Did Islam Fail in Afghanistan Part Two
The Importance of Political Awareness
In the second of this series of articles, we look at the vital importance of political awareness, something which was lacking in the foreign policy decisions of the Taliban.
This Islamic Ummah has been commanded to carry on the work of the Prophets, since the finality of the Messengership (risala) of Muhammad (Sallallahu Alaihi Wa Sallam), there are no new prophets, but the Messenger of Allah (Sallallahu Alaihi Wa Sallam) has said:
æÅäå áÇ äÈí ÈÚÏí¡ æÓÊßæä ÎáÝÇÁ ÝÊßËÑ
"…there is no prophet after me. There will be Khulafa’a and they will number many…" [Narrated by Muslim on the authority of Abu Hurayrah]
These Khulafa’a have been charged with continuing the mission of Prophethood, which was to spread the guidance, call to the worship of Allah exclusively (Tawheed). Once the Messenger (Sallallahu Alaihi Wa Sallam) established the Islamic state in Medina after which he began to call nations to Islam through sending delegations of invitation to Islam.
It was reported in the Hadith of Sulayman ibn Burayda on the authority of his father who said: "Whenever the Messenger of Allah (Sallallahu Alaihi Wa Sallam) appointed an Ameer to head an army or an expedition, he would command him to fear Allah and be good to those who are with him; then he (Sallallahu Alaihi Wa Sallam) would say:
ÇÛÒæÇ ÈÇÓã Çááå¡ Ýí ÓÈíá Çááå ÞÇÊáæÇ ãóä ßÝÑ ÈÇááå¡ ÇÛÒæÇ æáÇ ÊóÛõáøæÇ¡ æáÇ ÊóÛÏõÑæÇ æáÇ ÊõãËøáæÇ¡ æáÇ ÊÞÊõáæÇ æáíÏÇð¡ æÅÐÇ áÞíÊ ÚÏæøóß ãöä ÇáãÔÑßíä ÝÇÏÚåã Åáì ËáÇË ÎÕÇá¡ Ãæ ÎöáÇá¡ ÝÃíÊõåõäøó ãÇ ÃÌÇÈæß ÝÇÞÈá ãäåã¡ æßÝø Úäåã¡ Ëã ÇÏÚõåõã Åáì ÇáÅÓáÇã¡ ÝÅä ÃÌÇÈæß ÝÇÞÈá ãäåã¡ æßõÝø Úäåã ... Åáì Ãä ÞÇá: ÝÅä åõãú ÃÈóæúÇ ÝóÓáåã ÇáÌÒíÉ¡ ÝÅä åã ÃÌÇÈæß. ÝÇÞÈá ãäåã¡ æßõÝø Úäåã¡ ÝÅä åã ÃóÈóæúÇ ÝÇÓÊÚä ÈÇááå æÞÇÊáåã...
‘Raid in the Name of Allah! Fight whoever disbelieved in Allah! Raid but do not abuse, do not betray, do not maim or mutilate and do not kill any newborn. If you encounter your enemies, the Mushrikeen, call them to observe three qualities or dispositions, and whichever of these they accept then accept it from them, and do not fight them. Call them to Islam, and if they accepted it, do accept this from them and refrain from fighting them..." He (Sallallahu Alaihi Wa Sallam) went on: "If they refused, ask them to pay the Jizya, and if they accepted this, then take it from them and refrain from fighting them, and if they refused, seek the help of Allah and fight them" [narrated by Muslim]
Therefore the messenger had commanded that the invitation to Islam be given before the fight, if they refused to accept Islam as their Deen, they should be invited to live under the system of Islam and pay the Jizya, and if they yet refuse, those who stand as obstacles to the implementation of Islam must be fought. In order to have even gotten to this situation, the Messenger (Sallallahu Alaihi Wa Sallam) and the Sahaba (Radiallahu Anhum) had to undertake political manoeuvres in order to create a global environment where Islam could flourish, this meant creating stability in the lands surrounding Medina, forming treaties and alliances, sending delegations to different leaders as well as sending armed contingents to open up new lands. Islam was able to spread far and wide as a result.
Abu Dawood narrated on the authority of Anas b. Malik who related that The Messenger of Allah (Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam) said:
... æÇáÌåÇÏ ãÇÖ ãäÐ ÈÚËäí Çááå Åáì Ãä íÞÇÊá ÂÎÑ ÃãÊí ÇáÏÌÇá áÇ íÈØáå ÌæÑ ÌÇÆÑ æáÇ ÚÏá ÚÇÏá...
