| Guns,
Drugs, and Oil: The Realpolitik of the Afghan War, Part 2 1/23/02 THE MILITARY IMPORTANCE OF OIL Oil is not merely a vital economic resource, it's a crucial military resource as well (government officials use the word 'strategic'). Wars run on oil -- trucks, tanks, and planes can't move without it. Only nuclear-powered ships and submarines can sail without it1 (sailboats have negligible military value). Control of oil is a concern not only of the oil business but, more importantly, of the military, which protects "national interests and investments"2 and enforces the "rules of the game" for all the businesses. 'Strategic' thinking dictates not only that [the imperial] we must control our own oil supplies but also that we must be able to deny oil to our opponents, if not by controlling it at least by destroying it (for example, the British destroyed Romanian oil wells, equipment, and stocks before the Germans could reach them during WW I3). Thus the struggle over oil is part of the struggle for military as well as economic supremacy. Since a 1945 meeting between President Roosevelt and King Ibn Saud, the US has enjoyed privileged access to Saudi Arabian oil (by far the greatest share of Persian Gulf oil) and has supported the royal family's legitimacy.4 The relationship between the US and the Saudi royal family remains murky, with many of the accused Sept. 11th hijackers being Saudi5 - at least one of whom turned out to be still alive! In fact five of the FBI's suspected hijackers have been found alive.6 But Saudi Arabia is where the US now has a massive permanent military force in the Persian Gulf, which it has wanted for a long time but was unable to establish until the Gulf War. (One service which Saddam Hussein does the US is justifying the US troops in Saudi Arabia7). The oil & natural gas reserves in the Caspian area are immense8 and military powers are vying to control their development.9 This is not to belittle the general economic importance of oil and gas, but to underscore the military imperative to control as much oil as possible. There are other ways to make money besides the oil business, and there are other fuels for most civilian purposes, but there are no substitutes for oil (except gasified coal, which is more expensive) for military vehicles. No other fuel has as much energy per unit weight as petroleum does, so vehicles run on alternative fuels lose speed and range. Petroleum-powered vehicles run rings around them, and in fact the first oil venture in the Middle East was rescued from bankruptcy in 1914 by the British Admiralty in order to secure oil for its fleet, which was converting from coal.10 Over the course of the war the company's production went from 1,600 to 18,000 barrels per day.11 During WWII the US was laying special "battlefield pipeline" at rates of up to 50 miles per day to keep Patton's tanks supplied with gasoline.12 A modern jet fighter uses nearly as much fuel in an hour as an average family car does in two years.13 These are all examples of the military importance of oil. (In fact, scientists have long ago pointed out that we could meet US domestic energy demand without importing oil by developing renewable energy and conserving.14 There has never been a real US (domestic, peacetime) oil crisis; it is only the military which needs all that oil). What follows is admittedly simplified: there is oil in other nearby places, natural gas is also involved, and there are important mineral deposits in the area.15 Natural gas works fine for most civilian economies, and there's lots of money to be made from it. While my central thesis is that the most important, 'strategic,' goal of US military action in the area is control of the oil resources for military purposes, I don't mean to discount plain old greed as a motive in its own right. Most of the reserves are under the Central Asian Republics (CARs), especially Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. These are all former Soviet Republics, and they all border Afghanistan to the north. Most of the pipelines run north to Russia, which owns them and controls the flow of oil. Various other pipelines have been proposed: west through Iran to the Persian Gulf (but US sanctions against Iran prevent US companies from using this route); south through Afghanistan to the Arabian Sea (which appears to be the winner); and east to China (very long & expensive).16 A VP of Unocal Oil told the House Cmte on Int'l Relations that the best market for Caspian oil was in Asia, and from Pakistan's coast it can be shipped easily and cheaply to other parts of Asia.17 And fueling (literally) the Asian energy economy will help investments in Asian industry and transportation pay off. The Taliban were negotiating with both Unocal and a South American company for almost identical pipelines, and with the US State Dept. for recognition as a real government as late as November 1997. Unocal eventually gave up (temporarily) on the pipeline because of the incessant internal wars in Afghanistan and the lack of a recognized government. In 1998 the top US diplomat dealing with Afghanistan told Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid that "the US acquiesced in supporting the Taliban because of our links to the Pakistan and Saudi governments who backed them. But we no longer do so...."18 US Green Berets and regular troops have gone to Uzbekistan to train and establish ties with the Uzbek military since 1996, and 30-40 Uzbek officers have come to the US for military training since 1995. At least one of these has helped US troops get settled in Uzbekistan for the current occupation. Some US soldiers have even married Uzbek women.19 Within days of the start of the US bombing, the US Ambassador to Pakistan had a meeting with Pakistani Federal Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources Usman Aminuddin wherein he suggested that US oil companies reconsider the Turmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan pipeline "particularly in view of the recent geo-political developments in the region," and she "informed [him] that the US Government had lifted a number of sanctions on Pakistan which would help revive its national economy" and "expressed the hope that the US investors would avail [themselves of] the opportunities in the oil, gas and mineral sectors of Pakistan."20 Illegal drugs (mostly opium or heroin in Afghanistan) have been an undercurrent of covert military operations for a long time. They are important not only as commodities which can be sold for cash but as currency which can be traded directly for goods and services in situations where institutions like banks or governments are nonexistent or just too troublesome. In Afghanistan today merchants and farmers keep their savings in opium because there is no stable banking system or government to issue money.21 Illegal drugs are worth a lot of money, and those who transport them can't (officially) call the police for protection, so drug traders must either bribe the police or have their own guards. Either way, they have the cash at hand, so either some of the local police moonlight as security guards or a private security force forms, or a little of both. Either way, they need military supplies, and set up hidden warehouses and bases in defensible positions. Meanwhile, intelligence agencies of every government which wants to meddle covertly in the local military balance are looking for ways to smuggle people and military equipment and supplies in and establish hidden supply depots and bases in defensible positions. The drug dealers and the spooks bump into each other in the same arms bazaars, dark alleys, mountain passes, and transit hubs. The drug dealers also need ways to launder their money. The spooks need a way to buy weapons & other military supplies for their clients as unobtrusively as possible. The smugglers have empty transport vehicles which they must bring back. Sooner or later, inevitably, they fall into bed with each other. As Gen. Paul F. Gorman, former head of the US Southern Command, put it, "If you want to go into the subversion business, collect intelligence and move arms, you deal with the drug movers."22 The intelligence services set up dummy corporations in third countries to launder the drug money and buy and ship the military supplies. They also do much to grease the passage of the drugs into their countries and stall any investigations by their own governments into the traffic. As the trade grows the money from the consumer countries winds up in the country of origin's banks, often keeping them afloat with hard currency (for example, US dollars from cocaine sales have enabled banks in South America to repay dollar-denominated loans to US banks),23 and Pakistan's state bank relies on heroin dollars for the same thing.24 In fact, Professor Bob Auberbach of the University of Texas remarked that General Accounting Office inspectors had told him that the vaults of the Los Angeles Fed "have the second most currency in the entire Federal Reserve system because of all the drug money flowing into California."25 This complicates the issue; many a finance minister may have sincerely wished to clamp down on the scourge of drugs but few have been able, politically, to do so. Even the New York Stock Exchange seeks out strange bedfellows with drug money: former Wall Street banker and consultant to HUD Catherine Austin Fitts noted reports that the Exchange's chairman, Richard Grasso, had visited FARC guerrillas in Colombia "to bring a 'message of cooperation from U.S. financial services' and to discuss foreign investment and the future role of U.S. businesses in Colombia." "It does not take much reading in between the lines to conclude that Grasso's mission somehow relates to the continued circulation of cocaine capital into and through the US financial system," Fitts writes.26 The CIA is far from unique in its drug dealings, but it has elevated them to an art worthy (!) of a world superpower, a substantial multinational conglomerate with its own airlines and major accounts in money-laundering banks.27, But the CIA is very careful to keep its own hands clean and have proxies do the dirty work. In Afghanistan, the Taliban forced heavy poppy cultivation (until last year) and handed