The Taliban and Unocal want to build a $4.5 billion pipeline network carrying Caspian Sea oil and gas across Afghanistan to the Indian subcontinent. The Clinton administration supports the route, which would help free the new nations of Central Asia from dependence on Russia, avoid alternate routes across Iran and bring needed energy to Pakistan and India.The Taliban's military takeover of the Afghan capital of Kabul in September 1996 initially was welcomed cautiously by the administration.
A senior Unocal executive pronounced the takeover a "very positive" development that would provide the fractured country with "a single government." The company subsequently stressed its intent to remain neutral in Afghan internal affairs.
While the State Department is studying reports of growing domestic opposition to the Taliban (prompting Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to write in the margins of one memo, "This is encouraging"), UNOCAL (the Union Oil Company of California) is sponsoring a Taliban delegation on a tour of the United States in hopes of getting permission to build a pipeline through Afghanistan. One of the visitors, Mullah Amir Khan Muttaqi, the Taliban Minister of Education and Minister of Information and Culture, is described as a "key figure in the Taliban's ideological projects," and an individual even more "extreme on social issues than most Taliban." The State Department confesses U.S. policy "will inevitably be messy and the policy we follow will be ridden with inner tensions, as we simultaneously engage with the Taliban and criticize their abuses."
How The Taliban Went From International Pariah To U.S. Peace Partner In Afghanistan
Unocal even flew senior Taliban members to Texas in 1997 in an attempt to come to an agreement.
Zalmay Khalilzad, who had served as a State Department official when Ronald Reagan was president, worked as a consultant for the now-defunct company.
Khalilzad, who met with the Taliban members in the city of Houston, publicly voiced support for the radical Islamists at the time. The "Taliban does not practice the anti-U.S. style of fundamentalism practiced by Iran -- it is closer to the Saudi model," Khalilzad wrote in a 1996 op-ed for The Washington Post. "The group upholds a mix of traditional Pashtun values and an orthodox interpretation of Islam."
https://vimeo.com/ondemand/talibanoil
This is the unknown story of secret negotiations between the Taliban and America to build a pipeline through Afghanistan.
When America invaded Afghanistan in 2001, the stated aim was to dismantle Al-Qaeda, denying it a safe base of operations by removing the Taliban from power. But Al-Qaeda claimed that the attack on the Twin Towers was a response to the Bush administration’s threats to attack Afghanistan if its demands for pipeline rights were not met. According to sources, Taliban officials were told they could accept a ‘carpet of gold’ or a ‘carpet of bombs.’
What we know for sure is that in 1997, a delegation of Taliban officials visited Texas to discuss the possibility of a pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan via Afghanistan. Negotiations continued for years and as late as July 2001, just months before 9/11, the Taliban again met with top US representatives. What happened during those talks remains a mystery but, as this film shows, the pipeline played a key role in shaping US - Afghanistan relations pre-9/11.
https://www.biff.no/filmer/article1236410.ece?language=english
A Taliban delegation also visited the United States i 1997. The secret negotiations between Unocal and Taliban took place with the consultation of the intelligence agencies NSA and CIA. For the first time, Unocal-executives and former Taliban leaders speaks out about the controversial oil and gas plans.
But Al-Qaeda claimed that the attack on the Twin Towers was a response to the Bush administration’s threats to attack Afghanistan if its demands for pipeline rights were not met. According to sources, Taliban officials were told they could accept a ‘carpet of gold’ or a ‘carpet of bombs.’
https://fontanalib.org/books/taliban-oil
https://www.ozy.com/true-and-stories/when-texas-oil-execs-courted-the-taliban/96638/
Over the years, Unocal continued to decline and was finally bought by Chevron in 2005. More than two decades later, the governments of Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Turkmenistan are trying to once again build a pipeline to allow the export of Central Asian gas.
“The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-
Pakistan-India [TAPI] gas pipeline is a proposal that the United States has been strongly pushing,” says Brahma Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy and Research in New Delhi. “The U.S. objective has been to isolate Iran, which had proposed a gas pipeline to India.… The official launch of the TAPI project in February 2018 signaled that India had yielded to American pressure.” But that pipeline will have to pass through Afghanistan. Which means once again, the Taliban could decide its ultimate fate.
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