"Wide Angle: Who is winning in the ongoing struggle for Central Asian
oil and gas?"

This remarkable documentary was broadcast on Radio Netherlands on
November 12. The writers draw a close relationship between Islamic
terrorism (Wahabism), the US "war on terrorism" and the interests of the
multinational oil companies. A few quotations:

"Wherever you go in the world, if you draw a map of oil pipelines, oil
routes and you overlay onto that the centres of Wahabi activity, the two
things match perfectly."

"[The Caspian region] provides new oil that is not controlled by OPEC
and it's not controlled by Russia either."

"[T]he Americans, in the early 1990s, [supported] a young rebel movement
that was fighting to bring stability to war-torn Afghanistan.
If these rebels, called the Taliban, could end the Afghan civil war,
then the Americans could finally build a pipeline that neither Russia
nor Iran would control."

"...in '93 '94, members of the Taliban were already in Houston signing
an oil deal with Unical to build a pipeline from Turkmenistan through
Afghanistan and down into Pakistan.

"governments have lost control of the process that feeds extremism and
terrorism...its not governments, but multinational corporations that are
calling the shots in global politics."

"Geopolitics has moved ahead a bit and you can't really look at it in
terms of nation states anymore. You have to look at it more in terms of
corporate entities.

"Muslims around the world are being encouraged to think on a petty
national basis and the global corporations get more and more global.

"...fundamentalist terrorism fits in hand and glove with the needs of
the global capitalist entities and the corporations...

"Western oil companies have been paying groups of extremists to carry
out attacks in oil rich regions around the world. The extremists ... are
Muslim fundamentalists who draw their inspiration from the Wahabi sect
in Saudi Arabia."

"...there is an alarmingly close relationship between Wahabism and
corporate western economic policy."

_____________________________________


"Wide Angle"

Who is winning in the ongoing struggle for
Central Asian oil and gas?

RADIO NETHERLANDS - Newsline

Ever since the fall of the Soviet Union, western oil companies and
governments have acknowledged their desire to exploit the oil and gas
reserves of the Caspian Sea.

The Central Asian states, surrounded by potentially hostile countries
such as Iran and Russia, have desperately tried to have pipelines built
that could rescue them from the isolation and poverty of the post-Soviet
era.

Coby van de Linde is an oil markets analyst and she explains why the
Caspian region has attracted the interest of oil companies and
governments abroad.

"It provides new oil that is not controlled by OPEC and it's not
controlled by Russia either, it's in between. The oil is relatively
close to the European market - if they can work out the pipelines - and
it's potentially interesting for Asia, because every large consumer
region or nation is looking for alternatives. Everyone is becoming
increasingly more dependent on imports from the Middle East, because
that's where all the huge reserves and the production capacity are and
to have some alternatives of course would of course also affect power in
the market."

According to Coby van de Linde, the United States has been aiming to
acquire power in the market by building a pipeline from the Caspian
region. But in the attempt to secure an alternative oil source outside
the Middle East, the US has run up against reality. All other Caspian
energy sources are controlled by political adversaries - or they're
inaccessible because of wars and political instability.

"In the case of Russia, for instance, what has to some extent been
America's interest is to make sure that not every oil and gas production
that leaves the area goes through Russia's pipeline system, because
that, in the eyes of the US, would give the Russians too much control
over those deposits and production sites at the expense of private
international oil companies. It gives Russia quite a bit of economic,
but also political power. Because if you disagree about something, you
can just turn the tap somewhere."

In the attempt to secure a flow of oil that runs to the south, to avoid
Russia's sphere of influence, the US has run into another problem. Iran.
Always a formidable player in the region, Iran is the only country
that's managed - in the past ten years - to build a new pipeline from
Central Asia to the outside world.

Salih Brandt heads the office for Strategic and Political Research in
London. He believes the United States is desperate to catch up with Iran
in the race for Caspian oil. Mr Brandt says Washington, having failed by
other means, is now trying to make headway by waging war in Afghanistan.

"Over the past 6,7 years since the major developments of the Caspian oil
business, particularly in the last three years, the Iranians, strange
enough have outmanoeuvred the Americans and the British by building a
pipeline from the Caspian Sea down to the Arabian Gulf. One must also
remember that there's no doubt that when a global power was attacked in
the way that it was on September 11, they are under an obligation to
respond. There's also a point where the attacks become an excuse for the
Americans to achieve certain aims that they've wanted to progress over
the last four or five years and they haven't been able to and that
really is the domination of the oil industry in Central Asia, which they
haven't been able to get a handle on up to now."