the opium over to Pakistan's Integrated Services Intelligence (ISI) which oversaw the conversion to heroin (much easier to smuggle) in Pakistan and shipped it out, while shipping the weapons in.28 In 2000, to everyone's astonishment, the Taliban actually eliminated over 90% of the poppy farming in Afghanistan, although there was also a severe drought and Rohrabacher says that the Taliban had immense stocks of opium, so the ban may have been a ploy to gain a propaganda victory out of a poor harvest.29 According to former Indian intelligence officer B. Raman, "Even if no poppies are grown for the next two years, there are still enough stocks in Pakistan to be sold on the world market," and the ban on poppies was necessary to avoid a glut.30 However, Fitts and Ruppert both believe that US officials will encourage their friends to grow as much as they can.31 (Historically demand has expanded to absorb more drugs when they are available.) Whatever the case, a new poppy crop has already been planted, and the main opium bazaar in Afghanistan's Nangrahar Province has reopened to trade stockpiled opium since the Taliban started dodging bombs. Although the US has declared war on drug dealers, it had not (as of 11/25/01) bombed the bazaar.32 A US Special Forces Commander told journalist Daniel Hopsicker that he believed the Taliban had tried to take over the drug trade for themselves, leading to increased hostility from the US.33 Halliburton, an oil and military services conglomerate whose most recent CEO is now Vice President of the US, just signed large long-term contracts with both the British and US armies.34 In 1977 a narcotics officer from the LAPD discovered a CIA-managed guns-for-drugs exchange in New Orleans using ships and oil rigs built and run by Brown & Root, now a Halliburton subsidiary. The investigator was driven from the Department and all official investigations remain classified.35 Brown & Root has big oilfield-equipment construction contracts, which it has successfully lobbied the US government to back with guaranteed loans, with a Russian consortium which was caught smuggling heroin in 1995.36 While the Taliban were set up and funded by Saudi Arabia and operated through Pakistan's Integrated Services Intelligence (ISI), the US National Security Council (NSC) saw to it that they took over most of Afghanistan after the Russians were driven out. At a crucial point in the war between the remaining factions, the Taliban had overextended themselves and were vulnerable to a fatal blow, but the State Dept. stepped in and persuaded everyone to accept a cease-fire and arms embargo. Then what happened was that somebody (presumably the Saudis, who had been funding and managing the "Afghan Arabs" all along) resupplied and rearmed the Taliban in a massive airlift which everyone could see. Nonetheless, the State Dept. continued to pressure the other factions' supporters to maintain their embargo, resulting in a major Taliban victory. Rohrabacher said that every time Asst. Secretary of State Inderfurth went to Pakistan, a few weeks later the Taliban mounted an offensive and conquered more territory.37 Further, the US distributed its food aid only to Taliban-controlled areas, with the possible exception of one delivery to an area controlled by the late Commander Massoud.38 The exact nature of the NSC relationship to the Saudi-Pakistan-bin Laden axis is murky, but US officials have recently admitted that they had foreign informers in Afghanistan in recent years who could pinpoint bin Laden's location from time to time. The official said that the information didn't help them kill or capture him because he didn't hold still and their informant couldn't predict his position for the six to ten hours that it would take to get him with a cruise missile.39 Rohrabacher says that he has contacts in Afghanistan who offered to locate bin Laden but that the White House was uninterested.40 During the proxy war in Afghanistan with the (then) Soviet Union, Osama bin Laden rounded up Arabs in Saudi Arabia who then came to the US for training by the CIA before going to Afghanistan.41 Later he went to Sudan, and in 1994 he went to Libya where he collaborated with British intelligence in a plot to assassinate Khadaffi. In 1998 Libya charged bin Laden and three others with the murder of a couple of German counterespionage agents who were investigating the Lockerbie bombing (whether this had anything to do with the attempt on Khadaffi's life is unclear).42 The FBI became very interested in bin Laden after it found out that the plastic explosive used in the bombings in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam had been delivered by the CIA to bin Laden three years previously.43 The FBI has been prevented from investigating bin Laden and al-Qaeda,44 when (then) Dep. Director of the FBI in charge of counterterrorism John O'Neill finally, despite obstruction from the State Dept., managed to get to Saudi Arabia to interrogate suspects, the Saudis tried and executed them before he could get there to question them. O'Neill resigned from the FBI in August 2001 and became chief of security for