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 PART
12a
Pipelineistan revisited
Part 1: The last frontier: China's far
west
Part 2: The king of the steppes
Part 3: In pursuit of the snow leopard
Part 4: Touching base
Part
5: A new learning experience
Part 6: Peaceful jihad
Part
7: The American
client
Part 8: The Sufi way
Part 9: The Samarkand circle
Part 10: Turkmenbashi, it's a gas,
gas, gas
Part 11:
Russia's 'liberal empire'
BAKU, Azerbaijan - Tzaev Ilman, a
friendly Shi'ite Azeri fond of Platin vodka and always
caressing his proud possession - a Samsung mobile - may
not know how important a player he is in the New Great
Game. As a crew member of the "Azerbaijan" ferry, owned
by the Caspian Shipping Co, this Caucasian, melancholic
version of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's ancient mariner
plies the waters of the Caspian - a 400,000 square
kilometer expanse of water and a privileged source of
oil and caviar, unrivalled wealth and explosive conflict
- between Baku, Turkmenbashi in Turkmenistan and Aktau
in Kazakhstan.
Last week though, even the
ferries were silent in Baku's harbor. Heydar Aliyev, 80,
Azerbaijan's "father" and president, had died in an
American clinic of heart failure only a few hours before
captive  Saddam Hussein's images
were transfixing the world.
Aliyev had ruled
Azerbaijan since 1969 - as a general heading the local
branch of the Soviet KGB, then as Communist Party
secretary, and finally as president. Like Saddam and
other Central Asian dictators, such as Turkmenistan's
Saparmurat Niyazov, his image and his slogans were and
still are splashed all over the country.
In a
flash, more than a million mourners were crying for
Aliyev in the streets of Baku. This was unseen since the
death of Josef Stalin - Saddam's icon - 50 years ago.
The mourners, from all corners of the Caucasian
republic, streamed down avenues strewn with carnations
towards the Palace of the Republic, where his body lay
in state. His son, Ilham, 41, former playboy, casino
owner and vice president of the state oil company SOCAR,
is now president. In the first dynastic succession in
the post-Soviet sphere, he inherited power last October
in a rigged election.
The Paris of the
Caspian
Tzaev does not see much during his
ferry's pit stops. In Aktau, he hardly has any time to
mingle with the local Russians, Kazakhs and Caucasians.
Aktau, cornered between the Caspian and the desert, with
its water coming from a nuclear-powered desalinization
plant, has "attractions" like a huge Vladimir Lenin
statue, a real MiG stuck on a pedestal, literally in the
middle of nowhere.
Even the monster Tengiz
oilfield - operated by the joint venture Tenghizchevroil
- is 200 kilometers northeast. Aktau is not even
Kazakhstan's oil city: this is Atyrau, in the Urals, 350
kilometers north of Tengiz: although Atyrau is not on
the Caspian, the Caspian is coming to Atyrau, and the
city may be under water by 2050. As for Aktau, it is
certain to become a boom town when Caspian offshore oil
exploration begins in earnest.
Tzaev is envious
of Caspian waters in Turkmenbashi: they are a clear
blue, compared to polluted Baku. For US$100 one can buy
a kilogram of the finest beluga caviar, which would cost
$260 in Baku. Very few Turkmen live in the port city:
most people are Russian and Azeri. This was a key
crossroads when Tzarist Russia built the Trans-Caspian
railway. Then it was decadence, but now Turkmenbashi is
the only port and sea link with Russia and - via the
Volga and the Sea of Azov - the Black Sea and the
Mediterranean. And this is where Turkmenistan's oil and
gas reserves are.
Tzaev lives in a gritty Baku
suburb, Surakhani, where families exchange their gloomy
Soviet apartment blocks for extended promenades side by
side with oil derricks. This Baku, smelling of oil,
sulfur and sturgeon, is not the art deco Baku of old,
smelling of saphron, enveloped by olive trees and vines,
and greener than London. Now, destitute but dignified
old ladies are forced to beg in the streets. Like most
Azeris, Tzaev is very close to Anatolian Turks by
language, physical traits and way of life. But in
religion he is more like an Iranian, as he is Shi'ite.
Yet ethnicity in Azerbaijan is more important than
religion: the key references are Ankara and Istanbul in
Turkey, from where they adopted the adapted the Latin
alphabet, watch the movies - porno included - and follow
politics closely.
