Another Afghan Pipeline Conspiracy

I love a good Internet conspiracy theory, so this one from Internet journalist Webster Tarpley caught my eye. He’s arguing that the recent US-led assault on the southern Afghan town of Marjah in restive Helmand province wasn’t aimed at striking a deadly blow at the heart of the Taliban insurgency, but rather was designed to drive the Taliban out of Afghanistan and into Pakistan’s Belujistan region directly to the south. And why would the US want to push more of the Taliban into our supposed ally Pakistan? To disrupt the construction of an oil pipeline that would ship Iranian oil directly to China, of course.

What makes a conspiracy theory, like Tarpley’s ‘drive the Taliban into Pakistan’ notion, great is the inability to disprove it. But not being able to disprove something doesn’t automatically make it true, and Tarpley’s piece plays into an idea that’s become something of an obsession among some people – to explain the US/NATO/Western involvement in Afghanistan in terms of oil. The genesis for these theories likely go back to the days following the demise of the Soviet Union when it was believed that the newly-accessible Caspian Sea region (once in the midst of the Soviet heartland) might contain as much oil as Saudi Arabia. That sparked a round of speculation on how to get that oil out of the Caspian Sea and to the West via a route that didn’t cross either Russia or Iran, since both were considered to be unreliable partners in such an endeavor. The most direct path left was via Afghanistan and on to the coast of Pakistan where it could then be loaded onto tankers and shipped around the world.

But it turned out that the Caspian Sea wasn’t another Saudi Arabia, at least as far as oil was concerned and the oil pipeline plans were put on a shelf, except in the minds of people who want to see oil at the heart of any US foreign policy exercise. To confuse matters, there is a pipeline project well into the planning stages that would cross Afghanistan – the TAPI pipeline.

“TAPI” stands for Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India; the projected route of the pipeline, that’s meant to bring gas from Turkmenistan, which has the third-largest reserves in the world, to the P and I countries. The Asian Development Bank is backing TAPI to the tune of around $7 billion and the project is being touted as something that could help to stabilize Afghanistan in the long run. But even with that level of backing TAPI isn’t a sure thing. A Canadian study notes that in addition to having to build a pipeline across some of the most rugged, most remote mountains in the world, TAPI will also have to cross an area heavily landmined during the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, as well as running through the heartland of the Taliban movement, including the aforementioned Helmand province.

A Kindler, Gentler Military Junta

Sometimes you wonder what people are thinking… Foreign Policy magazine reports that last year, a consulting firm founded by the men responsible for the prosecution of Sierra Leone’s President Charles Taylor on charges of crimes against humanity offered their services to the neighboring West African nation of Guinea to educate his military on how to observe the basic norms of human rights law. If that’s not odd enough, the training material included a PowerPoint presentation with slides that included such nuggets of wisdom as: soldiers should not shoot civilians (you would kind of hope you wouldn’t need to teach basics like that).


Ultimately the training sessions never took place because of an attempted coup against Guinea’s current junta chief Captain Moussa Dadis Camara. It got me thinking though about the over-reliance on PowerPoint presentations these days and reminded me of a story I read back when Poland was being brought into NATO. A group of Polish generals were brought to observe a NATO mock military maneuver, the day of course started with a PowerPoint presentation about the upcoming operation. This being the 1990s, the Poles were duly impressed by the (then) hi-tech presentation, but they pointed out to their American and European hosts that in a real battle, while NATO command were off preparing their PowerPoint slides, the Poles would be out in the field killing their troops.

Canada’s Last World War One Vet Passes Away

Since there are so few living veterans of the First World War left, whenever one passes away I think it’s worth noting here. Last Friday Canada lost their last WWI vet when John Babcock, age 109, died.

Babcock lied about his age to join the Canadian military in 1915. Because of his youth he was assigned to a unit with other underage soldiers and remained in Canada for much of the war. By 1918 though he had been shipped off to England and his unit was preparing to be deployed to France when the armistice was signed on November 11th. Even though he never saw combat, by his later years Babcock became a living symbol for the 600,000 Canadians who fought, and 60,000 who died in WWI. But like other centenarian vets, Babcock was unsentimental about his service in what was then called “The Great War”.

