The Motives Behind American Invasion of Afghanistan

8/8/2019 The Motives Behind American Invasion of Afghanistan

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The Hidden Connection Global

nergy Trade and Global Terrorism. The

Hidden Connection Global Energy

Trade and Global Terrorism. The HiddeConnection Global Energy Trade and

Global Terrorism. The Hidden

Connection Global Energy Trade andGlobal Terrorism. The Hidden

Connection Global Energy Trade and


Connection Global Energy Trade andGlobal Terrorism. The Hidden


Global Terrorism. The HiddenConnection Global Energy Trade and



Global Terrorism.

The Hidden Connection- Global Energy Trade and

Global Terrorism

Chapter 1 - The motives behind American invasion of Afghanistan

For comments please email to [email protected]

Syed Haroon Haider Gilani


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The Hidden Connection Global Oil Trade and Global Terrorism

Chapter 1: The motives behind American invasion of Afghanistan 3

List of Contents

- Introduction

- Taliban, Bridas Corporation and Central Asian Pipelines- Turkmenistan hydrocarbon reserves

- The terrorism of exploitation in Central Asia by Oil Giants- Removal of Taliban regime is essential but how?- American again in the war in Afghanistan

- The War in Afghanistan and Taliban "Again"


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The motives behind American invasion

of Afghanistan

Introduction

U.S. governments have so far "invested"about half a trillion dollars ($ 500,000,000,000)entitled as cost of "war on terrorism" in Afghanistan since October 2001. No sane person agreesthat US government has not spent this amount only to counter terrorism nor as the fundamentalreason of the occupation to eliminate Taliban, Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden as Terrorists but forsome other objectives which we are discussing hereafter.

Simple answer is the oil-giants-formed "Bush Administration" wanted Taliban to be replaced

with the people favoring American interests in building Pipeline through Afghanistan because ofTaliban refusal to award the Unocal, the American participant in race for Trans AfghanistanPipeline that would carry gas thirteen hundred kilometers from Turkmenistan to Pakistan. As of2010, the value of the Turkmen gas reserve is estimated to be 4 trillion dollars. It made the attackon Afghanistan and toppling the Taliban regime, inevitable which otherwise remains the mainhurdle in American control over Turkmen Gas and Oil treasure. William O. Beeman, ananthropologist specialising in the Middle East at Brown University who has conducted extensiveresearch into Islamic Central Asia, observes that the US support of Taliban (in Mid 90s) has nothing

to do with religion or ethnicity - but only with the economics of oil. To the north of Afghanistan is one of

the worlds wealthiest oil fields, on the Eastern Shore of the Caspian Sea in republics formed since the

breakup of the Soviet Union. Caspian oil needs to be transhipped out of the landlocked region through a

warm water port, for the desired profits to be accumulated. The simplest and cheapest pipeline route

is through Iran - but Iran is essentially an enemy of the US, due to being overtly independent of theWest, as shall be discussed later. As Beeman notes: The US governmenthas such antipathy to Iran that

it is willing to do anything to prevent this.The alternative route is one that passes through Afghanistan

and Pakistan, whichwould require securing the agreement of the powers-that-be in Afghanistan - the

Taliban. Such an arrangement would also benefit Pakistani elites, which is why they are willing to defy

the Iranians.Therefore, as far as the US is concerned, the solution is for the anti-Iranian Taliban to win

in Afghanistan and agree to the pipeline through their territory.

Let us put a glance over the two vital indications about the above ideology. First is the officialreport from a meeting of the U.S. Government's foreign policy committee on 12 February 1998,confirms that the need for a US-friendly government was recognized long before the War on Terrorthat followed September 11th:

"The U.S. Government's position is that we support multiple pipelines... The Unocal pipeline

is among those pipelines that would receive our support under that policy. I would caution that

while we do support the project, the U.S. Governmenthas not at this point recognized

any governing regime of the transit country, one of the transit countries, Afghanistan, through

which that pipeline would be routed. But we do support the project."

[ U.S. House of Reps., "U.S. Interests in the Central Asian Republics", 12 Feb 1998 ]


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"The only other possible route [for the desired oil pipeline] is across, Afghanistan whichhas of

course its own unique challenges."

["U.S. Interests in the Central Asian Republics", 12 Feb 1998 ]

"CentGas cannot begin construction until an internationally recognized Afghanistan Government

is in place."

