|
Afghanistan, an ancient focal point of
trade and migration populated with a mosaic of ethnic groups, exists at the
junction of the crossroads between the East and West in the center of the
"world island" - Asia.
Afghanistan has suffered almost continuous
conflict being repeatedly invaded throughout history.
6th century BC The Median invasion comes from the region south
of the Caspian Sea.
516 BC Darius I creates the Achaemenid
Persian empire which reaches to
the Indus river.
Zoroastrianism appears along with a
Mithraic Median prototype and its Zurvanist Sassanid successor serves as the
state religion of pre-Islamic Iranian empires from around 600 BC to 650
AC.
4th century BC The
Scythian empire reached
its greatest extent during the reign of Ateas and includes Bactria (present-day
Balkh).
328
BC Alexander III of
Macedonia enters the territory of present-day Afghanistan to capture
Bactria and finally conquers a region reaching to the Indus river.
Alexander III of Macedonia brings leprosy to Europe from
India.
273 BC to 232 BC The Indian Hindu warrior and general
Ashoka Maurya reigns as the
emperor of the Mauryan empire.
The brutality of the conquests led
Ashoka Maurya later in life to adopt
Buddhism under the
guidance of the Brahma Buddhist sages Radhaswami and Manjushris.
2nd century BC The Bactrian Hellenistic Greek king Euthydemus
and his son Demetrius cross the Hindu Kush and began the conquest of Northern
Afghanistan and the Indus valley creating the Indo-Greek empire.
1st century AD The Kushan empire wrestled control of the area
from the Bactrian's including the Kabul valley, part of Qandahar and
established the twin capitals near present-day Kabul and Peshawar then known as
Kapisa and Pushklavati respectively.
The Kushans adopted elements of
the Hellenistic culture of
Bactria including a writing system that used the Greek alphabet.
During
the Kushana empire rule, Afghanistan and Gandhara become major centers of
trade.
425 White Huns
of the Hephthalite empire, an
agricultural people with
a developed set of laws, displace the Kushan and conquer Sogdiana and Khorasan
before 425.
They cross the Syr Darya (Jaxartes) River and invaded
Persia in 425.
Held
off at first by Bahram Gur, they later succeed in making
Persia a tributary in 485.
After a series of wars they are driven out of Persia, permanently loss
the offensive, and are finally defeated by Khosru I in 557 .
The White
Huns invade India and succeed in extending their empire to include the Ganges
river valley.
552 The Göktürks or
Kök-Türks - a Turkic people of ancient North and Central Asia,
Eastern Europe and northwestern China - under the leadership of Bumin/Tuman
Khan/Khaghan and his sons, establish the first known Turkic empire around in
the general area of territory that had earlier been occupied by the White Huns,
and expand rapidly to rule wide territories in Central Asia.
The
Göktürks originate from the Ashina tribe, an Altaic people who lived
in the northern corner of the area presently called the Xinjiang Uyghur
Autonomus Region of China.
Known in medieval Chinese sources as Tujue.
They were the first Turkic tribe to use the name "Türk" as a
political name.
552 - 642 The Sassanid empire, Sassanian empire, second
Persian empire, the fourth Iranian dynasty, and other powers ruled the rest of
Afghanistan.
The Sassanid empire's territory encompassed all of today's
Iran, Iraq, Armenia, Afghanistan,
eastern parts of Turkey, and parts of
Syria, Pakistan, Caucasia,
Central Asia and Arabia.
643 Arab Muslims invade the entire region and introduce
Islam.
Tang Chinese has
extended its influence all the way to Kabul.
875-999 The Samanids reign over a rebuilt Persian empire in
Central Asia and eastern Iran, named after its founder Saman Khoda.
It
is the first native Iranian dynasty in Iran and Central Asia after the Arab
conquest and the collapse of the Sassanid Persian empire.
999 Mahmud of Ghazni and Bughra Khan invade.
Bughra
Khan occupies Bukhara, the capital of the Persian Samanids empire.
The
Samanid domains were split up between the Ghaznavids, who gained Khorasan and
Afghanistan, and the Karakhanids, who received Transoxania; the Oxus River thus
became the boundary between the two rival empires.
During this period
the Karakhanid, Kara-Khanid Khanate, are converted to Islam.
962 to 1187 Mahmud of Ghazni,
founder of the Ghaznavid empire, a Sunni Muslim state in Khorasan in modern day
Afghanistan, consolidates the conquests of his predecessors and turns Ghazna,
Ghazni, into a great cultural center as well as a base for frequent forays into
India.
992 to 1041
Khwarezm is a province of
the Ghaznavid empire.
1041 Seljuk
Turks gain control of Khwarezm.
1092 The
Seljuk Turks, a Muslim
dynasty originally of Oghuz Turkic descent, is at its zenith under Malik Shah.
The Seljuk empire stretches from Anatolia to Pakistan.
Malik
Shah I dies and the Seljuk empire is split as his brother and four sons quarrel
over the apportioning of the empire among themselves.
They become the
target of the First
Crusade.
1124 The Khitan empire, Kara-Khitan
Khanate, is founded by Yelü Dashi, who led the remnants of the Liao
dynasty to Central Asia after fleeing from the Jurchen conquest of their
homeland in Manchuria.
Muhammad 'Ayn ad-Dawlah takes over administration
of the western branch of the Kara-Khanid Khanate, centred at Bukhara.
