As
the Pentagon was laying out targets, the State
Department was mapping pipelines.
U.S.
ambassador to Pakistan Wendy Chamberlain met
with Pakistan's oil minister to discuss reviving
the old Unocal deal on the third day of the
bombing campaign, October 10, 2001. This was
when the U.S.-aligned Northern Alliance still
controlled just five percent of the country
and defeat of the Taliban was still anything
but guaranteed. (22) On December
31, 2001, Bush appointed Afghan-American academic
Zalmay Khalilzad as his special envoy and
likely future U.S. ambassador to Hamid Karzai's
then nine-day-old interim government. (The
Karzai regime was called "interim" before
the loya jirga and "transitional" afterward.)
Khalilzad was a former Unocal Corporation
consultant who, as a member of the National
Security Council on Persian Gulf- and Southeast
Asian-related affairs, had reported to former
ChevronTexaco general counsel Condoleezza
Rice. (23)
The
Karzai and Khalilzad appointments were understandably
interpreted by Central Asia Kremlinologists
as a move that signaled American support for
a trans-Afghan pipeline in general and Unocal's
involvement in particular. (24) Karzai, after all, is himself a former Unocal consultant. (25) In February 2002, Khalilzad traveled to Ashkhabat to sign an initial
letter of intent on the pipeline with Turkmenistan's
autocratic president-for-life, Saparmurat
Niyazov. And on March 7, 2002, Reuters reported
that Karzai had gone to Islamabad to cover
the Pakistani side of the deal with that country's
military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf.
(26) Two and
half months later, all three countries met
in Pakistan to ink a formal letter of understanding.
Will
a pipeline ever be built? Probably not. At
this writing, Afghanistan remains as politically
and socially fractured as ever. At least seven
major warlords and hundreds of minor warlords
known locally as "commanders" control districts
outside the control of Karzai's American-backed
regime, which mainly consists of his tiny
Kabul city-state. Fighting has broken out
repeatedly, claiming hundreds of lives at
internal borders and checkpoints separating
the turf of rival warlords and with representatives
of the Karzai government. No fewer than three
versions of the Afghan flag fly over a nation
filled with an estimated five to ten million
mines, where most boys over 14 years of age
carry an AK-47 and where a culture of violence,
theft and hostage-taking have been both historically
and culturally endemic.
Experts
say that a trans-Afghan pipeline would be
subject to continuous threats of sabotage
committed by local warlords in the sectors
through which it ran, and immense amounts
of ever-increasing protection fees would have
to be paid to safeguard the steady flow of
fossil fuels. In addition, a large foreign
-- read, American -- occupation force would
be required for many years to enforce comparative
law and order, and it remains to be seen whether
the Bush Administration -- much less future
American presidents -- will be inclined to
devote substantial financial and military
resources to the aftermath of our 2001 Afghan
adventure. If pragmatism triumphs over ideology,
it seems likely that the oil companies involved,
reported to be led once again by the California-based
Unocal Corporation (27), will
reconsider their decision to bypass the shorter,
cheaper and infinitely more workable Iranian
proposal.
For
the time being, however, the Bush Administration
and its puppet regime in Kabul are working
furiously to make this highly dubious scheme
become reality. And various parties -- Russia,
Japan and the Asian Development Bank -- are
already committing millions of dollars to
the job.
Right-wing
commentators -- the same guys who previously
denied the existence of any pipeline scheme
-- now shrug: so what? To the victor goes
the spoils, their logic goes, and if a country
ever deserved to be compensated for its travails
-- in this case with cheap fuel -- it's the
United States. We lost more than 3,000 lives
and billions of dollars in property on September
11 -- maybe an unlimited supply of 50-cent-per-gallon
gas will help soothe our pain.
There
is no smoking gun, no leaked White House memo,
dated August 2001, signed by George W. Bush,
that calls for invading Afghanistan on whatever
pretext imaginable to secure it as a possible
pipeline route. There is, however, a preponderance
of evidence that the drive to establish an
American-friendly regime in Kabul was undertaken
not to protect American interests from the
attacks of Islamist radicals, but to enter
the "New Great Game" for Central Asian oil.
This is certainly the accepted view among
leaders and ordinary citizens of other Western
nations, and it is one that is impossible
to avoid after examining the published evidence.
The
profoundly cynical Bush Administration war
against Afghanistan that was waged during
the fall of 2001, while body parts were still
being extracted from smoldering rubble at
Ground Zero, has profoundly negative implications
for the United States at home and around the
world. These include, but are hardly limited
to the following:
1.
Rather than attempt to bring the perpetrators
of September 11 to justice, rather than end
the reign of terror carried out over the years
by Islamist extremists, the United States
allowed the real criminals -- officials in
the Egyptian, Saudi and Pakistani governments
who tolerated and worked with Islamic Jihad
and their allies -- to get away, as it let
bin Laden and Al Qaeda operatives escape.
These people and these groups will kill again,
and the Bush Administration will be partly
responsible for those deaths.
2.
The U.S. was so desperate to control a key
exit route for landlocked Central Asian oil
that it was willing to cause the deaths of
thousands of innocent Afghan civilians and
remove from power the first Afghan government
in two decades to bring some measure of stability
and order to the country. The Muslim world,
disgusted by the carnage caused by the U.S.
in Afghanistan as well as our impudent coup
de bombe against an attempt to create the
purest Islamic state in the world, will merely
experience further shudders of anti-Americanism
in response to a perceived war against Islam.
This will fuel the popularity and funding
of radical groups bent on spreading Islamic
fundamentalism.
3.
Rather than take up the Iranian government
on its recent overtures to thaw relations,
the U.S. established a puppet regime on Iran's
eastern border whose express purpose is to
"freeze out" Iran. If Iran drifts away from
Western-style reforms, if anti-Americanism
sweeps the richest, most culturally and politically
potent nation in the Middle East, the Bush
Administration will certainly be to blame.
4.
The U.S. has lost its moral imperative to
wage war, and its bull-in-a-china-shop sort
of unrepentant arrogance is now seen as a
problem that needs to be addressed by the
world's diplomatic community. Had the U.S.
waited a respectful period before allowing
Karzai to begin discussing a pipeline -- a
year or two, say -- our European allies might
have looked the other way as the United States
spread its domination over Afghanistan and
built military bases throughout the former
Soviet republics of Central Asia. As it is,
American intent is indecently obvious -- and
Europe is far less likely to join our next
oil-related conflict, whether against Iraq's
Saddam Hussein or elsewhere. If we fail to
secure the support of our allies when we genuinely
need it, we may lose our status as a superpower
-- and this will be the Bush Administration's
responsibility. The geopolitical consequences
of this breach are currently unknowable.
5.
Russia is understandably dismayed to watch
the United States building permanent military
bases throughout its former Soviet republics
-- Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and
Tajikistan all have American troops stationed
on their territory -- in order to safeguard
American oil interests. (28) The Chinese government is worried about the establishment of an U.S.
puppet state bordering its wild western underbelly,
the Xinjiang Muslim Autonomous Region. It's
the Cuban missile crisis all over again, but
this time we're playing the role of Russia.
