US in Afghanistan: Just War or Justifying Oil Profits?

opinion by David Ross, Contributor

What are the real reasons for the bombing of Afghanistan? What is behind the calls for unity and blind patriotism? Have the few powerful corporations that own the majority of the mass media told us the whole truth about the �war on terror?� The desire of the immensely powerful transnational oil corporations to control the world�s limited oil supplies is the primary reason for the US government�s bombing and invasion of Afghanistan.

Most sectors of our society are fueled by oil: including transportation, energy, heating, plastics, fertilizers and pesticides. The problem (aside from climate change) is that there is a finite supply of oil in the world. Whoever controls the oil supplies of the world will command great power and wealth.

The Caspian Sea Basin, north of Iran, is one of the largest untapped reservoirs of oil in the world. An oil pipeline through Iran would be the shortest distance to the sea and Asian markets, but the US doesn�t have their man, the Shah, in Iran anymore. Thus, security for a pipeline could not be guaranteed. Thankfully, there is already a pipeline in Turkmenistan adjoining the Caspian Sea, which oil corporations could extend through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Arabian Sea for export.

In 1998, Vice-President Cheney, then CEO of Halliburton, the largest oil services corporation stated, �I cannot think of a time when we have had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian.� One US oil corporation seeking to exploit the Caspian Sea Basin is Unocal. On February 12, 1998, John J Maresca, the company�s vice president, said to a committee of the House of Representatives, �Construction of our proposed pipeline [through Afghanistan] cannot begin until a recognized government is in place�.�

Enter the Taliban. Central Asia expert Amed Rashid wrote in his book Taliban, �Impressed by the ruthlessness and willingness of the then-emerging Taliban to cut a pipeline deal, the State Department and Pakistan�s ISI agency agreed to funnel arms and training to the Taliban�� Congressman Dana Rohrabachr, involved in Afghanistan since the early 1980�s, testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee: �There is and has been a covert policy by this Administration to support the Taliban� [under] the assumption that the Taliban would bring stability to Afghanistan and permit the building of oil pipelines from Central Asia through Afghanistan to Pakistan�.�

Ted Rall reported in the San Francisco Chronicle on November 2, 2001, �as recently as 1999, US taxpayers paid the entire annual salary of every single Taliban Government official.� Hugh Pope wrote in the Oct. 27, 1997 Wall St. Journal, that, indeed, Unocal had secured an agreement from the Taliban to build the pipeline. But the deal fell through because the Taliban harbored Osama Bin Laden and could not subdue the tribal warlords of Afghanistan, thus preventing a stable environment for a pipeline.

September 11 rolls around. The Taliban that the US had financed are now declared �evil.� No doubt a more compliant regime will be installed that will serve the oil corporations with proper respect, and thereby enjoy mutual enrichment.

The War on Terrorism is a smokescreen just like the War on Drugs and the Cold War; obscuring what the economic and political elites really want: to militarily intervene in any country when they need to protect corporate investments, in this case oil, and gas; and to funnel taxpayer dollars (perhaps an additional $30-$60 billion this year) into the military-industrial complex�the so-called �defense� industries�probably the greatest welfare scam in history; and to repress dissent at home (USA �PATRIOT� Act) and abroad in neo-colonial regimes�puppet regimes and all those caught in the debt bondage to the US-dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF), and Word Bank.

David Ross is a grass-roots activist who has worked on the Nader campaign, corporate accountability, US imperialism, and environmental issues. He can be reached at [email protected].