The unity of the Karakhanid empire is fractured by constant internal
warfare and later serves the dual suzerainty of both the Kara-Khitan empire to
the north and the Seljuk empire to the south.
1141 The Khwarezms expanded their territories south.
Seljuk Sultan Ahmed Sanjar is defeated by the Kara-Khitan Khanate and
the Great Seljuk empire falls into chaos.
Anu-sh Tigin's grandson Ala
ad-Din Aziz is forced to submit as a vassal to the
Khitan empire as is the the Kara-Khanid Khanate.
1146 The Ghaznavid empire is defeated by
Muhammad of Ghor, who founds the
Ghori empire.
The
Ghaznavid Khans continue to live in Ghazni as the 'Nasher' until the early 20th
century.
They regain power in 1709 when the Ghilzai Pashtuns's defeat
the Safavid Persians in Kandahar.
1175 The Ghurid
empire under the leadership of Muhammad of Ghor, stretches over a vast area
including parts of Iran, Afghanistan,
Pakistan, India, Turkistan, Iraq and parts of
other Arab countries.
Muhammad of Ghor occupies Uch, Multan, Peshawar,
Lahore, and Delhi.
1194 Last Sultan of Great
Seljuk empire is defeated by the Khwarezm ruler Ala ad-Din Tekish.
1200 Ala ad-Din Tekish dies and is succeeded by
his son, Ala ad-Din Muhammad, who in 1205 declares himself Shah, Persian for
King.
He becomes known as the Kwarezmshah, the ruler of the empire of
Khwarezm.
1204 Uthman briefly reestablishes the
independence of the Karakhanids empire.
1206
Qutb-ud-din Aybak, a Ghurid general, conquers Delhi and founds the Delhi
Sultanate which lasted from 1206-1526.
1211
Karakhanids are defeated by the Khwarezm-Shah 'Ala' ad-Din Muhammad and the
dynasty is extinguished.
1212 Ala ad-Din
Muhammad defeats the Ghurid empire and conquers the lands of the Kutluk, the
Gur-Khan of the Kara-Khitan Khanate, expanding the empire of Khwarezm, ruling a
territory from the Syr Darya nearly to Baghdad, and from the Indus River to the
Caspian Sea.
The empire of Khwarezm has now conquered both Khitan and
Ghurid.
Continuous warfare between these empires has drained the life
from them making them vulnerable to hostilities.
1219 Chingiz
Khan invades Afghanistan slaughtering resisters, salting fertile
agricultural areas and destroying cities including Herat, Ghazni, and Balkh.
To enhance the heinous legends of his conquests
Chingiz Khan leaves
mountains of the skulls of the defenders of those cities that would not submit
throughout Central Asia.
"The Mongols took no prisoners and allowed no
torture. They executed swiftly and efficiently, including all the soldiers of
the defeated army who, they believed, would be a constant source of future
problems if allowed to live. The first several months of a Mongol invasion were
bloody, but once the takeover ended, the bloodshed ended." - Jack
Weatherford
How Climate Change Drove the Rise of Chingiz Khan
1227 After Chingiz Khan died a
succession of petty chiefs and princes struggle for supremacy until Timur Lang,
Tamerlane or Tamburlaine, incorporates what is today Afghanistan into the
Timurid empire.
There are two factions within the
ruling class:
Tajik, men
of the pen, Wazirs in
Persian, of Persian descent, chancellors, merchants, artists and
scholars;
Warriors, men of the sword, a combination of Turk and Mongol
descent.
1526 Prince
Babur, a descendant of Tamburlaine, establishes the Mughal Empire by defeating
Ibrahim Lodi, the last of the Delhi Sultans, in the First Battle of Panipat.
The Mughal Empire's capital is based in Kabul.
At its greatest
territorial extent the Mughal Empire includes most of the Indian subcontinent,
then known as Hindustan, and parts of what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The Persian word for Mongol is Mughal, generally used to refer to
Central Asian nomads who claimed descent from the Mongol warriors of
Chingiz Khan.
The Mughal rulers were
adherents of Islam.
On the
whole the indigenous Pashtun tribes, Afghans living in the Kandahar area pitted
foreigner against foreigner, Persian against Arab against Turk against Mongol,
siding sometimes with the Persians, sometimes with the Turks, sometimes with
the Mughals.
Afghanistan was divided in many parts in the 16th, 17th
and early 18th century.
North were the Turkisk Uzbeks, west was Persian
Safavid's rule and east was the Mongol's or Mughals rule and local Pashtun
rule.
1501 to 1736 The
Persian Safavid's were the Azeri -speaking Iranian dynasty which established
Shi'a Islam as Iran 's official
religion.
15th century Pashtun Sher Shah Suri,
Sher Khan, the Lion King, conquers much of Central Asia and founds the Sur
empire of northern Indian during the time of Moghul Humayun.
Mughal
empire grows considerably Akbar the Great and now includes all of Hindustan.
Mughal empire expands until its defeat under Aurangzeb's rule.
1605–1627 Jahangir, the son of Moghul Akbar and Rajput
princess Mariam-uz-Zamani, rule the Mughal empire.
1627 Shah Jahan, the son of Jahangir and Mariam-uz-Zamani,
succeeds to the throne and inherits the
greatest empire on Earth.
