Recently, I wrote a piece of possibly wider interest for my column ‘The Erimtan Angle’ in the Istanbul Gazette.
In the 21st century, humanity has suddenly come face to face with the stupendous power of nature again. In the latter part of the previous century warnings regarding man-made or anthropogenic climate change started being voiced – arguably commencing in earnest with Professor Hansen’s testimony in front of the U.S. Senate during the summer of 1988. These dire words of caution arguably culminated in Al Gore’s sensational and “inconvenient” 2006 film. The Industrial Revolution and humanity’s subsequent immoderate burning of fossil fuels leading to a disproportionate increase in so-called greenhouse gases appear to be at the root of this apparently unnatural fluctuation in global temperatures – fluctuations which can lead to extreme weather events, such as hurricanes or floods. Very recently, in the first week of March this year actually, researchers from Oregon State University (OSU) and HarvardUniversity seem to have delivered the final verdict on anthropogenic climate change. They namely published the conclusions of their latest study in the journal Science, broadcasting to the wider world their concern with the state of the earth. Their findings reveal that our planet is warmer today than it has ever been during 70 to 80% of the last 11,300 years. As a result, the search for alternative fuels, fuels that would not lead to more greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere, should be the world’s leadership’s top priority given the looming threat of climate catastrophe that will eventually turn earth into a planet uninhabitable by humanity. In contrast, geo-political concerns and the simmering resource wars are such that attention remains focused on the remnants of earlier geologies. As a result, the consumption of fossil fuels continues unabated and the search for more hydrocarbon reserves follows suit – meaning that more and more greenhouse gases will keep on being added to the atmosphere for years and possibly decades to come. The war that in many ways started the 21st century can also be interpreted as having a close relationship to man’s endless thirst for ever-more fossil fuels.
The start of the invasion of Afghanistan on 7 October 2001 was presented as an act of war in direct response to the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on 9/11. But there is a back-story to Bush’s relationship with the land of Afghanistan. As such, the Taliban, in charge of the country since 27 September 1996 when they conquered the capital Kabul, sent a delegation to Texas in 1997. In Texas, the then-governor George W. Bush was instrumental in arranging meetings with the Texas oil firm Unocal. Quoting from a piece I wrote in 2010:
Unocal and its partners planned to build a 1,000-mile gas pipeline from resource-rich Turkmenistan to Multan in Pakistan [and then to India], passing through the Taliban heartland of Kandahar. In the waning years of the 20th century, the BBC dutifully reported that this deal was part “of an international scramble to profit from developing the rich energy resources of the Caspian Sea.” In other words, the Unocal deal with the Taliban was instrumental in the 21st-century development of what the Pakistani author Ahmed Rashid has termed the “New Great Game,” in reference to the 19th-century rivalry between the Russian and British empires for supremacy in Central Asia . . . In the south [of Afghanistan], Kandahar is [now] awaiting the completion of the TAPI pipeline, which will traverse the province on its way to Pakistan and India. In meetings held in the Turkmen capitol of Ashgabat [on] April 17-18, [2010] the go-ahead was given and work on the lucrative project started in May, with 2015 as the provisional completion date when Turkmenistan’s liquid gas will start flowing southward. The US government is one of the strongest backers of this project. How do these machinations surrounding the pipeline project relate to the [still ongoing] war in the Hindu Kush region? According to former Pakistani diplomat Niaz Naik, approximately two months prior to 9/11, the Bush administration had already decided to topple the Taliban regime and install a more amenable transitional government of moderate Afghans in its place. In July 2001 a four-day meeting was held in Berlin under the portentous heading of “brainstorming on Afghanistan.” The TAPI project was undoubtedly high on the session’s agenda. Literally one week after the attacks, the BBC’s former Pakistan correspondent George Arney related that Naik had “no doubt that after the World Trade Center bombings this pre-existing US plan had been built upon and would be implemented within two or three weeks.” And Niaz Naik proved right. Was he therefore really a man who knew too much? In early August 2009, Naik was tortured and murdered in his residence in Sector F-7/3 of Pakistan’s capital of Islamabad.
Did the TAPI project really play such an important role in the decision to invade Afghanistan? Was the outset of the continuing war against the Taliban (and “its Al-Qaeada allies” as the oft-repeated phrase goes) rather a calculated move to gain the initiative in the Central Asian resource war? Central Asia is a territory literally inundated with pipelines and in this context the investigative reporter Pepe Escobar coined the phrase Pipelineistan to refer to the CaspianBasin and the whole of Eurasia basically. And not just the West is addicted to fossil fuels being transported through this network of pipelines, the other global power which is China in equal measure relies on hydrocarbon assets being moved through Pipelineistan, converging in its Wild West, Xinjiang. From there, these assets are transported to mainland China in the east to fuel the ever-growing economy that has by now become the second-largest in the world. As for the TAPI pipeline, when the go-ahead, backed by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), was given for the construction of this huge pipeline, measuring a staggering 1,735 kilometres, Turkey’s State Minister Zafer Çağlayan had also been present in Turkmenistan.
On Pipelineistan’s western edge, Turkey is now actively operating to be included in the scramble for the massive Turkmen gas reserves, located at the Dovletabad and the Galkynysh (‘Southern Yeloten – Osman’) deposits. In early 2012, Turkmenistan’s President Gurbanguly Berdimuhammadov was in Turkey, visiting Ankara and Istanbul, and meeting Turkey’s President Abdullah Gül. And also signing a document containing this declaration: “The parties [, i.e. Turkey and Turkmenistan] confirmed the need for continuing work on the development of regional projects aimed at restoring the development of socio-economic spheres [in] Afghanistan. In this regard, the Turkish side expressed its interest in major projects, including the Turkmenistan – Afghanistan – Pakistan – India (TAPI) gas pipeline project, increasing supply of Turkmen electricity to Afghanistan, as well as projects of transport infrastructure development and expressed its support for these projects” – Turkey now clearly also wants to reap some benefits from the pipeline to transport Turkmen gas to the Arabian Sea.
