Besides, Niyazov met all the criteria for regime change; he controlled massive natural gas reserves and he refused to take orders directly from Washington. Typically, these are the only factors which matter when Bush decides which leader is next on his "hit list".

Niyazov was probably on the same "Enemies List" as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez and Saddam Hussein, the other foreign leaders whose only crime is that they control vital supplies of dwindling resources. Like his contemporaries, Niyazov represented an obstacle to the American oil giants extending their corporate empire through Central Asia and the Middle East. Now that he's dead, the power struggle can begin in earnest.

Turkmenistan has reserves which amount to a whopping 22.5 trillion cubic meters, the second largest supplies in Asia. Nearly all of Turkmenistan's gas is pumped through Russian energy giant Gazprom's pipelines. As economist Mikail Delyagin said, "Because of Gazprom's mismanagement, the European part of Russia cannot exist without Turkmen gas. Control over it is a categorical imperative for Russia's development during the next 10 years". (Victor Yasmann RFE/RL Current Affairs)

Disruption of gas supplies from Turkmenistan would be a severe blow to Gazprom's economic vitality. This ensures that Putin will be deeply involved in the selection of the country's future president. It also sets the stage for another clash between Moscow and Washington.

The Bush administration's objectives in Turkmenistan are the exact opposite of Putin's. The Bush team wants to build a pipeline under the Caspian Sea to pump natural gas reserves to the West through Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey and out the Mediterranean corridor or down through Bush's "new colony" in Afghanistan through Pakistan to the coast. If the Bush plan goes forward it would be a major setback to Gazprom which depends on Turkmenistan's gas to supply Ukraine and Europe. As Stratford says, "Without those shipments, Russian state energy firm Gazprom would find it impossible to satisfy both domestic Russian natural gas demand and fulfill its export contracts to Europe and Turkey".

The administration's plan would also sabotage Niyazov's prior commitments to China which has signed contracts for a pipeline to bring natural gas through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. China's future depends heavily on Turkmenistan. According to Alex Nicholson of the AP, "Niyazov promised to pipe 30 billion cubic meters of gas beginning January 2009. (China) also won an invitation last month to tap the giant Iolotan fields, which the late president declared, contained 7 trillion cubic meters of natural gas-or more than even Saudi Arabia's proven reserves."

"7 trillion cubic meters of natural gas"?!?

No wonder the Bush administration is paving the way for intervention.

At the very least, Niyazov's death has turned out to be another "great opportunity" for Uncle Sam and it looks like Bush may have already put the pieces in place to take full advantage of it.

For example, as soon as Niyazov's death was announced, his second in command, Ovez Atayev, was removed from power by Deputy Prime Minister, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, under the trumped charges of "harassing and humiliating his daughter in law". The charge is blatantly absurd and politically motivated. But is Washington behind it?

The elimination of Ovez Atayev is just the first of the many fortunate "coincidences" which seem to benefit western interests. Now that the president is dead and his successor is under indictment, there are reports that a number of prominent ex-patriots will soon be returning to Turkmenistan to take part in the political "free-for-all".

Haven't we seen this performance before?

Much of what is taking place in Turkmenistan resembles the Bush-script for toppling Saddam and replacing him with expatriate stooges who were assembled and briefed outside of the country before the 2003 invasion. Is this just a reenactment of that same worn libretto?

The media, of course, is playing its traditional role of championing Washington's interventions by demanding "free elections"; another comical part of the Bush-kabuki which never seems to change. Turkmenistan has no history of free elections, but the western press sees an opportunity to serve its constituents by fomenting dramatic political change; change that is designed to install a US-friendly client. Once again, Bush's "Global Democratic Revolution" is being invoked to strengthen America's grip in Central Asia.

If we look back at the "color coded" revolutions which were orchestrated by American NGOs and American intelligence agencies, we can see that (despite the planning and huge commitment of financial resources) they accomplished nothing of lasting value. Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan are back within Russia's orbit and Georgia will soon follow. (or lose access to Russia's natural gas)

Eurasia is Russia and China's backyard and they've build up the necessary defenses to keep Washington out. Bush can waste-away in Afghanistan for another 5 or 6 years dreaming of "victory", but his "Grand Plan" for the region is basically in ruins. The United States will not prevail in Central Asia any more than it will in Iraq.