1630–1653
Shah Jahan commissiones the Taj Mahal in Agra as a tomb for his wife Mumtaz
Mahal who dies giving birth to their 14th child.
1709 Pashtuns rise against the Persian Safavids in Kandahar.
The Persians are defeated.
1719-1729
Afghans conquer and hold Isfahan, Iran.
1729 Nadir Shah pushes back the Afghans in the
Battle of Damghan.
1738 Nadir Shah conquers
Kandahar and occupies Ghazni, Kabul and Lahore.
1747 Ahmad Shah Durrani, a Pashtun, is elected King in a loya
jirga after the assassination of Nadir Shah.
With the death of Nadir
Shah the Durrani Pashtuns became the principal rulers of Afghanistan.
Pashtun martial prowess has been renowned since
Alexander III of
Macedonia fought them.
The Pashtuns were one of the few groups that
managed to impede British imperialism during the 19th century.
The
Pashtuns are the world's largest patriarchal lineage
tribal group.
The total
population of the group is estimated to be at least 45 million, but an accurate
count remains elusive because there has not been an official census in
Afghanistan since the 1970s, and because of the migratory nature of many
Pashtun tribes and the practice of secluding women in Pakistan.
The area that is drone
targeted by the US is Pashtun.
Ahmad Shah Durrani consolidates
chieftains, petty principalities, and fragmented provinces into one
country.
Ahmad Shah Durrani's rule extended from Mashad in the west to
Kashmir and Delhi in the
east, and from the Amu Darya (Oxus) River in the north to the Arabian Sea in
the south.
From 1747 until the 1978 Marxist coup, all of Afghanistan's
rulers, with the exception of a 9-month period in 1929, were from Durrani's
Pashtun tribal confederation, and all were members of that tribe's Mohammadzai
clan.
19th century Afghanistan becomes a
battleground in the rivalry between
Imperial Britain and
Tsarist Russia for control of Central
Asia.
1809 "Imperial planners
saw themselves playing the "Great
Game." They sacrificed an entire British army of twelve thousand men in the
wilderness of Afghanistan." - Peter Dale Scott
1893 Britain establishes an unofficial border, the Durand
Line, separating Afghanistan from British India.
1919
Three Anglo-Afghan wars (1839-1842, 1878-1880, 1919) end with London granting
full independence.
Emir Amanullah foundes an Afghan monarchy in 1926.
King Amanullah moves to end Afghanistan's
traditional isolation in
the years following the Third Anglo-Afghan war.
King Amanullah
established diplomatic relations with most major countries and introduces
reforms intended to modernize Afghanistan.
Some of these reforms, such
as the abolition of the hijab for women and the opening of a number of
co-educational schools, quickly alienate many tribal and religious leaders.
Faced with overwhelming armed opposition, King Amanullah is forced to
abdicate in January 1929 after Kabul falls to forces led by Bacha-i-Saqao, a
Tajik.
1929 Prince Mohammed Nadir Khan, a cousin
of Amanullah's, kills Bacha-i-Saqao and with considerable Pashtun tribal
support is declared King Nadir Shah.
King Nadir Shah began
consolidating power and regenerating Afghanistan.
1933 King Nadir Shah is assassinated
in a revenge killing.
Mohammad Zahir Shah succeeds to the
throne and reigns from 1933
to 1973.
At this time a handful of families
including the Karzais and the Kalilzidads own nearly all arable land, while
most Afghans languished amidst some of the planet's worst poverty.
Zalmay Mamozy Khalilzad is instrumental in pushing the US
covert action and later the US invasion of Afghanistan in hopes of regaining
lost power.
1946 Zahir Shah rules with the
assistance of his uncle Sardar Mohammad Hashim Khan, who holds the post of
Prime Minister and continues the policies of Nadir Shah.
Zahir Shah's
uncle, Sardar Shah Mahmud Khan, becomes Prime Minister.
1951 The Afghan government of King Mohammed Zahir Shah is
tasked by the CIA to find an assassin to kill Pakistan first
Prime Minister Liaqat Ali
Khan.
Syed Akbar accepts the task and arrangements are made for him
to be killed.
October 16, 1951
CIA assassinates Pakistan first PM Liaqat Ali
Khan.
1953 Sardar Shah Mahmud Khan is
replaced as Prime Minister by Mohammed Daoud Khan, the king's cousin and
brother-in-law.
1963
Mohammed Daoud Khan, seeking a closer relationship with the
Soviet Union and a more hostile one
towards Pakistan, creates a dispute with Pakistan which leads to an economic
crisis and Mohammed Daoud Khan is forced to resign.
1964 King Zahir Shah promulgates a
liberal constitution
providing for a bicameral legislature to which the king appointes one-third of
the deputies.
The people elect another third, and the remainder are
selected indirectly by provincial tribal assemblies.
King Zahir Shah's
"experiment in democracy" produces few lasting reforms and it permits the
growth of extremist parties on both the left and the right.
These
included the communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan which
had close ideological ties to the Soviet
Union.
Zahir Shah takes a more active role.
1967 People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan splits
into two major rival factions: the Khalq (Masses) faction headed by Nur
Muhammad Taraki and Hafizullah Amin supported by elements within the military,
and the Parcham (Banner) faction led by Babrak Karmal.
The split
reflected ethnic, class, and ideological divisions within Afghan society.
Most of the following heads of state are Ghilzai (Taraki, Amin, Najib,
Mullah Omar).
