Alliance of the willing?

[Snowball]

BBC Source

The US threatened to bomb Pakistan "back to the stone age" unless it joined the fight against al-Qaeda, President Pervez Musharraf has said.

General Musharraf said the warning was delivered by former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage to Pakistan's intelligence director.

"I think it was a very rude remark," Mr Musharraf told CBS television.

Pakistan agreed to side with the US, but Gen Musharraf said it did so based on his country's national interest.

"One has to think and take actions in the interest of the nation, and that's what I did," he said.

'Ludicrous' requests

The extracts from the CBS show 60 Minutes, which will run on Sunday, were released on the same day that the White House praised Pakistan for its co-operation in America's "war on terror".

Gen Musharraf is due to meet US President George W Bush at the White House on Friday.

He is also due to launch his autobiography next week and some analysts say the timing of the revelation may be an attempt to generate interest in the book.

The Pakistani president said that, following the attacks of 11 September 2001, the US made some "ludicrous" demands of Pakistan.

"The intelligence director told me that Mr Armitage said, 'Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age'," he said.

The US envoy also insisted that Pakistan suppress domestic expression of support for attacks on the United States, he said.

"If somebody's expressing views, we cannot curb the expression of views," Gen Musharraf said.

Mr Armitage also allegedly demanded that Pakistan allow the US to use its border posts as staging points for the war on Afghanistan.

Pakistan's support was considered crucial in the defeat of Afghanistan's Taleban government, which Pakistan had helped to bring to power.

President Musharraf has proved a loyal ally though many now will question the means used to extract the co-operation, says the BBC's US state department correspondent Jonathan Beale.

[__Kratos__]

Pakistan's support was considered crucial in the defeat of Afghanistan's Taleban government, which Pakistan had helped to bring to power.

Anybody miss that key part there?

Threatening to bomb a country that helped the Taliban get into power... Shocking.

[Snowball]

Anybody miss that key part there?

Threatening to bomb a country that helped the Taliban get into power... Shocking.

Rense source

US Gave Silent Backing To

Taliban Rise To Power

By Phillip Knightley

The Guardian

10-8-1

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Afghanistan's Taliban regime, now bracing for punitive US military strikes, was brought to power with Washington's silent blessing as it dallied in an abortive new "Great Game" in central Asia.

Keen to see Afghanistan under strong central rule to allow a US-led group to build a multi-billion-dollar oil and gas pipeline, Washington urged key allies Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to back the militia's bid for power in 1996, analysts said.

But it was soon forced to abandon its brief and shadowy flirtation with the Islamic purists, who US officials now say are unfit to rule, as the militia began imposing its brutal version of Islamic law, sparking a violent outcry from US women's groups.

While the United States has denied supporting the Taliban's rise, experts say that at the time they seized the capital five years ago, Washington saw the militia as a strange but potentially stabilizing force.

"Now, years on, the US has to cope with the damage for which it is partially responsible starting with its role during and after the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan," said Radha Kumar of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

Ahmed Rashid, a leading author and expert on Afghan affairs, said it was "clear" Washington, which armed and trained the Afghan mujahedin during their battle against Soviet invaders in the 1980s, indirectly supported the Taliban.

"The United States encouraged Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to support the Taliban, certainly right up to their advance on Kabul" on September 26, 1996, he said from his base in Lahore, Pakistan. "That seems very ironic now."

One key reason for US interest in the Taliban was a 4.5-billion-dollar oil and gas pipeline that a US-led oil consortium planned to build across war-ravaged Afghanistan.

The California-based Unocal Corp. in 1996 hatched plans to stretch the pipeline from the central Asian state of Turkmenistan to Pakistan and the United States and the oil consortium wanted most of Afghanistan to be under the stable control of one government to ensure the pipeline's security, the analysts said.

In the months before the Taliban took power, former US assistant secretary of state for South Asia Robin Raphel waged an intense round of shuttle diplomacy between the powers with possible stakes in the project.

"Robin Raphel was the face of the Unocal pipeline," said an official of the former Afghan government who was present at some of the meetings with her.

