Ahmed Rashid and the pipeline theory

Just a note:  Ahmed Rashid came to our university yesterday for a talk and
was very surprised to hear that some people have extrapolated the argument
in his book to suggest that America's war in Afghanistan is all about the
oil pipeline.  Building and maintaining a pipeline through Afghanistan even
in the distant future would require a level of commitment to the
reconstruction of Afghanistan that the Bush administration is clearly not
pursuing.  Far from the pipeline, what the US has managed to get out of
this war is a military presence in Central Asia.  This of course does not
mean that that is why they fought the war in the first place.  But perhaps
it is time to outgrow the traditional models of "imperialist wars" to
explain US intervention in the 1990s and beyond.  When I look at the US
wrapping up one war and girding itself for another these days, I don't see
an imperialist war machine at work securing economic interests for its
ruling classes.  I see a superpower run amok, a defense establishment out
of civilian control, and geostrategic interests acquiring a significance of
their own.


Khurram Husain
Lahore,
Pakistan