The pipeline of greed
By Ashfak Bokhari
© The DAWN Group of Newspapers, 2001
The war on terrorism may well be a war for resources. In
more ways than one,
On October 29, 1994, a convoy of 30 military trucks manned
by ex-army drivers, supervised by a senior ISI official and guarded by Taliban fighters
set off on a long journey criss-crossing the rugged terrain of Afghanistan that,
few anticipated at the time, was to set in motion a chain of events that would
not only give birth to new power equations in the region, but also unleash a
new wave of misery and destruction on the impoverished country itself.
It was a trial convoy. The idea was conceived by former
premier Benazir Bhutto's interior minister,Naseerullah
Babar. The idea was to use the Taliban, who were then
mere armed zealots, for productive purposes. As the convoy proceeded, from one
province to another, the Taliban cleared the route by fighting off the regional
warlords' men who asked for money to let the convoy go.
By November 5, the Taliban had not only cleared the road,
but had, with minimal fighting, taken control of
The whole exercise, which also gave birth to the Taliban
phenomenon, was originally designed to convince and persuade Unocal to go ahead
with the project by guaranteeing safety of the route for laying of the
1,000-mile oil pipeline which Pakistan was also to greatly benefit from.
According to one estimate, Pakistan was to earn eight billion dollars in
transit fees, and get its oil at half price. Later, American policy-makers saw
in the Taliban an instrument for furthering US aims in the Caspian basin and
Persian Gulf, and placing increasing pressure on China and Russia.
But a major deterrent has been the lawlessness, chaotic conditions
and internecine strife. What the oil company wanted was a single administration
in the whole of Afghanistan before it could put in millions to realize the
cherished pipe dream. Unexpectedly, the Taliban emerged as a possible solution,
not without the ISI's active help, thus providing the
missing link.
Four years later, that link stood broken when Taliban chose
to protect Osama bin Laden, the Saudi fugitive who had taken refuge in
Afghanistan after having launched Jihad against the United States and was
wanted by Washington, rather than protect the pipeline and get 15 cents per
1,000 cubic feet from Unocal for the service. So, the pipeline dream went sour
and the Taliban became a pariah regime.
Come September 11, 2001. President Bush declares an
indefinite global war on terrorism as America's answer to the unthinkable
attacks on New York and Washington, with top priority being getting hold of
Osama "dead or alive" and dismantling of the Taliban regime. But many
analysts insist there is much more to it than meets the eye. The whole world
cannot be threatened by the US to rally behind it merely to launch a hunt for
one man and re-destroy an already destroyed country.
Since the October 7 invasion of Afghanistan, Washington's
strategy is marked by three distinct features: first, endless demonization of Osama bin Laden by the media in all
possible forms (to keep public attention away from real war aims); second,
perpetuation of a climate of fear in the United States by slashing civil
liberties, making laws harsher, incidence of hate crimes, forecasts of more terrorist
attacks and anthrax cases (to demoralize and silence dissidents and critics of
all shades); and, third, most of the statements by the president and the key
functionaries continue to remind the allies and rival powers that this time the
American presence in Afghanistan shall be indefinitely long, to rebuild the
country and to ensure stability and peace (a warning to Russia not to raise its
stakes in the region).
George Monbiot of The Guardian, in
a commentary on October 23, described the invasion as "a late colonial
adventure". Afghanistan, he says, is as indispensable to regional control
to the US and the transport of oil in Central Asia as Egypt was to the West in
the Middle East in the 1950s.
Halford Mackinder,
the British founder of geopolitical theory, had once said: "He who
controls Central Asia controls the world." But it seems the fabled race
for power and influence in Central Asia (which Rudyard Kipling had described as the
"Great Power Game") has been turned on its head by the US-led war on
terrorism.
For centuries, this region has been a buffer between Russia
to the north and the British, now Americans, to the South. But for the first
time in history, Kabul faced enemies wherever it looked. Its status of buffer
suddenly disappeared. The United States, Russia, Britain, China, Iran, Pakistan
and India - all opposed the government in Kabul. Russia's decision to join the
US-led coalition, though taken for selfish reasons, has suddenly brought to an
end the old Great Power Game.
Hence, now it is America alone which controls the region.
