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Headlines : InternationalAfghanistan's Other War
Ehsan Ahrari is the CEO of Strategic Paradigms Defense Consultancy, based in Alexandria, VA. He specializes in U.S. strategic issues affecting the Middle East, Central Asia, and Southern Asia. His columns appear regularly in Asia Times Online.
[Posted By atrain]Republished from The American Prospect
The security situation worsens by the day in Afghanistan, and tensions between the U.S. and Afghan governments are escalating. (Witness Hamid Karzai’s recent, publicly harsh criticisms of coalition force actions that result in civilian death.) In this context, it is ever more imperative that U.S. policy-makers consider the ways in which American disengagement from events in that country leave room for other states to wage geopolitical conflicts by proxy.
Of the myriad reasons for the deterioration of security in Afghanistan, one of the most underappreciated is the conflict between neighboring India and Pakistan. Their rivalry is a variable that has not been a sufficient focus of American attention — but few dynamics influence the stability of Afghanistan more. The Bush administration has been oblivious to this reality largely because its National Security Council staff does not implement America’s security policy toward South Asia on the basis of sound historical grounding.
In its endless quest for parity with India, Pakistan has long envisioned Afghanistan as an invaluable strategic asset. President Zia ul-Huq’s policy in the 1980s of seeking “strategic depth” for Pakistan amounted to a commitment to preventing any Afghan government from becoming friendly toward India. If that were to happen, the Pakistani…
Posted by atrain
Ari Paul has written for The American Prospect, In These Times, Tikkun, Z, Punk Planet, openDemocracy.net, Reason and other newspapers and magazines. He is also a reporter for The Chief-Leader, a New York weekly covering labor in the city.
ok, i stopped reading this article when this line came up…
“Balochistan produces 45 percent of Pakistan’s total natural gas and is reported to have 6 trillion barrels of oil reserves on and off shore.”
if anyone educated about oil reads this, they know that the combined estimate of every oil reserve on earth is somewhere between 2 and 3 trillion barrels… 2 trillion being much more realistic seeing as how there is evidence that we as a planet have reached a peak of production, which happens after half the reserves have been depleted (we have currently taken approximately 1 trillion barrels of oil out of the ground)...
so for anyone to even fantasize that Pakistan (Balochistan) has 6 trillion barrels of oil, which is twice as much as the most optimistic estimates for all the oil reserves in the entire world combined… is just well… stupid. and it destroys the credibility of the reporter as well as whoever mad
ok, i stopped reading this article when this line came up…
“Balochistan produces 45 percent of Pakistan’s total natural gas and is reported to have 6 trillion barrels of oil reserves on and off shore.”
if anyone educated about oil reads this, they know that the combined estimate of every oil reserve on earth is somewhere between 2 and 3 trillion barrels… 2 trillion being much more realistic seeing as how there is evidence that we as a planet have reached a peak of production, which happens after half the reserves have been depleted (we have currently taken approximately 1 trillion barrels of oil out of the ground)...
so for anyone to even fantasize that Pakistan (Balochistan) has 6 trillion barrels of oil, which is twice as much as the most optimistic estimates for all the oil reserves in the entire world combined… is just well… stupid. and it destroys the credibility of the reporter as well as whoever made up that phony figure.
sorry for the double post