Taliban's pals in Nebraska and Texas

here is an interesting article about the connections of the U.S. Gov. and
the Talaban through Higher Education.

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Nobody wants to be friends with the Taliban now. But
it wasn't always that way. Check out this item from
Bill Weinberg's WW3 report:


CORNHUSKERS WOOED TALIBAN FOR UNOCAL 

The Chicago Tribune reported Oct. 21 on a program at
the University of Nebraska's Omaha campus, the Center
for Afghanistan Studies, which served "a back door" to
the Taliban for US policy and intelligence intrigues.
While ostensibly aiming to "expose Afghan leaders to
American ideas and democracy," it continued to host
high-ranking Taliban representatives even as
anti-Taliban rhetoric in Washington grew harsher and
sanctions were instated. In November 1997,
then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright blasted
Taliban leaders as sadistic killers who nail enemies
to village walls and stone uncovered women. A month
later, eight top Taliban chiefs toured the US at the
Center's invitation. The university's Education Sector
Support Project even distributed thousands of
textbooks to Afghan children reflecting a
Taliban-approved version of history depicting women as
second-class citizens. The pro-democracy content of
the textbooks was edited out at the insistence of the
university's Taliban partners, and university plans to
educate female students and train female teachers in
Afghanistan were "sharply limited." 

Since 1986, the Center has received over $60 million
in US AID grants for programs in Afghanistan and
Pakistan, and to host visits by regional leaders. AID
cancelled the grant in 1994, but the State Department
continued to authorize the visits, and a private
interest stepped in to pick up the bill--the
(Texas-based) Unocal Corp. The sanctions do not apply
to private companies funding "education or
humanitarian relief efforts." Unocal, then seeking a
pipeline route linking the Caspian Basin oilfields to
global markets through Afghanistan, exploited this
loophole to bring 8 Taliban reps (and a Pakistani
intelligence officer) stateside to talk turkey in Dec.
1997. 

"The US government was encouraging our engagement
there to bring stability to the country," Unocal
spokesman Barry Lane said. The Taliban visitors
included Mullah Mohammad Ghaus, Afghanistan's foreign
minister; Ahmed Jan, minister for mines and industry;
Amir Muttaqi, education minister; and Din Muhammad,
minister of planning. The Taliban ministers were flown
to Unocal's Houston offices for four days of meetings.
They also toured NASA headquarters, spent several
hours at a shopping mall and attended a party at the
mansion of an oil company VP. The group also spent two
days at the Omaha campus. Back in Afghanistan, the
university was building its training program on a
56-acre plot in Kandahar that had once been a US AID
compound--now with Unocal picking up the tab to tune
of $1 million. 

Criticism of the program was voiced at Unocal's 1999
stockholder meeting in Los Angeles, where women's
rights groups staged protests accusing Unocal of
cutting secret deals with the Taliban. "We were
suspicious that women's rights would be sold out for
oil," said Feminist Majority spokeswoman Beth Raboin. 

Unocal dropped the pipeline plan when the Taliban was
linked to the Africa embassy bombings in 1998. No
longer receiving money from AID or Unocal, the Omaha
center closed its Afghanistan program. The center
still has an office in Peshawar, Pakistan, and employs
three guards to patrol the Kandahar compound.


=====
KOYAANISQATSI 

ko.yaa.nis.qatsi (from the Hopi Language) n.   1. crazy life.  2. life in 
turmoil.   3. life out of balance.   4. life disintegrating.  5. a state of 
life that calls for another way of living.



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