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Ahmed Rashid and the pipeline theory by Syed Khurram Hussain 19 February 2002 10:55 UTC |
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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
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