The Oil Factor - Afghanistan

Afghanistan

The part dedicated to the invasion to Afghanistan (Operation Enduring Freedom), introduced by the film as a "war virtually forgotten by media" begins with a rhetoric question of why the coalition units invaded the "extremely poor and desolated country" and why this military operation, allegedly waged for capturing Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda members, involves such vast concentration of American military technologies and building big permanent military bases, supposing this search and destroy mission would last for decades.

The documentary answers this question via Ahmed Rashid - according to his reasoning the clandestine reason is upcoming struggle for dwindling energy sources like oil and natural gas, abundantly present in the area of Central-Asian states - Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan a Kazakhstan. The players of this struggle are Russia, China and the United States of America. While both China and Russia neighbors with at least some of the mentioned countries, USA do not and if they want to import Central-Asian oil or gas, they have to establish a pipeline to the Indian ocean. Such pipeline would have to run over Pakistan and Afghanistan. While Pakistani authorities would not object the construction, Afghan Taliban members and local warlords embody a peril of the intact existence of the pipeline.

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