The Counterinsurgency Field Manual that was issued in 2006 for use in Afghanistan emphasizes the need to deal with local populations on a cultural level, which in this part of the world means a religious level. This is not only a major departure from earlier tactical concerns, but is also at odds with the longstanding US approach to geopolitics in the region. Washington's consistent goal for two decades has been to make Afghanistan safe for globalization, which in practical terms has been understood as advancing the interests of American oil conglomerates. It is no accident that a former Unocal employee, Hamid Karzai, was installed as the nation's president. Though it seems inconceivable today, at one time the US supported the Taliban against rival Afghan factions, including civil Islamic ones - most notably that of the remarkably humanitarian general Ahmed Shah Massoud. It was assumed that the Taliban was best equipped to provide the stability that Unocal and other globalist enterprises needed for their operations. In short, the Taliban's success and perhaps even its very existence, militarily speaking, owed much to "pipeline politics." This presumed instrument of stability came with a huge cultural price. Talibanization snuffed out the civil Islamic competition that could have been a bridge between the democratic West and non-jihadic Muslims. To save Afghanistan from a permanent state of war, it is imperative that the region's native civil Islam be revived. Instead of fighting the Taliban with bombs and rockets, it would be much less expensive and far more effective - not to mention humane - to combat it on a cultural level. A good place to start would be the indigenous Islamic concept of "Tawhid," which understands Islam as a religion of freedom. This strategic shift requires, to be sure, a more nuanced view of Islamism than the "us versus them" perspective that prevailed during the Bush years. No less, however, it requires a far more pluralistic and egalitarian sense of what globalization should entail. Suffice it to say that this reaches beyond the corporate interests of Unocal.