Why Afghanistan is under attack

October 31, 2001

Let the truth be told! The Caspian Sea is rich in oil and gas deposits. However, these rich reserves are useless until they can be explored and transported economically.

George Monbiot in an article in the Guardian titled "America's pipe dream", argues that the only route that makes political and economic sense is via Afghanistan. In fact Monbiot surmises that "Afghanistan is as indispensable to the regional control and transport of oil and gas in Central Asia as Egypt is to the Middle East."

The article also indicates that in 1995, UNOCAL, a US oil company, was seeking vigorously to negotiate pipelines from Turkmenistan via Afghanistan into Pakistani ports on the Arabian Sea and there was talk then about a "1000 mile pipeline".

In fact, Monbiot showed how certain economic variables and political considerations ruled out all the other options when he advanced the following:

"...Transporting all the Caspian basin's fossil fuel through Russia or Azerbaijan would greatly enhance Russia's political and economic control over the central Asian republics, which is precisely what the West has spent 10 years trying to prevent.

"Piping it through Iran would enrich a regime which the US has been seeking to isolate.

"Sending it the long way round through China, quite aside from the strategic considerations, would be prohibitively expensive.

"But pipelines through Afghanistan would allow the US both to pursue its aim of 'diversifying energy supply' and to penetrate the world's most lucrative markets.

"Growth in European oil consumption is slow and competition is intense. In South Asia, by contrast, demand is booming and competitors are scarce. Pumping oil South and selling it in Pakistan and India, in other words, is far more profitable than pumping it West and selling it in Europe..."

It is an historic fact that all wars have underlying economic considerations. Monbiot holds the view that anybody who believes that the US aims merely to defeat "terrorism" is really politically naive. The US aims to do much more.

And given what Monbiot outlined we can now comprehend why the USA and its covert-intelligence/military-operations arm, the CIA, spent hundreds of millions backing, training and arming the Mujaheddin with modern weaponry to fight the Russian invasion. It was geared to prevent Russian control of the Caspian reserves.

The fact that the Mujaheddin comprised an assortment of some of the most politically backward groups did not seem to be a worry to America who lays claim to be the international beacon of freedom and democracy.

Today the CIA insists that Osama bin Laden was never "one of theirs". But that is irrelevant. The Taliban and Osama are the guiding lights of the results of US foreign policy in Afghanistan and Central Asia, particularly given the fact that they, the Taliban, proved to be a stabilising force amidst the chaos that followed the Russian withdrawal, a chaos, it is reported, that brought the death of some 15,000 to 25,000 civilians.

In that very period, Monbiot informs us that UNOCAL officials invited Taliban leaders to Houston to court them in the course of ongoing negotiations over the oil question.

David Corn in his column Working For Change also examined the contradictions of US foreign policy in Afghanistan and explains:

"...Washington (and Langley, ie CIA headquarters) began providing covert assistance to the Mujaheddin in 1979, during the Carter Administration. This secret war was too tempting to resist, for here was a way to hurt the Soviets and perhaps draw Moscow into its own Vietnam.

"In the Reagan years, Washington allowed Pakistani intelligence to call the shots in terms of which resistance groups ­ there were seven major factions ­ would benefit most from US largesse."

Not all those Americans who called for arming the Mujaheddin saw the Afghan fighters as pawns in a Cold War struggle. Some argued these Afghans were freedom-fighters combatting a totalitarian and brutal invader and as such deserved the backing of freedom-lovers in America.

There was a problem with that idealistic view: key blocs of the resistance were not fans of freedom, especially freedom for women. Pakistan's favourite resistance element was led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, whose political party called for women to be veiled in public and for "open public resistance to un-Islamic ideas and practices."

Andrew Eiva, who ran a small Washington-based group lobbying for assistance for the resistance, had an enlightening conversation with Hekmatyar in the early 1980s. Eiva recalls:

"He told me that he faced two enemies. 'One comes at us from the North with troops and tanks. This I can defeat,' he said. 'The other comes at us from the West with pornography, divorce, abortion and movies. This I am more worried about...'"

David Corn in this very piece also reported on an episode involving Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter's National Security Advisor, and an interviewer that seriously calls to question America's elite leaders' view of the world and their sense of power and morality.

Brzezinski was asked by the interviewer if he had any regrets pertaining to the Afghanistan operation. He replied, "Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it?"

The interviewer continued: "And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?"

Brzezinski countered: "What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?"

"Some stirred-up Moslems!" Imagine that! We who hold a different view of the world and its peoples would do well to keep Zbig's words in mind. As well as America's ongoing "pipe dreams".