pakdefender
SENIOR MEMBER
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2009
- Messages
- 5,671
- Reaction score
- -8
- Country
- Location
The Caspian Basin located under the Central Asian states of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakkstan, holds an estimated 300 trillion cubic feet of gas and 100-200 billion barrels of oil. Securing the worlds last remaining known energy Eldorado is strategic priority for the western powers. China can only look on with envy.
But there are only two practical ways to get gas and oil out of land-locked Central Asia to the sea: through Iran, or through Afghanistan to Pakistan. For Washington, Iran is tabu. That leaves Pakistan, but to get there, the planned pipeline must cross western Afghanistan, including the cities of Herat and Kandahar.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, Argentine oil company Bridas, led by its ambitious chairman, Carlos Bulgheroni, became the first company to exploit the oil fields of Turkmenistan and propose a pipeline through neighboring Afghanistan. A powerful US-backed consortium intent on building its own pipeline through the same Afghan corridor would oppose Bridas' project.
Upon successfully negotiating leases to explore in Turkmenistan, Bridas was awarded exploration contracts for the Keimar block near the Caspian Sea, and the Yashlar block near the Afghanistan border. By March 1995, Bulgheroni had accords with Turkmenistan and Pakistan granting Bridas construction rights for a pipeline into Afghanistan, pending negotiations with the civil war-torn country
The following year, after extensive meetings with warlords throughout Afghanistan, Bridas had a 30-year agreement with the Rabbani regime to build and operate an 875-mile gas pipeline across Afghanistan.
Bulgheroni believed that his pipeline would promote peace as well as material wealth in the region. He approached other companies, including Unocal and its then-CEO, Roger Beach, to join an international consortium.
But Unocal was not interested in a partnership. The United States government, its affiliated transnational oil and construction companies, and the ruling elite of the West had coveted the same oil and gas transit route for years.
Much to Bridas' dismay, Unocal went directly to regional leaders with its own proposal. Unocal formed its own competing US-led, Washington-sponsored consortium that included Saudi Arabia's Delta Oil, aligned with Saudi Prince Abdullah and King Fahd. Other partners included Russia's Gazprom and Turkmenistan's state-owned Turkmenrozgas.
In October 1995, with neither company in a winning position, Bulgheroni and Imle accompanied Niyazov to the opening of the UN General Assembly. There, Niyazov awarded Unocal with a contract for a 918-mile natural gas pipeline. Bulgheroni was shocked. At the announcement ceremony, Unocal consultant Henry Kissinger said that the deal looked like "the triumph of hope over experience."
In 1997, Taliban officials traveled twice to Washington, D.C. and Buenos Aires to be wined and dined by Unocal and Bridas. No agreements were signed.
Unocal wasted no time greasing the palms of the Taliban. It offered humanitarian aid to Afghan warlords who would form a council to supervise the pipeline project. It provided a new mobile phone network between Kabul and Kandahar. Unocal also promised to help rebuild Kandahar, and donated $9,000 to the University of Nebraska's Center for Afghan Studies. The US State Department, through its aid organization USAID, contributed significant education funding for Taliban. In the spring of 1996, Unocal executives flew Uzbek leader General Abdul Rashid Dostum to Dallas to discuss pipeline passage through his northern (Northern Alliance-controlled) territories.
Bridas countered by forming an alliance with Ningarcho, a Saudi company closely aligned with Prince Turki el-Faisal, the Saudi intelligence chief. Turki was a mentor to Osama bin Laden, the ally of the Taliban who was publicly feuding with the Saudi royal family. As a gesture for Bridas, Prince Turki provided the Taliban with communications equipment and a fleet of pickup trucks. Now Bridas proposed two consortiums, one to build the Afghanistan portion, and another to take care of both ends of the line. By November 1996, Bridas claimed that it had an agreement signed by the Taliban and Dostumtrumping Unocal
Bridas' approach to business was more to the Taliban's liking. Where Bulgheroni and Bridas' engineers would take the time to "sip tea with Afghan tribesmen," Unocal's American executives issued top-down edicts from corporate headquarters and the US Embassy
By 1998, while the Argentine contingent made slow progress, Unocal faced a number of new problems.
