Western Interference In Afghanistan: Part 2

Western Interference In Afghanistan: Part2 


[NOTE: THIS WASN'T WRITTEN BY ME, BUT BY A  FRIEND]

As described in my previous article, the USA backed the Taliban in their bid for control of Afghanistan and implementation of a brutal fundamentalist regime, helped also by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. The basis for this is the same as for the invasion of Iraq; securing hydrocarbon resources and geopolitical manoeuvring. The Caspian Sea, in Central Asia, has valuable oil reserves, and is surrounded by post-Soviet states; most importantly in this case Turkmenistan, which shares a border with Afghanistan. Turkmenistan is landlocked, so the only economical way to transport oil out of the region is by pipeline. The easiest route for a pipeline would be to go across Iran and to Pakistan, but the USA has great antipathy for Iran, and therefore payment for the construction and lease of the pipeline as well as the taxation on the gas and oil that would pass through would benefit Iran. The US government was willing to anything to avoid this.  The only conceivable way to transport the oil and gas would be to go through Afghanistan to Pakistan.

 

In May 1996 Unocal stated that they were to build the oil pipeline, following the recent announcement of a Taliban victory in the war to control Afghanistan. There were many examples of Unocal’s support for the Taliban, including providing their militia with material support in their war against Rabbani’s forces in the north of Afghanistan, and granting them millions to keep negotiations going with the US government’s blessings. This was done without any concern for the consequences of monetary support for the Taliban, who were harbouring al-Qaeda since June 1996.

Another company involved deeply in shameless dealings with the Taliban was the former energy company Enron, synonymous with corporate corruption and wilful fraud. It had close ties to the US government, and performed the first feasibility study of a trans-Afghanistan pipeline, paid for with $750,000 by the US Agency for Trade and Development. It has been confirmed that Enron gave the Taliban millions of dollars with the US government’s approval in advance, in order to get a deal for an energy pipeline in Afghanistan. The company itself also paid more than $400 million for a study on feasibility of the pipeline, a great deal of which comprised of payoffs to the Taliban, and proposed to the Taliban to pay money in a “tax” on every cubic foot of oil and gas that was transported through the pipeline. A CIA insider gave information on Enron’s payoffs to the Taliban, and other sources indicate that officials of US administrations were fully aware of Enron’s attempts to make the Taliban their partners. Enron also took part in secret negotiations with the Taliban. A Al-Qaeda document kept from other agencies by the FBI to protect Enron, showed that American law enforcement agencies were kept in the dark or stopped from investigating secret negotiations between Enron and the Taliban in order Enron’s interests were protected. This cover-up resulted in the Taliban’s associates in al-Qaeda being able to complete their last 8 months of preparations for 9/11.

Several other companies were interested in the exploitation of Caspian Oil with the use of a pipeline, including AMOCO, BP, Chevron, EXXON and Mobile. The conversion of Afghanistan into a transhipment route for Caspian oil by the US/Western elite would allow them to weaken Iranian influence – an American motive - and Russian influence by the possibility of new trade routes. In the summer of 1998 the Clinton administration was involved in talks with the Taliban on the subject of potential pipelines to carry oil and natural gas out of Turkmenistan to the Indian Ocean, through Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The most heinous part of this US-backed corporate endeavour involving the capitalisation of the suffering of the Afghan people was that it involved direct US support of the Taliban. The US State Department and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency were in agreement to supply the Taliban with military aid and funding in their war against the Northern Alliance, and in 1999 US taxpayer money was being used to pay the wages of the Taliban’s government officials. In addition, two officials, Mr Inderfurth and Bill Richardson, visited Afghanistan in order to convince anti-Taliban factions to not go on the offensive against the Taliban, and to encourage their supporters to stop assisting these factions.  As well as benefiting the unscrupulous energy corporations, the US State Department had geo-strategic reasons for sponsoring the Taliban - to undermine Iran’s interests in the region, expand its power beyond the Amou Daria, and to influence the Federation of Russia from the South, debilitating any interests it had in the region, and the same for the North-western Chinese mainland.

However, for any partnership with the Taliban to go ahead and for the goals of the energy corporations to be reached, the US depended on the Taliban being a “servile government”, keeping the country stable and giving the energy corporations acceptable terms to make their operation profitable. The end of the Taliban’s rule can be seen as the result of their failure to do this. The entire Unocal project was based on the assumption that the Taliban would control and stabilise Afghanistan, based on reports from countries such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. However, the premise was based on conquest, and would therefore make it certain that the Taliban would not be able to provide Unocal with the security needed to build the pipeline.

The US relationship faced turmoil close to the millennium, when US policymakers started to realise that the Taliban would not act as a servile government. Anti-American views began to heavily influence Taliban officials, who became vocal against Americans, the UN, Saudis and other Islamic regimes worldwide. As well as this, their war for conquest of Afghanistan, carried out with extreme brutality, was fuelling inter-factional conflict, causing destabilisation when security and stability were paramount to Unocal’s project. They became uncooperative, leading to US policy becoming more hostile. What finally caused Unocal to drop its plans was, as reported by Oil and Gas International, that the Taliban called for more than $100 million annually in the form of construction of infrastructure, and  for its ability to tap into the pipeline to supply oil and gas for Afghanistan itself. This led to further deterioration of  the US relationship with Afghanistan, and in 1999 the US began to see the Taliban as major impediment to its interests. This view was reflected in the formulation of military action against the Taliban, a significant time before 9/11 - the official reason given by the US for military action in Afghanistan. 