With Babcock’s passing there are believed to be only three surviving veterans from World War One, including America’s “last doughboy” Cpl. Frank Buckles, age 108.

Medvedev Meets His (Paris) Match

In-depth interviews with the Russian president in the Western media are somewhat of a rare occurrence, so I wanted to make sure to link to this story about Dmitry Medvedev’s recent sit-down with Paris Match magazine.

The motivation for the interview was France’s launching of the “Year of Russia”, a yearlong celebration of Russian culture and Russo-Franco relations. Beyond the kind of platitudes you’d expect him to give towards France during such an occasion, along with some warm memories of a trip to Paris, Medvedev actually had a few interesting things to say about international affairs. Among them are Medvedev’s belief that a new set of regulations need to be introduced into the global financial markets (something France’s Nikolas Sarkozy has been pushing for during the past few months), and that while Russia doesn’t view NATO as a threat, they’re also are not happy with the ongoing expansion of the military alliance. As for Iran, Medvedev didn’t seem terribly interested in slapping a new round of sanctions on the country, saying instead that it’s up to Iran to make a decision on bringing their nuclear program inline with international norms. On the domestic side Medvedev said there was still a lot of work to do in battling corruption and that Russia needs to diversify their economy away from its current over-reliance on extracting raw minerals. He also insisted again that he and Vladimir Putin have a “good relationship”.

A full transcript of the interview can be found here.

An Example Of Why China Is Bad For Africa

Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe celebrated his 86th birthday last Sunday, and with millions of his countrymen living in poverty and hunger, you’d think that a big party might seem a big gauche. But that didn’t stop the Chinese from throwing a bash in Mugabe’s honor at their embassy in Harare, which marked the first time that Mugabe had even visited a nation’s embassy in his capital since 1980.

Many of Zimbabwe’s current problems can be traced back a decade to Mugabe’s ill-conceived “land reform” plan, which was meant to increase black ownership of farmland in the country but in reality turned out to be just a patronage plan for his political cronies. This led to chronic food shortages in the country and the collapse of the nation’s agriculture export economy. Earlier in February, Mugabe rammed through a new law that could have a similar effect on Zimbabwe’s business sector – requiring all 51% ownership by Zimbabweans in all foreign investments – possibly destroying the fragile coalition government with Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai in the process.

The United States and European Union have responded to Mugabe’s actions in recent years by slapping a series of economic sanctions on Zimbabwe. China, on the other hand, has been happy to trade with them. Unlike the Western nations, who increasingly have tied economic and development aid to good governance practices, China typically offers foreign aid and trade packages with no strings attached. China’s position is that this respects the “internal affairs” of each nation. A more cynical view though is that China really doesn’t care who they do business with so long as the countries in question can continue to supply China with the raw materials they need to fuel their domestic economic expansion – in Zimbabwe’s case it’s minerals; in Sudan’s, oil.

Of course the Chinese position works at cross purposes with that of the Western nations, since why would Mugabe, or any other local despot, change their style of governance when they know they can always do business with the Chinese? Assuming, that is, that they have something China needs.

Tymoshenko Drops Challenge, But Political Drama Continues In Ukraine

On Saturday, Ukraine’s Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko dropped her legal challenge over the results of the country’s presidential election, which she lost by about 3.5% to former President Viktor Yanukovych two Sundays ago. In dropping her lawsuit though, Tymoshenko made it clear that her actions weren’t because she suddenly accepted the results of the vote – which international observers declared free and fair – but rather because she said she thought she could not get an honest hearing in Ukraine’s courts on her charges of massive voter fraud during the February 7 elections. But in doing so Tymoshenko has shown that this ongoing drama isn’t about what’s best for Ukrainian democracy, but rather it’s all about what’s best for Yulia.

Few poll watchers in Ukraine expected Tymoshenko’s challenge to succeed; in addition to the blessing the election received from monitors from Europe’s OSCE, world leaders have lined up to congratulate Yanukovych on his victory – a stark contrast from 2004 when international pressure over what appeared to be a rigged vote forced then-President Yanukovych into a runoff with his challenger (and eventual winner) Viktor Yushchenko. But in withdrawing her challenge, Tymoshenko decided to cast doubts on not only the legitimacy of President Yanukovych but on Ukraine’s legal system as well saying that she couldn’t get a fair hearing since the court was packed with “Yanukovych supporters”.

