Pipelineistan: The politics of IPC, IPI, TAPI, TAPIC

Posted on 13 February 2008. Tags: Afghan, India, IPC, IPI, Pipeline, TAPI, TAPIC

Hatena Bookmark - Pipelineistan: The politics of IPC, IPI, TAPI, TAPIC

Pakistan is at the crossroads of the South Asia, Middle East and Central Asia. It snuggles a vital link to China, Central Asia and Afghanistan. The Turkmenistan to India pipeline via Afghansitan and Pakistan is very viable and all countries have agreed to build it. Both pipelines help Pakistan become an important link in the global strategy for oil and gas. While the IPI pipeline was to be built from Iran to India. However both Pakistan and Iran have decided to build the pipeline on their own

Pipelinistan:

India’s recalcitrance to join and China’s eager interest in the Iran Pakistan pipeline bodes well for the visionaries who wish to convert the Pakistan energy corridor into a reality.

The introduction of China into the pipeline project is huge morale boost for Pakistan and places a hamper on the hard bargaining on transportation costs. China has the largest investment banks in the world, and with Chinese trade surpluses, the financing issues would evaporate in a nano-second.

Beijing has been pressuring Tehran for China’s participation in the pipeline project and Islamabad, while willing to sign a bilateral agreement with Iran, has also welcomed China’s participation. According to an estimate, such a pipeline would result in Pakistan getting $200 million to $500 million annually in transit fees alone.

China and Pakistan are already working on a proposal for laying a trans-Himalayan pipeline to carry Middle Eastern crude oil to western China. Pakistan provides China the shortest possible route to import oil from the Gulf countries. Even so, passage over the Himalayas would be an expensive and challenging engineering feat, and once the oil reached China it would have to be shipped thousands of kilometers further east to coastal areas, where most energy demand is centered.

The pipeline, which would run from the southern Pakistan port of Gwadar and follow the Karakoram highway, would be partly financed by Beijing. The Chinese are also building a refinery at Gwadar. Imports using the pipeline would allow Beijing to reduce the portion of its oil shipped through the narrow and unsafe Strait of Malacca, which at present carries up to 80% of its oil imports. Islamabad also plans to extend a railway track to China to connect it to Gwadar.

The port is also considered the likely terminus of proposed multibillion-dollar gas pipelines reaching from the South Pars fields in Iran or from Qatar, and from the Daulatabad fields in Turkmenistan for export to world markets. Pakistan, Iran sign gas pipeline deal By Syed Fazl-e-Haider

TAPI: The other Pipeline is the Turkmenistan Afghanistan Pakistan pipeline in which India is more interested in. Now that China has shown interest in both pipelines. There is fresh emphasis on the pipeline from Daulatabad.

Govt to reactivate TAPI gas pipeline project: Official says ADB willing to finance 25% of project cost

SLAMABAD: The government has decided to reactivate the multi-billion-dollar Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline project, and is considering taking 25 percent of the total amount from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) for this purpose.

According to a senior official of the Ministry of Petroleum, a tripartite agreement was signed by Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan in December 2002 for laying hundreds of kilometres of gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan via Afghanistan.

The ADB was acting as the lead developer and coordinator for the project. It sponsored a feasibility study in 2003 – completed by a British consulting firm, Penspen, in 2004 – for laying a pipeline to carry 3.2 million cubic metres of gas per day from Turkmenistan through Herat and Kandahar in Afghanistan and terminating in Multan in Pakistan.

Financing: In order to be processed further, transaction advisory services by an international consultant are being considered wherein the ADB has indicated that it will be willing to finance 25 percent of the cost of such services, provided the remaining cost is shared equally among the participating countries, the official said.

The 1,680km pipeline was suppose to run from the Dovetabat gas deposit in Turkmenistan to Fazilka, a town in Indian near the border with Pakistan, he said. The official said India also expressed its willingness to join the project later, and the Inter-Governmental Framework Agreement (IGFA) signed in December 2002 was amended in April 2008 to facilitate Indian participation. All four governments initiated the revised IGFA, but a formal signing of the agreement is still pending, awaiting completion of some ‘enabling actions’ required to be completed by Turkmenistan and Afghanistan. “These principally includes the signing of the agreement as well as certification of reserves held by Turkmenistan,” he said.

The original estimate of the pipeline project in 2004 was $3.3 billion, which was revised to $7.6 billion in 2008. Responding to latest position of the ADB about the project, he said, “The bank has indicated that it would consider further investment only if the parties agree to move ahead with indication of tangible progress in the future.” APP

Pipeline

Iran Pakistan Pipeline The politics of IPC, IPI, TAPI, TAPIC

Blaming Pakistan won’t help the war on terror.

TAPI is being planned and will bring unprecendented change to the entire area..

State-run GAIL India Ltd will be part of a consortium that will be building the $7.6 billion Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline by 2015.

Unlike the rival pipeline from Iran, the 1,680 kilometer long pipeline from Dauletabad gas field in Turkmenistan will be built and operated by a consortium of national oil companies from the four countries, a top official said here.

India last week formally joined the US-backed project to meet its growing energy needs.

The rival Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline is to be built by the three nations separately – Iran is to build the section of the pipeline that fall in its territory, while Pakistan will construct the 1,035-km length from Iran-Pakistan border to Pakistan-India border. India will lay the line from its border with Pakistan to the consumption centre. But, TAPI would be constructed by a consortium.

“A Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) will be floated for the purpose, with a strong likelihood of international companies joining in laying and operation of the pipeline,” he said.

The Steering Committee meeting of TAPI project, called by the project sponsor Asian Development Bank in Islamabad last week, endorsed GAIL’s participation in the consortium.

TAPI pipeline will run from the Dauletabad gas field in Turkmenistan to Afghanistan. From there it will be constructed alongside the highway running from Herat to Kandahar and then through Quetta and Multan in Pakistan. The final destination of the pipeline will be the Indian town of Fazilka, near the border between Pakistan and India.

The pipeline will transport 100 million standard cubic metre per day of gas from the Dauletabad gas field, of which India’s share is likely to be 60 million standard cubic metre. Business Standard (India)

The original pipeline from Iran to India was supposed to be an underwater pipeline that economically hooked up Iran to China. The Indian vision was to bypass Pakistan and build the Chahbahar base and then spread a network of railroads and roadways networks to Afghanistan, Central Asia and Russia. Iran was a key link in hooking up to longtime Indian ally Russia. However the underwater pipeline was too expensive and technically not feasible.

Energy starved India can be helped but she must stop the terror sent to Pakistan.

A lot of water has flown down the Indus, and the Huraswati river of Iran is exactly where it was when the Aryans invaded the peaceful inhabitants of the Harappa and Moenjodaro. Indian plans for Central Asia, and Iranian plans to link up with India may be on hold.

In 2008, the shifting sands of Baluchistan are a signal of the tectonic shift in power-play. India is more closely allied with America and this alliance is seen with much suspicion by the Russians. America’s traditional cold war ally, Pakistan is a “war on terror” ally, but does not figure in the global American plans to build India as a bulwark against China.

A new government in Islamabad is not going to be as compliant to American wishes on the so called “Global War on Terror.” There is a broad consensus in Pakistan that doing Americas bidding is “never ending game” which impedes Pakistani growth, and the blowback is detrimental to Pakistani interests. Irregardless of which political party comes to power, the change in Pakistan’s internal and foreign policy will be definately discernable. Within the next months and years, Pakistan will be going through an historic shift in alliances. The new alliances being formed are Russia-China-Pakistan. Iran may have realized the implications to its own security in Chahbahar. If not, the carpet bombing may convince it if its blunders.

Iran the arch-nemesis of America will be vital partner in this new alliance. As such, the Indian participation in Chahbahar will end the same way Indian participation ended in Ayin-Dushambe. India was given an eviction notice.

In an interesting article titled “Will India again leave Afghanistan?” Ajai Shukla voices what most Indian Foreign policy spokespersons are silent about–the wish that American occupation of Afghanistan is good for Indian interests.

In the zero-sum Great game paradigm of the Subcontinent “What is good for India, is bad for Pakistan”. American and now NATO forces are propping up an anti-Pakistan government in Afghanistan and allowing India a foothold in the country with her 4 consulates, and 13 “Information Centers”. Pakistan has been at the receiving end of a flurry of terror activity emanating from the Indian consulates and its base in Tajikistan.

Being forced out of a country by the enemy, like India was from Afghanistan in 1996, when Taliban fighters encircled Kabul, is always a foreign policy nightmare. Just twelve years on, another evacuation from Afghanistan no longer seems impossible.

Indian vs. