US planned war in Afghanistan long before September 11
By Patrick Martin
20 November 2001
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Insider accounts published in the British, French and Indian media have
revealed that US officials threatened war against Afghanistan during the
summer of 2001. These reports include the prediction, made in July, that
“if the military action went ahead, it would take place before the snows
started falling in Afghanistan, by the middle of October at the latest.”
The Bush administration began its bombing strikes on the hapless,
poverty-stricken country October 7, and ground attacks by US Special
Forces began October 19.
It is not an accident that these revelations have appeared overseas,
rather than in the US. The ruling classes in these countries have their
own economic and political interests to look after, which do not
coincide, and in some cases directly clash, with the drive by the
American ruling elite to seize control of oil-rich territory in Central
Asia.
The American media has conducted a systematic cover-up of the real
economic and strategic interests that underlie the war against
Afghanistan, in order to sustain the pretense that the war emerged
overnight, full-blown, in response to the terrorist attacks of September
11.
The pundits for the American television networks and major daily
newspapers celebrate the rapid military defeat of the Taliban regime as
an unexpected stroke of good fortune. They distract public attention
from the conclusion that any serious observer would be compelled to draw
from the events of the past two weeks: that the speedy victory of the
US-backed forces reveals careful planning and preparation by the
American military, which must have begun well before the attacks on the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The official American myth is that “everything changed” on the day four
airliners were hijacked and nearly 5,000 people murdered. The US
military intervention in Afghanistan, by this account, was hastily
improvised in less than a month. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz, in a television interview November 18, actually claimed that
only three weeks went into planning the military onslaught.
This is only one of countless lies emanating from the Pentagon and White
House about the war against Afghanistan. The truth is that the US
intervention was planned in detail and carefully prepared long before
the terrorist attacks provided the pretext for setting it in motion. If
history had skipped over September 11, and the events of that day had
never happened, it is very likely that the United States would have gone
to war in Afghanistan anyway, and on much the same schedule.
Afghanistan and the scramble for oil
The United States ruling elite has been contemplating war in Central
Asia for at least a decade. As long ago as 1991, following the defeat of
Iraq in the Persian Gulf War, Newsweek magazine published an article
headlined “Operation Steppe Shield?” It reported that the US military
was preparing an operation in Kazakhstan modeled on the Operation Desert
Shield deployment in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq.
If the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union provided the opportunity for
the projection of American power into Central Asia, the discovery of
vast oil and gas reserves provided the incentive. While the Caspian Sea
coast of Azerbaijan (Baku) has been an oil production center for a
century, it was only in the past decade that huge new reserves were
discovered in the northwest Caspian (Kazakhstan) and in Turkmenistan,
near the southwest Caspian.
American oil companies have acquired rights to as much as 75 percent of
the output of these new fields, and US government officials have hailed
the Caspian and Central Asia as a potential alternative to dependence on
oil from the unstable Persian Gulf region. American troops have followed
in the wake of these contracts. US Special Forces began joint operations
with Kazakhstan in 1997 and with Uzbekistan a year later, training for
intervention especially in the mountainous southern region that includes
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and northern Afghanistan.
The major problem in exploiting the energy riches of Central Asia is how
to get the oil and gas from the landlocked region to the world market.
US officials have opposed using either the Russian pipeline system or
the easiest available land route, across Iran to the Persian Gulf.
Instead, over the past decade, US oil companies and government officials
have explored a series of alternative pipeline routes—west through
Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey to the Mediterranean; east through
Kazakhstan and China to the Pacific; and, most relevant to the current
crisis, south from Turkmenistan across western Afghanistan and Pakistan
to the Indian Ocean.
