Great Game and US Misstep

Here's a perspective I haven't heard before. The gist: the Northern
Alliance is a Russian proxy. US has been outplayed in the new "great game"
in Afghanistan and doesn't realize it yet. 

http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/margolis.html

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November 25, 2001 
Putin's the big winner in Bush's war
By ERIC MARGOLIS
Contributing Foreign Editor
 Did the United States go to war with Afghanistan for Central Asian oil and
gas? That's what many readers keep asking me. They clearly distrust the
White House's jingoistic bombast about defending freedom and western values
from evil Islamists. 

The answer is no, and yes. 

The U.S. attacked Afghanistan's Taliban government to exact revenge for the
Sept. 11 attacks on America. But it quickly occurred to former oilmen
George Bush and Dick Cheney that retribution against the Taliban and Osama
bin Laden offered a golden opportunity to expand American geopolitical
influence into South and Central Asia, scene of the Caspian Basin oil boom. 

The ex-Soviet states of Central Asia and the Caucasus - Kazakhstan,
Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kirgizstan, Azerbaijan and Chechnya -
contain the world's most recently discovered major oil and gas deposits. 

The world has ample oil today. But according to CIA estimates, when China
and India reach South Korea's level of per capita energy use, within 30
years, their combined oil demand will be 120 million barrels daily. Today,
total global consumption is 60-70 million barrels a day. In short, the
major powers will be locked in fierce competition for scarce oil, with the
Persian Gulf and Central Asia the focus of this rivalry. 

Central Asia's oil and gas producers are landlocked. Their energy wealth
must be exported through long pipelines. Competition over potential
pipeline routes has become the 21st century's geopolitical equivalent of
the great power race to build strategic railroads, a rivalry that helped
spark World War I. 

He who controls energy, controls the globe. The U.S. imports only 7% of its
energy from the Mideast, but holds on to this vital region in order to
control the energy source of its European and Japanese allies. 

Russia, the world's second largest oil exporter, wants Central Asian
resources to be transported across its territory. Iran, also an oil
producer, wants the energy pipelines to debouche at its ports, the shortest
route. But America's powerful Israel lobby has blocked Washington's efforts
to deal with Iran. 

The United States and Pakistan have long sought to build pipelines running
due south from Termez, Uzbekistan, to Kabul, Afghanistan, then down to
Pakistan's Arabian Sea ports at Karachi and Gwadar. Oilmen call this route,
"the new Silk Road," after the fabled route used to export China's riches.
But this requires a stable, pro-western Afghanistan. 

Iran has intrigued in Afghanistan since 1989 to keep that nation in
disorder, thus preventing rival Pakistan from building its long-sought
Termez-Karachi pipeline. 

EXPECTATIONS DENIED 

When Pakistan ditched its ally, the Taliban, in September, and sided with
the U.S., Islamabad and Washington fully expected to implant a pro-American
regime in Kabul and open the way for the Pak-American pipeline. But this
was not to be. 

In a dazzling coup, Russian President Vladimir Putin stole a march on the
Bush administration, which was so busy trying to tear apart Afghanistan to
find bin Laden it failed to notice the Russians were taking over half the
country. 

The wily Russians achieved this victory through their proxy Afghan force,
the Northern Alliance. Moscow, which has sustained the Alliance since 1990,
re-armed it after Sept. 11 with new tanks, armoured vehicles, artillery,
helicopters and trucks. The Alliance's two military leaders, Gen. Rashid
Dostam and Gen. Muhammed Fahim, were stalwarts of the old Communist regime
with close links to the KGB. 

Putin put the chief of the Russian general staff, Viktor Kvashnin, and the
deputy director of the KGB, in charge of the Alliance. During the Balkan
fighting in 1999, the hard-charging Kvashnin outfoxed the U.S. by seizing
Pristina's airfield, thus assuring a permanent Russian role in Kosovo. 

Now, he's done it again. To the fury of Washington and Islamabad, Kvashnin
rushed the Northern Alliance into Kabul, in direct contravention of Bush's
dictates. The Alliance is now Afghanistan's dominant force and, heedless of
multi-party political talks in Germany this weekend, styles itself the new
"lawful" government, a claim fully backed by Moscow. 

DEFEAT REVENGED 

The Russians have regained influence over Afghanistan, revenged their
defeat by the U.S. in the 1980s' war, and neatly checkmated the Bush
administration which, for all its high-tech military power, understood
little about Afghanistan. 

America's ouster of the Taliban regime meant Pakistan lost its former
influence over Afghanistan and is now cut off from Central Asia's
resources. So long as the Alliance holds power, the U.S. is equally denied
access to the much coveted Caspian Basin. Russia has regained control of
the best potential pipeline routes. The "new Silk Road" will become a
Russian energy superhighway. 

By charging like an enraged bull into the South Asian china shop, the U.S.
handed a stunning geopolitical victory to the Russians and severely damaged
its own great power ambitions. Moscow is now free to continue plans to
dominate South and Central Asia in concert with its strategic allies, India
and Iran. 

The Bush administration does not appear to understand its enormous blunder,
and keeps insisting the Russians are now our friends. 

Dear President Bush: Ask your dad. He will tell you that where oil is
concerned, there are no friends, only competitors and enemies.