Some economic reasons for U.S. staying in Afghanistan

This is part of a much larger article in the MOnthly Review. These factors are usually not mentioned in most accounts of the Afghan mission and never in official pronouncements of reasons for being there.

During the present war in Afghanistan, the U.S. media have generally been quiet about U.S. oil ambitions in the region. Nevertheless, an article in the business section of the New York Times (December 15, 2001) noted that, “The State Department is exploring the potential for post-Taliban energy projects in the region, which has more than 6 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves and almost 40 percent of its gas reserves.” In an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times (January 18, 2002), Richard Butler, of the Council on Foreign Relations, acknowledged that, “The war in Afghanistan…has made the construction of a pipeline across Afghanistan and Pakistan politically possible for the first time since Unocal and the Argentinean company Bridas competed for the Afghan rights in the mid-1990s.” Needless to say, without a strong U.S. military presence in the region, through the establishment of bases as a result of the war, the construction of such a pipeline would almost certainly have proven impracticable.