"...and the Jihad is continuous from the moment Allah has sent me till the last person of my Ummah fights against the Dajjal; neither the oppression of the oppressor, nor the justice of the just (ruler) will abolish it....."
This is the eternal method to propagate Islam and its system; it is the fixed method to remove the physical barriers that halt the progression of Islam to the world. Therefore no one has the authority to abolish or abrogate something which is ‘the peak of Islam’.
In short the Political Awareness is obliged upon a state whose very existence is due to the command of Allah (Subhanahu Wa ta’ala) for his deen (religion/ideology) to prevail over all other deens.
Let us look at how the Taliban fared in this regard.
The Taliban’s external relations
The Imara of Afghanistan was recognised by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and the US was initially quite open about its relations with the Taliban. The relationship between the Muslim countries is currently an abnormal one, the closest analogy to describe this irrational relationship would be if hundreds of Muslims were to converge to a Masjid for Salatul Jumuah, the Adhaan (call to Salah) having been called and following the Khutbah and the Iqama everyone were to pray individually. Similarly the relationship between the Muslim countries is an illegitimate and abnormal one as there is no place for nation-states within Islam. For a Muslim country to flaunt its Islamic credentials and then establish an Emirate for the Afghans and call for the recognition of other Muslim countries is one which Islam prohibits. Leadership from the point of view of Islam is singular and not collective; the existence of multiple leaders over the affairs of this Ummah is a disease which Allah (Subhanahu Wa ta’ala) and his Messenger (Sallallahu Alaihi Wa Sallam) prohibits.
The Messenger of Allah (Sallallahu Alaihi Wa Sallam) said:
áÇ íóÍáø áËáÇËÉ ÅáÇ ÃãøÑæÇ Úáíåã ÃÍÏåã
“It is not allowed for three persons (to be) without appointing one of them as an Ameer.” [Ahmed narrated on the Authority of Abdullah bin Amru]
The Messenger of Allah (Sallallahu Alaihi Wa Sallam) said:
ÅÐÇ ÎÑÌ ËáÇËÉ Ýí ÓÝÑ ÝáíÄãÑæÇ ÃÍÏåã
“If three people went out on a journey, let them appoint one of them as an Ameer.” [Abu Dawood narrated on the authority of Abi Sa’id]
He (Sallallahu Alaihi Wa Sallam) also said:
ÅÐÇ ßÇäæÇ ËáÇËÉ Ýí ÓÝÑ ÝáíÄãøÑæÇ ÃÍÏåã
“If there are three persons in a journey, let them appoint one (Ahad) of them as an Ameer.” [Al-Bazzaar narrated from the tradition of ‘Umar b. Al-Khattab]
All these traditions state that the Ameer should be one, as understood from the wording ‘without appointing one of them as an Ameer’, ‘let them appoint one of them as an Ameer’ and ‘let them appoint one (Ahad) of them as an Ameer’.
These Ahadith indicate the Shar’iah rule which states that there can only be one Ameer over one matter, this is denoted by the use of the term ‘ahad’ which means one, the opposite of whose meaning (Mafhoom al-Mukhalafah) is that it is not allowed to have more than one Ameer. With regards to the Khaleefah, the leader for all the Muslims, the Messenger of Allah (Sallallahu Alaihi Wa Sallam) has said:
ÅÐÇ ÈæíÚ áÎáíÝÊíä ÝÇÞÊáæÇ ÇáÂÎÑ ãäåãÇ
“When an oath of allegiance (Bai’ah) has been taken for two Khulafa’a, kill the latter of them.” [Narrated by Muslim on the Authority of Abi Sa’id al-Khudri]
This Hadith provides a Shar’ii permission to kill anyone who presents himself as Khaleefah once one already exists. Therefore how can it be that there exist many rulers over us implementing other than that which Allah (Subhanahu Wa ta’ala) has revealed. It was also the case that the Taliban and Iran mobilised their forces across the Afghan border to fight each other in September 1998 over the killing of Iranian diplomats in Mazar-e-Sharif. Had the Taliban publicly called for the Iranian Islamic people to unify with it based on Islam and vocalised their brotherhood, pointing to the plans of enemy states such as US, Britain, Russia, India, Israel, China etc imagine the impact this would have had. Even if the Ba’til Iranian Republican regime had spurned the call to unification, it would have exposed it throughout the world and amongst the Muslims of Iran, had this been followed by a call for unification for all the Muslims throughout the world, the Muslims would have risen up to remove their rulers and joined Afghanistan. Unfortunately this comes back to the nature of the system established within Afghanistan, which was one not fully compliant with Islam.
