The spoils of the Afghanistan War

The war in Afghanistan makes no sense unless you figure in what the spoils of the Afghanistan War brought America.

When the U.S. goes to war, there are usually two reasons: the reason given to the American public and the real reason that comes out sooner or later.

In Afghanistan, we were not physically at war during the Russian invasion, but we aided the Afghans with weapons and training. The acknowledged purpose of the war was to inflict as much damage on Russia, our cold war enemy, as we could.

But there was also the real reason. Afghanistan is crucial to the regional control and transport of oil in central Asia. The U.S. wanted that regional control and would have it at any cost. In fact, when we armed and trained Osama Bin Laden and later al-Qaida, which was founded in 1988, the American taxpayers would ultimately invest over $20 billion dollars to do so.

Is it logical that we really cared enough to inflict injury on Russia that we would spend $20 billion dollars? Hardly.

The importance of the pipeline and our regional control of central Asia’s resources are a more compelling and logical reason.

The unspoken reason for the support of Osama Bin Laden in the 1980s, and his Mujahedin fighters, was so that this important corridor would not be lost to Russia. So we trained and equipped the Mujahedin.

It is for that reason Unocal wanted to build and control a pipeline across Afghanistan from the Caspian Sea to the Arabian Sea.

As with all U.S. involvement in war, Afghanistan is no different, and one of our main interests is in drugs: opium. How much of this opium from Afghanistan’s poppy fields winds up for sale on American streets?

With Afghanistan, if we follow the opium money trail, it leads right to Osama Bin Laden’s right-hand man, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar—a Mujahidin leader and “alleged” heroin dealer who worked closely with both Bin Laden and the CIA.

Hekmaytyar and his group would receive more than $600 million from the CIA in support of Hekmatyar’s illicit heroin trade that allowed him to fund the Mujahidin. Like Bin Laden, Hekmatyar would begin waging war against coalition forces in Afghanistan.

In 1989, the last soviet forces left Afghanistan, leaving the country with multiple tribal leaders vying for power. By late 1995 to early 1996, the Taliban had seized control of Afghanistan sufficient for Unocal to begin negotiations. Unocal wanted to build the oil and gas pipelines from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and into Pakistani ports on the Arabian Sea.

The talks faltered because there were too many tribes to negotiate with. Unocal was prepared to not only build and maintain the pipelines but also to pay the Taliban a stipend of $0.15 for every thousand feet of gas and oil piped through them.

With too many tribal leaders to deal with, Unocal finally backed out of the talks and informed the U.S. they would not proceed until there was one government in control of the region and a guarantee of safety.

In 1996, al-Qaida, already in existence by 1988, was monitoring the negations between the Taliban and Unocal. A memo by al-Qaida military chief Mohammed Atef written in 1998 verifies al-Qaida’s extensive knowledge of the negotiations

Atef’s memo was discovered by FBI counter-terrorism expert John O’Neill. O’Neill left the Bureau in 2001, believing that U.S. oil interests were hindering his investigation into al-Qaida. He became security chief at the World Trade Center and was killed there on Sept. 11, 2001.

Those who speculate that the World Trade Center was an inside job—a false flag attack to go to war with Afghanistan—may be more accurate than you thought.

The pretext had always been that the U.S. wanted Osama Bin Laden turned over after the bombing of the American embassies in Africa on Aug. 7, 1998, which not only killed 224 people but also injured thousands more.

After 9-11, the U.S. became even more demanding. It wanted Bin Laden now for the 9-11 attack on the World Trade Center. But the Taliban wanted evidence once again before turning him over, and again no evidence was forthcoming.

It should be noted that the Taliban did not outright refuse but demanded evidence of Bin Laden’s involvement before complying with the Bush administration’s demands. The U.S. did not provide the Taliban any evidence.

Did the U.S. even have any, or was that just a pretext?

In the July 2001 meeting with the Taliban, the U.S. made it clear that Afghanistan could face an open-ended military operation from bases in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan if it didn’t agree to U.S. demands over the pipeline. In short, the Taliban were given two choices: a “carpet of gold” from the pipeline or “a carpet of bombs.”

In May 2001, the U.S. was already involved in four trials with terrorists accused in the Embassy bombings. The World Trade Center’s Twin Towers were attacked four months later.

All during the trials of the accused bombers, the Bush Administration was in secret negations with the Taliban for the pipelines until just days before we began the Afghanistan war.

Both Clinton and Bush wanted the pipelines and negotiated with the Taliban to get them. Bush was deeply involved in negations in 2001. In July 2001, when the negotiations appeared to fall apart, a Bush administration representative threatened the Taliban with military reprisals if the government did not go along with American demands. Two months later, the towers were attacked.

But who really attacked the World Trade Centers?

Fifteen of the 19 were citizens of Saudi Arabia.

The others were from the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Lebanon.

Not one hijacker was from Afghanistan! Yet we declared war with Afghanistan.

Does that make sense?

So why did we attack a country where not one hijacker was from, a country not controlled by al-Qaeda but by the Taliban?

Consider this: The U.S. wanted to control the oil and gas flowing through Central Asia, had negotiated with the Taliban but had not been able to negotiate a deal satisfactory to the Bush administration, and had threatened the Taliban that they would be carpet-bombed into submission.

It is arguably unlikely that the Taliban could have carried out such an attack; whereas al-Qaida had the experience of using suicide bombers. Trials were already completed in which four al-Qaida were found guilty.

After 9-11, the U.S. declared war first with Afghanistan and not long afterward with Iraq.

Yet if war should have been declared against any nation, it was Saudi Arabia, but we were being supplied oil from them, and the Bush family was in business with the Saudis, so there was reason not to attack them.

So what potentially were the spoils of the Afghanistan War?

The declared war with Afghanistan ushered in the Patriot Act, an act that for the most part violated our constitutional protections. It had already been drafted and was just waiting for the right moment to be introduced. The World Trade Center attack gave the Bush administration that right moment.

Interestingly enough, the BBC reported on Sept. 18, 2001, that the U.S. had planned a military strike against Afghanistan in mid-July that would go forward by the middle of October.

There was only one way to prevent this war, and that was to allow the pipeline to be built and controlled by the U.S.

In May 2002, the dream of a pipeline across Afghanistan became a reality. We now have the oil pipelines across Afghanistan, and we have access to some of Iraq’s massive reserves.

Iraq’s oil exports to the U.S. have varied, we are currently at the low end of their exports.

Perhaps that could be the reason for the new relationship with Iran. The U.S. would rather deplete the reserves of the Middle East and Asia before depleting our own.

That would make perfect sense.

Moreover, the U.S. has a history of taking what it wants from nations that were not capable of standing against it. We have been too quick to go to war.

The Original lyrics of “America the Beautiful” written in 1893 by Katharine Lee Bates says it all: