Presidents and Bankers, But No Action on the Ground
KARA-TEPE, AFGHANISTAN—There is no pipeline. There probably won’t be one. Yet the pipeline-that-will-never-exist is one of the main reasons that hundreds of thousands of Afghans and two thousand American soldiers are dead.
Among my goals during my late-summer trip to Afghanistan was to find the construction site for the Trans-Afghanistan oil and gas pipeline (TAP). Also known as Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan, TAP would carry the world’s biggest new energy reserves, which are in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan’s sections of the landlocked Caspian Sea, across Afghanistan to a deep-sea port in Pakistan. (A modified version of the plan, TAPI, would add an extension to India.)
Some background:
The idea dates to the mid-1990s. Unocal, owner of the Union 76 gas station chain, led a consortium of oil companies that negotiated with the Taliban government. Among their consultants was Zalmay Khalilzad, who later served as Bush’s ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq and the United Nations. (While in Kabul, Khalilzad engineered the U.S.-backed coup that installed Hamid Karzai—also a former Unocal consultant—over the wishes of the loya jirga.
As you’d expect, political instability has been the primary obstacle preventing a “New Silk Road” of oil and gas to flow across Central and South Asia. The planned route for TAP follows Afghanistan’s “ring road” from the northwestern city of Herat across soaring mountains and bleak deserts through Kandahar province, the heart of Taliban territory. Hundreds of warlords and regional commanders would have to be paid protection money.
[The most comprehensive history of TAP is my 2003 book “Gas War: The Truth Behind the U.S. Occupation of Afghanistan.”]
Unocal pulled out in 1998, citing the civil war between the Taliban and Northern Alliance. But logic can’t kill a dream.
In February 2001 the new Bush-Cheney Administration invited Taliban representatives to Texas for new talks. When the Afghans insisted upon higher transit fees than the White House oilmen were prepared to offer, things turned ugly. “Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold,” a frustrated U.S. negotiator snapped at the Talibs on May 15, 2001, “or we bury you under a carpet of bombs.”
The last Bush-Taliban pipeline discussions took place on August 2, 2001 in Islamabad between Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca, a former CIA employee, and Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan. (By the way Zaeef’s memoir “My Life in the Taliban” is riveting.)
The 9/11 attacks, planned in Pakistan and carried out by Pakistani-trained Saudis and Egyptians, provided the pretext for invading Afghanistan. Was TAP the only motivation? Certainly not: Afghanistan also offered a “dry run” invasion of a defenseless Muslim nation pre-Iraq, as well as a chance to exert geopolitical muscle-flexing at the expense of regional rivals Russia and Iran. But TAP was part of the calculus.
Since 2002 the presidents of Turkmenistan, Pakistan and Afghanistan have repeatedly met to talk about TAP(I). The Asian Development Bank has financed feasibility studies for the $8 billion deal.
“Of late, Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov has spoken often of TAPI,” U.S. government-backed Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported September 14, 2010. “He has contacted the leaders of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India since the start of September to arrange meetings in New York and Ashgabat. Berdymukhammedov is calling for a summit of TAPI leaders in Ashgabat in December.”
Politicians want the pipeline. Bankers want it too. But has ground been broken? A number of mainstream news accounts said yes, that the 52-inch pipe was already being laid along the highway that runs north from Herat to the Turkmen border.
I wanted confirmation. And photos. Something to shove in the faces of those neocons who dismiss TAP as a conspiracy theory.
Unfortunately, all the journalists in Afghanistan are embedded with soldiers, running around the mountains near the Pakistani border in a war that is irrelevant to the Afghan people but looks good on the nightly news. They’re too busy supporting the troops to do any real reporting. So, accompanied by fellow cartoonists Matt Bors and Steven Cloud, I set out up that road from Herat two weeks ago.
My goal: the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline. Not on paper. In real life.
It’s a hot, dusty drive. There isn’t much to see: desert, scrub, goatherds, adobe-style mud-brick villages. The Koshk District, the region’s major population center, is so infested with Talibs that Afghan national policemen are afraid to drive through. I can tell you what you don’t see: the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline. There’s no construction of any kind alongside that highway.
There was, however, fun to be had.
We stopped locals to ask them about TAP. Finally, one geezer brightened up. He had seen it! Our Afghan driver got excited. He turned to us: “It was here! But the local people stole it.”
“They stole the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline?”
“Yes! They used it to make a mosque. He is going to show us.”
I was happy. What a story! I took out my camera, ready to document the amazing tale of the Our Lady of TAP mosque, indirectly financed by American hubris. We followed the man down an alley and across a small garden. He walked us into what can only be described as a modest building. Less charitably, as a dump.
I am not charitable.
He gestured. There it is! Said his gesture. There, indeed it was: a dumpy little building, which I’ll call a mosque though there was no way to identify it as a house of God, with pipes holding up the corners and serving as rafters. Small pipes. Very small pipes.
Nine-inch pipes. Maybe eight.
“That’s not an oil pipeline,” I told my driver. “What we’re looking for is big. I made a big circle with my arms. “BIIIGG.”
He pointed again. He smiled as if to say: Look harder.
“This pipeline came from Turkmenistan,” said my driver. “I was a boy when the Soviets built it. For oil.”
“No. This is a water pipe,” I said. “Or maybe sewage. Besides, we’re looking for something new. Not Soviet.”
Because it seemed rude not to, I snapped a few photos and tipped the old guy. It was like that scene in “Spinal Tap” when the mini-Stonehenge drops from the ceiling. I stifled a laugh as we got back into our car.
An hour later, we were under arrest. But that’s another story.
(Ted Rall has recently returned from Afghanistan to cover the war and research a book. He is the author of “The Anti-American Manifesto,” out this week from Seven Stories Press. His website is tedrall.com.)
COPYRIGHT 2010 TED RALL
9 Comments.
I am thinking that a long pipeline would be wholly impractical in protecting.
Maybe it would be a good idea to keep it all super secret, buring it beneath below ground somehow.
I imagine that one could perhaps build an underground tunnel with machines, but that would perhaps be costly and sort of unpractical.
How long would such a pipeline be if built? Does anyone know?
The 9/11 attacks, planned in Pakistan and carried out by Pakistani-trained Saudis and Egyptians, provided the pretext for invading Afghanistan.
Ted, we get blamed for a lot of stuff, so don’t try and pin this one on us, because it is not true. The planning was already swirling around KSM’s head since the mid nineties Bojinka plot, it was thrashed out in Hamburg amongst the three non Saudi pilots of 9/11, and you are missing out how there was an entire industry of Jihad focused on Kashmir in mid to late nineties Pakistan. In that situation with Jihadis tramping in and out of the country, were we supposed to care about three bourgeoisie looking Arabs traveling from Europe? You are making it sound like Pakistan military intelligence was training Atta on how to fly a plane and blend into the US. This is blatantly false. Mention Khalid Sheikh Mohammad by name as much as you like, but kindly do not refer to this Kuwaiti born, Kuwait passport holder as Pakistani.
I will also mention that it has seemed to me that only over the last few years has the media begun to mention Khalid Shekh Mohammad in relation to the 2001 attacks, and for some strange reason they always list him as Pakistani. Strange, has the Al-Sabah family of Kuwait been paying off or misdirecting the United States media to mention him as Pakistani?
Because before around 2006, when the US media used to talk about “masterminding” 9/11, they would constantly talk about Osama Bin Ladin as the mastermind. Only since around 2006, did they start to bring up Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and then explicitly refer to him as Pakistani. That is very, very strange, because I recall reading about Khalid Sheikh Mohammad in the very late nineties, in various international news magazines, and these articles in the late nineties would list his nationality as Kuwaiti. Then from 2000 till about 2006, mention of him became very sporadic.
“The 9/11 attacks, planned in Pakistan and carried out by Pakistani-trained Saudis and Egyptians”
1. Yes, the 9/11 attacks were led by Saudis. The US went into Pakistan and offered $20,000 (each) for the perpetrators, and some Pakistanis handed over members of enemy tribes (average income in Pakistan is less than $300, so more than 60 year’s income). Those handed over confessed under torture (or so the torturers said, since they didn’t actually speak the prisoners’ languages). So they’re guilty????
2. The only evidence we have is that the Saudis planned the attacks first in Dubai, then in Berlin, then in London. But Germans and Brits are innocent and Pakistanis are guilty????
Some say the US invaded Iraq and Afghanistan for money. I’m among them.
But going after Iraqi and Afghani oil money? Where’s the proof? Where’s the evidence? The Bush, Jr. Administration got no-bid contracts and about $1 trillion in US funds to wreck Afghanistan and Iraq as punishment for 9/11 (the perpetrators were Saudis, but Saudi is the US’ BFF, so, as, in the middle ages when aristocratic students could not be touched by their common professors and so their fathers provided whipping boys for those professors to beat, the US chose Iraq and Afghanistan as 21st century whipping boys). The Bush, Jr. administration just smashed the Iraqi oil fields, enhancing the value of their oil holdings.
Given all they stole, I’m happy to accept that they also took a cut from the Afghani narcotics trade, and that they stole priceless Sumarian artefacts, but they didn’t invade either Iraq or Afghanistan to exploit oil resources.
offered $20,000 (each) for the perpetrators
I’ve never heard of this Michaelwme, maybe the bounty was higher, maybe it was offered only to the police and investigators, but dude, we aren’t utterly mercenary and utterly innocent. There actually were (and still) are Al Qaeda members in Pakistan. I have to tell you bro, Ted is really good on Afghanistan and points northwards, but he mixes up details, and isn’t always the best on Pakistan.
and some Pakistanis handed over members of enemy tribes
OK, seriously, our police don’t carry grudges over into their policework. I’m willing to bet that they just grab the wrong guy, but if there were a bigshot Jihadi Pakistan needed, it would string los Yanqui along until they could keep him safe. For example, got Mullah Umar yet?
average income in Pakistan is less than $300, so more than 60 year’s income
Dude! We’re not Somalia! Cost of living is cheap here, and yes I will admit Pakistan is at a collective level of industrial development that the US was at in about 1900-1910, (and the flooding having caused a lot of damage) but $300 per annum? Are you kidding me??? $1500 to $2000 per annum, and cost of living is cheap. I mean really cheap. Here, you can buy this dish at a road side stall (rice, lamb spinach, lentil beans) for 75 cents to a $1. Tell me if you could get that in America for less than $5.00. Anyway, back to counter-terrorism.
Those handed over confessed under torture
True, we torture. Our police do it unfortunately, watch Slumdog Millionaire, all South Asian police forces use some form of torture. Again, we hear that eighty years ago you could get beaten and tortured in some police and sheriff’s holding cells in the United States, so it’s a matter of catching up [and then we can use more sophisticate methods of coercion 😉 ] but yeah, it happens.
But I must mention there were real hard core Jihadis along the lines of Arab Al Qaeda. And yes we actually have Arabic translators on hand (Couldn’t speak there languages, my ass.)
But yeah they were guilty of being ultra shady characters. Remember how I mention reading about Khalid Sheikh Mohammad in news articles in the late nineties? Well the fuckers we caught were the other jerkoffs listed in those articles, such numbnuts as Abu Zubaydah, Abu Farraj Al Libi and Ramzi Bin Al Shibh aka Mr Flight 93 Pilot-if-my-visa-hadn’t-been-rejected.
And Finally….
The only evidence we have is that the Saudis planned the attacks first in Dubai, then in Berlin, then in London. But Germans and Brits are innocent and Pakistanis are guilty….Whipping boy
Hey Michaelwme, thanks for pointing it all out. We have enough troubles of our own without being saddled with the threat of having planned the largest attack on US soil. I would like to tie this all in with a larger factor that Ted does not delve into, possibly because he may personally not like Pakistan. The US invasion of Afghanistan is destabilising Pakistan. It has destabilised Pakistan. Beyond having a collection of nihilistic fundoes enter the hinterland of our country, active destabilisation campaigns are being run in our country using old separatist networks that we had squashed in the nineties. Sunni sectarian militants who kill Shias (hating them in the same manner as you ally Saudi Arabia) have been respawned and are killing. Baloch sepratists in Pakistan have been given a new lease on life. The drug trade has picked up. Baloch separatists in Iran who are also viciously anti-Shia and stridently sectarian have been causing violence there. These Iranian Baloch separatists are ultra-religious unlike the Pakistani Baloch who are stridently secular (in response to Pakistan`s religiously tinged nationalism). Both separatists are violent though. And there is anecdotal evidence that your ally, the UK, is using it`s Afghan bases to run these separatists for you. And if it`s not the Brits, then the Indians who operate in US controlled Afghanistan liaise with killer Baloch separatists. So America is involved in killing Pakistanis, via the Brits, or whoever they let operate on their controlled turf. All these revived factions we had defeated a decade (Shia killing Sunnis) or two (Baloch Separatists) ago.
