Attack on Afghanistan Formalised before 9/11: was Key to Unlock Route to Gas and Oil from Central Asian Republics.

1 of 214 DOCUMENTS
Geelong Advertiser (Australia)
April 1, 2011 Friday
1 - First Edition Edition
Why the US is in Afghanistan ... It's all about the oil
BYLINE: ALLAN SARGENT
SECTION: PERSPECTIVE; Pg. 32
LENGTH: 924 words
'It's not going to be built until there is a single Afghan government. That's
the simple answer. John Maresca, vice president of international relations for
Unocal.
INTERNATIONAL oil companies have long been aware that the former USSR states of
Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan have huge reserves of oil
and natural gas.
The problem for US, and other Western oil companies, is how to get oil and gas
from these huge land-locked reserves to seaports for export.
In 1995, the Union Oil Company of California (Unocal) gained an agreement with
Turkmenistan to lay a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan, across Afghanistan, to the
Pakistan coast.
US oil giant Enron planned another line from Turkmenistan, across the Caspian
Sea to Azerbaijan, where it could link with the Azerbaijan fields and then run
to the Turkish port of Ceyhan.
Unocal also gained a natural gas agreement with Uzbekistan. Pipelines from
Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan could then merge and cross Afghanistan. Unocal then
gained a deal with Uzbekistan's northern neighbour, Kazakhstan, and oil and gas
pipelines could then run south from Kazakhstan to Uzbekistan and link with the
trans-Afghanistan pipelines.
During the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the US established a covert operation
in Afghanistan code named `Bear Trap'. This anti-Soviet operation established a
base in Afghanistan jointly funded by the US and Saudi Arabia -- and run by the
CIA and Pakistan's ISI. The ISI component was headed by Osama bin Laden.
The purpose of this base, known as al Qaeda -- al Qaeda is literally `the base'
-- was to provide arms and training to warlords and Islamic fundamentalists that
later became the Mujaheddin or holy warriors.
Following Soviet withdrawal, the Afghan PDPA government fell and the Mujaheddin
took power in 1992. The Mujaheddin regime was plagued by factional fighting with
the Northern Alliance. In 1995, the Taliban was formed by Sunni, Pashtun Muslims
Page 1

and fundamentalists of the Mujaheddin. The Taliban took control in Kabul in
1996.
In August 1996, Unocal led the formation of Central Asia Gas Pipeline Ltd
(Centgas). Unocal invited Taliban leaders to Texas to finalise the Centgas
project. The Telegraph reported on December 14, 1997, `Òil barons court Taliban
in Texas''.
By 1998, Unocal were concerned that the Taliban only had partial control in
Afghanistan and there was continuing conflict. On February 12, 1998, John
Maresca, vice president of international relations for Unocal, testified before
the US House of Representatives Committee on International Relations about the
Centgas project.
He told the committee: `Ìt's not going to be built until there is a single
Afghan government. That's the simple answer.'' In December 1998, Unocal withdrew
from the Centgas agreement.
Following the attacks on the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001, US
President George W. Bush declared war on `global terrorism' and accused Osama
bin Laden and al Qaeda of organising the attacks from Afghanistan.
On October 7, 2001, US and UK forces commenced their attack on Afghanistan.
However, the US planned an invasion of Afghanistan before the events of 9/11.
The Guardian reported on September 22, 2001, ``Threat of US strikes passed to
Taliban weeks before New York attack''. Time magazine reported on August 12,
2002, ``They had a plan; long before 9/11''.
US and Northern Alliance forces took control in Kabul in November 2001 and
former Unocal staffer, Hamid Karzai, was installed to head an interim
Afghanistan Government.
With war still raging, on December 27, 2002, Karzai signed an agreement for a $5
billion trans-Afghanistan pipeline. The Associated Press reported the next day,
``$5 billion gas pipeline planned in Afghanistan''.
Centgas and Central Asia Oil trans-Afghanistan plans stalled in 2003 due to
continuing hostilities. However, the gas pipeline was revived in 2005 when the
Asian Development Bank agreed to finance it.
The trans-Afghanistan pipeline is now known as TAPI ( initials of the signatory
countries: Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India). An agreement was
signed in April 2008, for a $7.6 billion gas pipeline from the Dauletbad gas
field in Turkmenistan to Herat and Kandahar in Afghanistan, and then via Multan
in Pakistan, to India. Potential revenue from the pipeline is given as $14
trillion.
Reuters reported on September 22, 2010, `Àfghanistan says confident can secure
TAPI gas pipeline through the Taliban heartland''. The US and NATO forces now
believe they have control from the Turkmenistan border through to Kandahar in
Afghanistan. However, much of Kandahar and Oruzgan Provinces, and the Hada
Mountains where the pipeline must pass, is still under de facto Taliban rule.
General Petraeus, of US Command has been concentrating US forces (with
Australian forces), in eliminating the Taliban from Kandahar and Oruzgan
Provinces. But it seems the US has serious doubts the Taliban can be defeated in
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Why the US is in Afghanistan ... It's all about the oil Geelong Advertiser
(Australia) April 1, 2011 Friday

this region.
Dexter Filkins, of the New York Times, reported October 20, 2010: ``Taliban
leaders of this region have been escorted to Kabul, under guarantees of safe
conduct, for discussions with US Command.''
The pipeline is due for completion in 2014 and US forces have stepped up their
patrols of Highway One to ensure safe transport of materials (the pipeline
follows Highway One). It was reported in February 2011, that an agreement with
the Taliban may be close.
-- ALLAN SARGENT was a research officer for the late Senator C. G. Primmer,
senator 1971-85, member Senate Committee Foreign Affairs and Defence.
SUBJECT: OIL & GAS INDUSTRY (93%); NATURAL GAS PRODUCTS (91%); EDITORIALS &
OPINIONS (90%); PIPELINE TRANSPORTATION (90%); CRUDE OIL & NATURAL GAS
EXTRACTION (90%); NATURAL GAS PIPELINES (90%); TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS (89%);
AL-QAEDA (89%); MUSLIMS & ISLAM (89%); TERRORISM (89%); TALIBAN (89%); RELIGION
(88%); FUNDAMENTALISM (86%); CRUDE OIL PIPELINES (77%); EXPORT TRADE (77%);
INTERNATIONAL TRADE (77%); OIL & GAS PIPELINES (77%); LEGISLATIVE BODIES (73%);
US PRESIDENTS (73%); HARBORS & PORTS (70%); SEPTEMBER 11 ATTACK (69%); TESTIMONY
(65%)
COMPANY: ENRON CREDITORS RECOVERY CORP (56%)
INDUSTRY: SIC4911 ELECTRIC SERVICES (56%)
PERSON: OSAMA BIN LADEN (82%); GEORGE W BUSH (50%)
GEOGRAPHIC: KABUL, AFGHANISTAN (79%) TEXAS, USA (92%); CASPIAN SEA (79%);
CALIFORNIA, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (95%); KAZAKHSTAN (94%); TURKMENISTAN (94%);
AFGHANISTAN (94%); UZBEKISTAN (94%); AZERBAIJAN (94%); PAKISTAN (92%); TURKEY
(79%); SAUDI ARABIA (79%); CENTRAL ASIA (79%); ASIA (79%)
LOAD-DATE: April 1, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
JOURNAL-CODE: GAT
Copyright 2011 Nationwide News Pty Limited
All Rights Reserved
Page 3
Why the US is in Afghanistan ... It's all about the oil Geelong Advertiser
(Australia) April 1, 2011 Friday

2 of 214 DOCUMENTS
Atlantic Free Press
September 8, 2009 Tuesday 11:51 PM EST
Obamas Imperative in Afghanistan: OUT!
BYLINE: R.W. Behan
LENGTH: 2210 words
Sep. 8, 2009 (Atlantic Free Press delivered by Newstex) --
by Richard W. Behan
Mr. President, you cannot continue this wretched, dishonest, disastrous war. If
you do, your legacy will be poisoned by its obscene history.
George W. Bush was planning and mobilizing his attack on Afghanistan as early as
March of 2001, some six months prior to the horrors of 9/11. The Afghan war,
consequently, has nothing remotely to do with counter-terrorism. It is not an
act even of preemptive self defense, but one of utterly unprovoked military
aggression. Expressly prohibited by the charter of the United Nations, George
Bushs incursion into Afghanistan is an international crime.
Nor was the capture of Osama bin Laden of the least importance to the Bush White
House"before or after 9/11.
Waiting on his desk when George Bush took office on January 20, 2001 was an
offer from the Taliban to surrender Osama bin Laden, an offer negotiated by the
Clinton Administration after the al Qaeda attack on the U.S.S. Cole. But Mr.
Bush turned it down. And twice more during the spring and summer of 2001 the
Bush Administration refused the offer. Then on September 11 bin Laden struck
again. Four days afterward the Taliban sweetened the offer: now they would also
shut down bin Ladens bases and training camps. Once again the White House
refused the offer. Several weeks later the Taliban repeated the offer, again
it was rejected, and on October 7, 2001, George Bush launched the war on
Afghanistan he had been planning for months on end.
This is the war, President Obama, in which you apparently intend to oesucceed.
With your dispatch of 21,000 additional American troops, you now command an
American force in Afghanistan larger than the Russians deployed there. And
General McChrystal is expected to ask for more troops"10,000-15,000 more will
constitute a oehigh risk option, 25,000 a oemedium-risk option, and 45,000 a
oelow-risk option.
Mr. President, before you commit more young American lives to the tragedy,
please confront the facts about George Bushs invasion and occupation of
Afghanistan. Instead of expanding, you must choose to end immediately this
Page 4

hideous and illegal war"or be tarnished as a criminal accomplice.
It is a war of naked imperialism, undertaken for the geopolitical control of the
immense hydrocarbon resources of the Caspian Basin: Afghanistan, lying directly
between those resources and the worlds richest markets, uniquely offers pipeline
routes of incalculable value.
By 1996 the Bridas Corporation of Argentina had a lock on the routes. With
signed pipeline contracts from both General Dostum of the Northern Alliance and
the Taliban, Bridas controlled the Caspian play.
To the Unocal Corporation of the U.S. (and subsequently to the Bush
Administration) that was intolerable. To contest Bridas success, Unocal hired a
number of consultants: Henry Kissinger, Hamid Karzai, Richard Armitage, and
Zalmay Khalilzad. Armitage would later serve George W. Bush as Deputy Secretary
of State, and Khalilzad would become a prominent diplomat. Both were
enthusiastic members of the oePNAC, the Project for a New American Century, a
far-right group that asked President Clinton in January of 1998 to remove
forcibly the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. (Clinton ignored the request.)
In the late [#x2dc]90s Unocal hosted Taliban leaders at its headquarters in
Texas and in Washington D.C., seeking to have the Bridas contract voided. The
Taliban refused. Finally, on February 12, 1998, Mr. John J. Maresca, a Vice
President of Unocal, testified to the House Committee on International
Relations. He asked to have the Taliban removed from power in Afghanistan, and
for a oestable government to be installed in its place.
The Clinton Administration, having rejected a month earlier the PNAC request to
invade Iraq, was not any more interested in overthrowing the Taliban: President
Clinton understood and chose to abide by the United Nations Charter. In August
of 1998, however, Clinton launched a few cruise missiles into Afghanistan,
retaliating for al Qaeda attacks on the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
And he signed an Executive Order prohibiting further trade negotiations with the
Taliban.
Mr. Maresca was thus doubly disappointed. The Taliban would remain in power, and
now Unocal could not even continue its private entreaties.
Unocals prospects declined even further on October 12, 2000. In yet another al
Qaeda attack, the U.S.S. Cole was bombed, killing 17 sailors and injuring 39
more.
Some people in the Clinton Administration wanted immediately to oebomb the hell
out of Afghanistan. A few more cruise missiles wouldnt do. But the State
Department first dispatched Mr. Kabir Mohabbat, a U.S. citizen but a native
Afghani, to arrange a negotiating meeting with the Taliban.
The parties met November 2, 2000 in the Sheraton hotel in Frankfurt, Germany.
Frantic to avoid the retaliatory bombing, the Taliban offered the surrender of
Osama bin Laden.
As the details of the handover were being worked out, however, the stalemated
election of 2000 was awarded to George W. Bush. The surrender of Osama bin
Laden would be handled by the incoming Administration.
Page 5
Obamas Imperative in Afghanistan: OUT! Atlantic Free Press September 8, 2009
Tuesday 11:51 PM EST