If war with one of these nuclear superpowers
somehow develops from the rash actions taken
today, the Bush Administration will have been
responsible.
The
fundamental question is whether the trans-Afghan
pipeline idea is a happy by-product of American
-backed victory in its morally justified and
strategically vital war in Afghanistan, or
rather the culmination of a cynical ploy to
kill and maim innocent people living in the
world's poorest nation for the sake of securing
access to cheap energy.
The
answer to that question tells us what kind
of leaders currently reside at 1600 Pennsylvania
Avenue, what kind of people we are for allowing
them to govern on our behalf and how we're
likely to be perceived abroad. This last issue
-- the state of our reputation overseas --
will determine the level of resentment against
the United States. It will also increase the
likelihood that radicals angry at American
foreign policy will again target American
civilians. On September 11, 2001, we became
victims who enjoyed the support and best wishes
of the world. We destroyed that positive image
in a few months of haphazard militarism, but
it's not too late to stop the clumsy bullying
that got us into this mess.
Part 3: The Central Asian Oil and Gas Sweepstakes
The
republics of Central Asia that became independent
in 1991 -- Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan -- didn't leave
the Soviet Union voluntarily. They were thrown
out, ejected unceremoniously by a newly-independent,
impoverished Russia no longer willing to pay
enormous one-way subsidies that had been draining
Moscow's coffers for years.
With
the exception of the relatively democratic
Kyrgyz Republic, all of what U.S. State Department
insiders jokingly refer to as the "icky Stans"
are governed by the former Communist Party
strongmen who were appointed by Moscow to
run their Soviet Socialist Republic predecessors.
Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan --
the Central Asian countries possessing substantial
amounts of Caspian Sea oil and natural gas
-- are autocratic police states with rigidly
controlled state media, banned or nominal
opposition parties and ferociously totalitarian
policies of social control. In one of the
great ironies of recent geopolitical history,
Russia couldn't afford to hold on to the largest
untapped oil reserves in the world, yet ended
up maintaining a significant military presence
only in oil-poor, impoverished, civil-war-wracked
Tajikistan -- the "ickiest" of the Stans --
because the Tajik government otherwise could
not control its southern border with violent,
unstable Afghanistan.
In
the parlance of the oil business, "proven"
oil reserves are those that geologists judge
to be 90 percent probable and "possible" oil
reserves are considered 50 percent probable.
The landlocked Caspian Sea, home to a huge
sturgeon that produces most exported Russian
caviar, sits on top of an estimated 10 billion
barrels of proven reserves and 233 billion
barrels of possible reserves -- in total,
more than six percent of the world's proven
oil and 40 percent of its gas reserves. (29) At the
current rate of $26 per barrel, this amounts
to an astonishing $6 trillion in potential
gross revenues.
Compare
this to Saudi Arabia, currently the world's
largest oil producer, which possesses a mere
45 billion barrels of possible reserves. The
Caspian region also enjoys some 293 trillion
cubic feet of natural gas. (30)
Caspian
Sea oil and natural gas have always drawn
the attention of superpowers; Adolf Hitler,
whose Nazi war machine was hobbled by an Allied
fuel embargo, launched a disastrous front
against the Soviet Union in a desperate bid
to secure Baku's (then the capital of the
Azeri S.S.R., now Azerbaijan) oil rigs for
the fight against England and the United States.
Nowadays, the Caspian is divvied up among
five countries: Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan,
Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan.
In
1999, Kazakh drillers hit the Caspian jackpot
at the remote northwestern cities of Tengiz
and Kashagan. Thanks to these two strikes,
the biggest in the history of oil exploration,
Kazakhstan is estimated to possess 5.4 billion
barrels of proven and 92 billion barrels of
possible reserves (31). So while American foreign policy has always been influenced by the
discovery of oil, the gigantic Kazakh strike
changes everything.
Kazakhstan,
a U.S. client dictatorship the size of the
United States east of the Mississippi River
run by the notoriously corrupt Nursultan Nazarbayev,
possesses more than twice as much oil as Saudi
Arabia.
During
the first months after independence in 1991,
the unsophisticated autocrats of Central Asia
got taken for a ride by foreign investors.
"Naive Turkmen officials auctioned off choice
oil and gas fields for as little as $100,000
to foreign opportunity seekers," The Washington
Post reports. "Among those who picked up cut-rate
concessions were a Dubai car salesman, a Swedish
real estate magnate and Roger E. Tamraz, the
Lebanese-American entrepreneur who subsequently
became entangled in a U.S. Senate investigation
of his donations to the Democratic National
Committee." (32)
But
the leaders of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and
Kazakhstan quickly learned the value of the
Caspian Sea oil beneath their windswept deserts
and steppes. Beginning under the Clinton Administration
and continuing under Bush-Cheney, the U.S.
government has tried to help Nazarbayev's
Kazakhstan and Niyazov's Turkmenistan get
their oil and gas out to sea. The reasons
are simple: Increased production means lower
oil prices, which means less reliance on OPEC.
Lower oil prices would have a positive impact
on corporate profits as transportation, production
and power costs inevitably fall (33). And
one hardly needs an agile imagination to suspect
the interest of a White House headed by former
oil men in cutting deals to help their former
partners and friends in Texas.
By
all accounts the most direct and cheapest
route to extract Caspian Sea oil is across
the narrow shoulder of Iran to the Persian
Gulf. But "the U.S. wants a pipeline that
will help its friends in the region and freeze
out its enemies -- especially the Iranians,"
reported Business Week in late May 2002, while
Unocal Pipeline 2.0 was getting signed in
Islamabad (34). This project (taken over in 1995 from Argentina's Bridas Corporation,
which had conceived it in 1993) runs from
Turkmenistan to Pakistan via Afghanistan.
After
the Iranian artery, this is the second-shortest
route.
The
Trans-Afghan Pipeline: Alive and Well
S.
Frederick Starr, chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus
Institute at Johns Hopkins University, told
The New York Times' Steven Kinzer for an article
published March 17, 2002: "Whoever can shape
the way that pipeline map looks will shape
the future of a huge part of the world. The
main feature of these states is their remoteness.
Pipelines are the only way they can overcome
their isolation. Transit fees are real money,
and who gets that real money will go a long
way toward determining which of these countries
succeed and which don't."
There
are many pipelines slated for Caspian Sea
oil, some further along than others. In rough
order of desirability, they are:
1.
Turkmenistan-Iran: The shortest, cheapest
and safest route, from the Caspian Sea to
the Persian Gulf, yet indefinitely on hold
because Iran is subject to U.S. trade sanctions.
2.
Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan: The project
originally pushed by Unocal Corporation. A
(primarily) gas pipeline that begins in southeast
Turkmenistan, crosses Afghanistan from its
northwest to southeast and debouches in Pakistan
on the Arabian Sea. Now being developed after
establishment of Karzai government in Afghanistan
despite substantial danger and instability.
