"They don't give a fuck about oil pipelines and rare Earth minerals."

Really? It's unfortunate you don't know the history of the Taliban as it relates to the united States.

It was the Taliban that originally shut down opium production jeopardizing the CIA's world-wide 'black' projects. This is one of the reasons the US sent troops to Afghanistan.

The history of America's relationship with the Taliban goes back to the 1980s. It was the Taliban that the Carter Administration's Zbigniew Brzezinski funded to fight against the Soviets until the Soviets withdrew in 1989. When the Soviets withdrew, it was the Taliban that became Afghanistan's first installed government after the Soviets withdrew. This was all in accordance to CIA-controlled US policy.

Years later, the Bush Administration’s held negotiations with the Taliban government for building a pipeline from Caspian Oil Basin and Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to the Pakistani port city of Karachi. A branch of this pipeline was to feed all the power companies of western India. Enron had invested heavily in those power plants. It is well known that the American petroleum giant Unocal was very interested in this project and pursued it for years. The Taliban was in favor of building the pipeline. However in 1998, its efforts were thwarted because of the Afghanistan civil war and then after bin Laden was accused of blowing up two American embassies in Africa. This caused the Taliban to become diplomatically isolated. The regional instability halted any further discussions of the Afghanistan pipeline. Although, Bridas, a former Argentinean oil firm was favored by the Taliban and was willing to start building the pipeline despite the civil war.

It is interesting to note, the Taliban was first funded and installed by the American government, but were then ultimately overthrown by the U.S. Taliban delegates met with State Department officials ante bellum and Unocal in Washington D.C. and may have infuriated their hosts with their continued interest in Unocal’s competitor Bridas, (Bridas has since merged with BP Amoco Argentina). This was after Taliban government officials met in Houston and was given royal treatment that included a trip to see Mount Rushmore. There are several reports that describe the Bush administration's negotiations concerning the pipeline with the Taliban including threats of war if the project was not allowed to pass through Afghanistan. The Taliban was then overthrown by the US government and a new Afghani President, Harmid Karzai was installed in the Afghanistan government. It is more than coincidence that President Karzai was a former Unocal consultant.

With the Karzai government, opium production immediately increased to previous levels before the Taliban came to power.

The Taliban are not who the US government (CIA) portrays them as being.