AT THE HEART OF THE MATTER: CENTRAL ASIA

"This started more than a decade-long illegal, covert operation in Central Asia by a small group in the US intent on furthering the oil industry and the Military Industrial Complex, using Turkish operatives, Saudi partners and Pakistani allies, furthering this objective in the name of Islam."
~ Sibel Edmonds.

Luke Ryland has done it again:

Former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds dropped a bombshell on the Mike Malloy radio show, guest-hosted by Brad Friedman (audio, partial transcript).

In the interview, Sibel says that the US maintained 'intimate relations' with Bin Laden, and the Taliban, "all the way until that day of September 11."

These 'intimate relations' included using Bin Laden for 'operations' in Central Asia, including Xinjiang, China. These 'operations' involved using al Qaeda and the Taliban in the same manner "as we did during the Afghan and Soviet conflict," that is, fighting 'enemies' via proxies.

As Sibel has previously described, and as she reiterates in this latest interview, this process involved using Turkey (with assistance from 'actors from Pakistan, and Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia') as a proxy, which in turn used Bin Laden and the Taliban and others as a proxy terrorist army.

Control of Central Asia

The goals of the American 'statesmen' directing these activities included control of Central Asia's vast energy supplies and new markets for military products.

The Americans had a problem, though. They needed to keep their fingerprints off these operations to avoid a) popular revolt in Central Asia ( Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan), and b) serious repercussions from China and Russia. They found an ingenious solution: Use their puppet-state Turkey as a proxy, and appeal to both pan-Turkic and pan-Islam sensibilities.

Turkey, a NATO ally, has a lot more credibility in the region than the US and, with the history of the Ottoman Empire, could appeal to pan-Turkic dreams of a wider sphere of influence. The majority of the Central Asian population shares the same heritage, language and religion as the Turks.

In turn, the Turks used the Taliban and al Qaeda, appealing to their dreams of a pan-Islamic caliphate (Presumably. Or maybe the Turks/US just paid very well.)

According to Sibel:

This started more than a decade-long illegal, covert operation in Central Asia by a small group in the US intent on furthering the oil industry and the Military Industrial Complex, using Turkish operatives, Saudi partners and Pakistani allies, furthering this objective in the name of Islam.

Uighurs

Sibel was recently asked to write about the recent situation with the Uighurs in Xinjiang, but she declined, apart from saying that "our fingerprint is all over it."

Of course, Sibel isn't the first or only person to recognize any of this. Eric Margolis, one of the best reporters in the West on matters of Central Asia, stated that the Uighurs in the training camps in Afghanistan up to 2001:

"were being trained by Bin Laden to go and fight the communist Chinese in Xinjiang, and this was not only with the knowledge, but with the support of the CIA, because they thought they might use them if war ever broke out with China."

And also that:

"Afghanistan was not a hotbed of terrorism, these were commando groups, guerrilla groups, being trained for specific purposes in Central Asia."

In a separate interview, Margolis said:

"That illustrates Henry Kissinger's bon mot that the only thing more dangerous than being America's enemy is being an ally, because these people were paid by the CIA, they were armed by the US, these Chinese Muslims from Xinjiang, the most-Western province.

The CIA was going to use them in the event of a war with China, or just to raise hell there, and they were trained and supported out of Afghanistan, some of them with Osama Bin Laden's collaboration. The Americans were up to their ears with this."

Read the whole piece at Against All Enemies.

The comment I have is to urge everyone to read The Grand Chessboard by Zbigniew Brzezinski. The entire book is available for download here.

Brzezinski's thesis in the book would appear to be:

"For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia... Now a non-Eurasian power is preeminent in Eurasia - and America's global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained."--p. 38 of the online version.

Here's some reinforcement:

"It follows that America's primary interest is to help ensure that no single power comes to control this geopolitical space and that the global community has unhindered financial and economic access to it." --p. 148.

"Global community" means the corporate world and vermin like those at Goldman Sachs, naturally.

Then there are these interesting items:

"Moreover, they [the Central Asian Republics] are of importance from the standpoint of security and historical ambitions to at least three of their most immediate and more powerful neighbors, namely Russia, Turkey and Iran, with China also signaling an increasing political interest in the region. But the Eurasian Balkans are infinitely more important as a potential economic prize: an enormous concentration of natural gas and oil reserves is located in the region, in addition to important minerals, including gold."--p. 124.

"The world's energy consumption is bound to vastly increase over the next two or three decades. Estimates by the U.S. Department of energy anticipate that world demand will rise by more than 50 percent between 1993 and 2015, with the most significant increase in consumption occurring in the Far East. The momentum of Asia's economic development is already generating massive pressures for the exploration and exploitation of new sources of energy and the Central Asian region and the Caspian Sea basin are known to contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea." --p. 125.

Or how about this:

"In fact, an Islamic revival - already abetted from the outside not only by Iran but also by Saudi Arabia - is likely to become the mobilizing impulse for the increasingly pervasive new nationalisms, determined to oppose any reintegration under Russian - and hence infidel - control." -- p. 133.

And abetted from the outside by the US, too. Instead of "infidel control", simply put a Turkish proxy in there like, say, Gülen schools, to educate the children of the upper classes so that they'll be good Muslims sufficiently under the control of the US.


Brzezinski's ideas about Uzbekistan are interesting:

"Uzbekistan is, in fact, the prime candidate for regional leadership in Central Asia." --p. 130.

Why?

"Uzbekistan, nationally the most vital and the most populous of the central Asian states, represents the major obstacle to any renewed Russian control over the region. Its independence is critical to the survival of the other Central Asian states, and it is the least vulnerable to Russian pressures." --p. 121.

Could control over Uzbekistan have been the reason for linking the Fethullahçı to the assassination attempt of Uzbekistan's Islam Karimov in 1999?

I wonder, too, if, at the time of writing this book, Brzezinski was anticipating the next "Pearl Harbor" in order to make an outright move to control an area he obviously believes is crucial to maintain US hegemony:

"The attitude of the American public toward the external projection of American power has been much more ambivalent. The public supported America's engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. -- p. 24-25.

In light of the shock effect of the attacks of September 11, 2001, is this statement merely a coincidence?

Is it also coincidence that Brzezinski so glowingly endorsed Obama and that Obama now continues the war in Afghanistan and expands it to Pakistan?

And why did Obama lie about his relationship with Brzezinski?

Change you can believe in, all the way back to the Carter administration:

The CIA’s proposal [to "slow down Soviet progress in Afghanistan but also help deflect some of the energy of Middle Eastern Muslims, inspired by the Iranian revolution"] found a sponsor in Carter’s National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Polish émigré and fierce anticommunist hawk. Brzezinski, an academic who had done work for the CIA, believed the Afghan situation offered the United States a rare opportunity to frustrate the Soviet’s expansionist goals in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He recommended covert assistance to the Islamic fighters. On July 3, 1979, President Carter signed a directive authorizing nonlethal support. On that same day, Brzezinski said he sent a note the president saying his actions would result in direct military intervention by the Soviets.

And it did.

Another thing . . . it's not just the Turks in Central Asia who are helping to achieve US domination of that vast region. Check the activities of MASHAV, including Israeli military activity, in Central Asia and you will see that the Iron Triangle--the US, Turkey, and Israel--is alive and well in the heart of the Eurasian landmass.



On a separate note, I'm happy to announce that I have been invited by Sibel Edmonds to contribute from time to time at her blog. But Sibel has the details on that and there should be something coming up fairly soon. I'll keep you posted.

PJAK: WE WILL FIGHT TSK FROM NOW ON

"Victory is reserved for those who are willing to pay it's price."
~ Sun Tzu.

It looks like PJAK will join forces with HPG to fight TSK, from Özgür Gündem:

PJAK decides to fight TSK


PJAK, which implements guerrilla warfare against the Iranian army, declared that it will fight against the TSK from now on. HRK Headquarters Commander Amed Piran said, "Our guerrillas will have operation plans against the officials and effective personnel in the Turkish army and Turkish state."

Mentioning TSK's last attack on 25 September against HRK Headquarters in Qendil, HRK Commander Amed Piran wanted the US, which supported Turkey in these attacks, to make a statement. In addition to that, he stressed that the TSK is one of their targets from now on.