3.
Azerbaijan-Georgia: Also called Baku-Supsa,
a pipeline would carry oil and gas to the
Black Sea. Tankers would carry it through
the Bosphorus strait to the Mediterranean.
Cost of construction through the Caucasus
mountains would be high. Also, the Turkish
government is concerned about oil spills in
the already congested Bosphorus. (Both Kazakh
and Turkmen oil and gas can be shipped by
tanker to Baku across the Caspian Sea.)
4.
Azerbaijan-Turkey: An alternative to Azerbaijan-Georgia,
this route runs from Baku to the Turkish Mediterranean
port of Ceyhan. Even longer and more expensive
than Baku-Supsa, this could run over $3 billion.
5.
Azerbaijan-Russia: Baku-Novorossisk would
run through lawless Chechnya into nearly-as-lawless
Russia. No Central Asian leader trusts the
Russians not to cut off the pipeline or divert
its flow at whim.
6.
Kazakhstan-China: The Chinese government has
already promised the cash for this project,
which will be enormous due to engineering
concerns -- it crosses the Tian Shan mountain
range -- and distance (5,300 miles). (35)
Kinzer
wrote: "Afghanistan's main hope lies with
the huge gas reserves in neighboring Turkmenistan,
which other Asian nations crave. Today, the
only pipelines through which Turkmen gas and
oil can be exported run to Russia. American
companies have been seeking to build new lines
from Turkmenistan to a port from which this
wealth could be shipped to other markets."
(36)
In
order to understand the current thinking about
the trans-Afghan deal it's useful to take
a look at its recent origins. On October 27,
1997, Unocal Corporation announced the formation
of a six-company consortium, the Central Asia
Gas Pipeline, Ltd. (CentGas) to construct
a $2 billion trans-Afghan pipeline across
then-Taliban-held Afghanistan. According to
the company's press release (37), the
six lead participants in the project would
have been Unocal (46.5 percent), Delta Oil
Company Limited of Saudia Arabia (15 percent),
the Government of Turkmenistan (7 percent),
Indonesia Petroleum, Ltd. of Japan (6.5 percent),
Itochu Oil Exploration Co., Ltd. of Japan
(6.5 percent), Hyundai Engineering & Construction
Co., Ltd. of South Korea (5 percent) and the
Crescent Group of Pakistan (3.5 percent).
A Russian company, RAO Gazprom, indicated
interest initially, but withdrew in January
1998.
As
Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid has documented
extensively in his seminal book "Taliban:
Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in
Central Asia," Unocal representatives courted
Taliban officials from 1995 through 1998,
even arranging for a trip to Texas for Taliban
officials in 1997. By most accounts, the Taliban's
supreme leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, was
favorably disposed toward Unocal and its proposed
pipeline route.
However,
shortly after terrorists (allegedly sponsored
by Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda organization)
bombed two American embassies in Kenya and
Tanzania, President Bill Clinton retaliated
with cruise missile attacks against a pharmaceutical
plant in Sudan, and Al Qaeda training camps
near Khost and Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan,
on August 21, 1998 (38). In the
aftermath of these actions, Unocal immediately
withdrew from the CentGas consortium, formally
disbanding it in December 1998. "We met with
many factions, including the Taliban, to educate
them about the benefits such a pipeline could
bring to this desperately poor and war-torn
country, as well as to the Central Asian region,"
Unocal said in a statement announcing the
pullout. "At no time did we make any deal
with the Taliban, and, in fact, consistently
emphasized that the project could not and
would not proceed until there was an internationally
recognized government in place in Afghanistan
that fairly represented all its people. Our
hope was that the project could help bring
peace, stability and economic development
to the Afghans, as well as develop important
energy resources for the region." (39)
Though
Clinton and Bush officials repeatedly tried
to resurrect the deal, the Unocal project
remained shelved until September 11, 2001.
Those conditions -- "peace, stability and
economic development" -- had yet to be achieved
by any objective standard. But, by May of
2002, Unocal had obviously been satisfied.
The
Return of Unocal
Afghanistan's
new Minister of Mines and Industries, Mohammad
Alim Razim, announced that Unocal was the
"lead company" in the newly revived project.
"The work on the project will start after
an agreement is expected to be struck at the
coming [May 30, 2002] summit," Razim told
reporters (40). He said
that the Afghan government would build a new
road linking Turkmenistan with Pakistan running
alongside the pipeline in order to supply
nearby villages with gas and to carry Afghan
gas for export, and that additional construction
funds would be provided by the Asian Development
Bank (ADB) and donor countries. The Afghans
would collect "transit fees" amounting to
one-twelfth of overall profits (41) until it would take full possession of the conduit after 30 years (42). As further consideration, Turkmen President Sapamurat Niyazov promised
to add Afghan cities near the border to Turkmenistan's
electrical grid and to wire Kabul itself within
two years. (43)
In
a development that confirms Razim's account,
the Asian Development Bank's Marshuq Ali Shah
announced on August 12, 2002 that the ADB
had cut a check for $1.5 million for a feasibility
study of the trans-Afghan pipeline and would
meet on September 20, 2002 in Manila to discuss
the project. "The movement is quite fast,"
Shah told reporters. (44)
Obviously
attuned to the potential controversy surrounding
its previous dalliances with the Taliban and
the growing perception that George W. Bush's
"war on terrorism" was little more than a
cover for neo-colonialist oil exploitation,
Unocal officials at first denied Razim's statement.
"Unocal is not involved in any projects (including
pipelines) in Afghanistan, nor do we have
any plans to become involved, nor are we discussing
any such projects," spokesperson Teresa Covington
said (45). But
she added: "I don't think it would serve me
to say forever.'" (46) Covington
also allowed her employer a rhetorical opening:
"We can't make any decisions based on a snapshot
of a country," Covington said. "There are
several things we look for before we invest
in a country: an internationally recognized
government, peace and stability, and social
[standards]." (47)
However,
Razim's right-hand man, Deputy Minister of
Mines and Industries Mohammed Ebrahim Adel,
readily confirms Unocal's interest: "Naturally,
Unocal is economically and technically stronger...We
are sure Unocal will win, because it has big
potential and can work better."
"Business
has its secrets and mysteries," continued
Adel, a mining engineer, wondering aloud about
the oil company's reticence. "And maybe, before
there is a real contract, they don't want
it to be disclosed in the media." (48)
In
any event, the Afghans have made clear that
they're not waiting for Unocal, or for that
matter the West, to start construction. Any
pipeline deal will be done on a first-come,
first-serve basis. On August 8, 2002, the
Russian state oil company Rosneft announced
that it had signed an agreement with the Afghan
"Mining and Industry Ministry, under which
Russian specialists will study the state of
[Afghanistan's] gas fields and pipeline network
over the coming month. Russian companies will
finance the feasibility study and provide
the Afghans with information on the work of
Soviet Union specialists in Afghanistan's
gas industry prior to 1988. In turn, Rosneft
will participate in the development and privatization
of oil and gas blocs that Afghanistan will
offer in the future." (49)
Whether
Unocal, Rosneft or some other company decides
to move forward in Afghanistan, the Bush and
Karzai Administrations are moving heaven and
earth to break ground on some sort of trans-Afghan
pipeline as soon as possible. And that pipeline
is identical in virtually every respect to
the Unocal project tabled in 1998.