The frustration of the Americans in the struggle for Caspian oil, has
been well documented in the book "Taliban" by Pakistani journalist
Achmed Rashid. Mr Rashid argues that the US was hindered by its own
embargo of Iran, and was forced to look for other ways of moving oil
from the Caspian to the south. This, he says, is what led the Americans,
in the early 1990s, to support a young rebel movement that was fighting
to bring stability to war-torn Afghanistan.

If these rebels, called the Taliban, could end the Afghan civil war,
then the Americans could finally build a pipeline that neither Russia
nor Iran would control. Political scientist Salih Brandt says it went
like this.

"In 1994, when the Taliban first appeared on the scene, that was done by
the Americans in conjunction with the Pakistanis and the Saudis. The
Americans provided the overall strategic thinking, the Saudis paid for
it and the Pakistanis provided the on-the ground-logistics for it. At
the same time as this was happening in '93 '94, members of the Taliban
were already in Houston signing an oil deal with Unical to build a
pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and down into Pakistan.
So the original motive for the establishment of the Taliban was to send
in a force which would take over Afghanistan and establish a sort of
hegemonous control over the country which at that point was in a state
of total anarchy and civil war. In the early stages of this operation,
American diplomats were quite open about the oil pipeline business and
they were even open about saying, you know, there will be some
collateral in the fact that these are not a very pleasant bunch of
people, they don't treat women very well and they will behead a lot of
people and cut off hands and be fairly unpleasant but that's something
we can deal with and they're people we can deal with.

According to this view, the Taliban were seen as an acceptable partner
by the US government and by Western oil companies... even if they had
reservations about the Taliban's restrictive treatment of women.

Until September the 11th, Washington seldom went out of its way to
criticize the Taliban's social policies. But these days, the message
comes straight from the President.

CLIP BUSH "Children are forbidden to fly kites or sing songs or build
snowmen. A girl of seven is beaten for wearing white shoes. Our enemies
have brought only misery and terror to the people Afghanistan and now
they are trying to export that terror throughout the world."

The Americans would clearly like to distance themselves from the Taliban
in a moral sense... and the close business ties the Americans had with
the Taliban until quite recently, are something Washington would
probably rather not be reminded of.

But oil analyst Coby van de Linde is reluctant to condemn western
dealings with the Taliban.

"When they were negotiating with the Taliban, I think it was fairly
unclear in what type of regime they would develop later on. I think at
that time they were seen as a group who would finally stop the fighting
amongst all these groups. And to make the connections how cynical it is
that America might have contemplated supporting a pipeline from an
American oil company through that route and now of course there is the
conflict in Afghanistan, I think that would be cutting the line of
argument a little bit short. But yes of course what we see time and
again through history is that in order to get important reserves like
international oil and gas out and to produce them, that sometimes one
deals with governments that maybe with hindsight you don't want to
support."

All the players in the race to secure Caspian oil reserves have to
overlook issues of morality and ideology. But since the terrorist
attacks of September the 11th, it looks like the United States will have
to shift its allegiances. Coby van de Linde.

"The Americans will also realise it's going to be very hard unless they
have all sorts of troops in the Central Asian region that they cannot
control from that large distance. And therefore the efforts that were
made before by Russia, China in order to get on top of these regional
problems, that actually they are going to need Russia to control the
region somewhat, to police the region if you want."

And this partnership is equally vital to Russia in the long term. Russia
needs access to the Black Sea which is controlled by Turkey, one of
America's closest allies. And according to oil expert Coby van de Linde,
it also needs America's help to keep Central Asia under control.

"I think in the old days we called it the soft underbelly. Now see that
the soft underbelly of the old Soviet Union now actually includes those
newly independent states. And I think the problems as they were
addressed then are still valid. I mean, there are minorities, there is a
lot of internal dispute in these countries. It's absolutely not clear
that the road that they've decided to go on is the road they're going to
go on. I do not even rule out that Americans and Russians will have a
joint interest there to maintain peace and quiet in the region. If you
relate it back to the oil and gas situation, maybe at some point they
can come to some sort of arrangement where Russia will get some of the
pipelines and control some of the flows from the Caspian Sea, but that
maybe American companies get a little more leeway to produce in Russia
itself."