Talking to ANF, Amed Piran said, "From now on we will have operation plans against the officials and effective personnel in the Turkish army and Turkish state. As a reaction to TSK's move, we will open our forces to discussion of sending some of them to HPG to fight against the TSK as necessary."

Noting the Iranian army's artillery shelling, along with TSK's aerial attacks in 2008, which resulted in a fiasco, Piran emphasized that on 25 September, HRK Headquarters identified 16 fighter aircraft.

"TSK is the primary target"

HRK, which is known for its attacks against Iranian military forces, declared that TSK is their primary target from now on.

Mentioning that TSK had four aerial attacks against their territory, Amed Piran said the following: "TSK did not achieve a result in the first and the third attacks. In the last attack, TSK targeted HRK headquarters with 16 aircraft. In this attack HRK headquarters member, our comrade Xuynres was martyred. This attack was not an attack that we were unprepared for. We were expecting such an attack against our forces and the Qendil region.

"As HRK, we are a defensive force. In order to defend the general region, we had costs before. However, these costs will not weaken us; on the contrary, they will empower our struggle and will unleash the enlistment of the youth.

"Until this time, we, as HRK, were conducting our legitimate self-defense operations against the Iranian regime. When the Iranian side attacked our Kurdish people, our patriotic people, or our militants, we conducted defensive retaliation operations. However since spring, when the US and Turkey exchanged intelligence, again after Fall 2007, based on the intelligence and alliance of Iran and Turkey several harsh and technical attacks were conducted.

"From now on we, as HRK, will make wise decisions in terms of choosing our enemies. After this stage, we consider the Turkish state and its army as our primary enemy. Along with the increase of attacks, we will have plans against TSK. We will organize our forces, which are actively in the war, against the TSK."

"We expect a statement from the US"

Saying that they are expecting a statement from the US for TSK's attack, Piran said, "The Turkish state and its army decided on a comprehensive war against the Kurdish Freedom Movement and the Kurdish people. The US is actively supporting this decision. It was revealed that US intelligence support was behind the attacks against our region. Although we had operations against neither the TSK nor the US, we are expecting a statement from these countries after the operations against us."

HRK Commander Piran said that although Turkey uses the most modern techniques and enjoys high-level support from other countries, its attacks were unsuccessful.

Noting a remarkable number of youth enlistments in HRK recently, Piran said: "None of the things that we gave for the patriotic Kurdish people and for this land is without value. A Kurdish youth gets martyred, but hundreds enlist in his place. I mean, each attack makes us stronger and intensifies our anger against the enemy. If we make our promises on our comrades martyred by the enemy and we fulfill our promises, from now on we will take even greater revenge for our comrades. Just as our defensive and operations that we initiated against the ones who harmed the Kurdish people and treated them in inhumane ways, from now on we will re-examine such operations if needed.

"We will send our forces to HPG"

Pointing out that they had never conducted any operations against the TSK, Piran said, "We will send our forces to HPG against the TSK. Despite the fact that we never conducted any operations against TSK, TSK bombs our regions with the support of the US. Again, the Iranian state, improving some kind of alliance with the Turkish state, they surrender our militants to Turkey. Now our comrades, who are in Iranian prisons and are in the 38th day of their death fast, still did not get any response [for their demands]. We do know that the Turkish state is behind this. For this reason, once more we see that we need to identify our enemies more carefully. In this respect, due to TSK's increased attacks against our forces, TSK will be among our military targets."

In a post that's related to PJAK's news, Hevallo has a post on a recent article from the Islamist Zaman, in which "analysts" ask "Why can't we beat the PKK?"". He also has a post on another article from Zaman, in which Amed (Diyarbakır) Bar Association President Sezgin Tanrıkulu discusses how Öcalan could help expose the Ergenekon Gang. There's this item, for one:

In July, Öcalan triggered a national debate when he told his lawyers that some of the retired generals currently arrested as part of the Ergenekon operation had paid visits to him when the person in charge of security on İmralı Prison Island was former Gendarmerie General Command intelligence department head Levent Ersöz, who is currently being sought as a suspect in the Ergenekon case and believed to be on the run in Russia.

For more on alleged links between PKK and Ergenekon, check a post from August.

For some biting commentary on recent events in South Kurdistan and the possiblity of looking to the East for new political alliances, check an item at OpEdNews:

There is no change for the better; there is no turning point in our history: The anti-Kurdish forces of the past are the anti-Kurdish forces of today. Despite the end of Saddam’s dictatorship five years ago, there is still no freedom for the Kurds, no free Kurdistan even in so-called liberated Iraq. Our enemies are busy, as ever, with maintaining the status quo in the Middle East, and they are successful. In return for Kurdish efforts of reconciliation and goodwill, Arabs, with the help of the Turks, have stopped the referendum in Kerkuk and are now doing everything to abolish that constitutional requirement and right. The Kurdish city and especially the oil there are still regarded “Arab patrimony”, and under Saddam this meant Anfal: large-scale ethnic cleansing, deportations, displacement, genocide.

[ . . . ]

. . . We must now seek for some kind of cooperation based on the principle that the enemy of your enemy is your friend. In our case, our enemies’ enemies are Russia and China. The US and Nato have plotted new strategies to harm these countries and keep them out of the central Asian oil and gas markets. Two new power blocks are forming now, the NATO plus local clients led by the USA/EU on the aggressive-imperial side and the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) and CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organization) led by Russia and China on the defensive side. We are right in the middle of this confrontation, which seems to be inevitable and could lead to global wars. It will be impossible to remain neutral and if we don’t want to be crushed by both, we need to decide now where we will stand to achieve our goal of a free recognized Kurdistan.

Serkeftin!

2025: THE FACE OF HEGEMONY

"In the long run, global politics are bound to become increasingly uncongenial to the concentration of hegemonic power in the hands of a single state. Hence, America is not only the first, as well as the only, truly global superpower, but it is also likely to be the very last."
~ Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard.

I think a little update on global politics is in order. First, a prelude to the next National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) is out in which a reduced dominance for the US is predicted by 2025:

An intelligence forecast being prepared for the next president on future global risks envisions a steady decline in U.S. dominance in the coming decades, as the world is reshaped by globalization, battered by climate change, and destabilized by regional upheavals over shortages of food, water and energy.

[ . . . ]

In the new intelligence forecast, it is not just the United States that loses clout. Fingar predicts plummeting influence for the United Nations, the World Bank and a host of other international organizations that have helped maintain political and economic stability since World War II. It is unclear what new institutions can fill the void, he said.

In the years ahead, Washington will no longer be in a position to dictate what new global structures will look like. Nor will any other country, Fingar said. "There is no nobody in a position . . . to take the lead and institute the changes that almost certainly must be made in the international system," he said.

The predicted shift toward a less U.S.-centric world will come at a time when the planet is facing a growing environmental crisis, caused largely by climate change, Fingar said. By 2025, droughts, food shortages and scarcity of fresh water will plague large swaths of the globe, from northern China to the Horn of Africa.

[ . . . ]

Energy security will also become a major issue as India, China and other countries join the United States in seeking oil, gas and other sources for electricity. The Chinese get a good portion of their oil from Iran, as do many U.S. allies in Europe, limiting U.S. options on Iran. "So the turn-the-spigot-off kind of thing -- even if we could do it -- would be counterproductive."

There's more on that from ComputerWorld, in which the upcoming NIE identifies six disruptive technologies that will emerge by 2025.

An example of reduced dominance by the US was seen in last week's visit by VP Dick Cheney to the Caucasus:

Cheney's Caucasus gambit is a desperate attempt to stir up trouble while making a last ditch effort for the oil and natural gas of the resource-rich Caspian Basin. So far, he and his colleagues in Big Oil have nothing to show for their 20 years of labor except a few under-performing puppets in Ukraine and Georgia. The whole plan has flopped leaving Cheney with another failure on his resume. Just this week, there was more news of Russia's progress in the Central Asia energy sweepstakes in an article by Paul Goble titled "Moscow Wins a Major Victory on Pipelines":

"With Iran’s declaration that it opposes the construction of any undersea pipelines in the Caspian on "ecological grounds" and thus will block any delimitation of the seabed that allows for them and Baku’s decision not to back the West’s push NABUCCO project, Moscow can claim its first major political victory from its invasion of Georgia.

