New evidence of US dealings with the Taliban highlights the role of oil
"The Bush administration may also harbour some guilty secrets
over its determination to put America's economic and strategic
interests ahead of tracking down Islamist terrorists - at least
before September 11. In a new book, Bin Laden - the ForbiddenTruth,
two French intelligence analysts, Jean Charles Brisard
and Guillaume Dasquié, claim that the administration initially
blocked US secret service investigations into Islamist terrorism,
under the influence of powerful oil corporations, many of whom
had stumped up wads of cash for the Bush campaign."
Clearing up America's mess
Mark Seddon
Tuesday December 18, 2001
The Guardian
Tony Blair continues to stand shoulder to shoulder with
America. In the Middle East, any notion of a separate British
interest has been subordinated to unquestioning support for US
actions in Afghanistan.
The defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, suggested recently in the
Commons that British military support might also be offered
should the war against terrorism be extended beyond
Afghanistan. Earlier lofty pronouncements on the rights of the
Palestinians have given way to silence, as Israeli gunships
pound Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority out of existence.
So just how far is Britain prepared to go, as the Pentagon eyes
potential new targets in Somalia and Iraq? Now should be the
time to put down a marker against the Washington hawks.
Dizzied by the success of their Northern Alliance friends against
the Taliban, the hawks want to extend military operations - but
not to Saudi Arabia, from where much of the money and the
fundamentalism flowed. The Bush administration's single-minded
drive against al-Qaida suggests that its interest in the long-term
welfare of the Afghan people will disappear with the last B52
bomber. And Tony Blair, who has been holding out the prospect
of a major British involvement in Afghanistan, is looking isolated.
The Bush administration may also harbour some guilty secrets
over its determination to put America's economic and strategic
interests ahead of tracking down Islamist terrorists - at least
before September 11. In a new book, Bin Laden - the Forbidden
Truth, two French intelligence analysts, Jean Charles Brisard
and Guillaume Dasquié, claim that the administration initially
blocked US secret service investigations into Islamist terrorism,
under the influence of powerful oil corporations, many of whom
had stumped up wads of cash for the Bush campaign.
Oil interests are heavily represented in the Bush administration.
Aside from the president himself, the vice-president, Dick
Cheney, the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and
the ministers for commerce and energy, Donald Evans and
Stanley Abrahams, have all worked for US oil companies.
Bush's family has a strong oil background. The corporate giants
have not only wanted to keep the Saudis on side, but had their
eyes fixed on the rich oil fields of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and
Kazakhstan.
Brisard and Dasquié describe how weeks before the September
11 attacks, the US administration was bargaining with the
Taliban for the delivery of Bin Laden, in return for aid and political
recognition of a broad-based Afghan government - which would
have included the Taliban. That bargaining process had begun in
February, almost as soon as Bush was sworn in.
John O'Neill, former head of the FBI's counter-terrorism office in
New York, left his job earlier this year complaining that his
investigations into al-Qaida had been obstructed. He allegedly
told the French authors that "the main obstacles to investigating
Islamic terrorism were US corporate oil interests and the role
played by Saudi Arabia".
For their part, the Taliban seem to have taken the US
negotiations sufficiently seriously to appoint a public relations
expert, Laila Helms, niece of Richard Helms, the CIA director
during the Vietnam war. Traffic might have gone both ways. But
there can be little doubt that some in the US administration
viewed the Taliban as, in Brisard and Dasquié's words, "a source
of stability in central Asia", not only for their steely grip on the
heroin trade, but also because of the great prize - the oil pipeline
that might one day run from the rich fields in former Soviet
central Asia through Afghanistan to the Indian ocean.
The US government had other ambitions, including a further
weakening of Russia's grip on her old satraps. Sheila Heslin, a
Clinton-era US national security adviser, believed the Afghan
pipeline would "break Russia's monopoly control over the
transportation of oil from that region and promote western energy
security through energy diversification".
But what of Bin Laden? He was originally offered for extradition
by Sudan, but then apparently allowed to head for Afghanistan in
1996 with barely a whimper from the US. Here is the world's
most wanted man, explaining how he acquired his substantial
arsenal during the 1980s: "I settled in Pakistan, in the Afghan
border region. There I received volunteers, trained by Pakistani
and American officers. The weapons were supplied by the
Americans, the money by the Saudis".
As the Middle East slips further towards conflagration and
Washington's ultras prepare to extend the war elsewhere, Tony
Blair must explain why our government is so happy to help clear
up America's mess without asking some awkward questions.
· Mark Seddon is editor of Tribune and a member of Labour's
national executive committee
Email Mark Seddon
guardian.co.uk |
