CIA trained Al-Qaeda, and Saudi Arabia financed the Taliban

[IndianaGreen]

Why are we sending more troops to die and suffer in Afghanistan when we were the ones that created the Frankenstein monster we are now fighting?

Robert Fisk interviewed Osama bin Laden long before 9-11. Fisk also wrote about Saudi Arabia's financing of the Taliban.

Perhaps we should re-read these articles in light of our debacle in Aghanistan.

Public Enemy No 1 - a title he always wanted

Robert Fisk Middle East Correspondent

Saturday, 22 August 1998

An hour before the Americans launched their cruise missiles at Afghanistan, Mr bin Laden had sent a message to a Pakistani journalist in Peshawar, a satellite call in which an Egyptian doctor - whom I last saw sitting beside Mr bin Laden in Afghanistan - said the Saudi was not responsible for the attacks on the US embassies in Africa but invited all Muslims to join his jihad (holy war) against "the Americans and the Jews".

He denied the bombings in Africa just as he once denied to me his responsibility for the bombing of a US base in Dhahran that killed 19 Americans. He is, it would seem, a warrior who does not go to war, all cloak and no dagger.

True? Perhaps. But Mr bin Laden's record as a guerrilla - rather than the world's latest super-terrorist - is a real one. Initially unwilling to discuss his battle against the Soviet occupation army in Afghanistan - he became one of the war's guerrilla heroes - he told me, when I first met him in Sudan in 1993, that God had given him peace of mind during combat.

"Once I was only 30 metres from the Russians and they were trying to capture me," he said. "I was under bombardment but I was so peaceful in my heart I fell asleep. This experience has been written about in our earliest books. I saw a 120mm mortar shell land in front of me, but it did not blow up. Four more bombs were dropped from a Russian plane on our headquarters but they did not explode. We beat the Soviet Union. The Russians fled."

Little wonder, perhaps, that Mr bin Laden feels he can force the Americans to leave Saudi Arabia, the campaign he has been espousing for three years. Did he not help to drive the Russian army out of Afghanistan, even if at terrible cost in life? "I was never afraid of death," he told me in Sudan. "As Muslims, we believe that when we die, we go to heaven. Before a battle, God sends us seqina, tranquillity."

Is that how he feels today, in the aftermath of Bill Clinton's 60-missile strike against the old CIA camps in which the Americans once trained Mr bin Laden's fellow guerrillas?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/public-enemy-no-1--a-title-he-always-wanted-1173134.html

Saudis secretly funding Taliban

Robert Fisk Middle East Correspondent

Wednesday, 2 September 1998

US Defense Secretary Dick Cheney would later promise that US troops would not stay in Saudi Arabia "a minute longer than they were needed".

A meeting of 350 ulemas at Mecca eventually agreed to the temporary US military presence.

But to appease the ulema, King Fahd was forced to make concessions, increasing the authority of the Mutaween, the religious police who impose the strictest laws of Wahhabiism, a purist Islamic faith original expounded by Mohamed bin Abdul Wahab, whose descendants are now the powerful al-Shaikh family. For Wahhabis, only the strictest Islamic law is valid, while unbelievers are infidels, deserving punishment.

This same religious police would later create the Taliban's Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Suppression of Vice, which has made Afghan women prisoners in their own homes.

In Saudi Arabia, Obaid says, the US underestimated the ulemas' dissatisfaction when American troops stayed on.

Thus, the bombers who struck at US personnel, first in the capital, Riyadh, and then in Dhahran, "did not originate externally, but derived their theological and strategic underpinnings from the mainstream Wahhabi sect".

As resentment grew and Sheikh Salman al-Audah and Sheikh Safar al-Hawali demanded the withdrawal of US troops, Saudi security forces found that their followers tried to prevent their arrest.

According to a former interior ministry official, Obaid says, the region's governor, Prince Faisal bin Bandar, went to Riyadh "to seek ... assistance from the special forces of the Ministry of Interior". US intelligence officers "should have recognised the significance ... that this `extremist' group gained enormous popular support through propaganda that directly targeted US, French and British troops".

