NOVANEWS

NOVANEWS

China’s Land Bridge to Turkey creates new Eurasian Geopolitical Potentials      

…by F. William Engdahl

The prospect of an unparalleled Eurasian economic boom lasting into the next Century and beyond is at hand.

The first steps binding the vast economic space are being constructed with a number of little-publicized rail links connecting China, Russia, Kazakhstan and parts of Western Europe.

It is becoming clear to more people in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Eurasia including China and Russia that their natural tendency to build these markets faces only one major obstacle.

And that is NATO and the US Pentagon’s Full Spectrum Dominance obsession.  Rail infrastructure is a major key to building vast new economic markets across Eurasia.

China and Turkey are in discussions to build a new high-speed railway link across Turkey. If completed it would be the country’s largest railway project ever, even including the pre-World War I Berlin-Baghdad Railway link.

The project was perhaps the most important agenda item, far more so than Syria during talks in Beijing between Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Chinese leadership in early April.

The proposed rail link would run from Kars on the easternmost border with Armenia, through the Turkish interior on to Istanbul where it would connect to the Marmaray rail tunnel now under construction that runs under the Bosphorus strait. Then it would continue to Edirne near the border to Greece and Bulgaria in the European Union.

It will cost an estimated $35 billion. The realization of the Turkish link would complete a Chinese Trans-Eurasian Rail Bridge project that would bring freight from China to Spain and England.[1]

The Kars-Edirne line would reduce travel time across Turkey by two-thirds from 36 hours down to 12. Under an agreement signed between China and Turkey in October 2010, China has agreed to extend loans of $30 billion for the planned rail network.[2]

In addition a Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway connecting Azerbaijan’s capital of Baku to Kars is under construction, which greatly increases the strategic importance of the Edirne-Kars line. For China it would put a critical new link in its railway infrastructure across Eurasia to markets in Europe and beyond.

With the planned connection of the Marmaray project under the Bosphorus to the Edirne-Kars high-speed railway line, a train line from China’s easternmost Lianyungang to Spain and England would be completed. (Map: Yunus Emre Hatunoğlu)

Erdogan’s visit to Beijing was significant for other reasons. It was the first such high level trip of a Turkish Prime Minister to China since 1985.

Turkish and Chinese leaders meet in Beijing China to explore economic opportunities between the two largest growing economies in 2012. Several deals were signed mainly in the areas of energy and technology

The fact that Erdogan was also granted a high-level meeting with Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, the man slated to be next Chinese President, and was granted an extraordinary visit to China’s oil-rich Xinjiang Province also shows the high priority China is placing on its relations with Turkey, a key emerging strategic force in the Middle East.

Xinjiang is a highly sensitive part of China as it hosts some 9 million ethnic Uyghurs who share a Turkic heritage with Turkey as well as nominal adherence to the Turkish Sunni branch of Islam.

In July 2009 the US government, acting through the National Endowment for Democracy, the regime-change NGO it finances, backed a major Uyghur uprising in which many Han Chinese shop owners were killed or injured. Washington in turn blamed the riots on Beijing as part of a strategy of escalating pressure on China. [3]

During Uyghur riotsin Xinjiang in 2009, Erdogan accused Beijing of “genocide” and attacked the Chinese on human rights, a dicey issue for Turkey given their Kurd ethnic problems. Clearly economic priorities from both sides have now changed the political calculus.

Building the world’s greatest market

Contrary to the dogma of Milton Friedman and his monetarist followers, markets are never “free.” They are always manmade. The essential element to building new markets is building infrastructure, and for the vast landmass of Eurasia railroad linkages, ideally high-speed rail links, are essential to those new markets and the fastest way to economic prosperity for all concerned.

With the end of the Cold War in 1990 the vast under-developed land space of Eurasia became open again. This space contains some forty percent of total land in the world, much of it prime unspoiled agriculture land; it contains three-fourth of the entire world population, an asset of incalculable worth.

It consists of some eighty eight of the world’s countries and three-fourths of known world energy resources as well as every mineral known needed for industrialization. North America as an economic potential, rich as she is, pales by comparison.

The Turkish-China railway discussion is but one part of a vast Chinese strategy to weave a network of inland rail connections across the Eurasian Continent.

The aim is to literally create the world’s greatest new economic space and in turn a huge new market for not just China but all Eurasian countries, the Middle East and Western Europe.

Direct rail service is faster and cheaper than either ships or trucks, and much cheaper than airplanes. For manufactured Chinese or other Eurasian products the rail land bridge links are creating vast new economic trading activity all along the rail line.

Two factors have made this prospect realizable for the first time since the Second World War. First the collapse of the Soviet Union has opened up the land space of Eurasia in entirely new ways as has the opening of China to Russia and its Eurasian neighbors, overcoming decades of mistrust. This is being met by the eastward expansion of the European Union to the countries of the former Warsaw Pact.

The demand for faster rail transport over the vast Eurasian distances is clear. China’s container port activity and that of its European and North American destinations is reaching a saturation point as volumes of container traffic explode at double-digit rates.

Singapore recently displaced Rotterdam as the world’s largest port in volume terms. The growth rate for container port throughput in China in 2006, before outbreak of the world financial crisis was some 25% annually. In 2007 Chinese ports accounted for some 28 per cent of world container port throughput. [4]

Singapore – A Container Port on Steroids

However there is another aspect to the Chinese and, to an extent, the Russian land bridge strategies. By moving trade flows over land, it is more secure in the face of escalating military tensions between the nations of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, especially China and Russia, and NATO.

Sea transport must flow through highly vulnerable narrow passageways or choke points such as the Malaysian Straits of Malacca.

The Turkish Kars-Edirne railway would form an integral part of an entire web of Chinese-initiated rail corridors across the Eurasian landmass.

Following the example of how rail infrastructure transformed the economic space of Europe and later of America during the late 19^th Century, the Chinese government, which today stands as the world’s most efficient railroad constructor, has quietly been extending its rail links into Central Asia and beyond for several years.

They have proceeded in segments, one reason the vast ambition of their grand rail infrastructure has drawn so little attention to date in the West outside the shipping industry.

