Ex-Intel officer discloses US plans for Pakistan

By: Presstv

Pakistan’s former Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief Hamid Gul

The following is a transcript of a Press TV interview with Pakistan’s former Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief Hamid Gul.Q: The US is planning to establish military bases inside Pakistan. Can you expand on that?

A:They are expanding the embassy and they are bringing in security staff, in the garb of security staff which is not according to the diplomatic norms. And I think the Chinese are objected to that. The Chinese ambassador held a press conference here in Islamabad about a week or ten days ago and he said that, for instance, this is infringement of Pakistan’s sovereignty and secondly that we have also struck at expansion of embassy but we trust Pakistan’s security apparatus to look after us and why are the Americans are doing that. So I think this is a quite big indicator that the Chinese are concerned about our security and so should be everybody else because we know that these security contractors which are being brought like the old Blackwater now under the name of, the new name of Xe and there is the Extreme Dynamic company and there are several others. They are recruiting people from here at very high wages. They are mostly the ex-servicemen, ex-Army officers and men. And besides we think that there are special forces who operate into the garb of locals but basically are American agents and it is a cross mix of the CIA which is known as Delta Force, which is the Marines and the Navy Seals and the Orange Force, which means the Orange Force are actually the hired killers. They are either recruited locally or from abroad or brought in from America and they speak the local lingo. They wear the same dress. And they sort of grow beard, etc. So this is a very dangerous move they are making. So that is the basis on which I said. Besides, I have feared that the new policy which Obama will probably announce in March next year as they have already said so. That is going to be taking bases on long leases in Afghanistan because of the weak Karzai government which is likely to emerge after the announcement of the polling results. And secondly, they are making a tremendous investment in Afghanistan. They are bringing in troops again as security guards but really they are the hardened, trained military men. There are already three thousand five hundred of them and one thousand more are coming. So slowly and gradually, the Indians are moving into this area. The same model is going to be, I think, applied rather at a limited scale in Pakistan because of these security arrangements they are making. They have an excuse. They are trying to create an excuse. They have announced for Pakistan over a period of five years 7.5 billion dollars that is 1.5 billion dollars per year and so far for this year they have disbursed only 174 million dollars which is nothing to the government. There is still the money they are making it quite open that it is going to be spent directly by the Americans in Pakistan in various areas. So they are going to set up a large intelligence network inside Pakistan. And for that the excuse is that because we are spending this money directly on projects, therefore we need the security guards and we are bringing in the contractors. But in reality, what I fear is that, they really want to go for Pakistan’s nuclear assets. They are inching close to those nuclear assets day by day. They are getting very close and I am sure they are, because of their intelligence tentacles there, they are trying to gather information so that whatever surgical operation they have to carry out against our nuclear assets in connivance with Israel and India those will be totally taken out and nothing will be left in the hands of Pakistan. And there is plenty of evidence to suggest this because they have been saying in the past that the end game of war against terrorism is going to be in Pakistan. And that is what disturbs us the most because now they are saying that Taliban are in control of 80 percent of Afghanistan and that al-Qaeda is no longer present in Afghanistan but that a large number of al-Qaeda people are present inside Pakistan and if we think that they are there then we have a right to strike them and we will. That is what the last statement, a very categorical statement made by Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen that was very alarming because he very categorically said that if they find that there are targets inside Pakistan, al-Qaeda targets, then we will strike them. So it is a preparation which is being made. A psychological conditioning which is being done of the international communities, the real powers as well as the Pakistani nation and the Pakistani government.

Q:Do you think the Americans are trying to disintegrate Pakistan through this process?

A:I know the Indians are playing games inside Baluchistan. They are trying to create subversion and acts of sabotage are occurring every day. And they are trying to destabilize Pakistan. But disintegration is a very strong word. I do not think this words needs to be used. But I think they are trying to destabilize Pakistan at the moment so that it feels weak and economically has to go begging on its knees to Americans and ask for succor and help. And in that process they will want to expect certain concessions with regards to nuclear power and also with regards to setting up their facilities here in Pakistan.

Q:And the United States who wants to use Pakistan as a front against China, Iran and other countries in the region.

A:No, I do not think Pakistan can be [used for this purpose]. Even if Pakistan is very weak and is lost hypothetically, I do not think they will pluck out all the nuclear assets of Pakistan. It is not possible. I think the Americans should think twice before they attempt this because a frustrated Pakistan can do a lot of damage. But off course they have designs against Iran. They have designs against China. But, at the moment, I do not see Pakistan being used as a proxy for America against China or Iran for that matter.

