-Caveat Lector-
once again- this is a twisting of facts
it is WIDELY reported about the US role in the rise of the taliban, even on
the most mainstream news sources such as cnn, and the networks.
--
Doubt.
Doubt thyself.
Doubt even if thou doubtest thyself.
Doubt all.
Doubt even if thou doubtest all.
It seems sometimes as if beneath all conscious doubt
there lay some deepest certainty. O kill it! Slay the
snake!
The horn of the Doubt-Goat be exalted
Dive deeper, ever deeper, into the Abyss of Mind,
until thou unearth the fox THAT. On, hounds!
Yoicks! Tally-ho! Bring THAT to bay!
Then, wind the Mort!
Uncle Al. the kiddies pal
NEURONAUTIC INSTITUTE on-line: http://home.earthlink.net/~thew
> From: Euphorian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Reply-To: Conspiracy Theory Research List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 01:43:34 -0500
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [CTRL] Afghani Tribal Dances
>
> -Caveat Lector-
>
> From www.wsws.org
> WSWS : News & Analysis : The US War in Afghanistan
> The Taliban, the US and the resources of Central Asia
> Part 1
> By Peter Symonds
> 24 October 2001
> Back to screen version| Send this link by email | Email the author
> The following is the first article in a two-part series on the
> history of the Taliban movement in Afghanistan. The concluding part
> will be published tomorrow.
> The target of the latest US military aggression in Afghanistan is the
> Taliban. However, one searches in vain in the extensive media
> coverage of the “war on terrorism” for any coherent explanation of
> the origins of this Islamic extremist organisation, its social and
> ideological base, and its rise to power. The omission is no accident.
> Any serious examination of the Taliban reveals the culpability of
> Washington in fostering the current theocratic regime in Kabul.
> The Bush administration rails against the Taliban for harbouring the
> Islamic extremist Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda organisation. But
> throughout the 1980s, successive US administrations spent billions of
> dollars funding the Islamic holy war or jihad by Mujaheddin fighters
> against the Moscow-backed regime in Kabul in order to undermine the
> Soviet Union. Moreover, until the late 1990s, the US turned a blind
> eye to the Islamic fundamentalism and regressive social policies of
> the Taliban, which was backed and funded by two of Washington’s
> closest allies in the region—Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
> The primary factor in determining the twists and turns of
> Washington’s orientation in Afghanistan has not been the threat from
> Islamic extremism but how best to exploit the new opportunities that
> opened up in Central Asia following the collapse of the Soviet Union
> in 1991. Throughout the last decade, the US has been vying with
> Russia, China, the European powers and Japan for political influence
> in this key strategic region and for the right to exploit the world’s
> largest untapped reserves of oil and gas in the newly formed Central
> Asian republics—Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and
> Kyrgyzstan.
>
> The key to the huge potential profits in Central Asia was
> distribution—how to transport the oil and gas from this isolated,
> backward and landlocked region to the world’s main energy markets.
> The only existing pipelines were those of the old Soviet distribution
> network through Russia. As the scramble for resources in the region
> intensified, the US aims were clear. It wanted to undermine Russia’s
> economic monopoly while at the same time making sure that other
> rivals were kept out of the race. The pipelines therefore had to run
> through countries over which the US could exert substantial political
> influence, which excluded China and Iran.
> The Central Asian republics were previously part of the Soviet Union
> and had long borders with both China and Iran. So a pipeline that
> excluded Russia, China and Iran left two alternatives. One was a
> convoluted route under the Caspian Sea, through the Caucasus via
> Azerbaijan and Georgia, and then across Turkey. The second through
> Afghanistan and Pakistan was shorter, but immediately raised
> difficult political questions. With whom was one to negotiate in
> Afghanistan and how could the political stability necessary to
> construct and maintain pipelines be guaranteed?
> Following the fall of the Soviet-backed regime of Mohammad Najibullah
> in 1992, Kabul had been turned into a battleground by competing
> Mujaheddin militia. The nominal head of government was Professor
> Burhanuddin Rabbani, who presided over a highly unstable and shifting
> coalition, based mainly on ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks from northern
> Afghanistan. The rival Hizb-e-Islami militia, drawn from the Pashtun
> majority in southern Afghanistan, was also entrenched in the suburbs
> of Kabul. Led by Gulbuddin Hikmetyar, it was subjecting government
> positions in the capital to withering rocket barrages.