The Afghanistan pipeline route was pushed by the US-based Unocal oil
company, which engaged in intensive negotiations with the Taliban
regime. These talks, however, ended in disarray in 1998, as US relations
with Afghanistan were inflamed by the bombing of US embassies in Kenya
and Tanzania, for which Osama bin Laden was held responsible. In August
1998, the Clinton administration launched cruise missile attacks on
alleged bin Laden training camps in eastern Afghanistan. The US
government demanded that the Taliban hand over bin Laden and imposed
economic sanctions. The pipeline talks languished.
Subverting the Taliban
Throughout 1999 the US pressure on Afghanistan increased. On February 3
of that year, Assistant Secretary of State Karl E. Inderfurth and State
Department counterterrorism chief Michael Sheehan traveled to Islamabad,
Pakistan, to meet the Taliban’s deputy foreign minister, Abdul Jalil.
They warned him that the US would hold the government of Afghanistan
responsible for any further terrorist acts by bin Laden.
According to a report in the Washington Post (October 3, 2001), the
Clinton administration and Nawaz Sharif, then prime minister of
Pakistan, agreed on a joint covert operation to kill Osama bin Laden in
1999. The US would supply satellite intelligence, air support and
financing, while Pakistan supplied the Pushtun-speaking operatives who
would penetrate southern Afghanistan and carry out the actual killing.
The Pakistani commando team was up and running and ready to strike by
October 1999, the Post reported. One former official told the newspaper,
“It was an enterprise. It was proceeding.” Clinton aides were delighted
at the prospect of a successful assassination, with one declaring, “It
was like Christmas.”
The attack was aborted on October 12, 1999, when Sharif was overthrown
in a military coup by General Pervez Musharraf, who halted the proposed
covert operation. The Clinton administration had to settle for a UN
Security Council resolution that demanded the Taliban turn over bin
Laden to “appropriate authorities,” but did not require he be handed
over to the United States.
McFarlane and Abdul Haq
US subversion against the Taliban continued in 2000, according to an
account published November 2 in the Wall Street Journal, written by
Robert McFarlane, former national security adviser in the Reagan
administration. McFarlane was hired by two wealthy Chicago commodity
speculators, Joseph and James Ritchie, to assist them in recruiting and
organizing anti-Taliban guerrillas among Afghan refugees in Pakistan.
Their principal Afghan contact was Abdul Haq, the former mujahedin
leader who was executed by the Taliban last month after an unsuccessful
attempt to spark a revolt in his home province.
McFarlane held meetings with Abdul Haq and other former mujahedin in the
course of the fall and winter of 2000. After the Bush administration
took office, McFarlane parlayed his Republican connections into a series
of meetings with State Department, Pentagon and even White House
officials. All encouraged the preparation of an anti-Taliban military
campaign.
During the summer, long before the United States launched airstrikes on
the Taliban, James Ritchie traveled to Tajikistan with Abdul Haq and
Peter Tomsen, who had been the US special envoy to the Afghan opposition
during the first Bush administration. There they met with Ahmed Shah
Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance, with the goal of
coordinating their Pakistan-based attacks with the only military force
still offering resistance to the Taliban.
Finally, according to McFarlane, Abdul Haq “decided in mid-August to go
ahead and launch operations in Afghanistan. He returned to Peshawar,
Pakistan, to make final preparations.” In other words, this phase of the
anti-Taliban war was under way well before September 11.
While the Ritchies have been portrayed in the American media as
freelance operators motivated by emotional ties to Afghanistan, a
country they lived in briefly while their father worked as a civil
engineer in the 1950s, at least one report suggests a link to the oil
pipeline discussions with the Taliban. In 1998 James Ritchie visited
Afghanistan to discuss with the Taliban a plan to sponsor small
businesses there. He was accompanied by an official from Delta Oil of
Saudi Arabia, which was seeking to build a gas pipeline across
Afghanistan in partnership with an Argentine firm.
A CIA secret war
McFarlane’s revelations come in the course of a bitter diatribe against
the CIA for “betraying” Abdul Haq, failing to back his operations in
Afghanistan, and leaving him to die at the hands of the Taliban. The CIA
evidently regarded both McFarlane and Abdul Haq as less than
reliable—and it had its own secret war going on in the same region, the
southern half of Afghanistan where the population is predominantly
Pushtun-speaking.