As
originally conceived, the four-foot pipeline
would begin at Turkmenistan's Dauletabad field
just north of the northwestern Afghan city
of Herat. Dauletabad currently produces more
than two billion cubic feet of natural gas
per day. It would then run 790 miles along
the Herat-to-Kandahar highway, cross the Pakistani
border near Quetta and link up with an existing
Pakistani pipeline system at Multan, Pakistan.
The new plan, according to Pakistani oil ministry
officials, is to extend the original 1998
route an additional 160 miles to the Pakistani
port city of Gawadar, for a total of 950 miles.
(50)
Unocal's
1998 plan had also suggested the possibility
of adding a further extension from Pakistan
to oil-needy India, but ongoing saber-rattling
between those two countries over the Kashmiri
conflict renders that prospect extremely unlikely.
But
what about all that Kazakh oil found in 1999,
the biggest prize so far in the Central Asian
oil sweepstakes? According to the U.S. Department
of Energy, "Unocal had also considered building
a million barrel-per-day-capacity oil pipeline
that would link refineries at Charjou, Turkmenistan
to Pakistan's Arabian Sea Coast via Afghanistan.
Since the Charjou refinery is already linked
to Russia's Western Siberian oil fields, the
line could provide a possible alternative
export route for regional oil products from
the Caspian Sea." (51)
Though
the current scheme primarily focuses on Turkmen
natural gas -- because President Niyazov has
fully committed to the deal -- a gas line
would likely be built alongside a parallel
version to carry oil from Kazakhstan, as well
as possibly Uzbekistan.
Pipeline
Problems
The
oil-rich Kazakhs, however, are understandably
skeptical about the feasibility of a trans-Afghan
pipeline, viewing it more as a back-up project
than the most obvious choice: a short, cheap
and therefore sweet line across politically
stable Iran. As Secretary of State Colin Powell
listened during a state visit to Astana in
late 2001, Kazakh president-for-life Nursultan
Nazarbayev made his guest visibly uncomfortable
as he stated his opposition to American trade
sanctions against Iran: "Frankly speaking,
the investors who work in the oil field consider
the Iran-Persian Gulf route to be the best.
This is not only my point of view, but also
the opinion of several companies, including
American ones. We are interested in multiple
routes." (55) Kazakhstan's
overall strategy is to pursue "as many pipelines
as the country can handle," in order to maximize
options for export. Thus the country is asking
foreign oil companies to build transfer facilities
through Azerbaijan, the "best" Iranian route,
even the lengthy Chinese concept -- and a
trans-Afghan oil pipeline, which Nazarbayev
revealed is projected to be completed by 2007.
(56)
The
greatest obstacle to the revived "pipeline
of peace" -- Karzai's term -- is, of course,
that there isn't a hell of a lot of peace
to go with the pipeline. "Now with the gradual
return of peace and normality in Afghanistan,
we are confident that this mega-project will
be realized in the near future," Pakistani
ruler General Pervez Musharraf stated bombastically
after hosting the May 2002 oil summit in Islamabad.
But "peace and normality" have hardly returned
to a nation awash in mines, automatic weapons
and opium poppies. Karzai's central government
is under siege from warlords left out of the
power-sharing deal arranged in Bonn during
the fall 2001 bombing campaign. Bandits and
armed rape gangs roam the streets of cities
and villages (57). And even American troops are, at this writing, still coming under fire
from Taliban troops who have returned to the
guerrilla attacks they began against the Soviets
during the 1980s (58). In addition,
Afghanistan's unruly populace considers itself
entitled to charge for any goods that pass
through its territory; warlords and tribal
chieftains would surely hold the flow of oil
and gas hostage pending the receipt of ever-rising
protection payments.
Some
oil companies are talking about "managing
an Afghan pipeline themselves, rather than
letting Afghans do it, and on hiring a private
security force to guard the line." (59) But that
would add to the expenses. As England's Guardian
newspaper wrote on May 31, "Gas analysts warn
the project would be vulnerable to disruption
by warlords unless it was buried deep enough
in the ground, which would add considerable
extra costs." (60)
Furthermore,
Afghanistan's June 10 loya jirga merely established
the framework for a two-year "transitional"
government. There is no legal or political
structure to protect foreign investments;
in fact, the Karzai regime continues to enforce
a pastiche of Taliban-era Sharia law, the
system in which Islamic judges interpret the
Koran, and civil rights guaranteed under the
old monarchist constitution of 1964. In a
place where judges still condemn adulterers
to be stoned, securities and corporate laws
are nonexistent (61). As Peter
Bassett, investment manager for London-based
global investment firm Brunswick Capital Management
says, "From an emerging markets point of view,
Afghanistan has a long ways to travel."
Finally,
the greatest obstacle is the price of the
Turkmen natural gas that constitutes the project's
main raison d'ętre. Reuters cites analysts
who believe that "the cost of the project
means customers would have to pay more for
gas than they were currently paying to make
it economic." (62)
But
let's assume that some intrepid oil consortium,
led by Unocal or not, decides to sink billions
of dollars into a trans-Afghan pipeline whose
security is guaranteed by an Afghan government
itself entirely dependent on the U.S. military
for security. Let's say that they pay off
the warlords, that the price of natural gas
increases enough or that the Kazakh oil component
comes through. We'll allow that they bury
the pipeline so deep that no one can touch
it. Then they still have to contend with the
Pakistani factor.
The
Institute for Afghan Studies' Farhad Ahad
believes that Pakistan would hold a trans-Afghan
pipeline hostage to its own interests -- which
don't include access to gas or oil since the
country is considered energy-independent through
at least 2025. "Historically Pakistan has
always meddled in Afghanistan's affairs and
has never wanted to give Afghanistan access
to its waters. It's a way of keeping Afghanistan
dependent on Pakistan," Ahad says (63). And
Pakistan's military still supports its fellow
Pashtun Taliban, reducing the chances of the
military junta's cooperation with the U.S.-installed
Karzai.
The
Pipeline: A Stupid Idea Whose Time Has Come
So
far the most thorough and intelligent conspiracy
theory "debunker" has been The American Prospect's
Ken Silverstein. Silverstein and other Bush
Administration defenders argue that Operation
Enduring Freedom is unrelated to oil and gas
pipelines:
First,
they assert, President Bush is a well-intentioned,
intensely caring man determined to free the
enslaved women of Afghanistan from Taliban
oppression and hell-bent on justice for the
victims of September 11.
Second,
Turkmenistan no longer needs an Afghan pipeline
to carry its gas. Russia has become economically
stable and reliable, and in any event there
is no less demand for Turkmen gas than there
was when Unocal conceived its project in 1995.
