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TechnoratiThe Afghan Pipe Dream
America's convoluted, Alice-in-Wonderland interpretation of this summer's top political show - the "free expression of the people" in the Afghanistan election - reads like an opium dream. In fact, it is actually a pipe dream - as in Pipelineistan. With the added twist that no one's saying a word about the pipe that's delivering the opium dream.
As in an opium dream, delusion reigns. The chances of United States President Barack Obama actually elaborating what his AfPak strategy really is are as likely as having his super-envoy Richard Holbrooke share a pipe with explosive uber-guerrilla warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
Obama says "success in Afghanistan" involves "diplomacy, development and good governance" - but all dazed and confused world public opinion sees are packs of extra marines being deployed to "fight the Taliban".
Former Waziristan jihad master Baitullah Mehsud, a "Pak", not an "Af" Taliban, may have been done in by a clever US Predator drone. But one Osama bin Laden - as in an opium dream - still ghostly roams across the Hindu Kush, eight years after the 9/11 fact. A vision or a waking dream, he may be playing Return of the Living Dead in "Pak", not "Af" - so why all these extra marines frantically canvassing Afghan lands?
Or should we believe Pakistan Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira, who said there "is no evidence that Osama bin Laden is present in Pakistan" and that "those making claims of his presence in the country should provide valid proof of it"?
Furthermore, the US notion that a motley crew of Pashtun peasants, angry young religious men, gangsters, highway robbers and anti-government rabble-rousers sprinkled around Pashtun country in Afghanistan would suddenly start welcoming shady al-Qaeda new breeders bent on destroying Western civilization as we know it is, well, no less than an opium dream.
As for the sham election, who cares who's the winner - Pashtun President Hamid Karzai, aka "the kebab seller", Tajik Abdullah Abdullah or anyone else? Afghanistan will be ruled by Barack Hussein Obama anyway. "The Taliban" - this ghostly, immaterial entity - may start getting less cash from their former Pakistani intelligence masters; but pious, Salafi Persian Gulf potentates will still make sure they more than balance their budget - unlike certain Western powers. They couldn't care less about super-envoy Holbrooke's recently announced campaign to freeze wire transfers to "the Taliban".
Unable to fire Karzai, Washington watches impotently as he drafts psycho killer Uzbek General Rashid Dostum to campaign for him - as if sporting Tajik commander Muhammad Fahim as his running mate was not enough. It's Do the Warlord Dance in Kabul - and the prize is buckets of drug money for everybody so funding for private militias remains as free as a full supply of opium to the world economy.
And in the end, the warlords will find a shortcut to get rid of Karzai anyway.
Just ask the perennial Hekmatyar - who is fighting not only Karzai but the US and coalition troops (as if he's reading too much recent Iraq history, he insists on a timetable for Western troop withdrawal). Incidentally, good ol' friend of Saudi Arabia Hekmatyar is not a "Taliban" - but a Pashtun nationalist.
As for installed-by-George W Bush Karzai, he may be an Americanized aristocrat from the minor Popolzai tribe who knows his Pashtunwali - the inflexible Pashtun tribal code; but he's also a no-holds-barred opportunist who studied in India
, so he's betting on India to counter Pakistani influence over Afghanistan. He wants no "Pak" dominating "Af", while for Washington everything is now "AfPak". He knows that "the Taliban" control the day and virtually all the night in over half of Afghanistan. He knows he's got to do something to try to stop Westerners killing Pashtuns in droves. Yet another American puppet turns against his masters.
Ich bin ein Talibanistaner
And what to make of the McChrystal, Gates and Mullen show - worthy of the Marx Brothers? To amuse the galleries, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen did a two-on-one and faced down commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan General Stanley McChyrstal's inimitable Dr Strangelove impersonation by asking him to take it easy and submit his new Afghan report to Obama only after the Afghan election.
Iron Gates wants an orgy of new troops; super-envoy Holbrooke, for his part, wants a massive nation-building squad - he's building his own (doomed), counterinsurgency-heavy, Afghan shadow government. The bottom line is that, mired in the opium dream that all Afghans love the concept of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) occupying their country, the Pentagon wants a star-studded AfPak show running for decades.
McChrystal first said the Taliban are winning. Then he said they're not. Then he asked for - what else - more troops and more help on the civilian side. There will be 68,000 US troops in Afghanistan by the end of 2009. At the moment there are 96,500 US plus NATO troops on the ground - including 4,050 Germans, 485 Norwegians, 470 Bulgarians and 2,378 from "other nations".
The extrapolations into ridicule boggle the mind. The 4,050 members of the Bundeswehr fighting "Taliban" in northern Afghanistan near Kunduz now have to shout out a trilingual warning before getting down to the nitty gritty. First, in English, it's "United Nations - stop, or I will fire!" Then comes the Pashto remix - "Melgaero Mellatuna-Dreesch, ka ne se dasee kawum!" And then the Dari remix. Forget about the cool and crisp Achtung! Sounds more like a Monty Python sketch about the European Commission in Brussels. Even German top commander General Wolfgang Schneiderhahn is embarrassed.