According to a front-page article in the Washington Post November 18,
the CIA has been mounting paramilitary operations in southern
Afghanistan since 1997. The article carries the byline of Bob Woodward,
the Post writer made famous by Watergate, who is a frequent conduit for
leaks from top-level military and intelligence officials.
Woodward provides details about the CIA’s role in the current military
conflict, which includes the deployment of a secret paramilitary unit,
the Special Activities Division. This force began combat on September
27, using both operatives on the ground and Predator surveillance drones
equipped with missiles that could be launched by remote control.
The Special Activities Division, Woodward reports, “consists of teams of
about half a dozen men who do not wear military uniforms. The division
has about 150 fighters, pilots and specialists, and is made up mostly of
hardened veterans who have retired from the US military.
“For the last 18 months, the CIA has been working with tribes and
warlords in southern Afghanistan, and the division’s units have helped
create a significant new network in the region of the Taliban’s greatest
strength.”
This means that the US spy agency was engaged in attacks against the
Afghan regime—what under other circumstances the American government
would call terrorism—from the spring of 2000, more than a year before
the suicide hijackings that destroyed the World Trade Center and damaged
the Pentagon.
War plans take shape
With the installation of George Bush in the White House, the focus of
American policy in Afghanistan shifted from a limited incursion to kill
or capture bin Laden to preparing a more robust military intervention
directed at the Taliban regime as a whole.
The British-based Jane’s International Security reported March 15, 2001
that the new American administration was working with India, Iran and
Russia “in a concerted front against Afghanistan’s Taliban regime.”
India was supplying the Northern Alliance with military equipment,
advisers and helicopter technicians, the magazine said, and both India
and Russia were using bases in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan for their
operations.
The magazine added: “Several recent meetings between the newly
instituted Indo-US and Indo-Russian joint working groups on terrorism
led to this effort to tactically and logistically counter the Taliban.
Intelligence sources in Delhi said that while India, Russia and Iran
were leading the anti-Taliban campaign on the ground, Washington was
giving the Northern Alliance information and logistic support.”
On May 23, the White House announced the appointment of Zalmay Khalilzad
to a position on the National Security Council as special assistant to
the president and senior director for Gulf, Southwest Asia and Other
Regional Issues. Khalilzad is a former official in the Reagan and the
first Bush administrations. After leaving the government, he went to
work for Unocal.
On June 26 of this year, the magazine IndiaReacts reported more details
of the cooperative efforts of the US, India, Russia and Iran against the
Taliban regime. “India and Iran will ‘facilitate’ US and Russian plans
for ‘limited military action’ against the Taliban if the contemplated
tough new economic sanctions don’t bend Afghanistan’s fundamentalist
regime,” the magazine said.
At this stage of military planning, the US and Russia were to supply
direct military assistance to the Northern Alliance, working through
Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, in order to roll back the Taliban lines
toward the city of Mazar-e-Sharif—a scenario strikingly similar to what
actually took place over the past two weeks. An unnamed third country
supplied the Northern Alliance with anti-tank rockets that had already
been put to use against the Taliban in early June.
“Diplomats say that the anti-Taliban move followed a meeting between US
Secretary of State Colin Powell and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov
and later between Powell and Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh in
Washington,” the magazine added. “Russia, Iran and India have also held
a series of discussions and more diplomatic activity is expected.”
Unlike the current campaign, the original plan involved the use of
military forces from both Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, as well as Russia
itself. IndiaReacts said that in early June Russian President Vladimir
Putin told a meeting of the Confederation of Independent States, which
includes many of the former Soviet republics, that military action
against the Taliban was in the offing. One effect of September 11 was to
create the conditions for the United States to intervene on its own,
without any direct participation by the military forces of the Soviet
successor states, and thus claim an undisputed American right to dictate
the shape of a settlement in Afghanistan.