["U.S. Interests in the Central Asian Republics", 12 Feb 1998 ]

On February 12, 1998, John J. Maresca, vice president, international relations for UNOCAL Oil

Company, testified before the US House of

Representatives, Committee on International

Relations. Maresca provided information to Congress

on Central Asia oil and gas reserves and how they

might shape US foreign policy. UNOCAL's problem, As Maresca said: "How to get the region's vast

energy resources to the markets.The oil reserves are in areas north of Afghanistan, Turkmenistan,Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Russia. Routes for a pipeline were proposed that would transport oil on a

42-inch pipe southward thru Afghanistan for 1040 miles to the Pakistan coast. Such a pipeline would cost

about $2.5 billion and carry about 1 million barrels of oil per day".

It comprehensively explains the reason behind the half a trillion dollars investment and other

costs of war that include the causalities reaching 30 million people including civilians and armed

personals, increased drug trade since invasion and by 2005, Afghanistan had regained its position

as the world leader in opium production and was producing 90% of the worlds opium. The

production crossed more than 8,000 tons a year while it was only a few hundred tons in 2001. Most

of this poppy is processed into heroin and sold in Europe, North America and Russia. Since then

Afghan opium kills 100,000 people every year worldwide. It simply means that we have got

another million people killed by the increased Opium Trade due to invasion of Afghanistan by2011. It also sparked the "anti Americanism" and lost the sympathy of the world for American

people, that was earned after 9/11 and in turn earned anger and hatred for United States of

America.

Taliban, Bridas Corporation and Central Asian Pipelines

Caspian Sea region is the oldest oil producing region in the world with first oil well drilled byRussian Engineer F.N. Semyenov, in 1448 in Azerbaijan. Geologically the region is divided into twoparts, the North Caspian and South Caspian. South Caspian, with territories including Azerbaijan,Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, basin has the largest oil and gas reserves in Central Asia. The Amu-Darya Basin extends over an area of 370,000 km square of eastern Turkmenistan and western

Uzbekistan; another 57,000 km square situated in neighboring countries, in particular northernAfghanistan. More than 130 gas, gas condensate and oil fields have been discovered in the AmuDarya basin. Of these, 60% are in Western Uzbekistan and 40% in eastern Turkmenistan. According

to the report (1993) of Gregory Ulmishek, The Russian oil expert the Amu Darya basin contains 0.7billion barrels of oil in identified reserves and 3 billion in undiscovered reserves. For gas, thecumulative production is 86 trillion cubic feet; identified reserves are 200 trillion, andundiscovered reserves are assessed at 75 trillion. Seventy-five percent of these gas reserves arefound in Turkmenistan and 25% in Uzbekistan.


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Current estimates indicate that, in addition to huge gas deposits, the Caspian basin may hold asmuch as 200 billion barrels of oil - 33 times the estimated holdings of Alaska's North Slope and acurrent value of $4 trillion. It is enough to meet the U.S.' energy needs for 30 years or more. Thepresence of these oil reserves and the possibility of their export raises new strategic concerns forthe U.S. and other Western industrial powers. As oil companies build oil pipelines from theCaucasus and Central Asia to supply Japan and the West, these strategic concerns gain militaryimplications.

Turkmenistan hydrocarbon reserves and its importance for the world

By the 1990, most of the Turkmenistan Caspian shelf, with more than 40 untestedstructures, remained relatively undrilled. Turkmenistan was also disputing the Kyapaz field,which was discovered by Azerbaijan. Turkmenistans daily oil production in 1995 equaled79,000 barrels a day.Turkmenistan has the largest amount of gas reserves in Central Asiacounties with estimated reserves at 93 to 155 trillion cubic feet of gas, which placesTurkmenistan in between the U.S. (167 trillion) and Venezuela (142 trillion).A number ofexploration blocks were offered for bidding in September 1997.

Turkmenistan postulates undiscovered reserves on its Caspian shelf at 3 billion metric tons(22 billion bbl) of oil and 4.8 trillion cubic meters (168 tcf) of gas. According to testimony beforethe US House ofRepresentatives in March 1999 by the conservative think tank HeritageFoundation, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan together have 15 billion barrelsof proven oil reserves. The same countries also have proven gas deposits totaling not less than ninetrillion cubic meters. Another study by the Institute for Afghan Studies placed the total worth of oiland gas reserves in the Central Asian republics at around US$3 trillion at Mid 90's prices while inToday's market trends the worth is about 4 trillion dollars.