These actions mean that the Russian government will now have full and uncontested control over pipelines between the Caspian basin and the West which pass through Russian territory and will be able either directly or through its clients like the PKK to disrupt the only routes such as Baku-Tbilisi-Ceylon that bypass the Russian Federation."

If Cheney is serious about catching-up to Russia, he'll have to act fast. Unfortunately, Cheney is more disliked in Central Asia than he is in the USA where his public approval ratings have been well below sea-level for the last 4 years. In fact, when Cheney arrived in Azerbaijan, neither President Ilkham Aliyev nor Prime Minister, Artur Rasizade, even bothered to meet him at the airport. Politicians everywhere know that its is political suicide to even be seen with him.

The PKK is hardly the "client" of Russia, but the Russian people, through their Duma, did unanimously call for political asylum for Öcalan so a cautious alliance would be completely reasonable.

For more on the Russia-US conflict, see the comments and analysis by the always brilliant Noam Chomsky:

In the background lie two crucial issues. One is control over pipelines to Azerbaijan and Central Asia. Georgia was chosen as a corridor by Clinton to bypass Russia and Iran, and was also heavily militarized for the purpose. Hence Georgia is “a very major and strategic asset to us,” Zbigniew Brzezinski observes.

It is noteworthy that analysts are becoming less reticent in explaining real US motives in the region as pretexts of dire threats and liberation fade and it becomes more difficult to deflect Iraqi demands for withdrawal of the occupying army. Thus the editors of the Washington Post admonished Barack Obama for regarding Afghanistan as “the central front” for the United States, reminding him that Iraq “lies at the geopolitical center of the Middle East and contains some of the world's largest oil reserves,” and Afghanistan’s “strategic importance pales beside that of Iraq.” A welcome, if belated, recognition of reality about the US invasion.

The second issue is expansion of NATO to the East, described by George Kennan in 1997 as “the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era, [which] may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations.”

[ . . . ]

[Former US ambassador to Russia Jack] Matlock is not alone in regarding Kosovo as an important factor. “Recognition of South Ossetia's and Abkhazia's independence was justified on the principle of a mistreated minority's right to secession - the principle Bush had established for Kosovo,” the Boston Globe editors comment.

Which, of course, also means that the mistreated Kurdish minorities of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria also have the right to secession not only according to UN Resolution 3103 but also according to the Bush administration's Kosovo criteria.

Chomsky's quotation of Zbigniew Brzezinski reminds me of a quote in Brzezinski's book The Grand Chessboard about Eurasia:

Potentially, the most dangerous scenario would be a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran, and "antihegemonic" coalition united not by ideology but by complementary grievances. It would be reminiscent in scale and scope of the challenge once posed by the Sino-Soviet bloc, although this time China would likely be the leader and Russia the follower. Averting this contingency, however remote it may be, will require a display of U.S. geostrategic skill on the western, eastern, and southern perimeters of Eurasia simultaneously.

The Grand Chessboard, p. 55.

While that contingency may have seemed "remote" in 1997 when Brzezinski wrote those lines, the contingency is up close and personal now with the existence of the SCO. Especially since the predictions seem to be that the power of the SCO is on the increase:

"The SCO should eventually start playing a new role both in and outside the Caucasus. What we see now is a real crisis of the idea of a unipolar world now that the US and its NATO allies pretend they are unable to get to the core of what’s been happening in the Caucasus. I believe that organizations like the SCO and BRIC, that brings Russia together with Brazil, India and China, should play an important role here. Many people already realize the need for the SCO and other international organizations to start focusing more on ensuring global stability and security…"

Anatoly Bolyatko also said that closer interaction between the SCO and such observer nations as Iran, India and Pakistan could make it a major new instrument of collective security both in the former Soviet Union and neighboring regions.

If we take Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice as the ones who are to "display [ ] U.S. geostrategic skill" in Eurasia, as described by Kissinger protege Brzezinski, it should surprise no one that the spooks are predicting a reduction in US dominance by 2025.

Look to the East.

NYET TO A UNIPOLAR WORLD

"Unipolarity is unacceptable, dominance is inadmissible. We can't accept a world order where all the decisions are made by one country, even a country as serious and authoritative as the US. This kind of world would be unsteady and conflict prone."
~ Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

CNN recently interviewed Russian PM Vladimir Putin. Videos of the complete interview are shown below, along with the one that aired in the West:

Here's what was aired on CNN for Western consumption:

CNN transcript here.

The world's power structure is shifting. In mid-August, as a result of the conflict in Georgia, Turkish PM Gül said that the US must share power with the rest of the world, and the message trickled down to others who are now beginning to say that "what is clear is that America's unipolar moment has passed--and the new world order heralded by Bush's father in the dying days of the Soviet Union in 1991 is no more."

As Putin said in February 2007:

The unipolar world that had been proposed after the Cold War did not take place either.

The history of humanity certainly has gone through unipolar periods and seen aspirations to world supremacy. And what hasn’t happened in world history?

However, what is a unipolar world? However one might embellish this term, at the end of the day it refers to one type of situation, namely one centre of authority, one centre of force, one centre of decision-making.

It is world in which there is one master, one sovereign. And at the end of the day this is pernicious not only for all those within this system, but also for the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within.

And this certainly has nothing in common with democracy. Because, as you know, democracy is the power of the majority in light of the interests and opinions of the minority.

Incidentally, Russia – we – are constantly being taught about democracy. But for some reason those who teach us do not want to learn themselves.

I consider that the unipolar model is not only unacceptable but also impossible in today’s world. And this is not only because if there was individual leadership in today’s – and precisely in today’s – world, then the military, political and economic resources would not suffice. What is even more important is that the model itself is flawed because at its basis there is and can be no moral foundations for modern civilisation.

Over the weekend, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said the same thing during an interview in which he outlined the five points of Russian foreign policy:

First - Russia accepts the superiority of the fundamental principles of international law which determine relations between civilised nations. And within the framework of these principles and this view of international law, we will develop our relations with other countries.

Second - the world should be multi-polar. Unipolarity is unacceptable, dominance is inadmissible. We can't accept a world order where all the decisions are made by one country, even a country as serious and authoritative as the US. This kind of world would be unsteady and conflict prone.

Third - Russia doesn’t want a confrontation with any country, and has no plans to isolate itself. As far as we can, we will develop friendly relations with Europe, the United States and with other countries.

Fourth - protecting the lives and dignity of our citizens is an absolute priority for us, wherever they are. This is where we’ll be starting from in our foreign policy. We'll also be trying to protect the interests of our business community abroad. And it must be clear to all, that if anyone attempts any aggressive action, they will encounter a response.

And fifth - just like other countries, Russia has regions where it has special interests. These regions include states with which our country has had particularly warm and friendly historical ties. We will be working very closely with these regions, and developing our friendly relations with these states, our close neighbours. This is what we will be basing our foreign policy on. As far as the future goes, it doesn’t just depend on us. It also depends on our friends and partners in the international community. They have a choice.

These priority regions are of course the border regions, but not only these.

Russia will not accept a unipolar world and it no longer has to:

In Syria, Libya, even Turkey (a US and European friend) politicians and analysts have noted the consequences of the Georgian crisis - not for what Russia has done but for what the US, EU and Nato have been unable to do: exercise their power to protect an ally.

And while US taxpayers have been volunteered to generously hand Georgia $1 billion for reconstruction of damage caused by a mini-conflict that Georgia instigated--at whose behest?--Dick Cheney is on the ground in the region looking for ways to ensure "additional routes for energy exports that ensure the free flow of resources." In other words, to undermine Russia's growing dominance in the energy industry.

At an SCO summit on 28 August, the organization issued a mild statement over Russian action in Georgia, which was most likely the result of China's influence in the organization and may well work in China's favor.

As I have said before, Kurdistan must start looking to the East for its future. Turkey is doing so. Iran is doing so. Syria is doing so. The clock is ticking; it is almost too late.