But the new Administration demurred. In letter to the Taliban the Bush White
House asked to postpone the handover of bin Laden until February; the
Administration was still oesettling in. Kabir Mohabbat, however, was retained
as a consultant to the National Security Council.
Unocal's fortunes then improved dramatically. In direct repudiation of Clintons
Executive Order, the Bush Administration itself resumed pipeline negotiations
with the Taliban in February of 2001. (At one meeting, a Taliban official
presented President Bush with an expensive Afghan carpet.)
The Administration offered a tempting package of foreign aid in exchange for
secure and exclusive access to the Caspian Basin for American companies. (The
Enron Corporation also was eyeing a pipeline, to feed its proposed power plant
in India.) The Bridas contract might still be voided. The Administration met
with Taliban officials three times: in Washington, Berlin, and Islamabad. Still
the Taliban refused.
But the Bush Administration meant to prevail, by force if necessary. As early
as March 15, 2001, when Janes, the British international security journal
disclosed the fact, the Administration was engaged in a oeconcerted front
against Afghanistans Taliban regime. Confirming the Administrations intended
violence, George Arney of BBC News wrote a story published September 18, 2001:
oeU.S. Planned Attack on Taliban. In mid-July of 2001 a oesenior American
official told Mr. Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary that
oe...military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of
October.
Finally, on August 2 of 2001, the last pipeline negotiation with the Taliban
ended with a terse statement by Christina Rocca of the State Department:
oeAccept our offer of a carpet of gold or we bury you under a carpet of bombs.
Shortly afterward, President Bush informed India and Pakistan the U.S. would
launch a military mission into Afghanistan oebefore the end of October.
This was five weeks before the events of 9/11.
Twice during the spring and summer of 2001 Mr. Kabir Mohabbat was sent to
discuss the still pending surrender of Osama bin Laden. At both meetings Mr.
Mohabbat could only apologize. The Bush Administration was not yet ready to
accept the handover.
Then on September 11 Osama bin Laden struck once more.
With the Trade Towers in rubble and the Pentagon smoking, the Bush
Administration seized immediately on the stupendous opportunity to disguise its
intended attack on Afghanistan. It would be recast as a oeGlobal War on Terror,
and bringing Osama bin Laden to justice would be its initial, prime objective.
The Taliban asked quickly for another meeting. Once again Kabir Mohabbat was
dispatched to arrange it. On September 15, Taliban officials were flown in Air
Force C-130 aircraft to the Pakistani city of Quetta, to negotiate with the
State Department. Once again desperate to avoid a catastrophic bombing, the
Taliban sweetened the deal: now they would also shut down bin Laden's bases and
training camps.
The offer was rejected by the White House. The geopolitical need to proceed
Page 6

with the invasion was intractable, but with bin Laden in custody, the argument
for the oeWar on Terror smokescreen would collapse. Osama bin Laden simply had
to remain at large.
Several weeks later the Taliban's offer was repeated. And so was the White
House rejection.
On October 7, 2001, the carpet of bombs was unleashed over Afghanistan.
Then, with the Taliban removed from power, Mr. Hamid Karzai, the former Unocal
consultant, was installed by the U.S. as head of an interim government.
The first U.S. envoy to Afghanistan was Mr. John J. Maresca, a former Vice
President of the Unocal Corporation.
The next Ambassador to Afghanistan was Mr. Zalmay Khalilzad, also a former
Unocal consultant.
On February 8, 2002, four months after the carpet of bombs, Presidents Hamid
Karzai of Afghanistan and Perves Musharraf of Pakistan signed a new agreement
for a pipeline. The Bridas contract was now moot. The way was open for American
companies"Unocal and Enron"to proceed.
About a year later in the British trade journal Alexander's Gas and Oil
Connections dated March 20, 2003, the truth about the Afghan war is laid bare.
The article describes the readiness of three U.S. Federal agencies in the Bush
Administration to fund the pipeline project: the U.S. Import/Export Bank, the
Trade and Development Agency, and the Overseas Private Insurance Corporation.
The article continues: oe...some recent reports ...indicated ...the United
States was willing to police the pipeline infrastructure through permanent
stationing of its troops in the region.
It didnt take long for that to occur. At the website of GlobalSecurity.org, a
report entitled oeOperation Enduring Freedom Facilities tells what happened:
oeSince the 11 September 2001 attacks, the U.S. military has deployed to 13
locations in nine countries [in addition to] Afghanistan. More then 2,000 civil
engineers deployed to the region building and maintaining bases. Including
additional deployments in Bulgaria, Turkey, and Kuwait, by early 2002 over
60,000 U.S. troops were deployed at these forward bases, and hundreds of
aircraft were flying from expeditionary airfields.
Superimposing the base-locations over maps of the pipelines, the Bush
Administrations design is unmistakable. U.S. bases in Afghanistan proper"there
are now 15 altogether"precisely straddle the prospective pipeline routes.
Much has changed since President Bush launched his premeditated war of energy
imperialism. The warlords, the poppy growers, and the Taliban dominate
Afghanistan once more. A oestable government is nowhere to be seen. The Bridas
Corporation was bought by British Petroleum, Unocal is now part of
Chevron/Texaco, and the war in Afghanistan has a new Commander In Chief.
Yes, President Obama, this is your war now. This war of naked imperialism is
yours. This international crime is yours.
Page 7

The nation, the world, and the judgment of history await your next decision
about the war: what can you justifiably do, for Gods sake, but end it?
Authors note: to avoid cluttering the text with parenthetical references or
footnotes, here are my sources, not otherwise cited, in sequence of relevance:
Bedi, Rahul, oeIndia Joins Anti-Taliban Coalition, Janes Security News, March
15, 2001.
Clarke, Richard, Against All Enemies; Inside Americas War on Terror, The Free
Press, 2004.
Ames, Mark, oeObama Is Leading the U.S. Into a Hellish Quagmire, posted on
Alternet, September 3, 2009
Baker, Peter, and Elisabeth Bumiller, oeAdvisers to Obama Divided on Size of
Afghan Force, The New York Times, September 3, 2009.
U.S. Department of Defense, oeDoD News Briefing with Secretary Gates and Adm.
Mullen from the Pentagon, dated September 3, 2009.
Sperry, Paul, Crude Politics: How Bushs Oil Cronies Hijacked the War on
Terrorism, WND Books, 2003.
Chin, Larry, oePlayers on a Rigged Chessboard: Bridas, Unocal, and the
Afghanistan Pipeline. Online Journal, March 2002.
Madsen, Wayne, oeAfghanistan, the Taliban, and the Bush Oil Team. Counterpunch,
November 1, 2004.
Martin, Patrick, oeUS Planned War in Afghanistan Long Before September 11.
World Socialist Website, November 20, 2001.
oeAfghanistan: A Timeline of Oil and Violence, on the website ringnebula.com
Buncombe, Andrew, oeBush Rejects Taliban Offer to Surrender bin Laden, U.K.
Guardian, October 15, 2001.
Pizzey, Allen, oeOn the Scene: Taliban Talks, posted on the CBS website,
September 25, 2001.
ABC News, oeTaliban Told US It Would Give Up Osama: Report, June, 2004.
Cockburn, Alexander, and St. Clair, Jeffrey, oeHow Bush Was Offered bin Laden
and Blew It, Counterpunch, November 1, 2004.
Richard W. Behan lives and writes on Lopez Island, off the northwest coast of
Washington state. He has published on various websites some three dozen
articles exposing and criticizing the criminal wars of the Bush Administration.
The work is summarized in an electronic book, The Fraudulent War, available in
PDF format here. He can be reached at rwbehan@rockisland.com
Page 8

Newstex ID: ATFR-0001-37822327
SUBJECT: TERRORISM (90%); TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS (90%); US PRESIDENTS (90%);
ARMED FORCES (89%); US FEDERAL GOVERNMENT (88%); WAR & CONFLICT (78%); SEPTEMBER
11 ATTACK (77%); COUNTERTERRORISM (71%); PIPELINE TRANSPORTATION (63%)
COMPANY: BRIDAS CORP (60%)
ORGANIZATION: AL-QAEDA (55%); UNITED NATIONS (57%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS211111 CRUDE PETROLEUM & NATURAL GAS EXTRACTION (60%); SIC1311
CRUDE PETROLEUM & NATURAL GAS (60%)
PERSON: GEORGE W BUSH (96%); SADDAM HUSSEIN (59%); BARACK OBAMA (53%) Saddam
Hussein; George W. Bush
GEOGRAPHIC: UNITED STATES (96%); AFGHANISTAN (94%)
LOAD-DATE: September 9, 2009
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
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Page 9

3 of 214 DOCUMENTS
TendersInfo
August 7, 2010 Saturday
Afghanistan : TAPI Natural Gas Pipeline Through
Afghanistan Revived
BYLINE: roshani03
LENGTH: 475 words
The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India natural gas pipeline, first proposed
in 1995, is back on the drawing boards.
The TAPI technical working group's executive committee -- originally the
Trans-Afghan Pipeline, "TAP," now "TAPI" with the inclusion of Pakistan and
India -- stated that construction of TAPI could maintain and strengthen
political stability throughout Central Asia, including Afghanistan, Itar-Tass
reported Thursday.
Stretching 1,043 miles from Turkmenistan's Dauletabad gas field to the
northwestern Indian town of Fazilka, the $3.3 billion pipeline's annual
throughput of 33 billion cubic meters will be delivered to consumers in Pakistan
and India after transiting Afghanistan. Despite the ongoing turmoil in
Afghanistan, in 2005 the Asian Development Bank financed technical feasibility
study.
The project has a long genesis. In 1996 a memorandum of understanding resulted
in the establishment of a consortium led by Unocal, the Central Asia Gas
Pipeline Ltd. A Taliban delegation subsequently visited Unocal headquarters in
Texas and in January 1997 the Taliban approved TAP's construction. Afghanistan's
current President Hamid Karzai at the time worked for Unocal.
Whatever chances the project had were set on hold in the rising chaos in the
aftermath of November 2001's Operation Enduring Freedom, which quickly drove the
Taliban from power, invalidating the arrangements.
Despite Karzai's persistent support for the project, security of TAPI's route
through Afghanistan remains a major impediment to the project's realization,
though in 2008 the Afghan government made several pledges to relieve those
concerns.
As the Obama administration is continuing its predecessor's policy of
containment and isolation of both Russia and Iran, TAPI is currently the most
significant undeveloped southern output project for Central Asian natural gas
and oil.
Page 10