These reserves, which are according to assessments of independent and Turkmen experts, have20.8 billion tons of oil and 24.6 trillion cubic meters of natural gas. These figures were announcedat a conference Oil and Gas of Turkmenistan-2008 The forum was held in the London institute ofdirectors and included about 160 leading international energy companies from 23 countries,including BP, Chevron Corporation, Exxon Mobil, Marathon Oil Corporation, Total, Conoco Phillips,Worley Parsons and others. According to Turkmenistan representatives, both on land and sea,more than a thousand promising oil and gas deposits have been identified in the country, overone hundred and fifty of which have been opened. Fifty of those are currently in development. Asreported by the news source, Turkmenistan plans to extract 110 million tons of oil and 250 billioncubic meters of natural gas by 2030. This information was originally published on April 18, 2008.The terrorism of exploitation in Central Asia by Oil Giants

Larry Chim of Online Journal describes the situation as, "After the fall of the Soviet Union,

Argentine oil company Bridas, led by its ambitious chairman, Carlos Bulgheroni, became the first

company to exploit the oil fields ofTurkmenistan and propose a pipeline through neighboring

Afghanistan. A powerful US-backed consortium intent on building its own pipeline through the sameAfghan corridor would oppose Bridas' project".

On the competition of Bridas Corporation, emerged the CentGas that was a consortium formedin the 1990s to develop a project to build the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline to link Turkmenistan's

abundant proven natural gas reserves with growing markets in Pakistan. The Group led by UnionOil Company of California (Unocal) and Delta Oil Company, Ltd., of Saudi Arabia had alsoconsidered an extension of the line to the New Delhi area. The pipeline was to stretch 1,271km from


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Turkmenistan's Dauletabad fields to Multan in Pakistan at an estimated cost of $1.9 billion. Anadditional $600 million would have brought the pipeline to "energy-hungry" India.

In 1998, the California-based UNOCAL, which held 46.5 percent stakes in Central Asia Gas(CentGas), a consortium that planned an ambitious gas pipeline across Afghanistan, withdrew infrustration after several fruitless years. The immediate reason for UNOCAL's withdrawal wasundoubtedly the US cruise missile attacks on Osama bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan in August1998, done in so called retaliation for the bombing of its embassies in Africa but infact as UNOCALthen stated that the project would have to wait until Afghanistan achieved the "peace and stability

necessary to obtain financing from international agencies and a government that is recognized by the

United States and the United Nations". The violence and instability was created by the cruise missile

attacks in order to topple Taliban regime that were then supporting Bridas Corporation.Bridas Corporation started negotiations with Taliban in August 1995 after the discovery of a

new gas field in Yashlar, Turkmenistan with reserves of 800,000 million cubic meters, 10% morethan in all of Argentina, homeland of Bridas Corporation. Soon Bridas Corporation had the accordswith Turkmenistan and Pakistan while they were in process to complete the agreement withAfghanistan. It alarmed UNOCAL and Americans and they started interfering Bridas Corporation'soperations in building pipeline. In response to the interference of Unocal, Bridas Corporation hasfiled a law suit in Texas, USA, in which Bridas was seeking $ 15 billion in damages -- centers on the

Argentine firm's allegations that Unocal interfered in its operations in the former Soviet republic ofTurkmenistan. Those operations included plans to build a natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistanthrough war-torn Afghanistan to the growing energy market in Pakistan, for which it originally hadexclusive negotiating rights.

The American influence on Turkmenistan commenced in March 1993, with the appointment ofAlexander Haig (former U.S. National Security Adviser) to lobby for increased U.S. investment

in Turkmenistan. Bridas and Turkmenistan Government were having very good relations prior tothis appointment. Turkmenistan Government has awarded gas exploration rights to Bridas withproduction profits to be split 50-50 between Bridas and Turkmenistan government and just after


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one year of this deal Turkmenistan Government awarded Bridas to operate Keimir Oil and GasBlock in western Turkmenistan with 75-25 split in profits, in favor of Bridas. After the Americaninfluence is settled with Turkmenistan Government, Bridas was prevented from exporting oil fromKeimir Block by the government of Turkmenistan in September 1994. The deal was renegotiatedand in January 1995, Bridas was allowed to export the oil & gas from Keimir Oil and Gas Block withreduced profit share of 65%. Later in October 1995, when Turkmen President signed agreementwith Unocal in New York, he was probable instructed to stop the exports of Bridas from Keimirblock which he ordered in December 1995. According to Bridas, the Turkmen government thenmade an overnight decision to cut off the export of oil from Bridas' Keimir field on the Caspian Sea.The company also alleged that the deputy prime minister demanded that Bridas, with its cash flowstrangled, renegotiate its concession and "We found written evidence that Unocal was behind the

curtains".