When Syed Rahmatullah Hashimi (Senior Advisor to Mullah 'Umar, Afghanistan) was asked on March 10, 2001 at a Lecture he gave at the University of Southern California ‘What is Afghanistans priority in regards to establishing an Islamic state for all Muslims, not just for Afghans?’
He answered: “We have our first headache in Afghanistan, and that’s a big headache. We have a full-time job there. If we were worked 24 hours a day, we will hardly ever be able to re-construct an Islamic system in our own country. And we have no intention of going beyond our borders, and neither can we. So, all these people who exist in other countries, or their policies, they have nothing to do with us. We are only concerned about Afghanistan. And please do not try to make assumptions.”
I agree with him that the establishment of a stable Afghanistan was a full time job, and a hard one at that, but Islam requires that this action of building is done in conformity with Islam. Surely a country like Afghanistan which is land locked, having very little in terms of resources and torn by war for decades should have united with the other Muslims under one Khilafah, in that way the Hadith of the Messenger (Sallallahu Alaihi Wa Sallam) would have become a reality:
“The Ummah are one Ummah, their land is one, and their war is one.”
It was pitiful when Afghanistan faced an earthquake and then famine, and the response of the Muslim countries was pitiful, the small handouts that were given were analogous to the sympathy that someone gives a stray cat, sympathy without any real commitment. If the Muslims were one then the same response which Amr ibn al-as gave to Khaleefah Umar bin al-Khattab when asked to send food to alleviate the famine in Medina would have been repeated. Amr Ibn al-as was the Waali (governor) of Egypt and its inhabitants viewed the caravans of food leaving Egypt as though they were providing food for members of their families. And when the Taliban were attacked by the US and abandoned by Pakistan, Saudi, Qatar and all of the Muslim countries, the most that could have been expected of the Ummah was sympathy because their relationship though from Islam manifested solely in reading about their trial in newspapers, on Al-Jazeera as concerned bystanders rather than angered participants because the state that was about to be destroyed was an Afghani state, if they had attacked the Khilafah, the reaction would have been different as the entire Muslim world would have fought against the US, as that state would have belonged to them. Everyone fights to protect the seizure and destruction of that which belongs to them. Similar to the reaction of the Muslims of India to the destruction of the Khilafah in 1924, although the state had been in decline for centuries and a lot of the Islamic lands had been occupied by the colonialists, the Muslims there and indeed in other parts of the Islamic lands were distraught and even began movements for the restoration of the Khilafah because although they had taken the existence of such a state for granted they perceived its vital link to Islam. This was something which was vitally missing from the rule of the Taliban and how they were viewed by the rest of the Muslim world, as a result of the fact that the Emirate of Afghanistan was for the Afghanis and not the entire Islamic Ummah.
In similar light was the relationship that it had with Pakistan which was used by the US as a conduit to establish a government that would be stable enough to provide safe passage for a US oil pipeline.
The untamed bear
“It is common knowledge that American Imperialism is the custodian of global capitalism. Safeguarding the interests of this menace that has crossed national boundaries in search of greener pastures around the world...their entire history is a testimony to the fact that they have no permanent foes and friends, jumping into the fray whenever the environment is found to be entirely conducive but running for cover whenever the stakes are high. These fair-weather friends, notwithstanding the spurious and opportunistic war-time promises of standing through thick and thin to their allies, have an impeccable record of not even looking back to inquire about these allies at the time of their misery. One should not be bewildered, therefore, to find their allies left in the lurch licking their wounds with the American `master' enjoying the scene from a safe distance… These mercenaries of global capitalism also wanted to gain access to the mostly untapped natural resources of Central Asia.”
The statement above is a good description of US aims throughout the world, yet it is even more surprising that this statement came from Abdul Salam Zaeef, the former Taliban Ambassador to Pakistan. This is an illustration of the political naivety of the International situation on the part of the Taliban. The US is an untamed bear which befriends – if you can even call it that – other nations or peoples in order to secure an interest, whether that be a strategic, economic or military goal, once the bear has had its fill or realises that the object of its desire is beyond its reach it will either retreat, or if that interest were to be viewed as too important, she will quickly remove the obstacle which stands in her way to realising it.