(64)
Third,
Turkmenistan's Niyazov "is an unstable megalomaniac...an
old Communist Party hack. His portraits are
ubiquitous in Turkmenistan, the country's
currency bears his image, and cities, towns
and businesses have been renamed after him.
In his spare time, Niyazov makes grandiose
plans such as building an artificial lake
in the middle of the desert, issues presidential
decrees on issues such as the title of a women's
magazine, and erects monumental palaces. Niyazov's
madness," Silverstein writes, "combined with
his total control of the economy, has left
few Western companies willing to invest in
Turkmenistan, much less put up billions for
a gas pipeline."
Fourth,
Kazakhstan's desire for a pipeline has been
sated by increased Russian export capacity
and an American-backed plan for a so-called
Baku-Novorossiisk line which would debouche
on the Turkish Mediteranean coast.
Fifth,
Afghanistan itself possesses no significant
energy resources. Since its only value is
as a conduit, the area can be bypassed in
favor of a safer alternative -- across Azerbaijan
and Georgia, for example.
Finally,
the "debunkers" argue, Afghanistan is, and
will likely remain, far too dangerous for
the foreseeable future. "When you talk about
pipelines, you create an atmosphere of expectation
of money," Silverstein quotes Julia Nanay,
a Caspian expert at the Petroleum Finance
Company. "All the warlords are going to want
a piece of the action." "Few people would
bet on a long-term settlement to the fighting
there," Silverstein concludes, "and if peace
does take hold, it won't be for a long time."
(65)
All
but his last contention fall apart upon immediate
examination.
First,
neither George W. Bush nor any high-ranking
member of his cabinet ever issued a statement
pertaining to the status of Afghan women prior
to September 11, 2001. The truth is that the
U.S. government had no interest in liberating
Afghan women from Taliban control; feminist
groups in the U.S. found both Clinton and
Bush unresponsive to their pleas for action
against the Taliban. The mere suggestion that
an American war would have been conducted
against Afghanistan in order to liberate women
is patently ridiculous. Furthermore, although
it never extended formal diplomatic recognition
to the Taliban, the United States government
did not treat them as pariahs until the attacks
in New York and Washington. In April 2001,
the United States approved a $43 million United
Nations payment to the Taliban as a reward
for curtailing opium cultivation, and extensive
informal ties linked the two governments.
Informal contacts, including permitting a
Taliban representative to reside in Flushing,
New York, continued through September. The
U.S. even allowed the Taliban to maintain
an American-based website, the since-eliminated
taleban.com, to disseminate news and propaganda.
Second,
Niyazov has made his desire for a trans-Afghan
gas pipeline abundantly clear through countless
statements. On February 8, 2002, the day of
Khalilzad's visit, Turkmen state television
quoted Niyazov: "Peace is finally being installed
in Afghanistan. And we can now build a pipeline
to Pakistan across its territory." (66) Turkmenistan
may not need a new deal as Silverstein asserts
in a masterful bit of sophistry, but its leader
certainly wants one. That, needless to say,
is enough.
The
third argument, that U.S. corporations don't
do business with tyrants, is perhaps the most
absurd. If anything, corporations and political
leaders prefer dealing with autocrats over
democrats; all they need is a single individual's
handshake in order to finalize an agreement.
Furthermore, dictators, interested in lining
only their own pockets and those of their
cronies, typically charge less than civic-minded
leaders hoping to enrich their people and
their country. The man who calls himself "Turkmenbashi"
-- "Great Leader of all Turkmen Everywhere"
-- is certainly a megalomaniac figure; he
recently asked Turkmenistan's compliant legislature
to rename the month of January "Turkmenbashi."
(67) Nonetheless,
his oversized ego hasn't prevented the Bank
of New York, Coca-Cola, Arthur Andersen, Ford,
General Electric, Halliburton (68), Hewlett-Packard,
John Deere, Proctor & Gamble and Societé
Général from investing more than $8 billion
into Niyazov's Turkmenistan. (69)
Fourth,
Kazakhstan, as we have already seen, is pursuing
a pipeline-maximization strategy. While Russian
malevolence may be reduced from the bad old
days of the early-'90s Soviet collapse, landlocked
Kazakhstan will continue to seek economic
security by increasing the number of possible
routes for its fuel exports, whether though
Iran, China or Afghanistan -- "as many pipelines
as the country can handle," in other words.
Fifth,
northern Afghanistan does possess fossil fuel
reserves of its own. Along with fellow journalists
I saw oil rigs lining the highway east of
Taloqan in Takhar Province; they were functioning
even during the November-December 2001 bombings.
Russia's Rosneft states that, based on Soviet-era
data collected during the 1980s, Afghanistan
"has substantial reserves of light low-sulfur
oil amounting to 95 million barrels and up
to 5 trillion cubic feet of possible natural
gas reserves worth around $22 billion." (70)
The
Guardian summarizes the remaining argument
as follows: "Few believe Afghanistan is secure
enough to take such an expensive project.
Most provinces are still ruled by rival warlords
who often owe fickle allegiance to the government
in Kabul. Any pipeline that is on or near
the surface would be vulnerable to attack."
(71) As Silverstein
says:
No
major energy firm has expressed any interest
in working with the three countries. Even
Unocal has stated forthrightly that it has
abandoned its old project and that its priorities
have shifted outside of Central Asia. "The
fact that Karzai, Niyazov, and the Pakistanis
have agreed to build a pipeline is meaningless,"
says Robin Bhatty, an independent energy analyst
whose focus is the Caspian region. "None of
them have the money or skills to build the
thing, and no international firm will be involved
given the availability of already-built pipelines
and alternative routes." A January 2002 Associated
Press story quoted New York business analyst
Jeffrey Rogers as saying he couldn't imagine
any major corporation making a significant
investment in Afghanistan. "It's just not
the kind of risk anyone is prepared to take
right now," he said. "I can't imagine they
will take a risk like that for some time."
(72)
Of
course, the three nations involved signed
their memorandum of understanding just over
three months ago on May 31, 2002, so it's
a little early to discount the possibility
that they will ultimately obtain financing.
The Asian Development Bank has already spent
money on a feasibility study. And the availability
of alternative routes doesn't affect planners
in government and energy companies who are
looking for additional capacity. But the overall
argument is well-taken: the idea of a trans-Afghan
pipeline is ill-considered, absurdly premature
and probably constitutes financial suicide.
It's a big world -- why would anyone sink
hard-earned billions into Afghanistan?
Because,
as The Guardian admits in the same article,
the pipeline dream "is too good to resist."
And whether or not the three despots and their
American sponsors succeed at making Afghanistan
safe for the trans-Afghan pipeline, it's impossible
to ignore their intent: they are working hard
to make the pipeline a reality.
Afghanistan
was just as much of a miserable, war-torn
mess back in 1998 as it is today; Unocal and
its partners were nonetheless interested in
running a pipeline across its territory. Now
that the United States has committed itself
to an indefinite military presence, is it
really so farfetched to think that some Western
energy company will take the plunge again?