Q:You talked about Blackwater. What role these contractors have been playing in the region? Mr. Aslan Beik said on a television interview in Pakistan that Blackwater has played a role in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and Rafik Hariri in Lebanon.

A:I do not know about Aslan Beik’s statement but what I think is that Blackwater has a very bad record. They were operating in Iraq and they were guilty of many acts of misconduct and killings and rape and kidnapping and also pillage of property but this was settled at that time because I think North Carolina indicted them and they were banned. But now they have started operating under a new name, a new title of Xe Worldwide Services. So, as far as this issue is concerned, I think this comes out from some report from Seymour Hersh, the famous American journalist. He has supposed to have said that Dick Cheney’s agency Blackwater had something to do with the assasination of Benazir. So that is what I know.

Q:You earlier said that American is going to establish military bases in Peshawar and there was a hotel which was bombed in the city and it is said that the hotel was going to be used by the Americans as their base. Can you comment on that?

A:Yes, that is right, because initially they were trying to come in the days of Pervez Musharraf. I think he had entered into some kind of agreement for them to allow 750 people from Blackwater to claim Frontier Corps which is a paramilitary force operating on our border with Afghanistan. And they were to set up this in a fort in Peshawar. Then their presence was reported in this hotel. And this was bombed and it was commonly believed, although no official reports have ever come out, that two floors of that hotel had been occupied by Blackwater basically, I mean, this security contractor. But some people suggested that the marines were also there. It is possible that they were the special forces because, when we say marine, it formally becomes the Armed Forces of America. But the Special Forces are known to have been operating in this area for some time now and they were the ones who created probably some of the trouble in Swat valley where the Pakistani army is still engaged in operations.

Q:If you wanted to put it in one sentence, what is America’s long-term goal that it is seeking in Pakistan?

A:Well, long-term goal for America is that they want to keep Pakistan destabilized; perhaps create a way for Baluchistan as a separate state and then create problems for Iran so that this new state will talk about greater Baluchistan and, I think, a Baluch leader in London held a press conference and he talked a greater Baluchistan and he talked about the Kurd areas, he talked about Iranian Baluchistan and he talked about the Pakistani Baluchistan. So it appears that the long-term objectives are really to fragment all these countries to an extent that they can establish a strip that would be pro-America, pro-India, pro-Israel. So this seems to be their long-term objective apart from denuclearizing Pakistan and blocking Iran’s progress in the nuclear field.

How Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal endangers Us All

By Jeff Gates

On September 24th, U.S. President Barack Obama will preside over a U.N. Security Council session on nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament. In March 2010, Moscow will host a Global Nuclear Summit that the U.S. has agreed to attend.

The next six months could prove hopeful or harmful—depending on the impact on Israel’s nuclear arsenal. With U.S. backing, Tel Aviv has thus far avoided compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty—joining North Korea, India and Pakistan.

President John F. Kennedy tried to stop Israel from starting a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. In a June 1963 letter to Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, he insisted on proof “beyond a reasonable doubt” that Israel was not developing nuclear weapons at its Dimona reactor facility. Though his letter was cabled to the U.S. embassy, Ben-Gurion resigned (citing undisclosed personal reasons) before the message could be physically delivered.

With Israel’s nuclear ambitions under attack by its key ally, that strategically well-timed resignation duped an inexperienced young president and denied him a diplomatic victory that might well have precluded the wars now being waged in the Middle East.

With Ben-Gurion’s resignation, JFK was left without an Israeli government with which he could negotiate. By the time a new government was formed, the Kennedy threat had been eliminated and Tel Aviv could start haggling from scratch with successor Lyndon Johnson who was far more sympathetic to the goals of the Zionist state.

That strategy resurfaced in the recent resignation of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert just as the Road Map gained traction and the threat of peace loomed on the horizon. Olmert’s successor, Benjamin Netanyahu, then used the terms of the Road Map as a bargaining chip to start haggling—with an inexperienced young president—over sanctions against Iran.

