PIPE DREAMS -- Ted Rall

[Khephra]

An Update on the Real Reason We Invaded Afghanistan


NEW YORK--So where's the pipeline?


In 2001 common sense, expert opinion and extensive research convinced me and other Central Asia watchers that the United States didn't have much interest in saving Buddha statues or Afghan women when it went to war against the Taliban. After we turned down their offer to extradite Osama, it became obvious that we weren't interested in capturing the alleged mastermind of 9/11 either. Logic and evidence indicated that the Bush Administration's focused on Afghanistan to make it secure for a pipeline to carry oil and natural gas from the landlocked Caspian Sea.


Here's the story in a nutshell. The former Soviet republics surrounding the Caspian Sea--particularly Kazakhstan--have the potential to become the biggest oil-producing nations on earth. "By 2050," reports the Asia Times, "the Persian Gulf/Caspian Sea will account for more than 80 percent of world oil and natural gas production. Together, the Persian Gulf and the Caspian may have something like 800 billion barrels of oil and an energy equivalent amount in natural gas. Compare this figure with oil reserves in the Americas and in Europe: less than 160 billion barrels. And they will be exhausted before 2030." Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan want to build a pipeline to carry their oil and gas out to deep-sea ports. The shortest possible route would go through Iran, which the U.S. has declared part of an Axis of Evil. Second shortest is via Afghanistan, a dangerous proposition that the Clinton and Bush Administrations have nonetheless encouraged during and after Taliban rule. Top Bushies last met with Taliban officials in July 2001, two months before 9/11. Negotiations broke down over transit fees, but top-level discussions between the U.S., Turkmenistan and Pakistan resumed in October, while American bombs were still raining on Kabul. That led people like me to speculate that the invasion--which made little effort to catch Osama--was a transparent excuse to gain control over newly emerging energy resources.


Yet here we are two years later, some war supporters point out, and still no pipeline.


Well, not exactly.

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