China builds Second Eurasian Land Bridge

By 2011 China had completed a Second Eurasian Land Bridge running from China’s port of Lianyungang on the East China Sea through to Kazakhstan’s Druzhba and on to Central Asia, West Asia and Europe to various European destinations and finally to Rotterdam Port of Holland on the Atlantic coast.

The Second Eurasian Land Bridge is a new railway connecting the Pacific and the Atlantic that was completed by China to Druzhba in Kazakhstan. This newest Eurasia land bridge extends west in China through six provinces–Jiangsu, Anhui, Henan, Shaanxi, Gansu, and Xinjiang autonomous region, which neighbors respectively with Shandong Province, Shanxi Province, Hubei Province, Sichuan Province, Qinghai Province, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region and Inner Mongolia.

That covers about 360,000 square kilometers, some 37% of the total land space of China. About 400 million people live in the areas, which accounts for 30% of the total population of the country. Outside of China, the land bridge covers over 40 countries and regions in both Asia and Europe, and is particularly important for the countries in Central and West Asia that don’t have sea outlets.

In 2011 China’s Vice Premier Wang Qishan announced plans to build a new high-speed railway link within Kazakhstan, linking the cities of Astana and Almaty, to be ready in 2015.  The Astana-Almaty line, with a total length of 1050 kilometers, employing China’s advanced rail-building technology, will allow high-speed trains to run at a speed of 350 kilometers per hour.

DB Schenker Rail Automotive is now transporting auto parts from Leipzig to Shenyang in northeastern China for BMW. Trains loaded with parts and components depart from DB Schenker’s Leipzig trans-shipment terminal in a three-week, 11,000 km journey to BMW’s Shenyang plant in the Liaoning province, where components are used in the assembly of BMW vehicles. Beginning in late November 2011, trains bound for Shenyang departed Leipzig once each day.

“With a transit time of 23 days, the direct trains are twice as fast as maritime transport, followed by over-the-road transport to the Chinese hinterland,” says Dr. Karl-Friedrich Rausch, member of the management board for DB Mobility Logistics’ Transportation and Logistics division. The route reaches China via Poland, Belarus, and Russia. Containers have to be transferred by crane to different gauges twice—first to Russian broad gauge at the Poland-Belarus border, then back to standard gauge at the Russia-China border in Manzhouli.[5]

In May 2011 a daily direct rail freight service was launched between the Port of Antwerp, Europe’s second-largest port, and Chongqing, the industrial hub in China’s southwest. That greatly speeded rail freight transport across Eurasia to Europe. Compared to the 36 days for maritime transport from east China’s ports to west Europe, the Antwerp-Chongqing Rail Freight service now takes 20 to 25 days, and the aim is to cut that to 15 to 20 days.

Westbound cargo includes automotive and technological goods, eastbound shipments are mostly chemicals. The project was a major priority for the Antwerp Port and the Belgian government in cooperation with China and other partners. The service is run by Swiss inter-modal logistics provider Hupac, their Russian partner Russkaya Troyka and Eurasia Good Transport over a distance of more than 10,000km, starting from Port of Antwerp through to Germany and Poland, and further to Ukraine, Russia and Mongolia before reaching Chongqing in China.[6]

The Second Eurasian Land Bridge runs 10,900 kilometers in length, with some 4100 kilometers of that in China. Within China the line runs parallel to one of the ancient routes of the Silk Road. The rail line continues across China into Druzhba where it links with the broader gauge rail lines of Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan is the largest inland country in the world.

As Chinese rail and highways have expanded west, trade between Kazakhstan and China has been booming. From January to October 2008, goods passing through the Khorgos port between the two nations reached 880,000 tons – over 250% growth compared with the same period a year before. Trade between China and Kazakhstan is expected to grow 3 to 5 fold by 2013. As of 2008, only about 1% of the goods shipped from Asia to Europe were delivered by overland routes, meaning the room for expansion is considerable.[7]

From Kazakhstan the lines go on via Russia and Belarus over Poland to the markets of the European Union.

Another line goes to Tashkent in Uzbekistan, Central Asia’s largest city of some two millions. Another line goes west to Turkmenistan’s capital Asgabat and to the border of Iran.[8]  With some additional investment, these links, now tied to the vast expanse and markets of China could open new economic possibilities in much-neglected regions of Central Asia.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) could provide a well-suited vehicle for coordination of a broad Eurasian rail infrastructure coordination to maximize these initial rail links. The members of the SCO, formed in 2001, include China, Kazakhstan, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikstan, Uzbekistan with Iran, India, Mongolia and Pakistan as Observer Status countries.

Russia’s Land Bridge

Russia is well positioned to benefit greatly from such an SCO strategy. The First Eurasian Land Bridge runs through Russia along the Trans-Siberian Railway, first completed in 1916 to unify the Russian Empire. The Trans-Siberian remains the longest single rail line in the world at 9,297 kilometers, a tribute to the vision of Russian Sergei Witte in the 1890s.

The world’s longest railway, the Trans-Siberian Railway in Russia, is 5,777 miles (9,297 kilometers) long. It runs from Moscow to Vladivostok.I

The Trans-Siberian Railway, also called the Northern East-West Corridor, runs from the Russian Far East Port of Vladivostok and links in Europe to the Port of Rotterdam some 13,000 kilometers. At present it is the less attractive for Pacific-to-Atlantic freight because of maintenance problems and maximum speeds of 55 km.

There are attempts to better use the Trans-Siberian Land Bridge. In January 2008 a long distance Eurasian rail freight service, the “Beijing-Hamburg Container Express” was successfully tested by the German railway Deutsche Bahn. It completed the 10,000 km (6,200 miles) journey in 15 days to link the Chinese capital to the German port city, going through Mongolia, the Russian Federation, Belarus and Poland. By ship to the same markets takes double the time or some 30 days.

This route, which began commercial service in 2010 incorporates a section of the existing Trans-Siberian Railway, a rail link using a broader gauge than either Chinese or European trains, meaning two offloads and reloads onto other trains at the China-Mongolia border and again at the Belarus-Poland border.