The US threatens war—before September 11
In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon, two reports appeared in the British media
indicating that the US government had threatened military action against
Afghanistan several months before September 11.
The BBC’s George Arney reported September 18 that American officials had
told former Pakistani Foreign Secretary Niaz Naik in mid-July of plans
for military action against the Taliban regime:
“Mr. Naik said US officials told him of the plan at a UN-sponsored
international contact group on Afghanistan which took place in Berlin.
“Mr. Naik told the BBC that at the meeting the US representatives told
him that unless Bin Laden was handed over swiftly America would take
military action to kill or capture both Bin Laden and the Taliban
leader, Mullah Omar.
“The wider objective, according to Mr. Naik, would be to topple the
Taliban regime and install a transitional government of moderate Afghans
in its place—possibly under the leadership of the former Afghan King
Zahir Shah.
“Mr. Naik was told that Washington would launch its operation from bases
in Tajikistan, where American advisers were already in place.
“He was told that Uzbekistan would also participate in the operation and
that 17,000 Russian troops were on standby.
“Mr. Naik was told that if the military action went ahead it would take
place before the snows started falling in Afghanistan, by the middle of
October at the latest.”
Four days later, on September 22, the Guardian newspaper confirmed this
account. The warnings to Afghanistan came out of a four-day meeting of
senior US, Russian, Iranian and Pakistani officials at a hotel in Berlin
in mid-July, the third in a series of back-channel conferences dubbed
“brainstorming on Afghanistan.”
The participants included Naik, together with three Pakistani generals;
former Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations Saeed Rajai Khorassani;
Abdullah Abdullah, foreign minister of the Northern Alliance; Nikolai
Kozyrev, former Russian special envoy to Afghanistan, and several other
Russian officials; and three Americans: 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.
The meeting was convened by Francesc Vendrell, then and now the deputy
chief UN representative for Afghanistan. While the nominal purpose of
the conference was to discuss the possible outline of a political
settlement in Afghanistan, the Taliban refused to attend. The Americans
discussed the shift in policy toward Afghanistan from Clinton to Bush,
and strongly suggested that military action was an option.
While all three American former officials denied making any specific
threats, Coldren told the Guardian, “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.” Naik, however, cited one
American declaring that action against bin Laden was imminent: “This
time they were very sure. They had all the intelligence and would not
miss him this time. It would be aerial action, maybe helicopter
gunships, and not only overt, but from very close proximity to
Afghanistan.”
The Guardian summarized: “The threats of war unless the Taliban
surrendered Osama bin Laden were passed to the regime in Afghanistan by
the Pakistani government, senior diplomatic sources revealed yesterday.
The Taliban refused to comply but the serious nature of what they were
told raises the possibility that Bin Laden, far from launching the
attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon out of
the blue 10 days ago, was launching a pre-emptive strike in response to
what he saw as US threats.”
Bush, oil and Taliban
Further light on secret contacts between the Bush administration and the
Taliban regime is shed by a book released November 15 in France,
entitled Bin Laden, the Forbidden Truth, written by Jean-Charles Brisard
and Guillaume Dasquie. Brisard is a former French secret service agent,
author of a previous report on bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network, and former
director of strategy for the French corporation Vivendi, while Dasquie
is an investigative journalist.
The two French authors write that the Bush administration was willing to
accept the Taliban regime, despite the charges of sponsoring terrorism,
if it cooperated with plans for the development of the oil resources of
Central Asia.
Until August, they claim, the US government saw the Taliban “as a source
of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of an
oil pipeline across Central Asia.” It was only when the Taliban refused
to accept US conditions that “this rationale of energy security changed
into a military one.”