> Arrayed on either side of the conflict, which was reducing the
> capital to rubble and producing wave after wave of refugees, were
> other militia groups reflecting the country’s myriad of ethnic and
> religious divisions. The rivalries reflected not only local
> animosities but the interests of various sponsor states, each seeking
> to establish its own predominance. Pakistan supported Hikmetyar, Iran
> backed the Shiite Hazaras, and Saudi Arabia financed a number of
> groups, particularly those sympathetic to its brand of
> Islam—Wahabbism. The Central Asian republics had connections to the
> ethnic groups in northern Afghanistan and, in the background, India,
> Russia and the US all had a hand in Afghani political affairs.
> The situation in Kabul was a microcosm of the country as a whole. The
> Rabbani government exercised no real authority beyond the areas under
> its immediate military control. The country was carved up among rival
> militia, the economy was in ruins and the social fabric in tatters.
> Over a million people died in the war against the Soviet-backed
> regime in the 1980s and many more were refugees. By the mid-1990s,
> life expectancy was just 43-44 years and a quarter of all children
> died before the age of five. Only 29 percent of people had access to
> health care and a mere 12 percent to safe water.
> The Pashtun areas in the south, where the Taliban emerged in 1994,
> were among the most chaotic. Kandahar, the country’s second largest
> city, was divided between three rival warlords, and the surrounding
> areas were subject to the arbitrary and often brutal rule of dozens
> of militia commanders. The region, which was one of Afghanistan’s
> most economically backward and socially conservative, had
> traditionally provided the country’s royal rulers. Local resentment
> towards Kabul’s new Tajik and Uzbek leadership was intertwined with
> desperation produced by the intolerable economic and social
> conditions.
> Southern Afghanistan was, however, also the preferred route for a
> number of proposed pipelines from Turkmenistan to Pakistan. An
> Argentinean corporation, Bridas, was the first to enter the race. The
> company obtained rights in Turkmenistan in 1992 and 1993 to explore
> and exploit the country’s gas fields, and in 1994, opened up
> discussions with the Turkmen and Pakistani governments over the
> construction of a gas pipeline, leading to the signing of an
> agreement for a feasibility study in early 1995. Bridas initially
> attempted to involve US energy giant, Unocal, in the project. Unocal
> had plans of its own and later that year signed a separate pipeline
> agreement, triggering sharp rivalry and a legal battle between the
> two companies.
> All of the pipeline plans assumed that a political solution could be
> found to the chaotic conditions that existed along the proposed
> route. Other lesser business interests were also keen to clear out
> the petty warlords and militia. The road from Quetta in Pakistan
> through Kandahar and Herat to Turkmenistan offered the only
> alternative transport route to the northern road to Central Asia
> through embattled Kabul. The transport companies and truck owners
> involved in the profitable Central Asian trade and smuggling rackets
> were compelled to pay large tolls to each militia commander as their
> vehicles crossed his turf—a situation they wanted to end.
> The origins of the Taliban
> In the midst of these discussions, the Taliban movement appeared as a
> possible solution. That is not to say that the Taliban—students or
> “talibs” drawn from Islamic schools or “madrassas”—was simply a
> creation of governments and business interests. The sudden emergence
> of this new movement in 1994 and the rapidity of its growth and
> success was the product of two factors—firstly, the social and
> political quagmire that produced a ready supply of recruits, and
> secondly, external aid from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and, in all
> likelihood, the US, in the form of finance, arms and advisers.
> Although a number of Taliban leaders had fought in the US-sponsored
> “jihad” against the Soviet Union, the movement was not a breakaway
> from, or an amalgamation of, other Mujaheddin factions. It was
> largely based on a new generation who had not been directly involved
> in the fighting of the 1980s. They were hostile to what they saw as
> the corrupt rule of petty Mujaheddin despots who had brought nothing
> but misery to the lives of ordinary Afghanis in the wake of
> Najibullah’s fall. Their own lives had been torn apart by war. Many
> of them had grown up in the refugee camps inside Pakistan and
> received a rudimentary education in the madrassas run by various
> Pakistani Islamic extremist parties.
> One author provided the following description: “These boys were a
> world apart from the Mujaheddin whom I had got to know during the
> 1980s—men who could recount their tribal and clan lineages,
> remembered their abandoned farms and valleys with nostalgia and
> recounted legends and stories from Afghan history. These boys were
> from a generation who had never seen their country at peace—an
> Afghanistan not at war with invaders and itself... They were
> literally the orphans of the war, the rootless and the restless, the
> jobless and the economically deprived with little self-knowledge...