The Unocal consortium also included Saudi-based Delta Oil, Pakistan's Crescent Group and Gazprom of Russia.

The project was to start with a two-billion-dollar, 890-kilometer (556-mile) gas pipeline that would channel 1.9 billion cubic feet of gas to Pakistan each day.

In addition to tapping new sources of energy, the move also suited a major US strategic aim in the region: isolating its nemesis Iran and stifling a frequently-mooted rival pipeline project backed by Tehran, experts said.

"This was part of what I call a new great game between Russia, the United States, China, Iran and European companies for control of the new oil and gas resources that have been discovered," Rashid said. A dangerous game for influence in Afghanistan was played in the 19th century by Britain and Russia, at a strategic crossroads between South Asia and Czarist Russia.

The Unocal consortium feared there could be no pipeline as long as Afghanistan, battered by war since the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, was split among rival warlords. The Taliban, whose rise to power owed much to their bid to stamp out the drugs trade and install law and order, seemed attractive to Washington.

"It thought the Taliban might be a stabilizing factor if they controlled 90 percent of the country," said the CFR's Kumar.

When the Taliban rolled into Kabul, Washington appeared initially enthusiastic amid signs it would consider recognising the new regime.

The top US diplomat in Pakistan planned a visit to Kabul just days after it was captured by the Taliban and a State Department official expressed hope that the Taliban would "move quickly to restore order and security."

But Washington cancelled the diplomat's trip as protests against the Taliban's treatment of women erupted in the United States, news reports said at the time. Unocal withdrew from the pipeline consortium two years later.

[__Kratos__]

Rense source

Trusting Rense is like trusting a fire not to burn you when you stick your hand in the flame.

[Bone_Collector]

It seems like US thinks that it has the right to bomb just about anybody, anytime.

Edited September 22, 2006 by Bone_Collector

[__Kratos__]

It seems like US thinks that it has the right to bomb just about anybody, anytime.

You miss the point where Pakistan helps the Taliban?

[Snowball]

International Socialist Review

The Covert-US Taliban Alliance

Western motives become clearer when one recalls that it was the US that originally trained and armed the faction in Afghanistan - even "long before the USSR sent in troops" - which now constitutes the "leaders of Afghanistan".[31] The record illustrates the existence of an ongoing relationship between the United States and the Taliban. AI reports that even though the "United States has denied any links with the Taleban", according to then US Assistant Secretary of State Robin Raphel Afghanistan was a "crucible of strategic interest" during the Cold War, though she denied any US influence or support of factions in Afghanistan today, dismissing any possible ongoing strategic interests. However, former Department of Defense official Elie Krakowski, who worked on the Afghan issue in the 1980s, points out that Afghanistan remains important to this day because it "is the crossroads between what Halford MacKinder called the world’s Heartland and the Indian sub continent. It owes its importance to its location at the confluence of major routes. A boundary between land power and sea power, it is the meeting point between opposing forces larger than itself. Alexander the Great used it as a path to conquest. So did the Moghuls. An object of competition between the British and Russian empires in the 19th century, Afghanistan became a source of controversy between the American and Soviet superpowers in the 20th. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, it has become an important potential opening to the sea for the landlocked new states of Central Asia. The presence of large oil and gas deposits in that area has attracted countries and multinational corporations... Because Afghanistan is a major strategic pivot what happens there affects the rest of the world."[32]

Raphel’s denial of US interests in the region also stands in contradiction to the fact that, as AI reports, "many Afghanistan analysts believe that the United States has had close political links with the Taleban militia. They refer to visits by Taleban representatives to the United States in recent months and several visits by senior US State Department officials to Kandahur including one immediately before the Taleban took over Jalalabad." The AI report refers to a comment by the Guardian: "Senior Taleban leaders attended a conference in Washington in mid-1996 and US diplomats regularly travelled to Taleban headquarters." The Guardian points out that though such "visits can be explained", "the timing raises doubts as does the generally approving line which US officials take towards the Taleban."[33]

