{"id":222396,"date":"2021-09-09T00:46:57","date_gmt":"2021-09-08T19:16:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=222396"},"modified":"2021-09-14T01:26:37","modified_gmt":"2021-09-13T19:56:37","slug":"afghanistan-i-americas-oil-jihad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/afghanistan-i-americas-oil-jihad\/","title":{"rendered":"Afghanistan \u2013 I: America\u2019s Oil Jihad"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Sachithanandam Sathananthan<\/a>\u00a0\u2013<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Dr. Sachithanandam Sathananthan<\/p><\/div>\n

The members of NATO are in indescribable shock. <\/span><\/p>\n

The former European colonial masters led by their current political and military avatar, the US are struggling to digest their historic defeat at the hands of an opposition they contemptuously dismissed as \u201c<\/span>rag tag Afghan tribals\u201d and despised as \u201ctowel heads\u201d. <\/span>How, they agonize, did our Bunker Busters, high tech weaponry and robotic (drone) warfare fail so ignominiously?<\/span><\/p>\n

What\u2019s more they are staggered by the seismic consequences for the ineffectiveness of NATO as their main instrument for global domination. Could NATO expand and dominate Eastern Europe? Would the burgeoning Peoples Republic of China and a resurging Russian Federation take its threat seriously? For how long will the NATO powers\u2019 diplomatic and military intervention to buttress the medieval Sheikhdoms in West Asia (or \u201cMiddle East\u201d, for former European colonialists) keep at bay that region\u2019s gathering social forces for change?<\/span><\/p>\n

Many, including some in the traditional anti-Imperialist Left, who imbibed the West\u2019s Islamophobia and succumbed to its demonization of radical Muslims grieved the victory of the Taliban and worried about renewed \u201cIslamic terrorism\u201d. <\/span><\/p>\n

Most analysts sought to make sense of the melee among the plethora of Mujahidin organisations and shifting loyalties<\/span><\/a><\/span>. Equally important if less acknowledged is the legitimating ideology at the core of the West\u2019s intervention: namely, the 20<\/span>th<\/sup><\/span> Century version of White Man\u2019s Burden insinuated by the US-led NATO nations.\u00a0 <\/span>It claimed to \u201ccivilize\u201d the peoples of Afghanistan by rolling in \u201cdemocracy\u201d on the backs of battle tanks and dropping it from 60,000 feet! <\/span><\/p>\n

The 19<\/span>th<\/sup><\/span> Century West-European predecessors, while supposedly \u201ccivilizing\u201d the Asians and Africans if necessary over the barrel of a gun, had their eyes riveted on looting natural resources \u2013 land, minerals \u2013 of the people being \u201ccivilized\u201d. In the 20<\/span>th<\/sup><\/span> Century, US-led NATO strove to control Afghanistan because of its strategic location <\/span>on then Soviet Union\u2019s border<\/span> in the context of the Cold War; the economic rationale was to open up the country\u2019s estimated $1 trillion-worth mineral wealth<\/span><\/a><\/span> to American mining corporations.<\/span><\/p>\n

The US administration redoubled it efforts in 1979 to control Afghanistan after <\/span>Ayatollah Khomeini-led Islamic <\/span>Revolution swept away America\u2019s ally, the Shah of Iran<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The disintegration of the USSR opened access to the Caspian Sea region\u2019s vast energy resources \u2013 oil and gas \u2013 conservatively <\/span>estimated at about $6 Trillion<\/span>. The former Soviet Central Asian Republic of <\/span>Turkmenistan\u2019s oil and gas reserves, for example, were ripe for the picking.<\/span> Controlling Afghanistan, the land bridge between Central and South Asia, is crucial to pump <\/span>Caspian Sea resources through Afghanistan to<\/span> an Arabian Sea port in Pakistan and onwards to the global market or across the border to energy hungry India<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

UNOCAL (Union Oil Company of California), a giant American Oil conglomerate, greedily eyed the construction of <\/span>two <\/span>1,700 km long TAPI<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span> (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) pipelines \u2013 o<\/span>ne for oil and the other for natural gas.<\/span> The energy transnational had invested $10 billion<\/span><\/a><\/span> on geological surveys for\u00a0pipeline construction while Chevron (with Condoleeza Rice) and Haliburton (with Dick Cheney) waited in the wings. <\/span>Afghanistan\u2019s ruling elite was to be rewarded with a paltry $400m per year in transit fees.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, <\/span>the West\u2019s political classes and mainstream media repeatedly threw up <\/span>the propaganda smokescreen that <\/span>highlighted the US and its allies\u2019 self-proclaimed altruism <\/span>\u201cto instill a democratic system in the country, and to improve opportunities for women and minorities<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span>\u201d. The game of smoke and mirrors, cunningly crafted to bamboozle the politically unsophisticated, cleverly masked the schemes of US transnationals working hand in glove with the US political class to<\/span> grab Afghan and Caspian Sea resources. <\/span><\/p>\n