1973 Mohammad Sardar Daoud Khan
seizes power in a military coup.
King Zahir Shah flees.
Mohammad
Sardar Daoud Khan attempts to carry out economic and social
reforms.
1978 Iranian intelligence agency (SAVAK)
and CIA-supported Islamist agents arrived from Iran with bulging bankrolls in
an attempt to create a clamp-down on the People's Democratic Party of
Afghanistan by purging left-wing officers from the Afghan army.
On
April 27, 1978, the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan initiates a
bloody coup, which resulted in the overthrow and murder of Mohammad Sardar
Daoud Khan and most of his family.
Nur Muhammad Taraki, Secretary
General of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, becomes
President of the Revolutionary Council and Prime Minister of the newly
established Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, strongly supported by
the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
The People's
Democratic Party of Afghanistan implementes a socialist agenda which
includes: decrees abolishing usury, banning forced marriages, state recognition
of women's rights to vote, replacing religious and traditional laws with
secular and Marxist ones, banning tribal courts, land reform, men are obliged
to cut their beards and women couldn't wear a burka.
Taraki embarks
upon an ambitious land reform program to help poor Afghan sharecroppers; build
schools for women; opened Afghan universities to the poor and introduce free
health care.
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics sends
contractors to build roads, hospitals, schools and dig water wells; they also
train and equip the Afghan army.
Adolph "Spike" Dubs
Pro-Taraki
militants, convinced of a CIA destabilization plot, assassinated CIA Kabul
Chief of Station Adolph "Spike" Dubs.
Taraki appoints Tabizullah
Amin in charge of land reform.
Amin launched a brutal campaign of
terror against political opponents.
KGB Chief Yuri Andropov claims that
Amin is an agent provocateur working with the CIA to infiltrate the Kabul
government, intent on discrediting its progressive agenda.
Many groups are formed in an attempt to reverse the
dependence on the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, some
resorting to violent means
and sabotage of Afghanistan's industry and
infrastructure.
The
government respondes with heavy handed military intervention and arrests,
exiles and executes many mujahideen.
Pashtuns
play a pivotal role in the Soviet war in Afghanistan as
many join the ranks of the
mujahideen.
1979
Operation Cyclone the largest covert operation in history is launched in
Afghanistan shortly after James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. signs
the first executive directive for
secret aid.
Saudi-born
Usamah bin Mohammad bin
Laden, is recruited to
organize and train the mujahideen.
Under this secret presidential
directive James Earl
"Jimmy" Carter, Jr. gives the CIA
the authority to arm the
mujahideen through bin Laden.
This secret
aid lays the foundations of al-Qa`ida.
"With the active encouragement of the CIA
and Pakistan Inter-Service Intelligence,
who wanted to turn the Afghan Jihad into a global war waged by all Muslim
states against the Soviet Union,
some 35,000 Muslim radicals from 40 Islamic countries joined Afghanistan's
fight between 1982 and 1992.
Tens of thousands more came to
study in Pakistani madrasahs.
Eventually, more than 100,000 foreign
Muslim radicals were directly influenced by the Afghan jihad." - Ahmed
Rashid
This kicks start what will later be named
ISIS.
"It was
the government of the US who supported Pakistani dictator General Zia-ul Haq in
creating thousands of madrasahs, from which the germs of the Taliban emerged."
- Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan
BCCI, a
Pakistani-operated institution with connections to the Pakistani Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI) agency, is used by US intelligence agents to funnel money to
Usamah bin Laden and
the mujahideen in
Afghanistan.
Bank of England is the financial regulator for BCCI.
BCCI collapses leaving its legitimate creditors some $11 billion in
losses.
"According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the
mujahideen began
on 24 December 1979.
On July 3, 1979, President Carter signed the first
directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul.
And that very day, I wrote a note to the President in which I explained
to him that in my opinion, this aid was going to induce a Soviet military
intervention." - Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski
"Regret what?
The secret operation was an excellent idea.
It drew the
Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it?
On the day
that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter,
saying, in essence: 'We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its
Vietnam War.'" -
Zbigniew Kazimierz
Brzezinski 1998
Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski, co-founded the
Trilateral Commission with
David Rockefeller,
conceptualizes modern geopolitics as a New Great Game of competition in Central
Eurasia between the US, the
United Kingdom and other
NATO countries against Russia, the
People's Republic of
China and other Shanghai Cooperation Organization countries for "influence,
power, hegemony and profits in Central Asia and the Transcaucasus".
Bin
Laden, Saudi Arabia's richest construction family, builds military bases.
During the 1980s and
early 1990s, an estimated $500 million is split between
Usamah bin Laden training
bases and the Hezb-e Islami faction of the mujahideen led by
Gulbeddin Hekmatyar who
receives American weapons including Stinger anti-aircraft
missiles.
American officials estimated that from 1985 to
1992, some 12,500 people are trained in
bomb making, sabotage, and
urban guerrilla warfare.
Afghan army is overwhelmed by the number of
mujahideen incidents.
December 25 The
Soviet Union sends troops
which enter Kabul on , five months after the CIA hires
Usamah bin Mohammad bin
Laden and al-Qa`ida, to crush
the insurrection and install another pro-Moscow government.