Of course nothing is keeping Tymoshenko from just presenting her evidence directly to the public, either via the press or the Internet; that she hasn’t suggests that the OSCE monitors were right about the quality of the election in the first place. It also indicates that Prime Minister Tymoshenko is still pushing the idea of blanket opposition in lieu of an actual political platform. The main reason that voters rejected her presidential candidacy is that they were fed up with the infighting between her and President Yushchenko that marked the five years following the Orange Revolution. While the two of them fought, Ukraine’s economy shrank, their currency nearly collapsed and corruption across the country increased. Now Tymoshenko is showing that she plans to continue to be the Opposer in Chief as President Yanukovych takes office.

Yanukovych though is taking his own steps to prevent this. He has called for her resignation as Prime Minister, which Yulia has of course refused. Yanukovych is now trying to put together a coalition government that will include members of his former rival Yushchenko’s party but will exclude the Bloc Yulia Tymoshenko, thus freezing her out of the government and stripping her of the prime minister’s post in the process. If Yanukovych fails in his bid to put together his coalition, he is indicating he’ll call for early parliamentary elections, hoping that will give him the majority he needs to push Tymoshenko out.

*Ukraine 2010 electoral map from Wikipedia. Regions won by Yanukovych are blue, those won by Tymoshenko, yellow.

Sour Grapes On The Russian Olympic Menu

The Russian Olympic Team was extremely upset by the results of the men’s figure skating after the United States’ Evan Lysacek edged out Russia’s Evgeni Plushenko for the gold medal. I have to admit I think that Russia has something of a point: Plushenko apparently skated a more technically difficult routine, yet received lower scores than Lysacek.

But Russia’s Pravda.ru took Olympic criticism to a new level with this top-to-bottom ripping of the Winter Games: “Vancouver: Mutton Dressed as Lamb”. In it, the folks at Pravda not only light into VANOC (the Vancouver organizing committee) for the men’s figure skating judging, but also for the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili and the drug testing of a Russian skier while her event was still underway (somehow the failure of the Olympic torch to properly rise during the opening ceremonies avoided their critique). Pravda goes on to (somewhat bizarrely) suggest that Canada’s inability to stage a “successful” Olympic Games stems from their inferiority complex over being the United States “skinny and weakling bro”, and also from still being part of the British Commonwealth. They also infer that the figure skating judging was somehow influenced by Canada competing with Russia for dominance in the Arctic Sea.

All in all, it is a stunning mix of sour grapes and conspiracy theories. At the heart though is likely frustration over the generally poor performance of the Russian Olympic team, which is currently on track for their worst-ever Olympics. That is the last thing the Russians want heading into the next Winter Games, which will be held at Sochi, Russia. Countries always want to have a strong showing at the Games they host – even mild-mannered Canada launched an aggressive training program called “Own the Podium” ahead of the Vancouver Games. Russia’s only other experience as an Olympic host were during the massively-boycotted Moscow Summer Games in 1980, so the upcoming Sochi Games are a source of immense national pride. Of course Russia, traditionally a winter sports powerhouse, wants to have a strong showing for the home crowd – but the 2010 Games have so far been a pretty poor prelude of things to come, and perhaps the frustration is showing in some pretty odd ways.

New Missile Plans, New Problems For US/Russian Relations

So much for “resetting” relations with Russia I guess…

Just five months ago the Obama Administration gave a boost to their attempts at repairing relations with Russia with their decision to pull the plug on a scheme to base an anti-ballistic missile shield (or ABM) in Poland and the Czech Republic. Now Washington is putting new strains on that same relationship by floating plans to base elements of the US missile shield in Bulgaria and Romania instead.

In case you haven’t been keeping up with developments in anti-missile defense, a brief recap: The Bush Administration pushed to base elements of the ABM shield – a radar station in the Czech Republic and ten anti-missile missiles in Poland – in Eastern Europe to protect the Continent against rocket attacks from “rogue states”. In practice “rogue states” was translated as “Iran”. But Iran doesn’t even have ballistic missiles with the range to reach Europe, nor was it ever explained why Iran would even want to launch missiles against Europe, and there were questions about whether or not the ABM system would even work in the first place, so all in all the ABM project didn’t make a lot of sense.

