Background and History of Afghanistan:
The Taliban and Oil

In early 1990s, oil companies in the United States and other countries turned their attention to Afghanistan in efforts to gain access to the more than 200 billion barrels of oil in central Asia. Three major oil companies planned construction of a 1,040 mile-long oil pipeline. The estimated cost of this project was US $2.5 billion. The pipeline was planned to begin in two competing consortiums. One led by Bridas, an Argentinian oil company, and the other a joint project between UNOCAL, a Texas based American corporation, and its partner Delta Oil of Saudi Arabia. In 1994, as the Taliban captured Kandahar, Bridas proposed to build an 875-mile-long gas pipeline which would transfer gas from Turkmenistan through southern Afghanistan to Pakistan. A year later, Pakistan and Turkmenistan signed a memorandum with Bridas allowing the company to research the feasibility of construction of the pipeline through Afghanistan. At the same time, UNOCAL proposed a similar gas pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to central Pakistan, and a major oil pipeline through Afghanistan to Pakistan, delivering one million b/d of oil for export to the West.

Throughout 1997 and 1998, Pakistan was anxiously pushing for more “direct” US support for Taliban and was urging UNOCAL to start building the pipeline. While UNOCAL and Pakistan were lobbying both the US government and Congress for recognition of Taliban as the government of Afghanistan, efforts form human rights groups and feminist movements were increasing pressure on the US government not to resume diplomatic relationship with the group.

Notwithstanding the continuing civil war and the Taliban’s outrageous human rights record, UNOCAL signed an agreement with Pakistan and Turkmenistan to start the pipeline construction, by early 1998. The American oil company donated $US 900,000 to the Center for Afghanistan Studies at the University of Omaha in Nebraska for training of technicians for the pipeline project. At the end of 1998, unable to start the pipeline, UNOCAL announced that the company decided to postpone negotiations until an internationally recognized government is established in Kabul.

Meanwhile, officials at the US State Department lost optimism about Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan and began to explore alternative routs for Central Asia’s oil and gas pipeline. According to a senior UN official “the outside interference in Afghanistan is now all related to the battle for oil and gas pipelines. The fear is that these companies and regional powers are just renting the Taliban for their own purposes.” UN officials and Afghan community leaders publicly criticized the oil companies for the “criminalization of the Afghan economy” through their support of the Taliban.

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