During the final months of the Clinton administration, the Taliban was officially a rogue regime. After nearly a decade of fierce competition between the US-supported Unocal-CentGas consortium and Bridas of Argentina, neither company had secured a deal for a trans-Afghanistan pipeline.
Immediately upon seizing the White House, George W. Bush resumed relations with the Taliban.
Bush stocked his cabinet with figures from the energy industry with long-time ties to Central Asia (including Dick Cheney of Halliburton, Richard Armitage of Unocal, Condoleeza Rice of Chevron), and rode into office on the largesse of corporations with vested interests in the region (Enron). Suddenly, the prospects for a trans-Afghanistan oil and gas pipeline that would help ensure American dominance of Eurasia, described by Zbigniew Brezezinski as "The Grand Chessboard," began to improve
According to Brisard and Dasquie, and an investigation by journalist Greg Palast, Bush also blocked secret service and FBI investigations on terrorism, while bargaining with the Taliban for the delivery of Osama bin Laden in exchange for political recognition and economic aid.
Bush administration and Taliban officials met several times in Washington, Berlin and Islamabad. Each time, the Taliban refused Bush's conditions
Bush administration and Taliban officials met several times in Washington, Berlin and Islamabad. Each time, the Taliban refused Bush's conditions.
The last meeting took place in August 2001. Central Asian affairs representative Christina Rocca and a coterie of State Department officials voiced disgust and issued a threat to the Taliban ambassador: "Accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs." Bush promptly informed Pakistan and India that the US would launch a military mission against Afghanistan before the end of October.
Weeks later, under questionable circumstances, jetliners would crash into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania, killing some 2,000 Americans. The ensuing war on Afghanistan, and the "war on terrorism," would claim the lives of more than 5,000 Afghans, scatter (but not destroy) the Taliban and send Osama bin Laden and his Al-Queda network into hiding.
Bush's brutal "carpet of bombs" had done what years of Clinton administration jockeying had failed to do: topple a recalcitrant, uncooperative regime with nationalistic tendencies, and clear the key square of the Chessboard
In Argentina, executives of the old Bridas Group (now part of BP Amoco/Pan American Energy) must have viewed the US war in Afghanistan with more than a little interest. It was Bridas that pioneered exploration in Turkmenistan. It was Bridas that came up with the idea of a trans-Afghanistan pipeline. Before the Clinton administration had declared war on the Taliban, it was Bridas that was best positioned to build the pipeline.
But no Argentine was in a good position to entertain such thoughts. In the summer of 2001, the Argentine economy collapsed.
Argentina owed $132 billion to the IMF, foreign lenders, banks, pension funds and investors. In July 2001, riots and a general strike brought the country to a standstill.
With the approval of George W. Bush, the IMF cut off Argentina's $1.3 billion aid. Wall Street executives and analysts simply shook their heads, writing off Argentina as another case of "hopeless Third World bungling." Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank and Salomon Smith Barney were brought in to "restructure the country's international debt exchange."
Virtually unreported in the western media was evidence of a crippling flight of approximately $26 billion out of Argentina by foreign banks. Most of the money went to the United States.
Just after US bombs began to fall on Afghanistan, the US representative to Pakistan, Wendy Chamberlain, visited Usman Aminuddin, Federal Minister of Petroleum and Natural Resources, to talk about the "proposed Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan gas pipeline project that 'will open up new avenues of multi-dimensional regional cooperation, particularly in light of recent geopolitical developments in the region.'"
In November 2001, the White House released a statement hailing the official opening of the first new pipeline by the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, a joint venture of Russia, Kazakhstan, Oman, and several other oil companies-including BP Amoco. Bush himself declared, ''The CPC project advances my administration's National Energy Policy."