Those who dismiss the pipeline motive as a
half-baked "conspiracy theory" argue that
people, and companies, always behave in an
intelligent manner consistent with their self-interest.
History, however, confirms the Turkmen saying:
There are limits to wisdom, but there is no
limit to foolishness. The trans-Afghan pipeline
is a stupid idea, but it's a stupid idea whose
time has come.
PART
4: The "War on Terrorism" Before September 11
"To
term the war in Afghanistan a colonial adventure'
is to ignore the thousands of civilians who
died in terrorist attacks on September 11
and to ignore an unprecedented attack on the
nerve center of the U.S. military." -- World
Press magazine (73)
"President
Bush and Vice President Cheney, as former
oilmen, certainly understand the importance
of the pipeline projects, but these are surely
only part of a complex set of factors being
weighed by the administration." -- Brendan
Nyhan, SpinSanity.com (74)
"Considerations
of economic and political influence will undoubtedly
play a part in western strategies in Afghanistan.
It would be strange if they did not. But the
argument that these are the main motivations
behind U.S. actions, not the desire to stamp
out international terrorism, will probably
find support mainly among those who already
have a fondness for conspiracy theories."
-- Malcolm Haslett, BBC News (75)
Bush,
these writers say, did not attack Afghanistan
for oil -- at least not solely for oil. What
other "complex factors" played a role in the
decision to start dropping bombs on innocent
civilians?
For
a week or two after the terrorist attacks
of September 11, 2001, Americans -- including
President Bush and his administration -- operated
in a haze of shock and confusion. The name
of Osama bin Laden was bandied around as a
likely suspect, as it often had been after
such events, but no one knew what to do next.
Insofar as we know, no group had yet claimed
responsibility for the destruction of the
World Trade Center and the murders of 3,000
Americans (76). According
to Bush, no demands had been issued and no
requests for changes in policy had been received.
Although
Secretary of State Colin Powell and some Pakistani
officials initially promised to present proof
that the attacks had been planned and carried
out by Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda organization,
the closest solid evidence of culpability
materialized after the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan,
in the form of a video cassette showing bin
Laden discussing his foreknowledge -- hardly
the same as direct responsibility -- of the
strikes against New York and Washington.
Rather
than an actual terrorist himself, bin Laden
has historically acted as Islamist terrorism's
biggest "venture capitalist": other organizations
pitch him ideas for various operations in
the hope of obtaining funding (77). The
September 11 attacks were probably no different;
while bin Laden may have funded some or all
of the attack (that would explain the part
of the video in which he says he knew that
the attack was coming), another organization
probably conceived of the plan, recruited
its operatives and gave the signal to go ahead.
Although 15 of the 19 hijackers possessed
Saudi passports, the common link between Mohammad
Atta and his partners was their Egyptian ethnicity
-- and membership in Islamic Jihad, an Egyptian
group responsible for the 1981 assassination
of Anwar Sadat and the Luxor Temple massacre.
Islamic Jihad, based in Egypt, probably carried
out 9-11.
Islamic
Jihad is led by Ayman Zawahri, who is thought
to have been bin Laden's right-hand man in
Afghanistan. Many of its members belong to
Al Qaeda. Nevertheless, the countries most
closely associated with the origin, political
support and funding for the World Trade Center
and Pentagon attacks are, respectively, Egypt,
Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. The Egyptian government
of Hosni Mubarek has long tolerated the presence
of Islamic Jihad and could provide the United
States with intelligence that would lead to
the capture of the 19 hijackers' coconspirators.
Extremists affiliated with the Saudi Arabian
government provided funding to bin Laden that
found its way to the 9-11 plotters. And Pakistan
remains the world's nerve center for anti-American
jihad. Musharraf, after all, came to power
as a pivotal ally of the Taliban. (78)
Afghanistan
served as a back lot for Pakistani-based jihadi
groups. It was a failed state where Muslim
extremists from Chechnya, Xinjiang, Palestine
and elsewhere traveled to obtain training.
It also provided safe haven to Osama bin Laden,
a likely financier for 9-11. But bombing Afghanistan
was like bombing Yale to get even with George
W. Bush; the alumni had already left. And
even killing Osama bin Laden -- though the
U.S. made little serious effort to do so --
would not have brought justice or vengeance
to those who conceived and carried out 9-11.
A
war on terrorism would be a logical response
to September 11. One has yet to begin. What
has been called a "war on terrorism" has in
truth been an attack on domestic dissent and
basic Constitutional guarantees in the United
States and a dangerous military expansion
in the form of wars against Afghanistan and
Iraq and the installation of new U.S. bases
everywhere from the Philippines to Kyrgyzstan.
Where a serious effort to safeguard the U.S.
and its people was needed, the Bush Administration
has indulged itself in a brazen right-wing
power grab analogous to the malicious reign
of Senator Joseph McCarthy.
In
retrospect, the drive against Al Qaeda and
bin Laden's Taliban hosts in Afghanistan seems
like a foregone conclusion, a logical military
response to what leaders called an "act of
war." But in the first days after the attacks,
this was not the case. After intelligence
officers convinced administration officials
of Al Qaeda's role, several scenarios were
considered by the U.S. government:
1.
Negotiating with the Taliban government for
bin Laden's extradition and prosecution. (79)
2.
Dispatching elite ground commandos into Afghanistan
to search for bin Laden and his lieutenants,
with the goal of either killing or arresting
him. (80)
3.
Shutting down bank accounts and other financial
conduits that permit Islamist groups to fund
operations against the West. (81)
These
courses of action all offered various advantages
and disadvantages. Though the Taliban offered
to turn over bin Laden (despite the absence
of diplomatic relations with, much less an
extradition treaty with, the United States)
upon presentation of proof of his complicity,
it is likely that American officials didn't
possess more than circumstantial evidence
at the time. Had such evidence been available,
after all, it would probably have been released
in order to counter widespread Arab criticism
of the U.S. Those familiar with bin Laden
know that he funds operations that other groups
propose. As a rule, bin Laden neither plans,
nor carries out, terrorist operations.
The
second option would have involved high risk
with little chance of success; despite periodic
actions U.S. intelligence operations had generally
failed to invest in Afghanistan and Central
Asia, in effect dooming a ground operation
to failure. (Even now, the United States relies
on maps derived from Soviet-era cartographers
to conduct its operations.) In fact, ground
movements in the anti-Taliban war were largely
entrusted to Afghan soldiers of the Northern
Alliance and Eastern Shuria, the forces who
allowed the Taliban and Al Qaeda leadership
to escape into Pakistan.
