US had decided to overthrow Taliban regime a month before 9/11

[VCheng]

The same saudis which lets US control the middle east? The saudis who matched the 3.6$ billion funding to stop the soviet in AFG? The same saudi which enjoy one of the most cozy relations with the US? 300+ billion in defense deals? Everything from defense to companies most are related to US and they can be cut throat to US? Hard for me digest brother. You see when we have discussions like these then we sometimes understand that this invasion probably might have had many different aspects other than ALQ or talib etc.

Yes, the same Saudis. There are no different aspects here to be imagined, since these are all examples of alignments of national interests, nothing more and nothing less. Where there is a difference, it is always every side for itself.

 

[Kingslayerr]

20 years later, Taliban and america are good friends and the Taliban are back in power.......

We as regional partners and US as the world power should now pressure every group in AFG to sit down have a talk and decide the future. Nobody wants more war, atleast we pakis don't want it. We've lost so much which one can just imagine. Its time that the talibs also behave like humans and not animals. A peaceful,stable, Democratic is good for the world and the best scenario for pak.

 

[Vapnope]

If tomorrow a book is written by Taliban leader explaining the events leading to 9/11 and American designs, would you believe that? CIA is a party to this conflict. Need to take whatever they are saying with pinch of salt.

The book mentions ISI officers and even has pictures of Robert L Greenier with them. This has been an open secret for years now that CIA wanted the pre emptive strikes before 9/11.

 

[VCheng]

We as regional partners and US as the world power should now pressure every group in AFG to sit down have a talk and decide the future. Nobody wants more war, atleast we pakis don't want it. We've lost so much which one can just imagine. Its time that the talibs also behave like humans and not animals. A peaceful,stable, Democratic is good for the world and the best scenario for pak.

That s exactly why PMIK said these words:

The interests of Pakistan and the United States in Afghanistan are the same. We want a negotiated peace, not civil war. We need stability and an end to terrorism aimed at both our countries. We support an agreement that preserves the development gains made in Afghanistan in the past two decades. And we want economic development, and increased trade and connectivity in Central Asia, to lift our economy. We will all go down the drain if there is further civil war.

 

[Kingslayerr]

Yes, the same Saudis. There are no different aspects here to be imagined, since these are all examples of alignments of national interests, nothing more and nothing less. Where there is a difference, it is always every side for itself.

Countries do horrible things just to secure their national interest. Thats the only reason why i love and respect mostly every country including mine. Whatever might be the reason of invasion, i dont support it but understand it, its all about national interest.

 

[VCheng]

Countries do horrible things just to secure their national interest. Thats the only reason why i love and respect mostly every country including mine. Whatever might be the reason of invasion, i dont support it but understand it, its all about national interest.

War is only the pursuit of national interests by alternative means.

(Horror is a human emotion that has no role in international geopolitics.)

 

[Vapnope]

Here we need to use our own judgement. Regardless of 9/11, invasion of Afghanistan was already in motion.

You also have to consider 1993 bombing of World trade center that was planned in Afghanistan. CIA was tracking Al qaida from 90s inside Afghanistan.

 

[VCheng]

You also have to consider 1993 bombing of World trade center that was planned in Afghanistan. CIA was tracking Al qaida from 90s inside Afghanistan.

And the US Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

 

[Taimoor Khan]

The book mentions ISI officers and even has pictures of Robert L Greenier with them. This has been an open secret for years now that CIA wanted the pre emptive strikes before 9/11.

I am sure Taliban can make such claims as well.

The point is, when a party is directly related to a conflict, you need to take the claims and counter claims with pinch of salt and make your own educated judgement.

You also have to consider 1993 bombing of World trade center that was planned in Afghanistan. CIA was tracking Al qaida from 90s inside Afghanistan.

And we also know that Al Qaeeda was not under the control of Taliban, something which was making Taliban leadership uncomfortable.

 

[CrazyZ]

Posted this on earlier thread on the same topic.

