Told you so: the whole "Saffron Revolution" is a CIA-run jungle opera....
Oct 17, 2007
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The geopolitical stakes of 'Saffron Revolution'
By F William Engdahl
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In fact the US State Department admits to supporting the activities of the NED in Myanmar. The NED is a US government-funded "private" entity whose activities are designed to support US foreign policy objectives, doing today what the CIA did during the Cold War. As well, the NED funds Soros' Open Society Institute in fostering regime change in Myanmar. In an October 30, 2003 press release the State Department admitted, "The United States also supports organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy, the Open Society Institute and Internews, working inside and outside the region on a broad range of democracy promotion activities." It all sounds very self-effacing and noble of the State Department. Is it though?
In reality the US State Department has recruited and trained key opposition leaders from numerous anti-government organizations in Myanmar. It has poured the relatively huge sum (for Myanmar) of more than $2.5 million annually into NED activities in promoting regime change in Myanmar since at least 2003. The US regime change effort, its Saffron Revolution, is being largely run, according to informed reports, out of the US Consulate General in bordering Chaing Mai, Thailand. There activists are recruited and trained, in some cases directly in the US, before being sent back to organize inside Myanmar. The US's NED admits to funding key opposition media including the New Era Journal, Irrawaddy and the Democratic Voice of Burma radio.
The concert-master of the tactics of Saffron monk-led non-violence regime change is Gene Sharp, founder of the deceptively-named Albert Einstein Institution in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a group funded by an arm of the NED to foster US-friendly regime change in key spots around the world. Sharp's institute has been active in Myanmar since 1989, just after the regime massacred some 3,000 protestors to silence the opposition. CIA special operative and former US military attache in Rangoon, Col Robert Helvey, an expert in clandestine operations, introduced Sharp to Myanmar in 1989 to train the opposition there in non-violent strategy. Interestingly, Sharp was also in China two weeks before the dramatic events at Tiananmen Square.
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The gas fields of Myanmar
Oil and gas have been produced in Myanmar since the British set up the Rangoon Oil Company in 1871, later renamed Burmah Oil Co. The country has produced natural gas since the 1970s, and in the 1990s it granted gas concessions to the foreign companies ElfTotal of France and Premier Oil of the UK in the Gulf of Martaban. Later Texaco and Unocal (now Chevron) won concessions at Yadana and Yetagun as well. Yadana alone has an estimated gas reserve of more than 5 trillion cubic feet and an expected life of at least 30 years. Yetagun is estimated to have about a third the gas of the Yadana field.
In 2004 a large new gas field, Shwe field, off the coast of Arakan, was discovered.
By 2002 both Texaco and Premier Oil withdrew from the Yetagun project following UK government and non-governmental pressure. Malaysia's Petronas bought Premier's 27% stake. By 2004 Myanmar was exporting Yadana gas via pipeline to Thailand, worth $1 billion annually to the Myanmar regime. In 2005 China, Thailand and South Korea invested in expanding the Myanmar oil and gas sector, with export of gas to Thailand rising 50%.
Gas export today is Myanmar's most important source of income. Yadana was developed jointly by ElfTotal, Unocal, PTT-EP of Thailand and Myanmar's state MOGE, operated by ElfTotal. Yadana supplies some 20% of Thai natural gas needs.
Today the Yetagun field is operated by Malaysia's Petronas along with MOGE, Japan's Nippon Oil and PTT-EP. The gas is piped onshore where it links to the Yadana pipeline. Gas from the Shwe field is to come on line in 2009. China and India have been in strong contention over the Shwe gas field reserves.
India loses, China wins
This past summer Myanmar signed a memorandum of understanding with PetroChina to supply large volumes of natural gas from reserves of the Shwe gasfield in the Bay of Bengal. The contract runs for 30 years. India was the main loser. Myanmar had earlier given India a major stake in two offshore blocks to develop gas to have been transmitted via pipeline through Bangladesh to India's energy-hungry economy. Political bickering between India and Bangladesh brought the Indian plans to a standstill.
China took advantage of the stalemate. It simply trumped India with an offer to invest billions in building a strategic China-Myanmar oil and gas pipeline across Myanmar from Myanmar's deepwater port at Sittwe in the Bay of Bengal to Kunming in China's Yunnan province, a stretch of more than 2,300 kilometers. China plans an oil refinery in Kumming as well.
What the Myanmar-China pipelines will allow is routing of oil and gas from Africa (Sudan among other sources) and the Middle East (Iran, Saudi Arabia) without depending on the vulnerable chokepoint of the Malacca Strait. Myanmar becomes China's "bridge" linking Bangladesh and countries westward to the China mainland independent of any possible future moves by Washington to control the strait.
India's dangerous alliance shift
It's no wonder that China is taking such precautions. Ever since the Bush administration decided in 2005 to recruit India to the Pentagon's "New Framework for US-India Defense Relations", India has been pushed into a strategic alliance with Washington in order to counter China in Asia.
In an October 2002 Pentagon report, "The Indo-US Military Relationship", the Office of Net Assessments stated the reason for the defense alliance would be to have a "capable partner" who can take on "more responsibility for low-end operations" in Asia, provide new training opportunities and "ultimately provide basing and access for US power projection". Washington is also quietly negotiating a base on Indian territory, a severe violation of India's traditional non-aligned status.
Power projection against whom? China, perhaps?
As well, the Bush administration has offered India a deal to lift its 30-year nuclear sanctions and to sell advanced US nuclear technology, legitimizing India's open violation of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. At the same time Washington accuses Iran of violating same, an exercise in political hypocrisy to say the least.
Notably, just as the saffron-robed monks of Myanmar took to the streets, the Pentagon opened US-Indian joint naval exercises, "Malabar 07", along with armed forces from Australia, Japan and Singapore. The US showed the awesome muscle of its 7th Fleet, deploying the aircraft carriers USS Nimitz and USS Kitty Hawk, guided missile cruisers USS Cowpens and USS Princeton, and no less than five guided missile destroyers.
US-backed regime change in Myanmar together with Washington's growing military power projection via India and other allies in the region is clearly a factor in Beijing's policy vis-a-vis Myanmar's present military junta. As is often the case these days, from Darfur to Caracas to Yangon, the rallying call of Washington for democracy ought to be taken with a large grain of salt.
F William Engdahl is the author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, Pluto Press Ltd. Further articles can be found at his website, www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.
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