SOVIET AFGHAN
WAR DOCUMENTARY
"Relations between the CIA (US - CIA) and the
Inter-Services Intelligence
(Pakistan - ISI) had grown increasingly warm following Zia's ouster of
Bhutto and the advent of the military regime.
During most of the Afghan
war, Pakistan is more aggressively
anti-Soviet than the US.
Soon after the Soviet military invaded
Afghanistan in 1980, Zia sent his ISI chief to destabilize the Soviet
Central Asian states." - Diego Cordovez and Selig
Harrison
1980
Prior to the Soviet-Afghan war, opium
production in Afghanistan and Pakistan is directed to small regional
markets.
There was no local production of
Heroin™.
Researcher
Alfred McCoy's study confirms that within two years of the beginning of the CIA
operation in Afghanistan, "the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands became the
world's top Heroin™ producer,
supplying 60 per cent of US demand."
Gulbeddin Hekmatyar, a preferred
client of Pakistan's Inter-Services
Intelligence, builds a sophisticated Heroin™ supply network in
Afghanistan's Kunar and Nuristan provinces.
Heroin™ from the
Golden Crescent, negligible before 1979, amounts to 60% of the American market
in 1980.
1986 Golden Crescent is suppling 70%
of the high-grade Heroin™ in the world.
Eight tons of Afghan-Pakistani
morphine base from a single Pakistani source supply the Sicilian mafia "Pizza
Connection" in New York - 80% of the Heroin™ reaching the US between
1978 and 1984.
Witness'
confirmed that opium was shipped out of the area on the same Pakistan Army
trucks which shipped in "covert" US military aid.
At the same time the
the CIA and ISI together encouraged the mujahedin to get Soviet troops addicted
to Heroin™, hashish and
cocaine™ from Latin America in
Operation Mosquito.
"Half of
Taliban manpower and equipment
originate in Pakistan under the ISI." - Jane's Defence Weekly
The CIA,
Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia assisted in
the financing of the résistance.
In the case of Saudi
Arabia the House of Saud made
a deal with the Wahhabi to
share the oil revenues - revenues that would be spent on the support of Wahhabi
theology madrasahs.
For over nine years the Soviet Army occupied
Afghanistan while conducting military operations against the Afghan mujahideen
rebels.
"At first, everyone thought, there's no way to beat the Soviets.
So what we have to do is throw the worst crazies at them that we can find, and
there was a lot of collateral damage. We knew exactly who these people were,
and what their organizations were like, and we didn't care. Then, we allowed
them to get rid of, just kill all the moderate leaders. The reason we don't
have moderate leaders in Afghanistan today is because we let the nuts kill them
all. They killed the leftists, the moderates, the middle-of-the-roaders. They
were just eliminated, during the 1980s and afterward." - Cheryl Benard, a RAND
Corporation expert on Islam and the wife of future US ambassador to Afghanistan
Zalmay Mamozy
Khalilzad (formerly a Unocal lobbyist)
Zalmay Mamozy Khalilzad,
an ethnic Pashtun, was mentored by
Zbigniew Kazimierz
Brzezinski, the Carter Administration's architect of the policy supporting
the mujahideen résistance to the invasion of Afghanistan by the
Soviet Union .
Zalmay Mamozy Khalilzad was given
Council on Foreign
Relations fellowship were he was mentored by
Paul Dundes Wolfowitz
Director of Policy Planning at the
State Department.
Zalmay Mamozy Khalilzad served
Ronald Reagan as a
senior State
Department official advising on the Soviet war in Afghanistan and the
Iran–Iraq War. During this time he was the
State Department
Special Advisor on Afghanistan to Undersecretary of State Michael H.
Armacost. In this role he developed and guided the international program to
promote the merits of a Mujahideen-led Afghanistan to oust the Soviet
occupation.
Zalmay Mamozy Khalilzad served under President George H. W.
Bush in the Defense Department as Deputy Undersecretary for Policy
Planning. Between 1993 and 2000, Khalilzad was the Director of the
Strategy, Doctrine, and Force Structure at the RAND Corporation. During this
time, he helped found RAND's Center for Middle Eastern Studies as well
as "Strategic Appraisal," a periodic RAND publication.
Zalmay Mamozy Khalilzad consulted for
Cambridge Energy Research Associates, which at the time was conducting a
risk analysis for Unocal,
later a part of Chevron, for a proposed
1,400 km (890 mile), $2-billion, 622 m³/s (22,000 ft³/s)
Trans-Afghanistan gas pipeline project which would have extended from
Turkmenistan to Afghanistan and further proceeding to Pakistan.
Zalmay
Mamozy Khalilzad acted as a special liaison between UNOCAL and
the Taliban regime. As one
of the original members of Project for the New American Century, Zalmay
Mamozy Khalilzad was a signatory of the letter to William Jefferson Clinton
sent on January 26, 1998, which called for him to accept the aim of "removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power"
using "a full complement of diplomatic, political and military
efforts.
Taliban Oil
Pipelines to 9/11
US Bases
in Afghanistan and Oil Pipeline Politics
1989
Soviet Union withdraw troops but
continues to aid Mohammed Najibullah.
1992 Najibullah
government is overthrown when Abdul Rashid Dostum mutinies, and allies himself
with Ahmed Shah Massoud, to take control of Kabul and declare the
Islamic State of
Afghanistan.
mid 1990s Caspian
oil reserves are of top strategic
importance in the quest to control the earth's remaining oil supply. The US
developed a policy called "The Strategy of the Silk Route." The strategy was
designed to lock out Russia, China, and
Iran from the oil
in this region. This called for US corporations to construct an oil pipeline
running through Afghanistan.