Its immediate goal is to strip Russia of its hitherto control over the Caspian
oil, and build its bases in Central Asian states, first such base emerging in
Uzbekistan just before the war. The Caspian oil reserves are estimated at about
270 billion barrels, some 20 per cent of the world's proven reserves.
The primary factor in determining the twists and turns in
Washington's policy towards Afghanistan has not been the threat of Islamic
extremism, but how best to exploit the new opportunities that Soviet Union's
collapse has opened up in the region.
The key to huge profits lay in transporting oil from this
landlocked region to the world markets. The US would not favour any pipeline
through Iran. The only best route is through Afghanistan and Pakistan and then
to the entire South Asia. That is why Islamabad and Washington had backed the Taliban
when the latter swept into power in 1996, bringing, at least, a degree of
stability that foreign investors needed to go ahead with any deal.
Within hours of Kabul's capture by the Taliban, the US State
Department announced it would establish diplomatic relations with the Taliban
regime by sending an official to the Afghan capital – an announcement it also
quickly retracted. But the State Department spokesman at the time, Glyn Davies, said the US found "nothing
objectionable" in the steps taken by the Taliban to impose Islamic law.
Unocal's response was similar: it welcomed Taliban's victory, and then quickly
retracted the statement. The meaning was obvious. The US saw the Taliban as the
best means for ensuring stability for the Unocal project.
Taliban leaders, in an effort to obtain the most lucrative
deal, were in the meantime playing the US firm off against the Argentinean oil
company, Birdas. Unocal, with the support of
Washington, provided nearly one million dollars to set up a Centre for
Afghanistan Studies at the University of Omaha, but the money was actually used
to set up a school near Kandahar to train the pipefitters,
electricians and carpenters needed to construct the pipeline.
As Ahmed Rashid in his famous book on Taliban has
documented, the Unocal invited some of the leaders of the Taliban to Houston.
The delegation, headed by the one-eyed Mulla Mohammed
Ghous, reached there in November, 1997. They were
lodged in a five-star hotel, visited the zoo, supermarkets and the NASA space
centre. They had dinner at the home of Marty Miller, a senior company
executive, where they admired his swimming pool and the large, comfortable
house.
The US had no objection to Taliban's way of governance,
lifestyle and religious perceptions. In 1997, a US diplomat told Ahmed Rashid:
"The Taliban will probably develop like the Saudis did. There will be Aramco (meaning a consortium of oil companies as in Saudi
Arabia), pipelines, an Emir, no parliament and lots of Shariat
laws. We can live with that." It seems the Americans were ready to go to
any extent to promote business interests in Afghanistan.
The Clinton administration was clearly sympathetic to the
Taliban because it served its anti-Iran policy. The US Congress had authorized
a covert $20 million budget for the CIA to destabilize Iran, but some of these
funds, Iran says, went to the Taliban. In fact, the period from 1994 to 1997
saw a flurry of US diplomatic activity to secure support for the Unocal
pipeline.
In March, 1996, prominent US Senator Hank Brown, a vocal
supporter of the Unocal project, visited Kabul and met Taliban leaders. In the
same month, the US government put pressure on Pakistan government to back the
American company and distance away from the Argentinean rival. The next month,
US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, Robin Raphel,
visited Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia for the same purpose.
Now that the Taliban regime stands dismantled, what can be
the next move of the US in Afghanistan after a new, favourable government is
installed in Kabul? Finding Osama, of course, remains a major objective. In
September, a few days before attacks on New York, the US Energy Information Administration
had reported: "Afghanistan remains a potential transit route for oil and
natural gas exports from Central Asia to the Arabian sea. This potential
includes the possible construction of pipelines through Afghanistan."
In his commentary, Monbiot of The
Guardian says, "Given that the Bush administration is dominated by former
oil industry executives (Cheney was head of the world's biggest oil service
company, Halliburton; Condaleeza Rice has been on the
board of Chevron; Don Evans, commerce secretary, has been CEO and chairman of
an oil company), we would be foolish to suppose that a reinvigoration of these
plans (oil pipelines) no longer figures in its strategic thinking."
Michael T. Klare, a noted American
scholar, observes in his new book, Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global
Conflict: "Whereas international conflict was until recently governed by
political and ideological considerations, the wars of the future will largely
be fought over the possession and control of vital economic goods." Oil is
king in Klare's tome. As such, the Bush
administration's war on terrorism is, in fact, a war for resources, and the
most precious resources are oil and gas.
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