It is therefore a folly to ever believe that anyone can tame the beast in order to become its friend and ally, especially when the US is protecting its energy interests.
There are two main areas which illustrate the lack of political awareness linked to the rules of Islam which were exhibited by the Taliban
Link to Oil Companies and the US oil interests.
Search for recognition and UN membership.
The US’s energetic policy
Indeed it was Lord Palmerston (England’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and later Prime Minister) who insisted that:
"We have no eternal allies and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow."
The interest which the US pursued (and continues to chase after) in Afghanistan was the utilisation of a yet untapped oil resource in the Caspian Sea. The US wanted to clear the way for the proposed oil pipeline through the preferred route which would extend through Afghanistan.
The importance of the Caspian region in terms of potential reserves to rival the middle-east was too tempting an offer for the US to miss. The Current Vice-President, Dick Cheney underlined the importance of this region in 1998 whilst addressing a group of oil executives, he said:
"I cannot think of a time when we have had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian."
The Washington-based American Petroleum Institute, which acts as the voice of the major U.S. oil companies, called the Caspian region, "the area of greatest resource potential outside of the Middle East."
The problem was how it could be piped from its source in the Caspian (Central Asia) to the markets where they were needed. John J Maresca (Vice-President, International Relations UNOCAL Corporation) presented this problem to the House Committee on International relations (subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific, February 12 1998) he made clear to the committee, there were many risks involved in all potential avenues for the pipeline, Iran was out of the question due the ban on US companies establishing trading deals with Iran due to the Helms-Burton Act. John Maresca, taking all this into account stated:
“There are few, if any, other areas of the world where there can be such a dramatic increase in the supply of oil and gas to the world market. The solution seems simple: build a "new" Silk Road. Implementing this solution, however, is far from simple. The risks are high, but so are the rewards.”
Barry Lane, a UNOCAL spokesman was more open about the options that they had referring to the choice between Iran and Afghanistan, he said there was by the process of elimination one option, “And the U.S. sanctions against doing business with Iran left us only one option,” by this he meant that the Central Asia to Southern Afghanistan route could be by default the only viable route.
The US believed she could use the Taliban in order to create the stability they yearned after. For example in 1997 a US diplomat told the writer Ahmed Rashid "the Taliban will probably develop like the Saudis did. There will be Aramco [the former US oil consortium in Saudi Arabia] pipelines, an emir, no parliament and lots of Shariah law. We can live with that."
As long as they could achieve stability nothing else mattered. Yet this plan for stability pre-dated this.
In 1996 US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Robin Raphel on a visit to Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia, called on all parties to reach a political solution to end the continuing conflict. “We are also concerned that economic opportunities here will be missed, if political stability cannot be restored,” she told the media.
Between 1994 to 1997 attempts were made to achieve support for the UNOCAL pipeline.
In March 1996, a prominent US senator Hank Brown, a keen supporter of the UNOCAL project, visited Kabul and other Afghan cities. He met with the Taliban and invited them to send a delegation to a UNOCAL-funded conference on Afghanistan in the US. In the same month, the US applied pressure on the Pakistani government to cancel its agreements with the Argentinean company Bridas and back the America’s boys (UNOCAL).
On September 27, 1996 in a move which shocked the Afghan opposition and indeed much of the world, the Taliban captured the Afghan capital, Kabul. After a few days the US State Department responded by announcing they would send an envoy to meet with the Taliban to determine the shape of relations.
When asked about the Taliban’s human rights record, State Department spokesman Glyn Davies said the US saw "nothing objectionable" in their strict application of Shariah as there was "an indication ... that they intend to respect the rights of all their citizens." Upon hearing of the capture of Afghanistan's former Communist president, Najibullah, his castration and his hanging a White House spokesman called the action "regrettable." After a few days the US State Department condemned the killing.
A U.S. official told the Los Angeles Times in October of the same year, "We're not choosing. These people walked into Kabul, and they are no more or less legitimate than those sitting there last week."
The Taliban held a news conference after their takeover of Kabul where a representative claimed the movement desired "friendly and good" relations with the United States and would fervently crack down on the illegal drug trade, and would not export Islam beyond its borders.
It was then that the plan to establish fertile ground for the pipeline began to reveal itself; the US was calling for now calling for a 'broad based coalition government'.
