BEIRUT: Abdullah Al-Nafisi, a leading Kuwaiti Muslim leader who heads a London-based think tank - the Ibn-Rushd Centre said “The United States could end up abandoning some of its traditional allies in the Gulf and Middle East in the course of its ‘war on terror’

In his view, Washington is on the warpath for reasons that go far beyond retaliation for the September 11 attacks, and can be expected to restructure its regional alliances in the process — with the hard-line Anti-Arab / Muslim governments of Israel and India as its two favoured partners. And as America’s behaviour increasingly becomes a domestic political liability for various Arab governments allied to it, Washington may opt to “abandon them to their people’s anger at their submission to the USA and their submission to its economic, financial and political demands” the influential Kuwait academic and former opposition MP suggested in an interview.

Nafisi - whose outspokenness has previously landed him in trouble with his country’s government portrayed America’s military intervention in Afghanistan as being motivated by a range of factors not directly related to Al Qaeda which also make it likely that it will launch more wars in its aftermath.

One of those factors is its quest to control the abundant oil and gas resources of Central Asia and the Caspian Basin, said Nafisi, adding that in order to bypass Iran and Russia, Washington’s favoured route for exporting those resources is by pipeline via Afghanistan to the Pakistani coast. He recalled that prior to Sept 11, the US oil company UNOCAL - which hosted a visit to the US by the Taliban government’s minister for mines and industry, Ahmed Jan - tried to persuade Afghanistan’s former rulers to let it build a pipeline through Afghanistan.

According to Nafisi, the “ideological and religious hostility to the US of the Taliban leadership prompted Mullah Mohammad Omar to decide that no oil and gas exploration or pipeline rights could be awarded to the “US”. It later transpired that the Taliban was likely to award the pipeline deal to an Argentinean investor, with whom Jan negotiated an agreement which was “on the verge of being concluded when the suicide hijackings took place in New York and Washington.

“The Taliban had to be removed from power accordingly there had to be Sept 11. There is a terrible complimentarily between US economic interests and the decision to declare war on the Taliban” Nafisi remarked. The war was also fuelled by internal political dynamics of the US, Nafisi suggested, saying US President George W. Bush sees war as the best way to secure a second term in office and to “overcome suspicions” over the circumstances of his election. “The US always needs external wars, because it is the only thing that unites them” he said. “Every US president invents an external enemy, and Bush is no exception”.

Nafisi said powerful overlapping vested interests in the US political and defence establishments and corporate world were also pushing for “new wars” in the wake of Afghanistan to serve their agendas - as well as to give the recession - hit US economy a boost and further the process of “unifying the global market and gearing the world’s resources to the advantage of the US economy”

Nafisi said the Afghan war could also be seen in a broader strategic context as part of an attempt to offset the prospect of a new post-colt war partnership emerging between Russia, China and India as a counter weight to US global hegemony - something that was being suggested a decade ago by the likes of former Russian Prime Minister Yevgeni Primakov. He said that US interest in Central Asia and Afghanistan is in part motivated by its desire to become less reliant on oil from the Gulf region, where the US would continue to have reason to feel insecure about its presence.