Were the Trans-Siberian railway passage across Russian Eurasian space to be modernized and upgraded to accommodate high-speed freight traffic, it would add a significant new economic dimension to the economic development of Russia’s interior regions. The Trans-Siberian is double-tracked and electrified. The need is minimally to improve some segments to insure a better integration of all the elements to make it a more attractive option for Eurasian freight to the west.

There are strong indications the new Putin presidency will turn more of its attention to Eurasia. Modernization of the First Eurasian Land Bridge would be a logical way to accomplish much of that development by literally creating new markets and new economic activity.

With the bond markets of the United States and Europe flooded with toxic waste and state bankruptcy fears, issuance of Russian state bonds for modernization or even a new parallel high-speed rail Land Bridge linking to the certainty of growing freight traffic across Eurasia would have little difficulty finding eager investors.

Russia is currently in discussion with China and Chinese rail constructors who are bidding on construction of a planned $20 billion of new high-speed Russian rail track to be completed before the 2018 Russian hosting of the Soccer World Cup. China’s experience in building some 12,000 km of high speed rail in record time is a major asset for China’s bid. Significantly, Russia plans to raise $10 billion of the cost by issuing new railroad bonds.[9]

A Third Eurasian Land Bridge?

In 2009 at the Fifth Pan-Pearl River Delta Regional (PPRD) Cooperation and Development Forum, a government-sponsored event, the Yunnan provincial government announced its intention to accelerate construction of needed infrastructure to build a third Eurasian continental land bridge that will link south China to Rotterdam via Turkey over land. This is part of what Erdogan and Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao discussed in Beijing this April.

The network of inland roads for the land bridge within Yunnan province will be completed by 2015, said Yunnan governor Qin Guangrong. The project starts from coastal ports in Guangdong, with the Port of Shenzhen being the most important. It will ultimately go all the way through Kunming to Myanmar, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Iran, entering Europe from Turkey.[10]

The route would cut some 6,000-km from the sea journey between the Pearl River Delta and Rotterdam and allow production from China’s eastern manufacturing centers to reach Asia, Africa and Europe. The proposal is for completing a series of missing rail and modern highway links totaling some 1,000 Km, not that inconceivable.

In neighboring Myanmar a mere 300 km of railways and highways are lacking in order to link the railways in Yunnan with the highway network of Myanmar and South Asia. It will help China pave the way for building a land channel to the Indian Ocean.

The third Eurasian Land Bridge will cross 20 countries in Asia and Europe and have a total length of about 15,000 kilometers, which is 3,000 to 6,000 kilometers shorter than the sea route entering at the Indian Ocean from the southeast coast via the Malacca Straits. The total annual trade volume of the regions the route passes through was nearly US$300 billion in 2009.

Ultimately the plan is for a branch line that would also start in Turkey, cross Syria and Palestine, and end in Egypt, facilitating transportation from China to Africa. Clearly the Pentagon’s AFRICOM and the US-backed Arab Spring unrest directly impacts that extension, though for how long at this point is unclear. [11]

The geopolitical dimension

Not every major international player is pleased about the growing linkages binding the economies of Eurasia with western Europe and Africa. In his now famous 1997 book, “The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives”, former Presidential adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski noted,

“In brief, for the United States, Eurasian geo-strategy involves the purposeful management of geo-strategically dynamic states…To put it in a terminology that harkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geo-strategy are to prevent collusion and to

maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.” [12]

The “barbarians” that Brzezinski refers to are China and Russia and all in between. The Brzezinski term “imperial geo-strategy” refers to US strategic foreign policy. The “vassals” he identifies in the book as countries like Germany, Japan and other NATO “allies” of the US. That Brzezinski geopolitical notion remains US foreign policy today. [13]

The prospect of an unparalleled Eurasian economic boom lasting into the next Century and beyond is at hand. The first sinews of binding the vast economic space have been put in place or are being constructed with these rail links. It is becoming clear to more people in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Eurasia including China and Russia that their natural tendency to build these markets faces only one major obstacle: NATO and the US Pentagon’s Full Spectrum Dominance obsession.

In the period prior to World War I it was the decision in Berlin to build a rail land link to and through the Turkish Ottoman Empire from Berlin to Baghdad that was the catalyst for British strategists to incite the events that plunged Europe into the most destructive war in history to that date.

This time we have a chance to avoid a similar fate with the Eurasian development. More and more the economically stressed economies of the EU are beginning to look east and less to their west across the Atlantic for Europe’s economic future.

*F. William Engdahl is author of several books on contemporary geopolitics including A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order. He is available via his website atwww.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net

Endnotes:

NOVANEWS

http://www.thenational.ae

Turkey has discreetly begun preparations for a buffer zone on the Syrian side of the border between the two countries amid fears that hundreds of thousands could flee the fighting in Syria. 

One official said about 500 specialised soldiers had arrived in the area recently to look at military options for the buffer zone and the handling of more refugees.

Some residents said they had seen high-ranking officers of the Turkish military inspecting the border region. Others said newly-established no-go areas in some sections of the border were also linked to preparations for the buffer zone.

The observations are in line with Turkish media reports that Turkey’s military, intelligence service and foreign ministry were drawing up plans.

The purpose of a buffer zone would be to give Syrians a chance to flee the fighting without having to cross the border, as Bashar Al Assad‘s forces continue the brutal repression of an uprising against his regime and the threat of full-scale civil war grows.

But it is unclear whether countries such as Turkey would be willing to enforce such a zone without consent from the Damascus regime and risk a military confrontation.

Veysel Ayhan, an analyst at the Centre for Middle Eastern Strategic Studies (Orsam), a think tank in Ankara, said yesterday the preparations showed Turkey wanted to be ready for an emergency, but there were clear conditions for a buffer zone.

One was a sudden, massive wave of refugees from Syria, “not just ten thousand, but a hundred thousand” that would overwhelm Turkey’s capabilities, Mr Ayhan said.

Another condition would be international support for such a move, he said.

“If there is a situation like in Iraq after the Gulf War, nobody will object,” Mr Ayhan said. Several hundred thousand Kurds from Iraq fled to Turkey after a campaign by Iraqi government forces in 1991.

