The Afghan Key

Ike Solem
CA

...the U.S. economic agenda in the region, one which dates back to the mid-1990s and the rising importance of Central Asian gas and oil to the world's energy markets. That's not even usually mentioned, but the history is illustrative.

The major energy struggle in Central Asia involves control of fossil fuel export routes to Europe as well as ownership of the oil and gas fields themselves. During the 1990s, the era of economic malaise in Russia, western oil firms moved into the old Soviet satellites in an effort to secure control of the oil and gas exports. Their main problem then was devising export routes.

One possibility was to run exports to Europe via Georgia, Turkey & the Balkans. In many respects, the Balkans conflict was linked to a struggle over control of those pipeline routes, as was the summer 2008 conflict in Georgia (see Nabucco pipeline project).

Another was to ship the oil and gas out to the Indian Ocean (and India) from Turkmenistan over Afghanistan and Pakistan to India - the TAPI pipeline, first promoted by Unocal c. 1996. As part of that effort, the State Department got involved. Aid was given to the Taliban - some $143 million by summer 2001 - in an effort to get talks moving. Talks were conducted in summer 2001 in London between Taliban officials and U.S. State Department officials - and then 9/11 put an end to those talks.

(Note that 9/11 planning also took place in Germany, Saudi Arabia, and other states that we have no plans to attack in order to disrupt their terrorist networks).

Now, after years of war in Afghanistan, TAPI has been revived and is being aggressively pushed by the U.S. State Department, a fact hardly reported in the U.S. media. The proponents claim that "such a major undertaking would improve living standards in Afghanistan by bringing desperately-needed jobs to the country as well as enhance stability by providing steady transit revenues for a long time."

As seen elsewhere, this will not help the Afghan people, but will just add to the corruption in Kabul as Karzai's cronies dip their fingers into the cash flow (the standard model for Third World oil deals, see the Chad-Cameroon pipeline across Africa).

This is the real problem with the State Department - they don't design their aid programs to help people, but rather to help the corporate interests they're joined to via the revolving door. This is also true for World Bank/IMF 'assistance programs.' All it is is a con game, being played with U.S. taxpayer dollars - and that well is running dry.



decker
WA

Ike has the truth down pat.

OIL.

Oil routes, from American forays into Georgia to Ukraine to Turkenistan and with the TAPIl,(all sucessfully countered by Putin) that were all being pushed from former Cheney actions in Georgia, et al, and carried over by whomever was ascended to the throne next, and all orchestrated and directed by the Bilderberg/Rothschild/Corporate America/AIPAC cabal that runs the United States and shapes most of the Western world.

Remember as well, that (40) forty years ago the mineral, (with a foray into the oil) wealth of Afghanistan was well known, and especially for the abundant and critical lithium stores, as well as the trillions of dollars worth of other minerals that has the United States Oligarchy frothing from Wall Street to the corrupt banking cabal.

The war there, and for Irag's oil, also fill the demands of the Military/Industrial complex so that the oligarchy/autocracy United States makes billions and, by design, the people get the hindmost.

The troops are not coming home to flood the non-existent job market.

The troops will be sent to North Africa to the new Africa Command for more wars, just as the so-called draw-down in Irag simply shifted the troops to Afghanistan, with 30 thousands more for good measure as the first thing that Obama did to contribute when his handlers pulled his strings. No soldier, in any case, in his right mind now would leave the military to starve to death on the streets of the United States.

Yes, so now a good excuse is offered with the bin Laden death myth that allows a gracefull (without honor) pull-out, with a "presence" left behind, after 10 years of fruitlessness and death, and as well serve as a re-election enhancement.

The whole charade is so transparent and obvious that any intelligent person could have seen through the thing inside of a week.

Yet, the flag-wavers, and most of them not veterans, and the rural red-necks, yelp like dogs being fed fresh meat as every staged dis-information propagation that is released on time.

The United States is dying, and beset by one weather catastrophe after another, adding even more millions to the streets, without any homes left upon which the banking cabal can foreclose.

I see home after home boarded-up, or derelict, and abandoned in one small town in PA, that was once a thriving community with RRs and a large defense plant, and is now a rotting and criminal element-filled place. There are scores of such places all over the Unted States.

I saw no such thing whilst I was driving across Canada from BC to Ottawa.