Nevertheless, the plan is going forward and Bush apparently has the requisite agents in place to give him hope for success. According the RIA Novosti, "Many people in the former president's inner circle were oriented towards Europe."

Indeed.

The power struggle is bound to be ferocious and Washington is preparing to be right in the thick of it. Bush has little choice but to do everything he can to establish an American stronghold in Eurasia's energy-center. The geopolitical stakes are just too high to ignore. The country is perfectly situated between Russia and Iran on the Caspian Sea. In fact, the Pentagon's own maps show Turkmenistan at the very center of CENTCOM's global resource war; a pivotal location for military installations and pipeline corridors. It provides ready-access to an estimated 2 trillion in oil reserves in the Caspian Sea as well as the massive natural gas supplies.

At the same time, a US-friendly president in Ashgabat could block arch-rival Gazprom from extending its dominance throughout the region by handing over critical gas reserves to western energy corporations.

This is not a battle that the Washington warlords can afford to lose, but victory will not be easy. Neither Iran nor Russia can allow Bush to take over Turkmenistan without a fight. Iran would be surrounded on all sides by the US and cut off from its neighbors to the north by hostile American forces. At the same time, US military bases would be set up even closer to the Iranian capital of Tehran.

For Russia, an American client in Turkmenistan would be a stiff challenge to its role as the region's superpower; creating the looming possibility that NATO would get an even bigger foothold in Central Asia and threaten the delicate balance of power.

Turkmenistan is a key piece in the new "Great Game"; the ongoing struggle for supremacy in Central Asia. Whether Washington played a part in Niyazov's untimely death or not is almost irrelevant. The Bush-Cheney oiligarchy have demonstrated a willingness to fight-to-the-death for every thimbleful of oil or natural gas left on planet earth. This makes the likelihood of a sudden eruption of violence in Turkmenistan all the more probable.

As the weeks go by, we can expect to see the usual indications of US involvement; the CIA-funded public demonstrations, the "democracy promoting" coverage in the media, and the comical parade of ex-patriots who matriculated in US right-wing think tanks. The whole charade is being cobbled together as part of a failed strategy to control the world's remaining resources.

The faces may change, but the routine is always the same.

While attending Niyazov's Soviet-style funeral, US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher said that the president's death signaled "a new beginning" in relations, and that, he "hoped Turkmenistan would reform, move towards democracy and curtail human rights abuse."

Once again, "Democracy is on the march!"

"The opposition is going to dispatch to Turkmenistan a train of flour to support the republic's starving people," Avdy Kuliyev said over the phone.

He said the leaders of opposition movements, who have fled overseas to escape persecution at home, could follow the train and return to Turkmenistan.

"This will be the start of our 'flour' revolution," Kuliyev, who was foreign minister in late President Saparmurat Niyazov's government in the early 1990s, said but added that the opposition's intentions are peaceful.

The opposition borrowed the name in association with the "orange revolution" and "rose revolution" in other former Soviet republics, Ukraine and Georgia, which brought West-leaning governments to power in 2004 and 2003.

Kuliyev said Turkmenistan suffers from a constant lack of bread and flour, which are the main products for the most residents in the current dire economic conditions.

Turkmenistan's opposition earlier nominated Khudaiberdy Orazov, its leader and a former deputy prime minister, as a presidential candidate, who said the opposition will seek democracy in Turkmenistan by all means, including a possible coup. Orazov is wanted in Turkmenistan on embezzlement charges.

Russian-made jets swept low over the capital at midmorning, dropping two bombs on Mogadishu International Airport, part of a major escalation in the week-old fighting. The leader of the Islamic militia, Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, flew into the airport shortly after the attack; it was not clear if he was an intended target.

Airstrikes also hit Baledogle Airport outside Mogadishu.

