"Oil is a kind of original sin in American politics. It’s a big, messy business, and it has touched everyone and everything in our political system..." - David Ignatius, The Washington Post (2000)

In politics, they, say, there are neither permanent friends nor permanent enemies. That hoary cliche merely underlines the undeniable; today’s foe could be tomorrow’s friend [and, certainly, vice versa!], both possibilities to be constantly kept in mind in every nation’s diplomatic dealings.

What’s even more undeniable is that politics takes its strategic cue from Big Business. Always. And in America, there’s nothing bigger than that colossus, the energy industry. Little wonder, then, that US foreign policy since the end of World War II has been dominated by the need to secure guaranteed supplies of that main energy source, oil.

The recent news of the signing of a US-backed $7.6 billion Agreement between Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India (giving birth to the acronym TAPI) to build a gas pipeline running straight through Afghanistan’s Kandahar Province, the very heartland of the ruthless Taliban insurgency, needs therefore to be viewed in the light of the impermanency of friendships and animosities in contemporary ‘pipeline politics’. [Though considered a strategic energy pivot, landlocked Caspian and central Asia cannot be accessed by sea-going tankers; pipelines as the only conduit became an early petroimperial focus].

The funding for the US-backed pipeline is from a source familiar to Sri Lankans - the Asian Development Bank. Ministers from the four countries met in late April and agreed to start construction of the pipeline by 2010, and begin supplying gas by 2015, although critical financial issues are reportedly still to be worked out. [Clash of the Titans - the ADB ‘sharks’ taking on the Afghans on their own turf. Wonder if the pipeline involves clearing of any invasive species like ‘Lantana’ too?]

Pepe Escobar of Asia Times caught the incredulity accompanying the pipeline proposal with this observation: "The government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, which cannot even provide security for a few streets in central Kabul, has engaged in Hollywood-style suspension of disbelief by assuring unsuspecting customers it will not only get rid of millions of landmines blocking TAPI’s route, it will get rid of the Taliban themselves. Nonetheless, as in Iraq, American (and NATO) troops could one day be directly protecting (and dying for) the investments of Big Oil."

The history of the proposed Afghanistan pipeline goes back to 1998, proof that oil has never recognized the bogus distinction so assiduously being sought to be made in the US between Republicans and Democrats, two ‘political adjuncts’ of one entity, Big Business. To be sure, the oil-based foreign policy of Republican Papa Bush was not merely followed but taken forward in earnest by his successor in the White House, Democrat Bill Clinton. It was he who, in 1995, first announced ‘strategic partnerships’ with Uzbekistan and several other newly independent republics in former Soviet central Asia.

It was also Clinton the Democrat who launched major attacks on Iraq with aircraft and cruise missiles in January and June of 1996, and deployed troops near Iraq’s borders in 1997 and 1998 after Saddam proposed oil concessions to Russia, China and France; on October 31, 1998 it was he who signed the Iraq Liberation Act calling for regime change in Baghdad, having two months earlier signed another ‘finding’ accusing Iraq of building WMDs. [So Republican George W. Bush merely carried on from where Democrat Clinton left off. The smoothest of ‘smooth transitions’ of power, this!]

It took oil nearly two or more decades to become the reason for direct US military intervention overseas, that being Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, prompting Papa Bush to launch the first Gulf War in 1991. Papa’s subsequent decision to also intervene in Somalia in late 1992, though supposedly for humanitarian reasons, was later proved by the investigative journalism of the Los Angeles Times to have been largely oil driven.

The Times revealed that four American oil giants - Chevron, Amoco, Conoco, and Phillips - had exclusive concessions covering two-thirds of Somalia, all put at risk when the country’s pro-Western government was overthrown. It was obvious self-interest that drove Conoco to allow its corporate compound in Mogadishu to be turned overnight into a de facto US Embassy days before the marines landed in the capital, prompting the newspaper to liken the Somalia operation to a miniature version of the previous year’s Operation Desert Storm in Kuwait.

In Afghanistan, the resurgent Taliban are locked in mortal combat with an invading army led by the US and including NATO forces, with Canadian troops solely deployed in the Taliban’s heartland, Kandahar. This is ‘now’, 2008.

Let’s go back in time to ‘then’, or 1997. The Taliban had captured power in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul. The ‘foes’ of today were then, well, sort of ‘friends’. George W. Bush was Governor of Texas when a delegation of Tallblin leaders flew to Houston to meet with executives of the international energy company, Unocal Corp., to discuss the building of a pipeline through Afghanistan. What’s been forgotten was that it was an all-paid visit arranged by Unocal. Several days of discussions followed at the company’s headquarters in Sugarland, Texas.

The Telegraph (London) of December 4, 1997 reported: "The Taliban ministers and their advisers stayed in a five-star hotel and were chauffeured in a company minibus. Their only requests were to visit Houston’s zoo, the NASA space centre and Omaha’s Super Target discount store to buy stockings, toothpaste, combs and soap. The Taliban, which controls two-thirds of Afghanistan and is still fighting for the last third, was also given an insight into how the other half lives. The men, who are accustomed to life without heating, electricity or running water, were amazed by the luxurious homes of Texan oil barons. Invited to dinner at the palatial home of Martin Miller, a vice-president of Unocal, they marvelled at his swimming pool, views of the golf course and six bathrooms. After a meal of specially prepared halal meat, rice and Coca-Cola, the hardline fundamentalists - who have banned women from working and girls from going to school - asked Mr. Miller about his Christmas tree." There was also a side trip to Mount Rushmore for the wide-eyed Taliban delegates.

The US visit was arranged at a time Unocal was aware that the Taliban were considering a rival bid from Argentina’s Bridas Corp. to build the pipeline.

By the way, does anyone remember who was the special consultant to Unocal at that time? None other than GWB’s former viceroy of Kabul and then Baghdad, and the current US Ambassador to the UN, Zalmay Khalilzad. Rumour has him as a future ‘Afghan’ presidential candidate. [Better watch it, Hamid.

US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher recently said his government had a "fundamental strategic interest" in Afghanistan, claiming there was a "historic opportunity ... of having an open Afghanistan that can act as a conduit for energy, ideas, people, trade, goods from Central Asia and other places down to the Arabian Sea."

Stephen Blank, a professor at the US Army War College, in Carlisle Barracks, Pa., said America was particularly eager to provide an alternative to the proposed $7.5 billion Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline, which those three countries had agreed to pursue. "From the US viewpoint, the idea of blocking Iran is of paramount significance," he said, stressing the obvious.

Pipeline politics might necessitate a US rapprochement with the Taliban.

And the ‘War On Terror’ will go down the tube.