Amnesty goes on to confirm that recent "accounts of the madrasas (religious schools) which the Taleban attended in Pakistan indicate that these [Western] links [with the Taleban] may have been established at the very inception of the Taleban movement. In an interview broadcast by the BBC World Service on 4 October 1996, Pakistan’s then Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto affirmed that the madrasas had been set up by Britain, the United States, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan during the Jihad, the Islamic resistance against Soviet occupation of Afghanistan."[34] In light of Brzezinski’s testimony, the establishment of this Western link with the Taliban - as well as other Afghan factions - was initiated even prior to the Soviet invasion. Similarly, Vidgen reports that "the corporate media have... remained silent in regard to America’s involvement in the promotion of terrorism. On the issue of right-wing terrorism, little has been reported. On America’s intelligence connection to ‘Islamic’ guerrillas (and their manipulation of Islam), nothing has been said. Yet, the truth is that amongst those who utilise religious faith to justify war, the majority are closer to Langley, Virginia, than they are to Tehran or Tripoli... In a move to recruit soldiers for the Afghanistan civil war, the CIA and Zia encouraged the region’s Islamic people to think of the conflict in terms of a jihad (holy war). Thus was fundamentalism promoted."[35]

William O. Beeman, an anthropologist specialising in the Middle East at Brown University who has conducted extensive research into Islamic Central Asia, points out: "It is no secret, especially in the region, that the United States, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have been supporting the fundamentalist Taliban in their war for control of Afghanistan for some time. The US has never openly acknowledged this connection, but it has been confirmed by both intelligence sources and charitable institutions in Pakistan."[36] Professor Beeman observes that the US-backed Taliban "are a brutal fundamentalist group that has conducted a cultural scorched-earth policy" in Afghanistan. Extensive documentation shows that the Taliban have "committed atrocities against their enemies and their own citizens... So why would the US support them?" Beeman concludes that the answer to this question "has nothing to do with religion or ethnicity - but only with the economics of oil. To the north of Afghanistan is one of the world’s wealthiest oil fields, on the Eastern Shore of the Caspian Sea in republics formed since the breakup of the Soviet Union." Caspian oil needs to be transhipped out of the landlocked region through a warm water port, for the desired profits to be accumulated. The "simplest and cheapest" pipeline route is through Iran - but Iran is essentially an ‘enemy’ of the US, due to being overtly independent of the West, as shall be discussed later. As Beeman notes: "The US government has such antipathy to Iran that it is willing to do anything to prevent this." The alternative route is one that passes through Afghanistan and Pakistan, which "would require securing the agreement of the powers-that-be in Afghanistan" - the Taliban. Such an arrangement would also benefit Pakistani elites, "which is why they are willing to defy the Iranians." Therefore, as far as the US is concerned, the solution is "for the anti-Iranian Taliban to win in Afghanistan and agree to the pipeline through their territory."[37] Apart from the oil stakes, Afghanistan remains a strategic region for the US in another related respect. The establishment of a strong client state in the country would strengthen US influence in this crucial region, partly by strengthening Pakistan - a prime supporter of the Taliban - which is the region’s main American base. Of course, this also furthers the cause of establishing the required oil and gas pipelines to the Caspian Sea, while bypassing Russia and opening up the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) bordering Russia to the US dominated global market.

Strategic interests therefore seem to have continued to motivate what the Guardian refers to as "the generally approving line that US officials take towards the Taleban." CNN reports that the "United States wants good ties [with the Taliban] but can’t openly seek them while women are being repressed" - hence they can be sought covertly.[38] The Intra Press Service (IPS) reports that underscoring "the geopolitical stakes, Afghanistan has appeared prominently in US government and corporate planning about routes for pipelines and roads opening the ex-Soviet republics on Russia’s southern border to world markets." Hence, amid the fighting, "some Western businesses are warming up to the Taliban despite the movement’s" institutionalisation of terror, massacres, abductions, and impoverishment. "Leili Helms, a spokeswoman for the Taliban in New York, told IPS that one US company, Union Oil of California (Unocal), helped to arrange the visit last week of the movement’s acting information, industry and mines ministers. The three officials met lower-level State Department officials before departing for France, Helms said. Several US and French firms are interested in developing gas lines through central and southern Afghanistan, where the 23 Taliban-controlled states" just happen to be located, as Helms added, to the ‘chance’ convenience of American and other Western companies.[39]