A key question for the
immediate future is the possibility of moderate Islam -
now in power in Turkey - also seducing Azerbaijan.
Azeris are fervent Muslims, even if the social facade is
Soviet and somewhat Westernized, and there are fewer
veiled women in Baku than in a Paris suburb. In hotel
rooms, arrows pointing to Mecca coexist with condoms.
Azerbaijan is already a member of the Council of Europe
- and dreams of becoming, sooner or later, a full member
of the European Union.
The Azeri military also
collaborates with the Americans in Iraq. There was not a
single peep from Washington on the new Azeri "republican
dynasty" - a-la North Korea and Syria. Pentagon chief
Donald Rumsfeld, in a recent visit to Baku, was mum.
Azeris themselves also don't seem to mind. Their major
wounds remain the Soviet past, the demented excesses of
Stalinism and the fact that Karabakh Armenians joined
Armenia and forced hundreds of thousands of Azeri
refugees to come to Baku - in a sort of Caucasian replay
of India and Pakistan during partition in 1947.
Baku's fond memories are from the golden age
when it was "the Kuwait of the Tzarist empire" and "the
Paris of the Caspian". The city now would like nothing
more than to celebrate the return of the French branch
of the Rothschild family - which once had a crucial
financial role in the city. This is a city with a
certified chic CV.
A crucial cast of
characters
Baku's funereal mood lasted for a
full week, during which state TV, adding a new
totalitarian post-Soviet twist to Chinese torture - or
information control - took over all terrestrial
channels, including Turkish and Russian, broadcasting
for a whole week only throngs of people mourning Alyev.
Many Azeris weren't even aware that Saddam had been
arrested.
Among the mourners at the funeral was
a crucial cast of characters: Russian President Vladimir
Putin, Georgia's former leader Eduard Shevardnadze,
Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, George W Bush's
special envoy - oil man Brent Scowcroft. Putin said in
so many words that he "loved" Aliyev. Recep Erdogan,
prime minister of Turkey, with which Azerbaijan is
extremely close, said: "The Turkic world has lost an
outstanding individual." Shevardnadze was unconsolable:
Alyev had been his personal friend for more than three
decades. Every project involving oil and power between
the two countries was dependent on their friendship.
In May, during a solemn pipe-laying ceremony for
the start of the Georgian stretch of the
Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan pipeline (BTC), Georgia  oil executive Georgy
Chantiurua said: "This was the start of the integration
of Georgia into the NATO zone ... this pipeline will
become an artery feeding energy to the US and European
countries." The US$3.6 billion oilfield and pipeline
development project involves a 1,767 kilometer pipeline,
the world's longest, snaking from Baku through Georgia
to a new terminal at Ceyhan on the Mediterranean coast
of Turkey.
The elder Aliyev said that the
relationship between Georgia and Azerbaijan was a model,
and he hoped that "in 2005 the presidents of the two
countries will take part in the ceremony to load the
first tanker from Ceyhan with Caspian oil". Little did
he know that he and his great friend Shevardnadze would
miss it: one of them is now dead and the other has been
toppled. And no one at the moment is even betting that
the main actors at the 2005 ceremony will be the younger
Alyev and "Misha" Saakashvili, now at the interim helm
in Georgia.
BTC and the regional context
The New Silk Road - as far as Washington is
concerned - could be summarized by one acronym: BTC. The
pipeline will be a massive snake: 443 kilometers in
Azerbaijan, 248 kilometers in Georgia and 1,076
kilometers in Turkey. Its projected capacity is 50
million tons per annum. The plan is to start exporting
Azerbaijani oil from the Turkish port of Ceyhan to
Western markets by the second quarter of 2005. BTC has
become a true American obsession. According to the
official version in Baku of the consortium building the
pipeline, led by British oil giant BP, 25 percent of the
construction is already finished. The Azerbaijani
stretch should be finished by September 2004, the
Georgian by October and the Turkish by December.
But this is Pipelineistan politics at its
messiest. Nobody knows how stable the new
post-Shevardnadze Georgian government - following
January 4 elections - will be. Nobody knows how
politically competent Ilham Aliyev is, although a Baku
insider says that as long as oil wealth keeps flowing
in, the elite from different clans may continue to
support him.