He said a possible buffer zone would not be a Turkish project, but an international one, with the possible involvement of Nato and Arab states.

A Turkish official confirmed contingency planning to deal with a potentially much bigger wave of refugees from Syria, but stressed no plan for a buffer zone was in place “at the moment”.

But Mr Ayhan said the situation on the ground could change swiftly. “It all depends on the fighting in Syria,” he said. “Within a week, hundreds of thousands of people could come over.”

In the run-up to a meeting in Istanbul on April 1 of the Friends of Syria, a group of western and Arab countries trying to pressure the Syrian government into halting its crackdown on opponents, Turkey said it was considering building a buffer zone on Syrian soil.

“Buffer zone, security zone: there is work being done on all of those,” Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, said last week. “Many alternatives are under discussion.”

Ankara is concerned that the number of refugees from Syria could reach proportions that would make it impossible to care for all the Syrians inside Turkey.

About 16,000 Syrians have found shelter in Turkish refugee camps, but Ahmet Lutfi Akar, the head of the Turkish Red Crescent, has suggested up to half a million could cross the border.

The fears of an increase in the numbers crossing into Turkey come as the fighting in Syria moves closer to the border.

Mehmet Karabas, a farmer in the Turkish village of Guveccikoy overlooking the border, woke up at about 3am recently to the sound of a strange noise.

It was not the usual sound of gunshots often carried over on the night wind from Syria. This time, Mr Karabas, 22, heard the voice of a man begging for his life.

“For the love of God, don’t shoot me,” the man cried in Arabic. Mr Karabas ran down the hill towards the border that winds through the valley below, “but there was nobody there”.

Villagers in Guveccikoy see and hear signs of the conflict in neighbouring Syria almost daily. The nightly explosions and gunfire have come so close that bullets from Syria hit homes in Turkish villages.

“I have become used to it,” said one elderly villager.

NOVANEWS

The New Mediterranean Oil and Gas Bonanza

Part II: Rising energy tensions in the Aegean—Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Syria

By F. William Engdahl, author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order with permission

The discovery in late 2010 of the huge natural gas bonanza off Israel’s Mediterranean shores triggered other neighboring countries to look more closely at their own waters. The results revealed that the entire eastern Mediterranean is swimming in huge untapped oil and gas reserves. That discovery is having enormous political, geopolitical as well as economic consequences. It well may have potential military consequences too.

Preliminary exploration has confirmed similarly impressive reserves of gas and oil in the waters off Greece, Turkey, Cyprus and potentially, Syria.

Greek ‘energy Sirtaki’

Not surprisingly, amid its disastrous financial crisis the Greek government began serious exploration for oil and gas. Since then the country has been in a curious kind of a dance with the IMF and EU governments, a kind of “energy Sirtaki” over who will control and ultimately benefit from the huge resource discoveries there.

In December 2010, as it seemed the Greek crisis might still be resolved without the by-now huge bailouts or privatizations, Greece’s Energy Ministry formed a special group of experts to research the prospects for oil and gas in Greek waters. Greece’s Energean Oil & Gas began increased investment into drilling in the offshore waters after a successful smaller oil discovery in 2009. Major geological surveys were made. Preliminary estimates now are that total offshore oil in Greek waters exceeds 22 billion barrels in the Ionian Sea off western Greece and some 4 billion barrels in the northern Aegean Sea.[i]

The southern Aegean Sea and Cretan Sea are yet to be explored, so the numbers could be significantly higher. An earlier Greek National Council for Energy Policy report stated that “Greece is one of the least explored countries in Europe regarding hydrocarbon (oil and gas-w.e.) potentials.”[ii] According to one Greek analyst, Aristotle Vassilakis, “surveys already done that have measured the amount of natural gas estimate it to reach some nine trillion dollars.” [iii]

Even if only a fraction of that is available, it would transform the finances of Greece and the entire region.

Tulane University oil expert David Hynes told an audience in Athens recently that Greece could potentially solve its entire public debt crisis through development of its new-found gas and oil. He conservatively estimates that exploitation of the reserves already discovered could bring the country more than €302 billion over 25 years. The Greek government instead has just been forced to agree to huge government layoffs, wage cuts and pension cuts to get access to a second EU and IMF loan that will only drive the country deeper into an economic decline. [i]

Notably, the IMF and EU governments, among them Germany, demand instead that Greece sell off its valuable ports and public companies, among them of course, Greek state oil companies, to reduce state debt. Under the best of conditions the asset selloffs would bring the country perhaps €50 billion.[ii] Plans call for the Greek state-owned natural gas company, DEPA, to privatize 65% of its shares to reduce debt.[iii] Buyers would likely come from outside the country, as few Greek companies are in a position in the crisis to take it.

One significant problem, aside from the fact the IMF demands Greece selloff its public oil interests, is the fact that Greece has not declared a deeper exclusive economic zone like most other countries which drill for oil. There was seen little need until now. An Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) gives a state special mineral rights in its declared waters under the Third United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which came into force in November 1994. Under UNCLOS III, a nation can claim an EEZ of 200 nautical miles from its coastline.[iv]

Turkey has previously stated it would consider it an act of war if Greece drilled further into the Aegean. [v] Until now that did not seem to have serious economic consequences, as no oil or gas reserves were known. Now it’s an entirely different ballgame.

Evangelos Kouloumbis, former Greek Industry Minister recently stated that Greece could cover “50% its needs with the oil to be found in offshore fields in the Aegean Sea, and the only obstacle to that is the Turkish opposition for an eventual Greek exploitation.”[vi]

Hillary dances the Sirtaki too…

In July 2011 Washington joined the Greek energy Sirtaki. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton flew to Athens with energy on her mind. That was clear by the fact she brought with her her Special Envoy for Eurasian Energy, Richard Morningstar. Morningstar was husband Bill Clinton’s Special Advisor to the President on Caspian Basin Energy Diplomacy, and one of the Washington strategic operatives in the geopolitical battles to dismember the Soviet Union and surround a chaos-ridden Russia with hostile pro-NATO former states of the USSR. Morningstar, along with his controversial aide, Matthew Bryza, have been the key Washington architects of Washington’s geopolitically-motivated oil and gas pipeline projects that would isolate Russia and its Gazprom gas resources from the EU. Bryza is an open opponent of Russian Gazprom’s South Stream gas pipeline that would transit the eastern Mediterranean states.[vii] Clearly the Obama Administration is not at all neutral about the new Greek oil and gas discoveries. Three days after Hillary left Athens the Greek government proposed creation of a new government agency to run tenders for oil and gas surveys and ultimate drilling bids.

