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Date Posted: 10:17:13 01/21/02 Mon
Author: Joseph Samaha
Subject: Oil didn’t take America to Kabul but will keep it there

Oil didn’t take America to Kabul but will keep it there

The United States definitely didn’t go all the way to Afghanistan because of oil, whatever some of its more primitive critics may say. Yet it might well decide to stay there because of oil as some of its equally primitive backers refuse to admit.

The Afghan war was initiated because the attacks on America were so catastrophic that not to respond to them would have been even more serious. This is not to say that the party guilty of the attacks of Sept. 11 was not determined precipitously, nor that the US didn’t take draconian measures to ensure domestic security, nor that the Americans didn’t use an extremely simplistic message to sell the military action they were about to take, nor even that the action itself was too harsh and severe. All these factors, however, shouldn’t obscure the two basic facts: the attacks proper, and the subsequent war.

Nevertheless, and as simple as these facts undoubtedly are, the world the Third World, to be more precise is still full of simplistic theses as to why the Americans did what they did. Consider this:
The US concocted the whole thing because it wants to take over Afghanistan. And since the present US administration is full of oil men, the conclusion has to be that the war was fought over oil.

This thesis ignores a number of fairly elementary facts:

1. The Americans should more rightly be accused of having left Afghanistan to its fate after the Red Army withdrew in the late 1980s. In other words, the US used the Afghan mujahideen (including Osama bin Laden) for its own strategic purpose. When this purpose was fulfilled, however, the Americans turned their backs on Afghanistan, leaving it to the tender mercies of the mujahideen, which ultimately led to the Taleban seizing power.

2. Afghanistan doesn’t have an abundance of mineral resources anyway. In the best of cases, it can only act as a corridor for Central Asian oil (and a pretty costly one at that). This does not warrant a military campaign of this scale.

3. There is no way, whether in Afghanistan or anywhere else, that the Americans can compensate for the huge losses they sustained on Sept. 11. Washington was forced to intervene in Afghanistan not only to avenge its dead, but also to deter more devastating attacks in future.

If all this were true, it doesn’t deny the fact that since America is in Afghanistan, it won’t try to reap certain strategic and economic benefits. It will see such benefits as being its right. The following factors point to this being a likely outcome:

1. It is no secret that the United States is very interested in the energy resources of the Caspian basin. Major American oil companies are already in position in this region, and US policy is dealing with the regional governments according to the degree which they facilitate or obstruct the oil companies’ operations.

2. Some administration and energy circles in Washington have expressed interest in Afghanistan in the 1990s as a potential corridor through which pipelines can be built to transport Central Asian oil to the Arabian Sea. A pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan via Afghanistan (part of a plan to reward Pakistan and punish Iran) was almost built. It was because of this pipeline project that Washington flirted with the Taleban regime for a time, overlooking its oppressive nature and stressing its success in bringing order to Afghanistan. The fact that Afghanistan was the world’s largest exporter of heroin might have had something to do with it as well.

3. Certain aspects of American behavior on the ground in Afghanistan indicate that the US intends to stay on for some time whether in Afghanistan itself or in some of the other Central Asian republics. The Americans have been rotating their troops, building bases, and insinuating that the war will last a long time. All these and more point to the possibility that Washington is in this for the long haul.

4. There is a growing body of opinion in Western nations calling for reducing, at least partially, the West’s dependence on Gulf oil supplies, and consequently for more detached relationships with Gulf states, particularly Saudi Arabia. While some may be advocating more environment-friendly policies, including less dependence on fossil fuels, diversifying sources of energy and imposing higher taxes on greenhouse emissions, others are calling for diversifying the regions from which oil is produced or carried. This doesn’t mean that Gulf oil will become obsolete overnight, that’s for sure, but it does mean that there is a trend that must be taken into account when painting the overall picture.

5. The insistence that Hamid Karzai become leader of the interim Afghan administration, and that Zalmay Khalilzad be appointed special US envoy to Kabul was telling. The two men share a very interesting common trait: they both, at one time or other, worked for the American Unocal energy corporation. It was Unocal which thought up the Turkmenistan pipeline project. Unocal’s website (http://www.unocal.com) now carries an apology, and says that the company has had nothing to do with the Taleban since 1998.

When Unocal was negotiating with the Taleban, however, Khalilzad was busy writing in defense of the Kabul regime, using his Afghan background, his knowledge of the country, and the role he played in helping the mujahideen against the Soviet invaders. As Khalilzad saw it, the Taleban’s hostility to the US was different from Iran’s. He called on Washington to recognize the Taleban government and help it rebuild the country and criticized America’s abandonment of the country after the Soviet withdrawal.

Khalilzad played a prominent role in negotiations over the oil pipeline, which was supposed to extend from Devletabad to Quetta, through Herat and Kandahar, and cost at least $2 billion.
The bombings which took place in the summer of 1998 put paid to all that. Unocal ceased all operations in Afghanistan and left two months later. In the winter of 2000, Khalilzad wrote an article in the Washington Quarterly criticizing American policy and calling on the administration to pay more attention to Afghanistan for the following reasons: bin Laden, opium, the Taleban’s oppressive nature (especially toward women), and oil. Khalilzad said: “The importance of Afghanistan will grow in the coming years when the oil and gas of Central Asia will begin to play a major role in the world energy market.”

Has the time come for Afghanistan to assume the importance Khalilzad predicted? This requires further research. How vital is the Afghan corridor now, especially in light of the big changes anticipated in Pakistan and Iran?
These changes might be too slow in coming, however, and the Americans just might think it better to remain close to the Caspian oil wells.
Joseph Samaha is the editor-in-chief of the Beirut daily As-Safir. He wrote this commentary for The Daily Star

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