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Afghanstan new gov { January 3 2002 } Fwd: US Representative to Afghanistan - The oil connection (fwd)
Subject: Fwd: US Representative to Afghanistan - The oil connection
>Oil company adviser named US representative to Afghanistan
>
>By Patrick Martin
>January 3, 2002
>
>
>President Bush has appointed a former aide to the American oil company
>Unocal,
>Afghan-born Zalmay Khalilzad, as special envoy to Afghanistan. The
>nomination
>was announced December 31, nine days after the US-backed interim government
>of
>Hamid Karzai took office in Kabul.
>
>The nomination underscores the real economic and financial interests at
>stake in the US military intervention in Central Asia. Khalilzad is
>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 adviser 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
>southeastern Turkmenistan, one of the world's largest. The $2 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-U.S.
>style of fundamentalism practiced 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 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 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.
>
>Liasion to Islamic guerrillas
>
>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 mujahedin fighting the
>Soviet-backed
>regime in Kabul - the milieu out of which both the Taliban and bin Laden's
>Al
>Qaeda group arose. He was a special adviser to the State Department during
>the
>Reagan administration, lobbying successfully for accelerated US military aid
>to
>the mujahedin, including hand-held Stinger anti-aircraft missiles which
>played a key role in the war. He later became undersecretary of defense in
>the
>administration of Bush's father, during the US war against Iraq, then went
>to
>the Rand Corporation, a top US military think tank.
>
>After Bush was installed as president by a 5-4 vote of the US Supreme Court,
>Khalilzad headed the Bush-Cheney transition team for the Defense Department
>and
>advised incoming Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Significantly, however,
>he
>was not named to a subcabinet position, which would have required Senate
>confirmation and might have provoked uncomfortable questions about his role
>as
>an oil company adviser in Central Asia and intermediary with the Taliban.
>Instead, he was named to the National Security Council, where no
>confirmation
>vote was needed.
>
>At the NSC Khalilzad reports to Condoleeza Rice, the national security
>adviser,
>who also served as an oil company 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
>are well known, but little has been 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 last September 26.
>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."
>
>Silence in the media
>
>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 recent exception is an article which appeared December 15 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. Reilly, chairman of ChevronTexaco.
>
>Defense Secretary Rumsfeld has also played a role in the ongoing oil
>pipeline
>maneuvers. During a December 14 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 have 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.
>
>On November 28 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 northwestern 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."
>
>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 is 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.
>
>
>Copyright 1998-2001
>World Socialist Web Site
>All rights reserved
>
>
>--
>
>
>
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