Afghanistan: The Dollar Line

This article was first published in Chimes of Freedom in December 2007. With the current controversy of mortalities in the occupation forces I felt it an appropriate time to re-publish it along with some small additions:

The Battle of Musa Kala is supposedly over and the city is once more in the hands of NATO forces. There has been a virtual news blackout about the manner in which the city was taken but, listening to the BBC World Service yesterday, I picked up snippets about a heavy aerial bombardment by the US Air Force, using B1 and Stealth bombers in what appeared to be a Shock & Awe blitzkrieg. Phosphorous bombs may have been used. Thousands of civilians may have been killed. We just don't know.



Nor do we know just what the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is doing in South Central Asia. It is a question that after six years still goes unanswered. If pressed, we are given vague assurances about a continued "War against Terrorism", the catch-all justification the USUK regimes give their public for just about whatever they wish to do, either domestically or abroad.

In fact the much-vaunted "War against Terrorism" is really the ongoing World War of western capitalism that replaced the Cold War, a time during which "hot" wars were exported to places like Korea and Vietnam, with the idea of "Endless War", which is really an unending war based on geostrategic needs to grab as much of the Planet's mineral resources as possible.

And in this scenario, Afghanistan, rich in Gas, Oil and Coal, sits neatly in the middle of the Great Game, currently occupied by the western economic bloc but neighboured by the opposing bloc of the countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).


SCO

Indeed, looking at the history of US involvement in the area since the early days of its use of the Taleban as anti-Russian insurgents, it may be seen how Afghanistan has played the part of a significant chess-piece in the Great Game of geostrategic politics and war. And the entire fake operation of 911 as the window of opportunity which provided, amongst much else, the excuse for the US along with its dogged ally the UK, to occupy in perpetuo this strategic cross-roads, hence ensuring that it would never fall into the hegemony of the opposing powers.

The argument for a pipeline through Afghanistan was made before the US Congress in 1998 by John Maresca of the Unocal Oil Company in testimony to the House Sub-Committee on Asia and the Pacific:

Maresca concluded his Congressional testimony with this peroration. "Developing cost-effective, profitable and efficient export routes for Central Asia resources is a formidable, but not impossible, task. It has been accomplished before. A commercial corridor, a "new" Silk Road, can link the Central Asia supply with the demand -- once again making Central Asia the crossroads between Europe and Asia."

Gas, Oil and Afghanistan by Jon Flanders

The area includes a huge field of natural resources, predominantly Gas, Oil and Coal. Since the 'nineties the Texas-based Unocal company was negotiating with the Taleban to build pipelines south to the Arabian Gulf. But these negotiations were brought to a halt by events in a highly destabilized part of the Great Game.



Yet, even were the US oil monopolies temporarily unable to secure the required conditions to pipe the resources, they could still hold a stake in the area's oil-fields for future exploitation, particularly if the area concerned remained under US occupation. After Unocal pulled-out of the Central Asian Gas Pipeline (Centgas) the company's chief shareholder became the Saudi Arabian Delta Oil Company.

Unocal's defection did not end pipeline plans. According to the VOA's Sarah Horner "But the pipeline dreams have surfaced again. In May 2000 there were reports of discussions of the issue involving Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Iran and Turkmenistan. And the Taliban newspaper, the Kabul Times, recently reported that the mine and industries minister, Mullah Mohammed Isa Akhond, met representatives of the Central Asia-based US company, Central Asia Oil and Gas Industry. The newspaper quoted company representative, Rafiq Yadgar as saying: "Central Asia Oil and Gas Industry is ready to invest in Afghanistan in the field of oil and gas extraction and meanwhile is willing to build an gas and oil refinery in Afghanistan." He added that Turkmen authorities are ready to cooperate with his company."

ibid

Now it is the US-puppet Karzai regime which runs Afghanistan, not the Taleban. So if anyone is going to exploit Afghanistan's rich resources they would come from the western bloc, not the SCO. Hence the importance of Afghanistan remaining under the permanent occupation of the USUK and a fragmented NATO reborn as a 'Coalition of the Willing.' And why the UK Government has built in Kabul a huge, new fortified Embassy, signifying plans for a long-term occupation.

