Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 by Steve Coll

Author:Steve Coll
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2004-12-28T07:00:00+00:00

UNOCAL CONTINUED TO FLOOD Foggy Bottom and the National Security Council with the same advice: The Taliban were a reality, and they could also be part of a new Afghan solution. Marty Miller searched energetically during 1997 for a way to convert the Taliban’s triumph in Kabul into a final pipeline deal. He met regularly with Sheila Heslin at the White House. He announced that the Taliban might earn as much as $100 million annually from transit fees if they would only allow the pipeline to be built.

Miller had decided early in 1997 that Unocal needed better contacts in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He began to rely more on Robert Oakley, the former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan and a member of the Unocal advisory board. Oakley’s wife, Phyllis, was at this time the chief of the State Department’s intelligence wing, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. She had access to virtually all of the U.S. government’s most sensitive intelligence reporting.27

Robert Oakley advised Miller to reach the Taliban by working through Pakistan’s government. He also suggested that Unocal hire Thomas Gouttierre, an Afghan specialist at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, to develop a job training program in Kandahar that would teach Pashtuns the technical skills needed to build a pipeline. Gouttierre had worked on U.S.-funded humanitarian aid inside Afghanistan during the late years of the anti-Soviet jihad when Oakley was ambassador in Islamabad. Now Unocal agreed to pay $900,000 via the University of Nebraska to set up a Unocal training facility on a fifty-six-acre site in Kandahar, not far from bin Laden’s compounds. Gouttierre traveled in and out of Afghanistan and met with Taliban leaders. Oakley lobbied Nawaz Sharif’s government in Islamabad on the oil company’s behalf. In December 1997, Gouttierre worked with Miller to arrange for another Taliban delegation to visit the United States, this time led by Mullah Wakil Ahmed, Omar’s chief aide.28

By now it was reasonable for the Taliban to believe that Unocal was effectively an arm of the United States government. The Taliban had more intimate, more focused, and more attentive contact with Unocal executives and their paid consultants than with any American officials. The Unocal executives did not just talk about oil pipelines, they talked about a path to negotiated peace in Afghanistan.

Miller’s team provided escorts and transportation for the Taliban that December and helped arrange a meeting for three Taliban ministers at the State Department. Assistant Secretary of State Inderfurth expressed his strongest concerns to the visitors about the condition of Afghan women. He also admonished the Taliban about their tolerance of drug trafficking. He talked about demining, the peace process, and other subjects, never even raising the topics of terrorism or bin Laden. Only after Inderfurth left for another meeting did the subject come up. One of the Taliban ministers explained that his movement had inherited the bin Laden problem, as he was already in Afghanistan “as a guest of the previous regime.” The Taliban, this minister said, had stopped allowing bin Laden “to

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