Turkmens, Afghans struggle to realize pipeline dream focus 09/01/2010

Turkmens, Afghans struggle to realize pipeline dream

focus

09/01/2010
ASHGABAT — Plans for a pipeline to deliver natural gas

from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan and India are picking up steam but the decade-long dream still risks never leaving the drawing board.

The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline has featured prominently in recent talks among regional leaders eager to jumpstart the faltering project for reasons of economics or security.

But with spiraling violence in Afghanistan, one of the world’s most opaque regimes in Turkmenistan and miserable Pakistan-India relations, analysts remain skeptical that anyone can succeed in raising the pipeline off the desert floor.

Recent noises from Ashgabat, which may lack the volume to fill the pipeline, are at best wishful thinking, said Evan Feigenbaum, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former assistant deputy US secretary of state.

“Their roadshows periodically include every pipeline idea under the sun, so in theory they’d like to do lots of things. In reality, they probably can’t and almost certainly won’t,” he told AFP by e-mail in response to written questions.

That, he added, is even before any discussion of Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s increasingly-embattled government in Kabul or the thorny issue of India-Pakistan relations..... MORE

Source:  The Daily Tribune

URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20100901com3.html