Russian and Iranian intelligence agencies were following payments made to high officials of the Taliban since 1995 in Peshawar, Islamabad and London and one of the transactions was traced to a US oil company with offices in Arizona.

Russia’s federal security bureau director, Nicolai Patrushev, made several trips to Iran last year in connection with the Taliban oil pay-offs, diplomats said.

Patrushev paid one last visit to Teheran in March this year.

But the Russians and Iranians could not crack the case.

Some of the largest oil and gas deposits after the Middle East have been discovered on the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea in the former Soviet republics of Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan.

These republics became independent after the Soviet Union disintegrated.

Several international oil companies have invested heavily to draw oil and gas from this region.

The cheap and effective way would be to pipeline the oil and gas through Iran.

But this option is not available to US oil companies since America has broken off diplomatic relations with Iran following the overthrow of the Shah and the 1979 Ayatollah Khomeini revolution.

US oil companies, therefore, opted for the overland route through Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Analysts say that the US and Pakistan created the Taliban to overcome the chaos in Afghanistan created by Soviet withdrawal and mujahideen misrule between 1992-1996.

California-based oil giant Unocal was planning to build a $3 billion pipeline through Afghanistan to carry natural gas from Turkmenistan to Pakistan.

Unocal had 54 per cent interest in the project and the Taliban would have earned $100 million in royalties every year.

Unocal abandoned the project after the Saudi terrorist, Osama Bin Laden, based in Afghanistan, bombed two US embassies in east Africa in August 1998.

Russian and Iranian investigators followed up the Taliban oil pay-offs after the 11 September attacks with US intelligence agencies.

Russia offered to give intelligence on the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden in return for US help in tracking down the Taliban’s fund-raisers in American oil companies, said a diplomat.

Names of suspected American oil company executives were passed on to US agencies to check out their backgrounds and financial transactions.

But diplomats say that Russia did not disclose the reasons for seeking this background check fearing that the leads available with its agencies would be destroyed while endangering its sources.

US agencies wanted more information before they could proceed but Russian officials refused, diplomats said.

The Taliban oil pay-offs case has made no progress since.

But diplomats said millions of dollars were paid to the Taliban.

They accuse key politicians of the ousted Nawaz Sharief regime and some Pakistani generals serving under the former army chief, General (retired) Jehangir Karamat, and under General Pervez Musharraf of taking middle-money in the Taliban pay-offs.

“The Afghan desk is very prized in the Pakistani army,” said an official. “There is considerable money to be made there. And it is not all drug money. It is also oil money.”

Diplomats are worried about a return of the oil lobbies and the Taliban in another form. “The same lobbies could be active now,” said a diplomat. “The oil companies have their interests in Caspian Sea oil and will pursue it one way or the other.”

Analysts say that Russia is growingly apprehensive of the renewed role of oil, drug and arms lobbies in Afghanistan.

Russia believes that the oil lobby turned the Uzbek General Abdul Rashid Dostum against the Russian puppet regime of Najibullah and then against the government of Burhanuddin Rabbani.

General Dostum now controls Mazar-e-Sharief as part of the Northern Alliance led by Rabbani.

Diplomats say that Russia is piqued by statements from Western countries, beginning with Britain, that Afghanistan’s neighbours should not interfere in its affairs anymore.

“It is alright to ask states not to interfere,” said a diplomat, “but what about the drug cartels, the oil lobbies, and the arms merchants who are all going to create problems in Afghanistan once again?”

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