A stronger American-Russian partnership might well enable those two
countries to capitalize on the vast energy resources of the Caspian
basin.

But there's also a downside to the new partnership, especially when it
comes to the war on terrorism... No one knows where it will lead. Coby
van de Linde again.

"I think what is frightening is that in trying to fight terrorism, if we
really look where all the roots of what's going on and which countries
might or might not be implicated, I think the struggle against terrorism
in itself is so vague or opaque in terms of who you will come across on
this road. I call that frightening because I think you cannot control
this process."

Ms van de Linde says she fears what might happen as the war on terrorism
continues.

But according to Salih Brandt, something deeply frightening is already
going on. He says governments have lost control of the process that
feeds extremism and terrorism.

Mr Brandt believes that its not governments, but multinational
corporations that are calling the shots in global politics.

"Geopolitics has moved ahead a bit and you can't really look at it in
terms of nation states anymore. You have to look at it more in terms of
corporate entities. So you have to see in terms of the mineral resources
of the oil companies, the mineral companies and the mining operations -
and of course the financial institutions which recognise and are limited
by no known national borders. Now what's interesting is that the Muslims
around the world are being encouraged to think on a petty national basis
and the global corporations get more and more global. Now strife and
dissent and chaos and anarchy on a local level is extremely useful for
the global corporations because it enables them to move in wherever they
want. And we've seen this in East Timor, we're seeing it now in Aceh,
we've seen it in Chechnya, we've seen it in Bosnia, Kosovo. And
fundamentalist terrorism serves that purpose absolutely. I mean you
could say in a sense that fundamentalist terrorism fits in hand and
glove with the needs of the global capitalist entities and the
corporations. I'm not saying therefore that the corporations administer
the terrorism but it certainly plays into their hands to an enormous
extent and there is a wide body of literature out there now from
tremendous French and Swiss academics demonstrating that there is in
fact a much closer link between these people and the American business
world than people at first thought. Four of the people arrested in the
United States in connection with the whole thing of the September
11th... or arrested on the back of that... were people with whom George
W Bush's oil company had had previous oil dealings."

And Salih Brandt goes much further in his allegations.

He claims that Western oil companies have been paying groups of
extremists to carry out attacks in oil rich regions around the world.

The extremists, he says, are Muslim fundamentalists who draw their
inspiration from the Wahabi sect in Saudi Arabia.

"There's this dispute going on in Aceh. There you have a Wahabi
fundamentalist operation going on against the Indonesian government in
order to separate Aceh from the rest of Indonesia. There is also oil
there. There are also two large oil companies there. And then we
discover that this fundamentalist Muslim movement in Aceh wanting its
independence has been funded over the last 18 months to the tune of
30-million dollars by American non-governmental organisations. The
people that we hear of now as being called the "Afghans", the veterans
of the Afghan war against the Soviets, who then returned after the war
to places like Algeria to fight against the military government in
Algeria... They fought that by killing the innocent Muslim population.
If they had wanted to bring the Algerian government to a standstill they
could have blown up the pipeline. They didn't. They never touched the
pipeline. And when I speak to a lot of journalists who are experienced
in Algeria, they all say "Yes, this is the great unanswered question.
Why did they not attack the most strategically effective target that
they could have done?" So there is an alarmingly close relationship
between Wahabism and corporate western economic policy. If we go back to
the 19th century when the Wahabis first appeared in Saudi Arabia,
British intelligence very quickly latched on to them, promoted them,
used them as part of the process of overthrowing the caliph in Istanbul,
by creating what the Mulisms call fitnah which is splits and divisions
within the Muslim societies. That was very effective then. They then did
all the oil deals with them because they put them into power in Saudi
Arabia. That was all done very quickly at the turn of the century. And
wherever Wahabis appear now in the Muslim world they create this same
strife and conflict within the Muslim society. Wherever you go in the
world, if you draw a map of oil pipelines, oil routes and you overlay
onto that the centres of Wahabi activity, the two things match
perfectly. And this is a relationship which needs to be looked at much
more closely than people are at the moment doing."

A frightening view... by political scientist Salih Brandt - ending this
edition of Wide Angle. This has been a Radio Netherlands presentation.