By way of corroboration, one should note the curious fact that neither
the Clinton administration nor the Bush administration ever placed
Afghanistan on the official State Department list of states charged with
sponsoring terrorism, despite the acknowledged presence of Osama bin
Laden as a guest of the Taliban regime. Such a designation would have
made it impossible for an American oil or construction company to sign a
deal with Kabul for a pipeline to the Central Asian oil and gas fields.
Talks between the Bush administration and the Taliban began in February
2001, shortly after Bush’s inauguration. A Taliban emissary arrived in
Washington in March with presents for the new chief executive, including
an expensive Afghan carpet. But the talks themselves were less than
cordial. Brisard said, “At one moment during the negotiations, the US
representatives told the Taliban, ‘either you accept our offer of a
carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs’.”
As long as the possibility of a pipeline deal remained, the White House
stalled any further investigation into the activities of Osama bin
Laden, Brisard and Dasquie write. They report that John O’Neill, deputy
director of the FBI, resigned in July in protest over this obstruction.
O’Neill told them in an interview, “the main obstacles to investigate
Islamic terrorism were US oil corporate interests and the role played by
Saudi Arabia in it.” In a strange coincidence, O’Neill accepted a
position as security chief of the World Trade Center after leaving the
FBI, and was killed on September 11.
Confirming Naiz Naik’s account of the secret Berlin meeting, the two
French authors add that there was open discussion of the need for the
Taliban to facilitate a pipeline from Kazakhstan in order to insure US
and international recognition. The increasingly acrimonious US-Taliban
talks were broken off August 2, after a final meeting between US envoy
Christina Rocca and a Taliban representative in Islamabad. Two months
later the United States was bombing Kabul.
The politics of provocation
This account of the preparations for war against Afghanistan brings us
to September 11 itself. The terrorist attack that destroyed the World
Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon was an important link in the chain
of causality that produced the US attack on Afghanistan. The US
government had planned the war well in advance, but the shock of
September 11 made it politically feasible, by stupefying public opinion
at home and giving Washington essential leverage on reluctant allies
abroad.
Both the American public and dozens of foreign governments were
stampeded into supporting military action against Afghanistan, in the
name of the fight against terrorism. The Bush administration targeted
Kabul without presenting any evidence that either bin Laden or the
Taliban regime was responsible for the World Trade Center atrocity. It
seized on September 11 as the occasion for advancing longstanding
ambitions to assert American power in Central Asia.
There is no reason to think that September 11 was merely a fortuitous
occurrence. Every other detail of the war in Afghanistan was carefully
prepared. It is unlikely that the American government left to chance the
question of providing a suitable pretext for military action.
In the immediate aftermath of September 11, there were press
reports—again, largely overseas—that US intelligence agencies had
received specific warnings about large-scale terrorist attacks,
including the use of hijacked airplanes. It is quite possible that a
decision was made at the highest levels of the American state to allow
such an attack to proceed, perhaps without imagining the actual scale of
the damage, in order to provide the necessary spark for war in
Afghanistan.
How otherwise to explain such well-established facts as the decision of
top officials at the FBI to block an investigation into Zaccarias
Massaoui, the Franco-Moroccan immigrant who came under suspicion after
he allegedly sought training from a US flight school on how to steer a
commercial airliner, but not to take off or land?
The Minneapolis field office had Massaoui arrested in early August, and
asked FBI headquarters for permission to conduct further inquiries,
including a search of the hard drive of his computer. The FBI tops
refused, on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence of criminal
intent on Massaoui’s part—an astonishing decision for an agency not
known for its tenderness on the subject of civil liberties.
This is not to say that the American government deliberately planned
every detail of the terrorist attacks or anticipated that nearly 5,000
people would be killed. But the least likely explanation of September 11
is the official one: that dozens of Islamic fundamentalists, many with
known ties to Osama bin Laden, were able to carry out a wide-ranging
conspiracy on three continents, targeting the most prominent symbols of
American power, without any US intelligence agency having the slightest
idea of what they were doing.
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