One of the top roller-coaster sagas in what, some years ago, I christened Pipelineistan, has yielded a definitive twist.<\/p>\n
The US$8 billion,1,814-kilometer Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline (TAPI) was officially inaugurated on Friday, in full pomp, and with proceedings broadcast live on Afghan TV, on the Turkmen-Afghan border close to Herat.<\/p>\n
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\nAfghanistan\u2019s President Ashraf Ghani hosted Pakistan\u2019s Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, Turkmenistan\u2019s President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov and India\u2019s Minister of State for External Affairs M.J. Akbar.<\/p>\n
Assuming there are no major glitches \u2013 and that\u2019s a major \u201cif\u201d \u2013 TAPI should, in theory, be finished by 2020. So far, though, endless deadlines have come and gone.<\/p>\n
TAPI simply cannot exist without Taliban approval. According to a statement by Taliban spokesman Qari Mohammad Yusuf Ahmadi, \u201cthe Islamic Emirate views this project as an important element of the country\u2019s economic infrastructure and believes its proper implementation will benefit the Afghan people. We announce our cooperation in providing security for the project in areas under our control.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another Taliban faction, led by Mullah Mohammad Rasool, also let it be known, via spokesman Mullah Abdul Manan Niazi, that, \u201cwe will not allow any group or state to disrupt this project.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Ahmadi claims TAPI was initially planned when the Taliban were in power in Kabul from 1996 to 2001, he\u2019s correct. The Taliban were wined and dined in Houston in 1997, as I reported for Asia Times, but nothing came out of it. The haggling was all about transit fees<\/p>\n
All of the above is code for the Taliban getting their cut \u2013 which happens to have been the key point of contention ever since the first Clinton administration decided the then rulers of Afghanistan were worth doing business with.<\/p>\n
So when spokesman Ahmadi claims TAPI was initially planned when the Taliban were in power in Kabul from 1996 to 2001, he\u2019s correct. The Taliban were wined and dined in Houston in 1997, as I reported for Asia Times, but nothing came out of it. The haggling was all about transit fees.<\/p>\n
For Kabul, the game from now on is about providing adequate security \u2013 from construction to operation. After all, this is a major job-creating project bound to involve 30,000 Afghan workers and yield US$500 million annually for Kabul in transit rights.<\/p>\n
Rumors swirled in Herat about a bunch of unidentified jihadis, allegedly trained in Iran, planning to attack the inauguration ceremony. There has been no confirmation whatsoever that this is the case \u2013 either from Afghan or Iranian sources. Even President Ghani rejected the outlandish idea that Tehran would sabotage TAPI.<\/p>\n
The rumors should be traced to a Pipelineistan mini-Cold War between TAPI and IPI \u2013 the competing Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline, which, under pressure from the Bush and Obama administrations, was eventually reduced to IP.<\/p>\n
A win-win situation
\nTAPI is a very good deal for Ashgabat \u2013 as it allows Turkmenistan finally to diversify its export markets instead of relying entirely on its major customer China. Gurbanguly, moreover, wants to turn TAPI into an energy\/IT\/connectivity corridor.<\/p>\n
Washington supports TAPI \u2013 and not IPI\/IP \u2013 because its main financial source is the Japan-led Asian Development Bank (ADB), and because it would be a key stabilizing factor uniting Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.<\/p>\n
From Islamabad\u2019s point of view, both TAPI and IP are very much needed. TAPI will meet at least 20% of Pakistan\u2019s natural gas requirements and 10% of its energy needs.<\/p>\n
In economic and geopolitical terms, a steel umbilical cord running along the intersection of Central and South Asia can only be a win-win.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe hope our next generation will see this pipeline as the foundation of a joint position in our region which is aimed at improving our economy, providing jobs and increasing our security, all in our fight against extremists\u201d<\/p>\n
What we have here is a major upward twist in terms of Eurasian integration. The in-progress Turkmenistan energy corridor will eventually link with one of the major Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), sharply increasing Central Asian connectivity.<\/p>\n
Even New Delhi, despite its immense reservations regarding CPEC, is now hailing TAPI, via Minister Akbar, as \u201ca symbol of our goals\u201d and \u201ca new page in co-operation\u201d between the four nations.<\/p>\n
Additionally, TAPI adds to India\u2019s connectivity with Central Asia, via Afghanistan, as embodied in New Delhi\u2019s investment in Chabahar port in Iran.<\/p>\n
Ghani, for his part, said: \u201cWe hope our next generation will see this pipeline as the foundation of a joint position in our region which is aimed at improving our economy, providing jobs and increasing our security, all in our fight against extremists.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the key piece of the puzzle is his public recognition that Afghanistan, slowly but surely, may now be positioning itself \u2013 finally \u2013 as a connector between Central Asia and South Asia.<\/p>\n
The next piece will come from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) \u2013 with Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Iran making sure the war in Afghanistan is over for good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the top roller-coaster sagas in what, some years ago, I christened Pipelineistan, has yielded a definitive twist. The US$8 billion,1,814-kilometer Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline (TAPI) was officially inaugurated on Friday, in full pomp, and with proceedings broadcast live on Afghan TV, on the Turkmen-Afghan border close to Herat. The daily Report Must-reads from across Asia – directly to your inbox… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":72,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/72"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1574"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1575,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1574\/revisions\/1575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}