Just nine days after the US-backed interim Afghan government of Hamid Karzai (a former Unocal executive) took office, George W. Bush appointed former Unocal aide Zalmay Khalilzad as the new special envoy. Khalilzad reports to National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, a former Central Asian envoy for Chevron.
Virtually unreported in the mainstream media are the following:
Khalizad participated in Unocal's talks with the Taliban in 1997. In fact, it was Khalilzad who drew up the risk analysis of the pipeline.
Khalizad was a special advisor to the State Department during the Reagan administration, where he was instrumental in arming the mujahadeen during the 1980s.
After serving as an undersecretary of defense under George H.W. Bush, Khalizad went to the hawkish Rand Corporation.
The American military presence in the Balkans and Central Asia is deepening and expanding. The US has established a permanent base near Kandahar.
Conclusions
As one can see that the real reason to unleash the so called War on Terror was to secure the Central Asian Gas fields and in order to sell this War to the US public the government had to stage an event that would swing public opnion in favour of a military interventation in Afghanistan. The Bush adamistration used Islamophobia and false flag operation on Sept 11 to secure the much needed backing by the US public to plunge the country in War which the public had no idea what it was really about.
In Pakistan we paid the biggest price for this charade and we continue to pay in blood and money. Ignorance it a crime and its our responsibility to seek the truth and tell it as it is for truth will always prevail over fraud and falsehood.
Related Links:
---------------
Role of University of Nebraska in setting up traning facilities for Taliban on behalf of Unocal
University of Nebraska
Profile of the Univ of Nebraska Profesor who setup the traning facility for the Taliban.
http://world.unomaha.edu/files/File/TEGbio.pdf
BBC News | West Asia | Taleban in Texas for talks on gas pipeline
Unocal and Bridas Woo the Taliban for Oil Pipeline Project
Unocal and the Afghanistan Pipeline / Players on a Rigged Grand Chessboard: Bridas, Unocal and the Afghanistan Pipeline >> Four Winds 10 - fourwinds10.com
Christina Rocca's meeting with the Taliban
Context of 'July-August 1999: Taliban Leaders Visit US'
Crossing the Rubicon: the decline of ... - Google Books
Unsual Obama comment 'we took him out since Pakistan Army was moving aggresivley'
DAWN.COM | World | ?We took out? Baitullah, says Obama
But there are only two practical ways to get gas and oil out of land-locked Central Asia to the sea: through Iran, or through Afghanistan to Pakistan. For Washington, Iran is tabu. That leaves Pakistan, but to get there, the planned pipeline must cross western Afghanistan, including the cities of Herat and Kandahar.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, Argentine oil company Bridas, led by its ambitious chairman, Carlos Bulgheroni, became the first company to exploit the oil fields of Turkmenistan and propose a pipeline through neighboring Afghanistan. A powerful US-backed consortium intent on building its own pipeline through the same Afghan corridor would oppose Bridas' project.
Upon successfully negotiating leases to explore in Turkmenistan, Bridas was awarded exploration contracts for the Keimar block near the Caspian Sea, and the Yashlar block near the Afghanistan border. By March 1995, Bulgheroni had accords with Turkmenistan and Pakistan granting Bridas construction rights for a pipeline into Afghanistan, pending negotiations with the civil war-torn country
The following year, after extensive meetings with warlords throughout Afghanistan, Bridas had a 30-year agreement with the Rabbani regime to build and operate an 875-mile gas pipeline across Afghanistan.
Bulgheroni believed that his pipeline would promote peace as well as material wealth in the region. He approached other companies, including Unocal and its then-CEO, Roger Beach, to join an international consortium.
But Unocal was not interested in a partnership. The United States government, its affiliated transnational oil and construction companies, and the ruling elite of the West had coveted the same oil and gas transit route for years.
Much to Bridas' dismay, Unocal went directly to regional leaders with its own proposal. Unocal formed its own competing US-led, Washington-sponsored consortium that included Saudi Arabia's Delta Oil, aligned with Saudi Prince Abdullah and King Fahd. Other partners included Russia's Gazprom and Turkmenistan's state-owned Turkmenrozgas.