James Baker, a key Bank of
Credit and Commerce International player, former Treasury Secretary, Secretary
of State and Chief of Staff during Bank of Credit and Commerce International's
reign, is a leading player in developing the "Strategy of the Silk Route."
Consortium of US oil companies led by Unocal, later bought by Chevron,
pursue this goal. The plan is to build a Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline from
Turkmenistan's natural gas fields to Pakistan. Unocal partnered with Saudi
Delta Oil, which was owned by al Qeada funders Khalid bin Mahfouz and Mohammed
Hussein al-Amoudi form Central Asia Gas Pipeline, Ltd. (CentGas).
A
feasibility study for the Central Asian pipeline project is performed by
Enron. This study concludes that as long
as the country is split among fighting warlords the pipeline could not be
built. Stability was necessary for the $4.5 billion project and the US believed
that the Taliban would impose the necessary order.
US intelligence and
Pakistan's ISI then continued the close relationship that they established
through Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) and agreed to funnel
arms and funding to the Taliban in their war for control of Afghanistan.
Until 1999, US
taxpayers pay the entire annual salary of every single
Taliban government official.
"We would show up in someone's office, offer our thanks, and we would
leave behind a briefcase full of $100 bills, sometimes totaling more than a
million in a single transaction." - CIA Director George
Tenet
2000 The
Taliban control Afghanistan except a
small corner in the
northeast.
In reaction to the anarchy and warlordism prevalent in
Afghanistan, and the lack of Pashtun representation in the Kabul government,
the Taliban, a movement of religious
scholars and former mujahideen, emerged from the southern province of Kandahar.
"The Taliban conducted
simultaneous negotiations with two potential oil companies: Argentinean Bridas
and Unocal/CentGas. Once George Walker Bush was elected president, Unocal and
BP-Amoco, which had in the meantime bought Bridas, the Argentinean rival
resumed consortium negotiations with the Taliban. Under Secretary of State
Richard Armitage, previously
a lobbyist for Unocal, represented the administration's interests. The Taliban,
for their part, employed as their PR officer in the US Laila Helms, niece of
Richard Helms, former
director of the CIA and former US ambassador to
Iran. In March 2001,
Richard Helms brought
Rahmatullah Hashami, Mullah Omar's adviser, to Washington. Throughout the
1990's Hamid Karzai, a top adviser and lobbyist for Unocal, was involved in
negotiations with the Taliban regime for the construction of a Central Asian
gas pipeline from Turkmenistan through western
Afghanistan to Pakistan. At the same time, Zalmay Mamozy Khalilzad, who was
also working for Unocal, lobbied the Clinton administration to 'engage' with
the Taliban." - Loretta Napoleoni
Taliban's Ban On Poppy A Success, U.S. Aides
Say
2001 American
oil interests take control of the
White House by selecting
George Walker Bush. Enron
CEO Kenneth Lee Lay,
a Bush family friend
and Bush's biggest campaign contributor, is eager.
Donald Henry Rumsfeld, the
Secretary of Defense, is
a large stockholder in
Enron.
Thomas White, former
vice-chairman of Enron, is appointed
Secretary of the Army.
Condoleezza Rice, a former
Chevron board member, becomes National Security
Advisor and then Secretary of State.
A major
benefactor of the CentGas deal is going to be Halliburton. Vice President
Richard Bruce Cheney is
Halliburton's CEO. Richard Armitage, a
key lobbyist for Unocal, is appointed Under Secretary of State.
Hamid Karzai,
who would later become Afghanistan's Prime Minister, is a top Unocal adviser.
James Baker and the
Council on Foreign
Relations demand immediate action and publicly release a Task Force Report
labeled, "Strategic Energy Policy Challenges For The 21st Century," by the
James A. Baker III Institute. They claimed urgency of the pipeline project and
openly called for the Bush Administration to "quickly facilitate higher exports
of oil from the Caspian Basin region …" and they reiterated the basic
premise of the "Strategy of the Silk Route," stating, "the exports from oil
discoveries in the Caspian
Basin could be hastened if a secure, economical export route could be
identified swiftly." That "export route," as previously planned, would need to
run through Afghanistan and into Pakistan.
"The Chairman of the 911
Commission investigation was Thomas Kean, director of Hess Corp., which was in
a joint venture called Delta Oil, with Khalid Bin Mahfouz and Mohammed Hussein
al Amoudi. It is also important to mention that James Baker, who had a lead
role in developing the "Strategy of the Silk Route" and Bank of Credit and
Commerce International operations, was hired by these same BCCI/Saudi/
al-Qa`ida oil interests to defend them against lawsuits brought by families of
911 victims." - David DeGraw
Afghan Northern Alliance, led by Ahmed Shah
Massoud, has receive diplomatic recognition in the United Nations as the
government of Afghanistan. Ahmed Shah Massoud leads the United Islamic Front
for the Salvation of Afghanistan. Ahmed Shah Massoud, an ethnic Tajik, is
assassinated in late September.
Under the auspices of a response to the
September 11, 2001 attacks, the US and its coalition allies launched an
invasion of Afghanistan to
oust the Taliban
government. Sponsored by the United Nations, Afghan factions met in Bonn,
Germany and choose a 30 member interim authority led by
Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun from
Kandahar.