The plan did however infuriate the Russians. Publicly, Russia complained that the ABM system was intended not to guard against rogue states but to oppose their own nuclear missiles, something the Americans said wasn’t true since the ten interceptors in Poland could easily be overwhelmed by the thousands of missiles in the Russian arsenal. In reality, a lot of Russia’s opposition to the ABM program stemmed from the fact that they still consider Eastern Europe to be within their “sphere of influence” (a belief held over from Soviet times). Russia likely also doubted American claims that ABM was solely a defensive system since they had received similar assurances about NATO back in the 1990s, right before NATO went on the offensive against Russia’s long-time ally, Serbia in 1999.

Ultimately, the Obama Administration’s decision to end the ABM program in Poland and the Czech Republic last year seemed to be based more on a cost-analysis of an expensive, yet strategically dubious weapons program than as a way to placate the Russians, but it had that effect also, which is what makes the Administration’s decision this week even more puzzling. Russia considers Bulgaria to be in their backyard just as much as they do Poland (maybe even more so since Russian-Bulgarian relations have historically been much better than Russian-Polish ones), so their anger over the latest ABM decision is no surprise. At the same time, Poland will likely view this as a slap against them – if the US was going to base an ABM system in Eastern Europe anyway, why not just keep it on Polish soil?

One explanation could be Bulgaria’s importance in two competing natural gas pipeline projects meant to ship gas from Central Asia to Europe – the Russian-backed South Stream and the American-supported Nabucco (the United States hopes Nabucco will help to lessen Europe’s dependence on Russia for their natural gas supplies). Bulgaria is a key transit point in both plans, so perhaps ABM is a way for the United States to build up relations with Bulgaria to win them over to Nabucco.

But whatever the motivation, the latest chapter in the ABM saga is already causing problems in US-Russian relations. Russia is now threatening to suspend talks on a renewal of the START nuclear arms reduction pact, while the tiny pro-Russian quasi-nation of Transdnestr (a breakaway region of Moldova) is offering to host Russian ballistic missiles in response to an American ABM base in Bulgaria.

Protesting Too Is An Olympic Event

Along with the thousands of athletes, legions of journalists and hoards of spectators that have all descended upon Vancouver for the Olympic games, another group has come to town: Olympic protesters. On Monday there was a minor diplomatic incident when a young American was arrested by the Vancouver police on charges that included assaulting a police officer and inciting violence after an anti-Olympics rally turned into a vandalism spree in downtown Vancouver.

The protesters have a stew of Olympic-related complaints: Monday’s incident started out as a demonstration against the “carbon footprint” of the Games, and their ultimate effect on global climate change; another popular topic for protesters has been the diversion of public funds to build temporary housing for Olympic athletes (the Olympic Village) rather than providing permanent shelter for the city’s homeless population. To illustrate their point, homeless activists went as far as to set up their own “Olympic village” of tents for the indigent in downtown Vancouver.

That thought reminded of the song “Gassy Jack” by the Vancouver-based band, The Evaporators (for a brief musical interlude, see the video below), which includes the line: “social housing for the needy / not lofts for the greedy.” The 21st Winter Olympics will wrap up next weekend.

Working On The Railroad In Iraq

Iraq’s international railroad network is expanding again.

Earlier in the month, Iran announced plans to link their southern city Khorramshahr and the Iraqi port Basra with about 35 miles of newly built railway. Now according to the BBC, a rail-link between Iraq and Turkey has been opened for the first time since the 1980’s.

The journey between Gazientep, Turkey and Mosul, Iraq takes about 18 hours. German workers originally built the route almost a century ago as part of a plan to link Baghdad and Berlin by rail. Iraq’s war with Iran in the 1980’s damaged the line to the point where it needed to be closed, while Turkish conflicts with Kurdish rebels based in northern Iraq kept them from investing in repairs to the route. But in recent years trade between Turkey and Iraq, particularly the Kurdish northern region that abuts Turkey, has turned into a multi-billion dollar business, and has led to a reopening of the railroad.

Turkey now has plans to expand their network of high-speed passenger trains to include the Gazientep-to-Mosul route.