A problem with TAPI that has yet to be addressed is whether Turkmenistan will be
able to provide the required throughout, should the natural gas pipeline be
built.
At present Turkmenistan exports pipeline gas to China, Russia and Iran. In 2006
Turkmenistan produced 62.2 bcm of natural gas, second only to Russia. With 2005
domestic consumption estimated at 17.07 bcm, approximately 45 bcm, or more than
two-thirds of Turkmen production, was available for export.
The three above-mentioned countries now account for virtually all of
Turkmenistan's exports for the foreseeable future. Most notably, recently a
Turkmen-China natural gas pipeline agreed in 2006 capable of handling up 30 bcm
annually came online, providing an export route for Turkmen natural gas exports
for the near future.
How TAPI, which at present would be constructed through a war zone, could
compete with Turkmenistan's pre-existing markets in China, Russia and Iran
remains to be seen.
Ltd.
SUBJECT: PIPELINE TRANSPORTATION (93%); NATURAL GAS PRODUCTS (92%); NATURAL GAS
PIPELINES (91%); OIL & GAS INDUSTRY (89%); OIL & GAS EXPORTS & IMPORTS (78%);
CONSUMPTION (74%); DEVELOPMENT BANKS (74%); INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ORGANIZATIONS
(71%); INTERNATIONAL ASSISTANCE (69%); WAR ON TERROR (73%); TALIBAN (90%)
COMPANY: ASIAN DEVELOPMENT BANK (70%)
TICKER: ATB (ASX) (70%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS522110 COMMERCIAL BANKING (70%); SIC6081 BRANCHES & AGENCIES OF
FOREIGN BANKS (70%)
PERSON: HAMAD KARZAI (68%); BARACK OBAMA (54%)
GEOGRAPHIC: TURKMENISTAN (97%); PAKISTAN (94%); ASIA (94%); CENTRAL ASIA (94%);
AFGHANISTAN (94%); RUSSIA (94%); INDIA (94%); CHINA (93%); IRAN (92%); RUSSIAN
FEDERATION (94%); IRAN, ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF (92%)
LOAD-DATE: August 7, 2010
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication
JOURNAL-CODE: 81
Copyright 2010 TendersInfo - Euclid Infotech Pvt. Ltd.
All Rights Reserved
Syndigate.info, Al Bawaba.com
Page 11
Afghanistan : TAPI Natural Gas Pipeline Through Afghanistan Revived TendersInfo
August 7, 2010 Saturday

4 of 214 DOCUMENTS
In These Times
April 2010
Pipeline Politics
BYLINE: Carol Brightman.
CAROL BRIGHTMAN is the author of Total Insecurity: The Myth of American
Omnipotence (Vreso, 2004).
SECTION: FEATURES; Pg. 27 Vol. 34 No. 4
LENGTH: 557 words
WE'LL NEVER GET A straight answer from the U.S. government, not because the al
Qaeda attacks on September 11 were an administration set-up, which they weren't;
or because the CIA knew something was up (but not enough), which they did. Or
because Bush's buddies were still hoping to get a contract for an oil pipeline
across Afghanistan, which the Taliban government was refusing to give them.
There's truth there, for the Taliban had been entertained in Houston in 1997,
and were in negotiations with Unocal until 1998, when President Clinton fired
cruise missiles at targets in Afghanistan after al Qaeda bombed U.S. embassies
in Kenya and Tanzania. At that point Unocal pulled back and began to look toward
a post-Taliban Afghanistan, as did members of the U.S. national security
establishment.
After the arrival of Cheney and Bush in 2001, the Taliban discussions were
revived, until the Taliban began to demand "rent" for the roads, water supplies,
telephone and power lines, as well as a "tap" to provide oil and gas for
Afghanistan.
It's not hard to see how al Qaeda's attacks on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon gave the United States a passport to invade Afghanistan, oust the
Taliban, and install a puppet regime of former Unocal employees, like Hamid
Karzai, a Pashtun royalist, and Zalmay Kalizad, U.S. envoy. This was the origin
of the Karzai government, Bush's first experiment with "regime change," followed
by the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and the installation of the
accommodating regime of Shiite Nouri al-Maliki.
Only the San Francisco Chronicle broke the media's silence by observing, as
early as Sept. 26, 2001, that "the map of terrorist sanctuaries and targets in
the Middle East and Central Asia is also, to an extraordinary degree, a map of
the world's principal emerging energy sources in the 21st century," adding that
"it was inevitable that the war against terrorism will be seen... as a war on
behalf of America's Chevron, Exxon, and Arco; France's TotralFinalElf; British
Petroleum; Royal Dutch Shell ... which have hundreds of billions of dollars in
the region."
Page 12

But government PR machines, followed by a docile media, kept oil out of the
picture. New U.S. bases sprang up across the region in strategic proximity to
hydrocarbon assets, but little was said.
The war against terror was a fake. Osama bin Laden's motivation to do us harm
was based on his intimate knowledge of the global campaign to expand U.S. access
to Middle East oil. On the day he attacked the United States, Shafiq bin Laden,
Osama bin Laden's estranged brother, was attending an investment conference in
Washington with George Bush, Sr., and his former secretary of state, James
Baker, which was hosted by the Carlyle Group. Such were Carlyle's connections
that immediately following al Qaeda's attacks, when no one was allowed in or out
of the United States, most of the extended bin Laden clan were spirited home to
Saudi Arabia.
Could that date have mattered to Osama? It surely wasn't the reason for the
attacks, which took years to prepare. But Osama bin Laden's resentment of his
family's attachment to Bush, Baker, et al., and to the enormous oil wealth at
their fingertips in Saudi Arabia, the Middle East, and Central Asia, was
considerable. That is the direction we must take to find the answer to Helen
Thomas' question.
SUBJECT: TERRORISM (90%); TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS (90%); US FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
(90%); SEPTEMBER 11 ATTACK (78%); CRUDE OIL PIPELINES (76%); PIPELINE
TRANSPORTATION (76%); PETROLEUM PRODUCTS (76%); OIL & GAS INDUSTRY (76%);
EMBASSIES & CONSULATES (74%); NATIONAL SECURITY (73%); MUSLIMS & ISLAM (71%);
AL-QAEDA (90%); WAR ON TERROR (89%); TALIBAN (90%)
COMPANY: ROYAL DUTCH SHELL PLC (81%); BP PLC (74%)
TICKER: RDSA (LSE) (81%); RDSA (AMS) (81%); RDS (NYSE) (81%); BP (NYSE) (74%);
BP (LSE) (74%); RDS.B (NYSE) (81%); RDS.A (NYSE) (81%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS447110 GASOLINE STATIONS WITH CONVENIENCE STORES (81%);
NAICS211111 CRUDE PETROLEUM & NATURAL GAS EXTRACTION (81%); NAICS325110
PETROCHEMICAL MANUFACTURING (81%); NAICS324110 PETROLEUM REFINERIES (74%)
PERSON: HAMAD KARZAI (82%); BILL CLINTON (57%); HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON (57%);
DICK CHENEY (56%); SADDAM HUSSEIN (54%); NOURI AL-MALIKI (53%); GEORGE H W BUSH
(50%); OSAMA BIN LADEN (81%)
GEOGRAPHIC: BAGHDAD, IRAQ (73%) UNITED STATES (96%); AFGHANISTAN (94%); IRAQ
(92%); MIDDLE EAST (92%); KENYA (79%); CENTRAL ASIA (79%); TANZANIA (79%); ASIA
(79%); FRANCE (71%); TANZANIA, UNITED REPUBLIC OF (79%)
LOAD-DATE: April 7, 2010
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Picture, Iraqi contractors clean the Tigris river in Baghdad on March
28, 2009. Environmentalists say the river is polluted with war waste, oil
derivatives, and industrial and toxic waste. ALI AL-SAADI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Magazine
Page 13
Pipeline Politics In These Times April 2010

Copyright 2010 Institute for Public Affairs
All Rights Reserved
Page 14
Pipeline Politics In These Times April 2010

6 of 214 DOCUMENTS
Charleston Gazette (West Virginia)
February 21, 2010, Sunday
THE REASON THAT IS NOT DISCUSSED;
Why we are in Afghanistan
BYLINE: Lynda Ann Ewen
SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. P1C
LENGTH: 702 words
While Congress debates who is going to pay the spiraling costs of health, the
U.S. government spent $30 billion to send 30,000 additional troops to
Afghanistan. According to Linda Bilmes, a public-finance expert at Harvard's
Kennedy School of Government: "The total cost of [the escalation in] Afghanistan
will be at least twice the direct cost and perhaps three times the cost of the
estimate." She cites equipment replacement, medical and disability payments to
veterans and interest accrued on money we are borrowing to finance the war. And
how does one put a monetary value on the lives that will be lost?
Reading press accounts closely, one is left befuddled as to who we are really
fighting and why - al-Qaida, the Taliban or the "bad" Taliban vs. the "good"
Taliban. Nor do these explanations address the fact that al-Qaida operates
openly in Somalia, Yemen or any number of other states, including Pakistan. Why
have we not targeted those countries?
Humanitarian reasons have been cited - to improve the status of women and to aid
the economic development of Afghanistan. But then why do we not have troops in
the Congo to stop the rape and mutilation of thousands of women, or in Myanmar
(Burma) to stop the violent repression of human rights there?
The reasons for our military commitments are complex, but one explanation can be
summed up as: pipelines, geography and energy reserves. Afghanistan sits smack
in the middle of a pipeline route that would bring the control of future energy
to whoever can install "friendly governments" in the area. Afghanistan's gas
reserves are largely unexplored, but expected to be vast (the World Bank is
funding a study of those reserves). But the key is the region itself.
Afghanistan lies south of Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. These three
countries have known gas reserves that place each of them among the top 20
nations with the most natural gas.
There are a number of financial interests vying to control the pipeline that has
actually started construction in Afghanistan. One is the Asian Development Bank,
whose purpose includes meeting Japan's future energy needs. Why is the U.S.
fighting to protect Japan's interests?
Japan and the United States each hold 12.8 percent of the votes in the Asian
Page 15

