CASPIAN SEA
Washington's strategic target in Central Asia
By Cecil Williams
"America's new war!" That's what CNN calls President George
W. Bush's plans to bomb and invade Central Asia and the Middle
East.
There's not much new about it, though.
U.S. bombs and missiles have killed hundreds of thousands of
civilians in Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Sudan, Somalia and
Afghanistan in the past two decades alone. No doubt many people
in those countries have acquired a deep dislike for the United
States.
When investigators look into a murder, however, their first
question is not, "Who disliked the victim?" They want to know
who will benefit from the crime. The Sept. 11 deaths of over
6,000 people, many Muslims among them, benefit no one in the
Islamic world. But for some rich and powerful people in the
United States, the tragedy will pay off quite handsomely.
"Since Sept. 11 opposition to increased military spending
has evaporated," the New York Times reported Sept. 22. That
should make the Pentagon brass quite happy. Just a few months
ago they were publicly whining they hadn't gotten the giant
budget increase they were expecting after Bush's selection as
president.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was complaining he
couldn't get funds to build a "21st-century military." Now
Congress has not only voted the Pentagon an emergency increase.
Democrats say they'll no longer object to Bush's antiballistic
missile pork barrel.
When generals, admirals and defense secretaries retire from
the military, they usually get jobs with giant defense firms
like General Electric and Lockheed Martin. These firms are
"among the benefactors of the Sept. 11 tragedy," the New York
Times wrote.
Then there's the trenchcoat gang at the National Security
Agency, the CIA, the FBI and Secret Service. Not to mention the
new Office of Homeland Security to be headed by Bush's fellow
executioner, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge. They have been
promised funding and powers they recently only dreamed of.
The CIA actually created Osama bin Laden's organization back
in the 1980s to attack Soviet troops and the progressive
government in Afghanistan. As vice president, George Bush Sr.
oversaw the operation. In the Agency's employ, bin Laden's
troops murdered teachers, doctors and nurses, disfigured women
who took off the veil, and shot down civilian airliners with
U.S.-supplied Stinger missiles. The Afghan people called bin
Laden's forces the "brotherhood of Satan."
The Afghanistan war was the biggest covert operation in the
CIA's history. It was paid for in part by the heroin trade.
Many who took part in the operation were recruited by Egyptian,
Pakistani and Saudi intelligence services and didn't know they
were working for the CIA.
In 1990 and 1991 the CIA used bin Laden's's group for
operations against Iraq. More recently this group carried out
anti-Russian operations in Chechnya and Daghestan and
participated in U.S.-backed operations against Yugoslavia.
No one has more to gain, however, than the corporate big
shots at Exxon, Mobil, Chevron and the other big oil
monopolies. For 10 years now they have been scheming to get
their hands on the vast oil and gas wealth of former Soviet
Central Asia, just north of Afghanistan.
How to achieve that goal has been a U.S. foreign policy
priority since the fall of the Soviet Union.
In a Feb. 12, 1998, report to the House Committee on
International Relations, Unocal Corp. Vice President for
International Relations John J. Maresca testified on the
importance of this region. He said: "The Caspian region
contains tremendous untapped hydrocarbon reserves. ...
"Proven natural gas reserves within Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan,
Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan equal more than 236 trillion cubic
feet. The region's oil reserves may reach more than 60 billion
barrels of oil-enough to service Europe's oil needs for 11
years. Some estimates are as high as 200 billion barrels."
Oil, of course, is a commodity in which Bush and Vice
President Dick Cheney have a deep personal interest.
Now George W. has named his dad's old employees in
Afghanistan as the culprits in the Sept. 11 attack. And the
Pentagon has demanded the right to occupy the former Soviet
republics named above plus Kyrgizia. In other words, right
where the oil is.
According to the Sept. 25 New York Times, the Putin regime
in Moscow is offering the United States broad support in this
move.
The oil reserves are 10 percent of the world's known supply,
under or around the Caspian Sea. That's worth about $5 trillion
at today's prices.
Maresca testified that since "the Asia/Pacific region has a
rapidly increasing demand for oil," it would be useful to have
an oil pipeline from the Caspian region to the Indian
Ocean--that is, through Afghanistan. An unrecognized Taliban
government in Afghanistan is an obstacle to this, he wrote.
In May 1998, Time magazine reported that the CIA had "set up
a secret task force to monitor the region's politics and gauge
its wealth. Covert CIA officers, some well-trained petroleum
engineers, had traveled through southern Russia and the Caspian
region to sniff out potential oil reserves. When the
policymakers heard the agency's report, [Secretary of State
Madeline] Albright concluded that 'working to mold the area's
future was one of the most exciting things we can do.' "
That's just what Washington and Wall Street set out to do.
The Pentagon tried to entice the regions' governments into a
military alliance linked to NATO's "Partnership for Peace." Oil
companies hired Washington insiders like Zbigniew Brzezinski,
Lloyd Bentsen, John Sununu and a certain Dick Cheney to lobby
for them in the region.
As the 20th century ended, it seemed their efforts would be
crowned with success. The U.S. bombing of Yugoslavia seemed to
block the possibility of Caspian oil and gas reaching Western
Europe through Russian-owned pipelines.
Meanwhile President Bill Clinton's 1998 bombing of Iraq
pushed oil prices high enough to make construction of a
U.S.-owned pipeline seem possible. "U.S. is Gaining in Great
Game in Central Asia," a Time magazine headline crowed.
Then Boris Yeltsin resigned, and Vladimir Putin took office
in the Kremlin. The Putin administration offered German banks
stakes in Lukoil and Gazprom, Russia's main energy companies.
Russia began to actively reassert its influence east of the
Caspian, and Central Asian governments began to stall or renege
on their deals with U.S. oil companies. Former FBI Director
Louis Freeh and CIA Director George Tenet made emergency trips
to the region.
The potential alliance of German capital and Russian,
Caucasus and Central Asian energy resources raised the prospect
that Western Europe would no longer have to buy its oil and gas
from U.S. firms.
Adding to the U.S.-based corporations' problems, China began
negotiating to build oil and gas pipelines from Kazakhstan and
Turkmenistan. And Russia brokered a treaty with Iran to divide
up the Caspian Sea without U.S. participation.
Oil industry journals blasted the Clinton administration for
"appeasing Russia" and moaned about losing Central Asia.
Caucasuswatch.com bills itself as an intelligence service
for the oil industry. In January it wrote: "With the coming of
a Sino-Russian pact of mutual assistance and an Iranian
acceptance of the Russian proposal to carve up the Caspian Sea,
any chance the U.S. had of cementing alliances in the region
seemed doomed. The incoming American administration, heavy in
oil and related interests, will likely try to reverse this
trend. How effective they will be is open to question."
A more recent entry on the Web site tied U.S. Big Oil's
prospects in the region to "the success of the Central Asian
counterstrike." That article was posted on April 24 of this
year.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
Subscribe wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net
Support independent news http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php)
HOME
:: U.S. NEWS ::
WORLD NEWS ::
EDITORIALS ::
SUBSCRIBE ::
DONATE
Email
this article
Printable
page