Morningstar is the US specialist in economic warfare against Russian energy diplomacy. He was instrumental in backing the controversial B-T-C oil pipeline from Baku through Tbilisi in Georgia across to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, a costly enterprise designed solely to bypass Russian oil pipeline transit. He has openly proposed that Greece and Turkey drop all historic differences over Cyprus, over numerous other historic issues and agree to jointly pool all their oil and gas reserves in the Aegean Sea. He also has told the Greek government it should forget cooperation with Moscow on the South Stream and Bourgas-Alexandroupolis gas pipeline projects. [viii]

According to a report from Greek political analyst Aristotle Vassilakis published in July 2011, Washington’s motive for pushing Greece to join forces with Turkey on oil and gas is to force a formula to divide resulting oil and gas revenues. According to his report, Washington proposes that Greece get 20% of revenues, Turkey another 20% and the US-backed Noble Energy Company of Houston Texas, the company successfully drilling in the Israeli and Greek offshore waters, would get the lion’s share of 60%.[ix]

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s husband, Bill, is a Washington lobbyist for Noble Energy. ^[1]

And some Cyprus complications…

As if these geopolitical complications were not enough, Noble Energy, has also discovered huge volumes of gas off the waters of the Republic of Cyprus. In December 2011 Noble announced a successful well offshore Cyprus in a field estimated to hold at least 7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Noble’s CEO, Charles Davidson remarked to the press, “This latest discovery in Cyprus further highlights the quality and significance of this world-class basin.” [2]

Cyprus is a complicated piece of real estate. In the 1970’s as declassified US Government documents recently revealed, then-US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger actively encouraged and facilitated arms to the Turkish regime of Kissinger’s former Harvard student and then- Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit, to stage a military invasion of Cyprus in 1974, in effect partitioning the island between an ethnically Turkish north and an ethnically Greek Republic of Cyprus in the south, a division which remains. The Kissinger strategy, backed by the British was believed intended to create a pretext for a permanent US and British military listening post in the eastern Mediterranean during the Cold War.[3]

Today the ethnically Greek south, where Noble has discovered large gas deposits, is a member of the EU. Its President, Demetris Christofias, is the only national leader in the European Union who is a communist. He is also a close friend of Israel, and of Russia. In addition, he is a major critic of American foreign policy, as well as of Turkey.[4]

Now Israel is planning to build an underwater gas pipeline from the Israeli Levantine fields across Cyprus waters onto the Greek mainland where it would be sold on the EU market. The Cyprus and Israel governments have mutually agreed on delimitation of their respective economic zones, leaving Turkey in the cold. Turkey openly threatened Cyprus for signing the agreement with Noble Energy. That led to a Russian statement that it would not tolerate Turkish threats against Cyprus, further complicating Turkish-Russian relations. ^[5]

Turkish-Israeli relations, once quite friendly, have become increasingly strained in recent years under the Erdogan foreign policies. Ankara has expressed concern about Israel’s recent ties with its historic antagonists, Greece and the Greek side of Cyprus. Turkey’s ally the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, fears it could miss out on its fair share of the gas after Israel and Nicosia signed an agreement to divide the 250 kilometers of sea that separate them.[6]

It becomes evident, especially when we glance at a map of the eastern Mediterranean, that the oil and gas prospective bonanza there is a rapidly unfolding conflict zone of tectonic magnitude involving strategic US, Russian, EU, Israeli and Turkish, Syrian and Lebanese interests.

Endnotes:

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[1] Hugh Naylor, Vast gas fields found off Israel’s shores cause trouble at home and abroad, January 24, 2011, accessed in http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/middle-east/vast-gas-fields-found-off-israels-shores-cause-trouble-at-home-and-abroad#full.

[2] Noble Energy Press Release, Significant Natural Gas Discovery Offshore Republic of Cyprus, December 28, 2011, accessed in http://www.maritime-executive.com/article/significant-natural-gas-discovery-offshore-republic-of-cyprus.

[3] Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane, New documents link Kissinger to two 1970s coups, June 26, 2007, accessed in http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Intelligence_officers_confirm_Kissinger_role_in_0626.html.

[4] Yilan, Cyprus conflict defies ready solution, May 30, 2011, accessed inhttp://turkeymacedonia.wordpress.com/2011/05/30/cyprus-conflict-defies-ready-solution/.

[5] Stephen Blank, Turkey and Cyprus Gas: More Troubles Ahead in 2012, Turkey Analyst, vol. 5 no. 1, 9 January 2011, accessed in http://www.silkroadstudies.org/new/inside/turkey/2012/120109B.html.

[6] Hugh Naylor, op. cit.

[i] Chris Blake, Drilling for oil in the Aegean nay help ease Greece’s debt crisis, July 7, 2011, accessed inhttps://www.hellenext.org/reinventing-greece/2011/07/drilling-for-oil-in-the-aegean-may-help-ease-greeces-debt-crisis/

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] John Daly, Greece Considering Plugging Aegean Islands into Turkish Energy Grid, 22 November 2011,accessed in http://www.businessinsider.com/greece-considering-plugging-aegean-islands-into-turkish-energy-grid-2011-11.

[iv] United Nations, United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 10 December 1982: PART VI: CONTINENTAL SHELF, Article76, Definition of the continental shelf, accessed inhttp://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/part6.htm.

[v] Chris Blake, op. cit.

[vi] Ioannis Michaletos, op. cit.

[vii] Hellas Frappe, op. cit.

[viii] Ibid.

[ix] Ibid.