Democrat Lyndon Johnson proved himself a reliably pliant pro-Israeli president as did his successor, Republican Richard Nixon. Described by Prime Minister Golda Meir as “the best friend Israel ever had,” Nixon agreed in 1969 to endorse “constructive ambiguity” as a means for Tel Aviv to obscure its nuclear arsenal. Meanwhile Colonial Zionists brandished the threat of that arsenal to seize land they sought for Greater Israel.

Israeli incursions provoked the reactions one would expect, enabling Tel Aviv to portray itself as a hapless victim in need of U.S. support in a hostile and anti-Semitic neighborhood. Four years after Kennedy wrote to Ben-Gurion, Israel mounted a massive six-day assault on neighboring nations, occupying lands that remain at the heart of the hostilities against which Tel Aviv insists it needs nuclear weapons to defend itself.

With the war in Iraq poised to expand to Iran, the next six months offer a rare opportunity to revisit not only Israel’s nuclear arsenal but also—in light of the consistency of its behavior over six decades—the legitimacy of the Zionist enterprise.

Managing the Threat to Zionism: JFK, RFK and Fulbright

In 1962, Senator William Fulbright of Arkansas, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, convened hearings to ensure that the American Zionist Council—funded by the Jewish Agency—register as the agent of a foreign government. JFK was then president and brother Robert his attorney general. Edward (”Ted”) Kennedy was elected to the Senate that year to fill his brother Jack’s seat. In October 1963, the Department of Justice—led by Robert Kennedy—demanded that the Council register as a foreign agent.

Following the Kennedy assassination in November 1963, Nicholas Katzenbach succeeded RFK as Attorney General for Lyndon Johnson. To avoid registration, the Zionist Council morphed into the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). That umbrella organization—still disguised as a domestic lobby—continues to coordinate the efforts of dozens of organizations that sustain a U.S. policy environment favorable to a foreign nation.

The Kennedy brothers shared a little-known insight into the confidence with which Israel wields political influence across party lines. In the closing weeks of his 1960 presidential campaign, candidate Kennedy traveled to New York to seek financial support from Jewish business leaders. On his return to Washington, he called his old friend Charlie Bartlett who had introduced Jack to Jackie.

According to Bartlett, Kennedy was livid after those he met in Manhattan assured him that the funds he sought were available but only if he turned over to them the formulation of U.S. policy in the Middle East. With brother “Bobby” his chief campaign strategist, that experience doubtless came to mind when, in 1963, JFK confirmed that Israel—while portraying itself a U.S. ally—repeatedly lied to him about its development of nuclear weapons.

Israel vs. the Kennedys

At the height an unpopular war in Vietnam, Robert Kennedy emerged to challenge the policies of the Texan who replaced his brother as president in 1963. No one knows for sure that, as president, RFK would have followed JFK’s stance on the Zionist state’s nuclear arsenal. Nor do we know for certain that he would have renewed his insistence that the Israel lobby register as the agent of a foreign government.

When a second Kennedy threat was eliminated with an assassination in June 1968, Tel Aviv welcomed to the White House Richard Nixon who supported Israel’s strategically essential “ambiguous” policy on nuclear arms. Nixon Attorney General John Mitchell was a partner in the same New York law firm (Mudge, Rose, Guthrie & Alexander) that Nixon joined in 1963 after his failed bids as president, losing to JFK in 1960, and as governor of California two years later. In honor of Nixon’s arrival, the dominantly Jewish firm was renamed Nixon, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie & Alexander.

In 1973, five years after RFK’s death, Senator Fulbright could announce with confidence that “Israel controls the U.S. Senate.” By 1974, he was replaced in the Senate. Journalist Helen Thomas was then covering Nixon, one of ten presidents in her lengthy career as White House correspondent. In Obama’s first press conference, she sought to clarify the ambiguity about just who posed a nuclear threat in the region. Her question for this latest Commander in Chief: which nation in the Middle East has nuclear weapons?

In response, Chicagoan Barack Obama did the “Tel Aviv Two-Step.” Rather than answer the question, he spoke about the need for nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament. Not since then has Thomas been allowed to ask another question. Instead she was subjected to a withering barrage of personal attacks by pro-Zionist broadcasters who sought to make it appear that she—not the answer to her question—is the problem.

At every opportunity, Tel Aviv insists that Tehran’s nuclear energy program poses an “existential threat.” That claim is correct though not for the reason that the Israel lobby would have Americans believe. If Israel cannot persuade the U.S. to join (or condone) an attack on Iran, some faint semblance of stability may yet be attained in the Middle East. With stability will come an opportunity to confirm the common source of the fixed intelligence that induced the U.S. to invade Iraq in response to the mass murder of 911.