Turkey also has its own stakes in the infrastructure of Pipelineistan. For starters, there is the BTC or Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan pipeline transporting Caspian oil to the Mediterranean. In 1992, the Turkish Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel first proposed the construction of such a pipeline connection. In the further course of the 1990’s, the pipeline project was personally supported by U.S. President Bill Clinton. And finally, on 18 November 1999, when the Ankara Declaration was signed by Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, Clinton’s Energy Secretary Bill Richardson called the event “a major foreign policy victory” for the U.S. – a statement indicative of the continuing geopolitical importance of Turkey as a bridge between east and west. In the first instance, the sanctions on Iraq following the first Gulf War (2 August 1990-28 February 1991) meant that the Kirkuk-Yumurtalık pipeline was no longer able to transport Iraqi oil to the Mediterranean, thereby crippling the Turkish economy and depriving the world economy of an important source of oil, given that Ceyhan was (and still is) a world-class facility able to supply large tankers. In addition, the fall of the Soviet Union subsequently also meant that the vast Caspian oil and gas reserves could now be integrated into the West’s energy supplies’ system. On 25 May 2005, the BTC pipeline was inaugurated at the Sangachal Terminal on the Caspian by Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, Georgia’s President Mikhail Saakashvili and Turkey’s President Ahmet Sezer, joined by President Nursaltan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan and United States Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman. The pipeline now daily transports 1 million barrels of Capian oil to the Mediterranean.
Another outlier of Pipelineistan present in Turkey is the Nabucco gas pipeline project, which has been in the works since 2005 and aims to be “the new gas bridge from Asia to Europe and the flagship project in the Southern Corridor”, connecting the EU with the major hydrocarbon sources in the Caspian and the Middle East. The project, aimed at liberating Europe from Russia’s energy stranglehold, has been beset by many problems and financial woes – with the German investor backing out last December. At the beginning of this month, the consortium backing the projected Nabucco pipeline signed a memorandum of co-operation with the Trans-Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP), basically cutting the length of the Nabucco pipeline in two and limiting the cost considerably. Originally, the Nabucco pipeline was supposed to start its route from central Anatolia, but now the pipeline will only start its westward journey through Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria at the Turco-Bulgarian border, relying on TANAP to supply gas from the Caspian and the Middle East. This shortened version has been called Nabucco West and would constitute a major rival for Russia’s South Stream pipeline project. And once again, Turkey’s trans-Atlantic friend is all but supportive as voiced by US State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland last year: “We strongly support Nabucco. We think it’s a very important project. It’s going to bring energy diversification on both sides and market diversification”. In other words, the interpersonal relations between Tayyip Erdoğan and Barrack Obama have not been futile. The U.S. clearly supports Turkey’s new pseudo-Ottoman programme, as a stable Turkey could very well become another foundation for America to build its renewed bridges into the Arab world, following the recent ‘spring weather’ and its ‘unexpected’ consequences. The Obama administration’s support for the west-bound section of Pipelineistan that is Nabucco also seems congruent with the U.S. and Turkey’s joint stance on the Assad regime, Turkey’s erstwhile friendly neighbour.
In fact, the recent civil war in Syria has actually ensured that the Nabucco pipeline project was given another lease of life. The protests against the Assad regime started in March 2011 turning violent the next month, while backdoor negotiations between Tehran, Baghdad and Damascus were underway. These talks led to the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding for the construction of a pipeline designed to deliver Iran’s natural gas to Iraq and Syria in the next three to five years at a cost of about $10 billion. From Syria, this pipeline could possibly also deliver gas to Lebanon and even to Europe in the future, securing a Mediterranean outlet for embattled Iran fighting sanctions and public disapproval. Now, the anti-Assad violence has ensured that this potential rival to Nabucco would not be able to emerge on the energy scene. Originally, Turkey planned to include Iran as a gas supplier to the pipeline, but the geo-political realities of the day and particularly the Obama administration’s continuation of the Bush era sanctions against Tehran, have managed to exclude Iran from the project. As a result, with the projected Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline, Tehran would still have been able to supply the global market. In spite of Iran’s rich oil and gas holdings, the country is effectively excluded from the confines of Pipelineistan.
The leadership in Tehran, however, seems to be persistent in its effort to find alternative ways to find outlets for its hydrocarbon reserves. Now, Iran’s leadership is looking to the east. Recently, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari attended a ceremony at the Iran-Pakistani border, unveiling a plaque and inaugurating the construction of a pipeline ar a cost of some $1.5 billion. A joint statement read at the ceremony stated that “The completion of the pipeline is in the interests of peace, security and progress of the two countries. It will also consolidate the economic, political and security ties of the two nations”. Iranian gas is supposed to start flowing towards Pakistan at the end of next year. The Iranian gas would be most welcome in Pakistan as the country faces a shortfall of 2 billion cubic of natural gas feet per day and is actually going through a serious energy crisis at the moment. Pakistan is without electricity for up to six hours a day— leading to the loss of export revenues, the closure of tens of thousands of factories, and, most importantly, the loss of millions of jobs.
While the world’s leaders and oil corporations are devising more and more schemes to flood the global energy market with oil and gas to be burnt, the world actually appears to be approaching climate catastrophe at an increased pace. In his 2011 book Deep Future, the climatologist Curt Stager maintains that the effects of current climate change will persist for much longer than we can imagine – he paints the best-case scenario as a world that won’t fully recover from the effects of the burning of fossil fuels for tens of thousands of years, and possibly much longer. Still, the long-term has never been a great concern for Turkish, or any other, policy-makers and the decisions taken today, the pipelines built now and tomorrow, and the fossil fuels consumed in the years to come will change the world beyond recognition. Geo-political interests and the ongoing resource rivalries resulting from humanity’s acute addiction to fossil fuels, coupled with profit-hungry corporations eager to benefit from any kind of fossil fuels found anywhere, now seem to condemn humanity to a bleak future for the sake of short-term profits and power.[1]
This is absolutely crazy . . . can it really be true??? RT reports: ‘9-11 has been used to wage war on a number of countries and on the freedoms and liberties of all the people living in the western world, The 9-11 event is now also being recycled to wage a propaganda campaign against Iran. The Lies continue , the very same lies’.