"The CIA has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to
Pakistan's intelligence service since the Sept. 11 attacks, accounting
for as much as one-third of the foreign spy agency's annual budget. The
Inter-Services Intelligence agency also has collected tens of millions of
dollars through a classified CIA program that pays for the capture or killing
of wanted militants. The ISI has used the covert CIA money for a variety of
purposes, including the construction of a new headquarters in Islamabad, the
capital. The CIA has routinely brought ISI operatives to a secret training
facility in North Carolina. The CIA also directs millions of dollars to other
foreign spy services. But the magnitude of the payments to the ISI reflect
Pakistan's central role. The CIA depends on Pakistan's cooperation to carry out
missile strikes by Predator
drones that have killed dozens of suspected extremists in
Pakistani border areas. CIA
payments to the ISI can be traced to the 1980s, when the Pakistani agency
managed the flow of money and weapons to the Afghan mujahedin. In addition to
bankrolling the ISI's budget, the CIA forged a clandestine reward program that
paid bounties for suspected terrorists. The first check, for $10 million, was
for the capture of Abu Zubaydah, a top Al Qaeda figure. The ISI got $25 million
more for the capture of Khalid
Shaikh Mohammed. " - Greg Miller November 15, 2009
Afghan
Massacre: the Convoy of Death
2004
Hamid Karzai is selected as
president of Afghanistan.
2007 DoD contracts for
up to $300 million with AEY Incorporated to became the main supplier of
munitions to Afghanistan's army and police forces. AEY Incorporated provided
ammunition that was more than 40 years old in decomposing packaging
manufactured in China. The US government contributed $2 million to destroy
excess small-caliber weapons and 2,000
tons of ammunition in Albania, according to the
State Department
through 2007 which included 104 million 7.62 millimeter cartridges. AEY bought
more than 100 million cartridges manufactured in China from Albania for the
Pentagon contract.
AEY also provided ammunition or equipment in 2004 to
the Department of Energy, the EPA, the Transportation Security Administration
and the State Department. AEY was operated by Efraim E. Diveroli, president,
and David M. Packouz, vice president, (son of rabbi Kalman Packouz) both in
their early 20's. Yoav Botach, an Israeli citizen and "entrepreneur" who
"co-owns" 144 commercial and other properties in Los Angeles through Botach
Tactical, incorporated AEY and is the father of rabbi Shmuley Boteach and
grandfather of Efraim E. Diveroli. AEY won the contract primarily because the
US government declared Hasidic
Jews to be a disadvantaged minority for purposes of minority business
encouragement in 1984.
2008 "The chief effect of
military operations in Afghanistan so far has been to push radical Islamists
across the Pakistani border. As a result, efforts to stabilize Afghanistan are
contributing to the destabilization of Pakistan, with potentially devastating
implications." - Andrew Bacevich
"This is a warrior culture. If you walk around
looking scared, they are not going to respect you." - Army Gen. Stanley A.
McChrystal 2009
Afghanistan and the New Great Game
The oil connection: Give
me a pipeline
"Hell's Angels" of the Taliban engineer a revolt in
the Swat valley of Pakistan by exploiting profound fissures between
a small group of wealthy landlords and
their landless tenant
sharecroppers.
Taliban close a major supply route ferrying some 80%
of NATO supplies into Afghanistan by
blowing up a 30-yard-long iron highway bridge in the Khyber Pass.
Barack Obama ordered
17,000 American troops to Afghanistan "to stabilize a deteriorating
situation."
4000 newly arrived Marines and 650 Afghan troops poured into
Taliban-infested villages of southern Afghanistan with armor and helicopters in
the first major operation under a new Pentagon strategy to clear
insurgents from the hotly contested region
before the nation's August 20 presidential election. Southern Afghanistan is a
Taliban stronghold but also a region where Afghan president Hamid Karzai is
seeking votes from fellow Pashtun tribesmen.
Hamid Karzai is reelected
August 20 in a "landslide victory".
August
27 a suicide bomber hits a Pakistani
border security checkpoint killing at least 18 border guards (dozens reported
wounded) at the Torkham checkpoint, the main border crossing from the Khyber
Pass into Afghanistan.
August 30 the Chaman border crossing had been
closed for two days due to a dispute between Afghan and Pakistani customs
officers. 1,000 trucks were backed up along the road waiting to cross the
border. An explosion set several NATO vehicles on fire: three oil
tankers, two container trucks and two dump trucks.
NATO troops fighting the Taliban in
Afghanistan get about 75% of their supplies from Pakistan through the Chaman
and Torkham border crossings.
140 Afghan peasants are killed in rural
Farah province by American airstrikes according to the Red Cross. Relatives
received about $2,000 for family members killed and $1,000 for those
injured.
"As of
March 2009, there were 68,197 DoD contractors in Afghanistan, compared to
52,300 uniformed personnel. Contractors made up 57% of DoD's workforce in
Afghanistan. This apparently represented the highest recorded percentage of
contractors used by DoD in any conflict in the history of the US. Poor contract
management has also played a role in abuses and crimes committed by certain
contractors against local nationals, which likely has undermined US
counterinsurgency efforts
in Iraq and Afghanistan." - Congressional Research Service,
08/13/2009
American troops set up bases along a
dirt track that a Chinese firm is paving as part of a $3 billion project to
gain access to the Aynak copper reserves. American troops are providing
security to enable China to exploit one of the world's largest unexploited
deposits of copper, earn tens of billions of dollars and feed its voracious
appetite for raw materials.