JOINT OPERATION IN DERSIM: YJA-STAR AND TKPML-TİKKO

"After this the soldiers stopped distinguishing between the male and the female fighters. I think they are now more afraid of the women because the women are more disciplined and they will never surrender. We will either kill or be killed. For me it is freedom, success or death. It is simple."
~ Heval Surbuz, YJA-STAR.

On 10 July there was a significant news item on Özgür Gündem which described a recent joint operation between YJA-STAR women guerrillas and the women guerrillas of the TKPML-TİKKO (Türkiye Komünist Partisi/Marksist-Leninist-Türk İşci ve Köylü Kurtuluş Ordusu; Communist Party of Turkey/Marxist-Leninist-Turkish Workers' and Peasants' Liberation Army). I call it significant because I cannot recall a time in the past where PKK has conducted joint military operations with other groups inside Turkey, particularly with TKPML-TİKKO. Here's the link and a translation:

Joint operation with YJA-STAR and TİKKO women guerrillas

HPG announced that an operation that was implemented with heavy weapons against Çemişgezek (Dersim) police station was a joint operation of YJA-STAR and TKPML-TİKKO women guerrillas. In this joint operation, three police and eight Turkish soldiers were killed.

Mentioning the women guerrillas implemented three different operations, HPG said that on 8 - 9 July, three police and eight soldiers were killed around Çemişgezek's downtown. In the operations in Malazgirt and Savur, five Turkish soldiers were killed.

HPG-BİM revealed the details of the operation: "On 8 July YJA-STAR and TKPML-TİKKO women guerrillas carried out an operation from three directions toward Çemişgezek's downtown police guard shack, police station, and the hill where the military garrison is located," BİM also said that the guard shack was fired at by rockets at 22:40 hours; thus two police were killed and several soldiers suffered injuries.

In the operation, which lasted 45 minutes, the police station, police housing areas, and military garrison came under heavy weapons fire. One police was killed and an unknown number of police were wounded.

A military convoy that wanted to intervene in the operation was ambushed by the guerrillas. One panzer suffered major destruction; two troops in the panzer were killed and three wounded. BİM stated that after this operation the entrance and exit to Çemişgezek was blocked and a counter-operation began.

On 9 July an operation was executed by guerrillas against the hill where the Turkish forces were located. The operation lasted 20 intense minutes. BİM said, "After the clash, four soldiers were killed; our guerrillas suffered no casualties."

Special unit under surveillance

On the same day near Dersim downtown, a mobile TSK special unit was put under surveillance by YJA-STAR forces, said HPG BİM. HPG-BİM continued,"In the operation carried out against the special unit, which wanted to position itself at night, two troops were killed and three were wounded."

4 soldiers killed in Malazgirt

BİM stated that YJA-STAR forces also implemented an operation against Malazgirt's Muğidi regional garrison, located on a hill. The hill came under heavy weapons fire. One military emplacement was hit, which resulted in four soldiers killed. The counter-operation begun after this clash is still ongoing.

Clash in Savur

BİM stated that there was a clash with TSK, during an operation implemented by TSK in an area that included the villages of Günde Belizan, Avina, Darman, and Kunive. After an operation that was carried out by guerrillas in Tepe Şere, where TSK troops were positioned, one soldier was killed and three were wounded in this clash.

German detainees have also been released and more information is due out tomorrow. In the meantime, here's the HPG statement:

In its statement, HPG Serhat State Command said that the German hostages were released completely within HPG's will.

The Serhat State Command said, "As a result of the calls and attempts primarily from KCK, and international and democratic institutions and associations, the three German citizens that were detained were released today at noon after insuring their security. A detailed information will be shared with the public tomorrow about the release which occured with the cooperation of institutions and associations, and with our complete initiative."

In other news, maybe this is why the US is suddenly making nice with the mullahs, from RIA Novosti:

Foreign ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) will decide on whether to lift a moratorium on bringing in new states at a meeting in Tajikistan on July 25, a Russian diplomat said on Friday.

"The moratorium has lasted for two years. We have now decided to consider the possibility of the SCO's enlargement," a source in the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

Iran and Pakistan, observer states at the SCO since 2005, have sought full membership in the regional bloc comprising Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan and widely seen as a counterweight to NATO's influence in Eurasia.

The group primarily addresses security issues, but has recently moved to embrace various economic and energy projects.

That also may be why there have been reports in Iraqi media describing the possible construction of a US military base near Helebçe. If the SCO accepts Iran's request to be admitted to the organization as a full member, a US military airport near Helebçe could be a continuation of the American plan to expand NATO to the east, right alongside the border of the largest country in the SCO--Russia. And so the Cold War v.2 grinds on.


Ufuk Uras, leader of the Turkish ÖDP and member of DTP's parliamentary group, shows us why the Ergenekon investigation is bullshit:

"Turkey's recent history is full of coup plotters, politicians and public servants who were responsible for illegal operations and who have not been tried but walk around as 'gallants,'" he said in Parliament yesterday. Uras said failed coup plots named "Sarıkız" (Blonde Girl) and "Ayışığı" (Moonlight) against the government came to the agenda of Parliament's Human Rights Commission in April of last year but that most of the deputies were against investigating the alleged plots.

Uras, who started a signature campaign in May in Parliament, presented a motion to Parliament yesterday with the aim of opening an investigation into Sarıkız and Ayışığı. His initiative received the support of 20 deputies from the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) and Hakkari independent deputy Hamit Geylani. Deputies from the Justice and Development Party (AK Party), the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), the opposition Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and the Democratic Left Party (DSP) refused to sign the motion in the 550-seat Parliament.

DTP parliamentarian Emine Ayna has been blazing the trail on the same subject for DTP. Her position, and that of the party has been quite clear and consistent:


[Ayna] underlined that the success of the Ergenekon investigation depends on its enlargement east of the Euphrates River.

Ayna criticized the government and claimed that when dark forces attacked Kurds, Christians and Alevis, the AK Party did nothing -- but when these same forces turned against the AK Party, it was spurred into action.

"Our stand is very clear: We think that the investigations should go to the very end. Actions against the government and all murders by unknown assailants should be investigated. The government is dictating the idea of 'either you are with me or you are Ergenekon.' We are saying that we are not pro AK Party, we are not pro coups and we are not pro Ergenekon," she said.


There is no serious investigation into Ergenekon and no one should expect that there will be. If the Turkish ruling elites were serious about dismantling the Deep State that Ergenekon represents, they would have reopened the Susurluk investigation and people like Mehmet Ağar would not be walking free. Mehmet Eymür would be extradited from the US. Tansu Çiller would be detained, and all that just for a start.

As Fikri Sağlar, the chairman for the parliamentary committee that investigated the Susurluk Affair, noted after the Council of State attack in May 2006:

"To open the Susurluk file means challenging the system. Neither Erdogan nor Baykal have such a concern."

At the time, Sağlar further noted that CHP head Deniz Baykal dismissed the Susurluk Affair as "nonsense", which is exactly Baykal's characterization of the Ergenekon investigation.

Some things never change, do they?

For more on the insanity that is Turkish politics, make sure you stop by The Pasha and the Gypsy for Gordon Taylor's latest summation of the situation.

IN SIBEL'S CROSSHAIRS: FETHULLAH GÜLEN, CENTRAL ASIA, AND BEYOND

"After 911, the US Government engaged in mock investigations and shut down many small Islamic charities and organizations, giving the appearance of action in the so-called 'War on Terror.' Why did they harbor, support and resource Fethullah Gulen's $25 billion madrassa-and-mosque-establishment efforts throughout the Central Asian region and the Balkans?"
~ Sibel Edmonds.

Luke Ryland does it again, at Let Sibel Edmonds Speak. In this new post, we have more from Sibel Edmonds' "state secrets" information connecting Fethullah Gülen to those in the American Deep State, Central Asia and beyond. I'm stealing the whole thing from Luke because it's all too important not to.