Now they are all back and they all have a common ultra Sunni, anti-Shia tinge. They are dangerous tow us, but they are obviously blood enemies to one country entirely. Iran. You guys are destabilising us to try and pinch on Iran. Please do consider this next time you write about Pakistan, accusing us of crimes.
Sorry, TLW, my mistake. I meant median, not average. The average is much higher. Just as only about 5% of Americans earn more than the average income while 50% earn more than the median.
I was in Pakistan 8 years ago, and was told the standard wage for the typical, unskilled, median worker was 1,100 rupees a month, or about $20. But, of course, I found I could eat very well for less than 25¢ a day. I haven’t had the opportunity to go back and see how much more the typical agricultural worker is earning now, but I haven’t read anything about massive wage inflation for that sector.
My main point is that the notion that 15 Saudi shebabs would travel to Pakistan to sit, enthralled, at the feet of a Pakistani who was the Islamic equivalent of guru is absurd. It never happened. But the US says (and Rall agrees) that they have irrefutable proof that 9/11 was entirely developed, planned, and hatched in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and all operations were carefully directed from there. Of course, that ‘proof’ is classified, but trust us, it’s irrefutable.
I haven’t read anything about massive wage inflation for that sector.
Yeah but no thanks to oil prices rising up our exchange rate has declined pushing up prices and subsequently wages as well. But hey, nice to see you were here in Pakistan in ’02.
As for the 9/11 hijackers, there were two sets in the murderous 19. There were the four pilot guys, who were all initially non-Saudi. The 15 who were Saudi were (with the exception of Hani Hanjour) were all “Muscle” hijackers. What muscle means is that they were responsible for hijacking the planes. Those guys never travelled through Pakistan. They came pre-radicalised from Saudi Arabia.
The four “pilot” hijackers came from the Hamburg cell and traveled into Pakistan to meet up with Bin Ladin and KSM. I put pilot in quotation marks because one of them, Ramzi bin Al Shibh (a Yemeni) was unable to get a visa for the United States and was replaced with Hani Hanjour (a Saudi with prior residence in the United States). The other three real pilots were Marwan Al Shehi (UAE resident), Ziad Bin Jarrah (Lebanese) and the infamous Mohammad Atta (Egyptian). Hanjour was radicalised in Saudi and travelled eventually to Afghanistan, obviously via Pakistan.
My point is that, none of these guys were radicalised in Pakistan, and the “planning” was already half formed in Khalid Sheikh Mohammad’s head long before he met up with these people with vague but serious anger.
I haven’t read anything about massive wage inflation for that sector.
Yeah but no thanks to oil prices rising up our exchange rate has declined pushing up prices and subsequently wages as well. But hey, nice to see you were here in Pakistan in ’02.
As for the 9/11 hijackers, there were two sets in the murderous 19. There were the four pilot guys, who were all initially non-Saudi. The 15 who were Saudi were (with the exception of Hani Hanjour) were all “Muscle” hijackers. What muscle means is that they were responsible for hijacking the planes. Those guys never travelled through Pakistan. They came pre-radicalised from Saudi Arabia.
The four “pilot” hijackers came from the Hamburg cell and traveled into Pakistan to meet up with Bin Ladin and KSM. I put pilot in quotation marks because one of them, Ramzi bin Al Shibh (a Yemeni) was unable to get a visa for the United States and was replaced with Hani Hanjour (a Saudi with prior residence in the United States). The other three real pilots were Marwan Al Shehi (UAE resident), Ziad Bin Jarrah (Lebanese) and the infamous Mohammad Atta (Egyptian). Hanjour was radicalised in Saudi and travelled eventually to Afghanistan, obviously via Pakistan.
My point is that, none of these guys were radicalised in Pakistan, and the “planning” was already half formed in Khalid Sheikh Mohammad’s head long before he met up with these people with vague but serious anger.
Any attempt to shoehorn Pakistan into the plot, is an attempt to put Pakistan and its people under undue pressure.