Everything seems to have changed. Nothing has changed.

Watching Taliban take over the last few remaining bits of Afghanistan, and the live footage of tens of thousands of terrified Afghans still trying to flee the country (some killing themselves or getting killed in the process), brings to mind the identical scenes from 1989-90 when Taliban first swept to power and began their Reign of Horror in Afghanistan – under the benign watch of Pakistan and the US.

Remember: Taliban is a creation of the USA and its then-stooge, Pakistan.

Remember:  Osama bin Laden was a creation of the USA and its then-stooge, Pakistan.

It’s a good time to remember these things. It’s very important never to forget these facts.

We must not waste energy screeching ‘foul’ at USA or US President Joe Biden or his GI Joes for ‘abandoning’ Afghanistan.

Because, for the USA, its entire involvement in Afghanistan , Iraq and other regions of Central Asia and the Middle East from the 1980s till 2021 has been nothing more, nothing less, than a long-term  project aimed at securing the USA’s long-term energy security: specifically, USA’s command and control over the region’s vast oil and natural gas reserves.

After all, in statecraft there is no ‘morality’; there is no ‘good or ‘bad’, there is only Supreme National Interest.

And Taliban, Jihad, Osama bin Laden, the 9/11 attacks, the ‘War on Terror’, Hamid Karzai, Zalmay Khalilzad, Saddam Hussein…all these have been just actors and components and phases of this wonderful American-led project that has spanned several US Presidencies, both Democratic and Republican: from Reagan to Biden.  

This is a project that never ends.

Bear with me, O tolerant Reader, as I dust off and present two of a few articles I’d written on this theme for Indian Express from nearly two decades ago.   I do hope they jog thy memories as they did mine, and help discern hazy outlines of the unchanging truth from the ephemeral peta-tonnes of post-truths, half-truths and plain lies that now fill our media and numb our minds.

Free kick to Unocal!

[Indian Express: June 17th , 2002]

Saeed Naqvi’s criticism of India’s apathy and lack of vision in dealing with the post-Taliban Afghanistan (‘Mindsets with Manacles’, IE June 14) is timely, because Hamid Karzai’s coming to power has deep implications for India’s economy and long-term security.

If the USSR invaded Afghanistan in the 1980s to secure a strategic gateway on to the Arabian Sea, the US-backed mujahideen war to evict the Soviets was driven by the Americans’ desire to wrest control of the vast reserves of oil and gas in the (then-Soviet) Central Asian nations.

There were two fronts to the US campaign. On the one hand, the CIA and Pakistan’s ISI set up a vast operation to recruit, arm and train Islamic radicals from all over the world to fight a jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Simultaneously, the $ 6 billion American oil company, Unocal, drew up plans for a giant pipeline that would transport LNG from Turkmenistan via Afghanistan to Pakistan, and thence, to Southeast Asian markets by sea.

Throughout the war-torn 1990s, then, Unocal busily lobbied with various ethnic factions in Afghanistan to secure its proposed pipeline. In 1995, it strongly backed the Taliban regime. Its efforts were openly endorsed by Robin Raphel, then US assistant secretary of state (South Asia), and by Tom Simmons, then US ambassador to Pakistan, who encouraged the Pakistan prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, to grant Unocal exclusive transit rights for oil and gas across Pakistan.

One of Unocal’s most able executives in Afghanistan during this period was Hamid Karzai.

On February 8 this year, Pakistan’s General Musharraf and Karzai agreed on a $ 10 million deal confirming the pipeline arrangement.

There is another strange and murky twist to the Unocal tale. The company is closely associated with Saudi oil giant Delta; and Delta is closely linked to Turki bin Faisal, who until 2001, had headed Saudi Arabia’s intelligence service Istakhbarat.

 In the early 1990s, Faisal promoted the image of Taliban as ‘liberators’ to the US, thus endorsing Unocal’s stand. But Faisal did much more (as recorded by Pakistan journalist Ahmed Rashid in his book, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia).

At the urgings of Pakistan’s ISI, Turki bin Faisal provided a ‘royal prince’ to inspire and lead the Saudi contingent of mujahideen in Afghanistan

This ‘prince’ was none other than Osama bin Laden.

In the absence of any credible alternative, Hamid Karzai has now been chosen by the Loya Jirga as leader of Afghanistan for the next two years. Hopefully his election will bring a measure of unity and peace to the shattered peoples of Afghanistan. But his ascension to power also means that the US has finally have achieved the goal it has sought since the early 1990s — absolute control over Central Asian oil reserves.

A victory soaked in children’s blood

[Indian Express: Apr 22, 2003]

Iraq’s tragedy is symbolized by the fate of 12-year-old Ali Ismael Abbas. A Coalition missile strike killed Ali’s mother and father, sheared off his arms and destroyed his home. Ali has now been shifted to a hospital in Kuwait; there is talk of his being sent to the UK for advanced medical treatment. Surely this innocent child deserves the best care and assistance to start life anew.

But there are a thousand other Iraqi children like Ali: maimed, orphaned, homeless, nameless. What did they have to do with issues such as the removal of Saddam Hussein, weapons of mass destruction, or terrorism, issues cited by the US and UK to justify the Coalition campaign?

The military strikes are all but over. The Coalition forces have not captured Saddam or any key figures of his regime (unless an estranged ‘half-brother’ falls under the category). They have not found any WMD. The only ‘terrorist’ they have found is an ageing Palestinian who hijacked an Italian airliner 19 years ago, and against whom even Israel dropped all charges long ago. As for liberating the Iraqis, the irony is that the Coalition faced far fiercer resistance in Basra populated mainly by Shias, who were brutally oppressed by Saddam’s Sunni-dominated Ba’ath regime, than they did in Baghdad or even Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit.

So what has the Coalition campaign achieved?

The plain truth is, the US has secured its long-term strategic interests by paving the way for the installation of a regime that will allow it control over Iraq’s vast oil reserves.

In an energy-starved world, control over energy resources is the key to global dominance. Iraq has proven reserves of 115 billion barrels of oil (compared to Russia’s 49 billion and the Caspian states’ 15 billion barrels).

Significantly, US President Bush has appointed Zalmay Khalilzad as his special envoy to Iraq.

Khalilzad was earlier special envoy to Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan and both Karzai and Khalilzad were key advisors to US oil giant Unocal. Karzai’s installation in Afghanistan has enabled US oil majors to finalize plans to access Turkmenistan’s oil resources via a trans-Afghanistan pipeline to Pakistan. With control over Iraq’s oil resources, the US has in effect acquired a stranglehold over two-thirds of the world’s proven oil reserves. America will now use energy costs to wield global economic influence.

Today, the US and UK media strive to project their forces as saviours providing drinking water, medical assistance and electricity to Iraqis. Conveniently overlooked is the fact that the water and power infrastructure was destroyed in the first place by Coalition air strikes. Like little Ali, surely the Iraqi people need all the help they can get. But they know and the world knows that the Coalition campaign was never about saving the Iraqi people; it was about their oil.

[P.S.: Spare a thought – though perhaps little sympathy – for the Pakistani establishment: with Taliban at their gates, and no USA any more to turn to for dollars or for refuge in the short-term, they will soon learn the bitter truth of the old maxim: “Sow the wind, and thou shalt reap the whirlwind.” Of course, there’s always China...]