An article appearing in the prestigious German daily Frankfurter Rundschau, in early October 1996, reported that UNOCAL "has been given the go-ahead from the new holders of power in Kabul to build a pipeline from Turkmenstein via Afghanistan to Pakistan. It would lead from Krasnovodsk on the Caspian Sea to Karachi on the Indian Ocean coast." The same article notes that UN diplomats in Geneva believe that the war in Afghanistan is the result of a struggle between Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Russia and the United States, "to secure access to the rich oil and natural gas of the Caspian Sea."[40] Other than UNOCAL, companies that are jubilantly interested in exploiting Caspian oil, apparently at any human expense, include AMOCO, BP, Chevron, EXXON, and Mobile.[41]

It therefore comes as no surprise to see the Wall Street Journal reporting that the main interests of American and other Western elites lie in making Afghanistan "a prime transhipment route for the export of Central Asia’s vast oil, gas and other natural resources". "Like them or not," the Journal continues without fear of contradiction, "the Taliban are the players most capable of achieving peace in Afghanistan at this moment in history." The Journal is referring to the same faction that is responsible for the severe repression of women; massacres of civilians; ethnic cleansing and genocide; arbitrary detention; and the growth of widespread impoverishment and underdevelopment.[42] Despite all this, as the New York Times reports, "The Clinton Administration has taken the view that a Taliban victory... would act as a counterweight to Iran... and would offer the possibility of new trade routes that could weaken Russian and Iranian influence in the region."[43]

In a similar vein, the International Herald Tribunal reports that in the summer of 1998, "the Clinton administration was talking with the Taleban about potential pipeline routes to carry oil and natural gas out of Turkmenistan to the Indian Ocean by crossing Afghanistan and Pakistan",[44] clarifying why the US would be interested in ensuring that the region is destabilised enough to prevent the population from being able to mobilise domestic resources, or utilise the region’s strategic position, for their own benefit. P. Stobdan reports that "Afghanistan figures importantly in the context of American energy security politics. Unocal’s project to build oil and gas pipelines from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan for the export of oil and gas to the Indian subcontinent, viewed as the most audacious gambit of the 1990s Central Asian oil rush had generated great euphoria. The US government fully backed the route as a useful option to free the Central Asian states from Russian clutches and prevent them getting close to Iran. The project was also perceived as the quickest and cheapest way to bring out Turkmen gas to the fast growing energy market in South Asia. To help it canvass for the project, Unocol hired the prominent former diplomat and secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, and a former US ambassador to Pakistan, Robert Oakley, as well as an expert on the Caucasus, John Maresca… The president of Unocol even speculated that the cost of the construction would be reduced by half with the success of the Taliban movement and formation of a single government." Worse still, this corporate endeavour backed wholeheartedly by the US involved direct military support of the Taliban: "It was reported by the media that the US oil company had even provided covert material support to help push the militia northward against Rabbani’s forces." However, as Stobdan also notes, the terrorist antics of Taliban favourite Usama Bin Laden caused a rift in the blossoming US-Taliban relationship, leading the American corporation UNOCAL to indefinitely suspend work on the pipeline in August 1999. It is thus exceedingly hard to see how humanism has played a significant role in defining the policy of the US and the other Western powers toward Afghanistan. On the contrary, strategic and economic interests have evidently far outweighed the West’s professed humanitarian benevolence.[45]

It is in this context that Franz Schurmann, Professor Emeritus of History & Sociology at the University of California, comments on "Washington’s discreet backing of the Taliban", noting the announcement in May 1996 "by UNOCAL that it was preparing to build a pipeline to transport natural gas from Turkmenistan to Pakistan through Western Afghanistan... UNOCAL’s announcement was premised on an imminent Taliban victory."[46]

