Lurking in the shadows are the two Siamese twin gorillas that have been behind all the wars and misery inflicted upon the Afghans since at least the 1970s—Big Oil and the ubiquitous Israelis.
By Ralph Forbes
Barack Obama was once proud to claim Afghanistan as “his” war. Now he is desperately trying to figure out how to pass off this hot potato in an election year. The Obama-Clinton Afghanistan “peace process” is a rehash of the old Nixon-Kissinger Vietnam “peace plan”—declare “victory,” forget about all of the lost lives and the costs—and get out.
The U.S. government wants to cut Afghanistan’s puppet government out of the loop. In the wake of a furtive Dec. 5 conference in Bonn, Germany, the Taliban group has been setting up a political office in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar.
This news comes as a result of leaked information revealing that the Obama regime has been clandestinely in contact with the Taliban since at least June. In an October visit to Afghanistan, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton squabbled with the government of President Hamid Karzai over a future American withdrawal. This came a decade after Bush declared “we won”—and marched off to the cakewalk in Iraq.
Obama’s and Hillary’s representatives are now in Doha, Qatar, haggling over the details of the release of top Taliban leaders from the Guantanamo detention center with former Taliban diplomats Shahabuddin Dilawar, Suhail Shaheen and senior Taliban leader Sher Muhammad Stanekzai.
The prisoners in question include former Taliban Interior Minister Maulvi Khairullah Khairkhwa; former Taliban commander for the northern zone Nurullah Nuri; former Taliban intelligence officials Maulavi Wasiq and Muhammad Nabi Khosti; and Taliban army chief Mullah Fazal—according to Tayyeb Agha, a close aide to Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar.
Few Americans know these names—but all were once close to the CIA. Some even received payoffs for their support against the Soviet Union.
To survive, Karzai, a former executive at oil giant Unocal, doesn’t care how much trouble he makes for Obama. This regime, set up for the purpose of turning the vast Eurasian gas and oil reserves over to Big Oil, has already signed its first deal with China’s state-owned National Petroleum Corporation, which will become the first foreign firm to produce oil in the country. The oil field near the Chinese border has an estimated 87 million barrels of crude. Karzai also signed a $3.5 billion contract with China Metallurgical Construction Co. to develop the historic Mes Aynak copper mining area in Logar province. It may well be the world’s most important Buddhist historical site, but it will be destroyed by the mining activity.
China is only one of the foreign governments circling like hungry vultures around the vast mineral riches and geopolitical importance of Afghanistan—waiting for the United States to abandon the wounded, bloody carcass. Pakistan, India, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Azerbaijan, Chechnya and Turkey all have vital interests in a peace conference that would open the country to foreign investment.
Lurking in the shadows are the two Siamese twin gorillas that have been behind all the wars and misery inflicted upon the Afghans since at least the 1970s—Big Oil and the ubiquitous Israelis.
All this leaves American GIs to wonder: “What are we even doing in Afghanistan? Why did we invade in the first place?”
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Ralph Forbes is a freelance writer based in Arkansas. He is also a member of AFP’s Southern Bureau. Contact him at [email protected]