"We heard the sound of the jets and then they pounded," said Abdi Mudey, a soldier with Somalia's Council of Islamic Courts, which has seized the capital and much of southern Somalia since June.

Somalia has not had an effective government since warlords overthrew longtime dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, pushing the country into anarchy. Two years ago, the United Nations helped set up a central government for the arid, impoverished nation on the Horn of Africa.

But the government has not been able to extend its influence outside the city of Baidoa, where it is headquartered about 140 miles northeast of Mogadishu. The country was largely under the control of warlords until this past summer, when the Islamic militia movement seized power.

Experts fear the conflict in Somalia could engulf the region. A recent U.N. report said 10 countries have been supplying arms and equipment to both sides of the conflict, using Somalia as a proxy battlefield. Some analysts also fear that the courts movement hopes to make Somalia a third front, after Afghanistan and Iraq, in militant Islam's war against the West.

The Islamic group's often severe interpretation of Islam is reminiscent, to some, of Afghanistan's Taliban regime - ousted by a U.S.-led campaign in 2001 for harboring Osama bin Laden. The U.S. government says four al-Qaeda leaders, believed to be behind the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, are now leaders in the Islamic militia.

Militia forces have surrounded Somali government forces in Baidoa, where heavy artillery and mortar fire echoed through the streets, said Mohammed Sheik Ali, a resident reached by telephone.

But Ethiopian-backed government troops appeared to take the initiative on Monday.

Pro-government forces drove Islamic fighters out of the key border town of Belet Weyne, then headed south in pursuit of fleeing militiamen, a Somali officer said. Government troops were enforcing a curfew of 3 p.m. to 6 a.m.

"Anyone who has a gun but is not wearing a government uniform will be targeted as a terrorist," said Aden Garase, a government soldier who was put in charge of Belet Weyne.

On Ethiopian television Monday night, the defense ministry said troops would move toward the city of Jowhar, about 55 miles from Mogadishu. Later, Ethiopia made a push in that direction, capturing the villages of Bandiradley, Adadow and Galinsor, according Yusuf Ahmed Ali, a businessman in Adadow.

As its military forces advanced against militia fighters, Somalia's government also sought to seal its borders in order to prevent foreign Islamic militants from joining the Islamic courts forces.

Residents living along Somalia's coast have seen hundreds of militants arriving by boat, apparently in answer to calls by religious leaders to wage a holy war against Ethiopia.

It seems unlikely the government can blockade Somalia's 1,860-mile coastline - the longest in Africa. But the closures could hamper humanitarian aid deliveries to the country, where one in five children dies before age 5 from a preventable disease.

The U.N. World Food Program airlifted several tons of food and other aid into Somalia on Monday, but had not yet been notified of any border closings, agency spokesman Peter Smerdon said.

The Islamic militia, which grew out of a network of ad hoc Muslim courts, has brought a measure of law to a lawless country: The international airport reopened in July after being closed for a decade.

But leaders of the Islamic courts movement alarmed the country's neighbors by threatening to incorporate ethnic Somalis living in eastern Ethiopia, northeastern Kenya and Djibouti into a Greater Somalia.

Many Somalis are enraged by Ethiopian intervention because the countries have fought two wars over their disputed border in the past 45 years. Somalia is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim, while Ethiopia has a large Christian minority.

Despite this friction, the Somali government - which has failed to assert any real control since it was formed two years ago - relies on its neighbor's military strength.

Earlier, Ethiopia had said it sent advisers to bolster the Somali government's outgunned military forces, but denied dispatching combat troops. The U.N., though, estimates that Ethiopia has 8,000 troops in the country.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said Sunday that his country was "forced to enter a war" with Somalia's Council of Islamic Courts after the group declared holy war on Ethiopia.

So far, Ethiopian and Somali troops have used MiG jet fighters and artillery to attack the Islamists, who have no military aircraft and can return fire only with much smaller mortars and recoilless rifles.