Only one nation had the means, motive, opportunity and, importantly, the stable nation state intelligence to mount such a deception inside the U.S. As that fact becomes apparent, an informed American public will insist that its leadership revisit the legitimacy of the Zionist enterprise along with the costs that this “special relationship” has imposed on the U.S. in blood, treasure and hard-earned credibility.

Israel is the Real Threat to Israel

The existential threat to Israel is real but its source is not Iran. The real threat is the facts that Tel Aviv may again obscure if it succeeds in provoking yet another crisis in the region. Those facts confirm the illegitimacy of the Zionist enterprise as a nation state.

The threat to Barack Obama could become existential should he act consistent with his oath of office. As yet he has shown no inclination to address the perils that this entangled alliance with Jewish extremists imposes on U.S. national security and on the prospects for peace.

As the source of the duplicity that induced the U.S. to war becomes known, Americans will insist on accountability. Zionist fanatics may choose another course. A modern-day Masada is a nuclear possibility. With their vast arsenal (estimates range from 200 to 400 warheads), these religious extremists could preempt accountability by creating chaos worldwide while affixing blame on “Islamo” fascists in an attempt to keep their victim status plausibly intact.

To eliminate the existential threat posed by nuclear-armed religious extremists requires that the U.S.—as Israel’s key ally—isolate the Zionist enterprise, withdraw its recognition as a legitimate state and reclassify its advocates as foreign agents. That long overdue change in the legal status of the Israel lobby—first sought in 1962—will enable U.S. law enforcement to pursue its operatives for giving aid and comfort to an enemy within.

The focal point for peace in the Middle East should not be those nations that do not have nuclear weapons but the one nation that does. Absent external pressure, Israeli behavior will not change. Those who seek peace in the region must boycott Israeli exports, divest from Israeli firms and insist on sanctions against Israel akin to those it seeks against others. Anything less will ensure that Zionist extremists continue to endanger us all.

Jeff Gates: A widely acclaimed author, attorney, investment banker, educator and consultant to government, corporate and union leaders worldwide, Jeff Gates’ latest book is Guilt By Association—How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War (2008). His previous books include Democracy at Risk: Rescuing Main Street From Wall Street and The Ownership Solution: Toward a Shared Capitalism for the 21st Century.

For two decades, an adviser to policy-makers worldwide. Counsel to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee (1980-87) http://intifada-palestine.com/

Escalation of the Afghan War: US-NATO Target Russia, China and Iran

by Rick Rozoff

The United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are expanding their nearly eight-year war in Afghanistan both in scope, with deadly drone missile attacks inside Pakistan, and in intensity, with daily reports of more NATO states’ troops slated for deployment and calls for as many as 45,000 American troops in addition to the 68,000 already in the nation and scheduled to be there shortly.

The NATO bombing in Kunduz province on September 4 may well prove to be the worst atrocity yet perpetrated by Western forces against Afghan civilians and close to 20 U.S and NATO troops have been killed so far this month, with over 300 dead this year compared to 294 for all of 2008.

The scale and gravity of the conflict can no longer be denied even by Western media and government officials and the war in South Asia occupies the center stage of world attention for the first time in almost eight years.

The various rationales used by Washington and Brussels to launch, to continue and to escalate the war – short-lived and successive, forgotten and reinvented, transparently insincere and frequently mutually exclusive – have been exposed as fraudulent and none of the identified objectives have been achieved or are likely ever to be so. Osama bin Laden and Omar Mullah have not been captured or killed. Taliban is stronger than at any time since their overthrow eight years ago last month, even – though the name Taliban seems to mean fairly much whatever the West intends it to at any given moment – gaining hitherto unimagined control over the country’s northern provinces.

Opium cultivation and exports, virtually non-existent at the time of the 2001 invasion, are now at record levels, with Afghanistan the world’s largest narcotics producer and exporter.

The Afghan-Pakistani border has not been secured and NATO supply convoys are regularly seized and set on fire on the Pakistani side. Pakistani military offensives have killed hundreds if not thousands on the other side of the border and have displaced over two million civilians in the Swat District and adjoining areas of the North-West Frontier Province.