Development Bank, which means they control more than one-quarter of the votes.
The next largest bloc of votes is China and India, both countries with desperate
future energy needs. They each only control a little over 5 percent of the
votes. Vote proportions are based on "subscribed capital." This means the United
States has purchased a controlling interest in this bank. Where was the general
public discussion of this investment?
The second important player in Afghanistan is Chevron. In 2005, Chevron merged
with Unocal - an energy company that had been in talks with the Taliban after
the Soviet army was driven out. Unocal had negotiated an agreement to build a
pipeline through Afghanistan. According to Richard H. Matzke, president of
Chevron Overseas Petroleum Inc., "Another mega-project on the drawing board is
called the Central Asian Oil Pipeline. This is a proposal by Unocal and the
Saudi company Delta. They want to build a $2.7 billion pipeline from the heart
of Turkmenistan, south through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Arabian Sea. Oil
would then move by tanker to the fast-growing economies of East Asia." The above
quote is an "American" corporation executive with an "American" company
describing the plans to deliver oil, not to America, but to the economies of
East Asia. Unfortunately, American troops are being used to accomplish this
agenda.
If "American interests" are at stake in the quest for energy sources, why are we
not developing the vast natural gas reserves of the Marcellus shale formation -
a gas reserve the size of Greece that underlies West Virginia and several other
northern Appalachia states. Is "energy independence" simply a slogan for
political purposes?
The American public needs answers for these questions that, so far, our media
has failed to give.
Ewen is a retired sociology professor and former co-director of the Center for
the Studies of Ethnicity and Gender in Appalachia at Marshall University.
SUBJECT: EDITORIALS & OPINIONS (90%); PUBLIC FINANCE (90%); ARMED FORCES (90%);
TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS (90%); OIL & GAS INDUSTRY (89%); DEVELOPMENT BANKS
(89%); INTERNATIONAL ASSISTANCE (87%); INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT (87%);
WOMEN (78%); POLITICAL DEBATES (73%); HUMAN RIGHTS (72%); ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
(71%); INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ORGANIZATIONS (71%); PIPELINE TRANSPORTATION
(69%); NATURAL GAS PRODUCTS (69%); ECONOMIC NEWS (66%); INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
(66%); AL-QAEDA (90%); TALIBAN (90%)
COMPANY: ASIAN DEVELOPMENT BANK (64%)
ORGANIZATION: AL-QAEDA (83%)
TICKER: ATB (ASX) (64%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS522110 COMMERCIAL BANKING (64%); SIC6081 BRANCHES & AGENCIES OF
FOREIGN BANKS (64%)
GEOGRAPHIC: UNITED STATES (94%); AFGHANISTAN (94%); JAPAN (93%); MYANMAR (92%);
ASIA (92%); INDIA (79%); CHINA (79%); PAKISTAN (79%); KAZAKHSTAN (79%); SOMALIA
(79%); TURKMENISTAN (79%); UZBEKISTAN (79%)
LOAD-DATE: February 22, 2010
Page 16
THE REASON THAT IS NOT DISCUSSED; Why we are in Afghanistan Charleston Gazette
(West Virginia) February 21, 2010, Sunday

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
Copyright 2010 Charleston Newspapers
Page 17
THE REASON THAT IS NOT DISCUSSED; Why we are in Afghanistan Charleston Gazette
(West Virginia) February 21, 2010, Sunday

8 of 214 DOCUMENTS
Evansville Courier & Press (Indiana)
December 4, 2009 Friday
WAR IN AFGHANISTAN IS ALL ABOUT OIL AND SHOULD BE ENDED
BYLINE: SAM BLANKENSHIP, SPECIAL TO THE COURIER & PRESS
SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. A14
LENGTH: 285 words
We must end our war in Afghanistan.
The motives for our actions in Afghanistan have been represented incompletely to
both the people of Afghanistan and the American people.
We continue in Afghanistan because Afghanistan provides a good path for oil and
gas pipelines from the Central Asian countries of Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan,
Uzbekistan, and Russia to markets such as Pakistan, India and China.
The war in Afghanistan aptly has been called the "pipeline war."
The war in Afghanistan was planned well before the bombing of the World Trade
Center.
The Congressional Record states that on February 12, 1998, John J. Maresca,
vice president, international relations for UNOCAL oil company, testified before
the US House of Representatives on Central Asian gas reserves and their
importance to US foreign policy.
On June 13, 2002, Hamid Karzai, a former UNOCAL consultant, was elected
president of Afghanistan. On December 27, 2002, a pipeline deal was signed in
Turkmenistan.
There are 19 American military bases in Afghanistan strategically placed along
pipeline routes. Soldiers along these routes in Afghanistan protect the
interests of oil companies, while controlling for the United States the Central
Asian oil and gas access of Pakistan, China, India, et al.
President Obama saw the real cost of war when he saluted a flag-draped coffin
at Dover Air Force Base at 4:30 a.m. on Oct. 29. Obama now plans to send more
troops to Afghanistan as a stage in what later will become a withdrawal process.
Events likely will provide Obama with excuses to extend our presence in
Afghanistan.
Our country will benefit greatly if we withdraw on an expedited schedule.
Sam Blankenship is a resident of Mount Vernon, Ind.
Page 18

SUBJECT: OIL & GAS INDUSTRY (90%); WAR & CONFLICT (90%); PIPELINE TRANSPORTATION
(90%); EDITORIALS & OPINIONS (90%); ARMED FORCES (90%); LEGISLATIVE BODIES
(77%); CRUDE OIL PIPELINES (77%); OIL & GAS PIPELINES (77%); NATURAL GAS
PRODUCTS (77%); US PRESIDENTS (75%); AIR FORCES (73%); INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
(70%); FOREIGN POLICY (54%)
ORGANIZATION: US HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES (56%)
PERSON: BARACK OBAMA (92%); HAMAD KARZAI (56%)
GEOGRAPHIC: DOVER, DE, USA (52%) INDIANA, USA (79%); DELAWARE, USA (79%)
AFGHANISTAN (94%); ASIA (94%); UNITED STATES (94%); CENTRAL ASIA (94%); CHINA
(93%); PAKISTAN (93%); TURKMENISTAN (93%); INDIA (93%); UZBEKISTAN (92%);
KAZAKHSTAN (92%)
LOAD-DATE: January 27, 2010
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
Copyright 2009 The Evansville Courier Co.
All Rights Reserved
Page 19
WAR IN AFGHANISTAN IS ALL ABOUT OIL AND SHOULD BE ENDED Evansville Courier &
Press (Indiana) December 4, 2009 Friday

9 of 214 DOCUMENTS
The Pantagraph (Bloomington, Illinois)
May 28, 2010 Friday
Above all, 'do something' Leno uses feminist campaign
example as means to make a difference
BYLINE: By M.K. Guetersloh;mkguetersloh@pantagraph.com
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. A3
LENGTH: 452 words
NORMAL - Small efforts to improve the world around us may seem like a drop of
water in an ocean, but just like that drop of water, the effort doesn't
disappear.
Mavis Nicholson Leno said she learned that lesson as she started her work to
bring attention to the Taliban's treatment of Afghan women several years before
the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. It also was the lesson she shared at the YWCA
McLean County's 21st annual Women of Distinction Awards banquet Thursday night
at Illinois State University's Bone Student Center.
"No matter what you do, do something," said Leno, chairwoman of the Feminist
Majority's Campaign for Afghan Women and Girls. "The idea that a tiny feminist
organization from California can take on a huge international human rights issue
seemed pretty ridiculous."
Leno recounted her story of how she joined the Feminist Majority in the 1990s
and quickly volunteered to help with their Afghan campaign.
Leno said she won a small victory after questioning a Unocal executive during a
shareholders meeting in Los Angeles about the oil company's relationship with
the Taliban and women's rights. At the time, the oil company was training
members of the Taliban to build a pipeline through Afghanistan.
No one at the Unocal event knew she was married to comedian and Tonight Show
host Jay Leno. They thought she was just another protester asking questions, she
said.
Three months after Leno's question, Unocal stopped the project.
"That was most of the progress I had made for a year," Leno said. "Like most
women, I beat myself up about what I didn't know."
Leno said she couldn't figure out how to make the mainstream media pay attention
to what was happening in Afghanistan. Then Leno realized she needed to stop
looking at what she didn't know and to start capitalizing on what she did know.
Soon after, she enlisted the help of her husband.
Page 20

The couple created and endowed a foundation to help Afghan women and held news
conferences in Los Angeles and New York. They invited the entertainment media,
which arrived in droves, and soon after the mainstream news media followed, she
said.
During her 20-minute keynote address, Leno also advocated for the United States
to stay in Afghanistan until the Taliban is defeated.
"It's a horrible thing to say that our men and women need to stay in harm's
way," Leno said. "But we need to stay until the job is done. If Afghanistan's
government collapses, then the Taliban will take over and in 10 or 12 years we
will be back there fighting an entrenched Taliban."
CUTLINE:
PUB: The Pantagraph
PUB DATE: 20100528
Section: News
EDITION: Main
QRKPAGE: 1
PAGE SLUG: A3
XMLFILE: 49709937.txt
DOC NAME: A03 052810 Women of D
CREATOR:
SUBJECT: WOMEN (90%); OIL & GAS INDUSTRY (90%); STUDENTS & STUDENT LIFE (75%);
PIPELINE TRANSPORTATION (73%); SHAREHOLDERS (73%); TERRORISM (71%); TALKS &
MEETINGS (71%); SEPTEMBER 11 ATTACK (71%); ENTERTAINMENT & ARTS (71%);
ENDOWMENTS (70%); HUMAN RIGHTS (68%); SHAREHOLDER MEETINGS (66%); PRESS
CONFERENCES (62%); TALIBAN (90%)
ORGANIZATION: ILLINOIS STATE UNIVERSITY (57%)
PERSON: JAY LENO (74%)
GEOGRAPHIC: LOS ANGELES, CA, USA (90%); NEW YORK, NY, USA (72%) CALIFORNIA, USA
(93%); ILLINOIS, USA (79%); NEW YORK, USA (79%) AFGHANISTAN (94%); UNITED STATES
(93%)
LOAD-DATE: June 10, 2010
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: /* //JCL004 EXEC JCL004,COND=(0,NE), // USER=<RPCODE>, // OWNER=I03 //
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Page 21
Above all, 'do something' Leno uses feminist campaign example as means to make a
difference The Pantagraph (Bloomington, Illinois) May 28, 2010 Friday

EXEC MDCRJEDK, // USER=<RPCODE>, // OWNER=I03 //SYSUT1 DD *
Copyright 2010 The Pantagraph
Page 22
Above all, 'do something' Leno uses feminist campaign example as means to make a
difference The Pantagraph (Bloomington, Illinois) May 28, 2010 Friday