************

Court Documents Shed Light on CIA Illegal Operations in Central Asia Using Islam & Madrassas - Sibel Edmonds State Secrets Gallery Connects Pipeline Politics, Madrassas & the Turkish Proxies



In a recent immigration court case involving Turkish Islamic Leader, Fetullah Gulen, US prosecutors exposed an illegal, covert, CIA operation involving the intentional Islamization of Central Asia. This operation has been ongoing since the fall of the Soviet Union in an ongoing Cold War to control the vast energy resources of the region - Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan - estimated to be worth $3 trillion.

Court Case
The scene for these dramatic disclosures was an application for a Green Card in the Eastern District Court in Philadelphia by "controversial Islamic scholar" Fetullah Gulen. Gulen, who has been living in the United States since 1998, argued that he qualified for the Green Card as "an extraordinarily talented academic."

The court case was covered extensively by the Turkish press. Leading Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported:

"Gülen's financial resources were detailed in the public prosecutor's arguments, which claimed that Saudi Arabia, Iran, the Turkish government, and the Central Intelligence Agency, or CIA, were behind the Gülen movement. It stated that some businessmen in Ankara donated 10 to 70 percent of their annual income to the movement and that it corresponded to $20,000 to $300,000 per year per person. It added that one businessman in Istanbul donated $4-5 million each year and that young people graduating from Gülen's schools donated between $2,000 and $5,000 each year."

Another leading Turkish newspaper reported (translated by Rastibini)

Among the reasons given by the US State Department's attorneys as to why Gülen's permanent residence application was refused, is the suspicion of CIA financing of his movement.

[ . . . ]

"There is even CIA suspicion"

"Because of the large amount of money that Gülen's movement uses to finance his projects, there are claims that he has secret agreements with Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Turkic governments. There are suspicions that the CIA is a co-payer in financing these projects," claimed the attorneys.

[ . . . ]

Among the documents that the state attorneys presented, there are claims about the Gülen movement's financial structure and it was emphasized that the movement's economic power reached $25 billion. "Schools, newspapers, universities, unions, television channels . . . The relationship among these are being debated. There is no transparency in their work," claimed the attorneys."

Who is Gulen?
Fetullah Gulen is "a 67-year-old Turkish Sufi cleric, author and theoretician," according to a recent profile in the UK's Prospect magazine. Prospect ran a public poll last month to find the world's greatest living intellectual. Gulen 'won' the poll after his newspapers alerted readers to the poll's existence. Gulen is also the leader of the so-called 'Gulen Movement' which claims to have seven million followers worldwide. The Gulen Movement has extensive business interests, including "publishing activities (books, newspapers, and magazines), construction, healthcare, and education."

Gulen and the CIA
The fact that the prosecutors in the court cite documents that claim that Gulen has been financed in part by the CIA is remarkable for a number of reasons, even though there have been strong suspicions about the CIA's involvement in the Gulen Movement for years. The Russian intelligence agency, the FSB, has repeatedly taken action against the Gulen movement for acting as a front organization for the CIA. In December 2002, Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported:

"Russian secret service claims: Turkish religious brotherhood works for CIA

The FSB, the Russian intelligence organization formerly called the KGB, has claimed that the 'Nurcus' religious brotherhood in Turkey has engaged in espionage on behalf of the CIA through the companies and foundations it has founded. FSB head Nikolay Patrushev has mentioned the names of these companies and foundations, saying, 'The brotherhood engages in anti-Russian activities via two companies, Serhad and Eflak, as well as foundations such as Toros, Tolerans and Ufuk.' Patrushev has accused the brotherhood of conducting pan-Turkish propaganda, of trying to convert Russian youths to Islam by sowing the seeds of enmity, and of engaging in certain lobbying activities. These companies and foundations have turned up in the internet site of Fethullah Gulen [alleged leader of the Nurcu religious community currently living in the United States who is a defendant in several court cases in Turkey, accused of engaging in anti-secularist activities.]""

Russia has banned all of Gulen's madrassas, and in April of this year, banned the Nurcu Movement completely.

Gulen's Madrassas
The Gulen Movement founded madrassas all over the world in the 1990's, most of them in the newly independent Turkic republics of Central Asia - Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan - and Russia.

These madrassas appear to be used as a front for enabling CIA and State Department officials to operate undercover in the region, with many of the teachers operating under diplomatic passports.

Why Central Asia?
Central Asia, with its vast energy wealth, is of major interest to US oil and gas companies. The region is also of key strategic interest in the 'Great Game' as Russia, China and the US compete for dwindling energy supplies. The US government has been using Turkey as a proxy to gain control over Central Asia via Pan-Turkic nationalism and religion.

Sibel Edmonds Case
Twenty six people wrote reference letters supporting Gulen's application for a Green Card - most notably ex-CIA agent George Fidas, former Turkish ambassador Morton Abramowitz, and former CIA Deputy Director Graham Fuller who appears in Sibel Edmonds' State Secrets Privilege Gallery.

I called Sibel Edmonds to comment on the latest revelations. She said:

You've got to look at the big picture. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the super powers began to fight over control of Central Asia, particularly the oil and gas wealth, as well as the strategic value of the region.

Given the history, and the distrust of the West, the US realized that it couldn't get direct control, and therefore would need to use a proxy to gain control quickly and effectively. Turkey was the perfect proxy; a NATO ally and a puppet regime. Turkey shares the same heritage/race as the entire population of Central Asia, the same language (Turkic), the same religion (Sunni Islam), and of course, the strategic location and proximity.

This started more than a decade-long illegal, covert operation in Central Asia by a small group in the US intent on furthering the oil industry and the Military Industrial Complex, using Turkish operatives, Saudi partners and Pakistani allies, furthering this objective in the name of Islam.

This is why I have been saying repeatedly that these illegal covert operations by the Turks and certain US persons dates back to 1996, and involves terrorist activities, narcotics, weapons smuggling and money laundering, converging around the same operations and involving the same actors.

And I want to emphasize that this is "illegal" because most, if not all, of the funding for these operations is not congressionally approved funding, but it comes from illegal activities.

And one last thing, take a look at the people in the State Secrets Privilege Gallery on my website and you will see how these individuals can be traced to the following; Turkey, Central Asia, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia - and the activities involving these countries.

Many of the people in Sibel's State Secrets Privilege Gallery are closely connected to Gulen, and each other, as well as the operations that Sibel mentions. Many of them have actively advocated for using Muslims to further their own needs - from Turkistan to Albania and Central Asia.

Marc Grossman, former State Department #3 and former Turkish ambassador, and one of the key named individuals in Sibel's case, is currently receiving $1.2 million per annum from Ihlas Holding, a Gulen-linked Turkish conglomerate. Sibel has previously referred to Ihlas as 'semi-legitimate' and 'alleged shady' - and emphasized that Grossman's current payoff is a result of services performed while he was in office.

Grossman's predecessor as ambassador in Turkey was Morton Abramowitz - in fact, Grossman actually worked under Abramowitz in Ankara for a number of years. During that period, the US opened an espionage investigation into activities at the embassy involving Major Douglas Dickerson, a weapons procurement specialist for Central Asia. Dickerson and his wife, an FBI translator, later became famous when they tried to recruit Sibel to spy for this criminal network.

Abramowitz, who is not listed in Sibel's State Secrets Privilege Gallery, wrote a letter in support of Gulen for his immigration case. He has long advocated the use of Islamic fighters in furtherance of US interests, including the Afghan mujaheddin against the Soviets and the Kosovo Liberation Army during the war in the Balkans, acting as an advisor to the Kosovar Albanians.

Another player from Sibel's Gallery is Enver Yusuf Turani - Prime Minister of East Turkistan, a 'country' recognized by only one country, the United States. East Turkistan, aka Xinjiang, is officially a part of China, and home to the Uyghur people and the "Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement," a UN-nominated terrorist organization "funded mainly by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network and received training, support and personnel from both the al-Qaeda and the Taliban regime of Afghanistan." In fact, the Uyghurs constitute a significant percentage of detainees - at least 22 - at Guantanamo Bay since 2001. Five of those have been set free, and were eventually sent to Albania, amid much controversy.

