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MARCHING
THROUGH GEORGIA
The
move has attracted wide attention, but US-Georgian military
links are nothing new: in 2001, Georgian
pilots were trained at US military bases, and US aid including
military assistance to Tbilisi, was increased
by nearly $100 million. The shipment of helicopters to
the beleaguered Shevardnadze is also old
news: an American military delegation traveled to Georgia
early
last year, where deputy defense secretary Otar Shalikashvili
– chief American advisor for US-Georgian military
affairs, and brother of General John Shalikashvili, former
chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff – met with Georgian
defense minister David Tevzadze. The subsequent announcement
that the US would be sending 10 helicopters to the Georgian
air force attracted zero attention. In the post-9/11 world,
however, an arms shipment and the dispatching of US troops
("advisors") to this tumultuous region is showing up
on journalists' radar screens. While Georgia once rated only
a deputy secretary, Rumsfeld's December visit
to Tbilisi during a five-day tour of the region was marked
by mutual declarations of increased cooperation, and a budding
US-Georgian military alliance.
THE
PANKISI PROBLEM
The
irony of our intervention in the Caucasus on behalf of the last Gorbachevite is
that we are doing it in the name of a "war on terrorism."
Yet Shevardnadze has openly taken
up the cause of Chechen independence, and has furthermore
provided a de facto sanctuary for Al Qaeda-allied Chechen
rebels in the infamous Pankisi
Gorge, where drug dealers, Chechen terrorists, and every
criminal element within a thousand-mile radius has apparently
congregated in a Caucasian Coventry. Russia has long
demanded that Georgia police this area. On at least one occasion
Russian bombers took off in hot pursuit of the kidnapping
murdering terrorists who commit their crimes and then flee
to the safety of Georgian territory. Without taking action
against the terrorists, Shevardnadze denounced the [November
27, 2001] Russian bombing of the Pankisi Gorge, and was rewarded
with declarations of American support.
BIG
OIL IN THE CAUCASUS
In
shipping arms and aligning the US openly with Shevardnadze,
and pledging
to lift sanctions against Heydar Aliyev's neo-Stalinist
regime in Azerbaijan, Rumsfeld's December visit signaled
increasingly open support to the GUUAM
alliance of nations – Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan,
Moldova – against their Russian, Abhazian, Ossetian, and Armenian
antagonists in the region. True, sanctions were also lifted
against Armenia, but since these were never justified to begin
with – they were imposed as a result of American "evenhandedness"
toward the war over Nagorno-Karabakh
– the net effect was to make several oil companies very
happy. For this paves the way for commercial ties, and the
oil companies are already
heavily invested in the prospect that Azerbaijan's oil
fields could generate over $2 billion a year. Georgia stands
to make over $500 million annually from transit fees alone.
Although most oil companies would prefer to transport Caspian
oil through Azerbaijan and on down to Iran, the US government
has for many years opposed this economically rational solution
and insists on the alternative Baku-Ceyhan
route.
THE
BALKAN CONNECTION
Another
pipeline, which will be used to transport Caspian oil to Europe
and beyond, will run from Burgas, a Bulgarian port on the
Black Sea, through Macedonia to the Albanian port of Vlore,
on the Adriatic. A mysterious consortium
known as Ambo, with backing
from Chevron, Exxon Mobil, BP Amoco, Agip, and TotalElfFina,
is behind the project. Gee, I guess it's just a coincidence
that wherever US troops and "advisors" go, there is some oil
pipeline in development.
THE
GREAT GAME
These
developments show that opponents of the Afghan war were right
about the real motives behind the US invasion. Instead of
hunting down Osama bin Laden, who conveniently got away, the
Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz-Andrew Sullivan axis of evil is intent
on endless wars of conquest in Central Asia. This bold incursion
into the oil-rich Caucasus confirms what a few on the Left
– and even fewer on the Right – have been saying all
along: this is a war for oil. The
Great Game, as they call it, is being played out in the
Eurasian heartland, and the players are the big oil companies
and the governments that hope to cash in on what is being
touted as the biggest oil bonanza in history. Kipling's Kim
expressed the direction US foreign policy is taking:
"Now
I shall go far and far into the North, playing
the Great Game..."
