Pipeline Politics Taint U.S. War

An ongoing source of frustration and anger for many Americans is the lack ofsupport the war on terrorism has received abroad. Other nations are considerablyless enthusiastic about our use of "daisy cutter" and "thermobaric"bombs than we think they should be. Why is that?

One reason is their media. Stories alleging imperial and commercial motivesfor the war on terrorism are rife.

Outside this country, there is a widespread belief that U.S. militarydeployments in Central Asia mostly are about oil.

An article in the Guardian of London headlined, "A pro-western regime inKabul should give the U.S. an Afghan route for Caspian oil," foreshadowedthe kind of skeptical coverage the U.S. war now receives in many countries.

"The invasion of Afghanistan is certainly a campaign againstterrorism," wrote author George Monbiot in the Oct. 22, 2001, piece,"but it may also be a late colonial adventure."

He wrote that the U.S. oil company Unocal Corp. had been negotiating with theTaliban since 1995 to build "oil and gas pipelines from Turkmenistan,through Afghanistan and into Pakistani ports on the Arabian sea." He citedAhmed Rashid's authoritative book "Taliban, Militant Islam, Oil andFundamentalism in Central Asia" as a source for this information.

Rashid, who has reported on Afghan wars for more than 20 years as acorrespondent for the Eastern Economic Review and the Daily Telegraph, carefullydocuments in his book how the U.S. and Pakistan helped install the Taliban inhopes of bringing stability to the war-ravaged region and making it safer forthe pipeline project. Unocal pulled out of the deal after the 1998 terroristattacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were linked to terrorists basedin Afghanistan.

"The war against terrorism is a fraud," exclaimed John Pilger in anOct. 29 commentary in the British-based Mirror. Pilger, the publication's formerchief foreign correspondent, wrote, "Bush's concealed agenda is to exploitthe oil and gas reserves in the Caspian basin, the greatest source of untappedfossil fuel on earth."

These harsh assessments are not just those of embittered ideologues. They arecommon fare. "Just as the Gulf War in 1991 was about oil, the new conflictin South and Central Asia is no less about access to the region's abundantpetroleum resources," writes Ranjit Devraj in the Hong Kong-based AsiaTimes, a business-oriented publication.

A popular French book titled "Bin Laden, the Forbidden Truth,"which alleges that the Bush administration blocked investigations of Osama binLaden while it bargained for him with the Taliban in exchange for politicalrecognition and economic aid, is guiding much of the recent European coverage.

Written by Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, the book adds anotherplank to the argument that America's major objective was to gain access to theregion's oil and gas reserves.

According to the book, the Bush administration began to negotiate with theTaliban immediately after coming into power. The parties talked for many monthsbefore reaching an impasse in August 2001.

The terrorist acts of Sept. 11, though tragic, provided the Bushadministration a legitimate reason to invade Afghanistan, oust the recalcitrantTaliban and, coincidentally, smooth the way for the pipeline.

To make things even smoother, the U.S. engineered the rise to power of twoformer Unocal employees: Hamid Karzai, the new interim president of Afghanistan,and Zalmay Khalizad, the Bush administration's Afghanistan envoy.

"Osama bin Laden did not comprehend that his actions serve Americaninterests," writes Uri Averny, in a Feb. 14 column in the daily Ma'ariv inIsrael. Averny, a former member of the Israeli Knesset and a noted peaceactivist, added, "If I were a believer in conspiracy theory, I would thinkthat bin Laden is an American agent. Not being one I can only wonder at thecoincidence."

Averny argues that the war on terrorism provides a perfect pretext forAmerica's imperial interests. "If one looks at the map of the big Americanbases created for the war, one is struck by the fact that they are completelyidentical to the route of the projected oil pipeline to the Indian Ocean."

The Asia Times reported in January that the U.S. is developing "anetwork of multiple Caspian pipelines," and that people close to the Bushadministration stand to benefit.

For example, the proposed Baku-Ceyhan pipeline, linking Azerbaijan throughGeorgia to Turkey, is represented by the law firm Baker & Botts. Theprincipal attorney is James Baker, former secretary of state and chief spokesmanfor the Bush campaign in the Florida vote controversy.

In 1997, the now disgraced Enron Corp. conducted the feasibility study forthe $2.5 billion Trans-Caspian pipeline being built under a joint venturebetween Turkmenistan, Bechtel Corp. and General Electric, the article noted.

There are many other connections, too numerous to recount here. No wonder therest of the world is a bit skeptical about our war on evildoers.

(Salim Muwakkil is a senior editor at In These Times)