The US began to work to achieve this objective, yet the Taliban refused. They refused to participate in a ‘Loya Jirga’ with their opponents, Julie Sirrs, a former US Department of Defense Intelligence Agency official who specialised in Afghanistan said much later, "There were some bad signs from pretty early on ... that I think were just ignored because we had larger geopolitical reasons that we wanted to believe that they would be a good group."
The US knew that the ISI supported the Taliban’s quick entry into dominance in Afghanistan and the US supported this as indicated by statements from the December 1996 report on Afghanistan from the Congressional Research Service (a department of the Library of Congress which acts as a source of information for the US legislature) declared, "[t]he United States is unwilling to isolate [the] Taliban because Pakistan, on which the United States has consistently relied to protect U.S. interests in Afghanistan, supports the group."
UNOCAL was the preferred hope of the Clinton administration and the latter would do all it could to ensure that it prevailed in the great new game for oil. UNOCAL hired a set of impressive and high profile consultants, amongst which included Robert Oakley, a former ambassador to Pakistan; Zilmay Khalilzad, recently appointed by President George W. Bush to act as adviser on Southwest Asia on the National Security Council and envoy to Karzai’s Afganistan; and Henry Kissinger, the former US Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. There have also been unsubstantiated claims that UNOCAL was privy to regular briefings by the CIA.
UNOCAL officials lobbied the US government to aid it to establish a secure position on the ground for a pipeline.
In November 1997 Madeleine Albright, during a visit to Pakistan, called the regime's treatment of women "despicable" and condemned "their general lack of respect for human dignity." This was not a u-turn in US foreign policy but in part a reaction to the Women’s lobby, an indication of public appeasement of domestic opinion, whilst maintaining discussions and dialogue.
This is further proved by Karl Inderfurth, who succeeded Robin Raphel in July 1997, and was quoted by the Washington Post on 12 January 1998, as saying: "We do believe they (the Taliban) can modify their behaviour and take into account certain international standards with respect to women's rights to education and employment."
Richard Mackenzie in ‘The New Republic’ magazine highlighted the importance of the Taliban for the US who believed it could mould them into a force for stability and moderation, but in essence a puppet it could toy with and tie into its manipulative web of control just as it had done to the other Muslim countries.
"What probably made the most difference to U.S. policymakers [in welcoming the arrival of the Taliban], though, was the Taliban's commitment to a particular commercial enterprise. The Taliban had promised to permit construction of giant gas and oil pipelines from Central Asia, down through Afghanistan, to Pakistan. The main contender for that work was an American-Saudi coalition of Unocal and Delta oil companies....It took a while for many in the West to catch on, but inside Afghanistan the key players were already well-aware of the pipeline's importance--and its potential effect on policy. In 1996, during a conversation in Kabul not long before the Taliban reached the capital, Ahmed Shah Massoud asked me about Unocal, its motives, its methods, and its ties to the U.S. government. When the Taliban finally reached the gates of Kabul, it was well-financed and well-equipped--and it could count upon the acquiescence of the United States....” 'The succession: the price of neglecting Afghanistan', Richard Mackenzie. The New Republic, Sept 14, 1998 v219 n11-12 p23]
The Saudis were part of this plan and its collaboration with UNOCAL through its Delta-Nimir oil company, Nimir Petroleum had more than the funds needed to execute ambitious projects such as the UNOCAL pipeline since it was dominated by the bin-Mahfouz family which owned the National Commercial Bank whose patrons were high ranking members of the Saudi royal family. Delta-Nimir was already a major investor with Unocal in the oilfields of Azerbaijan, and had close links to Crown Prince Abdullah, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia.
The US government was backing UNOCAL aggressively as Bridas had made agreement with some Central Asia leaders to be the preferred company to build lucrative pipelines, but the US helped to destroy a lot of these agreements and the US Ambassador to Pakistan forced Bhutto’s government to openly come out in favour of UNOCAL whilst ceasing any contacts with Bridas, the Argentinean Oil company, her administration duly complied.
By mid-1996 it was difficult to view Robin Raphel as anything other than UNOCAL’s marketing spokesman since she was voicing the Clinton administrations full backing to its pipeline bid, she said in 1996 on one of two trips to Islamabad, that "We worked hard to make all the Afghan factions understand the potential, because the Unocal pipeline offered development opportunities that no aid program nor any Afghan government could" (Washington Post, 11/5/01).