In fact, the incredible story related above dates back to December 2011: the ‘U.S. District Judge George B. Daniels ruled . . . that Iran and Hezbollah materially and directly supported al Qaeda in the September 11, 2001 attacks and are legally responsible for damages to hundreds of family members of 9/11 victims who are plaintiffs in the case. Judge Daniels had announced his ruling in Havlish, et al. v. bin Laden, et al., in open court on Thursday, December 15, 2011, following a three-hour courtroom presentation by the families’ attorneys. Judge Daniels entered a written Order of Judgment . . . backed by 53 pages of detailed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law. Fiona Havlish, whose husband Donald perished in the WorldTradeCenterNorthToweron 9/11 said, “This is a historic day. For ten years we’ve wanted the truth to be known about who was responsible for our losses. Now we have that answer.” Ellen Saracini, the wife of United Airlines 175 pilot Victor Saracini, which the hijackers crashed into the WTCSouthTower, said after the hearing . . . [that]“We just came from Judge Daniels’ court where he ruled in favor of holding accountable those who perpetrated the attacks of 9/11 . . . I just smiled up to Victor and I said we’re still thinking about you . . . we’re there for you . . . we’ll always be there for you. But today’s very special.” In Havlish, et al. v. bin Laden, et al., Judge Daniels held that the Islamic Republic of Iran, its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei, former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and Iran’s agencies and instrumentalities, including, among others, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (“IRGC”), the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (“MOIS”), and Iran’s terrorist proxy Hezbollah, all materially aided and supported al Qaeda before and after 9/11’.[1]
In the New York Times then we can read that the there is “one unchallenged king of delayed decisions: Judge George B. Daniels of Federal District Court in Manhattan, who, the latest statistics show, had 289 motions in civil cases pending for more than six months, by far the highest total of any federal judge in the nation”.[2] In other words, a dilatory judge making a ruling of outrageous content . . . does it really mean anything beyond soothing the hopes of some apparently grieving people??? Is Judge Daniels really preparing the ground for World War III??? Does good old Mister Daniels actually know what he is talking about???
[1] “U.S. DISTRICT COURT RULES IRAN BEHIND 9/11 ATTACKS” Havlish et al. (23 December 2011). http://www.iran911case.com/.
The 2006 film Kill the Messenger is ‘a documentary produced by Zadig Productions, directed by French filmmakers Mathieu Verboud and Jean Robert Viallet, [was aired] on Canal + in France on September 19, 2006. The film [was] also . . . aired in Belgium, on BeTV, and Australia, on SBS . . . The documentary explores the abuses behind the State Secrets Privilege as invoked in FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds’ case as well as highlighting the travails and persecution of US national security whistleblowers. The filmmakers, Verboud and Viallet, spent nearly two years interviewing witnesses and researching the invocation and implementation of the state secrets privilege in Edmonds’ case. Based on their documented findings and interviews with experts such as David Albright, Philip Giraldi, John Cole, Joseph Trento, Glenn Fine, David Rose, and others familiar with Edmonds’ case, the film presents a terrifying picture of Turkish networks’ activities in global nuclear black-market, narcotics and illegal arms trafficking activities in the United States, and examines the extraordinary efforts of officials within the US Government to insure that the secrecy surrounding Edmonds’ case be maintained at any cost – from Edmonds’ termination from the FBI, to invoking the State Secrets Privilege, to gagging the US Congress. The film documents the formation of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition and the collective struggle of its members to bring legislative and media attention to retaliation by national security agencies against whistleblowers, and the resulting danger such suppression of the truth causes the United States. The entrenched bureaucratic power of the United States government would rather sacrifice those who would reveal the truth than face the changes necessary to protect the nation. The filmmakers interviewed many high-profile national security whistleblowers, including Daniel Ellsberg, Coleen Rowley (FBI), Russell Tice (NSA), Bogdan Dzakovic (DHS), John Vincent (FBI), Steve Elson (FAA), John M. Cole (FBI), and Matthew Fogg, among others’.[1]
Sibel Edmonds has been called the most classified woman in US history. But now, after a long battle with government secrecy, the full story has finally been written. She faced a nearly yearlong FBI campaign to prevent its publication. She joins the Alyona Show to tell us about her memoir, Classified Woman: The Sibel Edmonds Story.(9 May 2012).
The Obama administration has the worst track record when it comes to prosecuting whistleblowers. Obama once claimed he’d work hard to have a transparent government, but many have faced retaliation for revealing controversial government information. Sibel Edmonds, who is a whistleblower, waited 340 days for FBI clearance of her memoir but finally released it on her own. Edmonds, founder of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, joins us for more (9 May 2012).
David Swanson
This review is from: Classified Woman-The Sibel Edmonds Story: A Memoir (Paperback)
Sibel Edmonds’ new book, Classified Woman, is like an FBI file on the FBI, only without the incompetence.
The experiences she recounts resemble K.’s trip to the castle, as told by Franz Kafka, only without the pleasantness and humanity.
I’ve read a million reviews of nonfiction books about our government that referred to them as “page-turners” and “gripping dramas,” but I had never read a book that actually fit that description until now.
The F.B.I., the Justice Department, the White House, the Congress, the courts, the media, and the nonprofit industrial complex put Sibel Edmonds through hell. This book is her triumph over it all, and part of her contribution toward fixing the problems she uncovered and lived through.
Edmondstook a job as a translator at the FBI shortly after 9-11. She considered it her duty. Her goal was to prevent any more terrorist attacks. That’s where her thinking was at the time, although it has now changed dramatically. It’s rarely the people who sign up for a paycheck and healthcare who end up resisting or blowing a whistle.
Edmondsfound at the FBI translation unit almost entirely two types of people. The first group was corrupt sociopaths, foreign spies, cheats and schemers indifferent to or working againstU.S.national security. The second group was fearful bureaucrats unwilling to make waves. The ordinary competent person with good intentions who risks their job to “say something if you see something” is the rarest commodity. Hence the elite category thatEdmondsfound herself almost alone in: whistleblowers.
Reams of documents and audio files from before 9-11 had never been translated. Many more had never been competently or honestly translated. One afternoon in October 2001,Edmondswas asked to translate verbatim an audio file from July 2001 that had only been translated in summary form. She discovered that it contained a discussion of skyscraper construction, and in a section from September 12th a celebration of a successful mission. There was also discussion of possible future attacks.Edmondswas eager to inform the agents involved, but her supervisor Mike Feghali immediately put a halt to the project.
Two other translators, Behrooz Sarshar and Amin (no last name given), toldEdmondsthis was typical. They told her about an Iranian informant, a former head of SAVAK, the Iranian “intelligence” agency, who had been hired by the FBI in the early 1990s. He had warned these two interpreters in person in April 2001 of Osama bin Laden planning attacks onU.S.cities with airplanes, and had warned that some of the plotters were already in theUnited States. Sarshar and Amin had submitted a report marked VERY URGENT to Special Agent in Charge Thomas Frields, to no apparent effect. In the end of June they’d again met with the same informant and interpreted for FBI agents meeting with him. He’d emphatically warned that the attack would come within the next two months and urged them to tell the White House and the CIA. But the FBI agents, when pressed on this, told their interpreters that Frields was obliged to report everything, so the White House and other agencies no doubt already knew.
