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When The Taliban Came To Texas |
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Many Afghanistan experts have wondered why the Taliban allowed radical extremists to use Afghan territory to conduct acts of terrorism on western targets when a lucrative pipeline deal was on the verge of being finalized. That too, after a senior Taliban cabinet minister had publicly stated that Afghanistan’s economic and social future was almost entirely dependent upon its ability to become a reliable conduit for the energy riches of Central Asia. “The transit role could extend beyond oil and gas, to the trade in food, commodities and utility items,” the Minister said on Kabul Radio shortly after the Taliban delegation returned from Texas. |
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| Author: Chitra Ghosh |
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That was in late 1997, a few short months after the Taliban took control of Kabul. The Taliban was, of course, driven out of the Afghan capital in the closing weeks of 2001. And since then, the western-friendly Hamid Karzai has been trying to bring a semblance of law and order to his country. But the building of that gas pipeline is also still very much on the agenda.
In 1998, after the bomb attacks on US embassies in East Africa, the Unocal deal for the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline was taken off the table, officially. Unofficially, however, those involved with the first feasibility report on the gas pipeline have continued to search for ways to launch the project. “The scramble for Central Asia’s oil and gas riches has only just begun,” a spokeswoman for the Unocal consortium explained to reporters at a press briefing in Islamabad, Pakistan, in 1997. “This is only the first pipeline project, and a pipeline network across Central Asia is potentially an explosive proposition.”
Many Afghanistan experts have wondered why the Taliban allowed radical extremists to use Afghan territory to conduct acts of terrorism on western targets when a lucrative pipeline deal was on the verge of being finalized. That too, after a senior Taliban cabinet minister had publicly stated that Afghanistan’s economic and social future was almost entirely dependent upon its ability to become a reliable conduit for the energy riches of Central Asia. “The transit role could extend beyond oil and gas, to the trade in food, commodities and utility items,” the Minister said on Kabul Radio shortly after the Taliban delegation returned from Texas.
Regardless of what happened since then, Afghanistan’s unique geographical position remains very much intact today. In fact, over the course of the previous decade, the Central Asian region has been able to prove up more oil, more gas, and more minerals. Furthermore, Central Asian governments have been trying to reduce their dependence on pipelines (extending into the heart of Europe) owned and operated by Russian companies; and demand for gas within India has been growing at a phenomenal pace in recent years.
So, in every respect, the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline was not a pipedream. In 2005, the Asian Development Bank confirmed in a feasibility report that the US$3.5 billion project was more than viable; the Afghan government is targeted to receive about 8% of revenues from the project, yielding a dollar number which far outstrips any other segment of the Afghan economy, with perhaps one exception: opium.
But, feasibility apart, no multinational is willing to proceed on the pipeline just yet. The pipeline must pass through southern Afghanistan, where insurgents and drug smugglers rule the nights and, in some instances, albeit temporarily, the days. In early 2005 pro-Taliban Pushtun warlord Abdullah Mehsud, brother of the alleged killer of Benazir Bhutto (Baitullah Mehsud), told a group of Peshawar-based reporters that “the Pushtun people will never allow any foreign-built and foreign-managed oil or gas pipeline to pass through the tribal regions since our first objective here is to establish a government run according to Sharia laws.”
In the interim, officials at the Asian Development Bank head offices in Metropolitan Manila have been wondering how and why the Taliban-Unocal meetings in Sugarland were so successful. “Maybe we should go back in time and find out what motivated the Taliban in 1997,” one bank researcher suggested. But going back in time is likely to cause widespread embarrassment in the American Corporate Suite.
Atul Davda, a senior director of the now-defunct Texas-based energy trader Enron confirmed that “Enron developed intimate contacts with Taliban officials” after the US$3 Billion Dahbol power plant in India ran into trouble in 1995. “The only way to save Enron in India was to bring Turkmenistan’s gas into play,” another Enron source revealed. “To that end, Taliban leaders were wined, dined and bribed. Unconfirmed estimates suggest that Enron paid over US$400 million as its contribution towards the feasibility study, and a fair portion of that money was used to pay off Taliban commanders and Pushtun tribal chiefs.”
It is worth noting that the Houston Chronicle of June 25, 1996, announced that Enron had signed a huge US$1.3 Billion gas development agreement in Uzbekistan, another country on Afghanistan’s northern border. Uzbek opposition leaders then accused powerful individuals inside Uzbekistan’s government agencies of “selling out the nation’s resources to greedy multinationals after receiving huge pay-offs.”
Quite clearly, that researcher in the Asian Development Bank need not go “back in time” to learn how to turn the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline concept into a living reality.
About Author
Authored by Chitra Ghosh, a consultant and specialist writer on junior mining companies engaged in the business of oil and gas. (The view expressed here are solely and exclusively the opinions of the author and related entity takes any responsibility for the use of Ms. Ghosh`s opinions).
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