The USA could have cared less about the Taliban and Afghanistan prior to 9/11. Afghanistan is of little value to the USA. They were far more interested in taking Iraq oil. Plans to invade Iraq occurred prior to 9/11. Cheney chaired reports that found the USA was running out of conventional oil (this is long before the shale revolution).....so using 9/11 to justify invading Iraq was inevitable.

There are even theories that float around in the USA....that Cheney/Bush let OBL flee Tora Bora into Pakistan. The Cheney/Bush team held back available USA special forces and Marine corp assets that could have been deployed to Tora Bora. They couldn't kill OBL that soon.....since the invasion of Iraq had not been implemented. They needed him alive so they could use AQ as an excuse to invade Iraq. So the Americans let him flee into Pakistan.

The Americans always knew that OBL was in Pakistan, but let him live to use as boogie man to justify spreading turmoil in the ME. Once Obama gave up on Iraq and ME ("shifted to the Indo-Pacific"), OBL was magically found in Pakistan and killed. It was only dumb Pakistani leaders that kept denying OBL's presence.

 

[Taimoor Khan]

The USA could have cared less about the Taliban and Afghanistan prior to 9/11

You are forgetting the reason for Taliban creation by Benazir government. The UNICOL project, Dick Cheney and Co. It was about oil here as well back then.

 

[Hakikat ve Hikmet]

It shows how important for Pak to have a clandestine but active presence in every corner of Afghanistan! India will not sit idle this time too....

 

[CrazyZ]

You are forgetting the reason for Taliban creation by Benazir government. The UNICOL project, Dick Cheney and Co. It was about oil here as well back then.

Taliban were created locally in Afghanistan as a reaction to brutal warlords and disorder that occurred after the Soviet withdrawal. USA never had any serious interest in oil and gas from Central Asia. This is an exaggeration from some Pakistani circles.

Cheney and the neocons had their sights on Iraq. Afghanistan was just a convenient place to drop bombs and appease the USA desire for vengeance after 9/11.

 

[Taimoor Khan]

Clearly, that also means they were harboring OBL and AQ and wanted to trade them in for their own benefits. USA simply could not trust them to do what they had offered.

Wrong again. It is well known fact that Al Qeeda was not under Taliban control and just like today, where Taliban took on ISIS in Afghanistan (mainly due to the challenge posed by ISIS to Taliban hold), there is no reason not to believe that Taliban wouldn't have done the same against Al Qeeda. Mind you, there are reports (not sure how authentic) that Taliban and America have cooperated on ISIS issue in Afghanistan.

Taliban were created locally in Afghanistan as a reaction to brutal warlords and disorder that occurred after the Soviet withdrawal. USA never had any serious interest in oil and gas from Central Asia. This is an exaggeration from some Pakistani circles.

Cheney and the neocons had their sites on Iraq. Afghanistan was just a convenient place to drop bombs and appease the USA desire for vengeance after 9/11.

I dont know if you are deliberately ignoring a well documented fact (which is now obscured into history) or simply not aware.


Taliban Oil | Al-Qaeda | Al Jazeera

The peace pipeline in Afghanistan [Al Jazeera]
From: Featured Documentaries
Taliban Oil
The little-known story of secret negotiations between the Taliban and the US to build a pipeline through Afghanistan.

Editor’s note: This film is no longer available to view online.
In 1989, the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan marked the end of a violent occupation that had started almost 10 years earlier. The Soviet invasion, which had resulted in a protracted war for independence, fragmented the country and changed the political landscape forever.
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The sudden power vacuum of the post-Soviet era resulted in an upsurge of fighting as armed factions began to push for more territory.
In the North, people gathered around the Northern Alliance and its leader Ahmed Shah Masood, who was known as the “Lion of Pansjer”.
By 1994, in the South and the East another movement began to assert itself in ethnic Pashtun areas. They called themselves the Taliban and were supported militarily by neighbouring Pakistan.