One has to wonder whatU.S.public opinion would make of an Iranian having tried to prevent 9-11.
Next, a French translator named Mariana informedEdmondsthat in late June 2001, French intelligence had contacted the FBI with a warning of the upcoming attacks by airplanes. The French even provided names of suspects. The translator had been sent toFrance, and believed her report had made it to both FBI headquarters and the White House.
Edmondstranslated other materials that involved the selling ofU.S.nuclear information to foreigners and spotted a connection to a previous case involving the purchase of such information. The FBI, under pressure from the State Department,Edmondswrites, prevented her from notifying the FBI field offices involved.Edmondshas testified in a court deposition, naming as part of a broad criminal conspiracy Representatives Dennis Hastert, Dan Burton, Roy Blunt, Bob Livingston, Stephen Solarz, and Tom Lantos, and the following high-rankingU.S.government officials: Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, and Marc Grossman.
WhenEdmondswas hired, she was the only fully qualified Turkish translator, and this remained the case. In November 2001, a woman named Melek Can Dickerson (referred to as “Jan”) was hired. She did not score well on the English proficiency test, and so was not qualified to sign off on translations, asEdmondswas. Melek’s husband Doug Dickerson worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency under the procurement logistics division at the Pentagon dealing withTurkeyandCentral Asia, and for the Office of Special Plans overseeing Central Asian policy. This couple attempted to recruitEdmondsand her husband into the American Turkish Council and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations, offering large financial benefits. But these were organizations that the FBI was monitoring.Edmondsreported the Dickersons’ proposal to Feghali, who dismissed it.
ThenEdmondsdiscovered that Jan Dickerson had been forging her (Edmonds’) signature on translations, with Feghali’s approval. ThenEdmonds’ colleagues told her about Jan taking files out of other translators’ desks and carrying them out of the building. Dickerson attempted to control the translation of all material from particular individuals. Dennis Saccher, who was above Feghali, discovered that Jan was marking every communication from one important person as being not important for translation. Saccher attempted to address the matter but was shut down by Feghali, by another supervisor named Stephanie Bryan, and by the head of “counterintelligence” for the FBI who said that the Pentagon, White House, State Department, and Congress would not allow an investigation.
HadEdmondsunderstood the truth of that statement, it might have saved her years of frustration and stress, but it would have denied us the bulk of the revelations in her book. Dickerson threatenedEdmonds’ life and those of her family.Edmondslost her job, her reputation, her friends, and contact with most of her family members. She watched Congress cave in to the President. She watched the government protect the Dickersons by allowing them to flee the country. She listened to Congressman Henry Waxman and others in 2005 and 2006 promise a full investigation if the Democrats won a majority, a promise that was immediately broken when the Democrats took control of Congress in 2007.Edmondswas smeared in the media, and her story widely ignored when media outlets got parts of it right. The Justice Department claimed “States Secrets” and maneuvered for a cooperative judge (Reggie Walton) to have cases filed byEdmondsdismissed. The government classified as secret all materials related toEdmonds’ case including what was already public. The Justice Department issued a gag order to the entire Congress.
And Congress bent over and shouted “Thank you, sir, may I have another?”
As less confrontational approaches failed, Edmondsbecame increasingly an activist and an independent media participant and creator. Her story and others she was familiar with were rejected and avoided by the 9-11 Commission. She worked with angry 9-11 widows and with other whistleblowers to expose the failures of that commission. Disgusted with whistleblower support groups that only offered to help her when she was in the news and never when she needed help most desperately, Edmondsstarted her own group, made up of whistleblowers, called the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition. She started her own website called Boiling Frogs Post.
When an unclassified version of a report onEdmonds’ case by the Justice Department’s Inspector General was finally released, it vindicated her.
Edmondshas received awards and recognition. Her story has been supported (with rhetoric, not action) by Congress members and backed up by journalists. It appears in this forthcoming film.
Coleen Rowley, another FBI whistleblower, one who was honored as a Time magazine person of the year along with two others, told me: “What I find so remarkable is Sibel’s persistence in trying every avenue and possible outlet in trying to get the truth out. When going up the chain of command in the executive branch and Inspector General internal mechanisms for investigating fraud, waste, and abuse went nowhere, she sought judicial remedy by filing lawsuits only to be improperly gagged by ‘state secrecy privilege’. Along the way she also sought congressional assistance, testified to the 9-11 Commission, and engaged with various media and other non-governmental organizations. It’s somewhat ironic that Sibel herself demonstrated such enormous energy and passion throughout this decade quite the opposite of the ‘boiling frog’ idiom she uses for her website as a warning to others. If her book can inspire readers to summon even 1/100th of the determination and resolve she has modeled, there’s hope for us!”
Yet, thus far, no branch of our government has lifted its little finger to fix the problem of secrecy and the corruption it breeds, whichEdmondsargues has grown far worse under President Obama. That’s why this book should be spread far and wide, and read aloud to our misrepresentatives in Congress if necessary. This book is a masterpiece that reveals both the details and the broader pattern of corruption and unaccountability in Washington, D.C. Edmonds has not exposed bad apples, but a rotten barrel of toxic waste that will sooner or later infect us all — not just the whistleblowers like Sibel and the thousands of people in our government who see something and dare not say something for fear that we will not have their back.
In Honolulu things have been heating up over the past days and now temperatures have reached boiling point. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton namely declared the following: “Iran has a long history of deception and denial regarding its nuclear program and in the coming days we expect Iran to answer the serious questions raised by this report. The U.S. will continue to consult closely with our allies on the next steps we can take to increase pressure on Iran”.[1] In a way that resembles Colin Powell’s 2003 deception, the IAEA under its new chief Amano ‘showed satellite images, letters and diagrams to 35 nations earlier Friday [, 11 November] in Vienna as it sought to underpin its case that Iran apparently is working secretly on developing a nuclear weapon’.[2] In spite of the fact that its newly released report does not deliver any clear proof or convincing arguments regarding Iran’s bomb-building abilities, sufficing to spice the text with lots of ‘mights’, ‘coulds’ and ‘mays’, and literally stating that “There are also indications that some activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device continued after 2003, and that some may still be ongoing”.[3] Now the war drums are sounding loudly across the Western world because of ‘indications’ that something ‘may still be ongoing’ . . .