In October 1995, with neither company in a winning position, Bulgheroni and Imle accompanied Niyazov to the opening of the UN General Assembly. There, Niyazov awarded Unocal with a contract for a 918-mile natural gas pipeline. Bulgheroni was shocked. At the announcement ceremony, Unocal consultant Henry Kissinger said that the deal looked like "the triumph of hope over experience."
In 1997, Taliban officials traveled twice to Washington, D.C. and Buenos Aires to be wined and dined by Unocal and Bridas. No agreements were signed.
Unocal wasted no time greasing the palms of the Taliban. It offered humanitarian aid to Afghan warlords who would form a council to supervise the pipeline project. It provided a new mobile phone network between Kabul and Kandahar. Unocal also promised to help rebuild Kandahar, and donated $9,000 to the University of Nebraska's Center for Afghan Studies. The US State Department, through its aid organization USAID, contributed significant education funding for Taliban. In the spring of 1996, Unocal executives flew Uzbek leader General Abdul Rashid Dostum to Dallas to discuss pipeline passage through his northern (Northern Alliance-controlled) territories.
Bridas countered by forming an alliance with Ningarcho, a Saudi company closely aligned with Prince Turki el-Faisal, the Saudi intelligence chief. Turki was a mentor to Osama bin Laden, the ally of the Taliban who was publicly feuding with the Saudi royal family. As a gesture for Bridas, Prince Turki provided the Taliban with communications equipment and a fleet of pickup trucks. Now Bridas proposed two consortiums, one to build the Afghanistan portion, and another to take care of both ends of the line. By November 1996, Bridas claimed that it had an agreement signed by the Taliban and Dostumtrumping Unocal
Bridas' approach to business was more to the Taliban's liking. Where Bulgheroni and Bridas' engineers would take the time to "sip tea with Afghan tribesmen," Unocal's American executives issued top-down edicts from corporate headquarters and the US Embassy
By 1998, while the Argentine contingent made slow progress, Unocal faced a number of new problems.
During the final months of the Clinton administration, the Taliban was officially a rogue regime. After nearly a decade of fierce competition between the US-supported Unocal-CentGas consortium and Bridas of Argentina, neither company had secured a deal for a trans-Afghanistan pipeline.
Immediately upon seizing the White House, George W. Bush resumed relations with the Taliban.
Bush stocked his cabinet with figures from the energy industry with long-time ties to Central Asia (including Dick Cheney of Halliburton, Richard Armitage of Unocal, Condoleeza Rice of Chevron), and rode into office on the largesse of corporations with vested interests in the region (Enron). Suddenly, the prospects for a trans-Afghanistan oil and gas pipeline that would help ensure American dominance of Eurasia, described by Zbigniew Brezezinski as "The Grand Chessboard," began to improve
According to Brisard and Dasquie, and an investigation by journalist Greg Palast, Bush also blocked secret service and FBI investigations on terrorism, while bargaining with the Taliban for the delivery of Osama bin Laden in exchange for political recognition and economic aid.
Bush administration and Taliban officials met several times in Washington, Berlin and Islamabad. Each time, the Taliban refused Bush's conditions
Bush administration and Taliban officials met several times in Washington, Berlin and Islamabad. Each time, the Taliban refused Bush's conditions.
The last meeting took place in August 2001. Central Asian affairs representative Christina Rocca and a coterie of State Department officials voiced disgust and issued a threat to the Taliban ambassador: "Accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs." Bush promptly informed Pakistan and India that the US would launch a military mission against Afghanistan before the end of October.
Weeks later, under questionable circumstances, jetliners would crash into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania, killing some 2,000 Americans. The ensuing war on Afghanistan, and the "war on terrorism," would claim the lives of more than 5,000 Afghans, scatter (but not destroy) the Taliban and send Osama bin Laden and his Al-Queda network into hiding.
