06-27-2004, 07:04 PM
<b>Oil, the Taliban and the Political Balance of Central Asia</b>
<b>The New Great Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asia </b>
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The Great Game today is about access to the regionâs substantial and largely underdeveloped reserves of petroleum and natural gas. The former Soviet Republics of the Caucasus region are also players in this story. Before the United States occupied Iraq and before Osama bin-Laden became a household dirty word, American foreign policy favored an economic plan to build an oil pipeline from post-Soviet Azerbaijan, through post-Soviet Georgia, to an Eastern Mediterranean port in Turkey. This pipeline, if built, might also transport oil from other friendly former Soviet Republics in Central Asia. The neighboring Russian Federal Republic, Peopleâs Republic of China, and Islamic Republic of Iran have not been consulted in the formulation of this plan. All three nations have since expressed muted hostility at American involvement in the region. The pipelineâs purpose would be to reduce or eliminate American/Western dependence on oil produced by the Arab states in the Persian Gulf. Most of the Caucasian and Central Asian nations do not have a history of hostility toward Israel and none of them are, or have been, members of OPEC. Both conditions are concentric to current American foreign policy.
U.S. support for Israelâs continued existence in the Mideast remains a mainstay of American foreign policy, but an energy policy linked to finding a reliable source of reasonably cheap fossil fuel is relatively new. OPECâs boycott of the sale of oil to the United States after the 1972 Yom Kippur War has made filling the gas tanks of American cars at agreeable prices a goal of American foreign policy and an achievement which any political party in the U.S. wanting to successfully run a presidential candidate would want to take credit for. Our current Chief Executive can offer his impression of Woodrow Wilson in preaching the expansion of American-style democracy in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere all he wants to, but Lutz Klevemanâs interviews with Afghan, Russian, Uzbek, and other regional leaders indicate that something else is the primary motivation for American presence in the region. Such people believe that U.S.involvement in Afghanistan is neither about promoting democracy or stopping Al Queda. The Americans are believed to be in Central Asia for oil and, with respect to Afghanistan, the right of way for an oil pipeline. The United Statesâ supposed âdemocratic reconstructionâ of the national government of Afghanistan appears shallow in Klevemanâs reporting. Local warlords lack the systematic brutality of the Taliban, but remain very much in charge of their regions. With one group of Islamic fundamentalist thugs gone, another group of political muscle men now seem to be in charge. These local bosses refer to Afghanistanâs President Karzai as the âMayor of Kabul.â
East of Kabul, many of the Taliban and Al Queda fighters that our forces battled in the caves of the Hindu Kush are now welcomed and glorified in neighboring Pakistan. Much of Pakistan along the Afghan border is not controlled by Pervez Musharrafâs government in Islamabad. Pakistanâs Khyber Agency is in much the same situation as was Northern Mexico in the early twentieth century. Just as the national government in Mexico City was unable to offer the United States the head of Pancho Villa on a platter in 1916, Islamabad does not have the necessary power in the frontier region to offer up Osama bin-Laden to the American justice system. Elsewhere in Central Asia, the prospects for pro-American ideas and institutions are shown as not particularly bright. On the economic front, visions of a new American source of petrodollars range in the authorâs estimation from hard-choice deals to improbable fantasies in this part of the world.
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<b>The New Great Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asia </b>
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The Great Game today is about access to the regionâs substantial and largely underdeveloped reserves of petroleum and natural gas. The former Soviet Republics of the Caucasus region are also players in this story. Before the United States occupied Iraq and before Osama bin-Laden became a household dirty word, American foreign policy favored an economic plan to build an oil pipeline from post-Soviet Azerbaijan, through post-Soviet Georgia, to an Eastern Mediterranean port in Turkey. This pipeline, if built, might also transport oil from other friendly former Soviet Republics in Central Asia. The neighboring Russian Federal Republic, Peopleâs Republic of China, and Islamic Republic of Iran have not been consulted in the formulation of this plan. All three nations have since expressed muted hostility at American involvement in the region. The pipelineâs purpose would be to reduce or eliminate American/Western dependence on oil produced by the Arab states in the Persian Gulf. Most of the Caucasian and Central Asian nations do not have a history of hostility toward Israel and none of them are, or have been, members of OPEC. Both conditions are concentric to current American foreign policy.
U.S. support for Israelâs continued existence in the Mideast remains a mainstay of American foreign policy, but an energy policy linked to finding a reliable source of reasonably cheap fossil fuel is relatively new. OPECâs boycott of the sale of oil to the United States after the 1972 Yom Kippur War has made filling the gas tanks of American cars at agreeable prices a goal of American foreign policy and an achievement which any political party in the U.S. wanting to successfully run a presidential candidate would want to take credit for. Our current Chief Executive can offer his impression of Woodrow Wilson in preaching the expansion of American-style democracy in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere all he wants to, but Lutz Klevemanâs interviews with Afghan, Russian, Uzbek, and other regional leaders indicate that something else is the primary motivation for American presence in the region. Such people believe that U.S.involvement in Afghanistan is neither about promoting democracy or stopping Al Queda. The Americans are believed to be in Central Asia for oil and, with respect to Afghanistan, the right of way for an oil pipeline. The United Statesâ supposed âdemocratic reconstructionâ of the national government of Afghanistan appears shallow in Klevemanâs reporting. Local warlords lack the systematic brutality of the Taliban, but remain very much in charge of their regions. With one group of Islamic fundamentalist thugs gone, another group of political muscle men now seem to be in charge. These local bosses refer to Afghanistanâs President Karzai as the âMayor of Kabul.â
East of Kabul, many of the Taliban and Al Queda fighters that our forces battled in the caves of the Hindu Kush are now welcomed and glorified in neighboring Pakistan. Much of Pakistan along the Afghan border is not controlled by Pervez Musharrafâs government in Islamabad. Pakistanâs Khyber Agency is in much the same situation as was Northern Mexico in the early twentieth century. Just as the national government in Mexico City was unable to offer the United States the head of Pancho Villa on a platter in 1916, Islamabad does not have the necessary power in the frontier region to offer up Osama bin-Laden to the American justice system. Elsewhere in Central Asia, the prospects for pro-American ideas and institutions are shown as not particularly bright. On the economic front, visions of a new American source of petrodollars range in the authorâs estimation from hard-choice deals to improbable fantasies in this part of the world.
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