While all this funky charade goes on, virtually nobody - apart from Canadian energy economist John Foster, in an op-ed published by The Star newspaper - is talking about the (real) Afghan pipe dream. Once again, since the late 1990s, it all comes back to TAPI - the Turkmenistan/Afghanistan/Pakistan/India gas pipeline, the key reason Afghanistan (as an energy transit corridor) is of any strategic importance to the US, apart from being deployed as an aircraft carrier stationed right at the borders of geopolitical competitors China and Russia. TAPI, financed by the Asian Development Bank, should in theory start to be built in 2010.
Both Russia and Iran, accomplished chess masters, are honing their moves to make TAPI unworkable. Until then, the AfPak theater basically boils down to the US and NATO at war against nationalist Pashtuns. Washington hysteria will continue to rule - as in "the Taliban" about to take over Islamabad's nukes and convert the US into TalibanUStan. And last but not least, please save the last bowl of opium for that oh-so-savvy wild bunch - the warlords.
15 Comments so far
Show AllIf Pepe's main complaint is that "nobody is talking about the proposed pipelines to go through Afghanistan" why did he devote only one sentence in the next to last paragraph of his story to that fact?
Some questions it would be nice to know the answers to:
Which multi-national corporation's or cosortium's interests are US tax dolars really defending?
Does the US really expect Russia, Iran, China, and the rest of Asia to just sit back and do nothing?
Assuming the pipeline{s) get built, how does anybody keep such a long, exposed, and vulnerable thing such as that from sabateurs?
Poet
At last! An article that exposes the pipeline. We were threatening the Taliban from the earliest days of the Bush regime after the negotiations with them broke down when the Taliban wanted too much money. We told them we would "carpet bomb Afghanistan" if they wouldn't accept our offer... and we ended up doing it. Heroin? The Drug Trade (as opposed to ineradicable "drugs" themselves) could be ended overnight with a vigorous audit of the banks. Latin American drug gangs (they are NOT "cartels"!!) don't buy multi-million dollar ranches with millions of rolled up $20 bills. Laundering is essential. It's the vulnerable choke point that would really threaten the organizations that funnel smack and crack into the US... so no one mentions it. How much money would such an audit cost the Anglo-American bankers? A trillion+ dollar trade at, say 25%? 25% is not even the top charge card rate. Yet that is $250 billion a year that WE KNOW some one is getting. Have you seen the bankers do anything that convinces you they are above such behavior?
I could sure use some of that fantastic opium. Does anyone know of an US Military contacts i can use to get some? They must be shipping it back here by the ton.
pepe escobar always hits the nail on the head. pipelinestan how true
Legalizing drugs would remove a key excuse for invading other countries, stealing their resources and enriching war-profiteering, empire building oligarchs.
-- extra marines being deployed to "fight the Taliban". --
So it looks like it's time to bore again you by redundantly and repetitively reiterating what it's all about, Alfie.
Public Law 107-40. Read it and weep. The most execrable and dangerous legislative crap ever dumped on us by the morons in Congress.
Despite what people SAY is the reason for the US involvement in the AfPak theater of AfPakIraqistan (pipeline! no, drugs!, no, encircling the USSR! - oops, Russia, no, rebuilding the country!, no, bringing democracy!) -
- the Congress enacted INTO LAW that the goal of allowing the President to wield the US military was 'preventing future terrorism'.
And that's what the US military and its NATO auxiliaries will attempt to do until ordered to stop - prevent future terrorism.
That's why there's no 'end strategy'. Who can tell when future terrorism has been completely prevented?
America is stuck, stuck, stuck until it acknowledges that Congress failed miserably, abjectly, stupidly, in its duties and is responsible for allowing Bush and his warmongers to start this mess.
Once again I point out:
One reason given for the need to stay in Iraq is 'counter-terrorism'.
The illegal cross-border strike into Syria was aimed at 'foreign fighters linked to al-Qaeda'.
The bombings in Somalia were aimed at 'militants linked to Islamic terrorists'.
It's all about fighting 'future terrorism', which allows the military to fight forever, and the US to inject itself wherever, and the profits to pour in for the death merchants.
You can believe this is the reason or you can believe what the government, military and media say. Your choice, as always.
Sweep out the House in 2010. Let's get us a Congress for Progress.
It's good to see Common Dreams tapping into the resources available in the Asia Times. Some of the articles from this source can be quite "off the wall" but still worth considering. Their economics tend to be libertarian, the sum of which a sensible person would have to reject but, never-the-less, one picks up alot of information virtually unobtainable from other sources. A warning as well- (from the Angry Arab)- every once in a while the Zionists are able to plant an article in this paper.
Fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is like fighting termites. You can spray your house, poison and drive them away for a time. You can spray every year. You can spray the whole neighborhood. But no chance you are going to rid the world of termites who will inevitably come back to eat your "wood": the presumption that you are in a position to tell everybody in the world exactly how they should live, who should rule over them and what their national identity will be. The only significant and lasting change is the one that is self-determined. As in the case of the U.S.A, even if that means suffering through a Civil War.