David Woodward, BP's top employee
in Baku, essentially says that both Georgia and
Azerbaijan remain on board the project. Saakashvili says
that BTC is "a matter of survival". Official lenders
like the European Bank for Reconstruction and
Development say that all's well with the pipeline,
despite uncertainty in Georgia.
But the fact is
the geopolitical armwrestling between Russians and
Americans for control of these crucial Eurasian lands is
nothing less than titanic. Rumsfeld visited Baku on
December 3, met Ilham Aliyev and proposed the deployment
of mobile US military forces. This was the swift
response in the incendiary words of Nikolay Ryabov,
Russia's ambassador to Azerbaijan: "There has not been
and there will not be any kind of American presence in
the Caspian. We will not allow it, they have nothing to
guard here." Crucially, Colonel-General Safar Abiyev,
the Azeri minister of defense, admitted that he and
Rumsfeld had discussed the security of BTC.
Russian Defense Minister Igor Ivanov was also
alarmed. But Vafa Guluzade, head of the pro-American
Caspian Political Studies Foundation, is sure that "the
issue of the location of NATO bases in Azerbaijan has
already been agreed upon between the Azerbaijani and the
US governments". Guluzade says that Russia may not be
happy - a splendid euphemism - with NATO knocking on its
doors, but it doesn't have the power to prevent it.
Guluzade has been in favor of NATO in Azerbaijan since
the late 1990s, when he was a foreign affairs advisor to
the elder Aliyev. Before the rigged Azeri presidential
election last October, Aliyev junior went to Russia and
stressed the "strategic character" of the bilateral
relationship. He will be back to Moscow in mid-February,
when he will certainly be forcefully reminded of his
words by Putin.
American moves in the Caspian
are directed against both Russia and Iran. So Iran also
had to react against the militarization of the Caspian.
The commander of the Iranian navy, Abbas Mohtaj, called
all five Caspian countries "to unite efforts to prevent
foreign military interference in the Caspian".
The Georgia factor
Relations between
Georgia and Russia have been extremely tense for years.
Tbilisi accuses Moscow of supporting the separatist
Abkhazia and South Ossetia provinces, and of ordering
assassination attempts against Shevardnadze in 1996 and
1998. Georgians are overwhelmingly against a Russian
presence in the tiny republic. Moscow for its part is
fiercely against BTC, and also accuses Tbilisi of
supporting Chechen guerrillas. In 2001, Moscow even
slapped visas on Georgian visitors.
Russia's man
in Georgia is definitely Aslan Abashidze, the flamboyant
governor of the Black Sea province of Ajaria. He
regarded Shevardnadze's ouster as "a coup". Ajaria, the
biggest Georgian seaport, is also the site of Russia's
largest military base in the country. Abashidze strongly
denies he wants to secede from Georgia, like Abkhazia
and South Ossetia. Georgian journalist Khatuna
Kviralashvili says that Abashidze will secede only if he
is sure to have support from the local people and from
Russia: "But it's very unlikely that Ajaria's people
will support his secessionist sentiments."
Georgia and Azerbaijan are joined by their
security fears. Avtandil Iioseliani, head of Georgian
intelligence - echoing Azerbaijan's security minister
Namig Abasov - says there's credible information of
possible sabotage against BTC by "some Arab countries".
Geydar Jemal, chairman of the Russian Islamic Committee,
says that there will be no holds barred: Russia may slap
visas on Azeris as retaliation - like it did with
Georgians in 2001 - if Azerbaijan welcomes NATO mobile
military bases. This will be an enormous problem: at
least 2 million Azeris live in Russia and send money
every month to their families, a vital source of Baku's
foreign exchange. According to Jemal: "It's obvious the
US are interested in Azerbaijani territory for
strengthening military pressure on Iran. But this would
not serve the real interests of Azerbaijan."
The Chechen factor
Freelance Russian
journalist Andrei Smirnov managed to meet and get a
stunning interview from Amir Ramzan, the commander of
one of the Chechen groups operating against the Russian
military in the Northern Caucasus. Ramzan says that "not
only do we carry out raids to various areas in the
Caucasus, but we also form local jama'ats
[groups], militant sabotage groups, locally. We are
joined by a lot of Kabardinians, Dagestanis,
Karachaevans, Ingushetians and even Ossetians."