The Bush administration was adamant in its condemnation of Iran, even suggesting that its troubles in Iraq were due to machinations hatched in Tehran . . . The Obama administration has been equally vocal in its opposition to the Islamic Republic. About two weeks ago, Clinton staged a media assault employing the offices of VOA: ‘U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has told VOA that she believes the government of Iran is a dictatorship, and she said the United States wants to assure Iranians that their aspirations for freedom are legitimate. She spoke to VOA’s Persian News Network Wednesday [, 26 October] and addressed the Iranian people directly. She said the United States hopes to open a “virtual embassy in Tehran” online by the end of the year. She said America would very much like to improve relations with Iranians and encouraged Iranian students to “come and study in the United States.” And she said Washington seeks to provide tools that would allow Iranians to circumvent the “electronic curtain” she said Iran has imposed on communications online’.
Could it be that the Obama administration, borrowing a leaf from the Bush playbook, is heating up the temperature at home by means of conjuring up another warlike phantom abroad in time for the 2012 presidential elections??? Now that the Libyan war has been brought to a provisional conclusion of sorts with the authorised murder of Colonel Gadhafi, and the prospect of more sweet crude flowing in the right direction, and now that U.S. combat troops are vacating Iraqi territory to be replaced by well-paid contractors, while the inconclusive war in the Hindu Kush continues in spite of the execution of Usamah bin Laden, the presentation of a new bogeyman seems appropriate: re-enter Iran and its phantom-like nuclear weapons programme. As reiterated by VOA’s Persian News Network’s reporter, President Obama has called the Libya operation “a recipe for success”, unlike Iran’s 2009 Green Revolution, which was probably instigated by the Bush administration, now it has the appearance that the current U.S. administration is floating the possibility of regime change in Tehran. In the above clip, Clinton is presenting the “soft power” side of this new resolve. The recently released IAEA report, on the other hand, seems well-placed to usher in the “hard power” segment of Washington’s plans for Iran and its political leadership.
President Obama seems to have begun his re-election bid in earnest now. At the end of October he appeared on Jay Leno’s TV show to announce his administration’s foreign policy strategy to the American public: in Libya “[n]ot a single U.S. troop was killed or injured, and that, I think, is a recipe for success in the future”.[4] In this way Obama has clearly positioned himself at the opposite side of his predecessor’s stance, his predecessor whose foreign policy has led to many American troops dying in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. While the current U.S. president is all but continuing the Bush strategy in the Hindu Kush, the operations in North Africa are now rhetorically employed to define President Obama’s approach to American military intervention. Air power and unmanned drone strikes are the new weapons of choice. President Obama is thus staking out his position at the forefront of a new understanding of warfare, a new understanding that sees military intervention as remote-controlled and from above, rather than consisting of boots on the ground effectively occupying foreign soil. Whereas Donald Rumsfeld on 10 September 2001 envisioned an American military that was a slimmed down yet still powerful fighting machine, consisting of gun-toting men and women, the current administration apparently views tomorrow’s soldiers as joystick-wielding operators bringing death and destruction from afar and above, aided by special forces executing targeted assassinations and other delicate groundwork.
President Obama honors the special relationship between France and the United States with President Nicolas Sarkozy at a special event in Cannes. November 4, 2011.
Last week marked the tenth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and the NATO occupation of the landlocked country in the Hindu Kush. Ostensibly, the 9/11 attacks provided the reason for the invasion. As I have pointed out recently the whole 9/11 discourse is awash with conspiracy and other conundrums which do not make it easy to determine the reality. It would stand to reason to look at the PNAC document Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century (2010) as a pivotal text in 21st-century U.S. foreign policy thinking. The Project for the New American Century or “PNAC, as a Neo-Con think tank, was trying to figure out how America could again become the primary power in the world, but deemed such a development unlikely ‘absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event like a new Pearl Harbor’ . . . a phrase that has by now become emblematic of George Bush’s War on Terror and the doctrine of pre-emption in the minds of critics of the U.S. and its foreign policy under Bush and Obama. There are those who say that it was no coincidence that the Twin Towers and the Pentagon were hit, suspecting that the PNAC and the Bush administration had previous knowledge of the plot, or were even involved in the planning and execution of the attacks”.[1] Quite apart from any kind of involvement of the Bush administration, the fact that the 9/11 attacks have functioned as “a new Pearl Harbor” for the 21st century seems incontrovertible and now at the outset of the second decade of the century, the War-on-Terror is still being waged as enthusiastically as ten years ago. President Obama campaigned on the premise of U.S. withdrawal from Iraq to then re-engage in the Af-Pak Theatre where the real war was being fought, hinting at a menacing Al Qaeda presence and its supposed kingpin Usamah bin Laden. Now that the U.S. has all but “dismantled” Al Qaeda in the Hindu Kush and executed Usamah bin Laden, it would seem that President Obama has made good on his promise . . . alas, U.S. troops still do not seem ready to leave Afghanistan.
