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but these articles express my beliefs of what 'may have' happened, way better than I can. The fact that until now, no one has been offered up as bin Laden...dead or alive...is rather astonishing considering how easily that could be done. It's very hard for me to understand what bin Laden expected to gain by the terrorist attacks of 9/11, but who knows? These articles are pretty dated, but nothing has changed the logic they provide. http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Central_Asia_watch/Afghanistan_CAsia_Oil.htmlAfghanistan, Central Asia, Georgia Key to Oil Profits by Karen Talbot Censored 2003, pp148-163 TALIBAN WANTED MORE An Argentine oil company, Bridas, was also in the bidding to build a pipeline. The same month Taliban representatives were being given red carpet treatment by Unocal in Texas, another delegation went to Buenos Aires to meet with Bridas executives. There was an intense campaign by Unocal and Washington to outmaneuver Bridas. The Taliban played one company against the other.
The Taliban and Osama bin Laden were demanding, as part of the deal, that Unocal rebuild the infrastructure in Afghanistan and allow them access to the oil in several places. Unocal rejected this demand.
Nevertheless, the Bush Administration held a series of negotiations with the Taliban early in 2001, despite the developing rift with them over the pipeline scheme. Laila Helms, who was hired as the public relations agent for the Taliban government, brought Rahmatullah Hashimi, an advisor to Mullah Omar, to Washington as recently as March 2001. (Helms is the niece of Richard Helms, former chief of the CIA and former ambassador to Iran.) One of the meetings was held on August 2, just one month before September 11, when Christina Rocca, in charge of Asian Affairs at the State Department, met Taliban Ambassador to Pakistan Abdul Salem Zaef in Islamabad. Rocca has had extensive connections with Afghanistan including supervising the delivery of Stinger missiles to the mujahideen in the 1980s. She had been in charge of contacts with Islamist fundamentalist guerrilla groups for the CIA. "At one moment during one of the negotiations, U.S. representatives told the Taliban, 'either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs,"' said Jean-Charles Brisard, co-author of Bin Laden, the Forbidden Truth.
When Washington decided to break with the Taliban, they took advantage of the fact that the U.N. had continued to refuse to recognize their government. Then, of course, the Taliban suddenly became more vulnerable after September 11, for "harboring" Osama bin Laden. Thus it became much easier to win international support for bombing them. Another compelling reason may have been that the Northern Alliance forces, with whom the U.S. would have to join forces, controlled the portion of the country near Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, whose governments were helping to support the Alliance. This offered convenience for the U.S. military to base troops in those countries. The Northern Alliance consists largely of ethnic Uzbeks and Tajiks. The Taliban is made up of Pashtun tribesmen- along with large numbers from Pakistan, Arab countries, and elsewhere- who came to be trained and to fight in Afghanistan as well as in Chechnya, Kashmir, Bosnia, Kosovo, and former Soviet republics in Central Asia. ----------------------------------------------------- A remarkable description of CIA operations in Afghanistan can be found in the book, Victory-The Reagan Administration's Secret Strategy that Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union. The book carries many boastful accounts by William Casey, director of the CIA under President Reagan. It paints a vivid picture of how Casey, himself, convinced the Saudi Arabians to match CIA funding of the mujahideen, and how all the money, and, training were funneled through the Pakistan Intelligence Service (ISI). According to the book, "The strategy attacked the very heart of the Soviet system and included ... substantial financial and military support to the Afghan resistance (sic), as well as supplying the mujahideen personnel to take the war into the Soviet Union itself ... campaign to reduce dramatically Soviet hard currency earnings by driving down the price of oil with Saudi cooperation and limiting natural gas exports to the West...
We learn about the quantities of weapons that were delivered-including Stinger missiles and increasingly sophisticated armaments. "Tens of thousands of arms and ammunition were going through...every year" rising to 65,000 tons by 1985. Approximately 100 Afghans living abroad were schooled in the "art of arms shipping." Two-week courses in "anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns, mine laying and lifting, demolitions, urban warfare, and sabotage were offered for thousands of fighters. Twenty thousand mujahideen were being pumped out every year by these schools dubbed 'CIA U' by some wags...
Don't Mess with Unocal The war against terrorism may really be a battle over oil by Craig Rosebraugh Toward Freedom magazine, January 2002 Taliban officials 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 electrical power lines. While Birdas agreed to meet the demands and build an open pipeline, Unocal refused, preferring a closed pipeline for export only. Birdas and the Taliban initially reached an agreement, but the deal later fell through due to lack of financing. 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. At the time, the US expressed little, if any, concern about the mounting evidence of abuses of women's rights. Despite an increasing lack of cooperation from the Taliban, Unocal continued to push the project. Testifying before the House US Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific on February 12, 1998, Unocal representative John Maresca discussed the importance of the pipeline project-and the increasing difficulties in dealing with the Taliban. "The region's total oil reserves may well reach more than 60 billion barrels of oil. Some estimates are as high as 200 billion barrels .... From the outset, we have made it clear that construction of the pipeline we have proposed across Afghanistan could not begin until a recognized government is in place that has the confidence of governments, leaders, and our company." A second pipeline was proposed in 1997, this time by the Central Asia Gas Pipeline Consortium, or CentGas, in which Unocal held the major interest. The proposed line would run from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to markets in Pakistan and India. Conflicts emerged again, as Maresca testified to Congress. "As with the proposed Central Asia oil pipeline, CentGas can not begin construction until an internationally recognized Afghanistan Government is in place."
Even after the 1998 US embassy bombings and Al Qaeda's declaration to "kill the Americans and their allies-civilian and military," Unocal still hoped to see through the pipeline projects. In an August 30,1998, interview with the BBC, Unocal spokeswoman Terry Covington stated that Unocal "believes the project is both economically and technically feasible and can still be carried out once a stable government is in place in Kabul."
Due to the rising concerns of financial backers about the instability of Afghanistan, Unocal pulled out of CentGas in December 1998. On its Website (www.unocal.com), Unocal claims to have completely dropped the oil pipeline projects between Turkmenistan and Pakistan. But the projects weren't altogether abandoned. An article in the March 23, 2000, Business Recorder, titled "Unocal trying to re-enter Turkmen gas pipeline project," stated that "the US company is in dialogue with the Afghan authorities seeking guaranteed protection for its personnel while working on the Afghani terrain." Enron, another US-based oil company, also has a strong presence in the region through its involvement in a pipeline project from Turkmenistan to Turkey by way of Azerbaijan and Georgia. Headquartered in Houston, TX, it was the largest contributor to George Bush the junior's presidential campaign, giving at least $550,000 to Bush himself and an estimated $1.8 million to the Republican Party during the 2000 election. As its stock plummeted in October 2001, after an admission that half a billion in debt had been hidden, the company was swallowed by Dynergy, Inc., which is controlled by Chevron-Texaco. To the US government, the financial interests and political power to be gained within the Middle East and Central Asia regions are extremely important. By ousting the Taliban, which put up so much resistance to US economic interests, it may succeed in installing a puppet regime in Afghanistan, thereby gaining control of oil resources sure to produce billions in revenues. Craig Rosebraugh is a political activist living in Portland, Oregon. He is a former spokesperson for the North American Earth Liberation Front and can be reached at [email protected] or (503) 3351436. http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Central_Asia_watch/Don%27t%20Mess_Unocal.html |
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