AFGHAN ACTION WAS PLANNED LONG AGO

With $3 trillion in Caspian Sea oil as the prize, it can now be demonstrated that military action against Afghanistan had been in the works long before the September 11 attacks.

Shortly after Bush was selected for the presidency in late 2000, S. Frederick Starr, head of the Central Asia Institute at Johns Hopkins University, stated in the Washington Post, “The US has quietly begun to align itself with those in the Russian government calling for military action against Afghanistan and has toyed with the idea of a new raid to wipe out bin Laden.” Others in that area were gearing up for an armed attempt to oust the Taliban.

Officials in India said their nation and Iran would only play the role of “facilitator” while the US and Russia would combat the Taliban from the front with the help of two Central Asian countries, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, to push the Taliban lines back to the 1998 position.

Thus began the build up of American-led military operations against Afghanistan as reported by the Indian News Agency on June 26, 2001, more than two months prior to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

As reported by BBC’s George Arney, former Pakistani foreign secretary Niaz Naik was alerted by American officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would be launched by mid-October. At a UN-SPONSORED meeting in Berlin concerning Afghanistan, Naik was informed that unless bin Laden was handed over, America would take military action either to kill or capture both him and Taliban leader Mullah Omar as the initial step in installing a new government there.

In other words, contrary to the words of America's leadership, who proclaimed that “everything has changed” because of the 9/11 attacks, US foreign policy stayed right on track, right down to the October date given out in the summer for military action in Afghanistan.

This was confirmed in early 2004 in a preliminary report by the 9/11 Commission. The report said the decision to overthrow the Taliban government of Afghanistan was made by senior Bush administration officials the day before the September 11, 2001, attacks. The panel stated that despite diplomatic efforts of both the Clinton and early Bush administrations coupled with a pledge to Saudi Arabia, the Taliban still had not made any effort to expel Osama bin Laden by September 2001. No mention was made of the oil/gas pipeline deals.

However, it should be noted that American intervention in Afghanistan had actually begun years ago, even prior to the Soviet occupation.

In a 1998 interview with former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski in the French publication Le Nouvel Observateur, he admitted that American activities in Afghanistan actually began six months prior to the 1979 Soviet invasion.

Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, said the Carter administration began secretly funding anti-Soviet rebels in July 1979 with the full knowledge such action might provoke a Soviet invasion. Soviet leaders at the time argued the invasion was necessary to thwart American aggression in Afghanistan.

Brzezinski told French interviewers, “According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahideen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 December 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise. Indeed, it was July 3, 1979, that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul.”

Based upon this admission, it would appear that the Soviets were speaking the truth when they told the world they were forced to move Russian troops into that nation to prevent a secret American takeover.

Brzezinski expressed no regret at this hidden provocation, stating, “That secret operation was an excellent idea. It brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.” It also led to the creation of the Taliban regime as well as empowering Osama bin Laden.

But after almost ten years of brutal, no-quarter fighting against Afghans and Arab mercenaries backed by the United States, including Osama bin Laden, the Soviets were forced to withdraw from Afghanistan, a pertinent fact to remember as the US-led fighting there reaches its 10th year. The economic stress of this Russo-Afghan War was enough to help topple communism in the early 1990s and Brzezinski was happy enough to take full credit for this even though it resulted in introducing militant Muslim theology into that volatile region.

Asked if he regretted such activities, Brzezinski replied, “What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet Empire? Some stirred up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?”

It is pertinent to note three things about the Brzezinski interview: one is that he is a leading luminary of the Council on Foreign Relations as well as a founder and today a member of the Trilateral Commission's executive committee; second, that with the apparent exception of a copy in the Library of Congress, his interview was not included in a truncated version of the article circulated in the United States; and third, no one in 1979 could have foreseen the collapse of communism, with or without the Afghan incursion.

In a 1997 Council on Foreign Relations study entitled The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostatic Imperatives, Brzezinski clearly showed why he and his fellow CFR members believed it necessary for the United States to maintain a military presence in the Near East. “[A] s America becomes an increasingly multicultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues,” he wrote, “except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat.” He was explicit that such a threat would need to be on the order of the one that involved America in the last world war. “The attitude of the American public toward the external projection of American power has been much more ambivalent. The public supported America's engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor,” Brzezinski wrote.

Shortly after 9/11, the Guardian, a British newspaper, conducted its own investigation and concluded that both Osama bin Laden and the Taliban received threats of possible American military attacks on them two months before 9/11. According to “senior diplomatic sources,” the threats were passed along by the Pakistani government.

The newspaper elaborated on BBC reporter Arney's report of the pre-attack warnings by stating that the warning to the Taliban originated at a four-day meeting of senior Americans, Russians, Iranians and Pakistanis at a hotel in Berlin in mid-July 2001. The conference, the third in a series dubbed “brainstorming on Afghanistan,” was part of a classic diplomatic device known as “track two,” a method whereby governments can pass messages to each other. “The Americans indicated to us that 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,” said Niaz Naik, former foreign minister of Pakistan, who attended the Berlin meeting.

Many Internet sources have quoted from an interview with French authors Jean Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie who told of US representatives threatening, “Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs.” However, no other source, including Naik, has confirmed this quote.

But the implication of the talks was much the same. Naik did say he was told that unless bin Laden was handed over quickly, America would take military action to kill or capture, not only bin Laden, but also Taliban leader Mullah Omar. He added that he was informed that the broader objective was to end the Taliban regime and install a transitional government in Afghanistan, presumably one less intransigent on the oil pipeline negotiations.