On the occasion of last year’s 9/11 anniversary I wrote the following in Today’s Zaman: “According to former Pakistani diplomat Niaz Naik, approximately two months prior to 9/11,the Bush administration had already decided to topple the Taliban regime and install a more amenable transitional government of moderate Afghans in its place. In July 2001 a four-day meeting was held in Berlin under the portentous heading of “brainstorming on Afghanistan.” . . . Literally one week after the attacks, the BBC’s former Pakistan correspondent George Arney related that Naik had “no doubt that after the World Trade Center bombings this pre-existing US plan had been built upon and would be implemented within two or three weeks.” And Niaz Naik proved right. Was he therefore really a man who knew too much? In early August 2009, Naik was tortured and murdered in his residence in Sector F-7/3 of Pakistan’s capital of Islamabad”.[2] In the piece I connected Naik’s assertions with the plans for a pipeline project that was supposed to transport natural gas from Turkmenistan to the Arabian Sea, through Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India (TAPI). I maintained that the “TAPI project was undoubtedly high on the [Berlin] session’s agenda”, adding that “[i]n meetings held in the Turkmen capitol of Ashgabat April 17-18 [,2010], the go-ahead was given and work on the lucrative project started in May [2010], with 2015 as the provisional completion date when Turkmenistan’s liquid gas will start flowing southward”.[3] As a result, my Today’s Zaman piece presented an ulterior motive for the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, a motive that also happened to be congruous with the reasoning of Zbigniew Brzezinski, the architect of the U.S. support of the Afghan Mujahideen in the eighties.[4] This realisation then led to recognising the importance of China as the new rival of the U.S., not just in Central Asia but across the wider world.[5] And thus, I concluded that “[i]n spite of the very real TAPI project and the American backing for the pipeline in the US pursuit of a fossil fuel policy, President Obama is keen to continue the Bush rhetoric as well as policy. In his address to the nation from the Oval Office on Aug. 31 to mark the end of the combat mission in Iraq, he made the following remarks: ‘And no challenge is more essential to our security than our fight against al-Qaeda. … Americans across the political spectrum supported the use of force against those who attacked us on 9/11. … As we speak, al-Qaeda continues to plot against us, and its leadership remains anchored in the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan. We will disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaeda, while preventing Afghanistan from again serving as a base for terrorists’”.[6]
But today Bin Laden is dead and Al Qaeda no longer a viable presence in the Af-Pak Theatre. Still, the American soldiers are staying put on the ground. The U.S. has over the years taken over and improved the former Soviet base of Bagram, now known as Bagram Airfield or Bagram Air Base. The informative website Global Security provides this introduction: ‘Bagram Airbase is located in the Parvan Province approximately 11 kilometers (7 miles) southeast of the city of Charikar and 47 Kilometers (27 miles) north of Kabul. It is served by a 10,000 foot runway built in 1976 capable of landing large cargo and bomber aircraft. Bagram Airbase has three large hangars, a control tower, and numerous support buildings. There are over 32 acres of ramp space. There are five aircraft dispersal areas with a total of over 110 revettments. Many support buildings and base housing built by the Soviets, have been destroyed by years of fighting between the various warring Afghan factions. Bagram Airbase played a key role during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, serving as a base of operations for troops and supplies and Aircraft based at Bagram provided close air support for Soviet and Afghan troops in the field. Some of the Soviet forces based out of Bagram included the elite 105th Guards Airborne Division’.[7] And the base has now become a small city, including bowling rinks, fastfood outlets and other diversions. Earlier this year, the Louisville, Kentucky-based Yum Brands franchise Pizza Hut opened up a branch at Bagram, and its spokesman said that the company is “proud to be serving the men and women who serve in Afghanistan”.[8] Additionally, Miami-based Burger King also opened its doors in Bagram. In other words, the U.S. service men and women are made to feel home away from home . . . arguably in an effort to boost morale and to ease ever-lengthening deployments in the Hindu Kush. Recently, Retired USAF Lt Col Karen Kwiatkowski appeared on RT where she outlined her contention that the U.S. had achieved its objectives in Afghanistan: to build permanent bases. Talking about the U.S. leadership, she said that “[t]here is a good reason in their minds why they are there, and they plan to stay. We like these military bases too well, we like the minerals, and we like the geographic positioning Afghanistan provides our military”.[9] Kwiatkowski openly refers to the recently rediscovered mineral wealth in the Afghan mountains,[10] and also insinuates that China is another reason the U.S. is positioning itself in a comfortable and secure base to keep an eye on Beijing’s designs. She further asserts that the occupation of Afghanistan “is not a success for the
American people, who are very tired of this. But the real reasons that we are in Afghanistan have never been put forward”.[11]
In addition to Bagram in Afghanistan, there is also the Manas Air Transit Center in Kyrgyzstan, a country bordering China’s important Xinjiang region where all of China’s Central Asian pipelines converge and other underground wealth is also available. Even more poignant is the fact that last year, the U.S. was also planning to build a second base in the land of the Kyrgyz – namely a $10 million military training base in the southern city of Osh called Osh Polygon. Osh was also the scene of ethnic clashes that led to many deaths last year.[12] Not being content with the size of its military footprint in Central Asia, the small non-Turkic nation of Tajikistan was also included in the U.S. strategy of encircling China in 2009.[13] Late last year, WikiLeaks released a cable that even indicated that the Tajiks were actively seeking a U.S. base on its soil: “The Tajik government presses us for greater benefits in return for support on Afghanistan . . . They see U.S. involvement in the region as a bulwark against Afghan instability, and as a cashcow they want a piece of”.[14]
And lest we forget, Uncle Sam’s Central Asian adventures do cost a lot of money. According to Reuters, President Obama ‘referred to a $1 trillion price tag for America’s wars’. The Reuters’ report then adds that ‘[s]taggering as it is, that figure grossly underestimates the total cost of wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan to the U.S. Treasury and ignores more imposing costs yet to come, according to a study released Wednesday [, 29 June 2011]. The final bill will reach at least $3.7 trillion and could be as high as $4.4 trillion, according to the research project “Costs of War” by Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies’.[15] For Dow Jones Newswires, Corey Boles now writes that the “federal government recorded a $1.3 trillion budget deficit in fiscal 2011, the same level recorded in fiscal 2010, the Congressional Budget Office said Friday [, 7 October 2011]. In its monthly assessment of the government’s finances, the nonpartisan congressional scorekeeper said the $1.3 trillion deficit was equivalent to 8.6% of U.S. gross domestic product, down from 8.9% in fiscal 2010 but still the third-highest percentage of GDP recorded since 1945”.[16]
[2] C. Erimtan, “9/11 and the occupation of Afghanistan” Today’s Zaman (13 September 2010). http://tiny.cc/81shu.
[3] C. Erimtan, “9/11 and the occupation of Afghanistan”.
[4] C. Erimtan, “The War in Afghanistan: The legacy of Zbigniew Brzezinski and the Volatile Situation in Pakistan” Today’s Zaman (07 October 2010). http://tiny.cc/7gsi2.
[5] C. Erimtan, “A frontline in the war against Islamic Extremism or A Crucial Part of the Eurasian chessboard?” Today’s Zaman (25 January 2011). http://tiny.cc/h3b5g.
[6] C. Erimtan, “9/11 and the occupation of Afghanistan”.
President Obama delivered a speech Wednesday morning (21 September 2011) at the U.N. General Assembly as diplomatic efforts to try to dissuade the Palestinian Authority from submitting a bid for U.N. membership continue.
Today, 15 September 2011, is the 3rd anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Bros, and the beginning of the financial crisis. And 3 years later, it looks like we’re not in much better shape. David Sirota is on the show to talk about where we’ve gone wrong. Then, David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy travelled to Libya today, but with fighting between rebels and pro-Qaddafi forces still going on, is it too early for this trip? Next, it’s almost a year since the homes of anti-war activists across the US were raided by the FBI. We’ll catch up with one of the activist, Jess Sundin. And then don’t miss our Happy Hour.
