Afghan Pipeline Route
“US to launch Fallujah-style attack in Afghanistan
As US and British troops prepare to attack the town of Marjah in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province, military commanders and the media are openly comparing the operation to the November 2004 siege of Fallujah, one of the bloodiest war crimes of the Iraq war.
The operation in central Helmand province, long an area of intense resistance to the US-led occupation, will constitute the largest military offensive since Washington invaded the country in October 2001. At least 15,000 troops are expected to lay siege to the Helmand river valley town, which has 80,000 inhabitants and is said by the US military to be a stronghold of the Taliban.
A total of 125,000 people live in the district around Marjah, which is an agricultural center 350 miles west of Kabul. The population has been swelled by Afghans fleeing villages occupied by US Marines last summer, following President Barack Obama’s order shortly after he took office to send 21,000 more troops into Afghanistan.
US Marines, frustrated and enraged over casualties suffered at the hands of an unseen enemy who is able to attack and then blend back into the local population, will be unleashed against the town in a violent military assault, with predictable results.
This is a terrible idea. Most people in the U.S. want no part of this. The LA Times quotes the mentality behind this coming assault, during which many people will most assuredly die.
“Reporting from Camp Leatherneck, Afghanistan — U.S. Marines and the Afghan army plan a major assault on Taliban fighters in Marja, the last main community under the militants’ control in what had been a largely lawless area of the Helmand River Valley, a top Marine said Wednesday.
“We are going to gain control,” Col. George “Slam” Amland told reporters. “We are going to alter the ecosystem considerably.”. . . . .
Marine and NATO leaders want sprawling Helmand province to be a showpiece of the “clear, hold, build and transition” counterinsurgency strategy, in which Taliban fighters are forced out of a region and then a “civilian surge” begins to rebuild war-ravaged communities and bolster villagers’ confidence in their provincial and national governments.”
Helmand is the crucial area to the planned natural gas pipeline that the U.S. has been wanting to control since the early days of the Bush administration, and probably before.
See: A “Necessary War” — for a Gas Pipeline
U.S. policy has been to build pipelines from the Caspian avoiding Russia or Iran. Construction of the TAPI (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) pipeline which will pump the gas straight to the Indian Ocean and on to world markets has been long delayed due to the fighting in Afghanistan.
The pipeline will run through Helmand province, then into Pakistan’s Balochistan. If it all works out, this will represent a highly significant improvement in the geostrategic position of the U.S. in the region, including in the event of another world war (such as might be provoked by a U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities and unpredictable repercussions of such action).”
Change in ecosystem is right. The U.S. government apparently wants the Taliban fighters forced out so we can build the pipeline there into Pakistan that we have long planned. This is not about a war on terrorists, this probably has always been a war about a pipeline, and energy resources. Keep an eye on where the main fighting is. It’s often near Pakistan in Helmand province, where the pipeline needs to run.
To the people who believe Obama really cares about climate change, it will come as quite a surprise to see that we are fighting yet another war for fossil fuels. A president who is fighting a war for a pipeline and more fossil fuels isn’t planning on seriously dealing with climate change, unless it’s via some method of geoengineering.
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