The former Pakistani diplomat was further informed that if such military action were to commence, it would happen before the first snows in Afghanistan, no later than the middle of October. Naik's prophetic words were reported on September 18, 2001, almost three weeks before the start of the US bombing campaign.

According to the Guardian article, the American representatives at the Berlin meeting were Tom Simons, a former US ambassador to Pakistan, Karl “Rick” 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 was quoted as saying that he specifically asked Simons why such an attack would be any more successful than President Clinton's missile strikes against Afghanistan in 1998. That attack killed twenty persons but missed bin Laden. “He said 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,” Naik said, adding, “What the Americans indicated to us was perhaps based on official instructions. They were very senior people. Even in ‘track two’ people are very careful about what they say and don't say.” No representative from the Taliban was present but Naik, representing one of only three governments that recognized the Taliban, said he passed the warning along to the Afghan authorities.

Coldren told the British paper, “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.” But he added that it was not an agenda item at the meeting.

According to the article, Nikolai Kozyrev, Moscow's former special envoy on Afghanistan and one of the Russians in Berlin, would not confirm the contents of the US conversations, but said: “Maybe they had some discussions in the corridor. I don't exclude such a possibility.”

Naik's recollection is that “we had the impression Russians were trying to tell the Americans that the threat of the use of force is sometimes more effective than force itself.”

Simons denied having said anything about detailed operations and Inderfurth told the Guardian, “There was no suggestion for military force to be used. What we discussed was the need for a comprehensive political settlement to bring an end to the war in Afghanistan that has been going on for two decades and has been doing so much damage.”

Told the American participants were denying the pre-attack warnings, Mr. Naik was quoted as saying, “I’m a little surprised but maybe they feel they shouldn't have told us anything in advance now we have had these tragic events.”

Perhaps the reason that no one in the American delegation wanted to admit the pre-attack threats was given by the Guardian writers who speculated, “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 ten days ago, was launching a pre-emptive strike in response to what he saw as US threats.”

A pre-emptive strike? Could Osama bin Laden have been acting in self-defense? No one has mentioned that in the major corporate media.

The destruction of the Taliban actually was the object of several diplomatic discussions months before the events of 9/11, including a May 2001 meeting between the State Department and officials from Iran, Germany and Italy. The talks centered around replacing the Taliban with a “broad-based government.” This same topic was raised at the Group of Eight (G-8) talks in Genoa, Italy, in July 2001.

Many people have questioned why we bombed Afghanistan when apparently none of the listed hijackers was an Afghan, but instead all but four were Arabs from Saudi Arabia. Since Iraq was implicated in the 1993 WTC attack, why did we not bomb that “rogue” nation in 2001? Better yet, since Attorney General John Ashcroft announced soon after 9/11 that the “masterminds” of the attacks were operating out of Hamburg, Germany, why not bomb Germany, an activity with which America has had considerable experience in the past?

Such questions grew as American troops moved into Afghanistan, especially when it was found that the oil reserves might not be as productive as first believed.

Sources in the oil industry have reported that with the American military incursion into Afghanistan came the troubling news that the country might prove to be a dry hole. Once old seismic data was compared with actual drilling, it was learned that the Caspian Sea oil was concentrated in small pools rather than in large deep reserves. Another source of plentiful oil was needed. That source may have become known to the public in late 2002, when the Bush administration appeared hell-bent on attacking Iraq despite howls of protest from other Middle East nations, many Americans and other NATO countries.

Despite the questions over Afghanistan's oil supply, American military action there was swift and deadly effective and not always aimed at strictly military targets. Only three days after the US bombing began in early 2003, American firepower appeared to violate international conventions. In Afghanistan's capital, Radio Kabul was knocked off the air by US bombs, silencing the voice of the Taliban. Farhad Azad of Afghanmagazine.com reported that the station's stored musical library was lost. “The Taliban made music illegal, but it was US bombs that physically destroyed the hidden archive,” he said. But more suspiciously, a month later the Kabul offices of satellite television station Al-Jazeera, which sat in the middle of a residential neighborhood, were struck by two five hundred-pound bombs.

Colonel Brian Hoey, a spokesman for the US Central Command, confirmed that the United States had bombed the building but stated, “[T] he indications we had was that this was not an Al-Jazeera office.”

Al-Jazeera had already come under figurative fire from US authorities for broadcasting interviews with Osama bin Laden. The station also had aired interviews with Donald Rumsfeld and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.

The military action against a civilian TV station “could prove to be a public relations fiasco for the US government,” noted the Washington Post at the time. But this could only occur if the American people were told about it. In fact, little or no reporting on this incident reached the public.

The evidence that operations against Afghanistan were planned long before the 9/11 attacks prompted author Gore Vidal to remark, “With that background, it now becomes explicable why the first thing Bush did after we were hit was to get Senator Daschle and beg him not to hold an investigation of the sort any normal country would have done. When Pearl Harbor was struck, within twenty minutes the Senate and the House had a joint committee ready. Roosevelt beat them to it, because he knew why we had been hit, so he set up his own committee. But none of this was to come out and it hasn't come out.”

Since it is now plain that military operations against Afghanistan were in the planning stages months before 9/11, the question must be asked why there was no buildup of propaganda in the American media. Before every military action, the reasons and rationales must be placed before the public to accustom them to the idea and gain their support. Yet, while both diplomatic and military preparations were being made for war against Afghanistan, the American public remained ignorant and contented. Some researchers contend this is an indication that national leaders knew such a propaganda campaign would be unnecessary because a surprise attack would do the job.