According to TurkPulse:

"One of the main tools Washington is using in this affair in order to get Turkey involved in the Xinjiang affair is some Turkish Americans, primarily the Fetullah Gulen team who are prosecuted in absentia in Turkey for trying to found a theocratic State order in this country because he runs his activities from the United States, his protégé. Another Turk used in this affair is Enver Yusuf Turani, who is the self styled Foreign and Prime Minister of the East Turkistan Government in exile. He has been an American citizen since 1998. Enver Yusuf is in close cooperation with Fetullah Gulen... Their activities for the government in exile are based on a report entitled “the Xinjiang Project” drafted by Graham Fuller in 1998 for the Rand Corporation and revised in 2003 under the title “the Xinjiang Problem.” It emphasises the importance of the Xinjiang Autonomous region in encircling China and provides a strategy for it."

In fact, Abramowitz and Fuller were key players in the establishment of 'East Turkistan,'

"proclaiming the government in exile within 4-5 months, starting in May (2004) and completing the proclamation in mid- September. The ceremony was held at Capitol Hill under American flags in Washington."

Two others from Sibel's gallery, Sabri Sayari and Alan Makovsky, have been similarly involved with Gulen, Fuller, and Abramowitz - co-authoring books and articles, making joint appearances, dinners etc.

Illegal Operations
Earlier I quoted Sibel saying

"And I want to emphasize that this is "illegal" because most, if not all, of the funding for these operations is not congressionally approved funding, but it comes from illegal activities."

Where does this funding come from? Narcotics trafficking, nuclear black market, weapons smuggling, and terrorist activities. As Sibel makes clear in her The Highjacking of a Nation article, the management of the heroin industry from the farms in Afghanistan to the streets of London and elsewhere "requires highly sophisticated networks," from the protection of the convoys from Afghanistan through Central Asia to their final destination, to the laundering of the billions of dollars in proceeds in Central Asian casinos and financial institutions in Dubai and Cyprus. "So, who are the real lords of Afghanistan’s poppy fields?" Sibel asks. The heroin trade finances al-Qaeda and the Taliban, but they aren't the real lords of the poppy fields. Journalist Ahmed Rashid, author of "Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia" and other similar books about these issues recently noted on Democracy Now that a "cartel" controls Afghanistan's heroin, which supplies 93% of global heroin supply.

Sibel has been trying to tell us about these operations for years, but has been gagged by the State Secrets Privilege which was invoked citing certain 'sensitive foreign diplomatic and business relationships.' These 'sensitive relationships' have now been exposed to a degree, thanks to the immigration case against Mr Gulen - one of the Turkish operatives who have been fronting for the CIA in the Islamization of Central Asia, incorporating drug trafficking, money laundering, and the nuclear black market, and the convergence with terrorism.

One Last Question
At the end of our interview, Sibel asked me to leave you with this question:

"After 911, the US Government engaged in mock investigations and shut down many small Islamic charities and organizations, giving the appearance of action in the so-called 'War on Terror.' Why did they harbor, support and resource Fethullah Gulen's $25 billion madrassa-and-mosque-establishment efforts throughout the Central Asian region and the Balkans?"

************

You also might be interested to see the comments and discussion of Luke's article over at Daily Kos. Drop by there, register, and leave your own comments to show your support for Sibel as she battles the Deep State in America.

Oh, yeah . . . don't expect to see this in the worthless American media.


DEST XWEŞ, LUKE!

NO REPRESSION LIKE IT IN THE WORLD

"Across this last weekend, the Western propaganda machine was working overtime, celebrating the latest NATO miracle: the transformation of Serbian Kosovo into Albanian Kosova. A shameless land grab by the United States, which used the Kosovo problem to install an enormous military base (Camp Bondsteel) on other people's strategically located land, is transformed by the power of the media into an edifying legend of "national liberation"."
~ Diana Johnstone, "Independence in the Brave New World Order".

State Department hack defends US recognition of Kosovo independence to the Chinese:

Kosovo's situation is "unique", a senior U.S. diplomat told China on Tuesday, trying to assuage Beijing's opposition to independence for the region from Serbia.

"As I emphasized to our Chinese interlocutors today, it is quite a unique situation in Kosovo, really very unique, and there's nothing like it in the world," U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Chris Hill told reporters in Beijing.

Really?? "There's nothing like it in the world"? Not quite:

. . . [I]f bad treatment of the local population were to disqualify a state from exercising sovereignty over part of its territory, then an awful lot of countries would be eligible for enforced amputation: Turkey would have to be stripped of Turkish Kurdistan . . .

At the same link, check the numbers:

The Foundation for Humanitarian Law led by Nata_a Kandi_, much beloved and much bankrolled by Western governments and non-governmental organizations, runs a project seeking to establish the number of dead and missing in Kosovo. According to an article in the Croatian magazine, Globus, "The project has documented 9,702 people dead or missing during the war in Kosovo from 1998 to 2000. Of this number, as things stand now, 4,903 killed and missing are Albanians and 2,322 are Serbs, with the rest either belonging to other nationalities or their ethnic identity remaining uncertain."

At least 40,000 Kurds were murdered by the Turkish state during the 1990s, the same time that Serbia was allegedly trying "to annihilate over one million Kosovar Albanian Muslims," according to another State Department hack, Daniel Fried.

Compare Turkey's program of "ethnic cleansing", from Hill and Fried's employer:

The exact number of persons forcibly displaced from villages in the southeast since 1984 is unknown. Most estimates agree that 2,600 to 3,000 villages and hamlets have been depopulated. A few NGO's put the number of people forcibly displaced as high as 2 million. Official census figures for 1990--before large-scale forced evacuations began--indicate that the total population for the 10 southeastern provinces then under emergency rule was 4 to 4.5 million people, half of them in rural areas. Since all rural areas in the southeast have not been depopulated, the estimate of 2 million evacuees is probably too high. On the low end, the Government reports that through 1997 the total number of evacuees was 336,717. Rapidly growing demands for social services in the cities indicate that migration from the countryside has been higher than this figure. Although this urbanization is also accounted for in part by voluntary migration for economic or educational reasons also related to the conflict, the figure given by a former M.P. from the region--560,000--appears to be the most credible estimate of those forcibly evacuated.

Compare against figures released in December 2006:

The long-awaited results of the government-commissioned national IDP survey were released in December 2006, confirming that the number of IDPs in Turkey is significantly higher than the previous government estimate of 355,807. According to the survey between 953,680 and 1,201,200 people were displaced for security-related reasons from the east and south-east of the country between 1986 and 2005.

How many ethnic Albanians were "ethnically cleansed" from Kosovo? After crunching the numbers, Kosovo looks less and less like "a really very unique" situation and more and more like much ado about nothing. Or I should say "much ado about oil":

Camp Bondsteel, the biggest “from scratch” foreign US military base since the Vietnam War is near completion in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo. It is located close to vital oil pipelines and energy corridors presently under construction, such as the US sponsored Trans-Balkan oil pipeline. As a result defence contractors—in particular Halliburton Oil subsidiary Brown & Root Services—are making a fortune.

[ . . . ]

The contract to service Camp Bondsteel is the latest in a string of military contracts awarded to Brown & Root Services. Its fortunes have grown as US militarism has escalated. The company is part of the Halliburton Corporation, the largest supplier of products and services to the oil industry.

In 1992 Dick Cheney, as Secretary of Defence in the senior Bush administration, awarded the company a contract providing support for the US army’s global operations. Cheney left politics and joined Halliburton as CEO between 1995 and 2000. He is now US vice president in the junior Bush administration. In 1992 Brown & Root built and maintained US army bases in Somalia earning $62 million. In 1994 Brown & Root built bases and support systems for 18,000 troops in Haiti doubling its earnings to $133 million. The company received a five-year support contract in 1999 worth $180 million per-year to build military facilities in Hungary, Croatia and Bosnia. It was Camp Bondsteel, however, that was dubbed “the mother of all contracts” by the Washington based Contract Services Association of America.

[ . . . ]

According to leaked comments to the press, European politicians now believe that the US used the bombing of Yugoslavia specifically in order to establish Camp Bondsteel. Before the start of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, the Washington Post insisted, “With the Middle-East increasingly fragile, we will need bases and fly over rights in the Balkans to protect Caspian Sea oil.”