The world’s been marking 10 years since the 9/11 attacks. President Barack Obama honoured the victims at three of the sites. He ended commemorations by praising the American resolve. Al Jazeera‘s Alan Fisher sent in this report.
Op-Ed: Pipelineistan and Turkey: The Geo-Political Realities behind Resource Rivalry and the Looming Climate Catastrophe
Recently, I wrote a piece of possibly wider interest for my column ‘The Erimtan Angle’ in the Istanbul Gazette.
In the 21st century, humanity has suddenly come face to face with the stupendous power of nature again. In the latter part of the previous century warnings regarding man-made or anthropogenic climate change started being voiced – arguably commencing in earnest with Professor Hansen’s testimony in front of the U.S. Senate during the summer of 1988. These dire words of caution arguably culminated in Al Gore’s sensational and “inconvenient” 2006 film. The Industrial Revolution and humanity’s subsequent immoderate burning of fossil fuels leading to a disproportionate increase in so-called greenhouse gases appear to be at the root of this apparently unnatural fluctuation in global temperatures – fluctuations which can lead to extreme weather events, such as hurricanes or floods. Very recently, in the first week of March this year actually, researchers from Oregon State University (OSU) and HarvardUniversity seem to have delivered the final verdict on anthropogenic climate change. They namely published the conclusions of their latest study in the journal Science, broadcasting to the wider world their concern with the state of the earth. Their findings reveal that our planet is warmer today than it has ever been during 70 to 80% of the last 11,300 years. As a result, the search for alternative fuels, fuels that would not lead to more greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere, should be the world’s leadership’s top priority given the looming threat of climate catastrophe that will eventually turn earth into a planet uninhabitable by humanity. In contrast, geo-political concerns and the simmering resource wars are such that attention remains focused on the remnants of earlier geologies. As a result, the consumption of fossil fuels continues unabated and the search for more hydrocarbon reserves follows suit – meaning that more and more greenhouse gases will keep on being added to the atmosphere for years and possibly decades to come. The war that in many ways started the 21st century can also be interpreted as having a close relationship to man’s endless thirst for ever-more fossil fuels.
The start of the invasion of Afghanistan on 7 October 2001 was presented as an act of war in direct response to the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on 9/11. But there is a back-story to Bush’s relationship with the land of Afghanistan. As such, the Taliban, in charge of the country since 27 September 1996 when they conquered the capital Kabul, sent a delegation to Texas in 1997. In Texas, the then-governor George W. Bush was instrumental in arranging meetings with the Texas oil firm Unocal. Quoting from a piece I wrote in 2010:
Unocal and its partners planned to build a 1,000-mile gas pipeline from resource-rich Turkmenistan to Multan in Pakistan [and then to India], passing through the Taliban heartland of Kandahar. In the waning years of the 20th century, the BBC dutifully reported that this deal was part “of an international scramble to profit from developing the rich energy resources of the Caspian Sea.” In other words, the Unocal deal with the Taliban was instrumental in the 21st-century development of what the Pakistani author Ahmed Rashid has termed the “New Great Game,” in reference to the 19th-century rivalry between the Russian and British empires for supremacy in Central Asia . . . In the south [of Afghanistan], Kandahar is [now] awaiting the completion of the TAPI pipeline, which will traverse the province on its way to Pakistan and India. In meetings held in the Turkmen capitol of Ashgabat [on] April 17-18, [2010] the go-ahead was given and work on the lucrative project started in May, with 2015 as the provisional completion date when Turkmenistan’s liquid gas will start flowing southward. The US government is one of the strongest backers of this project. How do these machinations surrounding the pipeline project relate to the [still ongoing] war in the Hindu Kush region? According to former Pakistani diplomat Niaz Naik, approximately two months prior to 9/11, the Bush administration had already decided to topple the Taliban regime and install a more amenable transitional government of moderate Afghans in its place. In July 2001 a four-day meeting was held in Berlin under the portentous heading of “brainstorming on Afghanistan.” The TAPI project was undoubtedly high on the session’s agenda. Literally one week after the attacks, the BBC’s former Pakistan correspondent George Arney related that Naik had “no doubt that after the World Trade Center bombings this pre-existing US plan had been built upon and would be implemented within two or three weeks.” And Niaz Naik proved right. Was he therefore really a man who knew too much? In early August 2009, Naik was tortured and murdered in his residence in Sector F-7/3 of Pakistan’s capital of Islamabad.
Did the TAPI project really play such an important role in the decision to invade Afghanistan? Was the outset of the continuing war against the Taliban (and “its Al-Qaeada allies” as the oft-repeated phrase goes) rather a calculated move to gain the initiative in the Central Asian resource war? Central Asia is a territory literally inundated with pipelines and in this context the investigative reporter Pepe Escobar coined the phrase Pipelineistan to refer to the CaspianBasin and the whole of Eurasia basically. And not just the West is addicted to fossil fuels being transported through this network of pipelines, the other global power which is China in equal measure relies on hydrocarbon assets being moved through Pipelineistan, converging in its Wild West, Xinjiang. From there, these assets are transported to mainland China in the east to fuel the ever-growing economy that has by now become the second-largest in the world. As for the TAPI pipeline, when the go-ahead, backed by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), was given for the construction of this huge pipeline, measuring a staggering 1,735 kilometres, Turkey’s State Minister Zafer Çağlayan had also been present in Turkmenistan.
On Pipelineistan’s western edge, Turkey is now actively operating to be included in the scramble for the massive Turkmen gas reserves, located at the Dovletabad and the Galkynysh (‘Southern Yeloten – Osman’) deposits. In early 2012, Turkmenistan’s President Gurbanguly Berdimuhammadov was in Turkey, visiting Ankara and Istanbul, and meeting Turkey’s President Abdullah Gül. And also signing a document containing this declaration: “The parties [, i.e. Turkey and Turkmenistan] confirmed the need for continuing work on the development of regional projects aimed at restoring the development of socio-economic spheres [in] Afghanistan. In this regard, the Turkish side expressed its interest in major projects, including the Turkmenistan – Afghanistan – Pakistan – India (TAPI) gas pipeline project, increasing supply of Turkmen electricity to Afghanistan, as well as projects of transport infrastructure development and expressed its support for these projects” – Turkey now clearly also wants to reap some benefits from the pipeline to transport Turkmen gas to the Arabian Sea.