Finally,
the financial option stood little chance of
success. Too many Islamic regimes, such as
those of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, are sympathetic
to the fundamentalists to ever cut off the
money supply entirely. Besides, many of these
groups rely on alternate forms of money transfer,
such as maintaining one-person "banks" who
keep credit/debit "balances" as needed, which
can't be controlled through any wire-transfer
network. In addition, some assets were converted
into fungible gold and diamonds. By the summer
of 2002, Western officials conceded that Al
Qaeda assets had not been seized in significant
amounts. (82)
The
reason I reference these pre-bombing options
is to remind us that, in fact, the bombing
campaign was anything but inevitable. Quite
the contrary: the administration rushed Congress
and its allies in the media into declaring
a "war on terrorism," the first strike of
which would be an air campaign designed to
help Afghanistan's Northern Alliance to seize
power in Kabul. Ironically, those bombs created
the chaos that allowed Osama bin Laden and
his cohort Mullah Mohammed Omar to escape,
not through the Tora Bora mountains into Pakistan's
tribal areas as reported, but far more likely
into Pakistani Kashmir and from there anywhere
his immense wealth could spirit him (83). The
Northern Alliance took power, only to lose
much of it in a U.S.-brokered deal to a Pashtun
former Talib, Hamid Karzai.
If
the goal of American military action had been
to close terrorist training camps and madrassas
where anti-American propaganda was disseminated,
it would not have attacked Afghanistan, but
rather the greatest sources of funding and
personnel for anti-American jihad: the extreme,
corrupt regimes of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
If another goal had been to put those who
planned and executed the 9-11 attacks on trial,
the U.S. would have leaned on Egypt to turn
over members of Islamic Jihad. Those were
obviously not the goals of the U.S. war in
Afghanistan.
Bush
Planned to Attack Afghanistan Before September
11
The
Washington Post's Bob Woodward reported in
November 2001 that the CIA had conducted paramilitary
operations in southern Afghanistan dating
back to 1997. And, he wrote, "For the last
18 months, the CIA has been working with tribes
and warlords in southern Afghanistan, and
the division's units have helped create a
significant new network in the region of the
Taliban's greatest strength." (84) Thus, during the last nine months of the Clinton presidency and first
nine months of the Bush Administration, the
United States government had been attacking
-- albeit on a scale smaller than the onslaught
that would ensue in the fall -- the Taliban
government on Afghan soil.
Moreover,
on September 18, 2001 George Arney of the
BBC said that ex-Pakistani Foreign Secretary
Niaz Naik had been briefed by U.S. officials
about plans to invade Afghanistan before September
11. That conversation took place in mid-July
2001, two months before the September attacks.
Arney's report, filed before the beginning
of the Afghan war nine days later, is shocking
in its prescience:
Niaz
Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary,
was told by senior American officials in mid-July
that military action against Afghanistan would
go ahead by the middle of October. Mr. Naik
said U.S. officials told him of the plan at
a U.N.-sponsored international contact group
on Afghanistan which took place in Berlin.
Mr. Naik told the BBC that at the meeting
the U.S. representatives told him that unless
Bin Laden was handed over swiftly America
would take military action to kill or capture
both Bin Laden and the Taliban leader, Mullah
Omar. The wider objective, according to Mr.
Naik, would be to topple the Taliban regime
and install a transitional government of moderate
Afghans in its place -- possibly under the
leadership of the former Afghan King Zahir
Shah.
Mr.
Naik was told that Washington would launch
its operation from bases in Tajikistan, where
American advisers were already in place. Mr.
Naik was told that if the military action
went ahead it would take place before the
snows started falling in Afghanistan, by the
middle of October at the latest.
He
said that he was in no doubt that after the
World Trade Center bombings this pre-existing
U.S. plan had been built upon and would be
implemented within two or three weeks. And
he said it was doubtful that Washington would
drop its plan even if Bin Laden were to be
surrendered immediately by the Taliban. (85)
Of
course, that is exactly what happened. The
U.S. demanded bin Laden's extradition; when
it was offered, they refused it. The bombs
began falling before mid-October. And a "transitional
government of moderate Afghans" was installed
after a November meeting in Bonn, Germany.
Remember:
This report was filed on September 18, 2001.
The
French authors Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume
Dasquie published a book in November 2001,
"Bin Laden: The Forbidden Truth," that goes
even further. According to the two men, one
a former French secret service agent, the
other an investigative journalist, the U.S.
viewed the Taliban before August 2001 "as
a source of stability in Central Asia that
would enable the construction of an oil pipeline
across Central Asia." A Taliban representative
opened negotiations with the freshly installed
George W. Bush by taking an expensive Afghan
carpet to Washington in February 2001, but
U.S.-Afghan talks went poorly. "At one point
during the negotiations, the U.S. representatives
told the Taliban official, either you accept
our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury
you under a carpet of bombs.'" (86)
If
true, this is as close to a smoking gun as
it gets. But even dismissing Brisard and Dasquie's
story as pure fiction doesn't change the fundamental
fact that an Afghan invasion was in the cards
irrespective of September 11.
The
seeming conflict in these accounts reflects
the reality of a standard two-pronged American
policy on the Taliban -- coddling and financing
on the one hand, while simultaneously working
to destabilize them. So even while negotiations
continued between the Taliban and the U.S.
government on the trans-Afghan pipeline, commandos
were training and arming anti-Taliban tribes
to act in the event that the discussions failed.
PART
5: Bush's Oil War
With
the benefit of hindsight, the following is
evident:
1.
Before September 11, American officials still
hoped to work with the Taliban -- on a trans-Afghan
pipeline, reduction of opium cultivation and
other issues.
2.
American-Taliban negotiations were held on
a pipeline during 2001, but failed to result
in an agreement.
3.
By July or August 2001, U.S. officials, "disgusted"
with the Taliban, were leaning towards military
action.
4.
September 11, 2001 provided the pretext to
carry out a military action that had already
been planned to a significant extent.
5.
The pretext for the invasion -- the drive
to capture Osama bin Laden and then Mullah
Omar, was never achieved. (87)
6.
A secondary pretext for the invasion -- stabilizing
Afghanistan -- was never achieved.
7.
Despite the aforementioned two points, a trans-Afghan
pipeline was planned from the beginning of
the war.
8.
A trans-Afghan pipeline has been a top Bush
Administration priority from October 2001
through the present.
Granted,
these facts do not necessarily lead to the
absolute conclusion that George W. Bush attacked
Afghanistan to get a pipeline built rather
than to avenge 9-11. The circumstantial evidence
would presumably be enough to convince a jury
of 12 Americans (or of a Senate impeachment
hearing), however, that that is precisely
what happened.
Administration
"disgust" with the Taliban, after all, stemmed
almost exclusively from a failure to come
to terms on a pipeline deal. Had that deal
been successfully concluded before 9-11, the
attacks of that day would not have likely
led to Operation Enduring Freedom against
a cooperative, if not exactly friendly, government.
Conversely,
the absence of a pipeline motivation for talking
to the Taliban would likely have led the Bush
Administration, or Bill Clinton beforehand,
to one of two courses of action -- either
the total isolation of Afghanistan, or military
action based on some other pretext (the oppression
of women, say, or the destruction of Afghanistan's
cultural and archeological heritage in the
form of the Bamiyan Buddhas). The latter course
would have been extremely risky, because of
Pakistan's loyal financial and military support
for the Taliban. Given the expense and risks
involved, it is improbable that the U.S. would
have gone to war.