Yet far from acknowledging that the war, America’s longest since the debacle in Vietnam and NATO’s first ground war and first conflict in Asia, has been a signal failure, U.S. and NATO leaders are clamoring for more troops in addition to the 100,000 already on the ground in Afghanistan and are preparing the public in the fifty nations contributing to that number for a war that will last decades. And still without the guarantee of a successful resolution.

But the West’s South Asian war is a fiasco only if judged by what Washington and Brussels have claimed their objectives were and are. Viewed from a broader geopolitical and strategic military perspective matters may be otherwise.

On September 7 a Russian analyst, Sergey Mikheev, was quoted as saying that the major purpose of the Pentagon moving into Afghanistan and of NATO waging its first war outside of Europe was to exert influence on and domination over a vast region of South and Central Asia that has brought Western military forces – troops, warplanes, surveillance capabilities – to the borders of China, Iran and Russia.

Mikheev claims that “Afghanistan is a stage in the division of the world after the bipolar system failed” and the U.S. and NATO “wanted to consolidate their grip on Eurasia…and deployed a lot of troops there,” adding that as a pretext for doing so “The Taliban card was played, although nobody had been interested in the Taliban before.” [1]

A compatriot of the writer, Andrei Konurov, earlier this month agreed with the contention that Taliban was and remains more excuse for than cause of the United States and its NATO allies deploying troops and taking over air and other bases in Afghanistan and the Central Asian nations of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. In the case of Kyrgyzstan alone, there were estimates at the beginning of this year that as many as 200,000 U.S. and NATO troops have transited through the Manas air base en route to Afghanistan.

Konurov argued that “With Washington’s non-intervention if not downright encouragement, the Talibs are destabilizing Central Asia and the Uyghur regions of China as well as seeking inroads into Iran. This is the explanation behind the recent upheaval of Uyghur separatism and to an extent behind the activity of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.” [2]

It must be kept in mind, however, that for the West the term of opprobrium Talib is elastic and can at will be applied to any ethnic Pushtun opponent of Western military occupation and, as was demonstrated with the NATO air strike massacre last Friday, after the fact to anyone killed by Western forces as in multi-ethnic Kunduz province.

The last-cited author also stated, again contrary to received opinion in the West, that “the best option for the US is Afghanistan having no serious central authority whatsoever and a government in Kabul totally dependent on Washington. The inability of such a government to control most of Afghanistan’s territory would not be regarded as a major problem by the US as in fact Washington would in certain ways be able to additionally take advantage of the situation.” [3]

An Afghanistan that was at peace and stabilized would then be a decided disadvantage for plans to maintain and widen Western military positioning at the crossroads where Russian, Chinese, Iranian, Pakistani and Indian interests meet.

The Russian writer mentions that Washington and its NATO allies have employed the putative campaign against al-Qaeda – and now Taliban as well as the drug trade – to secure, seize and upgrade 19 military bases in Afghanistan and Central Asia, including what can become strategic air bases like former Soviet ones in Bagram, Shindand, Herat, Farah, Kandahar and Jalalabad in Afghanistan. The analyst pointed out that “The system of bases makes it possible for the US to exert military pressure on Russia, China, and Iran.”

It suffices to recall that during the 1980s current U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates was the CIA official in charge of the agency’s largest-ever covert campaign, Operation Cyclone, to arm and train Afghan extremists in military camps in Pakistan for attacks inside Afghanistan. A “porous border” was not his concern at the time.

Konurov ended his article with an admonition:

“There is permanent consensus in the ranks of the US establishment that the US presence in Afghanistan must continue.

“Russia should not and evidently will not watch idly the developments at the southern periphery of post-Soviet space.” [4]

Iran’s top military commander, Yahya Rahim-Safavi, was quoted in his nation’s media on September 7 offering a comparable analysis and issuing a similar warning. Saying that “The recent security pact between US and NATO and Afghanistan showed the United States has no plan to leave the region,” he observed that “Russia worries about the US presence in Central Asia and China has concerns about US interference in its two main Muslim provinces bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan.” [5]

To indicate that the range of the Western military threat extended beyond Central Asia and its borders with Russia and China, he also said the “presence of more than 200,000 foreign forces in the region particularly in South-West Asia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Middle East, the expansion of their bases, the sale of billions of dollars of military equipments to Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and looting their oil resources are the root cause of insecurity in South-West Asia, the Persian Gulf region and Iran,” and noted that “US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf had been a cause for concern for Russia, China and Iran.” [6]

The Iranian concern is hardly unwarranted. The August 31 edition of the Jerusalem Post revealed that “NATO’s interest in Iran has dramatically increased in recent months” and “In December 2006, Israeli Military Intelligence hosted the first of its kind international conference on global terrorism and intelligence, after which Israel and NATO established an intelligence-sharing mechanism.”