The situation did change in August 1998, following the bombings of the US Embassies in Africa. UNOCAL withdrew from the project to build a pipeline,. It has since September 11 gone to painstaking lengths to convey its reason for pulling out of the Centgas consortium as a direct result of the bombing and the retaliatory strikes against the Taliban by the US. Firstly Clinton used the bombing of Sudan and Afghanistan as a means of diverting attention away from the investigation into his lies about the ‘Lewinsky Affair’ and the consequent investigation by Ken Starr, it was not a reflection of the administrations anger towards the Taliban’s relationship with Osama bin Laden, otherwise the strike would have been more devastating and achieved tangible results such as what has been achieved after September 11 in the ousting of the Taliban. The truth of the matter is that contacts with the Taliban continued after this, and UNOCAL had not in anyway been pressurised to cease the proposed pipeline, the decision was as a result of good old fashioned economic concerns over the price of oil. UNOCAL announced that it was closing three of its four offices in the four Casian republics where it operated, it had only a month earlier pulled out from another consortium which was due to initiate a $2.9 billion pipeline to ship natural gas from Turkmenistan to Turkey, if instability was their main concern, nothing had changed in this regard to the Central Asian Republics.
The New York Times reported on 4 December 1998 that UNOCAL had made clear they had withdrawn because the venture was no longer economically viable due to the fact that the price of oil had plummeted to $12 a barrel, the previous price of oil had been $24 a barrel, thus highlighting the gamble it would have been for UNOCAL which had counted itself in to the venture based upon the higher projected price. Since Bridas the only potential competitor had been frozen out, there was no chance that in the interim period which saw a downturn in world oil prices it would re-enter the race for oil.
UNOCAL and its government backers went to great lengths to convince the Taliban to accept the pipeline and create stability on the ground which could only materialise if it was within an environment of a ‘broad based government’, such proposals were aired as early as 1996 by officials such as Robin Raphel. Therefore like Iran, the US believed it could use a series of ‘carrot and stick’ initiatives. The Carrots were indeed quite bizarre, which included a visit of a Taliban delegation to Houston, Texas in December 1997 in which they were housed in a five-star hotel, taken to the Zoo and visited the Nasa Space Center, they were also invited to Dinner at Marty Miller’s (Vice President, UNOCAL) House. At the same time a Taliban delegation was in Buenos Aires being courted by UNOCAL’s rival, Bridas.
In February 1997, a delegation of Taliban leaders had flown to the UNOCAL headquarters at Sugarland, Texas, for a whirlwind of corporate hospitality, one of many which UNOCAL hosted.
The Carrots kept coming as UNOCAL donated $900,000 to the Centre of Afghanistan Studies at the University of Omaha, Nebraska. The Centre set up a training and humanitarian aid programme for the Afghans, opening a school in Kandahar, which began to train some 400 Afghan teachers, electricians, carpenters and pipe-fitters to help UNOCAL to lay the pipeline.
In the Cent-Gas Consortium, UNOCAL held a 70 per cent stake, Saudi oil company Delta-Nimir 15 per cent, Russia's state-owned gas company Gazprom 10 per cent and the Turkmen state-owned company Turk-menrosgaz 5 per cent. In October 1997, after Gazporm left the Cent-Gas, the consortium was expanded, with UNOCAL's share reduced to 54.11 per cent, Delta 15 per cent, Turk-menrosgaz 7 per cent, Indonesia Petroleum (Japan) 7.22 per cent, CIECO Trans-Asia Gas Ltd (Japan) 7.22 per cent, Crescent Group (Pakistan) 3.89 per cent and Hyundai Ltd (South Korea) 5.56 per cent.
As recently as July 2001, Christina Rocca, the US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, met the Taliban officials in Islamabad and announced $43 million in food and shelter aid, bringing to $124 million the US contribution to the Internally Displaced Persons project in 2001 alone. This money was given straight to the Taliban without them having to account for how it was spent. The renewed US contacts with the Taliban, including a visit by seven US officials to Kabul in late April 2001 preceded by another visit by three US officials earlier in that month, this was all conducted even though Afghanistan fell under the stringent sanctions by Washington and the UN Security Council. But more tellingly was a reaction to Dana Rohrabacher, a member of the House Foreign Relations Committee, who requested access to official US documents related to US relations with the Taliban, after two years of repeated requests, the State Department relented, handing over one thousand documents which covered the period after 1996, which was the year the Taliban had taken Kabul. The documents of interest were those related to US relations with the Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Pakistani government with regards to backing the Taliban, they are under embargo to this date.