September
11 served as a convenient excuse for a war
designed to install a friendly Afghan regime
to safeguard a trans-Afghan pipeline. To believe
otherwise is to discard the way the war campaign
was marketed, justified and executed. It is
also to ignore the most obvious fact: that
the transitional government of Afghanistan,
which rules a nation with devastated infrastructure
and enormous human needs, spent its first
months in office negotiating a pipeline deal
rather than attending to those concerns.
Enron,
Halliburton, BCCI and Other Red Herrings
Critics
of the White House have made much of the Bush-Cheney
team's oil-industry connections, implicitly
arguing that any action the United States
adopts in the Middle East and Central Asia
-- because so many Bush Administration officials
hail from big oil -- must be motivated solely
by oil.
Like
those who dismiss the oil consideration --
and in many cases, the existence of a trans-Afghan
pipeline project itself -- as a mere "conspiracy
theory," liberal opponents of the Bush interregnum
are succeeding more at making themselves foolish
than convincing Americans that their taxdollars
and young men and women are being squandered
on a vicious oil war that has only made them
less safe than they were before 9-11. More
importantly, these conjectures work to discredit
those whose interest is to bring the truth
about the U.S. government's relationship to
the trans-Afghan pipeline to the attention
of the American people.
It
is undeniable that the Bush Administration
is staffed by more former oil-company executives
than any other in American history. A Texas
oilman who failed at virtually every business
venture in which he participated, Bush engaged
in dubious insider stock transactions at Harkin
Energy. While at the Halliburton Company in
1998, Dick Cheney gave a now-famous speech
discussing the vital importance of Caspian
Sea oil and natural gas to the United States.
National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice,
an expert in Central Asian oil, was on the
board of ChevronTexaco. And don't forget:
Zalmay Khalilzad's boss was Rice.
All
that this proves, however, is that Bush Administration
staffers were well aware of the New Great
Game over Central Asian oil and gas. For that
matter, so was the Clinton Administration
-- which wasn't at all well-connected with
the energy business. The mere fact that the
Bushies know the oil business doesn't make
the Afghan adventure an oil war.
Some
left-of-center conspiracy theorists are obsessed
with the list of unsavory individuals who
have come and gone in the annals of the Unocal
scheme, the Bush Administration and the Afghan
interim regime. And to be sure, there are
plenty of interesting corporate and political
links to wonder aloud about. Reagan's former
Secretary of State, Alexander "I'm in charge
here" Haig, worked for Turkmen President Niyazov
to lobby for a gas pipeline across Iran and/or
Afghanistan (88). Another
former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger,
became a consultant for Unocal in October
1995. He wryly called the trans-Afghan pipeline
"the triumph of hope over experience." (89) And yet
another head man at State, Texan James Baker,
had toiled as lead attorney for British Petroleum's
Baku-Ceyhan pipeline consortium, conceived
primarily as an alternative to trans-Afghanistan.
(90)
And
the sleazy interactions don't stop at connections
between Bush personnel and oil companies.
Links have been found and asserted between
Bush, Unocal, Enron, the Bank of Commerce
and Credit International, Halliburton, the
Carlyle Group -- all scandal-scarred companies
allegedly implicated in trans-Afghan pipeline
shenanigans. These people have worked on the
wrong side of ethical boundaries in the past,
the thinking goes, so their involvement necessarily
implies wrongdoing now. But while wrongdoing
may be more likely when rogues and scoundrels
are in charge, mere involvement falls well
short of proof.
Smooth
interaction between corporate executives and
government officials, especially when people
go from a high position in one sector to the
other, and even more so when nepotism plays
a role, is bound to inspire suspicion of corruption.
During the Florida election crisis of 2000,
for example, the fact that the presidential
candidate's brother was that state's governor
-- and failed to recuse himself -- raised
more than a few eyebrows. But in that case,
Jeb Bush's role is inconsequential, for even
if he pulled strings for George W. the U.S.
Supreme Court violated its constitutional
mandate and betrayed the trust of the American
people with its decision to hear the case
in the first place. Elections, after all,
are state matters. The U.S. Supreme Court,
a federal panel, didn't have jurisdiction
in the case. When critics decry the 5-4 party-line
vote in Bush v. Gore, they're missing the
real point.
Similarly,
it's important not to point at ties between
the Bushies, Enron and BCCI as de facto proof
of ill intent after September 11. Granted,
corruption may be present, but at this point
it isn't necessary to discuss what is, in
some ways, a distraction from the main point.
The point is that in all likelihood a president
of the United States invaded a sovereign state
for one cynical reason: to create a puppet
state that might, with luck, serve as a conduit
for oil to go into SUVs on American highways.
Proof
is in the timelines, in the reported facts,
in the reality that the trans-Afghan pipeline
was conceived concurrent to a bombing campaign
that killed more than 3,500 Afghan civilians.
Proof is in the relative unimportance of Afghanistan
as a terrorist state and the United States'
failure -- or unwillingness -- to launch a
bonafide campaign against terrorists or the
countries where they operate. We went to Afghanistan
to get Osama -- at least that's what Bush
said. We didn't get Osama, or Mullah Omar,
or anyone important, but we ended up with
a trans-Afghan pipeline project. And it only
took a few months.
In
the end, it doesn't matter who the players
are, what sordid dealings they have carried
out or how they're all interconnected. The
question of paramount importance to those
who care about the integrity of the United
States and the government that is charged
with carrying out the best interest of its
people is: Are we doing our best for ourselves
and, when possible, for the people of other
countries? Are we doing what's right? The
best way to determine that is to examine our
reactions to the events of September 11, 2001,
when we were hit hard -- when we were down.
How we carried ourselves in the face of adversity
showed the world what kind of people Americans
can be.
On
a personal level, Americans performed admirably.
Individuals acted heroically. Selfishness
was sacrificed for the common good. These
are the noble traits that have always inspired
the American people to rise to the occasion
throughout our history.
Unfortunately,
our government seized the moment as well,
not to do good or right, but to take advantage
-- of our grief, of our naiveté, of our lust
for justice and vengeance. They did it to
line the pockets of themselves and their friends,
to gain political and economic advantage for
a tiny coterie of influential people. In doing
so, they endangered the rest of us. They took
advantage of our ignorance about Islam, Caspian
Sea oil and remote Central Asia. I have faith
that the fundamental goodness of the American
people will cause them to see what was done
in their name, and to do something about it.
Sidebars:
Trans-Afghan Pipeline Vital
Statistics
Pipeline Timeline After
Sept. 11
Ken Silverstein responds
Ted
Rall, 39, is a syndicated editorial cartoonist
and columnist. Twice winner of the Robert
F. Kennedy Journalism Award and a finalist
for the Pulitzer Prize, Rall is the author,
most recently, of the "graphic travelogue"
To Afghanistan and Back.
A
special thanks to Daniel Durham, one of our
viewers for sending us this terrific article,
plus these links to other articles on this
topic:
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