The same article quoted an unnamed senior Israeli official as adding, “NATO talks about Iran and the way it affects force structure and building.” [7]

Six days earlier an American news agency released a report titled “Middle East arms buys top $100 billion” which said “Middle Eastern countries are expected to spend more than $100 billion over the next five years” the result of “unprecedented packages…unveiled by President George W. Bush in January 2008 to counter Iran….” [8]

The major recipients of American arms will be three nations in the Persian Gulf – Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Iraq – as well as Israel.

Other Gulf states are among those to participate in this unparalleled arms buildup in Iran’s neighborhood. “The core of this arms-buying spree will undoubtedly be the $20 billion U.S. package of weapons systems over 10 years for the six states of the Gulf Cooperation Council – Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E. [United Arab Emirates], Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Bahrain.” [9]

A week ago Nicola de Santis, NATO’s head of the Mediterranean Dialogue and the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative Countries Section in the NATO Public Diplomacy Division, visited the United Arab Emirates and met with the nation’s foreign minister, Anwar Mohammed Gargash.

“Prospects of UAE-NATO cooperation” and “NATO’s Istanbul Cooperation Initiative” were the main topics of discussion. [10]

The Istanbul Cooperation Initiative was formed at the NATO summit in Turkey in 2004 to upgrade the status of the Mediterranean Dialogue – the Alliance’s military partnerships with Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, Mauritania and Algeria – to that of the Partnership for Peace. The latter was used to prepare twelve nations for full NATO accession over the last ten years.

The second component of the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative concerns formal and ongoing NATO military ties with the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council: The United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain (where the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet is headquartered), Kuwait, Oman and Qatar.

In May of this year France opened its first foreign military base in half a century in the United Arab Emirates.

In addition to U.S. and NATO military forces and bases in nations bordering Iran – Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkey, Pakistan and increasingly Azerbaijan – the Persian Gulf is now becoming a Pentagon and NATO lake.

China is also being encroached upon from several directions simultaneously.

After the visit of the Pentagon’s Central Command chief General David Petraeus to the region in late August, Kyrgyzstan, which borders China, relented and agreed to the resumption of U.S. military transit for the Afghan war.

Tajikistan, which also abuts China, hosts French warplanes which are to be redeployed to Afghanistan this month.

Mongolia, resting between China and Russia, hosts regular Khaan Quest military exercises with the U.S. and has now pledged troops for NATO’s Afghan war.

Kazakhstan, with Russia to its north and China to its southeast, has offered the U.S. and NATO increased transit and other assistance for the Afghan war, with rumors of troop commitments also in the air, and is currently hosting NATO’s 20-nation Zhetysu 2009 exercise.

Late last month China appealed to Washington to halt military surveillance operations in its coastal waters, with its Defense Ministry saying “The constant US air and sea surveillance and survey operations in China’s exclusive economic zone is the root cause of problems between the navies and air forces of China and the US.” [11]

A spokeswoman for the American embassy in Beijing responded by saying, “The United States exercises its freedom of navigation of the seas under international law….This policy has not changed.” [12]

The war in Afghanistan was launched four months after Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan formed the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a regional security and economic alliance with a military component. Now the Pentagon and NATO have bases in the last three nations and military cooperation agreements with Kazakhstan.

In 2005 India, Iran, Mongolia and Pakistan joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as observer states. Now all but Iran are being pulled into the U.S.-NATO orbit. No small part of the West’s plans in South and Central Asia is to neutralize and destroy the SCO as well as the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), founded in 2002 by Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Armenia and Belarus.

Uzbekistan joined in 2006 but after General Petraeus’s visit to the country last month it appears ready to leave the organization. Belarus, Russia’s only buffer along its entire Western border, may not be far behind.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 the U.S. and NATO immediately moved on Central Asia, and the war in Afghanistan has provided them with the opportunity to gain domination over all of South as well as Central Asia and to undermine and threaten the existence of the only regional security bodies – the SCO and CSTO – which could counteract the West’s drive for control of Eurasia.