The missing link was a pro-West regime in Kabul willing to do US administration\u2019s bidding. <\/span><\/p>\n

The US intelligence agencies laid, or so they thought, the foundation to turn non-aligned Afghanistan into an American outpost. The CIA took a leaf out of the 19<\/span>th<\/sup><\/span> Century Great Game<\/span><\/a><\/span> to nurture Mujahidin, who opposed the reformist President <\/span>Mohammed Daoud Khan, in order <\/span>to undermine his non-aligned government in the 1970s. <\/span>To cut a long story short, President Jimmy \u201cPacifist\u201d Carter authorised the first tranche of $695,000<\/span><\/a><\/span> in July 1979 to fatten and arm the Mujahidin, who hated even more Khan\u2019s successor Nur Mohammad Taraki. Taraki\u2019s secular Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA) dared to legislate for land reform and emancipating women and looked to Moscow\u2019s backing to counterbalance US support for forces threatening his government; the Red Army marched in across the border six months later, in December.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Soviet intervention further enraged the socially regressive feudalistic landlords and Mullahs, many of whom are affluent landlords themselves, who together cried that Islam is in danger under the \u201ccommunist\u201d DRA. The CIA\u2019s \u201cregime change\u201d conspiracy, Codenamed Operation Cyclone<\/span><\/a><\/span>, contrived to install the same degenerate and misogynous forces in power and, through the 1980s,<\/span> cobbled together the Al Qaeda.<\/span><\/p>\n

The then Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson (Democrat) is widely credited as the firm hand that orchestrated Operation Cyclone, which imported Osama bin Laden, bankrolled the Al Qaeda and recruited Mujahidin enticed from numerous Muslim countries. <\/span><\/p>\n

Afghanistan\u2019s largely secular culture and especially the youth were not at first receptive to the exhortations of a minority of Islamic fanatics; indeed they were opposed by the mainstream Islamic orthodoxy. The CIA worked through USAID to break down the resistance: the Washington Post reported that for more than two decades, from the mid-1980s onwards, they funded the University of Nebraska to write schoolbooks preaching violent Islamic extremism; tens of thousands of copies were printed in Pakistan. Some were distributed to Pakistan\u2019s Madrassahs<\/i> but the bulk was trucked into Afghanistan\u2019s schools. The books<\/span><\/a><\/span>, \u201cfilled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system’s core curriculum.\u201d <\/span>The textbooks were designed to offset Marxism\u2019s intellectual influence by glorifying terrorism; they prodded Afghan children<\/span><\/a><\/span> to \u201cpluck out the eyes of the Soviet enemy and cut off his legs.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Anyone anguished by the cruelty of the Taliban need go no further to understand the tragedy than examine America\u2019s exploitative ideological conditioning and callous brutalisation of the Afghan children. One may legitimately wonder what action, if any, the UNICEF took to arrest the unfolding disaster. <\/span><\/p>\n

President <\/span>Jimmy Carter\u2019s National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski helpfully explained the radicalised Afghan Muslims would not only attack the non-aligned Kabul regime but also serve as the bridgehead to destabilise the neighbouring Soviet Islamic Republics. In a 1998 interview to Le Nouvel Observateur<\/i> Brzezinski elaborated<\/span><\/a><\/span> on his rather questionable grasp of history: \u201c<\/span>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?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In stark contrast Sarah Chayes<\/span>, boomed as <\/span>Advisor to several senior U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan and then to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, hallucinated otherwise<\/span><\/a><\/span>. \u201cThe Taliban were a strategic project of the Pakistani military intelligence agency, the ISI. It even conducted market surveys around Kandahar, to test the label and the messaging.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The truth is that <\/span>the military establishment in Pakistan cunningly rode the American juggernaut to successfully achieve its own geopolitical objective, of Strategic Depth<\/span><\/a> in Afghanistan.<\/span><\/p>\n

