study for the $2.5 billion trans-Caspian pipeline being built under a joint venture signed almost three years ago between Turkmenistan and Bechtel and General Electric. The go-between in the deal was none other than the Mehrav Group. Chairman Maiman spent a fortune hiring the Washington lobbying firm Cassidy and Associates to seduce official Washington with the trans-Caspian pipeline project.
The intricate relationship between Israel, Turkey and the US means that as much as the trans-Caspian pipeline, the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline is also absolutely crucial because it could be extended to bring oil directly to thirsty Israel.
Russia already has a contract with Turkmenistan to purchase 30 billion cubic meters of gas a year, a big blow to US plans. This also means that Russia will never let go of its sphere of influence without a tremendous fight. The Central Asian republics are on its borders, and Russia has dominated them for centuries.
Thanks to master political chess player Vladimir Putin, Russia is now on the coziest terms possible with Washington. Russia may eventually become a partner in at least some of Washington’s petro-strategy games in Central Asia—like the Caspian Pipeline Consortium. The regional map also reveals that Iran, besides holding important gas reserves, offers the best direct access from the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf, where oil and gas can be quickly exported to Asian markets.
Iran assumes, not entirely without reason, that it is the rightful guardian of Central Asia because of centuries of ethnic, historical, linguistic and religious ties. And Iran is very conscious that American military links and now physical presence in Central Asia are part of a strategy to encircle it. But even amid so many geopolitical and ideological pitfalls, the fact remains that as long as the US is militarily involved in Afghanistan, there will be some sort of US-Iranian diplomatic engagement.
Under the control of the China National Petroleum Corporation, pipelines from Central Asia will also reach China’s Xinjiang. Oil sources in Singapore stress that this will certainly spell a slump for the sea routes across the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. Washington is more than aware through its think tanks of the consequences: an extremely likely strategic realignment between China, Japan and Korea.
The Taliban were always just a scapegoat—rather, a horde of medieval warrior scapegoats—who simply did not fulfill their contract: to insert Afghanistan into Pipelineistan. All the regional players now know America is in Central Asia to stay, as Washington itself has been stridently repeating, and it will be influencing or disturbing the economy and geopolitics of the region. The wider world is oblivious to these real stakes in the New Great Game.
During the Gulf War the US did not have a serious interest in replacing Saddam Hussein. The American plan was actually to establish bases on the Arabian peninsula on the pretext of helping defend Saudi Arabia against Iraq. More than a decade later, Hussein is still there, Bush I is now Bush II, and assorted Pentagon hawks are still trying to fabricate an excuse to blow Saddam back to Mesopotamian ashes. Now, after the (also unfinished) New Afghan War, American forces are establishing themselves in Central and South Asia to once again “protect the interests of the free world.”
We must remember that after the end of the communist regime in Afghanistan, the American strategy was to deliberately let Islamic extremism go wild—a perfect way to scare the unstable regimes in the Central Asian neo-republics. Islamic fundamen-talism has been a key card in the American strategic design since the Cold War days when the CIA subcontracted to the Pakistani ISI the arm-them-to-their-teeth policy regarding the mujahideen. It is easy to forget that the good-guys-turned-bad-guys were once hailed by Reagan himself at the Oval Office as “the moral equivalent of the founding fathers.”
America has been trying hard to “get” Afghanistan—the heart of Asia in Antiquity, the Pipelineistan crossroads of Asia nowadays—for more than 20 years. But Pipelineistan is not an end in itself. Oil and gas are not the US’s ultimate aim, it’s all about control. In Monopoly, Belgian writer Michel Collon wrote: “If you want to rule the world, you need to control oil. All the oil. Anywhere.” If the US controls the sources of energy of its rivals—Europe, Japan, China and other nations aspiring to be more independent—they win.
There’s no business like war business. Thanks to war against Iraq, the US has its military bases in the Persian Gulf. Thanks to war against Yugoslavia, the US has its military bases in Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia. Thanks to war against the Taliban, the US is now in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Not to mention the base in Incirlik, Turkey. The US is also in the Caucasus—in Georgia and Azerbaijan. Iran, China and Russia are practically encircled.
There’s no business like show business. Raise the curtains. Enter Pipelineistan. (Applause).
Reprinted
with permission from Asia Times Online http://atimes.com (Hong Kong).
April/May 2002
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