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The US Mission in Afghanistan is...?

For centuries, the people of Afghanistan have eked out a living from their land’s harsh topography and drought-prone climate by farming, trading, and raiding. Starting before the birth of Christ and ending only in the nineteenth century when steamships replaced caravans, Afghans made a living off traders plying the Silk Route from China and India to Egypt, Italy, and Greece.

Today, Afghanistan is again seen as a viable trade route for commerce. Not for silks and satins, spices, fine china, jewels, and even slaves, but for fossil fuels, the riches of our modern age. Although very few deposits of oil or gas can be found within its borders, there are huge untapped reservoirs that have been located to its west in the Caspian Sea Basin that is surrounded by the former Soviet republics of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and tiny Georgia.

Since these countries are all landlocked, the energy conglomerates, whose executives are bidding for extraction rights, need pipelines to transport the oil and gas to seaports for shipping to markets further to the east.

The following chronology shows the events that brought the Taliban to power, their ouster by the US, and efforts to achieve the objective noted above:

1978 — April 27th - a small Communist clique, not backed by the Soviet Union, grabs power in Kabul.

1979 — July - President Carter signs a secret directive ordering the CIA to work with its opponents — mainly warlords who object to the group’s policies of education for girls and for land reform — in hopes that the Soviets would be drawn into the conflict. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s Foreign Policy Advisor, acknowledged to a French newspaper in 1998 that the US objective in 1979 had been “to give the Soviets their Vietnam.” [Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998.]

1979 — December 12th – The Soviets intervene at the request of the Afghan government. In the past, skirmishes between tribes were carried on with rifles and on horseback, but over the next decade the US spends billions supplying tribal chiefs with weaponry including pricey stingers, as well as bundles of cash, Toyota pick-up trucks, and access to the international opium market. A number unite under the banner of the Mujahideen to fend off the Russians.

1989 — February 15th – Last Soviet troops leave. The Soviets tried for ten years to bring the country under the control of the Kabul government. (They must be enjoying a last laugh since our troops have now been there for eight years, going on nine, giving us our second “Vietnam.”)

1996 — September – Taliban emerge as dominant force when various factions of Afghan population began fighting among themselves after the Soviets left.

1997 — December 17th – A UK newspaper reports that Taliban representatives were in Texas hoping to sign an agreement with UNOCAL, an oil consortium based in California, for construction of an oil pipeline across Afghanistan, which would then head south to a port on the Indian Ocean.  [CounterPunch, January 10, 2002]

1998 — February 12th - John Maresca, a UNOCAL executive, clarified the situation when he told the House Sub-Committee on Asia and the Pacific, “construction of the pipeline we have proposed across Afghanistan cannot begin until a recognized government is in place that has the confidence of governments, lenders, and our company.” In other words, a stable government, uniting all of Afghanistan, was seen as crucial to protecting their investments.

[ http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/intlrel/hfa48119.000/hfa48119_0.htm ]

1998 — August 20th – President Clinton sends cruise missiles to strike NATO-built Taliban camps in Afghanistan and to destroy a pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, Sudan, in retaliation for embassy bombings in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, for which bin Laden and Al Qaeda were held responsible.

2001 — January – July - Secret negotiations go on between the Bush administration and the Taliban throughout the first seven months of Bush’s presidency.

2001 — Mid-July - US warns Taliban that if they do not hand over Osama bin Laden, who was there as a “guest” after being told to leave Sudan, the US will retaliate by bombing the country and instituting sanctions.

Both Presidents Clinton and Bush wanted to grab Osama bin Laden. Clinton planned a secret operation with the head of Pakistan to capture him, but it had to be canceled when that government changed hands. However, Bush added to this objective a demand that the Taliban sign an agreement furthering the oil interests of US corporations in Central Asia.

2001 — August 2nd – At a multi-government confab in Berlin, US breaks off talks with Taliban when they fail to agree to US conditions set forth in the agreement. [Bin Laden, the Forbidden Truth, by Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie – November 2001.]

2001 — August 6th – Foreign Policy Advisor Condoleeza Rice relays memo to Bush warning that planes may be used to attack the US.

2001 — September 11th – Pilots of hijacked commercial planes hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Nearly 3000 people died. Regardless of the answer to the question of who it was that pulled off this attack, it proved to be a useful propaganda tool for the US.

In his speech to the nation that night, Bush states, “I've directed the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible and to bring them to justice.”

But that effort, deemed appropriate by international law experts, was rapidly transformed into a military campaign.

2001 — October 7th - President Bush makes the following announcement shortly after the noon hour: “Good afternoon. On my orders, the United States military has begun strikes against al Qaeda terrorist training camps and military installations of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. More than two weeks ago, I gave Taliban leaders a series of clear and specific demands: Close terrorist training camps; hand over leaders of the al Qaeda network; and return all foreign nationals, including American citizens, unjustly detained in your country. None of these demands were met. And now the Taliban will pay a price."

Bush does not mention that his ultimatums to the Taliban before 9/11 may have provoked the WTC attack. Nor is anything said about his willingness to overlook terrorism in exchange for the “oil” agreement.

2001 — December 22nd – After the Taliban were pushed out of Kabul by US forces, Bush persuades political leaders at a meeting in Bonn, Germany, to appoint Hamid Karzai, a CIA operative during the decade-long fight against the Soviets, as head of Afghanistan’s interim government. (The claim by a number of sources that Karzai worked for UNOCAL appears to be an urban legend.)

2001 — December 31st - Bush appoints Afghan-born Zalmay Khalilzad as US Special Envoy to Afghanistan. Khalilzad did indeed work for UNOCAL as a consultant in the nineties. He has since served as US Ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq, and the United Nations. He also served under Brzezinski in Afghanistan during the Soviets’ attempt to pacify the country. He presently heads Khalilzad Associates.

The American people have never been told that the US objective in Afghanistan is to install a government that is recognized as legitimate by all Afghans, but one that will comply with US demands and be able to guarantee security for the pipelines. Instead, a pretense is being maintained that it is the security of America for which US troops are fighting and dying in Afghanistan.

While the operation in Afghanistan should be shut down because it is in violation of international law and the Geneva Conventions, it should also be shut down because no outsiders or insiders have ever been able to unite the country under a single government. Just as travelers once did along the Silk Route, governments of various stripes have only been able to rule a tiny portion of Afghanistan by paying tribute to warlords from the mountainous rural areas to forestall their raiding parties. Even now, reporters in the country’s capital refer to Karzai, the winner of the 2004 presidential election, as “the mayor of Kabul.”

But there’s another even more urgent reason. The corporate world whose policies and practices have brought us to an unprecedented global crisis want to continue to enrich themselves by selling fossil fuels to developing economies in the Far East.

This ongoing use of fossil fuel products is just one indication that corporate leaders put profits over any agreements to work collectively to halt an ever-deepening worldwide climate crisis.

If life on earth is to continue, they must be stopped.