On the other side of border, Bridas has been scoring points with Taliban since the first meetingwith Taliban in 1995. In February 1996, Bridas signed agreement for Tran Afghanistan Pipelinewith Afghan government. In November 1996, Bridas signed agreements with Taliban and Gen.Dostum to build pipeline through Afghanistan. By February and March 1997, Bridas succeeded to

establish its office in Kabul under Taliban government and when Taliban announced their criteriafor awarding the contract to the company that starts the work first, wins, the Unocal's response wasconditional and showing reservations while Bridas responded with "interested in beginning work in

any kind of security situation." In May 97, one month later to this interest, Taliban-controlled radio in

Kabul said a visiting delegation from an Argentinean company (Bridas Corporation) had announcedthat pipeline construction would start "soon" and The chief of Bridas' Afghan operations, said thathis company was close to signing a pipeline agreement with the Taliban, the Islamic movement thatcontrols large parts of Afghan territory, including virtually all the proposedpipeline route. He said Bridas would start construction as soon as thedeal is signed. According to BBC, "The radio has reported several visits

to Kabul by Unocal and Bridas company officials over the past few

months".

Unocal was also putting its best efforts to win the favors ofnewly established Afghan government of Taliban and otherstakeholders including Afghan warlords, Turkmen government and

Pakistan Government. Craig Rosebraugh in his article "Don't Messwith Unocal" narrates," During the mid-1990s, the Unocal project

received strong support from the US government. From 1995-98, especially after the Taliban seized

control of Kabul in September 1996, Clinton administration officials actively lobbied Taliban

officials on behalf of Unocal". In March 1996, U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan, Tom Simmons, urged

Benazir Bhutto, the prime minister of Pakistan to give exclusive rights to build pipeline throughPakistan to Unocal that Ms. Benazir Bhutto refused with apology and Americans turned theirattention towards Afghanistan where Taliban were about to control the government. Unocal

offered aid to warlords in September 1996 and next month, when the Taliban has taken over Kabul,the Unocal expressed its support for Taliban regime in flattery and hope to get easy way to build itspipeline.

In March 1997, Unocal established its office in Kandhar, and next month Taliban announcedthat the contract to be awarded to the company that starts the work on pipeline first. In the wordsof Brooke Shelby Biggs, Pacific News Service "Unocal courted both the Taliban and the rival Northern

Alliance, but paid special attention on the Taliban. In 1997, the Unocal vice president in charge of the

Taliban representatives in Texas, 199[Source: Lions Gate Films]


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pipeline project was quoted as saying thathis companyhad provided"non-cash bonus payments"to

members of the regime in return for their cooperation".

In February 1997, Taliban visited Unocal in U.S.A and later in December 1997, as reported byBBC, "A senior delegation from the Taleban movement in Afghanistan is in the United States for talks

with an international energy company that wants to construct a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan across

Afghanistan to Pakistan. A spokesman for the company, Unocal, said the Taleban were expected to

spend several days at the company's headquarters in Sugarland, Texas". But in the end, all the

company had, according to Unocal spokesman Mike Thatcher, was a "letter of support" signed byrepresentatives of both the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. "It wasn't a binding business deal,"he

says, "just a piece of paper that basically said they liked the idea of the project." The game was

obviously being won by Bridas in Afghanistan, with Taliban who extensively worked out theirbenefit in this case and finally showing their favors towards Bridas. Unocal halted its operations onthis project which was later carried by another American Oil company, "The Enron.

As the matter of fact, Taliban according to Craig Rosebraugh in 2002," issued two demands to

both companies before any agreement could be reached. They wanted Unocal and Birdas to construct an

open pipeline, one that could be tapped into from Afghanistan for local consumption. Second, they

wanted the companies to get involved in building roads, water supplies, telephone lines, and electricalpower lines. While Bridas agreed to meet the demands and build an open pipeline, Unocal refused,

preferring a closed pipeline for export only. Bridas and the Taliban initially reached an agreement, but

the deal later fell through due to lack of financing".

Taliban became the most important and, to my opinion, most sincere and smart guys in theentire scenario as Afghanistan was in the centre of most important global issue of that time, "theCentral Asian energy trade dominance".

Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban's Consultant for Pipeline deal

I have researched more about Taliban and Bin Laden connection in view of Taliban'sshrewdness in dealings with the Global Oil Giants, especially American Oil companies which in past

have been fooling all the nations and governments with Oil reserves, could not trap, Taliban, thepeople with very poor information and intelligence of global politics of oil, global Energy situationunless there is a very well learned and outstanding consultant is tagged along. Who could be betterthan Osama Bin Laden? With his family background in deep relations with Saudi Royal Family, Oilconstruction and development business,

Now the only way for America to control the pipeline is to topple Taliban Regime and replace itwith its supporting people in order to stabilize the country and control to be given under onegovernment, as required by John J. Maresca, vice president of international relations for UNOCAL onFebruary 12, 1998, to the US House ofRepresentatives, "It's not going to be built until there is a single

Afghan government. That's the simple answer."

Taliban, drug trade and Afghanistan

History of poppy production and heroin smuggling from Afghanistan can be traced back in the late 1970swhen Soviet Union invaded and Afghan war lords started cultivation of poppy to generate money to

purchase weapons and income for Afghan citizens. Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN), a

part of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, but its services are editorially

independent, detailed the background and facts about Afghan poppy cultivation, trade and politics in itsreport, published in August 2004, entitled as "AFGHANISTAN: The risk of losing the peace". According

to the report, some important facts are;


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- "The temptation for (Pre & Post Taliban) government officers, law enforcement officials andlocal authorities to become involved in the multi-million dollar trade has proved too much for

many and an entrenched culture of corruption prevails".

Removal of Taliban regime is essential but how?

In the 90s, Afghanistan occupied the central position in the U.S. strategy for the economiccontrol of the oil and gas resources in the entire Middle East. In the mid-1990s, while Russia, China,Iran, and several European nations squabbled over pipelines throughRussia and Iran, California-based oil and gas giant Unocal was looking at another route -- from Turkmenistan straight throughAfghanistan to Pakistan or India.

To build such a pipeline, however, the company would have to dance cheek-to-cheek with theTaliban, who were then rising to power which finally Unocal lost and left with only option ofmilitary occupation on the route followed by a puppet government of United States to protect thepipeline or to lose not only the "new great game" a rivalry for pipeline routes to access energyresources in Central Asia and the Caspian Sea but also the control over hydrocarbon reserves andresources of Amu Darya Region, particularly of Turkmenistan.

In the words of Leandro Natividad" Beneath the rhetorics of US President George W. Bush tosmash the so-called Al Quida network led by Osama bin Laden in the name of freedom and civilization

lies a deeper and far-reaching reason: Central Asias oil and gas reserves and other natural resources.

Bush, Vice PresidentDick Cheney and some ofhis Cabinet men who themselves have corporate ties

with giant power corporations are not just fighting terrorism. Theyre fighting for something else".

An "inside job" was planned and later in September a "new pearl Harbour" was conducted todivert the global attention and concern and to seek the sympathy to invade Afghanistan. I don't gointo lengthy debate on the topic but the simplest reason behind 9/11 and war on terror can befound while meditating on the fact that who could be benefited by such an act like 9/11? What, if itis conducted by Osama Bin Laden or Al Qaeda, was gained? What could be their motives behindsuch events of terrorism? To terrorize the world of their power and capability which could not lasta few weeks when they were retaliated and attacked by the US lead coalition forces? What they

gained is the gift of Bush Administration to them today, the grown hatred and "anti Americanism"as the result of American brutality and violence in the majority of global territories, particularly inAfghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan.

American again in the war in Afghanistan

Now if one looks deeply into the motives from the stand point of Neo cons and people of PNAC,it fits best. Regarding the invasion of Afghanistan and Pakistan, the clear objective is to clear andsecure the way for the transportation channels of Central Asian hydrocarbon reserves which areotherwise could fall into the control ofRussia and Iran. After successful completion of 9/11,America moved towards the Afghanistan with a huge stockpile of sympathy and support fromInternational community. Tom Turnipseed's article in January 2002, published in Counter Punch, a

bi-weekly newsletter published in the United States narrates the situation,""The BushAdministration's entanglement with ENRON is beginning to unravel as it finally admits that Enronexecutives entered the White House six times last year (2001) to secretly plan the Administration'senergy policy with Vice-President Cheney before the collapse of the Texas-based energy giant.