The scale of US oil corporations investment in the exploitation of Caspian oil fields and the US government demand for the economy to be less dependent on imported oil, particularly from the Middle-East, demands a long term solution to the transportation of oil to European and US markets. The US Trade & Development Agency (TDA) has financed initial feasibility studies, with large grants, and more recently advanced technical studies for the New York based AMBO (Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria Oil) Trans-Balkan pipeline.

[ . . . ]

The $1.3 billion trans-Balkan AMBO pipeline is one of the most important of these multiple pipelines. It will pump oil from the tankers that bring it across the Black Sea to the Bulgarian oil terminus at Burgas, through Macedonia to the Albanian Adriatic port of Vlore. From there it will be pumped on to huge 300,000 ton tankers and sent on to Europe and the US, bypassing the Bosphorus Straits—the congested and only route out of the Black Sea where tankers are restricted to 150,000 tons.

US support for Kosovo is all about the oil. And that may help explain why the new NATO protege is a criminal society.

For the moment, it appears that Russia will bide its time. China, with its own ethnic "problem" in Xinjiang, is standing with Russia.

What might Russia and China do? It might be appropriate for them to gather a consensus within the SCO to restrict Western access to Central Asian energy resources. Russia recently struck a couple of blows against the Western-backed Nabucco pipeline, which may explain Turkish foreign minister Babacan's current visit to Russia. Babacan may be trying to save an agreement between Russian Gazprom and Turkish Botaş.

Maybe, too, Putin can whisper something in Babacan's ear about possible Russian support for the "unique" situation of the Kurds under Turkish repression.

WHOSE HEGEMONY?

"We indeed may see epochal changes. We are at the end of the era of monetarism, where Federal Reserve monetary targeting was implemented by free market ideologues frustrated with the stagnation of New Deal and post-World War II central government planning strategies."
~ Richard C. Cook.

For those who doubt my suggestions that Kurds should keep an eye on China to see what kinds of deals can be made in the Far East, here's a little news update for you from the last few days.

From the UK's Telegraph:

The Chinese government has begun a concerted campaign of economic threats against the United States, hinting that it may liquidate its vast holding of US treasuries if Washington imposes trade sanctions to force a yuan revaluation.

Two officials at leading Communist Party bodies have given interviews in recent days warning - for the first time - that Beijing may use its $1.33 trillion (£658bn) of foreign reserves as a political weapon to counter pressure from the US Congress.

[ . . . ]

Described as China's "nuclear option" in the state media, such action could trigger a dollar crash at a time when the US currency is already breaking down through historic support levels.

It would also cause a spike in US bond yields, hammering the US housing market and perhaps tipping the economy into recession. It is estimated that China holds over $900bn in a mix of US bonds.

That would totally screw the system, wouldn't it?

Commentary on that from one of Reagan's former assistant Secretary of Treasury--I particularly like the title on this one:

Early this morning China let the idiots in Washington, and on Wall Street, know that it has them by the short hairs. Two senior spokesmen for the Chinese government observed that China’s considerable holdings of US dollars and Treasury bonds “contributes a great deal to maintaining the position of the dollar as a reserve currency.”

Should the US proceed with sanctions intended to cause the Chinese currency to appreciate, “the Chinese central bank will be forced to sell dollars, which might lead to a mass depreciation of the dollar.”

If Western financial markets are sufficiently intelligent to comprehend the message, US interest rates will rise regardless of any further action by China. At this point, China does not need to sell a single bond. In an instant, China has made it clear that US interest rates depend on China, not on the Federal Reserve.

The precarious position of the US dollar as reserve currency has been thoroughly ignored and denied. The delusion that the US is “the world’s sole superpower,” whose currency is desirable regardless of its excess supply, reflects American hubris, not reality. This hubris is so extreme that only 6 weeks ago McKinsey Global Institute published a study that concluded that even a doubling of the US current account deficit to $1.6 trillion would pose no problem.

Strategic thinkers, if any remain who have not been purged by neocons, will quickly conclude that China’s power over the value of the dollar and US interest rates also gives China power over US foreign policy. The US was able to attack Afghanistan and Iraq only because China provided the largest part of the financing for Bush’s wars.

And, just to rub a little salt in the wound, here's something on "NATO's rival" holding its first joint military exercise:

Russian and Chinese troops are joining forces this week in the first military exercises by an international organisation that is regarded in some quarters as a potential rival to Nato.

Thousands of soldiers and 500 combat vehicles will take part in “Peace Mission 2007”, organised by the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in the Chelyabinsk region of Russia. Russian officials have also proposed an alliance between the SCO and a body representing most of the former Soviet republics.

Scores of Russian and Chinese aircraft begin joint exercises tomorrow before a week of military manoeuvres from Thursday that will include Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. At least 6,500 troops are involved in what is described as an antiterror exercise.

Colonel-General Vladimir Moltenskoi, the deputy commander of Russian ground forces, said: “The exercise will involve practically all SCO members for the first time in its history.”

Staff officers from Uzbekistan, the sixth SCO member, will also attend in what is being regarded as a major extension of the organisation’s capabilities.

Let's not forget that Iran has observer status in the SCO, so not only does China not want appreciation of the yuan, it doesn't want a US attack against Iran and will not finance such an attack.

For more background on dollar hegemony, see a little something by Henry C.K. Liu at Asia Times.

Who's hegemony is it now and who says there's no new Cold War?

UPPING THE ANTE

“Control your own destiny or someone else will.”
~ Jack Welch.

UPDATE ON US RAID IN HEWLÊR:


NPR has an audio report on the incident from Hewlêr. According to pêşmerge, there was a stand off between them and a three-HUMVEE convoy of American forces outside the Hewlêr airport, which lasted about an hour. The pêşmerge surrounded the Americans and aimed their weapons at them, holding them in place because they were in Kurdish territory without authorization.


Bijî pêşmerge!

Very interesting, so please give the report a listen. Sounds like the KRG is really pissed off.

Since the news topic of the day seems to be Iran, let's continue with the same thing by first focusing on the situation in Iranian-occupied Kurdistan, from HULIQ:

Despite its wealth of oil and natural-gas reserves, Iran has faced a gas crunch as people turn up the heat this winter.

Partial or total energy cutoffs were reported in 11 provinces, with residents of colder western provinces worst affected, and exports to Turkey were suspended for five days.

The National Iranian Gas Company issued a statement on January 2 warning of shortages and asking Iranians -- including Tehran residents -- to moderate their consumption or face cuts.

There are energy shortages in 11 provinces, with partial or total cuts that include Kurdistan in western Iran, the northwestern Zanjan Province, and the provinces of East and West Azerbaijan.

[ . . . ]

In Saqqez, in Kurdistan Province [Iranian-occupied Kurdistan], residents gathered outside the district governor's office on January 4 to protest eight days without sufficient gas supplies.

From there, some 200 protesters went to the city council, then to the town's central square, by which time they numbered about 1,000, according to advarnews.com. Protesters demanded that the government resolve such fundamental problems instead of attending to its high-profile nuclear program.

Fakhredin Heidari, the parliamentary representative for Saqqez and Baneh, wrote to President Mahmud Ahmadinejad on January 3 to complain about the situation.

Heidari reminded Ahmadinejad that on his last visit to Saqqez, the president responded to public outcry by promising that shortages would not happen again "this year." The lawmaker recounted the death of a family of five due to a faulty heater that they were forced to use because of a lack of gas.

Heidari asked whether Ahmadinejad would respond similarly if it were his family and that of the oil minister who had to spend the night in the cold.

He also accused gas authorities of "giving away" natural gas to states who side with Iran's opponents in the nuclear standoff, leaving none for Iranians.

Heidari struck a note that the president himself has played in many of his speeches since taking office 1 1/2 years ago -- that of social justice. The lawmaker questioned the justice of a situation in which "the negligence of some officials" leaves Saddez residents "shivering in the cold" or burning to death in their homes.

Lawmaker Amin Shabani, from Sanandaj in Kurdistan Province [Iranian-occupied Kurdistan], argued on January 5 that Oil Minister Kazem Vaziri-Hamaneh should be questioned in parliament if the gas shortages continue -- particularly in the country's colder western provinces. He said many western areas had experienced weeks of gas shortages or cutoffs.