We should therefore take particular note of the authoritative testimony of US Congressman Dana Rohrabacher concerning American policy toward Afghanistan. Rohrabacher has been involved with Afghanistan since the early 1980s when he worked in the White House as Special Assistant to then US President Ronald Reagan, and he is now a Senior Member of the US House International Relations Committee. Since 1988 he traveled to Afghanistan as a member of the US Congress with mujahideen fighters and participated in the battle of Jalalabhad against the Soviets; he has been involved in US policy toward Afghanistan for twenty years. He has testified as follows: "Having been closely involved in US policy toward Afghanistan for some twenty years, I have called into question whether or not this administration has a covert policy that has empowered the Taliban and enabled this brutal movement to hold on to power. Even though the President and the Secretary of State have voiced their disgust at the brutal policies of the Taliban, especially their repression of women, the actual implementation of US policy has repeatedly had the opposite effect." After documenting a large number of factors indicating tacit US support of the Taliban, Rohrabacher concludes: "I am making the claim that there is and has been a covert policy by this administration to support the Taliban movement’s control of Afghanistan… [T]his amoral or immoral policy is based on the assumption that the Taliban would bring stability to Afghanistan and permit the building of oil pipelines from Central Asia through Afghanistan to Pakistan… I believe the administration has maintained this covert goal and kept the Congress in the dark about its policy of supporting the Taliban, the most anti-Western, anti-female, anti-human rights regime in the world. It doesn’t take a genius to understand that this policy would outrage the American people, especially America’s women. Perhaps the most glaring evidence of our government’s covert policy to favor the Taliban is that the administration is currently engaged in a major effort to obstruct the Congress from determining the details behind this policy. Last year in August, after several unofficial requests were made of the State Department, I made an official request for all diplomatic documents concerning US policy toward the Taliban, especially those cables and documents from our embassies in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. As a senior Member of the House International Relations Committee I have oversight responsibility in this area. In November, after months of stonewalling, the Secretary of State herself promised before the International Relations Committee that the documents would be forthcoming. She reconfirmed that promise in February when she testified before our Committee on the State Department budget. The Chairman of the Committee, Ben Gilman, added his voice to the record in support of my document request. To this time, we have received nothing. There can only be two explanations. Either the State Department is totally incompetent, or there is an ongoing cover-up of the State Department’s true fundamental policy toward Afghanistan. You probably didn’t expect me to praise the State Department at the end of this scathing testimony. But I will. I don’t think the State Department is incompetent. They should be held responsible for their policies and the American people should know, through documented proof, what they are doing."[47]

Thus, as Afghan scholar Noor Ali accurately points out, by its covert policy "to make of Afghanistan a satellite or a protectorate of Pakistan, the US Administration ignored the very objectives of Afghans themselves to repulse the invader, to recover their independence, to establish the style of government of their choice, and to live in peace. It disregarded the aspirations of the Afghan masses who bore the actual burden of the war and rendered an unparalleled sacrifice to the cause of freedom." Rather than providing genuine help to the Afghan people by making available to them "the necessary facilities to rebuild an independent Afghan state and to reconstruct Afghan economy, the US Government has shamefully rewarded Pakistan in authorizing it to control Afghanistan as suzerain through the heads of Units - the warring faction’s leaders [the Taliban] - originated in Pakistan" - evident in America’s failure to condemn the policies of its subservient Pakistani client. "The current warfare in Afghanistan is not a civil war. It is rather an international war among the involved regional states, through their respective proxies - Afghan warring factions - using Afghanistan territory as their battle field… the war is between the interfering foreign powers for their expansionist or protectionist objectives within and beyond the region; the warring factions and their leaders are their surrogates and defacto extension of their state organizations." Summarising the economic and strategic interests of the US that have motivated the current policy, Dr. Ali remarks that the Great Game in Central Asia is not ending, but rather "going on briskly." Today, however, it is "the United States that is looking North and intended to cross Afghanistan from Pakistan so as to be able (i) to sway Iran; (ii) to expand its power beyond the Amou Daria to control the resources of Central Asia; and (iii) to influence the Federation of Russia from South, and the mainland China from North West, as and when required… The US Government, in complicity with its regional allies, and for want of anything better, is trying to put therein a servile government of its own choice so as to possess the necessary leverage to influence the overall politics and economics of the region in accordance with its imperialistic objectives. Pending the identification and installation of such a government the country has to endure the state of anarchy and instability accordingly."[48]