> “Their simple belief in a messianic, puritan Islam which had been
> drummed into them by simple village mullahs was the only prop they
> had to hold on to and which gave their lives some meaning. Untrained
> for anything, even the traditional occupations of their forefathers
> such as farming, herding or the making of handicrafts, they were what
> Karl Marx would have termed Afghanistan’s lumpen proletariat”
> [Taliban: Islam, Oil and the New Great Game in Central Asia, Ahmed
> Rashid, I.B Tauris, 2000, p.32].
> The Taliban’s ideology was a jumble of ideas that had evolved to
> appeal to these social layers. From the very outset, the movement was
> profoundly reactionary. It looked backward for its social solutions
> to a mythical past when the precepts of the prophet Mohammad were
> strictly observed. It was deeply imbued with the virulent anti-
> communism that had been generated by the brutality and repression of
> successive Soviet-backed regimes in Kabul, which had falsely ruled
> under the banner of “socialism”.
> Like the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the Taliban reflected the suspicion
> and hostility of oppressed rural layers towards urban life, learning,
> culture and technology. Its leaders were semi-educated village
> mullahs, not learned Islamic scholars versed in the scriptures and
> religious commentaries. They were hostile to other Islamic sects,
> particularly the Shias, and to non-Pashtun ethnic groups. The
> Taliban’s regressive social code drew as much from Pashtun tribal
> laws, or Pashtunwali, as from any Islamic tradition. In as much as
> its ideology had an Islamic base it was Deobandism—an influential
> 19th century reform movement—but in a form that was stripped of
> anything remotely progressive.
> The Taliban emerged in war-ravaged Afghanistan as a type of clerical
> fascism. It reflected the despair and desperation of uprooted and
> declassed layers of the rural petty bourgeoisie—the sons of mullahs,
> petty officials, small farmers and traders—who could see no
> alternative to the social evils that abounded in Afghanistan other
> than through the imposition of a dictatorial Islamic regime.
> The Taliban’s own account of its origins provide an insight into its
> appeal. In July 1994, the Taliban’s top leader Mohammad Omar, then a
> village mullah, responded to pleas for assistance in freeing two
> girls who had been kidnapped by a local militia commander and raped.
> Omar, who had fought in one of the Mujaheddin organisations, gathered
> together a group of his supporters among the religious students of
> the local madrassas. Armed with a handful of rifles, the group
> released the girls, captured the commander and hung him from the
> barrel of his tank.
> Whatever the truth of the story, the Taliban portrayed themselves as
> religious vigilantes, intent on righting the wrongs inflicted on
> ordinary people. Its leaders insisted that the movement, unlike the
> Mujaheddin organisations, was not a political party and not out to
> form a government. They claimed to be clearing the way for a true
> Islamic administration and, on that basis, demanded great sacrifices
> from their recruits, who received no pay, only weapons and food.
> Pakistani assistance
> There was always, however, a large gulf between the image and
> reality. If the Taliban were to be more than a group of armed
> religious zealots engaged in hit-and-run guerrilla warfare, the
> movement required large amounts of money, arms and ammunition, as
> well as considerable technical and military expertise—none of which
> would be forthcoming from its impoverished recruits.
> From the outset, the Taliban’s most prominent sponsor was Pakistan.
> Pakistan’s powerful Interservices Intelligence (ISI), which had been
> the principal conduit for US money, arms and expertise to the
> Mujaheddin groups throughout the 1980s, was deeply enmeshed in
> Afghani politics. By 1994, the government of Benazir Bhutto had held
> talks with the Argentinean company Bridas, but was no closer to
> clearing a route through southern Afghanistan. Pakistan’s main proxy,
> Hikmetyar, was bogged down in the fighting in Kabul and was unlikely
> to provide a solution.
> Casting around for an alternative, Bhutto’s Interior Minister
> Naseerullah Babar hit upon the idea of using the Taliban. In
> September 1994, he organised a team of surveyors and ISI officers to
> survey the road through Kandahar and Herat to Turkmenistan. The
> following month, Bhutto flew to Turkmenistan where she secured the
> backing of two key warlords—Rashid Dostum, who controlled areas of
> Afghanistan near the Turkmen border, and Ismail Khan, who ruled over
> Herat. In a bid to attract international financial support, Pakistan
> also flew a number of foreign diplomats based in Islamabad to
> Kandahar and Herat.
