US women fight Taliban oil deal
The Guardian [Manchester (UK)]
January 12, 1998


THE outraged leaders of the United States women's movement vowed yesterday to fight the Clinton administration's backing for a $4.5 billion ( pounds 2.8 billion) oil pipeline deal between a California energy giant and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

The latest chapter in the deal was revealed in yesterday's Washington Post: the arrival by helicopter of four Afghan clerics on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico to meet directors of the Unocal Corp last month. This meeting followed one in Texas, where the Taliban had been tempted by VIP treatment and a shopping spree for luxury goods.

On the oil platform the mullahs ate a specially prepared meal and examined Unocal's latest deep-water drilling technology - with a view to building a pipeline to carry Caspian Sea oil to the Indian subcontinent.

The 790-mile pipeline would carry oil south from northern Turkmenistan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan and out into the Persian Gulf, with a possible extension to New Delhi.

Sources say President Bill Clinton is eager to clinch the deal. He reportedly believes the Taliban-built pipeline would free the new states of central Asia from dependency on Russia, which demands huge transport fees, and bypass Iran and Iraq.

But the Taliban's treatment of women - which includes banning girls and women from schools, hospitals and public places - has led the US women's movement to launch one of its biggest international campaigns to try to prevent White House approval for the pipeline.

State department officials are privately wary of giving the president's blessing to the scheme. The women's campaign could "stall if not scupper" presidential approval and "certainly stir up trouble in Congress", one official said yesterday.

The feminists will lobby their old adversaries in the rightwing Republican majority, among which the Taliban counts few admirers, who will be only too happy to challenge the president about cosying up to a militant Islamic regime.

The campaign is spearheaded by the mainstream National Organisation of Women, which accuses the Taliban of "gender apartheid"; the Feminist Majority group; and the Working Group on Human Rights for Women, whose organisers have met Unocal.

Lea Browning, an official with the Working Group, said she had asked the company to ensure women were trained in the engineering and construction of the pipeline.

"They were less than enthusiastic at first about meeting us," she said, "It took them a while to understand the constituency we represent."

The campaign will involve demonstrations outside the Afghan and Pakistani embassies and lobbying at the United Nations and Congress.

Unocal has been pressing ahead with the project while diplomats from the US, Russia, Iran and Pakistan have failed to reach a settlement on oil pipelines. The company has already sponsored a $900,000 training programme for 137 Afghans at the University of Nebraska, all of them men.

The debate will be embarrassing for President Clinton, who in large part owes his re-election to women voters. Hillary Clinton and the secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, have criticised the Taliban's treatment of women. Mrs Albright called the regime "despicable".



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