We thus see a clear example of how human rights, democracy and egalitarian social development are directly opposed by deliberate Western policies to further the economic interests of Western corporate elites. In this case, a faction whose policies of brutal repression are extensively documented and well known is being covertly supported at the expense of the Afghan people in the name of US strategic and corporate interests - although of course, this support wavers when the Taliban behaves with overt insolence; for example, in relation to the Bin Laden issue. Evidently, the human rights of the Afghan people is not a very significant factor in the formulation of Western policy toward Afghanistan. AI summarises the crisis: "Civilians are the targets of human rights abuses in a war they have not chosen, by one faction after another... They are pawns in a game of war between armed groups inside Afghanistan backed by different regional powers", with the leading perpetrator of abuses and massacres - the Taliban - covertly supported by the United States. "Meanwhile, the world has watched massacres of civilians without making any meaningful effort to protect them."[49]

------------------------------------------------------

[31] Smith, J. W., ‘Simultaneously Suppressing the World’s Break for Freedom’, op. cit.

[32] Krakowski, Elie, ‘The Afghan Vortex’, IASPS Research Papers in Strategy, No. 9, April 2000.

[33] AI report, Afghanistan: Grave Abuses in the Name of Religion, op. cit; Guardian, 9 October 1996. Also see Financial Times, 9 October 1996.

[34] AI report, Afghanistan: Grave Abuses in the Name of Religion, op. cit.

[35] Vidgen, Ben C., ‘A State of Terror: How many ‘terrorist’ groups has your government established, sponsored or networked laterly?’, op. cit.

[36] Beeman, William O., ‘Follow the Oil Trail - Mess in Afghanistan Partly Our Government’s Fault’, Jinn Magazine (online), Pacific News Service, San Francisco, 24 August 1998, web-site at http://www.pacificnews.org/jinn. Thus, we may note the observation of Hizb ut-Tahrir: "The importance of Pakistan [to the US] comes from the effect it has on neighboring countries like Iran, Afghanistan and India. Pakistan is a powerful tool of American which has established, supported and guarded the Taliban in her control of Afghanistan." (‘An Army General in Pakistan Overthrows the Prime Minister’, Hizb ut-Tahrir,15 October, 1999, http://www.khilafah.com)

[37] Ibid. For a summary of the issue of Caspian oil see Bangash, Zafar, ‘Pipelines in the pipeline: The Scramble for Central Asia’s black gold’, Crescent International, 1-15 June 1997, http://www.muslimedia.org. It is important to note that the US sanctions ‘on the Taliban’, which have been allegedly imposed because of the Taliban’s refusal to give up Usama Bin Laden, do not contradict America’s general supportive tendencies toward the Taliban. This is because the so-called sanctions ‘on the Taliban’ are not actually that - they are sanctions on the people on Afghanistan which have absolutely no effect on the members of the Taliban, and will therefore have no impact on forcing the Taliban to give up Bin Laden, but will rather merely add to the decimation of the innocent Afghan population (see especially Online Center for Afghan Studies, Economic, Humanitarian and Political Impact of the UN Imposed Sanctions, November 1999, http://www.afghan-politics.org). As Beeman similarly points out, the US bombing of a Bin Laden outpost in Afghanistan in response to his alleged prior bombing of US embassies was designed to send a message to the Taliban that they must "ditch Bin Laden", whose anti-Americanism threatened the US-Taliban relationship. However, the action may not ultimately be successful in this regard. If the US-Taliban relationship degrades, this is therefore not because of US concern for human rights, since the US support of the Taliban that has been an ongoing reality for many years is a geopolitical/business-orientated strategy that utterly (and knowingly) disregards the human rights of millions of Afghans (as has been reported for almost decade by numerous human rights organizations). Any such degradation would actually be an effective result of Bin Laden’s anti-Americanism, and its effects on the Taliban’s approach to the US, in light of the US response to the latter.

[38] CNN, ‘US in a diplomatic hard place in dealing with Afghanistan’s Taliban’, CNN, 8 October 1996.