10 of 214 DOCUMENTS
Business Recorder
September 11, 2010 Saturday
UGLY REALITIES OF 'WAR ON TERRORISM'
LENGTH: 3193 words
On the eve of 9th anniversary of 9/11, the world is turning into hub of
religious bigotry, hate crimes, terrorism, intolerance, mass killings, war
tragedies and what not. The announcement of public burning of holy Quran by a
church in Florida (The Dove World Outreach Centre) on 9th September 2010 has
created world-wide uproar.
The top US military commander in Afghanistan General David Petraeus has
criticised plans by a Florida church saying that "it could endanger troops and
it could endanger the overall effort". The announcement by Florida Church and
reaction against it - Muslims just cannot tolerate desecration of their holy
book - is bound to create more hate crimes all over the world. The perpetuation
of terrorism since 2001, coupled with religious extremism and militancy, is now
posing serious threat to international peace. In the name of fighting terrorism,
certain forces are, in fact, colonising oil and mineral rich countries,
conspiring to topple some "unwanted" governments and lending support to drug
trade and mass acceptance of fascism in the name of reforming the world.
The US intervention in Afghanistan is as disastrous as were its earlier actions
in Cambodia, Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Grenada, Panama, and
elsewhere. The purpose behind all these interventions has been the same:
prevention of egalitarian social change, bringing into power retrograde
elements, leaving the economy in ruins, and pitilessly laying waste, many
innocent lives. Purportedly, the invasion of Afghanistan was due to the reason
that the Taliban were providing sanctuary to al Qaeda, who claimed
responsibility of 9/11 shameless aggression. Nobody raised the question as to
why Clinton or Bush administrations did not ever place Afghanistan on the
official State Department list of states charged with sponsoring terrorism,
despite the acknowledged presence of Osama bin Laden as a guest of the Taliban
government. Obviously, such a "rogue state" designation would have made it
impossible for any US oil or construction company to enter an agreement with
Kabul for a pipeline to the Central Asian oil and gas fields.
Very few people know that really compelling - though less advertised - reason
for plunging deeper into Afghanistan was ownership of oil and gas reserves of
Central Asia. A decade before 9/11, Time magazine (18 March 1991) reported that
US policy elites were contemplating a military presence in Central Asia. The
discovery of vast oil and gas reserves in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan provided
the lure, while the dismemberment of the USSR removed the one major barrier
against pursuing an aggressive interventionist policy in that part of the world.
US oil companies acquired the rights to some 75 percent of these new reserves. A
major problem was how to transport the oil and gas from the landlocked region.
US officials opposed using the Russian pipeline or the most direct route across
Page 23

Iran to the Persian Gulf. Instead, they and the corporate oil contractors
explored a number of alternative pipeline routes, across Azerbaijan and Turkey
to the Mediterranean or across China to the Pacific.
The route favoured by UNOCAL, a US-based oil company, crossed Afghanistan and
Pakistan to the Indian Ocean. The intensive negotiations that UNOCAL entered
into with the Taliban regime remained unresolved by 1998, as an Argentine
company placed a competing bid for the pipeline. Bush's war against the Taliban
rekindled UNOCAL's hopes for getting a major chunk of business. Zalmay
Khalilzad, Condoleezza Rice, Hamid Karzai, all had established link with UNOCAL.
It is a matter of record that much before 9/11, the US and its Nato allies
decided to invade Afghanistan. The decision to this effect was taken in Berlin
during the joint meeting of Council of Ministers held in November 2000. It
exposes the claims of US and coalition partners that 9/11 was the sole reason
for invading Afghanistan. The actual cause was apprehension regarding
Turkmenistan Gas Pipeline Project in which powerful corporate entities who in
reality, rule US and other capitalist countries, had financial interests. It was
not the existence of so-called al Qaeda in Afghanistan that forced US and its
allies to invade Afghanistan but the "financial terrorism" of US and its blind
allies was the main cause of action. Till the said time al Qaeda was a weapon in
the hands of US policymakers to put pressure on Islamic States having enormous
oil, gas and mineral wealth to toe its line and extend financial benefits
uninterruptedly or face the onslaught of "fundamentalists'.
It needs to be remembered that President Bush appointed former aide to the
American oil company UNOCAL, Afghan-born Zalmay Khalilzad, as special envoy to
Afghanistan nine days after the US-backed interim government of Hamid Karzai
took office in Kabul. This appointment underscored the real economic and
financial interests at stake in the US military intervention in Central Asia.
Khalilzad was intimately involved in the long-running US efforts to obtain
direct access to the oil and gas resources of the region, largely unexploited
but believed to be the second largest in the world after the Persian Gulf.
As an advisor for UNOCAL, Khalilzad drew up a risk analysis of a proposed gas
pipeline from the former Soviet Republic of Turkmenistan across Afghanistan and
Pakistan to the Indian Ocean. He participated in talks between the oil company
and Taliban officials in 1997, which were aimed at implementing a 1995 agreement
to build the pipeline across western Afghanistan. UNOCAL was the lead company in
the formation of the Centgas consortium, whose purpose was to bring to market
natural gas from the Dauletabad Field in south-eastern Turkmenistan, one of the
world's largest gas reserves.
The multi-billion project involved a 48-inch diameter pipeline from the
Afghanistan-Turkmenistan border, passing near the cities of Herat and Kandahar,
crossing into Pakistan near Quetta and linking with existing pipelines at
Multan. An additional $600 million extension to India was also under
consideration. Khalilzad also lobbied publicly for a more sympathetic US
government policy towards the Taliban. Four years ago, in an op-ed article in
the Washington Post, he defended the Taliban regime against accusations that it
was a sponsor of terrorism, writing, 'The Taliban does not practice the anti-US
style of fundamentalism practised by Iran.'
'We should... be willing to offer recognition and humanitarian assistance and to
promote international economic reconstruction,' he declared. 'It is time for
Page 24
UGLY REALITIES OF 'WAR ON TERRORISM' Business Recorder September 11, 2010
Saturday

the United States to reengage' the Afghan regime. This 'reengagement' would, of
course, have been enormously profitable to UNOCAL, which was otherwise unable to
bring gas and oil to the market from landlocked Turkmenistan.
Khalilzad only shifted his position on the Taliban after the Clinton
administration fired cruise missiles at targets in Afghanistan in August 1998,
claiming that terrorists under the direction of Afghan-based Osama bin Laden
were responsible for bombing US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. One day after
the attack, UNOCAL put Centgas on hold. Two months later it abandoned all plans
for a trans-Afghan pipeline. The oil interests began to look towards a
post-Taliban Afghanistan, and so did their representatives in the US national
security establishment.
Born in Mazar-e Sharif in 1951, Khalilzad hails from the old ruling elite of
Afghanistan. His father was an aide to King Zahir Shah, who ruled the country
until 1973. Khalilzad was a graduate student at the University of Chicago, an
intellectual center for the American right-wing, when the Soviet Union invaded
Afghanistan in 1979. He was a special advisor to the state department during the
Reagan administration, lobbying successfully for accelerated US military aid to
the Mujahideen, including hand-held Stinger anti-aircraft missiles which played
a key role in the war. He later became under-secretary of defence in the
administration of senior Bush, during the US war against Iraq, and then went to
the Rand Corporation, a top US military think tank.
After George W. Bush was installed as president by a 5-4 vote of the US Supreme
Court, Khalilzad headed the Bush-Cheney transition team for the Defence
Department and advised incoming Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Significantly, however, he was not named to a sub-cabinet position, which would
have required senate confirmation and might have provoked uncomfortable
questions about his role as an oil company advisor in Central Asia and
intermediary with the Taliban. Instead, he was named to the National Security
Council (NSC), where no confirmation vote was needed.
At the NSC, Zalmay Khalilzad reported to Condoleezza Rice, then national
security advisor [later became US Secretary of State] who also served as UNOCAL
consultant on Central Asia. After serving in the first Bush administration from
1989 to 1992, Rice was placed on the board of directors of Chevron Corporation
and served as its principal expert on Kazakhstan, where Chevron holds the
largest concession of any of the international oil companies. The oil industry
connections of Bush and Cheney were well known, but little was said in the media
about the prominent role being played in Afghan policy by officials who advised
the oil industry on Central Asia.
One of the few commentaries in the America media about this aspect of the US
military campaign appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on September 26, 2001.
Staff writer Frank Viviano observed: 'The hidden stakes in the war against
terrorism can be summed up in a single word: oil. The map of terrorist
sanctuaries and targets in the Middle East and Central Asia is also, to an
extraordinary degree, a map of the world's principal energy sources in the 21st
century.
It is inevitable that the war against terrorism will be seen by many as a war on
behalf of America's Chevron, Exxon, and Arco; France's TotalFinaElf; British
Petroleum; Royal Dutch Shell and other multinational giants, which have
hundreds of billions of dollars of investment in the region.' This reality is
Page 25
Saturday

well understood in official Washington, but the most important
corporate-controlled media outlets - the television networks and major national
daily newspapers - have maintained silence that amounts to deliberate
politically motivated self-censorship.
The sole exception was an article, which appeared December 15, 2001 in the New
York Times business section, headlined, 'As the War Shifts Alliances, Oil Deals
Follow.' The Times reported, 'The State Department is exploring the potential
for post-Taliban energy projects in the region, which has more than 6 percent of
the world's proven oil reserves and almost 40 percent of its gas reserves. The
Times noted that during a visit in early December to Kazakhstan, "'Secretary of
State Colin L. Powell said he was particularly impressed with the money that
American oil companies were investing there. He estimated that $200 billion
could flow into Kazakhstan during the next 5 to 10 years." Secretary of Energy,
Spencer Abraham also pushed US oil investments in the region during a November
visit to Russia, on which he was accompanied by David J. O'Reilly, chairman of
ChevronTexaco.
Former Defence Secretary Rumsfeld also played a role in the oil pipeline
maneuvers. During a visit to Baku, capital of Azerbaijan, he assured officials
of the oil-rich Caspian state that the administration would lift sanctions
imposed in 1992 in the wake of the conflict with Armenia over the enclave of
Nagorno-Karabakh. Both Azerbaijan and Armenia aligned themselves with the US
military thrust into Central Asia, offering the Pentagon transit rights and use
of airfields. Rumsfeld's visit and his conciliatory remarks were the reward.
Rumsfeld told President Haydar Aliyev that the administration had reached
agreement with congressional leaders to waive the sanctions.
The White House released a statement hailing the official opening of the first
new pipeline by the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, a joint venture of Russia,
Kazakhstan, Oman, ChevronTexaco, ExxonMobil and several other oil companies. The
pipeline connects the huge Tengiz oilfield in north-western Kazakhstan to the
Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, where tankers are loaded for the world
market. US companies put up $1 billion of the $2.65 billion construction cost.
The Bush statement declared, 'The CPC project also advances my Administration's
National Energy Policy by developing a network of multiple Caspian pipelines
that also includes the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan, Baku-Supsa, and Baku-Novorossiysk
oil pipelines and the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas pipeline.' The pipeline
consortium involved in the Baku-Ceyhan plan, led by the British oil company BP,
is represented by the law firm of Baker & Botts. The principal attorney at this
firm was James Baker III, Secretary of State under Bush's father.
The subsequent invasion of Iraq by US and its allies using the myth of weapons
of mass destruction [which proved to be a hoax] and appointment of Zalmay
Khalilzad as US Ambassador proved beyond any doubt that the reality of 'war on
drug' is nothing but quest for OIL. Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele [TIME,
May 19, 2003] remarkably exposed the dark side of American oil policy from
classified government documents and oil industry memos, involving a pair of
Iraq's neighbours, Iran and Afghanistan. The aim of controlling Iranian oil
forced Americans for 25 years to spend more than $20 billion in US taxpayers'
money as military aid and subsidised weapons sales for the Shah's most
undemocratic rule, its oppressive armed forces and ruthless intelligence
apparatus SAVAK. These policies lead to take-over of Iran by anti-US forces in
1979. Resultantly for two decades, American oil companies were barred by the US
Page 26
Saturday

