October 6, 2009
Why are we in Afghanistan? They're called PIPELINES!
To answer critics who will say that Al Qaeda terrorists must be contained in Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan, the facts are that those terrorists are situated in many countries of the world from which new attacks could be planned and launched. In fact, much of the planning for the attack of 9/11 was done in Germany. Since 1992 there have been attacks by Al Qaeda in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algiers and several other nations.
To be explicit, one of the main reasons our military forces, together with NATO, are fighting to defeat and pacify the Taliban insurgents is to pave the way for the construction of the TAPI pipeline to transport natural gas and oil from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan, to Pakistan and India. Some of it, without a doubt, will be channeled to seaports in Pakistan for transport to European nations, who need to acquire additional sources of natural gas. That fact should explain why European nations are involved in Afghanistan as a part of NATO. While several pipelines are being planned for that geographic region, the TAPI pipeline is the main objective.
It is a matter of record that Unocal, a major U.S. oil company, was in negotiations with the nation of Turkmenistan and Taliban leaders as early as 1995 with regard to construction of several potential pipeline routes, including the TAPI. These pipelines would be in operation today if normal conditions existed in that region of the world. But nothing close to normal conditions exists in that region because of the special interests and strategies of all the major, competing nations who are competing for control of oil and natural gas resources.
The chief impediment to a pipeline through Afghanistan was and still remains the Taliban. Once an ally of the U.S. during the 1980's when our aim was to see that the Russians were defeated and forced to leave Afghanistan, the Taliban are now on the opposite side and are determined not to allow the U.S. military to prevail. The proposed pipeline into and through Afghanistan is totally dependent on whether the Taliban decide to end their insurgency and cooperate with all parties in this project. Based on the strategy that we are taking, trying to bomb them into complete submission, that is not likely to happen.
OpEdNews - Article: Why are we in Afghanistan? They're called PIPELINES!