[i] Ioannis Michaletos, Greek Companies Step Up Offshore Oil Exploration—Large Reserves Possible, December 8, 2010, accessed in http://www.balkanalysis.com/greece/2010/12/08/greek-companies-step-up-offshore-oil-exploration-large-reserves-possible/.

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Hellas Frappe, Hillary came to Greece to seal oil exploration deals!, July 21, 2011, accessed inhttp://hellasfrappe.blogspot.com/2011/07/special-report-hillary-came-to-greece.html.

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guardian.co.uk

Turkey has called the violence in Syria “a crime against humanity” on the scale of the 1990s bloodshed in the Balkans, as a Red Cross convoy was once again barred from entering the Homs suburb of Baba Amr.

The comment by Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu follows similar remarks from the EU on Friday, which called for the documentation of war crimes in Syria.

“No government, no authority, under no circumstances, can endorse such a total massacre of its own people,” Davutoglu said. “The international community must speak louder. The lack of international consensus is giving Syria the courage to continue.”

The criticism came at the end of a week in which the UK and France closed their embassies in Syria, and China and Russia appeared to shift position in calling for President Bashar al-Assad‘s regime to admit UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos.

“The situation in the field seems to resemble Sarajevo or Srebrenica. This seems to be the way we are heading,” Davutoglu said at a joint news conference with Giulio Terzi, Italy’s foreign minister. “We believe that diplomatic pressure on the Assad regime must be increased. We say this not only from the point of view of the EU. We believe all international institutions must do this.”

China  urged the government and the rebels to immediately end all acts of violence, especially against civilians. A foreign ministry statement urged both sides to “launch an inclusive political dialogue with no preconditions” under the mediation of former UN secretary- eneral Kofi Annan, the newly appointed UN-Arab League envoy on the Syria crisis, .

On Friday, current UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon said he had received “grisly reports” that Assad’s troops were executing, imprisoning and torturing people in Homs. Syrian forces continued to pound the battered city and authorities handed over the bodies of two journalists killed in Baba Amr last month – including Marie Colvin of the Sunday Times – to diplomats in Damascus.

Meanwhile, the wounded French journalist Edith Bouvier described for the first time how she feared her attempt to escape from Homs had ended inside a dark, three-kilometre tunnel that rebels were using to supply the besieged district of Baba Amr when the Syrian army bombarded its exit.

Bouvier was abandoned, taped to a stretcher with a broken leg, as rebels and dozens of wounded headed back to the neighbourhood. “One of them placed his Kalashnikov on me. He put his hand on my head and said a prayer. It wasn’t very reassuring. Then he left,” Bouvier told Le Figaro newspaper, for which she was working in Syria. “I didn’t know what was going to happen. Was the exit blocked? Were Syrian soldiers going to enter? I wanted to run away, before remembering that I was taped to a stretcher.” Bouvier and French photographer William Daniels, who stayed with her, were finally rescued by a rebel who drove down the tunnel on a motorbike.

Concern was mounting for civilians in freezing conditions in battered Baba Amr, where trucks from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) were still blocked from entering. “The ICRC and Syrian Red Crescent are not yet in Baba Amr today. We are still in negotiations with authorities. It is important that we enter today,” ICRC spokesman Hicham Hassan said.

Anti-government activists said they feared troops were keeping out the ICRC to prevent aid workers witnessing a massacre. UN chief Ban blamed Damascus for the fate of civilians. “The brutal fighting has trapped civilians in their homes, without food, heat or electricity or medical care; without any chance of evacuating the wounded or burying the dead. People have been reduced to melting snow for drinking water. This atrocious assault is all the more appalling for having been waged by the government itself, systematically attacking its own people.”

Bashar Ja’afari, Syria’s UN ambassador, said Ban’s remarks included “extremely virulent rhetoric which confines itself to slandering a government based on reports, opinions or hearsay”.

Elsewhere in the country, Syrian state news agency Sana said a suicide car bomber in the town of Deraa, near the border with Jordan, had killed two people and wounded 20. Residents claimed seven people had been killed, and anti-Assad activists denied the attack was a suicide bombing. Rami Abdelrahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said anti-Assad fighters had earlier killed six soldiers and wounded nine in al-Herak.

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Serbia Vs. Turkey, Kosovars Vs. Kurds !!!

By Sir Vojislav Milosevic, Director, Center for Counter-terrorism & World Peace

Similar Crises Get Divergent Treatment in the White House and in the New York Times

The Kingdom of Corduene, which emerged from declining Selucid Empire, was located to the south and south-east of Lake Van, between Persia and Mesopotamia and ruled northern Mesopotamia and south-eastern Anatolia from 189 BC to AD 384.

At its zenith, the Roman Empire ruled large Kurdish inhabited areas, particulary the western and northern areas in the Middle East. The Kingdom Corduene became a vassal state of the Roman Republic in 66 BC and remained allied with the Romans until AD 384. The Kingdom of Corduene was situated to the east of Tigranocerta, that is, to the east and south of present-day Diyarbakir in south-east Turkey.

One of the earliest records of the phrase land of the Kurds is found in a Syriac Christian document of late antiquity, describing the stories of Christian saints of the Middle East, such as the Abdisho. When the Sassanid Marzbah asked Mar Abdisho about his place of origin, he replied that according to his parents, they were originally from Hazza, a village in Assyria.

However they were later driven out of Hazza by pagans, and settled in Tamanon, which according to Abdisho was in the land of the Kurds. Tamanon lies just north of the modern Iraq-Turkey border, while Hazza is 12 km southwest of modern Irbil In another passage in the same document, the region of the Khabur River is also identified as land of the Kurds.

Kurdistan

Ancient Kurdistan as Kard-uchi, during Alexander the Great’s Empire, 4th century BC

In the 16th century, after prolonged wars, Kurdish-inhabited areas were split between the Safavid and Ottomanempires. A major division of Kurdistan occurred in the aftermath of the Battle of Chaldiran in 1514, and was formalized in the 1639 Treaty of Zuhab.

Prior to World War I, most Kurds lived within the boundaries of the Ottoman Empire in the province of Kurdistan^]. After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Allies contrived to create several countries within its former boundaries – according to the never-ratified Treaty of Sèvres, Kurdistan, along with Armenia, were to be among them.