Meles has said he does not intend to keep his forces in Somalia for long, perhaps only a few weeks. He has told visiting dignitaries that his goal is to damage the courts' military capabilities, take away their sense of invincibility and allow both sides to return to peace talks on an even footing.

Government officials and Islamic militiamen have said hundreds of people have been killed in clashes since Tuesday, but the claims could not be independently confirmed. Aid groups put the death toll in the dozens.

Besides, even if Iran were inciting genocide, and as wicked as this would be, it pales in comparison to the malevolence of the actual perpetration of genocide, of which the Israeli regime is guilty among other crimes. [5]

But these are not stupid "Jewish leaders," so a question arises: what do these leaders really intend to accomplish with their fraud? JTA News makes this clear: the "Jewish leaders" seek "to lay the groundwork for a military strike if diplomacy [sic] and legal action don't derail Iran's quest for nuclear weapons."

JTA News is not easily dismissed. The New York City-headquartered JTA dates back around the end of World War I, billing itself as the Global News Service of the Jewish People. Its website claims the Jewish community relies upon JTA as "the single most credible source of news and analysis available about events and issues of Jewish interest anywhere in the world."

JTA News quotes attorney Alan Dershowitz, "We will try the law. We will try politics. We will try everything." He adds, "But if they fail, we will use self-defense." Dershowitz has already pre-judged the issue. To hell with the law and to hell with politics! If legal and political avenues do not accede to zionist aims, then Zionists will resort to whatever means necessary to achieve their aims. And this comes from the mouth of a Harvard law professor!

Aiding Dershowitz in his above-the-law vendetta is former Canadian minister of justice Irwin Cotler. They are preparing justification for "military preemption" if other efforts fail.

"We waited once, we will not wait again," said Dershowitz, who like other speakers evoked the global silence as the Nazis prepared the Holocaust. "Do not expect passive acceptance of genocide. We will fight back."

Dershowitz must battle former soldiers in the Israeli occupation army who do heed the admonition against keeping silent in the face of atrocities. A group of ex-Israeli occupation soldiers have formed Break the Silence, which does just that around the world. Said Break the Silence member Yehuda Shaul: "We provide the tools for people to understand the deeply woven moral corruption and numbness of what we do [in Occupied Palestine]. It's like a slide; once you start going down, you keep going down." [6]

It takes a lot of chutzpah for Dershowitz (not surprising since he is said to be beyond chutzpah) to invoke a right to fight back against a fraudulently alleged incitement to genocide. Unless one initiates a fight against you, you cannot correctly be said to be fighting back. As for the "passive acceptance of genocide," that is exactly what too many Israeli Jews and too many other regimes and their citizens are guilty of vis-à-vis the Palestinians today.

Taking down Ahmadinejad legally is one recourse Dershowitz and his fellow cronies may futilely attempt since leaders of nation states have diplomatic immunity (applicable before all except hyper-powers, which the hapless duo of Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein discovered). Some speakers pointed to the "successful" cases to prosecute former Chilean leader Augusto Pinochet and former Serbian-Yugoslavian leader Slobodan Milosevic as war criminals under international law. Successful? Both were eventually arraigned, but the trials were never concluded. This is hardly "successful."

It must also be noted that neither Pinochet nor Milosevic was a leader at the time of his arraignment.

Nonetheless, Jewish leaders have graciously "give[n] the international community a chance to prove itself" by trying the legal route.

Speaking for the Jewish leaders, Dershowitz issued a warning:

If the international community fails, if this challenge is not met, we reserve the right of self-defense. We pledge here today to do everything it takes, and anything it takes, to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. We will not fail. We cannot fail. [italics added]

If the international community caves into the illegitimate demands of Jewish (or other) leaders, then it will have failed. The silent international community, however, is already failing the victimized Palestinian people and the result is another bloody stain on humanity.

Kim Petersen, Co-Editor of Dissident Voice, lives in the Republic of Korea. He can be reached at: kim@dissidentvoice.org.

ENDNOTES

[1] Ben Harris, "Jewish leaders threaten to indict Ahmadinejad for inciting genocide," JTA News, 14 December 2006.

