Music critic Escobar initially became known in his native Brazil as a music critic covering the 1980s
pop and
punk music scene of
São Paulo, reporting on bands such as
Ira! for
Folha de S.Paulo and
O Estado de S. Paulo. His career at the newspapers ended in disgrace after accusations of plagiarism and other ethical controversies surfaced. Lúcio Ribeiro, a journalist for
Folha de S. Paulo, stated in his column that Escobar was fired from the publication in 1987 after a review for the
David Bowie album
''Let's Dance was revealed by
André Vítor Singer to have been entirely plagiarized from a rock book published by the
Rolling Stone'' magazine. Escobar justified the act as a tribute to the "game of mirrors" by
Jorge Luis Borges. The piece was called "prophetic" by
KBOO. In 2011, journalist
Arnaud de Borchgrave described Escobar as "well known for breaking stories in the Arab and Muslim worlds." Escobar reported from
Afghanistan and
Pakistan in the period around 2000–2001. In August 2000, the Taliban arrested Escobar and two other journalists and confiscated their film, accusing them of taking photos at a soccer match. According to de Borchgrave, during the
2011 Libyan Civil War Escobar wrote a piece "uncovering" the background of
Abdelhakim Belhaj (whose military leadership against
Muammar Gaddafi was being aided by
NATO), including his training with
al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Interviewed about his story by
Radio New Zealand, Escobar said that Belhaj and his close associates were fundamentalists whose goal was to impose Islamic law once they defeated Gaddafi, and that Libya would slide into a civil war between Gaddafi loyalists and "Jihadist fundamentalists". Escobar's story was commented on by
Muhammad Sahimi for
PBS. In 2014, Escobar participated in an international conference in Iran that also included several conspiracy theorists and
Holocaust deniers. Journalist
Gareth Porter said he would not have attended the event if he had known that some of the other participants held extremist views. Porter said that his representatives told him extremists would not be attending. He said that Escobar and
Code Pink founder,
Medea Benjamin, were equally upset by some of the presentations.
Pipelineistan "Pipelineistan" is a term coined by Escobar to describe "the vast network of oil and gas pipelines that crisscross the potential imperial battlefields of the planet," from the Middle East to East Asia and particularly Central Asia. Articles by Escobar about his "Pipelineistan" theory, many first published in
TomDispatch, were re-published in
Al Jazeera,
Grist,
Mother Jones, and
The Nation. Escobar argued in a 2009 article published by
CBS News that running energy pipelines from the energy-rich nations near the
Caspian Sea would let Europe be less dependent on the natural gas that it currently gets from Russia, and would potentially help the West rely less on
OPEC. This situation results in an international conflict of interest over the region. Escobar wrote that "The
New Great Game of the twenty-first century is always over energy and it's taking place on an immense chessboard called Eurasia". In 2018, Paul Cochrane in
Middle East Eye dismissed the "Pipelineistan" theory put forward in Escobar's Al-Jazaeera piece, "that the
bloodshed in Syria is simply another war over Middle Eastern energy resources". Cochrane wrote that covert action by the US against Syria started in 2005, which was before any plan was put forward to run a gas pipeline from Qatar to Syria. Robin Yassin-Kassab called it a "
conspiracy theory". Naser Tamimi said "If Syria and Iraq stabilise, and political relations with Saudi Arabia and Iraq improve ... after all of that, then you could think of a pipeline. But at the end of the day it's a pipe dream". A 2021 study which examined data on
Russia's intervention in Syria concluded that "Russian intervention has a distinct ‘dual logic’ aimed at integrating the interests of key regional actors into a transnational energy network, while stabilising Russia’s regional dominance within this network". ==Views and reception==