Meanwhile, even more trouble for our former-Texas-oil-man-turned-President is brewing with reports

that unveil UNOCAL, another big energy company, for being in bed with the Taliban, along with the U.S.

government in a major, continuing effort to construct pipelines through Afghanistan from the petroleum-

rich Caspian Basin in Central Asia". With the Taliban's replacement, the new Afghan government's


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head, Hamid Karzai, formerly served as a UNOCAL consultant a claim originated from December 6,2001 issue of the French newspaper Le Monde. Only nine days after Karazai's ascension, PresidentBush nominated another UNOCAL consultant and former Taliban defender, Zalmay Khalilzad, as hisspecial envoy to Afghanistan. Barry Lane UNOCAL's manager for public relations states that, "He

was never a consultant, never an employee. We've exhaustively searched through all our records." Lane

however did say that Zalmay Khalilzad was a Unocal consultant in the mid-1990s. The publishedworks of Wayne Madsen, the investigative journalist, author and columnist provides a detaileddescription of Mr, Karzai and Mr. Khalilzad in his article, " Afghanistan, the Taliban and Bush OilTeam" published by Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG) on January 23 2002. He writes,"

According to Afghan, Iranian, andTurkish government sources, Hamid Karzai, the interim Prime

Minister of Afghanistan, was a top adviser to the El Segundo, California-based UNOCAL Corporation

which was negotiating with the Taliban to construct a Central Asia Gas (CentGas) pipeline from

Turkmenistan through western Afghanistan to Pakistan.

Karzai, the leader of the southern Afghan Pashtun Durrani tribe, was a member of the mujaheddin

that fought the Soviets during the 1980s. He was a top contact for the CIA and maintained close relations

with CIA Director William Casey, Vice President George Bush, and their Pakistani Inter Service Intelligence

(ISI) Service interlocutors. Later, Karzai and a number ofhis brothers moved to the United States underthe auspices of the CIA. Karzai continued to serve the agency's interests, as well as those of the Bush

Family and their oil friends in negotiating the CentGas deal, according to Middle East and South Asian

sources.

When one peers beyond all of the rhetoric of the White House and Pentagon concerning the Taliban,

a clear pattern emerges showing thatconstruction of the trans-Afghan pipeline was a top priority of

the Bush administration from the outset.Although UNOCAL claims it abandoned the pipeline project

in December 1998, the series of meetings held between U.S., Pakistani, and Taliban officials after

1998, indicates the project was never off the table.

Quite to the contrary, recent meetings between U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Wendy Chamberlain

and that country's oil minister Usman Aminuddin indicate the pipeline project is international Project

Number One for the Bush administration. Chamberlain, who maintains close ties to the Saudi

ambassador to Pakistan (a one-time chief money conduit for the Taliban), has been pushing Pakistan to

begin work on its Arabian Sea oil terminus for the pipeline.

Karzai's ties with UNOCAL and the Bush administration are the main reason why the CIApushed him for Afghan leader over rival Abdul Haq, the assassinated former mujahidin leader from

Jalalabad, and the leadership of the Northern Alliance, seen by Langley as being too close to the Russians

and Iranians. Haq had no apparent close ties to the U.S. oil industry and, as both a Pushtun and a

northern Afghani, was popular with a wide cross-section of the Afghan people, including the Northern

Alliance. Those credentials likely sealedhis fate.

When Haq entered Afghanistan from Pakistan last October, his position was immediately known to

Taliban forces, which subsequently pinnedhim andhis small party down, captured, and executed them.

Former Reagan National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, who worked with Haq, vainly attempted to

get the CIA to help rescue Haq. The agency claimed it sent a remotely-piloted armed drone to attack theTaliban but its actions were too little and too late.

While Haq was not part of the Bush administration's GOP (Grand Oil Plan) for South Asia, Karzai was

a key player on the Bush Oil team. During the late 1990s, Karzai worked with an Afghani-American,

Zalmay Khalilzad, on the CentGas project. Khalilzad is President Bush's Special National Security Assistant

and recently named presidential Special Envoy for Afghanistan. Interestingly, in the White House press

release naming Khalilzad special envoy, no mention was made ofhis past work for UNOCAL. Khalilzad

has worked on Afghan issues under National Security AdvisorCondoleezza Rice, a former member of


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the board of Chevron, itself no innocent bystander in the future CentGas deal. Rice made an impression

on her old colleagues at Chevron. The company has named one of their supertankers the SS

Condoleezza Rice.

Khalilzad, a fellow Pashtun and the son of a former government official under King Mohammed Zahir

Sh

ah

, was, in addition to being a consultant to the "RAND Corporation", a special liaison betweenUNOCAL and the Taliban government. Khalilzad also worked on various risk analyses for the project.

Khalilzad's efforts complemented those of the Enron Corporation, a major political contributor to the

Bush campaign. Enron, which recently filed for bankruptcy in the single biggest corporate collapse in the

nation's history, conducted the feasibility study for the CentGas deal. Vice President Cheney held several

secret meetings with top Enron officials, including its ChairmanKenneth Lay, earlier in 2001.These

meetings were presumably part of Cheney's non-public EnergyTask Force sessions. A number ofEnron

stockholders, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Trade Representative Robert Zoellick,

became officials in the Bush administration. In addition, Thomas White, a former Vice Chairman of

Enron and a multimillionaire in Enron stock, currently serves as the Secretary of the Army.

