The Coming, Terrible, War
Keep Oil Out of the Action
Praful Bidwai
India-syndicate.com, 28 September 2001
The US seems less interested in bringing those guilty of the September 11 attacks to book, as in waging war to control the oil rich Caspian Basin of Central Asia, writes Praful Bidwai. Indians must be wary of this rhetoric - greater tension and communalization of the issue of ‘terrorism’ can have disastrous consequences for freedom and democracy.
America is preparing to avenge September 11, but it has still not presented compelling evidence linking Al-Qaeda to Terror Tuesday. Reports in Jane’s and the London Times have named Imad Mughniyeh, not bin Laden, as the culprit.
The US and its allies threaten a large-scale, worldwide "anti-terrorist" operation. But they lack a mandate to attack before securing the terrorists’ extradition and trial. The UN Security Council’s Resolution 1368 only asks states to "work together... to bring to justice the perpetrators, organisers and sponsors" of the latest carnage.
In Western Europe, a Gallup poll finds that most people (67 to 86 percent) prefer extradition-and-trial to military attacks (favoured by 12 to 29 percent). This is right. Civilised societies don’t "hunt down" criminals. They prosecute them in accordance with the law.
But President Bush has a "Dead-or-Alive" cowboy response: you are "either with America, or with the terrorists".
What the world needs most today is an international forum to legally try terrorists, obviating military action. The International Criminal Court is such a forum. Over 150 states have agreed to create it. But it is opposed by the US, China and India.
The coming US retaliation could be disproportionate to the September 11 carnage. It could result in untold human suffering in Afghanistan, big setbacks to the global economy, and sacrifice of freedom for "security".
When powerful states use force, they use it massively. The six weeks-long 1991 Gulf campaign cost $79 billion and 20,000 Iraqi lives. The sanctions imposed since have caused 1.2 million civilian deaths. The Vietnam war caused three million fatalities.
War should be the last resort in resolving disputes. Today, it has become the first step. Excessive force shouldn’t be used because it serves to fight "evil". That’s the logic of terrorists who kill to fight their "evil". Once "might is right" wins, society gets trapped into a cycle of terror, counter-terror, and yet greater terror....
The US-led coalition’s agenda is all-encompassing and vague. Many strange and selfish objectives could get added to it-e.g. destruction of any regime Washington loathes.
A major but self-serving US objective will be to control the huge oil and gas resources of Central Asia. Afghanistan and its neighbours hold the key to these. Since 1989, Afghanistan has witnessed what’s called the New Great Game.
The original Great Game was played between Czarist Russia and Imperial Britain in the 19th century. This was about Central Asian territory. The New Game is about oil and gas.
The Caspian Basin, to which Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, etc. belong, is the world’s second greatest oil and gas reservoir. Its oil reserves are next only to the Persian Gulf’s.
The richest parts of the Basin like Turkmenistan have been looking for outlets. The most attractive outlet would be a pipeline passing through Afghanistan to Pakistan-and India.
Politically, the New Great Game spells intense competition between Western oil companies using bribery and influence. They include giants like Shell, Exxon, Enron and Unocal.
The closest contestants have been an Argentinian company, Bridas, and Unocal, one of America’s dozen oil majors. Bridas was first to offer to build a pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan. It was outmanouevred by Unocal which used its connections with the US state department and Pakistan’s ISI.
Journalist Ahmed Rashid in his Taliban: Islam, Oil and the New Great Game in Central Asia, has documented how the US came close to recognising the Taliban; how serving US officers, including assistant secretary of state Robin Raphel, helped Unocal; how the oil majors drafted a galaxy of Americans, including Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, former US ambassador Robert Oakley, and Richard Armitage, currently deputy secretary of state.
Unocal pushed out its rival. The deal was: Washington would recognise the Taliban, which would favour Unocal over Bridas. (The deal fell through-because of instability.)
However, US interest in Central Asia’s oil is abiding. It is related to defending "American lifestyles", based on energy over-consumption. The coming war, then, will probably reproduce Iraq-1991 on a larger scale. That too was about controlling oil.
The double standards here are sickening. They are being masked with keywords like "crusade" and "clash of civilisations". At work globally, however, is not some conflict between "Christian" modernity and "obscurantist" Islam, but struggles within the same culture between secular-liberals and conservatives.
There is not one "Islamic" and one "Christian" but many varieties of each civilisation. "Clash of civilisations" tells us nothing about the real forces shaping the world, including economic competition, globalisation, clashing identities, or tensions between democracy and authoritarianism, between capitalism and human needs.
We in India must guard against four specific dangers. First, the way "anti-terrorism" is orchestrated, it can only further vilify Muslims. Communalists are equating jehad (struggle) with terrorism. This must be firmly resisted.
A second danger is sharpened India-Pakistan rivalry. Parochial rulers of both are pushing narrow, self-serving, agendas about "cross-border terrorism" and Kashmir. Both India and Pakistan are vying to become America’s ‘frontline’ partners and telling each other to "lay off". Two months after Agra, they are again war-mongering.
A third danger is that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons will fall into the hands of fanatics-in an anti-Musharraf mutiny, or in anticipation of US intervention to cap Pakistan’s (and India’s) nuclear capability.
This underscores the colossal folly of South Asia’s nuclearisation. All those "experts" who told us that nuclear weapons would induce "responsible" conduct in South Asia have proved disgracefully wrong.
Finally, the present war climate will spur militarisation of society and life. There are strong pressures for draconian anti-"terrorist" laws. Mr Advani, a Sardar Patel parody, is already talking of a special Central category of crimes like terrorism. He has wrongly equated SIMI with bin Laden by banning it.
Calls for "order", discipline, and "unity" against the "terrorist challenge" must be resisted. There must be no more vengeance, no more victims.
Copyright 2001 Content Providers International
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