government from doing business with Iran.
In Afghanistan the story was even more bizarre as in 1977 the CIA "sounded an
alarm on the Soviets' faltering energy prospects in a secret 14-page memo
titled: The Impending Soviet Oil Crisis." President Jimmy Carter, in the wake of
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, concluded that the Soviet Army was passing
through Afghanistan to seize the Middle East oil fields and "any outside attempt
to gain control of Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the
vital interests of the United States of America..." Soon after Reagan took
office the CIA began one of its largest, longest and most expensive covert
operations, "supplying billions of dollars in arms to a collection of Afghan
guerrillas who were fighting the Soviets". The arms shipments included Stinger
missiles, the shoulder-fired, anti-aircraft weapons that were used with deadly
accuracy against Soviet helicopters - these are now in circulation among
terrorists who fight US and Nato forces in Afghanistan. Among the rebel
recipients of US arms was Osama bin Laden, who is now considered as enemy no.1
in 'war on terrorism'.
At the same time the USA was moving into the Persian Gulf militarily and
supplying Afghan rebels, all based on a faulty CIA oil assessment, it was also
secretly supporting Saddam Hussein - in 1982 when the state department removed
Iraq from its list of countries supporting terrorism. The root of all this folly
was the US government's officially sanctioned version of faltering Soviet oil
production, which was at odds with reality. In fact, Russia today is the world's
second largest [oil] producer, after Saudi Arabia. Instead of becoming a major
buyer of Middle East oil, as the CIA had warned, Russia ships 3 million bbl. a
day to other countries, including the US. As all this makes clear, the former
Soviet Union was not running out of oil. Neither is the world. The one
exception: the USA, which was the Saudi Arabia of the first half of the 20th
century, is finally running out. As a result, thanks in part to American policy
that put an emphasis on foreign intervention rather than domestic conservation,
Americans are more dependent than ever on imported oil.
The second myth that Taliban was not able to effectively curb poppy cultivation
and drug trade is equally false. According to The Economist (August 16-22,
2003), the Taliban regime clamped down on poppy growing with an iron fist, and
banned it completely in 2000. Production collapsed from its peak of over 4,500
tonnes in 1999 to 185 tonnes in 2001. However, the ban did not cover trade, and
opiates kept on flowing into Central Asia - Mullah Omar and many others made
billions after this ban as they had huge stockpiles with them (see details in
Peter Gretchen's book Seed of Terrorism). After the downfall of the Taliban,
poppy cultivation re-appeared with a vengeance, in spite of a fresh ban imposed
by US-installed Hamid Karzai's government. According to UN estimates [United
Nations Office on Drugs and Crime] production increased to over 8,000 tonnes in
2007. Afghanistan once again dominates world production of opium, with almost
80% of the total annual global yield.
Obama administration like that of his predecessor is not interested in democracy
in Afghanistan. On assuming power Obama promised more military operations in
war-ravaged country. In fact, no US administration has ever engaged in any 'war
on terrorism (sic). In reality, they have launched "oil and war bonanza" around
Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan with multiple objectives: ensuring continuous
enormous profits for war industry, control over oil and gas rich countries and
containment of China by physical military presence in its nearby areas. The
statement of Bush on September 8, 2008 declaring Pakistan "a major theatre" in
Page 27
Saturday

'war on terror" and Obama's Af-Pak Policy, followed by wanton attacks on
civilians inside our territories, should be viewed in proper perspective: the
purpose is to forewarn new democratic government in Islamabad not to deviate
from the commitments given by ex-ruler Pervaiz Musharraf - with House of Saud
acting as a guarantor - or results would be disastrous.
Had Unites States been really serious in uprooting the causes of drug trade and
terrorism, it could have played a useful role by acknowledging and supporting
the efforts of Iran - whose policy on narcotics trafficking is in many ways
more intelligent - and by cracking down on warlords and commanders. However, the
American stance is diametrically opposite. Clinton, Bush, Obama et al have been
levelling baseless allegations against Iran and Pakistan of supporting militants
whereas CIA covertly keeps on aiding these elements. It unveils the hidden
agenda of USA and its allies in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere to promote
war industry, grab oil and gas resources, protect drug trade, use religious
fundamentalism to threaten hostile States and enforce mass acceptance of its
policies of fascism for its own self-interests and economic benefits of certain
corporations in which the ruling elite has substantial interest.
(The writers, tax lawyers, authors of many books and articles on
narco-terrorism, are visiting Professors at Lahore University of Management
Sciences (LUMS)).
Copyright 2010 Business Recorder
SUBJECT: TERRORISM (94%); RELIGION (92%); ARMED FORCES (89%); TERRORIST
ORGANIZATIONS (89%); OIL & GAS INDUSTRY (88%); OIL & GAS EXPLORATION (88%);
CONSPIRACY (78%); ANNIVERSARIES (78%); MUSLIMS & ISLAM (78%); US FEDERAL
GOVERNMENT (76%); STATE DEPARTMENTS & FOREIGN SERVICES (73%); NATIONAL SECURITY
(73%); FOREIGN POLICY (71%); CONSTRUCTION SECTOR PERFORMANCE (70%); CRUDE OIL &
NATURAL GAS EXTRACTION (66%); WAR ON TERROR (90%); AL-QAEDA (89%); QURAN &
ISLAMIC TEXTS (77%) ON07 Crimes; ON General News; GN Government News; GN12
National Security; ON20 Terrorism; ON21 Wars
INDUSTRY: NAICS; N9261 Admin of Economic Programs; N92811 National Security;
N928 National Security & International Affairs; N81 Other Services exc Public
Admin; N92 Public Admin; N92613 Regulation & Admin of Utilities; N813 Religious
Grantmaking Professional & Like Organizations; N81311 Religious Organizations
PERSON: OSAMA BIN LADEN (53%)
GEOGRAPHIC: KABUL, AFGHANISTAN (79%) FLORIDA, USA (94%); INDIAN OCEAN (79%)
AFGHANISTAN (95%); UNITED STATES (94%); CENTRAL ASIA (93%); ASIA (93%); CAMBODIA
(79%); TURKMENISTAN (79%); IRAN (79%); KAZAKHSTAN (79%); RUSSIA (79%); GULF
STATES (79%); RUSSIAN FEDERATION (79%); IRAN, ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF (79%) AF
Afghanistan; US United States of America; XR Americas; XO Asia; XB North
America; QH South Asia
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
ACC-NO: A201009105A-21256-GNW
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Other
Page 28
Saturday

JOURNAL-CODE: WBRE
Copyright 2010 Financial Times Information
All Rights Reserved
Global News Wire
Copyright 2010 Emmayzed Publications (PIT) Ltd, Source: The Financial Times
Limited
Page 29
Saturday

11 of 214 DOCUMENTS
Business Recorder
September 12, 2009 Saturday
UGLY REALITY OF 'WAR ON TERRORISM'
BYLINE: HUZAIMA BUKHARI & DR IKRAMUL HAQ
LENGTH: 3423 words
Eight years after the wanton attack on New York's twin towers - masterly planned
and executed to create a pretext to invade Afghanistan - majority believes that
the United States and its allies have pushed the world into a frenzied quagmire.
Friday was the eighth anniversary of 9/11:
The perpetuation of terrorism since 2001 - coupled with mishandling of the
entire issue by US and its allies - has been posing serious threat to
international peace. In the name of fighting terrorism, so-called proponents of
"peace", "democracy" and champions of human rights are colonising oil and
mineral rich countries, conspiring to topple some "unwanted" governments and
lending support to drug trade and mass acceptance of fascism in the name of
reforming the world.
The US intervention in Afghanistan is as disastrous as were its earlier actions
in Cambodia, Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Grenada, Panama, and
elsewhere.
The purpose behind all these interventions has been the same: prevention of
egalitarian social change, bringing into power retrograde elements, leaving the
economy in ruins, and pitilessly laying waste, many innocent lives. Purportedly,
the invasion of Afghanistan was due to the reason that the Taliban were
providing sanctuary to al Qaeda, who claimed responsibility of 9/11 shameless
aggression.
Nobody raised the question as to why Clinton or Bush administrations did not
ever place Afghanistan on the official State Department list of states charged
with sponsoring terrorism, despite the acknowledged presence of Osama bin Laden
as a guest of the Taliban government.
Obviously, such a "rogue state" designation would have made it impossible for
any US oil or construction company to enter an agreement with Kabul for a
pipeline to the Central Asian oil and gas fields. Very few people know that
really compelling - though less advertised - reason for plunging deeper into
Afghanistan was ownership of oil and gas reserves of Central Asia.
A decade before 9/11, Time magazine (18 March 1991) reported that US policy
elites were contemplating a military presence in Central Asia. The discovery of
vast oil and gas reserves in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan provided the lure,
while the dismemberment of the USSR removed the one major barrier against
Page 30

pursuing an aggressive interventionist policy in that part of the world.
US oil companies acquired the rights to some 75 percent of these new reserves. A
major problem was how to transport the oil and gas from the landlocked region.
US officials opposed using the Russian pipeline or the most direct route across
Iran to the Persian Gulf. Instead, they and the corporate oil contractors
explored a number of alternative pipeline routes, across Azerbaijan and Turkey
to the Mediterranean or across China to the Pacific.
The route favoured by UNOCAL, a US-based oil company, crossed Afghanistan and
Pakistan to the Indian Ocean. The intensive negotiations that UNOCAL entered
into with the Taliban regime remained unresolved by 1998, as an Argentine
company placed a competing bid for the pipeline. Bush's war against the Taliban
rekindled UNOCAL's hopes for getting a major chunk of business.
Zalmay Khalilzad, Condoleezza Rice, Hamid Karzai, all had established link with
UNOCAL. It is a matter of record that much before 9/11, the US and its Nato
allies decided to invade Afghanistan. The decision to this effect was taken in
Berlin during the joint meeting of Council of Ministers held in November 2000.
It exposes the claims of US and coalition partners that 9/11 was the sole reason
for invading Afghanistan. The actual cause was apprehension regarding
Turkmenistan Gas Pipeline Project in which powerful corporate entities who in
reality, rule US and other capitalist countries, had financial interests.
It was not the existence of so-called al Qaeda in Afghanistan that forced US and
its allies to invade Afghanistan but the "financial terrorism" of US and its
blind allies was the main cause of action. Till the said time al Qaeda was a
weapon in the hands of US policymakers to put pressure on Islamic States having
enormous oil, gas and mineral wealth to toe its line and extend financial
benefits uninterruptedly or face the onslaught of "fundamentalists'.
It needs to be remembered that President Bush appointed former aide to the
American oil company UNOCAL, Afghan-born Zalmay Khalilzad, as special envoy to
Afghanistan nine days after the US-backed interim government of Hamid Karzai
took office in Kabul.
This appointment underscored the real economic and financial interests at stake
in the US military intervention in Central Asia. Khalilzad was intimately
involved in the long-running US efforts to obtain direct access to the oil and
gas resources of the region, largely unexploited but believed to be the second
largest in the world after the Persian Gulf.
As an advisor for UNOCAL, Khalilzad drew up a risk analysis of a proposed gas
pipeline from the former Soviet Republic of Turkmenistan across Afghanistan and
Pakistan to the Indian Ocean. He participated in talks between the Oil Company
and Taliban officials in 1997, which were aimed at implementing a 1995 agreement
to build the pipeline across western Afghanistan.
UNOCAL was the lead company in the formation of the Centgas consortium, whose
purpose was to bring to market natural gas from the Dauletabad Field in
south-eastern Turkmenistan, one of the world's largest gas reserves. The
multi-billion project involved a 48-inch diameter pipeline from the
Afghanistan-Turkmenistan border, passing near the cities of Herat and Kandahar,
crossing into Pakistan near Quetta and linking with existing pipelines at
Multan.
Page 31
UGLY REALITY OF 'WAR ON TERRORISM' Business Recorder September 12, 2009 Saturday