[39] Intra Press Service (IPS), ‘Politics: UN considers arms embargo on Afghanistan’, IPS, 16 December 1997, web-site at http://www.oneworld.org/ips2/dec/afghan.html

[40]Frankfurter Rundschau, October 1996; also see Catalinotto, John, ‘Afghanistan: Battle deepens for central Asian oil’, Workers World News Service, Workers World, 24 October 1996.

[41] Goltz, Thomas, ‘The Caspian Oil Sweepstakes - A Great Game Replayed’, Jinn Magazine (online), Pacific News Service, San Francisco, 15 October 1997, http://www.pacificnews.org/jinn.

[42]Wall Street Journal, 23 May 1997.

[43]New York Times, 26 May 1997.

[44] Fitchett, Joseph, ‘Worries Rise that Taleban May Try to Export Unrest’, International Herald Tribunal, 26 September 1998; also see Gall, Carlotta, ‘Dagestan Skirmish is a Big Russian Risk’, New York Times, 13 August 1999.

[45] Stobdan, P., ‘The Afghan Conflict and Regional Security’, Strategic Analysis (journal of the Institute for Defence & Strategic Analysis [iSDA]), August 1999, Vol. XXIII, No. 5, p. 719-747.

[46] Schurmann, Franz, ‘US Changes Flow of History with New Pipeline Deal’, Jinn Magazine (online), Pacific News Service, San Francisco, 1 August 1997, http://www.pacificnews.org/jinn.

[47] Statement of Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, US Policy Toward Afghanistan, Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on South Asia, 14 April 1999. Rohrabacher includes the following reasons in his analysis: "[1] In 1996, the Taliban first emerged as a mysterious force that swept out of so-called religious schools in Pakistan to a blitzkrieg type of conquest of most of Afghanistan against some very seasoned former-mujahideen fighters. As a so-called ‘student militia’, the Taliban could not have succeeded without the support, organization and logistics of military professionals, who would not have been faculty in religious schools. [2] The US has a very close relationship with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, in matters concerning Afghanistan, but unfortunately, instead of providing leadership, we are letting them lead our policy. This began during the Afghan war against the Soviets. I witnessed this in the White House when US officials in charge of the military aid program to the mujahideen permitted a large percentage of our assistance to be channeled to the most anti-western non-democratic elements of the mujahideen, such as Golbodin Hekmatayar. This was done to placate the Pakistan ISI military intelligence. [3] In 1997, responding to the pleas of the Afghan-American community and the recognized Afghanistan ambassador, I led an effort to stop the State Department from permitting the Afghanistan embassy in Washington from being taken under the control of a diplomat loyal to the Taliban. Instead, of permitting a new ambassador who was assigned by the non-Taliban Afghan government that is still recognized at the United Nations, the State Department claimed ‘we don’t take sides’, and forced the embassy to be closed against the will of the Afghanistan United Nations office. [4] During late 1997 and early 1998, while the Taliban imposed a blockade on more than two million people of the Hazara ethnic group in central Afghanistan, putting tens of thousands at risk of starving to death or perishing from a lack of medicine during the harsh winter months, the State Department undercut my efforts to send in two plane loads of medicines by the Americans and the Knightsbridge relief agencies. State Department representatives made false statements that the humanitarian crisis was exaggerated and there was already sufficient medical supplies in the blockaded area. When the relief teams risked their lives to go into the area with the medicines - without the support of the State Department they found the hospitals and clinics did not have even aspirins or bandages, no generators for heat in sub-zero weather, a serious lack of blankets and scant amounts of food. The State Department, in effect, was assisting the Taliban's inhuman blockade intended to starve out communities that opposed their dictates. [5] Perhaps the most glaring evidence of this administration's tacit support of the was the effort made during a Spring 1998 visit to Afghanistan by Mr. Indefurth and U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson. These administration representatives convinced the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance not to go on the offensive against a then-weakened and vulnerable Taliban. And instead convinced these anti-Taliban leaders to accept a cease-fire that was proposed by Pakistan. The cease fire lasted only as long as it took the Pakistanis to resupply and reorganize the Taliban. In fact, within a few months of announcement of the US-backed ‘Ulema’ process, the Taliban, freshly supplied by the ISI and flush with drug money, went on a major offensive and destroyed the Northern Alliance. This was either incompetence on the part of the State Department and U.S. intelligence agencies or indicative of the real policy of our government to ensure a Taliban victory. [6] Can anyone believe that with the Taliban, identified by the United Nations and the DEA as one of the two largest producers of opium in the world, that they weren't being closely monitored by our intelligence services, who would have seen every move of the military build up that the Pakistanis and Taliban were undertaking. In addition, at the same time the U.S. was planning its strike against the terrorist camps of Osama bin laden in Afghanistan. How could our intelligence services not have known that Osama bin Laden's forces had moved north to lead the Taliban offensive, where horrendous brutality took place. [7] In addition, there has been no major effort to end the flow of opium out of Afghanistan, which is the main source of the revenues that enables the Taliban to maintain control of the country, even though the US Government observes by satellite where the opium is grown."