Marty Miller, former Unocal vice president, in Taliban headquarters during negotiations for the ‘peace’ pipeline [Al Jazeera]
When the Iron Curtain fell, a member of American gas and oil explorer Unocal (Union Oil Company of California) scouted the former Soviet Union territories for opportunities and came across the gas reserves in Turkmenistan.
“Turkmenistan was stuck with reserves and no market,” says John Imle, former CEO of Unocal.
Unocal’s plans were to build two pipelines, one for oil and the other for gas, travelling through Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India – a distance of well over 1,700km. Afghanistan was set to earn $400m per year in transportation costs, which would significantly enrich Afghan government’s income at that time.
“Taliban wanted the reconstruction of the country, so that’s why we were interested in working with Unocal,” says Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, former Taliban foreign secretary.
“When a company wants to establish itself in Afghanistan it will bring a lot of investment. It’s natural that this has a positive effect on mutual relationships, but our main goal was to improve economic conditions in Afghanistan.”
In the meantime, a power vacuum had been created with the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan.
The North saw the rise of the Northern Alliance, led by Ahmed Shah Masood. In the South and the East, the Taliban – supported by Pakistan – had begun to assert themselves in ethnic Pashtun areas.
“Worldwide there was a very broad perception that Unocal was working with the US government to promote the Taliban as the most likely source for a stable, single group controlling Afghanistan. And there was… an effort or hopefulness on the part of some that if this pipeline could be put through, it could be a source of stability or development for Afghanistan. I personally didn’t like the idea that that stability would mean that the Taliban would be in charge,” says Julie Sirrs, former officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Advice to form a united government recognised by the UN in order to garner World Bank and Asian Development Bank interest fell flat. The Taliban were on the offensive and publicly executed former President Mohammed Najbullah who had been spared by the Northern Alliance.

Members of the Taliban at former Unocal Vice President Marty Miller’s house in Sugar Land, Texas for pipeline discussions [Al Jazeera]

The al-Qaeda chapter
Unocal continued with its plans and flew core members of the Taliban to Sugar Land, Texas and Unocal headquarters to further investigate the project.
At the same time, a new leader had begun to reestablish himself in Afghanistan post-Soviet rule: Osama bin Laden.
The Bill Clinton administration, now aware of the value of the pipeline, continued in its efforts to influence the Taliban regime. However, the 1998 bombings of the US embassy in Nairobi claimed by al-Qaeda changed everything.
Plans to support the Taliban’s bid for power in hopes of “stability” backfired.
“He had declared war on America and the simultaneous bombings of our embassies in Tanzania and Kenya really put us on a war-footing with Osama bin Laden. From that point on we were actually trying to kill him,” says Nancy Soderberg, former US ambassador at the United Nations.

Julie Sirrs, former officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency, on one of her research missions to Afghanistan [Al Jazeera]
A ‘carpet of gold’ or a ‘carpet of bombs’
In 1997, US President Bill Clinton ordered missiles to be fired at al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan. Several operators were killed, but Bin Laden escaped unscathed. Unocal decided to withdraw from the project.
“I remember when President Clinton sent some cruise missiles into Afghanistan…. that’s when I told my boss and the board of directors that it was time… this wasn’t gonna go anywhere any time soon,” says Marty Miller, Unocal’s former vice president.
It was at this time that the Taliban had become wary of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda’s scope of international attack. They were not looking to make Afghanistan a base for these activities.
With the pipeline negotiations hanging by a thread, and the threat of al-Qaeda hanging over the US government, America needed a reason to invade Afghanistan – and bin Laden gave it to them on September 11.
While the stated aim of the invasion was to dismantle al-Qaeda, denying it a safe base of operations by removing the Taliban from power, al-Qaeda claimed otherwise. The group stated that the attack on the Twin Towers was a response to the Bush administration’s threats to attack Afghanistan.
According to sources, Taliban officials were told they could accept a ‘carpet of gold’ or a ‘carpet of bombs.’
Talks of bringing the ‘peace’ pipeline project back to life have floated around since – the US government expressed its interests in peace with the Taliban.
“It is not impossible that the Taliban will come back to power. They are an element, they’re not going away, and in order to have peace – not necessarily yet prosperity in Afghanistan, they’re going to have to be part of that fabric of society,” says Nancy Soderberg.
8 Oct 2016

 

[Old School]

Gen. Musharraf was in charge instead of Gen. Zia-ul-Haq. That alone was enough for the debacle.