An additional $600 million extension to India was also under consideration.
Khalilzad also lobbied publicly for a more sympathetic US government policy
towards the Taliban. Four years ago, in an op-ed article in the Washington Post,
he defended the Taliban regime against accusations that it was a sponsor of
terrorism, writing, 'The Taliban does not practice the anti-US style of
fundamentalism practised by Iran.'
'We should be willing to offer recognition and humanitarian assistance and to
promote international economic reconstruction,' he declared. 'It is time for the
United States to re-engage' the Afghan regime. This 're-engagement' would, of
course, have been enormously profitable to UNOCAL, which was otherwise unable to
bring gas and oil to the market from landlocked Turkmenistan.
Khalilzad only shifted his position on the Taliban after the Clinton
administration fired cruise missiles at targets in Afghanistan in August 1998,
claiming that terrorists under the direction of Afghan-based Osama bin Laden
were responsible for bombing US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. One day after
the attack, UNOCAL put Centgas on hold. Two months later it abandoned all plans
for a trans-Afghan pipeline. The oil interests began to look towards a
post-Taliban Afghanistan, and so did their representatives in the US national
security establishment.
Born in Mazar-e Sharif in 1951, Khalilzad hails from the old ruling elite of
Afghanistan. His father was an aide to King Zahir Shah, who ruled the country
until 1973. Khalilzad was a graduate student at the University of Chicago, an
intellectual center for the American right-wing, when the Soviet Union invaded
Afghanistan in 1979.
Khalilzad became an American citizen, while serving as a key link between US
imperialism and the Islamic fundamentalist Mujahideen fighting the Soviet-backed
regime in Kabul - the milieu out of which both the Taliban and bin Laden's al
Qaeda group emerged. He was a special advisor to the State Department during the
Reagan administration, lobbying successfully for accelerated US military aid to
the Mujahideen, including hand-held Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, which played
a key role in the war.
He later became Under-secretary of Defence in the administration of senior Bush,
during the US war against Iraq, and then went to the Rand Corporation, a top US
military think tank. After George W. Bush was installed as president by a 5-4
vote of the US Supreme Court, Khalilzad headed the Bush-Cheney transition team
for the Defence Department and advised incoming Defence Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld.
Significantly, however, he was not named to a sub-cabinet position, which would
have required Senate confirmation and might have provoked uncomfortable
questions about his role as an oil company advisor in Central Asia and
intermediary with the Taliban. Instead, he was named to the National Security
Council (NSC), where no confirmation vote was needed.
At the NSC, Zalmay Khalilzad reported to Condoleezza Rice, then national
security advisor [later became US Secretary of State] who also served as UNOCAL
consultant on Central Asia. After serving in the first Bush administration from
1989 to 1992, Rice was placed on the board of directors of Chevron Corporation
and served as its principal expert on Kazakhstan, where Chevron holds the
largest concession of any of the international oil companies.
Page 32

The oil industry connections of Bush and Cheney were well known, but little was
said in the media about the prominent role being played in Afghan policy by
officials who advised the oil industry on Central Asia. One of the few
commentaries in the America media about this aspect of the US military campaign
appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on September 26, 2001.
Staff writer Frank Viviano observed: 'The hidden stakes in the war against
terrorism can be summed up in a single word: oil. The map of terrorist
sanctuaries and targets in the Middle East and Central Asia is also, to an
extraordinary degree, a map of the world's principal energy sources in the 21st
century.
It is inevitable that the war against terrorism will be seen by many as a war on
behalf of America's Chevron, Exxon, and Arco; France's TotalFinaElf; British
Petroleum; Royal Dutch Shell and other multinational giants, which have
hundreds of billions of dollars of investment in the region.' This reality is
well understood in official Washington, but the most important
corporate-controlled media outlets - the television networks and major national
daily newspapers - have maintained silence that amounts to deliberate
politically motivated self-censorship.
The sole exception was an article which appeared on December 15, 2001 in the New
York Times business section, headlined, 'As the War Shifts Alliances, Oil Deals
Follow.' The Times reported, 'The State Department is exploring the potential
for post-Taliban energy projects in the region, which has more than 6 percent of
the world's proven oil reserves and almost 40 percent of its gas reserves.
The Times noted that during a visit in early December to Kazakhstan, "'Secretary
of State Colin L. Powell said he was particularly impressed with the money that
American oil companies were investing there. He estimated that $200 billion
could flow into Kazakhstan during the next 5 to 10 years." Secretary of Energy,
Spencer Abraham also pushed US oil investments in the region during a November
visit to Russia, on which he was accompanied by David J. O'Reilly, chairman of
ChevronTexaco.
Former Defence Secretary Rumsfeld also played a role in the oil pipeline
maneuvers. During a visit to Baku, capital of Azerbaijan, he assured officials
of the oil-rich Caspian state that the administration would lift sanctions
imposed in 1992 in the wake of the conflict with Armenia over the enclave of
Nagorno-Karabakh.
Both Azerbaijan and Armenia aligned themselves with the US military thrust into
Central Asia, offering the Pentagon transit rights and use of airfields.
Rumsfeld's visit and his conciliatory remarks were the reward. Rumsfeld told
President Haydar Aliyev that the administration had reached an agreement with
congressional leaders to waive the sanctions.
The White House released a statement hailing the official opening of the first
new pipeline by the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, a joint venture of Russia,
Kazakhstan, Oman, ChevronTexaco, ExxonMobil and several other oil companies. The
pipeline connects the huge Tengiz oilfield in north-western Kazakhstan to the
Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, where tankers are loaded for the world
market. US companies put up $1 billion of the $2.65 billion construction cost.
The Bush statement declared, 'The CPC project also advances my Administration's
National Energy Policy by developing a network of multiple Caspian pipelines
Page 33

that also includes the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan, Baku-Supsa, and Baku-Novorossiysk
oil pipelines and the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas pipeline.'
There was little US press coverage of this announcement. Nor did the media refer
to the fact that the pipeline consortium involved in the Baku-Ceyhan plan, led
by the British oil company BP, is represented by the law firm of Baker & Botts.
The principal attorney at this firm was James Baker III, Secretary of State
under Bush's father and chief spokesman for the 2000 Bush campaign during its
successful effort to "shut down the Florida vote recount".
The subsequent invasion of Iraq by US and its allies using the myth of weapons
of mass destruction [which proved to be a hoax] and appointment of Zalmay
Khalilzad as US Ambassador proved beyond any doubt that the reality of 'war on
drug' is nothing but quest for oil. Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele [TIME,
May 19, 2003] remarkably exposed the darker side of American oil policy from
classified government documents and oil industry memos, involving a pair of
Iraq's neighbours, Iran and Afghanistan.
The aim of controlling Iranian oil forced Americans for 25 years to spend more
than $20 billion in US taxpayers' money as military aid and subsidised weapons
sales for the Shah's most undemocratic rule, its oppressive armed forces and
ruthless intelligence apparatus SAVAK.
These policies lead to take-over of Iran by anti-US forces in 1979. Resultantly
for two decades, American oil companies were barred by the US government from
doing business with Iran. In Afghanistan the story was even more bizarre as in
1977 the CIA "sounded an alarm on the Soviets' faltering energy prospects in a
secret 14-page memo titled: The Impending Soviet Oil Crisis."
President Jimmy Carter, in the wake of Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, concluded
that the Soviet Army was passing through Afghanistan to seize the Middle East
oil fields and "any outside attempt to gain control of Persian Gulf region will
be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of
America..." Soon after Reagan took office the CIA began one of its largest,
longest and most expensive covert operations, "supplying billions of dollars in
arms to a collection of Afghan guerrillas fighting the Soviets".
The arms shipments included Stinger missiles, the shoulder-fired, anti-aircraft
weapons that were used with deadly accuracy against Soviet helicopters - these
are now in circulation among terrorists fighting US and Nato forces in
Afghanistan. Among the rebel recipients of US arms was Osama bin Laden, who is
now considered as Enemy No 1 in 'war on terrorism'.
At the same time the US was moving into the Persian Gulf militarily and
supplying Afghan rebels, all based on a faulty CIA oil assessment, it was also
secretly supporting Saddam Hussein - in 1982 when the State Department removed
Iraq from its list of countries supporting terrorism. The root of all this folly
was the US government's officially sanctioned version of faltering Soviet oil
production, which was at odds with reality.
In fact, Russia today is the world's second largest [oil] producer, after Saudi
Arabia. Instead of becoming a major buyer of Middle East oil, as the CIA had
warned, Russia ships 3 million bbl. a day to other countries, including the US.
As all this makes clear, the former Soviet Union was not running out of oil.
Neither is the world. The one exception: the US, which was the Saudi Arabia of
Page 34

the first half of the 20th century, is finally running out. As a result, thanks
in part to American policy that put an emphasis on foreign intervention rather
than domestic conservation, Americans are more dependent than ever on imported
oil.
The second myth that Taliban was not able to effectively curb poppy cultivation
and drug trade is equally false. According to The Economist (August 16-22,
2003), the Taliban regime clamped down on poppy growing with an iron fist, and
banned it completely in 2000.
Production collapsed from its peak of over 4,500 tonnes in 1999 to 185 tonnes in
2001. However, the ban did not cover trade, and opiates kept on flowing into
Central Asia. After the downfall of the Taliban, poppy cultivation re-appeared
with a vengeance, in spite of a fresh ban imposed by US-installed Hamid Karzai's
government.
According to UN estimates [United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime] production
increased to over 8,000 tonnes in 2007. Afghanistan once again dominates world
production of opium, with almost 80 percent of the total annual global yield.
About 70-80% of Afghans depend on what they can grow. But Afghanistan lacks
water and cultivable land. Even in the halcyon 1970s, less than 5% of the land
was irrigated.
The war halved that. Then during the seven-year-long drought in some places,
most of the livestock died and staple crops failed. In the south and south-west
of the country, water-tables are dangerously low. Even with the best possible
governance, that part of Afghanistan is a poor proposition.
In post-Taliban Afghanistan, drought, drugs and insecurity started to feed off
each other. Three of the country's five big drug-producing provinces - Helmand,
Uruzgan, and Kandhar - remained unsafe and parched. In today's Afghanistan,
poppy cultivation is spreading to new areas, and with it insecurity. The
nightmare is a new Colombia: a place where drug lords capture and wreck
governments and the economy alike - the return of butcher likes Rashid Dostum in
August 2009 elections proves the point.
The drug trade in the post-Taliban Afghanistan is becoming institutionalised.
Opium is now being processed into morphine and heroin inside Afghanistan. That
means a lot more money for warlords and militia commanders on the ground,
something made apparent by the switch-over to ever more expensive jeeps.
Self-styled, US-hijacked, Nato-sponsored democracy (sic) in Afghanistan plays in
the hands of more sophisticated narco-enriched criminals - these include members
of parliament, warlords and militia commanders. Obama administration like that
of his predecessor is not interested in democracy in Afghanistan. On assuming
power Obama promised more military operations in war-ravaged country.
In fact, no US administration has ever engaged in any 'war on terrorism (sic).
In reality, they have launched "oil and war bonanza" around Iraq, Afghanistan
and Pakistan with multiple objectives: ensuring continuous enormous profits for
war industry, control over oil and gas rich countries and containment of China
by physical military presence in its nearby areas.
The statement of Bush on September 8, 2008 declaring Pakistan "a major theatre"
in 'war on terror" and Obama's AfPak Policy, followed by wanton attacks on
civilians inside our territories, should be viewed in proper perspective: the
Page 35

