[R-G] These wars are about oil, not democracy

[Anthony Fenton]

http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Margolis_Eric/2008/06/22/pf-5953041.html
June 22, 2008
These wars are about oil, not democracy
By ERIC MARGOLIS
	

PARIS -- The ugly truth behind the Iraq and Afghanistan wars finally  
has emerged.

Four major western oil companies, Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP and Total are  
about to sign U.S.-brokered no-bid contracts to begin exploiting  
Iraq's oil fields. Saddam Hussein had kicked these firms out three  
decades ago when he nationalized Iraq's oil industry. The U.S.- 
installed Baghdad regime is welcoming them back.

Iraq is getting back the same oil companies that used to exploit it  
when it was a British colony.

As former fed chairman Alan Greenspan recently admitted, the Iraq war  
was all about oil. The invasion was about SUV's, not democracy.

Afghanistan just signed a major deal to launch a long-planned, 1,680- 
km pipeline project expected to cost $8 billion. If completed, the  
Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline (TAPI) will export  
gas and later oil from the Caspian basin to Pakistan's coast where  
tankers will transport it to the West.

The Caspian basin located under the Central Asian states of  
Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakkstan, holds an estimated 300  
trillion cubic feet of gas and 100-200 billion barrels of oil.  
Securing the world's last remaining known energy El Dorado is a  
strategic priority for the western powers.

But there are only two practical ways to get gas and oil out of land- 
locked Central Asia to the sea: Through Iran, or through Afghanistan  
to Pakistan. Iran is taboo for Washington. That leaves Pakistan, but  
to get there, the planned pipeline must cross western Afghanistan,  
including the cities of Herat and Kandahar.

PIPELINE DEAL

In 1998, the Afghan anti-Communist movement Taliban and a western oil  
consortium led by the U.S. firm Unocal signed a major pipeline deal.  
Unocal lavished money and attention on the Taliban, flew a senior  
delegation to Texas, and hired a minor Afghan official, Hamid Karzai.

Enter Osama bin Laden. He advised the unworldly Taliban leaders to  
reject the U.S. deal and got them to accept a better offer from an  
Argentine consortium. Washington was furious and, according to some  
accounts, threatened the Taliban with war.

In early 2001, six or seven months before 9/11, Washington made the  
decision to invade Afghanistan, overthrow the Taliban, and install a  
client regime that would build the energy pipelines. But Washington  
still kept sending money to the Taliban until four months before 9/11  
in an effort to keep it "on side" for possible use in a war against  
China.

The 9/11 attacks, about which the Taliban knew nothing, supplied the  
pretext to invade Afghanistan. The initial U.S. operation had the  
legitimate objective of wiping out Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida. But  
after its 300 members fled to Pakistan, the U.S. stayed on, built  
bases -- which just happened to be adjacent to the planned pipeline  
route -- and installed former Unocal "consultant" Hamid Karzai as  
leader.

Washington disguised its energy geopolitics by claiming the Afghan  
occupation was to fight "Islamic terrorism," liberate women, build  
schools and promote democracy. Ironically, the Soviets made exactly  
the same claims when they occupied Afghanistan from 1979-1989. The  
Iraq cover story was weapons of mass destruction and democracy.

Work will begin on the TAPI once Taliban forces are cleared from the  
pipeline route by U.S., Canadian and NATO forces. As American analyst  
Kevin Phillips writes, the U.S. military and its allies have become an  
"energy protection force."

ADDED BENEFIT

 From Washington's viewpoint, the TAPI deal has the added benefit of  
scuttling another proposed pipeline project that would have delivered  
Iranian gas and oil to Pakistan and India.

India's energy needs are expected to triple over the next decade.  
Delhi, which has its own designs on Afghanistan, is cock-a-hoop over  
the new pipeline plan.

Russia, by contrast, is grumpy, having hoped to monopolize Central  
Asian energy exports.

Energy is more important than blood in our modern world. The U.S. is a  
great power with massive energy needs. Domination of oil is a pillar  
of America's world power. Let's be realistic. Afghanistan and Iraq are  
about oil, nothing else.