Date: Wed, 13 Aug 1997 14:43:55 -0400
From: malecki-AT-algonet.se (Robert Malecki)
Subject: M-NEWS: Afghanistan and the Caucasus..


Dear Lists,
Sending two extremely interesting articles on Afghanistan and the Caucasus..

#13
The Philadelphia Inquirer
13 August 1997
[for personal use only]
The perils may be many, but interest in the Caucasus and Central Asia is
high. 
Oilmen and U.S. hope dollars and diplomacy will yield a big payoff 
By Peter Slevin 
INQUIRER WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON -- Afghanistan, at war with itself, is not exactly a hospitable
place these days. Its rugged, mountainous turf is plagued by kidnapping,
corruption, and nearly 10 million land mines. Travel by Americans, the
State Department warns, is ill-advised.
   Marty Miller, a can-do Texas oilman, is just back from there. He
chartered a plane into bomb-battered Mazar-e Sharif and Kandahar to pitch a
pipeline deal worth billions to rival Afghan chieftains.
   The Unocal executive is willing to place a large bet on long odds. He
has calculated that the smell of money will inspire warring Afghan leaders
to build a working government in a land that has known only war for nearly
20 years.
   ``It's not for the faint of heart. A lot of our associates in the
industry still don't think we're playing with a full deck,'' Miller
admitted from Sugar Land, Texas. ``Certainly the political risk is very
high, but oil companies are used to dealing with risk and large sums of
money.''
   Large sums, indeed. Lured by analysts' estimates that there is more oil
under the Caspian Sea than there is in Kuwait -- with a potential value of
$4 trillion -- oil companies around the world are racing to invest in the
surrounding nations of the Caucasus and Central Asia. At last count, U.S.
companies had committed $65 billion to just Kazakstan and Azerbaijan.
   And U.S. policymakers are newly alert to the possibilities and the
perils of the region.
   In search of energy security far from Middle Eastern intrigues,
President Clinton and Vice President Gore have urged Caucasus and Central
Asian leaders to back American projects. Three Caspian region presidents
have visited the White House this summer, and U.S. senators and
representatives are adding the area to their itineraries.
   The administration's goals for the nations in this suddenly lucrative
region are independence, stability and democracy, and a level playing field
for American companies. Failure would carry a high price.
   ``If economic and political reform in the countries of the Caucasus and
Central Asia does not succeed . . . the region could become a breeding
ground of terrorism, a hotbed of religious and political extremism, and a
battleground for outright war,'' Strobe Talbott, deputy secretary of state,
warned July 21 in a speech that defined U.S. policy.
   Among the high-powered consultants working with the oil companies are
former Secretary of State James Baker and former national security advisers
Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft.
   Baker is the honorary chairman of the United States-Kazakstan Council, a
business promotion organization. The five honorary advisers to the
U.S.-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce are Baker, Brzezinski, former Secretary
of State Henry Kissinger, former Defense Secretary Richard Cheney and
former White House chief of staff John Sununu.
   ``If these countries didn't have the oil resources to tap into, they'd
be worthless, and we wouldn't be paying much attention,'' said Robert Ebel
of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonprofit
public-policy research organization in Washington and author of a new book
on the subject. ``Oil is a very powerful magnet. It attracts entrepreneurs,
and it attracts nations.''
   The region is made up largely of former Soviet republics and client
states, many of them bitter rivals or riven with internal dissension.
Getting the oil out will mean negotiating contracts in landlocked countries
rife with fiefs and feuds, and only the most haphazard legal systems.
   ``We used to joke that the good news and the bad news was that there was
no law yet,'' Pennzoil executive Frank Verrasto said. ``There's huge
resource potential, but the real trick is going to be to get the oil to
market.''
   Oil executives and policymakers are counting on a potent combination of
dollars and diplomacy to make the region safe for oil. By strengthening the
countries born of the collapse of the Soviet empire, the thinking goes, the
United States will project influence over a strategic region while limiting
the reach of Russia and Iran.
   ``A political vacuum would only give Iran the opportunity to fill it,''
Undersecretary of State Stuart Eizenstat told the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee last month. ``As long as the Caucasus and Central Asia remain
vulnerable to internal instability and ethnic conflict, the danger of
external dominance exists, compounded by the presence of a militant
fundamentalist regime in Iran intent on destabilizing its neighbors.''
   To that end, the Clinton administration this year is seeking a 34
percent increase to $900 million in foreign aid to the eight countries in
the region that were once part of the Soviet Union. Talbott called it a
``prudent investment in our nation's future.'' Since 1992, the United
States has delivered $2.2 billion in assistance to the eight (Azerbaijan,
Armenia, Georgia, Kazakstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and
Kyrgyzstan).
   Clinton has endorsed dual pipelines for the first streams of oil, a
tactic to spread wealth and preserve options for the oil producers and
their buyers.
   Among the projects and the pipe dreams, the most outlandish may be the
idea of shipping oil and gas from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan.
   The civil war continues. The country is a wreck, and skepticism abounds,
but Miller and his Unocal colleagues and their Saudi Arabian partners persist.
   ``These guys are used to moving very fast,'' Washington academic S.
Frederick Starr said of the energy companies. ``They're used to rolling the
dice.'' 

*******

#14
Zavtra Claims U.S. Wants International Forces in Caucasus 

Zavtra, No. 31
August 1997
[translation for personal use only]
Item by the "Den Security Services Agents' Reports" column,
under the "Bulletin Board" rubric

Information is coming in from Washington confirming that the biggest
U.S. oil magnates have given Aliyev (who was in the United States on an
official visit) a guarantee that Clinton would soon forcefully deliver
"instructions" about bringing international troops into the conflict areas
in the Caucasus instead of the Russian Armed Forces.  The aim is to
encircle Karabakh, isolating it from Armenia, and to deploy subunits in
Abkhazia and South Ossetia -- and subsequently in the Ossetia-Chechnya
zone. Similar actions were also being planned at secret talks with
Shevardnadze, who will soon put forward a number of "significant diplomatic
initiatives."  During closed meetings, it was suggested that officials from
Azerbaijan's security services "plan and carry out, in collaboration with
their Caucasian ally [Georgia], some sort of galvanizing actions that would
trigger a new outburst, attesting to the inability of the Russian
Federation to control the sit