purpose is to forewarn democratic government in Islamabad not to deviate from
the commitments given by ex-ruler Musharraf - or results would be disastrous.
Had Unites States been really serious in uprooting the causes of drug trade and
terrorism, it could have played a useful role by acknowledging and supporting
the efforts of Iran - whose policy on narcotics trafficking is in many ways
more intelligent - and by cracking down on warlords and commanders. However, the
American stance is diametrically opposite. Clinton, Bush, Obama et al have been
levelling baseless allegations against Iran and of late Pakistan of supporting
militants whereas CIA covertly keeps on aiding these elements.
It unveils the hidden agenda of US and its allies in Afghanistan and elsewhere
to promote war industry, grab oil and gas resources, protect drug trade, use
religious fundamentalism to threaten undesirable States and enforce mass
acceptance of its policies of fascism for its own self-interests and economic
benefits of certain corporations in which the ruling elite has substantial
interest.
(The writers, tax lawyers, authors of many books and articles on
narco-terrorism, are visiting Professors at Lahore University of Management
Sciences (LUMS)).
Copyright 2009 Business Recorder
SUBJECT: TERRORISM (93%); OIL & GAS EXPLORATION (89%); TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS
(89%); OIL & GAS INDUSTRY (88%); CRUDE OIL & NATURAL GAS EXTRACTION (86%);
CONSPIRACY (78%); US FEDERAL GOVERNMENT (77%); STATE DEPARTMENTS & FOREIGN
SERVICES (76%); HUMAN RIGHTS (76%); PIPELINE TRANSPORTATION (75%); FOREIGN
POLICY (73%); ANNIVERSARIES (72%); CONSTRUCTION SECTOR PERFORMANCE (72%); ARMED
FORCES (50%); WAR ON TERROR (90%); TALIBAN (89%); AL-QAEDA (76%) ON General
News; ON20 Terrorism
ORGANIZATION: AL-QAEDA (55%)
PERSON: OSAMA BIN LADEN (54%)
GEOGRAPHIC: KABUL, AFGHANISTAN (79%) INDIAN OCEAN (92%); NEW YORK, USA (92%)
AFGHANISTAN (95%); UNITED STATES (94%); ASIA (93%); CENTRAL ASIA (93%);
TURKMENISTAN (79%); IRAN (79%); GULF STATES (79%); CAMBODIA (79%); AZERBAIJAN
(79%); KAZAKHSTAN (79%); PAKISTAN (79%); RUSSIA (79%); TURKEY (79%); IRAN,
ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF (79%); RUSSIAN FEDERATION (79%) AF Afghanistan; US United
States of America; XR Americas; XO Asia; XB North America; QH South Asia
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
ACC-NO: A200909112B-1D739-GNW
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Other
JOURNAL-CODE: WBRE
Copyright 2009 Financial Times Information
All Rights Reserved
Page 36

Global News Wire
Copyright 2009 Emmayzed Publications (PIT) Ltd, Source: The Financial Times
Limited
Page 37

12 of 214 DOCUMENTS
Telegraph Herald (Dubuque, IA)
October 30, 2010 Saturday
Mavis Leno: Make a difference
BYLINE: SANDYE VOIGHT TH staff writer * svoight@wcinet.com
SECTION: A; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 447 words
It kills her to say, "Stay the course" in Afghanistan. Mavis Leno, wife of
comedian Jay Leno and head of the Feminist Majority's Campaign for Afghan Women
& Girls, knows it's a bitter pill for Americans to keep sending troops into
harm's way. "But, if we don't, we will be back there again in 10 years," she
said Friday at the Grand River Center.
The audience of 740 mostly women attended Salute to Women to lunch, shop, watch
a fashion show and listen to guest speaker Leno. The event is presented by the
Telegraph Herald and "her" magazine and sponsored by American Trust & Savings
Bank. Leno wanted women to know that they can make a difference if they fight
for something they believe in. "If you take on something, then never let go.
Sink your teeth in it." She became a feminist at 7 when her father told her that
girls weren't allowed to become jockeys and that once women didn't have the
right to vote. She joined the Feminist Majority, in 1998, and was immediately
taken with the plight of Afghan women. She took the audience back to those
pre-Sept. 11 days, when the Taliban virtually buried Afghan women alive, hidden
in burqas and cut off from work and society. The Taliban, she said, "had the
world's worst case of girl cooties." "I thought, 'We have to tell the world
about these women,'" she said. "I stood up and said, 'This is mine. I'm going to
do it.' " She confronted Unocal, a California oil company that wanted to run a
pipeline through Afghanistan. "Why would we fund a country with bitter
oppression to women?" she asked at a shareholders' meeting. Three months later,
Unocal withdrew and named the Feminist Majority among its reasons. "They didn't
even know who I was," Leno said. "It showed me you don't have to do a
spectacular thing where people hold up candles." Later, she and Jay gave
$100,000 to fund programs to end gender apartheid in Afghanistan. She said
single moms in America flooded Washington with their protests once they learned
that Afghan women - many widowed by decades of war - were not allowed to work
and take care of their families, except to beg in the streets. Leno lamented
that America's original intentions got "sidetracked by Iraq." She wants to see
American troops stay to keep the Taliban at bay. She wants to see more funding
for schools and organizations led by women. "If we leave, it'll sink back to the
Taliban, and we can't allow that to happen," she said. After her speech, women
lined up to meet her. Among them was Carol Foht, of Dubuque, who said her
nephew, Matt Jones, is a Marine stationed in Afghanistan. She said she couldn't
wait to tell him how valuable his work is. "I want to tell him why he's there,"
she said.
Page 38

SUBJECT: WOMEN (78%); WAR & CONFLICT (77%); SINGLE PARENTS (72%); OIL & GAS
INDUSTRY (68%); SHAREHOLDERS (66%); SHAREHOLDER MEETINGS (66%); EDUCATION
FUNDING (62%); FASHION SHOWS (55%)
COMPANY: AMERICAN TRUST & SAVINGS BANK (70%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS522120 SAVINGS INSTITUTIONS (70%); SIC6036 SAVINGS INSTITUTIONS,
NOT FEDERALLY CHARTERED (70%)
PERSON: JAY LENO (94%)
GEOGRAPHIC: CALIFORNIA, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (96%); AFGHANISTAN (94%); IRAQ
(66%)
LOAD-DATE: October 30, 2010
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
Copyright 2010 Woodward Communications, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
Page 39
Mavis Leno: Make a difference Telegraph Herald (Dubuque, IA) October 30, 2010
Saturday

13 of 214 DOCUMENTS
The Business Insider
May 30, 2011 Monday 8:00 AM EST
How Do You Support Your Troops"Regular, Special or Super?
BYLINE: Russ Baker
LENGTH: 1858 words
May 30, 2011 (The Business Insider delivered by Newstex) --
How do you support your troops? Regular, Special or Super?
As we celebrate Memorial Day, it can be hard to remember that this is not
principally intended as a day off from work for most of us, but as an occasion
to honor dead soldiers who were once actual living persons, with many years of
expected life ahead of them.
While contemplating the reality of all these dead young people, we would do well
to ponder why soldiers are currently dying in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Those who oesupport the troops, i.e. support their being involved in those
conflicts, should be able to explain, with vigor and simplicity, in just a few
words, why it is necessary that they die"or risk dying.
Most cant, and its not surprising that they are unfamiliar with some of the most
revealing reports and analyses.
First, theres the question of why the US (and its principal ally, Britain)
invaded Iraq in the first place. Weve had a lot to say on that topic, such as on
Britains motivation (oil), more on Britain here, and then George W. Bushs
principal personal motivation (not oil!)
Enough Iraq. On to the war that gets the attention these days, Afghanistan. For
perspective, see the following, little-recalled BBC report from May 13,
2002"not long after the US invasion of Afghanistan and installation of Hamid
Karzai in power:
Afghanistan hopes to strike a deal later this month to build a $2bn pipeline
through the country to take gas from energy-rich Turkmenistan to Pakistan and
India.
Afghan interim ruler Hamid Karzai is to hold talks with his Pakistani and
Turkmenistan counterparts later this month on Afghanistans biggest foreign
investment project, Mohammad Alim Razim, minister for Mines and Industries told
Reuters.
Page 40

oeThe work on the project will start after an agreement is expected to be struck
at the coming summit, Mr Razim said.
The construction of the 850-kilometre pipeline had been previously discussed
between Afghanistans former Taliban regime, US oil company Unocal and Bridas of
Argentina.
The project was abandoned after the US launched missile attacks on Afghanistan
in 1999.
US company preferred
Mr Razim said US energy company Unocal was the oelead company among those that
would build the pipeline, which would bring 30bn cubic meters of Turkmen gas to
market annually.
Unocal " which led a consortium of companies from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan,
Turkmenistan, Japan and South Korea " has maintained the project is both
economically and technically feasible once Afghan stability was secured.
oeUnocal is not involved in any projects (including pipelines) in Afghanistan,
nor do we have any plans to become involved, nor are we discussing any such
projects, a spokesman told BBC News Online¦.
Also worth reviewing is this inadequately discussed June, 2010 article from the
New York Times:
The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits
in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to
fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself,
according to senior American government officials.
The previously unknown deposits " including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt,
gold and critical industrial metals like lithium " are so big and include so
many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could
eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the
world, the United States officials believe.
An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the
oeSaudi Arabia of lithium, a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries
for laptops and BlackBerrys.
The vast scale of Afghanistans mineral wealth was discovered by a small team of
Pentagon officials and American geologists. The Afghan government and President
Hamid Karzai were recently briefed, American officials said.
While it could take many years to develop a mining industry, the potential is so
great that officials and executives in the industry believe it could attract
heavy investment even before mines are profitable, providing the possibility of
jobs that could distract from generations of war.
oeThere is stunning potential here, Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the
United States Central Command, said in an interview on Saturday. oeThere are a
lot of ifs, of course, but I think potentially it is hugely significant.
Page 41
How Do You Support Your Troops"Regular, Special or Super? The Business Insider
May 30, 2011 Monday 8:00 AM EST

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