However, the reconquest of these areas by the forces of Kemal Atatürk (and other pressing issues) caused the Allies to accept the renegotiated Treaty of Lausanne and the borders of the modern Republic of Turkey – leaving the Kurds without a self-ruled region. Other Kurdish areas were assigned to the new British and Frenchmandated states of Iraq and Syria.

19th-century map showing the location of the Kingdom of Corduene in 60 B.C

An article in the New York Times reported on the trial in Turkey of captured Kurdish guerrilla leader Abdullah Ocalan. The Times provided background on the war between Kurdish separatist guerrillas and Turkish security forces:

The war that Ocalan has waged has cost more than 30,000 lives and made him the object of intense hatred. It has also made him a heroic figure to many Kurds who live in Turkey’s southeast.

Contrast this description with the way the New York Times presents the background of another, very similar, separatist war (3/27/99):

“The Serbian campaign against the ethnic Albanians has seen more than 2,000 killed in the last year, with hundreds of thousands of Kosovars driven from their homes, according to the United Nations.”

The two news articles quoted above appear to assign responsibility for casualties in each war to one or the other side in the conflict: In the case of Turkey, blame for the 30,000, mostly Kurdish, dead goes to the leader of the Kurdish rebels.

In the case of Yugoslavia, blame for the 2,000, mostly ethnic Albanian, dead is put squarely on the shoulders of the Serbian authorities putting down the rebellion.

This disparity is typical in Times coverage of the two conflicts. In an editorial on the Ocalan trial (6/24/99), the Times explained the Kurdish war:

“In response to Mr. Ocalan’s violence, the country’s armed forces have devastated Kurdish-inhabited areas of southeastern Turkey, razing villages, and driving tens of thousands of refugees to Ankara and Istanbul.”

On the other hand, in a March 24/99 editorial about NATO’s bombing (“The Rationale for Air Strikes”), the Times’ editoral writers describe the Kosovo conflict this way:

“Serbian forces are shelling and burning villages, forcing tens of thousands to flee. They have also been killing ethnic Albanian civilians.”

In these editorials, the two very similar conflicts are described in very similar terms. But the editorial about Turkey makes it clear that the security forces are acting “in response to Mr. Ocalan’s violence”; whereas the editorial about Kosovo does not mention the existence of the Kosovar guerrillas at all.

In fact, a reader who knows nothing about the Kosovo conflict would have literally no inkling, from reading this editorial laying out “The Rationale for Air Strikes,” that an insurgency has ever taken place there.

Serbian historical pretext

Kosovo was an integral part of Serbia when the area was conquered by the Turks in the fifteenth century. In Serbian history books it is often called Old Serbia. Albanians began arriving in the seventeenth century during the Turkish occupation. It has been recognized as an integral part of Serbia by the international community since 1912.

When the Axis powers invaded and dismembered Yugoslaviain 1941, they attached Kosovo and Albanian-speaking regions of Montenegro,Macedonia, and Greece to Albaniato form a greater Albania under the rule of a fascist dictator. The Kosovo Albanians formed military units to fight for the Nazis, killed more than 10,000 Kosovo Serbs, and drove more than 100,000 out of the province into the rest of Serbia. They brought immigrants in from Albania to fortify the Albanian presence in the province.

When the Croatian Communist dictator Tito came to power in Yugoslaviain 1945, he forbade the Serbian refugees to return to their homes in Kosovo. He then signed a deal with the new Communist dictator of Albania to bring in another 100,000 Albanian settlers. The Albanian majority in Kosovo appears to date from the years around World War II.

An upsurge of Albanian Kosovo violence in 1969-1974 caused another 200,000 Serbs and Montenegrins to leave Kosovo and gave Tito an excuse to separate Kosovo from Serbia. He made it an autonomous province under the total control of the now Albanian majority.

The KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army) was formed shortly thereafter from a Maoist organization dedicating itself to free Kosovo. As recently as a years ago, the United States government condemned the KLA as a terrorist group, linked closely to Iran, the Islamic fundamentalist Osama bin-Laden, and the heroin traffic in Europe, and put them on the list of the world’s serious terrorist organizations. Europeans have likened it to a Mafia because of its lawless involvement in organized crime, including prostitution.

The stated goal of the KLA is to create a greater Albania by attaching Yugoslav Kosovo and Albanian-speaking regions of Montenegro, Macedonia, and Greece to Albania. Using Albania as a base and conduit for weapons, the KLA began carrying on a terror campaign against the Yugoslav government in Kosovo, assassinating and kidnapping not only Serbs but also Albanians and other ethnic groups who opposed their desires for independence.

Kosovo continues to be home not only to Albanian-speaking Muslims, but also to nearly half a million other people. The goal of the KLA is to create an ethnically pure Kosovo by driving out or culturally assimilating the rest of the population.

Their claims of 1.8 million Albanians in Kosovo are demographically impossible, even with immigration, for there were only 645,000 Albanians in the last full federal census carried out in 1961. There have also been many emigrants from Kosovo to other parts of Yugoslavia and Europe. With the collapse of the Communist regime in neighboring Albania in the 1990s and the nearly anarchic conditions in that country, more Albanians crossed the porous borders with Yugoslavia into Kosovo.

Within Kosovo, Yugoslav forces were attempting to deal militarily with KLA terrorism. Using as an excuse an alleged massacre of Albanian Kosovars at Racak by Yugoslav security forces in mid-January, 1999, Mrs. Albright and Mr. Clinton demanded to “mediate” at Rambouillet. Themassacre was quickly identified as a KLA set up.

This did not deter Mr. Clinton and Mrs. Albright from pursuing their designs. It is now known that Mr. Clinton had made a decision months earlier to seek to destroy Milosevich. Racak was the pretext.

Why the discrepancy?

The two conflicts are notable for the remarkable parallels between them. In each case, a local ethnic minority has seen its cultural, civil and human rights abused by the central government. In each case, members of the minority responded by organizing an armed guerrilla force in their local territory, aimed at secession and independence. In each case, the guerrillas used terrorism, e.g., sniping at police officers and civilians – to provoke a response from security forces.