> Having secured a measure of support for his plan, Interior Minister
> Babar organised a trial convoy of 30 military trucks, manned by ex-
> army drivers under the command of a senior ISI field officer and
> guarded by Taliban fighters. The trucks set off on October 29 1994,
> and, when the path was blocked, the Taliban dealt with the militia
> responsible. By November 5, the Taliban had not only cleared the road
> but, with minimal fighting, taken control of Kandahar.
> Over the next three months, the Taliban took control of 12 of
> Afghanistan’s 31 provinces. At least some of its “victories” were
> secured with large bribes to local militia commanders. After
> suffering military reversals in mid-1995, the Taliban rearmed and
> reorganised with Pakistani assistance and in September 1995 entered
> Herat, effectively clearing the road from Pakistan to Central Asia.
> The following month, Unocal signed its pipeline deal with
> Turkmenistan.
> Pakistan has always been cautious about admitting any direct support
> for the Taliban, but the links are quite open. The Taliban has close
> connections with the Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam (JUI), a Pakistani-based
> Islamic extremist party, which ran its own madrassas in the border
> areas with Afghanistan. The JUI has provided the Taliban with large
> numbers of recruits from its schools, as well as a communication
> channel into the upper echelons of the Pakistani military and ISI.
> The most telling sign of outside involvement was the military success
> of the Taliban. In little more than a year, it had grown from a
> handful of students to a well-organised militia that could muster up
> to 20,000 fighters, backed by tanks, artillery and air support,
> controlling large swathes of southern and western Afghanistan.
> As one writer observed: “It is also inconceivable that a force
> composed mostly of former guerrillas and student amateurs could have
> operated with the degree of skill and organisation which the Taliban
> showed almost from the outset of their operations. While there were
> undoubtedly former members of the Afghani armed forces among their
> numbers, the speed and sophistication with which their offensives
> were conducted, and the quality of such elements as their
> communications, air support and artillery bombardments, lead to the
> inescapable conclusion that they must have owed much to a Pakistani
> military presence, or at least professional support” [Afghanistan: A
> New History, Martin Ewers, Curzon, 2001, pp182-3].
> Pakistan was not the only source of assistance. Saudi Arabia also
> provided substantial financial and material aid. Shortly after the
> Taliban took control of Kandahar, JUI head Maulana Fazlur Rehman
> began to organise “hunting trips” for royalty from Saudi Arabia and
> the Gulf States. By mid-1996, Saudi Arabia was sending funds,
> vehicles and fuel to support the Taliban’s push on Kabul. The reasons
> were two-fold. On the political plane, the Taliban’s fundamentalist
> ideology was close to the Saudi’s own Wahabbism. It was hostile to
> the Shiite sect and thus to Riyadh’s major regional rival—Iran. On a
> more prosaic level, the Saudi oil company, Delta Oil, was a partner
> in the Unocal pipeline and was pinning its hopes on a Taliban victory
> to get the project off the ground.
> Copyright 1998-2001
> World Socialist Web Site
> All rights reserved
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed
> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
> In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material
> is distributed without charge or profit to those who have
> expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information
> for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
> The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
> new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
> "Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe
> simply because it has been handed down for many generations. Do not
> believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do
> not believe in anything simply because it is written in Holy Scriptures. Do
> not
> believe in anything merely on the authority of Teachers, elders or wise men.
> Believe only after careful observation and analysis, when you find that it
> agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all.
> Then accept it and live up to it."
> The Buddha on Belief, from the Kalama Sutta
> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
> A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled
> one is truly vanquished. -Johann Christoph Schiller,
> German Writer (1759-1805)
> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
> It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that
> prevents us from living freely and nobly. -Bertrand Russell
> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
> "Everyone has the right...to seek, receive and impart
> information and ideas through any media and regardless
> of frontiers."
> Universal Declaration of Human Rights
> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
> "Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will
> teach you to keep your mouth shut."
> --- Ernest Hemingway
>
> <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A>
> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
> ==========
> CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
> screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are
> sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis-
> directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with
> major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
> That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
> always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
> credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
>
> Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
> ========================================================================
> Archives Available at:
> http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
> <A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>
>
> http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
> <A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/";>ctrl</A>
> ========================================================================
> To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
> SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
> SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> Om
<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
<A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
<A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/";>ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