[48] Ali, Noor, US-UN Conspiracy Against the People of Afghanistan, Online Center for Afghan Studies, 21 February 1998,

[49] AI news release, ‘Afghanistan: Civilians in a game of war they have not chosen’, Amnesty International, London, 27 May 1999.

[__Kratos__]

Nothing more then accussing the US of really helping them out. Did the US have interests in the country? Sure. The US trades with a lot of countries that aren't to par with being great. China is a HUGE example of this. China has widespread human rights abuses, sever government censorship and isn't our friend all the time in the UN. Shouldn't that be what a country does... Look out for it's self first before all others? It's a sink or swim world out there, you can't afford to drop connections with everybody you have a disagreement with. You pick and choose your battles.

[Bone_Collector]

You miss the point where Pakistan helps the Taliban?

But it was Pakistan that helped US defeat Taliban. They do not support them openly, Musharraf is trying his best to keep a lot of Islamic fanatics at bay and lead Pakistan towards development. While he cannot openly denounce them, he cannot even give 100% support to US. He has to do a very delicate balancing act if he has to stay in power.

Threatening to bomb Pakistan "back to the stone age?" What arrogance! Anyways, it's about time Pakistan stops harboring terrorists and does something substantial to curb the fanatics.

[__Kratos__]

But it was Pakistan that helped US defeat Taliban. They do not support them openly, Musharraf is trying his best to keep a lot of Islamic fanatics at bay and lead Pakistan towards development. While he cannot openly denounce them, he cannot even give 100% support to US. He has to do a very delicate balancing act if he has to stay in power.

Threatening to bomb Pakistan "back to the stone age?" What arrogance! Anyways, it's about time Pakistan stops harboring terrorists and does something substantial to curb the fanatics.

Yeah, that they did.

The threat was after Sept. 11th 2001 so it's not like last week the US made this threat.

Yes, they really should work on those.

[Bella-Angelique]

It seems like US thinks that it has the right to bomb just about anybody, anytime.

Why yes. That is absolutely correct. If anyone kills US citizens they can expect to get plowed under if the US government feels that is best. It is called self defense.

If any nation has a problem with the USA there is a simple solution. Cut off all diplomatic and economic ties with the USA. If your nation refuses to do this then the problem is really not the USA, the problem is your own nation.

[RedEyeJedi]

Kratos: It is well known that the US backed the Taliban's rise to power. As did the UK. All war is a racket.

[__Kratos__]

Kratos: It is well known that the US backed the Taliban's rise to power. As did the UK. All war is a racket.

Hear that knocking at your door? They're finally going to get you.

• NEW: Ex-deputy secretary of state denies that he made such a threat

Source

Well that's interesting. The Ex-CIA director was on CNN this morning as well talking about how the Ex-deputy was talking to the general of Pakistan and not the president... So it's being looked at how the general replayed the conversation back to the president. It was more then likely a heated talk.

[Cinders]

Kratos: It is well known that the US backed the Taliban's rise to power. As did the UK. All war is a racket.

Yea it is.. I was not so surprised that this news has come out. After all, the Bush Administration basically "frightened" the American voting public into voting for him in the last election.