Bush's brutal "carpet of bombs" had done what years of Clinton administration jockeying had failed to do: topple a recalcitrant, uncooperative regime with nationalistic tendencies, and clear the key square of the Chessboard
In Argentina, executives of the old Bridas Group (now part of BP Amoco/Pan American Energy) must have viewed the US war in Afghanistan with more than a little interest. It was Bridas that pioneered exploration in Turkmenistan. It was Bridas that came up with the idea of a trans-Afghanistan pipeline. Before the Clinton administration had declared war on the Taliban, it was Bridas that was best positioned to build the pipeline.
But no Argentine was in a good position to entertain such thoughts. In the summer of 2001, the Argentine economy collapsed.
Argentina owed $132 billion to the IMF, foreign lenders, banks, pension funds and investors. In July 2001, riots and a general strike brought the country to a standstill.
With the approval of George W. Bush, the IMF cut off Argentina's $1.3 billion aid. Wall Street executives and analysts simply shook their heads, writing off Argentina as another case of "hopeless Third World bungling." Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank and Salomon Smith Barney were brought in to "restructure the country's international debt exchange."
Virtually unreported in the western media was evidence of a crippling flight of approximately $26 billion out of Argentina by foreign banks. Most of the money went to the United States.
Just after US bombs began to fall on Afghanistan, the US representative to Pakistan, Wendy Chamberlain, visited Usman Aminuddin, Federal Minister of Petroleum and Natural Resources, to talk about the "proposed Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan gas pipeline project that 'will open up new avenues of multi-dimensional regional cooperation, particularly in light of recent geopolitical developments in the region.'"
In November 2001, the White House released a statement hailing the official opening of the first new pipeline by the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, a joint venture of Russia, Kazakhstan, Oman, and several other oil companies-including BP Amoco. Bush himself declared, ''The CPC project advances my administration's National Energy Policy."
Just nine days after the US-backed interim Afghan government of Hamid Karzai (a former Unocal executive) took office, George W. Bush appointed former Unocal aide Zalmay Khalilzad as the new special envoy. Khalilzad reports to National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, a former Central Asian envoy for Chevron.
Virtually unreported in the mainstream media are the following:
Khalizad participated in Unocal's talks with the Taliban in 1997. In fact, it was Khalilzad who drew up the risk analysis of the pipeline.
Khalizad was a special advisor to the State Department during the Reagan administration, where he was instrumental in arming the mujahadeen during the 1980s.
After serving as an undersecretary of defense under George H.W. Bush, Khalizad went to the hawkish Rand Corporation.
The American military presence in the Balkans and Central Asia is deepening and expanding. The US has established a permanent base near Kandahar.
Conclusions
As one can see that the real reason to unleash the so called War on Terror was to secure the Central Asian Gas fields and in order to sell this War to the US public the government had to stage an event that would swing public opnion in favour of a military interventation in Afghanistan. The Bush adamistration used Islamophobia and false flag operation on Sept 11 to secure the much needed backing by the US public to plunge the country in War which the public had no idea what it was really about.
In Pakistan we paid the biggest price for this charade and we continue to pay in blood and money. Ignorance it a crime and its our responsibility to seek the truth and tell it as it is for truth will always prevail over fraud and falsehood.
Related Links:
---------------
Role of University of Nebraska in setting up traning facilities for Taliban on behalf of Unocal
University of Nebraska
Profile of the Univ of Nebraska Profesor who setup the traning facility for the Taliban.
http://world.unomaha.edu/files/File/TEGbio.pdf
BBC News | West Asia | Taleban in Texas for talks on gas pipeline
Unocal and Bridas Woo the Taliban for Oil Pipeline Project
Unocal and the Afghanistan Pipeline / Players on a Rigged Grand Chessboard: Bridas, Unocal and the Afghanistan Pipeline >> Four Winds 10 - fourwinds10.com
Christina Rocca's meeting with the Taliban
Context of 'July-August 1999: Taliban Leaders Visit US'
Crossing the Rubicon: the decline of ... - Google Books
Unsual Obama comment 'we took him out since Pakistan Army was moving aggresivley'
DAWN.COM | World | ?We took out? Baitullah, says Obama