[2] Juan Cole, "Hitchens the Hacker; And, Hitchens the Orientalist And, We don't Want Your Stinking War!" Informed Comment, 3 May 2006. According to Cole, Ahmadinejad's words were: "The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] from the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad)." Ahmadinejad was not making a threat, he was quoting a saying of Khomeini and urging that pro-Palestinian activists in Iran not give up hope.

[3] A case for the right to question history. Kim Petersen, "Progressivism, Skepticism, and Historical Revisionism: The Inalienable Right to Question History," Dissident Voice, 19 December 2005.

[4] Jeremy R. Hammond, "Iran and the Violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty," Dissident Voice, 4 December 2006.

[5] Francis A. Boyle, "Palestine Should Sue Israel for Genocide before the International Court of Justice," Media Monitors, 2 December 2000.

[6] Haroon Siddiqui, "Ex-soldiers break 'silence' on Israeli excesses," Toronto Star, 17 December 2006. The TS headline euphemistically refers to "Israeli excesses," but Yehuda Shaul details crimes such as throwing Palestinians out of homes, closing their schools, and shooting grenades at them.

The vigorous dialogue that comes as NATO's response to the two countries' aspiration for closer cooperation with alliance has not been developing at the expense of relations between these countries and Russia, de Hoop Scheffer said. NATO is seeking to help form good and constructive relations between them, he added.

NATO is not going to assert that it is able to resolve today's security problems on its own, de Hoop Scheffer noticed.

The U.S. instigation of war between Ethiopia and Somalia, two of world's poorest countries already struggling with massive humanitarian disasters, is reckless in the extreme. Unlike in the run-up to Iraq, independent experts, including from the European Union, were united in warning that this war could destabilize the whole region even if America succeeds in its goal of toppling the Islamic Courts.

An insurgency by Somalis, millions of whom live in Kenya and Ethiopia, will surely ensue, and attract thousands of new anti-U.S. militants and terrorists.

With so much of the world convulsed by crisis, little attention has been paid to this unfolding disaster in the Horn. The UN Security Council, however, did take up the issue, and in another craven act which will further cement its reputation as an anti-Muslim body, bowed to American and British pressure to authorize a regional peacekeeping force to enter Somalia to protect the transitional government, which is fighting the Islamic Courts.

The new UN resolution states that the world body acted to "restore peace and stability." But as all major international news organizations have reported, this year Somalia finally experienced its first respite from 16 years of utter lawlessness and terror at the hands of the marauding warlords who drove out UN peacekeepers in 1993, when 18 American soldiers were killed.

Since 1993, there had been no Security Council interest in sending peacekeepers to Somalia, but as peace and order took hold, a multilateral force was suddenly deemed necessary - because it was the Islamic Courts Union that had brought about this stability. Astonishingly, the Islamists had succeeded in defeating the warlords primarily through rallying people to their side by creating law and order through the application of Shariah law, which Somalis universally practice.

The transitional government, on the other hand, is dominated by the warlords and terrorists who drove out American forces in 1993. Organized in Kenya by U.S. regional allies, it is so completely devoid of internal support that it has turned to Somalia's arch- enemy, Ethiopia, for assistance.

If this war continues, it will affect the whole region, do serious harm to U.S. interests and threaten Kenya, the only island of stability in this corner of Africa.

Ethiopia is at even greater risk, as a dictatorship with little popular support and beset also by two large internal revolts, by the Ogadenis and Oromos. It is also mired in a conflict with Eritrea, which has denied it secure access to seaports.

The best antidote to terrorism in Somalia is stability, which the Islamic Courts have provided. The Islamists have strong public support, which has grown in the face of U.S. and Ethiopian interventions. As in other Muslim-Western conflicts, the world needs to engage with the Islamists to secure peace.

Salim Lone, who was the spokesman for the UN mission in Iraq in 2003, is a columnist for The Daily Nation in Kenya. This Global Viewpoint article was distributed by Tribune Media Services.