A chief benefactor in the CentGas deal would have been Halliburton, the huge oil pipeline

construction firm that also had its eye on the Central Asian oil reserves. At the time, Halliburton was

headed by Dick Cheney. After Cheney's selection as Bush's Vice Presidential candidate, Halliburton

also pumped a huge amount of cash into the Bush-Cheney campaign coffers. And like oil cash cow

Enron, there were Wall Street rumors in late December that Halliburton, which suffered a forty per cent

drop in share value, might follow Enron into bankruptcy court.

Assisting with the CentGas negotiations with the Taliban was Laili Helms, the niece-in-law of

former CIA Director Richard Helms. Laili Helms, also a relative of King Zahir Shah, was the Taliban's

unofficial envoy to the United States and arranged for various Taliban officials to visit the United States.

Laili Helms' base of operations was in herhome in Jersey City on the Hudson River. Ironically, most ofher

work on behalf of the Taliban was practically conducted in the shadows of the WorldTrade Center, just

across the river.

Laili Helms' liaison work for the Taliban paid off for Big Oil. In December 1997, the Taliban visited

UNOCAL's Houston refinery operations. Interestingly, the chiefTaliban leader based in Kandahar, MullahMohammed Omar, now on America's international Most Wanted List, was firmly in the UNOCAL camp.

His rivalTaliban leader in Kabul, Mullah Mohammed Rabbani (not to be confused with the head of the

Northern Alliance Burhanuddin Rabbani), favored Bridas, an Argentine oil company, for the pipeline

project. But Mullah Omar knew UNOCAL had pumped large sums of money to the Taliban hierarchy in

Kandahar and its expatriate Afghan supporters in the United States. Some of those supporters were also

close to the Bush campaign and administration. And Kandahar was the city near which the CentGas

pipeline was to pass, a lucrative deal for the otherwise desert outpost.

While Clinton's State Department omitted Afghanistan from the top foreign policy priority list, the

Bush administration, beholden to the oil interests that pumped millions of dollars into the 2000

campaign, restored Afghanistan to the top of the list, but for all the wrong reasons.

According to the Washington Post, the Special Envoy of Mullah Omar, Rahmatullah Hashami, even

came to Washington bearing a gift carpet for President Bush from the Taliban leader. The Village Voice

reported that Hashami, on behalf of the Taliban, offered the Bush administration to hold on to bin Laden

long enough for the United States to capture or killhim but, inexplicably, the administration refused.

Meanwhile, Spozhmai Maiwandi, the director of the Voice of America's Pashtun service, jokingly

nicknamed"Kandahar Rose"byher colleagues, aired favorable reports on the Taliban, including a

controversial interview with Mullah Omar.

The Bush administration's dalliances with the Taliban mayhave even continued after the start of the

bombing campaign against their country. According to European intelligence sources, a number of


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European governments were concerned that the CIA and Big Oil were pressuring the Bush administration

not to engage in an initial serious ground war on behalf of the Northern Alliance in order to placate

Pakistan and its Taliban compatriots. The early-on decision to stick with an incessant air bombardment,

they reasoned, was causing too many civilian deaths and increasing the shakiness of the international

coalition.The obvious, and woefully underreported, interfaces between the Bush administration, UNOCAL, the

CIA, the Taliban, Enron, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, the groundwork for which was laid when the Bush

Oil team was on the sidelines during the Clinton administration, is making the Republicans worried.

Vanquished vice presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman is in the ironic position of being the senator

who will chair the Senate Government Affairs Committee hearings on the collapse of Enron. The roads

from Enron also lead to Afghanistan and murky Bush oil politics.

The War in Afghanistan and Taliban "Again"

Now the war goes on after summer 2002, the Taliban commenced to trouble US and coalitionforces in Afghanistan as part of their war strategy. Taliban retreated swiftly after the US attack onAfghanistan and scattered. My observation was that it was a very clever war strategy by Taliban toengage US in Afghanistan for long time, like former Soviet Union. Taliban gathered their strengthfor two years after the US invasion and During September 2002, Taliban forces began a recruitmentdrive in Pashtun areas in both Afghanistan and Pakistan to launch a renewed "jihad" or holy waragainst the Afghan government and the U.S-led coalition. Pamphlets distributed in secret during thenight also began to appear in many villages in the former Taliban heartland in southeasternAfghanistan. Small mobile training camps were established along the border with Pakistan byTaliban fugitives to train new recruits in guerrilla warfare and tactics.