 

US, Russian and Indian officials met in 2001 to discuss the overthrow of the Taliban regime and its replacement with a pro-US servile government that could stabilise Afghanistan. This would hypothetically provide profitable terms for an oil and gas pipeline for foreign energy corporations such as Unocal, and provide the US with strategic geo-political influence in the region. Before the Bush administration took power (N.B. illegitimately due to election fraud, as in the 2004 elections), the United States, Russia, India and Iran were providing the anti-Taliban forces with military aid, and intelligence and logistical support to anti-Taliban forces. Military sources have shown that Tajikistan and Uzbekistan were being used to base attacks on the Taliban by the Indian and Russian militaries. In Geneva, Italian, German and Iranian officials, along with the US State Department met to discuss a strategy to replace Taliban regime and replace it with a pro-US government. 

Simultaneously, attempts were made to salvage the relationship by the Bush administration whilst military preparations were made to invade Afghanistan. In July 2001, Christian Roca (Assistant Sectary of State for South Asia) met with Taliban officials in Pakistan and offered $43 million in food and shelter aid to the Taliban government without accountability. This was followed by other secret meetings, including visits by US officials to Kabul in April, and three others earlier in the month, despite the fact that the Taliban were under UN sanctions. The administration also escalated a previous initiative - starting negotiations to save the relationship. These were usually held in Islamabad, New York or Washington. These included meetings of US and Taliban officials in February 2001 in Washington, Berlin and Islamabad. The last of these meetings was in August 2001. When the Taliban government refused to accept US terms, as the Bush administration wanted to take the oil and gas reserves in Central Asia out of Russian control, and the issue of hydrocarbon security became a military issue.  US representatives told the Taliban officials “either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs.”

Niaz Naik, the Minster for Foreign Affairs in Pakistan’s government attended, and later recalled what went on in the Berlin meeting of July 2001. The discussion focused on the establishment of a coalition government of national unity with the Taliban. The Taliban were offered international economic aid if they accepted the formation of a coalition, which would most likely have made the pipeline from Central Asia across Afghanistan possible. Naik also confirmed that Tom Simons, one of the representatives, had openly threatened the Taliban with military action by August. Simons had also said that “either the Taliban behave as they ought to, or Pakistan convinces them to do so, or we will use another option”, which Simon said was “a military operation”. Throughout this period, US war plans were coming to completion, which reliable military sources report were completed by the summer, to attack Afghanistan from the North.

Just two days before 9/11, George Bush was presented with plans for a military operation to invade Afghanistan and depose the Taliban. The President was also expected to declare a worldwide operation against al-Qaeda two days before 9/11, but was reported to have not had the chance to do so before 9/11. The Bush Administration was able to respond so quickly to the terrorist attacks with the declaration of the “War on Terror” because, according to NBC’s News’ Jim Miklaszewski, they had to take the all the pre-prepared plans “off the shelf”. Interestingly, on 11^th September two US Aircraft Carrier task forces reached the Persian Gulf on “rotation”. Simultaneously the British military formed the largest invasion armada since the Falklands War, which headed to South-East Asia with 23,000 UK soldiers, while 12,000 NATO troops landed in Turkey. This had all been in planning for at least two years.

So given the previous information, it is clear that the war plan for the invasion of Afghanistan, planned over several months and in consideration for at least a year, was to secure energy reserves in Central Asia and give the US geo-political influence in the area. The concept of an invasion of Afghanistan had been in consideration for many years, evidently not as a response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. As Francis Boyle, Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois concluded, “September 11 is a pre-text, a trigger, or both.”

As a brief summary of both parts, Afghanistan was first used by the US to draw the Soviet Union into a debilitating and wearying proxy by inspiring rebellion and religious fundamentalism to create fanatics who waged war against Afghanistan’s communist government. This attracted the Soviet Union’s attention to the situation, causing it to invade, devastating the Soviet economy and costing the government billions of rubels, hence debilitating and distracting the Soviets. The US government, along with oil corporations, then sponsored and supported the brutal Taliban despites its record of atrocities. This was all under the false assumption that they would become a pro-US servile government, allowing the USA to gain geopolitical influence in the area and give the oil corporations access to the hydrocarbon reserves in Central Asia.

And so Britain, in a time of austerity, is spending about £4.5 billion a year on the war in Afghanistan - over £12 million a day - on a war that’s purpose is to give oil corporations more money to line their pockets with, sending tens of thousands to their deaths, bringing corruption and insecurity to both Afghanistan and the entire region, and driving millions from their homes. George Bush and Tony Blair told us that the “War on Terror” was to protect our freedom and maintain security, and gave these false claims credence using fear and lies, only to have inspired more terrorism, undermined and curtailed human rights, ignored international law, blocked dissidence, and clamped down on a number of freedoms. This was all so that a small elite can capitalise on their destructive obsession for black gold…

“War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.”

-     George Orwell

Kristian Smith