The Afghanistan files
Since the mid-1990s, Afghanistan was the centrepiece of Central Asian pipeline politics as it provides the easiest access to the Arabian Sea, with the exception of Iran. Two companies, Bridas of Argentina and Unocal of USA, fought a no-holds-barred turf war for the control of pipeline routes in Afghanistan. Bridas was the first Western company to take the risk of exploring in Turkmenistan in 1991. After some minor discoveries, it struck pay dirt in a massive gas field in Yashlar in Karakum desert 1995. The search for a pipeline route through Afghanistan began. Bridas invited Unocal to form a consortium of companies to build the pipeline. Unocal, present in Pakistan since 1976, decided it didn't need Bridas and started wooing the leaders of Turkmenistan and Afghanistan.
In his widely acclaimed book Taliban: Islam, Oil and the New Great Game in Central Asia, journalist and author Ahmed Rashid writes that the oil companies are very secretive - a legacy of the fierce competitions they indulged in around the world. With its strategic interests in the Caspian growing, the US became wary of Russia. "While US policymakers certainly do not want to see a hegemonic Russia, the potential costs of such hegemony become far greater if Russia is able to dictate the terms and limit Western access to the world's last known oil and gas reserves," Martha Brill Olcott, a leading US academic on Central Asia, told Rashid in May 1997.
The US government's open backing of Unocal aroused suspicion in Iran and Russia - both countries were opposed to the Taliban regime. Turkmenistan switched sides from Bridas to Unocal, but the Pakistan administration felt more comfortable with Bridas at this stage. The crucial link in the pipeline strategy, the Taliban, remained ambivalent towards both. "When the Taliban captured Kabul in September 1996, Chris Taggert, a Unocal executive, told wire agencies that the pipeline project would be easier to implement now that the Taliban had captured Kabul - a statement that Unocal quickly retracted because it implied that Unocal favoured the Taliban," Rashid writes. The Taliban was interested in Unocal because it could have brought them US recognition. But Taliban leaders preferred Bridas as it did not expect them to improve their human rights image. Unocal, meanwhile, was facing feminist protests in the US in view of the Taliban's mistreatment of women.
This rivalry got buried when the US bombed Osama bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan in August 1998. In December, Unocal withdrew from the consortium that was pursuing a pipeline through Afghanistan. Bridas kept a low profile and then eventually gave up. The Clinton administration started concentrating on the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline.
But a book entitled Osama bin Laden: The Hidden Truth, recently published in France by two French intelligence analysts Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasique, claims that the Bush administration revived the Taliban pipeline connection and that high-level talks continued through August 2001, about a month before the September 11 terrorist strikes. Now that the war is over, the business of oil can begin again.