There are two kinds of Taliban in existence today, the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani Taliban.The U.S military commanders call the Afghan Taliban Big T and they call the Pakistani Taliban LittleT. The Afghan Taliban's main goal is to remove the foreign forces and their backed governmentfrom Afghanistan. Their leadership councils are intact and they operate in almost all parts of theAfghanistan in one form or the other. The Taliban control most of the country side from HeratNorthwestern Afghanistan to Qandahar (southern Afghanistan) to Kunar (NortheasternAfghanistan). Taliban fighters are also said to have started operations in the Northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

In 2003, Taliban started attacks in small groups of 40 to 50 on US lead coalition forces, conveysand isolated outposts, police and militia and disburse in 5 to 10 to avoid retaliation. In thebeginning, U.S. forces, which remained in Afghanistan in fortifications and with limited and extraordinary security mobility, were attacked usually indirectly, through rocket attacks on bases andimprovised mines planted in the roadside. In early 2003, when Germany and the Netherlandsformally took command of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in the Afghan capital,Kabul, on 10 February, Afghanistan was again warm with clashes and attacks on coalition forces.Few incidents reported in the media were:

- In the end of January 2009 (on Jan 28th probably), near the south-eastern border town of

Spin Boldak, coalition forces killed 18 rebels in the Adi Ghar mountain cave complex.The operation, involving US and Norwegian warplanes, was the biggest confrontation

involving the US military in Afghanistan for 10 months. Rebels loyal to the Hezb-i-Islamic party of renegade warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar were said to be using Adi Ghar

cave warren as a base.


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- In response, at least five heavily-armed extremists ambushed US Special Forces Patrol onon February 10 2003, as they picked their way through a remote mountain valley. The

patrol was attacked at dawn by machine-guns and rocket-propelled grenades fromoverhead ridges as it was exploring Bahgran valley in central Uruzgan province.

-A car packed with explosives pulled up to a bus carrying German peacekeepers in Kabul anddetonated Saturday, killing four and wounding more than two dozen in the first fatal attackon the international force.

Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan

From the beginning Pakistan was the prime beneficiary of the project as the Trans Afghanistanpipeline is designed primarily to supply Turkmen gas and oil to energy-hungry Pakistan market.Now when the project is suspended, it created the energy crisis in Pakistan and as of 2010, Pakistanis in severe shortage of gas and electricity. Consequences, shown by the statistics are horrifying.Since 2006, citizens of Pakistan are protesting against the power cuts which converted into violencetill 2009 and 2010. I witnessed violence in Karachi during July and August 2009 when peopleblocked major roads and transportation in Karachi for several consecutive days striking against the

power cuts. A month earlier, BBC reported "Karachi, the country's financial capital and a city of 14million people, is the worst affected. Power cuts, sometimes for as long as 12 to 16 hours a day, have

caused widespread disruption to life in the city and much anger. Traders and manufacturers in Karachi

say they are losing millions of dollars a day in lost business because of the repeated cuts."Tayyab

Siddiqui describes the situation as," The long power outages across the countryhas made it an issue of

extreme volatility causing suffering in the daily life of Pakistani and putting Pakistans economic future in

serious jeopardy." Haji Aftab Ahmad Barlas Acting President FPCCI said in February 2010 that due to

current energy shortage industry has failed to continue the productivity process in smooth way.Shortage of gas consequently lead Pakistan's reliance on imported oil to produce electricity

forcing the already shattered external balance sheet of the country to borrow more from foreignlenders to meet the required and increasing imports of oil. The practice is alarming for the

economic stability of the country because of its control by IMF. The intensifying shortage of gassupply has now hit over 2500 industrial units in Lahore, Faisalabad, Multan and other cities andtowns.

Taliban vindicated to be the only regime that managed peace and sovereignty in Afghanistanwhich historically had been centre of tribal clashes and social-political violence. The peace andsovereignty of government, law and order implementation are the important most factors in supplyof hydrocarbon energy resources through Afghanistan to Pakistan but for US, Taliban or any othergovernment and regime in the region is a peaceful regime as long as it is working for the interestsand causes of America. Such a nation is peaceful and democratic as long as it is obeying Americanorders and serving for American benefits. If not, then the nation, the government and the regime isTerrorist, Al Qaeda connected and producing Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Documents

The Motives Behind American Invasion of Afghanistan