OUR
FRIENDS, THE AZERIS
But
what does playing this game have to do with eliminating Osama
bin Laden and his Islamist legions – except as a general pretext
for inserting US forces into the region? The reality is that
our alleged "allies" in the war on terrorism in the Caucasus
are precisely those countries which have proven most useful
to bin Laden & Co. As Yossef Bodansky points out, no country
in the region was friendlier to the radical Islamists than
Azerbaijan, and yet when Rumsfeld visited and pledged
the repeal of sanctions, the all-powerful "President" Aliyev
absurdly burbled: "Azerbaijan has always been against terrorism.
We are willing to continue our cooperation in this field."
OUR
FRIENDS, THE GEORGIANS
As
for Georgia, Shevardnadze's friendly relationship with Chechen
rebels, including units with some loyalty to bin Laden and
Al Qaeda, is well
known in Russia, albeit not in the US. When what had to
be Russian planes – in spite of Putin's denial – bombed
the Pankisi Gorge, US State Department spokesman Richard
Boucher roundly denounced
the Russian anti-terrorist campaign, even as the US was bombing
Afghanistan:
"We
have consistently supported the sovereignty and the territorial
integrity of Georgia. We are deeply concerned about these
intrusions which undermine stability in this region, and we've
raised the situation at senior levels with the Russian government
in the past and will do so again in the near future."
IT
SEEMS LIKE ONLY YESTERDAY
Getting
Al Qaeda-affiliated militants, who, as Bodansky shows, were
streaming into the region prior to 9/11, is apparently secondary
to playing the Great Game – which demands an alliance with
Shevardnadze and Aliyev. If the US were serious about fighting
terrorism in the Caucasus, they would allow Russia to go in
and clean out the pockets of infestation encouraged and shielded
by Shevardnadze, who has utilized terrorist elements in his
battle against Abhazian rebels. It seems like only yesterday
that Shevardnadze was denying there was
any Pankisi problem. As Interfax News Agency reported
on a Shevardnadze news conference in Tbilisi:
"The
recurring statements by Russian officials about the presence
of Chechen terrorists in the Pankisi Gorge 'are not based
on the facts', Shevardnadze said. The president reminded the
press about his recent trip to the Pankisi Gorge and said
he 'did not find any terrorists there.'"
If
the US is opening up a new front in the "war on terrorism"
in the Caucasus, then why is the Bush administration siding
with those who have harbored terrorists
against the only force fighting them in the region? If this
isn't about oil and power politics – and, again, it's
just a coincidence that the
new US envoy to Afghanistan is a former Unocal employee
involved in an oil pipeline project – then why is Russia
being excluded from the developing "anti-terrorist"
operation in the Caucasus?
APPEASING
THE EUROPEANS
The
complete fraudulence of the "war on terrorism" is confirmed,
at this point, beyond the shadow of a doubt. The sham is becoming
increasingly brazen, as a war against bin Laden – now relegated
to the role of omnipresent phantom – segues effortlessly into
a war for US-Western European hegemony over the central Eurasian
landmass. This is one extension of the war that the Europeans,
notably EU honcho Chris
Patten, will applaud. Before a visit to the region last
year, Patten declared that the EU must consider extending
its borders to include the Caucasus:
"The
European Union cannot afford to neglect the southern Caucasus.
Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan form a strategic corridor
linking southern Europe with central Asia There is perhaps
as much oil under the Caspian sea as under the North sea and
a huge amount of gas there and in central Asia - good news
for energy-hungry Europe."
In
preparation, Georgia was admitted
to the Council of Europe, in 1999, and Shevardnadze's
campaign to get
Georgia admitted to NATO by 2004 may yet be achieved.
A
DEFT MANEUVER
Perhaps
the wily old commissar can even get the Abhazian and Ossetian
rebels, who have long chafed under his repressive rule, officially
classified as "terrorists." Meanwhile Osama bin Laden remains
at large, and his former allies are raking in US tax dollars
and otherwise enjoying the many benefits of an alliance with
the Americans.
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