15.09.2011., četvrtak
SLP Newsletter
WHY IS THE U.S. AT WAR IN AFGHANISTAN?
TAPI Gas Pipeline or Terrorism
By Diane Secor
FOR the last ten years, U.S. military interven¬tion in Afghanistan has been presented to the American public as a response to the Sep¬tember 11, 2001 terrorist at¬tacks on the New York World Trade Center and the Penta¬gon. However, as The People (November 2001) stated, Jane's International Security News had reported that U.S. covert military operations to over¬throw the Afghan Taliban re¬gime were in progress several months before September 2001.1
The Taliban regime was de¬feated at the end of that year.
Ever since then, Taliban and other insurgent factions have been fighting the U.S. occupa¬tion and a U.S.-backed Afghan regime. The Bush and Obama administrations have called this a "necessary war" to fight "terrorists." These U.S. military operations, many of which have become NATO operations, are also supposedly intended to spread "democracy" or to "liber¬ate" the Afghan people from Taliban Islamist theocratic despotism. However, recent events and the history of U.S.imperialism in Afganistan show that substantial capitalist interests are at stake. Afganistan is of strategic value because a regional gas pipeline route passes throungh that country. Afganistan is also rich in minerals, which are in demand in capitalist production around the world.
According to United Press In¬ternational (July 21), after meetings with government offi¬cials in India, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promoted coop¬eration among countries in the region to build a "new Silk Road." The TAPI (Turkmeni- stan-Afghanistan-Pakistan- India) gas pipeline seems to be the center piece of this "new Silk Road," with railroads, highways, and related infra¬structure.
John Foster in the Toronto Star (Dec. 23, 2010) reported that the U.S. has been "pushing hard" behind the scenes for TAPI, such as through the Asian Development Bank and various diplomatic channels. The governments of Turkmeni¬stan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India have been negotiat-ing the terms of TAPI since 2002, and in December 2010, these four countries signed "formal" TAPI agreements. At a NATO summit in Lisbon in No¬vember 2010, Afghanistan be¬came NATO's "enduring part¬ner."
President Hamid Karzai's Af¬ghan regime has announced that 5,000-7,000 Afghan troops will be assigned to guard this TAPI route, while U.S., Cana¬dian, and other NATO forces are training this Afghan army. The U.S. also has been building new bases in Afghanistan, which does not seem like an "exit strategy" for American troops.
Turkmenistan reportedly has the fourth largest deposits of natural gas in the world. The TAPI plan of transporting Turkmen gas through Afghani¬stan, Pakistan, and India is not a novel idea. As the Foster arti¬cle reported, this TAPI pipeline route is identical to the Unocal consortium's gas pipeline route in the 1990's.
Afghanistan's mineral wealth provides other compelling rea¬sons for U.S. and NATO troops to remain in Afghanistan. The BBC (June 14, 2010) reported that an American "team" of the Pentagon, the U.S. Geological Service, and USAID did a study and announced that Afghani¬stan has $900 billion, possibly a trillion dollars, worth of min¬eral resources, including de¬posits of iron, copper, niobium
cobalt, gold, and lithium. Lith¬ium is used in batteries for computers and mobile phones, and niobium is a component in hardened steel.
As the BBC noted, many of these findings are not new. The U.S. Geological Service con¬ducted an evaluation of Af¬ghanistan's mineral deposits in 2007. This U.S. "team" is sig¬nificant in the June 2010 an¬nouncement. The Pentagon wants to give the European countries in NATO more moti¬vation to stick with these Af¬ghan military operations. India and China will be competing with Western firms for access to these raw materials. However, NATO and U.S. troops and Pentagon contractors will be expanding their Afghan opera¬tions to provide security for the property and employees of all of these large foreign mining com¬panies. These foreign investors also demand more basic infra-structure, such as the construc¬tion of buildings, railroads, and highways, which will also be necessary for the TAPI pro¬gram.