U.S. troops set up bases last month along a
dirt track a Chinese firm is paving as part of a $3 billion project to gain
access to the Aynak copper reserves. Some troops made camp outside a compound
built for the Chinese road crews, who are about to return from winter break.
American forces also have expanded their presence in neighboring Logar
province, where the Aynak deposit is.
Chinese company and Taliban battle over Afghanistan’s
underground riches
China gets an all-clear from the Taliban to mine for copper in
Afghanistan
"Contrary to the official portrayal of the Afghan
National Army (ANA) as ethnically balanced, the latest
data from US sources reveal that the Tajik minority now accounts for far more
of its troops than the Pashtuns, the country's largest ethnic group. Tajik
domination of the ANA feeds Pashtun
resentment over the control of
the country's security institutions by their ethnic rivals, while Tajiks
increasingly regard the Pashtun population as aligned with the Taliban." -
Gareth Porter
The Campaign for a US-Afghanistan
Partnership is a nonprofit pro-war front group established by Washington's
most monied lobbying firm Patton Boggs LLP. One of Patton Boggs
LLP clients is NCL Holdings, a US firm headed by Hamed Wardak, the
Afghan-American son of Afghanistan's defense minister, General Abdul Rahim
Wardak. NCL Holdings runs supply lines in Afghanistan for the DoD.
NCL Holdings is believed to be paying protection money to the Taliban to
leave supply lines alone.
"The Afghan war is the center of a Western military
operation that is broadening into wider and wider circles throughout Eurasia
and in varying degrees taking in dozens of nations from the Chinese border to
the Indian Ocean to the Black Sea to the Adriatic Sea. Nations being absorbed
into this military transit, overflight, troop recruitment, training network
include all those in Central Asia (Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan,
Turkmenistan and
Uzbekistan) and the South
Caucasus (Armenia,
Azerbaijan and
Georgia), the Black Sea
region (Georgia, Turkey, Bulgaria,
Romania and
Ukraine) and the Southern
Balkans (Albania,
Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia,
Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia) in addition to Afghanistan and Pakistan. With
the exception of the Central Asian states (so far), all of those nations
mentioned above have sent troops to the war theater or soon will, Serbia alone
possibly excepted." - Rick Rozoff 09/09
|
|
 |
This web site is not a commercial web site and
is presented for educational purposes only.
This website defines a
new perspective with which to engage reality to which its author adheres. The
author feels that the falsification of reality outside personal experience has
forged a populace unable to discern propaganda from reality and that this has
been done purposefully by an international corporate cartel through their
agents who wish to foist a corrupt version of reality on the human race.
Religious intolerance occurs when any group refuses to tolerate religious
practices, religious beliefs or persons due to their philosophical ideology.
This web site marks the founding of a system of philosophy named The Truth of
the Way of the Lumière Infinie - a rational gnostic mystery religion
based on reason which requires no leap of faith, accepts no tithes, has no
supreme leader, no church buildings and in which each and every individual is
encouraged to develop a personal relation with the Creator and Sustainer
through the pursuit of the knowledge of reality in the hope of curing the
spiritual corruption that has enveloped the human spirit. The tenets of The
Truth of the Way of the Lumière Infinie are spelled out in detail on
this web site by the author. Violent acts against individuals due to their
religious beliefs in America is considered a "hate crime."
This web site
in no way condones violence. To the contrary the intent here is to reduce the
violence that is already occurring due to the international corporate cartels
desire to control the human race. The international corporate cartel already
controls the world economic system, corporate media worldwide, the global
industrial military entertainment complex and is responsible for the collapse
of morals, the elevation of self-centered behavior and the destruction of
global ecosystems. Civilization is based on cooperation. Cooperation does not
occur at the point of a gun.
American social mores and values have
declined precipitously over the last century as the corrupt international
cartel has garnered more and more power. This power rests in the ability to
deceive the populace in general through corporate media by pressing emotional
buttons which have been preprogrammed into the population through prior
corporate media psychological operations. The results have been the destruction
of the family and the destruction of social structures that do not adhere to
the corrupt international elites vision of a perfect world. Through distraction
and coercion the direction of thought of the bulk of the population has been
directed toward solutions proposed by the corrupt international elite that
further consolidates their power and which further their purposes.
All
views and opinions presented on this web site are the views and opinions of
individual human men and women that, through their writings, showed the
capacity for intelligent, reasonable, rational, insightful and unpopular
thought. All factual information presented on this web site is believed to be
true and accurate and is presented as originally presented in print media which
may or may not have originally presented the facts truthfully. Opinion and
thoughts have been adapted, edited, corrected, redacted, combined, added to,
re-edited and re-corrected as nearly all opinion and thought has been
throughout time but has been done so in the spirit of the original writer with
the intent of making his or her thoughts and opinions clearer and relevant to
the reader in the present time.
Fair Use Notice
This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has
not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making
such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of criminal
justice, human rights, political, economic, democratic, scientific, and social
justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such
copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In
accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in
receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For
more information see: www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to
use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond
'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. |
 Copyright
© Lawrence Turner
All Rights Reserved
|