"Doctors Without Borders" represents a way of doing things that is actually helpful. If armed soldiers show up in their hospital, they evacuate. If they can't travel safely from their living quarters to the hospital, they give up the mission. They cring when food and other international relief arrives in an area with armed guards, even UN troops.
This gives everybody air to breathe, even the waring factions. However successful you think you have been in establishing "security", opposition to hegemony will simply regroup and appear at a different place or time or in a different form. That you can fight terror with terror is a the total fallacy of "counter-insurgency' operations.
Of course the so-called "insurgencies" (which are actually 'national liberation movements') have limited resources but they adjust to these limitations- the principles of conducting such a struggle are well known, have been for decades and have never, repeat NEVER failed to achieve their goals, at least not in modern times. But note- it cannot be said that Native Americans have entirely given up their struggle.
This is what the war in Afghanistan and especially in the unincorporated territories of Pakistan remind me of- the Indian wars in North America during the 19th century. There is almost nothing to differentiate the two.
What Americans don't understand is this; "The center of the universe is everywhere but the circumference nowhere." As the red cross instructor told me as a kid when I was-first learning to swim:' thee only thing worse than a drowning is two drownings."
Seeds of Terror by Gretchen Peters, 2009, Excerpts
Opium makes up between 30 and 50 percent of Afghanistan’s GDP. It’s essential to recognize the economic miracle the drug traffickers have achieved. From one of the world’s most remote and backward regions, where the transport network and infrastructure is almost completely shattered, they have managed to integrate an agricultural product into the global economy. From importing precursor chemicals to giving loans to thousands of small farmers to providing security for shipments as they move across the border, this is an organizational feat of the highest order. And it’s all about making money. Although the Taliban commanders are deep in the opium trade, they are not the masterminds. This is being run by businessmen.
http://theformofmoney.blogharbor.com/blog?nc=1
Of course the solution to this problem, as is the case in Mexico, is to make heroin available by prescription. But the thought of allowing people to enjoy getting high, even if allowing it reduces crime, improves the addicts health and increases the chance that they will give up the habit, is just too much for power-mongers.
From the article:
"It's Do the Warlord Dance in Kabul - and the prize is buckets of drug money for everybody so funding for private militias remains as free as a full supply of opium to the world economy."
And again:
"Once again, since the late 1990s, it all comes back to TAPI - the Turkmenistan/Afghanistan/Pakistan/India gas pipeline, the key reason Afghanistan (as an energy transit corridor) is of any strategic importance to the US, apart from being deployed as an aircraft carrier stationed right at the borders of geopolitical competitors China and Russia."
so, in one sentence, we acknowledge the free buckets of drug money available for private militias...in the second, we deny the US has any interest in that drug money, only in a pipeline yet to be constructed, or a place to dock a carrier...
is it impossible to believe the US is not only deeply, if not primarily, interested in the opium\heroin money, but actively engaged in the production and sale to fund their own covert activities, perhaps even including private militias?
opium is an incredibly important substance both physiologically and psychologically, and has been used for a number of purposes, good and ill, throughout history...
That the U.S. is in Afghanistan for the sake of oil and gas is a pretty weak argument at least by comparison to the invocation of a reviled common enemy to solidify group loyalty- that is, as an integral element in the zetgeist of the age, as Francine Prose once put it:
"a flinty individualism, the vision of a zero-sum society in which no one can win unless someone else loses, the conviction that signs of altruism and compassion are signs of folly and weakness, the exaltation of solitary striving above the illusory benefits of cooperative mutual aid, the belief that certain circumstances justify secrecy and deception, the invocation of a reviled common enemy to solidify group loyalty- the exact same themes that underlie the rhetoric we have been hearing and continue to hear from the republican Congress" .
The trouble with Obama is that he continues to ride on the crest of this zeitgeist. We'll never get a real change until this ethos is attacked directly, openly and with all the humanistic arguments of the ages. Right now he's trying to justify whatever modests reforms he has proposed by using criteria designed to argue in favor of the old (Reaganite) paradigm... "it's the economy stupid", "preserving choices" which are largely mythical rather than standing four square for cooperative mutuual aid, altruism and compassion (the virtues of his professed religion) the end of secrecy, regardless of any temporary set back in economic growth or "consumer satisfaction".
. . . is it impossible to believe the US is not only deeply, if not primarily, interested in the opium\heroin money
The only god in the United States is MONEY. So, yes, lucre, filthy or not, but preferably filthy and preferably in eye-popping amounts, is a prime motivator. You said it!
Obama, like almost all politicians, claims he doesn't do drugs, or at least not any longer. But what is the Afghanistan Pipe Dream but the Opiate of the Elite, passed out on Glory.
I hope I've got the quote from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar right:
"Mischief, thou art afoot, take what course thou will"--Cassius.
We've started something, and it's a wild guess what the repercussions will be. But I'm willing to bet it will destabilize Pakistan and so will also impact the Pak-India dynamics.
What a mess!
Since no occupying force has ever succeeded in Pipelinestan, the US will waste more money there than it would take to provide health care to its entire population.
The miltary industrial media complex is making lots of money on the deal at the expense of US taxpayers.