Turkey also has its own stakes in the infrastructure of Pipelineistan. For starters, there is the BTC or Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan pipeline transporting Caspian oil to the Mediterranean. In 1992, the Turkish Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel first proposed the construction of such a pipeline connection. In the further course of the 1990’s, the pipeline project was personally supported by U.S. President Bill Clinton. And finally, on 18 November 1999, when the Ankara Declaration was signed by Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, Clinton’s Energy Secretary Bill Richardson called the event “a major foreign policy victory” for the U.S. – a statement indicative of the continuing geopolitical importance of Turkey as a bridge between east and west. In the first instance, the sanctions on Iraq following the first Gulf War (2 August 1990-28 February 1991) meant that the Kirkuk-Yumurtalık pipeline was no longer able to transport Iraqi oil to the Mediterranean, thereby crippling the Turkish economy and depriving the world economy of an important source of oil, given that Ceyhan was (and still is) a world-class facility able to supply large tankers. In addition, the fall of the Soviet Union subsequently also meant that the vast Caspian oil and gas reserves could now be integrated into the West’s energy supplies’ system. On 25 May 2005, the BTC pipeline was inaugurated at the Sangachal Terminal on the Caspian by Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, Georgia’s President Mikhail Saakashvili and Turkey’s President Ahmet Sezer, joined by President Nursaltan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan and United States Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman. The pipeline now daily transports 1 million barrels of Capian oil to the Mediterranean.
Another outlier of Pipelineistan present in Turkey is the Nabucco gas pipeline project, which has been in the works since 2005 and aims to be “the new gas bridge from Asia to Europe and the flagship project in the Southern Corridor”, connecting the EU with the major hydrocarbon sources in the Caspian and the Middle East. The project, aimed at liberating Europe from Russia’s energy stranglehold, has been beset by many problems and financial woes – with the German investor backing out last December. At the beginning of this month, the consortium backing the projected Nabucco pipeline signed a memorandum of co-operation with the Trans-Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP), basically cutting the length of the Nabucco pipeline in two and limiting the cost considerably. Originally, the Nabucco pipeline was supposed to start its route from central Anatolia, but now the pipeline will only start its westward journey through Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria at the Turco-Bulgarian border, relying on TANAP to supply gas from the Caspian and the Middle East. This shortened version has been called Nabucco West and would constitute a major rival for Russia’s South Stream pipeline project. And once again, Turkey’s trans-Atlantic friend is all but supportive as voiced by US State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland last year: “We strongly support Nabucco. We think it’s a very important project. It’s going to bring energy diversification on both sides and market diversification”. In other words, the interpersonal relations between Tayyip Erdoğan and Barrack Obama have not been futile. The U.S. clearly supports Turkey’s new pseudo-Ottoman programme, as a stable Turkey could very well become another foundation for America to build its renewed bridges into the Arab world, following the recent ‘spring weather’ and its ‘unexpected’ consequences. The Obama administration’s support for the west-bound section of Pipelineistan that is Nabucco also seems congruent with the U.S. and Turkey’s joint stance on the Assad regime, Turkey’s erstwhile friendly neighbour.
In fact, the recent civil war in Syria has actually ensured that the Nabucco pipeline project was given another lease of life. The protests against the Assad regime started in March 2011 turning violent the next month, while backdoor negotiations between Tehran, Baghdad and Damascus were underway. These talks led to the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding for the construction of a pipeline designed to deliver Iran’s natural gas to Iraq and Syria in the next three to five years at a cost of about $10 billion. From Syria, this pipeline could possibly also deliver gas to Lebanon and even to Europe in the future, securing a Mediterranean outlet for embattled Iran fighting sanctions and public disapproval. Now, the anti-Assad violence has ensured that this potential rival to Nabucco would not be able to emerge on the energy scene. Originally, Turkey planned to include Iran as a gas supplier to the pipeline, but the geo-political realities of the day and particularly the Obama administration’s continuation of the Bush era sanctions against Tehran, have managed to exclude Iran from the project. As a result, with the projected Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline, Tehran would still have been able to supply the global market. In spite of Iran’s rich oil and gas holdings, the country is effectively excluded from the confines of Pipelineistan.
The leadership in Tehran, however, seems to be persistent in its effort to find alternative ways to find outlets for its hydrocarbon reserves. Now, Iran’s leadership is looking to the east. Recently, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari attended a ceremony at the Iran-Pakistani border, unveiling a plaque and inaugurating the construction of a pipeline ar a cost of some $1.5 billion. A joint statement read at the ceremony stated that “The completion of the pipeline is in the interests of peace, security and progress of the two countries. It will also consolidate the economic, political and security ties of the two nations”. Iranian gas is supposed to start flowing towards Pakistan at the end of next year. The Iranian gas would be most welcome in Pakistan as the country faces a shortfall of 2 billion cubic of natural gas feet per day and is actually going through a serious energy crisis at the moment. Pakistan is without electricity for up to six hours a day— leading to the loss of export revenues, the closure of tens of thousands of factories, and, most importantly, the loss of millions of jobs.
While the world’s leaders and oil corporations are devising more and more schemes to flood the global energy market with oil and gas to be burnt, the world actually appears to be approaching climate catastrophe at an increased pace. In his 2011 book Deep Future, the climatologist Curt Stager maintains that the effects of current climate change will persist for much longer than we can imagine – he paints the best-case scenario as a world that won’t fully recover from the effects of the burning of fossil fuels for tens of thousands of years, and possibly much longer. Still, the long-term has never been a great concern for Turkish, or any other, policy-makers and the decisions taken today, the pipelines built now and tomorrow, and the fossil fuels consumed in the years to come will change the world beyond recognition. Geo-political interests and the ongoing resource rivalries resulting from humanity’s acute addiction to fossil fuels, coupled with profit-hungry corporations eager to benefit from any kind of fossil fuels found anywhere, now seem to condemn humanity to a bleak future for the sake of short-term profits and power.[1]
[1] C. Erimtan, “Pipelineistan and Turkey: The Geo-Political Realities behind Resource Rivalry and the Looming Climate Catastrophe” ‘The Erimtan Angle’, The Istanbul Gazette (15 March 2013). http://istanbulgazette.com/pipelineistan-and-turkey-the-geo-political-realities-behind-resource-rivalry-and-the-looming-climate-catastrophe/2013/03/15/.
Category:
9/11, Afghanistan, Climate Change, Current Affairs, Environment, Obama, Oil and Gas, Peak Oil, Pipelineistan, Political Commentary, Propaganda, Tayyip Erdoğan, Terrorism, Turcica, Turkey, Uncategorized