And in each case, the security forces responded with overwhelming force, clearing out villages suspected of providing support to the terrorists, all the while claiming they were merely preventing terrorists from threatening the territorial integrity of their country.

In both countries, the human costs of both campaigns were not equal. When the New York Times published its description of the Kosovo campaign, in addition to the 2,000 dead, an estimated 200 villages „had been partly or completely destroyed“, with approximately 450,000 people displaced in one year of heavy fighting, and much more by NATO bombing campaign.

In Turkey, according to Human Rights Watch, 35,000 people have been killed, while more than 3,000 villages have been destroyed, and an estimated 2 million Kurdish people have been displaced in 15 years of fighting.

Doc: NATO’s illegal WAR againgst SERBIA. KOSOVO LIES part2/2

YouTube 

But the two conflicts differ in one crucial respect: The U.S. militarily opposed Yugoslavia’s actions in Kosovo. Turkey, on the other hand, is a close U.S. ally. As a State Department official told reporters in 1992, when Turkey’s human rights abuses were reaching a peak:

“There is no question of halting U.S. military assistance to Turkey. The U.S. sees nothing objectionable in a friendly or allied country using American weapons to secure internal order or to repel an attack against its territorial unity.”

Clearly the U.S. has a double standard when it comes to civil wars – but that doesn’t mean that the New York Times ought to.

Novak Djokovic about Kosovo 

YouTube 

Video. Novak Djokovic speaks about Kosovo

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“Fighting against your own people is not heroism, but cowardice”

by  Jim W. Dean,  VT Editor

Erdogan Speaks to Turkish Parliament – Nov 22nd, 2011

Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdogan has once again stepped up to the historical plate and hit one out of the park.

He has publicly challenged Assad not to go the way of Hitler, Mussolini, Ceausescu, and Gaddafi. I am not sure Assad is listening. He has not been so far.

Assad has pushed the envelope even more when he agreed with the Arab League to pull his troops back to the barracks, only to have them go onto the attack the next day.

It was a great humiliation and loss of face for the League, not something that they really needed or could afford.

Are their hypocrites among them? Of course, but they are everywhere. Throw a dart off the observation seating area in Congress and you have a better that even chance of hitting one.

But where Assad made a huge goof here, reneging on a deal in a day, that kinds of opens the door to other avenues of conflict resolution.

Russia’s Medvedev and Bashir Assad

Assad still holds some cards. Russia has no intention of losing it’s only naval port on the Mediterranean. Iran wants to maintain it’s defense in depth with the Russian S-300 top of the line air defense missiles over Syria territory.

And China will not be leaving Iran hanging out to dry, even more so with Obama and Hillary making such a big deal over SE Asia military alliances.

The American dummies are making it very easy for China to offer a nuclear umbrella over Iran…and maybe Pakistan while they are at it. Then again, that’s what the ‘dummies’ might want.

But Erdogan is the semi wildcard here. The Israeli rhetoric has calmed down while Turkey got their F-16s upgrade package. And Gordon informed me this week that they have F-35′s on order.

Syrian Troops Continue to Desert

Have you noticed there has not been a peep in the news about oil drilling spats around Cyprus. It’s almost like if someone told all them to cool it.

I can’t imagine they got bought off, when the Super Committee turned up with dead chicken on the trillion dollars in budget cuts. Even Israel’s Iran attack hysteria has cooled down.

Meanwhile, more army troops seem to be deserting. What is happening to their families could determine whether enough joint them to turn it into a dam break.

They will need anti-armor munitions to discourage attacks against the towns.

There have been no car bombings or suicide attacks yet, but that could start up at any time. The Assad folks might even do it themselves to ‘prove’ the rebels are just terrorists, and they would not be the first. Maybe they can even borrow some frozen bodies from the Balkans from Israel that they keep in the freezer for when they need a few.

News Report Text from Al Manar in Lebanon:

Erdogan Puts Death on the Table for Assad

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has called on embattled Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad to step down for the sake of his own people and the region, reminding him of the tragic end of Adolf Hitler and ousted Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Erdoğan said during his Justice and Development Party’s (AK Party) parliamentary meeting that “for the welfare of your own people and the region, just leave that seat.”

“Assad is showing up and saying he would fight to the death. For God’s Sake, against whom will you fight? Fighting against your own people is not heroism, but cowardice.

If you want to see someone who has fought until death against his own people, just look at Nazi Germany, just look at Hitler, at [Benito] Mussolini, at Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania,” he said.

“If you cannot draw any lessons from them, then look at the Libyan leader who was killed just 32 days ago in a manner none of us would wish for and who used the same expression you used.”

The prime minister referred to Assad’s remarks over the weekend, when the Syrian leader defiantly vowed to fight and die if needed as an Arab League deadline for his government to stop its lethal crackdown on protesters expired with 20 more people killed.

Turkish Muslims Returning From Mecca Attacked by Syrian Troops

Condemning Monday’s attack on three buses carrying returning Turkish pilgrims to Turkey passing through Syria, Erdoğan called on Assad to find the perpetrators of the attack as well as those responsible for earlier attacks on Turkish missions in Syria.

Erdoğan has grown increasingly critical of the Syrian regime and said last week that the world must urgently “hear the screams” of Syria and do something to stop the bloodshed.

Turkey has allowed Syrian refugees and military defectors to take refuge on its soil and Syria’s political opposition has used Turkey as a place to meet and organize.

Assad’s deepening isolation and the growing calls for his ouster are a severe blow to a family dynasty that has ruled Syria for four decades and any change to the leadership could transform some of the most enduring alliances in the Middle East and beyond.

Tensions between the Syrian administration and Turkey have once again run high after three buses carrying Turkish pilgrims to Turkey from Saudi Arabia, where they had gone to perform the Islamic pilgrimage, were attacked at a check point in Syria on Monday.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry said the attack occurred near the central city of Homs, where Syrian activists reported at least nine people killed by security forces on Sunday. The statement said two Turkish citizens were injured in the attack.

Ceausescu and Wife Being Executed by Machine Gun Fire – Gunner is Shooting Him First