THE
ROVING EYE Pakistan 'punished' in
Pipelineistan By Pepe Escobar
Before the end of 2011, Pakistan will
start working on its stretch of the IP
(Iran-Pakistan) gas pipeline - according to Asim
Hussain, Pakistan's federal minister for petroleum
and natural resources. The 1,092 kilometers of
pipeline on the Iranian side are already in place.
IP, also known as "the peace pipeline",
was originally IPI (Iran-Pakistan-India). Although
it badly needs gas for its economic expansion,
faced with immense pressure by the George W Bush -
and then Barack Obama - administrations, India
still has not committed to the project, even after
a nearly miraculous agreement for its construction
was initialed in 2008.
More than 740
million cubic feet of gas per year will start flowing
to Pakistan from Iran's giant
South Pars field in the Persian Gulf by 2014. This
is an immense development in the Pipelineistan
"wars" in Eurasia. IP is a major node in the
much-vaunted Asian Energy Security Grid - the
progressive energy integration of Southwest,
South, Central and East Asia that is the ultimate
mantra for Eurasian players as diverse as Iran,
China, India and the Central Asian "stans".
Pakistan is an energy-poor, desperate
customer of the grid. Becoming an energy transit
country is Pakistan's once-in-a-lifetime chance to
transition from a near-failed state into an
"energy corridor" to Asia and, why not, global
markets.
And as pipelines function as an
umbilical cord, the heart of the matter is that
IP, and maybe IPI in the future, will do more than
any form of US "aid" (or outright interference) to
stabilize the Pakistan half of Obama's AfPak
theater of operations, and even possibly relieve
it of its India obsession.
Another
'axis of evil'? This Pipelineistan
development may go a long way to explain why the
White House announced this past Sunday it was
postponing US$800 million in military aid to
Islamabad - more than a third of the annual such
largess Pakistan receives from the US.
The
burgeoning Pakistan-bashing industry in Washington
may spin this as punishment related to the
never-ending saga of Osama bin Laden being
sheltered so close to Rawalpindi/Islamabad. But
the measure may smack of desperation - and on top
it do absolutely nothing to convince the Pakistani
army to follow Washington's agenda uncritically.
On Monday, the US State Department
stressed once again that Washington expected
Islamabad to do more in counter-terrorism and
counter-insurgency - otherwise it would not get
its "aid" back. The usual diplomatic doublespeak
of "constructive, collaborative, mutually
beneficial relationship" remains on show - but
that cannot mask the growing mistrust on both
sides. The Pakistani military confirmed on the
record it had not been warned of the "suspension".
No less than $300 million of this blocked
$800 million is for "American trainers" - that is,
the Pentagon's counter-insurgency brigade.
Moreover, Islamabad had already asked Washington
not to send these people anymore; the fact is
their methods are useless to fight the Pakistani
Taliban and al-Qaeda-linked jihadis based in the
tribal areas. Not to mention the preferred US
method is the killer drone anyway.
The
wall of mistrust is bound to reach
Himalaya/Karakoram/Pamir proportions. Washington
only sees Pakistan in "war on terror",
counter-terrorism terms. Since the coupling of the
AfPak combo by the Obama administration, clearly
Washington's top war is in Pakistan - not in
Afghanistan, which harbors just a handful of
al-Qaeda jihadis.
Most "high-value
al-Qaeda targets" are in the tribal areas in
Pakistan - and they are, in a curious parallel to
the Americans, essentially trainers. As for
Afghanistan, it is most of all a neo-colonial
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) war
against a Pashtun-majority "national liberation"
movement - as Taliban leader Mullah Omar himself
defined it.
Asia Times Online's Saleem
Shahzad - murdered in May - argued in his book
Inside al-Qaeda and the Taliban (full
review coming later this week) that al-Qaeda's
master coup over the past few years was to fully
relocate to the tribal areas, strengthen the
Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (Pakistani Taliban), and
in a nutshell coordinate a massive Pashtun
guerrilla war against the Pakistani army and the
Americans - as a diversionist tactic. Al-Qaeda's
agenda - to export its caliphate-bound ideology to
other parts of South and Central Asia - has
nothing to do with the Mullah Omar-led Afghan
Taliban, who fight to go back to power in
Afghanistan.
Washington for its part wants
a "stable" Afghanistan led by a convenient puppet,
Hamid Karzai-style - so the holy grail (since the
mid-1990s) can be achieved; the construction of
IP's rival, the TAPI
(Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) gas
pipeline, bypassing "evil" Iran.
And as
far as Pakistan is concerned, Washington wants it
to smash the Pashtun guerrillas inside their
territory; otherwise the tribal areas will keep
being droned to death - literally, with no regard
whatsoever to territorial integrity.
No
wonder the wall of mistrust will keep rising,
because Islamabad's agenda is not bound to change
anytime soon. Pakistan's Afghan policy implies
Afghanistan as a vassal state - with a very weak
military (what the US calls the Afghan National
Force) and especially always unstable, and thus
incapable of attacking the real heart of the
matter: the Pashtunistan issue.
For
Islamabad, Pashtun nationalism is an existential
threat. So the Pakistani army may fight the
Tehrik-e-Taliban-style Pashtun guerrillas, but
with extreme care; otherwise Pashtuns on both side
of the border may unite en masse and make a push
to destabilize Islamabad for good.
On the
other had, what Islamabad wants for Afghanistan is
the Taliban back in power - just like the good old
days of 1996-2001. That's the opposite of what
Washington wants; a long-range occupation,
preferably via NATO, so the alliance may protect
the TAPI pipeline, if it ever gets built.
Moreover, for Washington "losing" Afghanistan and
its key network of military bases so close to both
China and Russia is simply unthinkable - according
to the Pentagon's full-spectrum dominance
doctrine.
What's going on at the moment is
a complex war of positioning. Pakistan's Afghan
policy - which also implies containing Indian
influence in Afghanistan - won't change. The
Afghan Taliban will keep being encouraged as
potential long-term allies - in the name of the
unalterable "strategic depth" doctrine - and India
will keep being regarded as the top strategic
priority.
What IP will do is to embolden
Islamabad even more - with Pakistan finally
becoming a key transit corridor for Iranian gas,
apart from using gas for its own needs. If India
finally decides against IPI, China is ready to
step on board - and build an extension from IP,
parallel to the Karakoram highway, towards
Xinjiang.
Either way, Pakistan wins -
especially with increasing Chinese investment. Or
with further Chinese military "aid". That's why
the Pakistani army's "suspension" by Washington is
not bound to rattle too many nerves in Islamabad.
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