The US-Taliban relations was a complex one, which meant that the US became impatient with their stance, not necessarily in terms of failing to hand over Osama bin Laden, but more its unwillingness to share power to reach a broad-based government, the Clinton administration had been fighting for this and the Bush administration followed suit. A recent book by two French authors with links to French intelligence has made some far reaching allegations. The book ‘Bin Laden, la verite interdite’ (Bin Laden, the forbidden truth), that was released recently, the authors, Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie said that at a meeting between US officials and Taliban representatives, the latter were told:
"Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs."It consolidates documents released by the State department which indicate a series of missions of Shuttle diplomacy by the Bush administration since it came to power, the state department line was that these meetings were convened to agree the handing over of bin Laden, but was in effect seeking the agreement of the Taliban for a broad based government which would encompass Ahmed Shah Masood, Abdul-Rashid Dostam, Ismail Khan as well as other leaders of the United Front (Northern Alliance).
It is claimed by the authors that the last meeting between the Taliban and the US was conducted in August 2001, Christina Rocca, undersecretary for South Asian affairs for the US government met with Abdul Salaam Zaeef, the Taliban Ambassador to Afghanistan in Islamabad.
The book continues to describe that frequent meetings took place under the Six plus 2 forum of Central Asian countries, including Russia and the US, they claim that on some occasions Taliban officials were present.
Niaz Naik, former Pakistani minister for foreign affairs was interviewed both on French television and also by the BBC, he emphasised that the bone of contention during a Six plus 2 meeting in a Berlin hotel in mid-July was "the formation of a government of national unity.” He was very clear in the options which the Taliban were presented with, “if the Taliban had accepted this coalition, they would have immediately received international economic aid. And the pipelines from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan would have come."
The meeting was attended by senior Americans, Russians, Iranians and Pakistanis, on the American side was Tom Simons, a former US ambassador to Pakistan, Karl Inderfurth, a former assistant secretary of state for south Asian affairs, and Lee Coldren, who headed the office of Pakistan, Afghan and Bangladesh affairs in the state department until 1997.
Naik also claimed that Tom Simons issued a stern ultimatum which impressed upon him the significance of this meeting, and that the days of negotiation had ended, Naik quotes Simons as having said, “in case the Taliban does not behave and in case Pakistan also doesn't help us to influence the Taliban, then the United States would be left with no option but to take an overt action against Afghanistan," He said that following these threats "I told the Pakistani government, who informed the Taliban via our foreign office and the Taliban ambassador here."
The Taliban was invited to this meeting, but refused to send a representative, Dr Abdullah Abdullah, the Northern Alliance's foreign minister did attend.
In a cagey statement to the Guardian newspaper on September 22 2001, Mr Coldren confirmed the broad outline of the American position at the Berlin meeting. "I think there was some discussion of the fact that the United States was so disgusted with the Taliban that they might be considering some military action." The three former US diplomats "based our discussion on hearsay from US officials", he said. “It was not an agenda item at the meeting but was mentioned just in passing".
Surely a threat of war as the consequences for refusing US demands would be memorable enough for such high level delegates to remember. What this does show is that the US had lost all patience and such a view is reinforced by Bush’s ‘no negotiation’ statements following September 11, most diplomats are in agreement that even if they had handed bin Laden over (which Mullah Omar refused to do) the removal of the Taliban was still a sub-objective of the US stability plan for the Caspian oil pipeline.
It was more than politically naïve for the Taliban to enter into a protracted engagement with the US believing she would act in the interests of the Muslims, her history has shown that she does not allow for any group of people to threaten her interests, she follows the Machiavellian principle of “the ends justifies the means” as her mission statement in life, vigorously pursuing her objectives. She does not follow principles of Justice and fair play rather these red herrings are intertwined within her wider marketing and disinformation campaign which she presents to the world. Her relationship with the Muslims countries was also based upon an abnormal relationship, a mutual recognition of interests with the US as its conductor.
George Kennan the Director of Policy Planning at the U.S. State Department after the Second World War illustrated this when he said:
"To maintain this position of disparity (U.S. economic-military supremacy)... we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming.... We should cease to talk about vague and... unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standard and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts.... The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better."
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[This message has been edited by clubber lang (edited August 10, 2002).]