USAID (United States Agency for International Development) is an important member of this "team" because of USAID's his¬toric role in Afghanistan. Ac¬cording to a Center for Public Integrity report on the Center for Afghanistan Studies at the University of Nebraska in Omaha (UNO), the Center for Afghanistan Studies received over $60 million in USAID grants from 1984-1994. USAID provided the funds, but the CIA had actually designed the Cen¬ter's program, as part of a sup¬port network for the CIA's Af¬ghan operations against the Soviet Union. This UNO Center had offices in Pakistan for training and providing educa¬tional materials for Afghan refugees, who had joined the seven mujahideen factions, who fought Soviet troops. This USAID funding of the Center continued after Soviet troops started to withdraw from Af¬ghanistan in 1989.
Interestingly, just a few years after this USAID grant expired, in 1997 Unocal offered the Cen¬ter about $1.8 million to train Afghans to work on the Afghan segments of that Turkmen- Afghan-Pakistan-India gas pipeline, now called TAPI. A Taliban regime ruled Afghani¬stan at that time. This Unocal contract with the UNO Center seems to have received de facto U.S. government approval. When Unocal brought top Tali¬ban officials for visits to the Center and to Unocal's facilities in Texas, Unocal also took their Taliban guests to visit the State Department in Washington. Reportedly during these Tali¬ban visits, the UNO Center was a place where these Afghan of¬ficials could "informally" pass information on to the U.S. gov¬ernment, since no formal dip¬lomatic relations existed be¬tween the U.S. and Afghanistan at that time. In 2001 it was re¬ported that the Center had been communicating with U.S. offi¬cials on intelligence and other matters related to Afghanistan.
These Taliban contacts were a public relations problem for UNO, Unocal, and the State Department, in particular when protests broke out from women's rights groups. But as long as the Taliban were willing to uphold Western oil interests, the State Department and Uno¬cal were willing to do business with the Taliban. Like capital¬ists everywhere, American capi¬talists and the state, the execu¬tive committee of the capitalist class, will make a deal with whoever agrees to help defend their material and strategic in¬terests, even those designated as terrorists by their own gov¬ernment.
Indeed, in a press release dated February 19, 2003, the State Department announced that Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was officially added to the Specially Designated Global Terrorist list. Hekmatyar's mujahideen faction, Hezb-i-Islami, received large quantities of U.S. finan¬cial and military aid to fight the Soviet army in Afghanistan in the 1980's. Since the U.S. inva¬sion of Afghanistan in 2001, Hezb-i-Islami has been one of the insurgent groups fighting the U.S. occupation. However Reuters reported on December 19, 2010 that Hekmatyar's en¬voys have had "direct talks" with the U.S.-backed Karzai regime. No agreement directly between the U.S. and Hekmat¬yar has been reported. How¬ever, Karzai's regime would not even exist without a U.S.- NATO occupation army behind him, and it is no secret that this TAPI pipeline has strong U.S. support, as a U.S. strategic aim.
In December, the same month that Turkmenistan, Afghani¬stan, Pakistan and India signed a "preliminary agreement," a major step toward TAPI con¬struction, Hekmatyar's Hezb-i- Islami agreed to help defend the TAPI pipeline route. Reuters reported this from a statement from this group:
"Hezb-i-Islami strongly sup¬ports this deal on the basis of which Turkmenistan's gas will be exported through Afghani¬stan to Pakistan and In¬dia. . . . We are ready ... to help with the work arrangement and enforcement of security of the pipeline in areas where Hezb-i- Islami has influence."
Hezb-i-Islami has influence in the Herat region, along the Af¬ghan segment of TAPI. This militia also has influence in Logar province, where Karzai has established a "special pro¬tection force" to provide secu¬rity for a copper mine, which a Chinese firm plans to operate.
Given the history of the Tali¬ban and Unocal, insurgent Taliban factions from the old regime will probably make similar agreements to defend the TAPI route or foreign min¬ing interests, in return for rul¬ing their own Local flefdoms. The factions who refuse to do so will continue to be hunted down by U.S. forces as "terrorists."
U.S. and NATO troops could be in Afghanistan indefinitely to train their proxy Afghan army and to prop up the Karzai regime. Notwithstanding some troops withdrawals, like the Bush administration, the Obama administration has no "exit strategy." For decades, Af¬ghanistan has been a strategic prize with enormous material interests at stake.
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