The cost of the NATO-backed America\u2019s Jihad against the Kabul regime ballooned to $630 million per year by 1987, the bulk of which went to the <\/span>Mujahidin commander\u00a0<\/span>Gulbuddin Hekmatyar<\/span>\u2019s <\/span>Hezb-e-Islami<\/i> Gulbuddin party.<\/span><\/p>\n

Not one to take his eyes off the ball, President Ronald Reagan invited Mujahidin leaders to the While House in 1985<\/span><\/a><\/span> and again in 1987, when he arranged a meeting with some Members of Congress in the White House\u2019s Roosevelt Room. Reagan lionised the visitors as \u201cAfghan Resistance Leaders<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u201d (not \u201cwarlords\u201d or \u201cterrorists\u201d, yet). <\/span><\/p>\n

The western corporate media kept mum about Mujahidin atrocities. The probable reason was the negotiations in progress: in return for US government support, the Mujahidin, when in power, were to grant concessions to US corporations to exploit Afghanistan\u2019s vast mineral resources. <\/span><\/p>\n

In the following year, the USSR ended its 9-year intervention. The Red Army began its retreat in May and finally left Afghanistan by February 1989; Operation Cyclone came to an end. Congressman Wilson, however, merrily continued to secure congressional funds, albeit <\/i>reduced, for the Mujahidin well into 1991.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Neo-Cons or \u201ccrazies\u201d, among them <\/span>Zbigniew Brzezinski (National Security Adviser) and<\/span> Richard Perle (Assistant Secretary of Defense), and \u201dbleeders\u201d like<\/span> Walter Slocumbe (Under Secretary of Defence) thirsted to \u201cteach the Russians a lesson<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u201d by sucking them into a \u201ca Vietnamese quagmire<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u201d. However, amidst popping champagne corks and congratulatory backslapping over the success of Operation Cyclone, the US-led NATO powers apparently failed to notice that the Soviets had in fact nimbly stepped back thereby leaving the NATO powers to clean up the \u201cAfghan quagmire\u201d. <\/span><\/p>\n

Nevertheless they couldn\u2019t resist lionizing Wilson; a British TV journalist lauded him for \u201csponsoring the only successful jihad in modern history<\/span><\/a>.<\/span>\u201d Hollywood celebrated Wilson\u2019s Operation Cyclone with the cinematic version under the same title as the book, \u201cCharlie Wilson\u2019s War\u201d. A dispassionate observer couldn\u2019t be faulted for concluding that Wilson was Superman in flesh and blood!<\/span><\/p>\n

But the plot thickened. The Taliban \u2013 the legacy of Operation Cyclone \u2013 took centre stage. Pashtun students from Madrassahs in Pakistan\u2019s North West Frontier Province and southern Afghanistan \u2013 indoctrinated by US-supplied Jihadi textbooks, trained by the Pakistani military and funded by Saudi Arabia \u2013 barrelled into battle against the Red Army around the early 1980s. Over time the battle-hardened Taliban coalesced around their Pashtun ethnic identity in the early 1990s. <\/span><\/p>\n

Led by Mullah Mohammad Omar, reinforced by the fiercely loyal Pashtun people in southern Afghanistan and relying on their rear base in Pakistan\u2019s Pashtun-dominated <\/span>Khyber Pakhtunkhwa<\/span>, the Taliban rapidly gained control of southern and eastern Afghanistan. The US administration sensed a winner and Taliban\u2019s battlefield advances attracted CIA\u2019s funding and supplies that enhanced their military prowess; the US administration is said to have paid the salaries of Taliban officials in Kabul up to 1998<\/span><\/span><\/a>. As anticipated by the US, the Taliban emerged as the predominant force, controlling about three-quarters of Afghanistan by 1996.<\/span><\/p>\n

From 1991 to 1996 the western corporate media carried hardly any gory report about the US-backed Taliban\u2019s extremes and excesses for they, after all, were US allies!<\/span><\/p>\n

However, by 1998 it was clear the Taliban would not grant economic concessions to US corporations; <\/span>they threw UNOCAL out and invited an Argentinian company<\/span><\/a><\/span> to execute the pipeline project. <\/span>Almost on cue, the corporate press shovelled out blood curdling stories Taliban brutality. \u201cResistance Leaders\u201d turned into \u201cwarlords\u201d and \u201cterrorists\u201d virtually overnight. <\/span><\/p>\n

The wheels came off America\u2019s oil Jihad as well as the Neo-Cons delusions about the post-Cold War <\/span>Project for the New American Century (PNAC)<\/span><\/a><\/span>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

*To be continued..<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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