-Caveat Lector-
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2002 17:33:31 -0800
From: Richard Clark <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [911nomorevictims] Taliban was actively encouraged by CIA
Three sources: Author Ahmed Rashid, a U.S. Senator, and a State
Department official:
The creation of the Taliban was "actively encouraged by the . . . CIA,
according to Selig Harrison, an expert on U.S. relations with Asia.�
�The United States encouraged Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to support the
Taliban, certainly right up to their advance on Kabul,� adds respected
journalist Ahmed Rashid. When the Taliban took power, State Department
spokesperson Glyn Davies said that he saw �nothing objectionable� in the
Taliban�s plans to impose strict Islamic law, and Senator Hank Brown,
chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on the Near East and
South Asia, welcomed the new regime: �The good part of what has happened
is that one of the factions at last seems capable of developing a new
government in Afghanistan.� �The Taliban will probably develop like
the Saudis. There will be Aramco [the consortium of oil companies that
controlled Saudi oil], pipelines, an emir, no parliament and lots of
Sharia law. We can live with that,� said another U.S. diplomat in 1997.
The reference to oil and pipelines explains everything. Since the
collapse of the USSR at the end of 1991, U.S. oil companies and their
friends in the State Department have been salivating at the prospect of
gaining access to the huge oil and natural gas reserves in the former
Soviet republics bordering the Caspian Sea and in Central Asia. These
have been estimated as worth $4 trillion. The American Petroleum
Institute calls the Caspian region �the area of greatest resource
potential outside of the Middle East.� And while he was still CEO of
Halliburton, the world�s biggest oil services company, Vice President
Dick Cheney told other industry executives, �I can�t think of a time
when we�ve had a region emerge as suddenly, to become as strategically
significant, as the Caspian.� The struggle to control these stupendous
resources has given rise to what Rashid has dubbed the �new Great Game,�
pitting shifting alliances of governments and oil and gas consortia
against one another.��
Afghanistan itself has no known oil or gas reserves, but it is an
attractive route for pipelines leading to Pakistan, India, and the
Arabian Sea. In the mid-1990s, a consortium led by the California-based
Unocal Corporation proposed a $4.5 billion oil and gas pipeline from
Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan. But this would require a
stable central government in Afghanistan. Thus began several years in
which U.S. policy in the region centered on "romancing the Taliban."
*
* *
Taken from Ahmed Rashid's book, _Taliban, Militant Islam, Oil, and
Fundamentalism in Central Asia_, Yale University Press, 2000.
<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
<A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
<A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/";>ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