In the interview, Ramzan issues a chilling
warning: in 2004 "the war will seize the entire Caucasus
from the Caspian Sea to the Black Sea. Apart from
Ossetia and Ingushetia, this year another guerrilla war
has already started in two areas of Dagestan bordering
Chechnya. I swear by Allah, this is only the beginning."
Significantly, Ramzan suspects that "Western
governments and their security services also secretly
finance us through different Islamic funds and
organizations. I am convinced that there are Western
powers in whose interests it is to keep Russia
permanently involved in such a slow-burning conflict as
the war in the Caucasus."
Chechen President
Akhmad Kadirov, in a recent press conference in Grozny,
said that Russia's anti-terrorism operations in Chechnya
will be over after the "elimination" of master guerrilla
commander Shamil Basayev, accused by the president of
being supported by foreigners and hiring foreign
mercenaries. The majority of Chechens consider Kadirov a
Russian puppet.
The big picture
There
is little doubt that al-Qaeda was incubated by the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the 1980s in
Pakistan. Peter Schweizer, in Victory - The Reagan
Administration's Secret Strategy that Hastened the
Collapse of the Soviet Union (Atlantic Monthly
Press), describes how "twenty thousand mujahideen were
being pumped out every year by these schools dubbed 'CIA
U' by some wags". A few hundred of these Arab-Afghans
may now have joined the Iraqi resistance.
And
there is also little doubt that September 11 provided
the ultimate excuse for the US to install its military
bases in Central Asia and the Trans-Caucasus - a former
Soviet sphere. So the "war on terror" is not about a
clash of civilizations between Islam and the West, and
not even solely about "terrorism". The name of the game
is basically Pipelineistan: monster oil corporate
profits to be made by controlling Central Asia-Caspian
Sea oil and gas, bypassing both Russia and Iran, and
exerting extra pressure on China. As countless watchdogs
have stressed, this is a ruthless "do or die" corporate
war. As From the Wilderness puts it, it will be carried
out "at any cost, no matter the suffering it may bring
to human beings or the devastation it unleashes upon the
environment. Such are the characteristics of today's
imperialism, the source of war and terrorism."
"Grand chessboard" theoretician Zbigniew
Brzezinski, former US national security advisor, defines
Persian Gulf/Central Asia as the "global zone of
percolating violence": it will become "a major
battlefield, both for wars among nation-states and, more
likely, for protracted ethnic and religious violence".
Pentagon officials talk of an "arc of instability"
running from the Andes in South America through North
Africa, the Middle East and into Southeast Asia.
American military intervention is making sure this is a
self-fulfilling prophecy.
The US energy strategy
is being guided by the Baker report - commissioned by
Vice President Dick Cheney in 2001. The report stresses
"the concentration of resources in the Middle East Gulf
region and the vulnerability of the global economy to
domestic conditions in the key producer countries". So
the big picture as far as Washington is concerned is to
mould these "domestic conditions" by carrots and by the
biggest sticks to be found anywhere. As Larry Everest
analyzes it in his book Oil, Power and Empire
(Common Courage Press), the Baker report says, for
instance, that "more than 90 percent of the world's
proven oil reserves are owned by countries, national oil
companies and the Russian oil companies" - a substantial
majority closed to foreign direct investment. So it
comes as no surprise that the road map for what will
happen in the next few years is Cheney's May 2001 energy
report: the strategy is to to gain access, leverage and
control of oil and gas from Colombia and Venezuela in
South America to Iraq in the Middle East and the
Caspian. Thus the American demonization of Hugo Chavez
in Venezuela, the fight against FARC in Colombia, the
war against Iraq, the push for BTC in the Caspian, the
courtship of Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov, etc.
Europe's thirst for oil until 2015 is expected
to grow by only 1 million barrels a day. But Asia's is
expected to grow by at least 10 million barrels a day.
So the logic of the game dictates Pipelineistan should
preferentially go East. The problem is this new golden
oil road requires the longest pipelines in the world.
The Hindu Kush and the Tian Shan mountains, for example,
have to be bypassed. The shorter southern route has to
go via either Iran or Afghanistan and Pakistan. Iran is
anathema in Washington. So as Azerbaijan, Georgia and
Turkey became the chosen ones for Pipelineistan going
west, Afghanistan and Pakistan are the chosen ones for
Pipelineistan going east.
TOMORROW:
Pipelineistan revisited, Part 12b
(Copyright
2003 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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