the World Trade Center, where he died on September 11th. French intelligence analyst Jean-Charles Brisard (who spoke with O'Neill before his death) says that O'Neill left because he was fed up. Brisard says bin Laden knows too much and the CIA doesn't want him to testify in public. It wants him either dead before he can talk or tried in a closed military tribunal.45 FBI agents have asked high-profile Washington lawyer David Shippers, who impeached President Clinton, to lobby for a Congressional hearing where they can be subpoenaed and tell what they know. Shippers says they are being muzzled and this is the only way they can get their information out.46 On Hallowe'en of 2001 the French daily Le Figaro reported that bin Laden had been at the US hospital in Dubai to see a kidney specialist, and that the top local CIA official, as well as many of his family, visited him there.47 The hospital's director immediately denied the report, but the journalists who made it stand by their story.48 The directors of the CIA and ISI have exchanged visits over the years and the ISI's chief Ahmed Mahmoud was in Washington starting Sept. 4th 2001.49 After the Sept. 11th attacks, he met with top White House officials and was sent to Afghanistan to deliver Washington's ultimatum to the Taliban.50 But then India's intelligence service told Washington that Mahmoud had had an aide wire $100,000 to Mohamed Atta, the FBI's suspected ringleader in the Sept. 11th hijackings, sometime before the event. The ISI removed Mahmoud at Washington's demand, saying publicly that he had chosen to retire.51 On August 31st 2001 Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak warned the US that an attack of some sort was in the offing.52 In the summer of 2001, according to reports in the Russian press, Russian intelligence notified the CIA that 25 terrorist pilots had been specifically training for suicide missions. Then, in August, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his intelligence services to warn the US government "in the strongest possible terms" of imminent attacks on airports and government buildings.53 US authorities did not follow up leads from French intelligence regarding Zacarias Moussaoui, a Frenchman of Moroccan descent whom the US had arrested in August 2001 on a passport violation. The French suspected Moussaoui of links to Al-Queda. He was taking flight lessons in Minnesota. Moussaoui lived for years in England, and British intelligence services also left him alone, despite French warnings and requests to question him. The US government finally arrested (and held) him. No-one seems to have interrogated him about any of the warnings, although the government charged him on 12/11/01 with conspiracy to commit the 9/11 attacks (even though they caught him before he could participate).54 Stock option trading during the week leading up to Sept. 11th shows beyond reasonable doubt that some people knew that disaster was about to strike American Airlines, United Airlines, and the World Trade Center. Former LAPD narcotics investigator Michael Ruppert, who became an investigative reporter after realizing that the CIA was running much of the drug trade, says that intelligence agencies have software capable of tracking such stock-option trading in real time -- in short, if they were paying attention to the proper stocks, the CIA must have had a pretty good idea what was going to happen. In fact, the current Executive Director of the CIA was until 1998 vice chairman of the bank though which many of the options were purchased.55 A former senior investment bond trader from that bank recently pled guilty to conspiracy to launder money and ship military supplies to an undisclosed destination. One of his clients was a Pakistani man who offered heroin in partial payment for the military supplies.56 Bin Laden is currently either at large or dead (the US now admits it doesn't know where he is).57 During the siege of Kunduz many Pakistani Air Force planes flew in and out of the garrison and witnesses suspect a rescue of Pakistani Taliban fighters. The flights could not have happened without US permission, but the US claimed complete ignorance of them.58 Thousands of Taliban fighters, including many top leaders, have escaped into the mountains and probably into Pakistan, and one Northern Alliance commander admitted that following time-honored Afghan custom, they are letting many of their vanquished enemies go, weapons and all.59 How much control the US has over this is unclear, but our government has invested so much in the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and other armed Islamic groups -- the CIA helped set up Islamic death squads in Indonesia in the mid-sixties, for example.60 -- it may be reluctant to abandon or burn them, especially if they can be spirited away to places like Uzbekistan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Kosovo, where the US is maintaining a military presence.
References: 1. Richard M. Nixon,: The Real War
(Warner Books, 1980);
see also Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil,
Money, and Power (Simon and Schuster, 1991) p. 181. |