Shabani said that such areas are living "entirely the opposite" of Ahmadinejad's reported campaign pledge to bring "oil to the people's tables" and oil wealth into Iranian homes. He said gas exports should be cut until domestic needs are met. He invited Vaziri-Hamaneh to visit Kurdistan "one day" and -- in his words -- "feel the cold...and properly answer how helpless people are to live" in near-freezing temperatures without gas, gasoline, or oil.

The crisis appears to have eased for now. Shabani said recently that there are currently sufficient supplies for the city of Sanandaj, and intermittent but less severe cuts in Saqqez and Baneh, according to ILNA on January 8.

But Shabani also warned ominously of a "100-percent possibility that with another cold wave, people in cold regions will face a fuel crisis."

So, there you have it. Energy resources necessary for survival in the fierce winter of Kurdistan are the first to be cut off as Iran suffers a fuel shortage, along with other regions filled with restive minorities. No doubt the fuel shortages are causing problems in those South Kurdistani towns bordering Iranian-occupied Kurdistan, since many of them purchase winter fuel from Rojhelat.

There are a couple of other articles describing the politics behind Iran's fuel shortage and these politics contribute to the sufferings of the Kurds and other minorities. The first is from the LATimes:

Iran's oil industry has raked in record amounts of cash during three years of high oil prices. But a new U.S. campaign to dry up financing for oil and natural gas development poses a threat to the republic's ability to continue exporting oil over the next two decades, many analysts say.

The campaign comes at a moment of unique vulnerability for Iran's oil industry, which also faces challenges from rising domestic energy consumption, international isolation, a populist spending spree by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and trouble closing contracts with foreign oil companies — a recipe for potential disaster in a nation with one of the world's largest reservoirs of oil.

[ . . . ]

If Iran were to suddenly stop exporting its 2.6 million barrels of oil a day, such as in the event of a military strike, world oil prices probably would skyrocket. But a gradual decline might be offset by other OPEC members, analysts say, particularly as Iraq increases its oil production and Saudi Arabia carries out plans for significant increases in its production capacity.

The US has had sanctions against Iran since 1979 and the seizure of the US Embassy in Teheran when the Islamic regime came into power. Now, however, it is applying more pressure to financial institutions, and not only to those based in the US but to international institutions as well. At the moment, the tactic seems to be working:

"Banks are constantly doing risk assessments about what kind of business they want to be involved in," Stuart Levey, Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a telephone interview.

"There's a lot out there suggesting that there's an element of coercion involved. But I think that for a lot of these executives, the main thing driving them is they really don't want to be involved in facilitating terrorism or proliferation or any other crime."

More than two decades of U.S. sanctions have had little effect on Iran's oil industry — U.S.-based companies have been replaced, largely by Europeans. But this new attack on financing has rapidly started to dry up potential loans on dozens of projects, according to oil industry insiders in Tehran and the West.

Any "element of coercion involved" is coming from the US, and if the American definition of terrorism as described in the US Code were consistently applied, not only would worldwide financial institutions have to cut off business with Iran, but with the US, too.

What are the possibilities that the current US tactic will backfire?

The LATimes article glosses over the possibility that China will involve itself with the further development of Iranian oil production facilities, saying "U.S. officials already have warned that they will seek to hold China accountable under Washington's unilateral sanctions laws if it proceeds with a $16-billion project to develop Iran's North Pars gas field." But China may not bow so easily to US pressure as banks do. For more on that, there's a detailed discussion at Political Affairs.net:

Iran facing a increasingly hostile US and Europeans has turned to Russia and China for investment and technical know-how for its oil and gas industries. China has the needed financial muscle and enough thirst for energy to disregard American pressures. China is already investing heavily in Iranian oil fields, securing for itself a portion of the oil and gas reserves. China with 1.3 billion people and fast growing economy is already the second largest oil consumer in the world. If China’s economic growth continues, it is estimated that by 2020 China’s energy needs will increase by 150 percent.

“China's expectation of growing future dependence on oil imports has brought it to acquire interests in exploration and production in places like Kazakhstan, Russia, Venezuela, Sudan, West Africa, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Canada. But despite its efforts to diversify its sources, China has become increasingly dependent on Middle East oil. Today, 58% of China's oil imports come from the region. By 2015, the share of Middle East oil will stand on 70%. Though historically China has had no long-standing strategic interests in the Middle East, its relationship with the region from where most of its oil comes is becoming increasingly important.”[8]

Last year China signed oil and gas contracts worth over $100 billion with Iran. China is heavily involved in developing the huge Yadavaran oil field. “If completed, the deal will allow China to buy 150,000 barrels of Iranian crude a day at market rates for 25 years as well as 250 million tons of liquefied natural gas. Under an initial agreement signed by the Sinopec Group in October 2004, China could pay Iran as much as $100 billion for the stake and the purchases of oil and gas over 25 years.” [9] Interestingly Royal Dutch Shell Plc works as technical consultant for Sinopec on Yadavaran field.

On 25 December 2006, National Offshore Oil Corp of China announced the signing of a $16 billion memorendom of understanding to develop Iran’s North Pars gas field and build liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants in Iran. The project is expected to take 8 years to complete.

The article goes on to describe Russia's interest in Iran's energy resources along with its desire to set up an OPEC-style organization which would include a number of Central Asian republics, Ukraine, and Belarus. Iran was granted observer status with the SCO in 2005 and has since applied for full membership.

Let's review, from yesterday's post:

The US does not want democracy in Iran, either. It wants regime change. Regime change does not equal democracy. Regime change does not stabilize the region, but it does stabilize US hegemony.

From the Political Affairs.net article:

The current US strategy is to starve the Iranian oil and gas industries of new investments, thereby reducing the Iranian government’s revenues which are hoped will in turn reduce Iran’s ability to maintain not only its armed forces, but also the government’s social obligations to its people (subsidies, salaries, etc.). It is hoped that this combined with international isolation and (with the help of Saudi Arabia) a reduction in oil prices (OPEC crude basket price: $51.25 per barrel on 8/1/07) will not only cripple the Iranian economy, but also (possibly) lead to a regime change. All attacks on the economy was being presented under the guise of stopping Iran from developing WMDs, and in particular Nuclear weapons.

It's a very high-stakes game of poker the US is playing with Iran. What if Iran were to Washington's bluff? What if Iran "were to suddenly stop exporting its 2.6 million barrels of oil a day," but not as a result of a military strike but because it chose to remove its oil from the world market and sell only to SCO countries, namely China? What if it granted more development contracts to China, guaranteeing a certain percentage of oil to be sold to China over the next 25 years, as in the Yadavaran development project? What would happen to Europe with such a scenario?

This would be a sort of counterbalance between regional hegemonies, given that Western oil companies are busily trying to finalize their 30-year, 75%-profit deal in Iraq, as Britain's The Independent reported last weekend.

Is that what the new "surge" in Iraq is all about? If not, why are US senators "grilling" Condoleeza Rice over the lack of progress with Iraq's oil law?

Iraq's government is hammering out an oil law to regulate foreign investment. But it has been held up by disagreements over how revenues will be divided between provinces and the central government, and over who will have authority to sign contracts with foreign companies.

Sununu said he had been briefed on the oil law recently by members of the White House National Security Council, and had received a top-secret briefing from individuals he did not identify.

[ . . . ]

The contract issue is vital to Iraq's future as a solution favoring the regions would devolve power over its most valuable resource to the majority Shi'ites and the Kurds whose regions are home to the country's most coveted oil fields.

[ . . . ]

Ethnic Kurds whose region includes the country's northern oil fields including the giant Kirkuk field have signed some contracts with foreign oil companies, spurring confusion over who has the authority to ink contracts.

Rice said the oil law would not give the Kurds such authority.

"Even though the Kurds might have been expected ... to insist that they will simply control all the resources themselves, that's not what the oil law does," Rice said.

Are the Başûrî going to be left out in the cold like the Rojhelatî? We'll all know the answer to that when the oil law is made public. In the meantime, there's Iran, China, and Russia . . . and "A 16-year cycle of treachery" at the hands of the US.

How many more cycles of treachery must come and go before the Başûri leadership learns to build alliances with its brother and sister Kurds still under occupation, before all other alliances?