The present Bush junta represents nothing less than a coup d'état against the US people by oil interests.

As most of us know, the Bush-Cheney team that took control of the US Government in January, 2001, was heavily influenced by the oil industry. Bush himself is a veteran of a number of mostly failed oil enterprises. Condolezza Rice, Bush's assistant to the president for national security affairs, was on the board of Chevron. Vice President Dick Cheney was the CEO of Halliburton, a major player in the downstream oil industry.

ibid



The hot spot for where the business is is the Caspian.

In a column dated Thursday, August 10, 2000 in the Chicago Tribune, Marjorie Cohn, a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego [wrote] ... "Because of the instability in the Persian Gulf, Cheney and his fellow oilmen have zeroed in on the world's other major source of oil --the Caspian Sea. Its rich oil and gas resources are estimated at $4 trillion by US News and World Report. The Washington-based American Petroleum Institute, voice of the major US oil companies, called the Caspian region, "the area of greatest resource potential outside of the Middle East." Cheney told a gaggle of oil industry executives in 1998, "I can't think of a time when we've had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian." Halliburton's Caspian investments include Turkmenistan.

ibid

And in this revealing paper, written in 2001, its author goes on to note,

P.V. Vivekanand, chief editor of The Gulf Today in the United Arab Emirates sums up the pipeline picture in the Caspian/Central Asia region in this way..."There are dozens of oil and gas pipeline projects in Central Asia, some estimated to cost billions of dollars and almost all sparking transborder disputes and controversies. Most of the projects have been discussed for decades as the oil giants wait for the right political conditions to move in. Because pipelines are the best method to transport oil and gas over land, the efficiency of such a delivery system is too tempting for energy exporters and importers to let go of plans in a hurry. And for many potential exporters and pipeline hosts, the realization of such projects can mean economic survival."

ibid

and finally concludes,

I think the evidence is overwhelming. The Bush administration plans to use the WTC attack as an opportunity to use the US military as pipeline police, with the current goal of splitting the government of Pakistan and the Taliban from the Islamic militants led by Bin Laden. If they can accomplish this, and this is a big if, the way might be cleared for the Afghanistan pipeline project, and the basis for further penetration into the oil rich former Soviet republics established, as part of a general rollback of Russian influence in the Caspian and Central Asia.

ibid

Six years on we can see how this analysis has been borne out. It underscores the vital role played by the false-flag events of 911 which are now being increasingly exposed as having been a CIA-Mossad operation. And it reveals the skeleton-in-the-cupboard behind a nonsensical war, not so much against terror but of ongoing terror by the USUK-led capitalist West against the people of our Planet.

Richard Behan, in his Alternet article, The Mega-Lie called the War on Terror: A Masterpiece of Propaganda, provides a useful synopsis of events leading up to the bombing of Afghanistan.

At the final meeting with the Taliban, on Aug. 2, 2001, State Department negotiator Christine Rocca, clarified the options: "Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs." With the futility of negotiations apparent, "President Bush promptly informed Pakistan and India the U.S. would launch a military mission into Afghanistan before the end of October."

This was five weeks before the events of 9/11.

The Mega-Lie called the War on Terror: A Masterpiece of Propaganda

Afghanistan is an early example of a 21st Century Resource War. For obvious reasons the public must be kept in the dark. We have seen how in these wars the deaths of millions are just written-off as "collateral damage", of no significance in contrast to the profitable purposes to be achieved by the constant playing-out of a hell on earth. Hells which are carefully kept out of the view of consumer target audiences and where war crimes are repeated so often that the concept itself begins to seem meaningless.



All wars are ruthless. But when the very survival of the New World Order lies at stake, as it now does, we can be sure that their horror and intensity will only grow, foreshadowing a great, planetary showdown in the interests of the Dollar Line.