From The Guardian, 10/20/03:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1066570,00.html
The new Great Game
The 'war on terror' is being used as an excuse to further US energy
interests in the Caspian
Lutz Kleveman
Monday October 20, 2003
The Guardian
Nearly two years ago, I travelled to Kyrgyzstan, the mountainous
ex-Soviet republic in Central Asia, to witness a historical event: the
deployment of the first American combat troops on former Soviet soil.
As part of the Afghan campaign, the US air force set up a base near
the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek.
Brawny pioneers in desert camouflages were erecting hundreds of tents
for nearly 3,000 soldiers.
I asked their commander, a wiry brigadier general, if and when the
troops would leave Kyrgyzstan (and its neighbour Uzbekistan, where
Washington set up a second airbase).
"There is no time limit," he replied.
"We will pull out only when all al-Qaeda cells have been eradicated."
Today, the Americans are still there and many of the tents have been
replaced by concrete buildings.
Bush has used his massive military build-up in Central Asia to seal
the cold war victory against Russia, to contain Chinese influence and
to tighten the noose around Iran.
Most importantly, however, Washington - supported by the Blair
government - is exploiting the "war on terror" to further American oil
interests in the Caspian region.
But this geopolitical gamble involving thuggish dictators and corrupt
Saudi oil sheiks is only likely to produce more terrorists.
For much of the past two years, I have researched the links between
conflict in Central Asia and US oil interests.
I travelled thousands of kilometres, meeting with generals, oil
bosses, warlords and diplomats.
They are all players in a geostrategic struggle - the new Great Game.
In this rerun of the first great game - the 19th-century imperial
rivalry between the British Empire and Tsarist Russia - players once
again position themselves to control the heart of the Eurasian
landmass.
Today, the US has taken over the leading role from the British.
Along with the Russians, new regional powers, such as China, Iran,
Turkey and Pakistan, have entered the arena, and transnational oil
corporations are also pursuing their own interests.
The main spoils in today's Great Game are Caspian oil and gas.
On its shores, and at the bottom of the Caspian Sea, lie the world's
biggest untapped fossil fuel resources.
Estimates range from 110 to 243bn barrels of crude, worth up to $4
trillion.
According to the US department of energy, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan
alone could sit on more than 130bn barrels, more than three times the
US's reserves.
Oil giants such as ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and BP have already
invested more than $30bn in new production facilities.
"I cannot think of a time when we have had a region emerge as suddenly
to become as strategically significant as the Caspian," said *****
Cheney in a speech to oil industrialists in 1998.
In May 2001, the US vice-president recommended in the national energy
policy report that "the president makes energy security a priority of
our trade and foreign policy", singling out the Caspian basin as a
"rapidly growing new area of supply".
With a potential oil production of up to 6m barrels per day by 2015,
the Caspian region has become crucial to the US policy of
"diversifying energy supply".
It is designed to wean the US off its dependence on the Arab-dominated
Opec cartel, which is using its near-monopoly position as pawn and
leverage against industrialised countries.
As global oil consumption keeps surging and many oil wells outside the
Middle East are nearing depletion, Opec is expanding its share of the
world market.
At the same time, the US will have to import more than two-thirds of
its total energy demand by 2020, mostly from the Middle East.
Many people in Washington are particularly uncomfortable with the
growing power of Saudi Arabia.
There is a fear that radical Islamist groups could topple the corrupt
Saud dynasty and stop the flow of oil to "infidels".
To stave off political turmoil, the regime in Riyadh funds the radical
Islamic Wahabbi sect that foments terror against Americans around the
world.
In a desperate effort to decrease its dependence on Saudi oil sheiks,
the US seeks to control the Caspian oil resources.
However, fierce conflicts have broken out over pipeline routes.
Russia, still regarding itself as imperial overlord of its former
colonies, promotes pipeline routes across its territory, including
Chechnya, in the north Caucasus.
China, the increasingly oil-dependent waking giant in the region,
wants to build eastbound pipelines from Kazakhstan.
Iran is offering its pipeline network via the Persian Gulf.
By contrast, Washington champions two pipelines that would circumvent
both Russia and Iran.
One would run from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to the Indian
Ocean.
Construction has already begun for a $3.8bn pipeline from Azerbaijan's
capital, Baku, via neighbouring Georgia to Turkey's Mediterranean port
of Ceyhan.
BP, its main operator, has invested billions in oil-rich Azerbaijan,
and can count on support from the Bush administration, which recently
stationed about 500 elite troops in war-torn Georgia.
Washington's Great Game opponents, particularly in Moscow and Beijing,
resent what they perceive as arrogant imperialism.
Worried that the US presence might encourage internal unrest in its
Central Asian province of Xingjiang, China has recently held joint
military exercises with Kyrgyzstan.
The Russian government initially tolerated the intrusion into its
former empire, hoping Washington would in turn ignore the atrocities
in Chechnya.
However, the much-hyped "new strategic partnership" against terror
between the Kremlin and the White House has turned out to be more of a
temporary tactical teaming-up.
For the majority of the Russian establishment it is unthinkable to
permanently cede its hegemonic claims on Central Asia.
Two weeks ago, Russia's defence minister, Sergei Ivanov, demanded
publicly that the Americans pull out within two years.
Ominously, President Putin has signed new security pacts with the
Central Asian rulers, allowing Russian troops to set up a new military
base in Kyrgyzstan, which lies only 35 miles away from the US airbase.
Besides raising the spectre of inter-state conflict, the Bush
administration is wooing some of the region's most tyrannical
dictators.
One of them is Islam Karimov, the ex-communist ruler of Uzbekistan,
whose regime brutally suppresses any opposition and Islamic groups.
"Such people must be shot in the head. If necessary, I will shoot them
myself," Karimov once told his rubber-stamp parliament.
Although the US state department acknowledges that Uzbek security
forces use "torture as a routine investigation technique", Washington
last year gave the Karimov regime $500m in aid and rent payments for
the US air base in Chanabad.
The state department also quietly removed Uzbekistan from its annual
list of countries where freedom of religion is under threat.
The British government seems to support Washington's policy, as
Whitehall recently recalled its ambassador Craig Murray from Tashkent
after he openly decried Uzbekistan's abysmal human rights record.
Worse is to come: disgusted with the US's cynical alliances with their
corrupt and despotic rulers, the region's impoverished populaces
increasingly embrace virulent anti-Americanism and militant Islam.
As in Iraq, America's brazen energy imperialism in Central Asia
jeopardises the few successes in the war on terror because the
resentment it causes makes it ever easier for terrorist groups to
recruit angry young men.
It is all very well to pursue oil interests, but is it worth
mortgaging our security to do so?
__________________________________________________
Ultimately this sham "war on terror" is about oil and power.
Harry
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