--- Hakki Alacakaptan <nucleus at superonline.com> wrote:
>
----
> The US in 1996 considered the Taliban not only an
> "ally" in the War on
> Drugs, but as a bulwark against international
> terrorism.
Where did this idea come from? From the Rashid book, I got the idea that the US didn't really look into these things and certainly the Taliban while prohibiting domestic use of drugs actually encouraged poppy farmers to export.
It seems to me that the US was not at all interested in curbing the Taliban at all until the US feminist movement put pressure on to criticize the Taliban. Before that, the US was just focused on getting pipelines through Afghanistan.
It also seems that everything fell apart on the Unocal afghanistan project and the caspian sea route through Turkey was decided upon.
What is the status of the trans-caspian pipelines today? Would anyone, like the World Bank, be willing to fund a pipeline through Afghanistan in the near future...even if a new government is put into place?
Why would Russia be so willing to help the United States, if it was the US motive to help the unocal consortium or another run pipelines through Afghanistan (thus bypassing russian jurisdiction)...Why wouldn't Turkmenistan , Kadjhakistan, etc not choose to just run the pipelines through Iran or through China (Iran and Russian seem the safest routes)? Is their alliance with the US based solely on the desire to stop the destabilizing features of the Taliban inspired islamicists and to stop the black market profiteers originating out of Afghanistan?
Thomas
Barnett Rubin, the
> Afghanistan expert at the US-based Council on
> Foreign Relations, told Time
> in October, 1996, "The Taliban do not have any links
> to Islam's
> international radicals. In fact, they hate them."
>
> The Independent reported that the Clinton
> Administration was counting on the
> "20,000-strong Taliban militia to also deal harshly
> with the various Islamic
> revolutionaries and terrorists, from the Middle
> East, the Gulf and even
> Chechnya, who have been using Afghanistan as a
> sanctuary and arms bazaar."
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----
>
> And this from Rashid: "Thirdly, Casey committed CIA
> support to a
> long-standing ISI initiative to recruit radical
> Muslims from around the
> world to come to Pakistan and fight with the Afghan
> Mujaheddin. The ISI had
> encouraged this since 1982, and by now all the other
> players had their
> reasons for supporting the idea."
>
> || Unless I missed something, Rashid found no
> || evidence to support everyone's suspicions or
> assertions of US
> || covert aid.
>
> The CIA's Taliban recruiting center, the Maktab at
> Khidamat, had an office
> in NY, for pete's sake, that was finally closed
> after 9-11, and its bank
> account blocked. And this despite the fact that the
> CIA's been tailing ObL
> because of his terrorist activities since 1996 at
> least (Rashid again). The
> CIA's back-seat role can be attributed to 3 things:
> 1) No humint assets in
> the region (MOSSAD agent Jonathan Pollard burned the
> entire CIA Middle East
> network in 1985), 2) Let the Saudis foot the bill
> (just like they paid for
> Desert Storm) 3) Deniability.
>
> || What he found instead was a semi-covert
> non-policy. (b) the US supported
> || the Unocal pipeline for geostrategic reasons --
> to counter the interests
> || of Iran and Russia -- rather than cutting policy
> to fit oil interests
> || (although granted, once involved, it did support
> a US company over an
> || Argentine one just for the money); and (c)
> Unocal couldn't have gotten
> || more screwed in the end. For all its lobbying
> and heavy
> || hitters, nothing
> || went its way. Oh, and (d) once the US decided
> it would let Turkmenistan
> || run its pipelines through Iran after all in July
> 1997, the
> || Unocal pipeline
> || lost its raison d'etre. And this seems to me
> even more true now.
>
>
> Another excerpt from the above link:
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> -----
> The US has smiled benignly on terror in Kashmir and
> Pakistan's thuggish and
> corrupt military leaders, because fractured, chaotic
> Pakistan could
> dangerously threaten US interests in the region.
> Among that constellation of
> interests is a long planned pipeline for natural
> gas. California Petrogiant
> Unocal heads up a consortium that wants to build a
> pipeline for
> Turkmenistan's natural-gas, across Afghanistan and
> Pakistan, to the Indian
> Ocean.
>
> Iran has a competing proposal with more advantageous
> geography, but less
> advantage to the US economy.
>
> Business Week reported in October, 1996 that "Unocal
> Vice-President Marty F.
> Miller recently told the US Senate he's concerned
> that Iran, which wants to
> sell gas to Pakistan and has a competing pipeline in
> the works, will
> 'promote conflict in order to advance their own
> economic interests.' Still,
> senior Unocal execs in Islamabad hope the Taliban's
> grip on Afghanistan will
> bring stability."
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> -----
>
> Here's another article, "Gas, Oil, and Afghanistan",
> of which I've posted
> the link at least twice and you obviously haven't
> read:
>
> http://members.localnet.com/~jeflan/jfafghanpipe.htm
>
> Excerpts:
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> -----
> By early 1998 a Unocal led consortium had made a
> deal with the Taliban to
> construct an Afghanistan pipeline from Turkmenistan
> to Pakistan. The Bridas
> Group cried foul and launched legal action against
> Unocal, to no avail.
>
> On the question of the Afghanistan route VOA's
> Beecher says that........
>
> "the most obvious drawback of a proposed pipeline
> from Turkmenistan, through
> Afghanistan, to Pakistan and down to the Arabian Sea
> is that there is still
> a civil war going on in Afghanistan.
>
> Nevertheless, all factions in the civil war have
> signed agreements
> supporting the proposed pipeline, according to Bob
> Todor, executive vice
> president of Unocal, the company that is leading an
> international consortium
> to construct the central Asian pipeline through
> Afghanistan.
> (...)
> Among the many advantages of the Afghanistan route,
> according to Mr. Todor,
> is that it would terminate in the Arabian Sea, which
> is much closer than the
> Persian Gulf or northern China to key Asian markets:
>
> "There is tremendous international and regional
> political will behind the
> pipeline. The pipeline is beneficial to Central
> Asian countries because it
> would allow them to sell their oil in expanding and
> highly
=== message truncated ===
===== "The tradition of all the dead generations
weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living"
-Karl Marx
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Make a great connection at Yahoo! Personals. http://personals.yahoo.com