Obaid quotes a former senior Pakistani civil servant saying that in Afghanistan "the US provided the weapons and the know-how, the Saudis provided the funds, and we provided the training camps ... for the Islamic Legions in the early 1980s and then for the Taliban."

The Saudis and the US chose the Taliban, Obaid says, with the belief that they would be able to take over Afghanistan.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/saudis-secretly-funding-taliban-1195453.html

[mia]

1. More troops will help protect theTransatlantic Pipeline (Tapi)

The real stakes in the Afghan war
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/dec/10/afghan-war-france-germany-europe

...Afghanistan is a crucial energy transit corridor in central Asia, potentially connecting the energy-rich central Asian republics with the Arabian Sea and/or the Indian Ocean. Stabilising Afghanistan – not just temporarily to justify withdrawal, but for good – is crucial for the anticipated Trans-Afghanistan pipeline from Turkmenistan to India (known as Tapi) to be built and its security to be guaranteed.

The construction of Tapi is essential for Europe to diversify its energy supplies and reduce its dependence on oil and gas imports from the Gulf and Russia. Failure in Afghanistan, and by extension in Pakistan, would mean abandoning the construction of Tapi and in turn, pave the way for Russia to reassert its former hegemony in the region.

Should this transpire, European dependence on Russian-controlled energy supplies would increase hugely, giving Russia unprecedented leverage over Europe, both economically and politically. A Russia-dependent Europe would damage the transatlantic relationship beyond repair, wean the Europeans away from their former American partner, and split the west into two.

On the other hand, should the mission in Afghanistan succeed and Tapi be built, Europe could continue to deepen its economic and political ties with Russia without running the risk of falling hostage to Russia's geostrategic ambitions (which are still very much alive); it would allow Europe to progressively integrate Russia into a united west....

[UpInArms]

2. 01/14/2002 USA Today - Build pipeline to Afghans' future

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/2002/01/14/ncguest2.htm

Now that the war in Afghanistan is essentially over, pulling off the country's reconstruction will not be easy. But, as Secretary of State Colin Powell has said, the USA has "an enormous obligation to not leave the Afghan people in a lurch."

One potential solution could give the United States an opportunity to help Afghanistan, help our friends and boost our own economy, all at the same time.

For two centuries, Afghanistan has been a victim of its geography, wrangled over by others because of its strategic location. Now, as the United States looks toward rebuilding Afghanistan, geography may prove to be the country's best asset.

North and west of Afghanistan are enormous oil and natural gas reserves in countries such as Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan. The region's available but untapped energy resources are second only to those of the Middle East.

Production in this area now is about 1 million barrels a day. But daily production could rise to 3.4 million barrels or more by 2010 if a way is found to get the energy onto world markets.

That's where Afghanistan becomes an intriguing option.

During the 1990s, several groups of international energy companies considered building a massive pipeline from Central Asia to the sea, where ships could transport the oil to the world. One option was a pipeline to Turkey via Azerbaijan. Another was a pipeline across Iran to the Persian Gulf. A third option, considered by Unocal and others, was to construct a 1,040-mile pipeline that would cross Afghanistan to the Pakistani coast.

Taliban hindered development

The Afghan option made the most sense geographically, but never really went anywhere because of concerns about the Taliban and political instability.

But the Bush administration now has the unique opportunity to push through the Afghan option. Almost everyone would reap enormous rewards:

In Afghanistan, it would create jobs and generate hundreds of millions of dollars annually in fees. It also would help Afghanistan, which suffers from chronic energy problems but has no known oil or gas reserves, develop its coal resources. Additionally, with the relative prosperity that pipeline money could bring, many Afghans might reduce their incentives to produce illicit drugs such as opium.

Building the pipeline would help Pakistan, where an oil terminal would have to be built. Pakistan has stood firmly with us during the war on terrorism. Like Afghanistan, the country is desperately in need of economic development.

The Central Asian governments of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan would also benefit economically.

The oil pipeline would send a powerful political message to the region: The United States will support those countries that support it.

The United States would benefit from greater world energy production, which brings down prices. Lower oil prices are like a tax cut. They put more money in the pockets of U.S. consumers and businesses and strengthen the economy.