We installed the government in Afghanistan, support it with our military. We basically supported the Taliban in the past in our desire to build an oil pipeline.
Unocal, was a major player in a January 1998 agreement with the Taliban to build a natural gas pipeline across Afghanistan. The energy company led an international consortium deal to build a $ 2 billion, 1,275 km-long, natural-gas pipeline from Dauletabad in Turkmenistan to Karachi in Pakistan, via the Afghan cities of Herat and Kandahar, crossing into Pakistan near Quetta.
http://www.gasandoil.com/goc/features/fex20867.htm The Bush family's connections to Unacol date back to the '80's, when Bush associate Nicholas Brady helped defend the firm from a takeover attempt by Mesa Petroleum.
http://www.thedubyareport.com/iraq2.html (March of the Neocons)
The Bush Justice Dept. recently filed a friend of the court brief opposing a lawsuit against Unacol that alleged abuses on behalf of an indigenous community, claiming among other things, that the suit was a "threat to national security."
The Clinton administration and the Pakistani Inter Services Agency had developed a strategy in which the Taliban would provide 'stability' in managing the tribal rivalries that had prevented the pipeline from proceeding without sabotage.
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2002/01/6919.shtmlIn 1998 the New York Times reported that, ". . . Unocal opened offices in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Turkmenistan. To help it sell the pipeline project to the many governments involved, Unocal hired senior United States diplomats like the former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Problems began with the Taliban's capture of the Afghan capital, Kabul, in September 1996. Unocal initially took a positive view of the movement's triumph."
In October 1997, Zalmay Khalilzad, and Unocal executive Marty Miller testified before a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee, touting the "economic benefits that a set of pipelines from Central Asia can bring to the Afghan people if it is able to pass through the country."
http://www.thedubyareport.com/iraq2.html Khalilzad met with Taliban representatives in 1997 in Houston during the pipeline negotiations. He wrote in a Washington Post article that, "The Taliban does not practice the anti-U.S. style of Muslim fundamentalism practiced by Iran. We should be willing to offer recognition and humanitarian assistance and to promote international economic reconstruction. It is time for the United States to 'reengage' the Taliban."
He has changed his view of the Taliban a great deal since that statement, especially in the wake of the terrorist bombings of 9-11. In 1984, Khalilzad joined the State Department on a one-year fellowship. His background and language skills were enough to enable his placement in a permanent position on the State Department's Policy Planning Council.
He worked at the State Dept. under Paul Wolfowitz, who served as director of policy planning in the Reagan administration. Later Khalilzad worked on issues related to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the Iran-Iraq war.
Khalilzad had signed Feith's "open letter" to President Clinton in 1998, calling for "a determined program to change the regime in Baghdad." The letter echoed policy proposals prepared by Perle and Feith two years earlier, for Israel's Binyamin Netanyahu. Khalilzad was among the first Bush administration officials to speak publicly of "regime change" in Iraq.
After the 2000 election, Khalilzad, led the Bush-Cheney transition team for the Defense Department, and served as an advisor to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Khalilzad, who was then gifted with a permanent position on the State Department's Policy Planning Council right in the midst of the mujahedeen's war against Soviet occupation, was appointed by our current president to the position of Special Envoy to Afghanistan. Khalizad will have another opportunity to reverse or expound on whatever mistakes he made over there in the lead up to 9-11. It's hard to imagine that his leadership or counsel in Afghanistan's regard will resolve the conflict, or win the hearts and minds of any would-be conscripts or reformers.
Robert Oakley, U.S. ambassador to Pakistan in the 1980's was chaperone to the CIA support of the Afghan Mujahedeen (in which Osama bin Laden became a commander), later worked for Unacol.
http://www.ceto.quantico.usmc.mil/bios/roakley.aspThe current president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karszi, hand-picked by this administration, was said to have been employed at one time as a consultant to Unacol. He denies it.
This is a smart cabal of executives who can't seem to clean up their own meddling messes. They seem as foreign and removed from the citizens of Afghanistan as do their invading American benefactors.
The U.S. imposed authority in Kabul can't speak for the people there. It's not clear where the interests of the people of Afghanistan are to be voiced. For now we are left to the brunt of anger and frustration which the Afghan rebels express through desperate, violent reprisals.
These are excerpts from my book, Power Of Mischief:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0974735205/002-0073119-5222456?v=glance&s=books
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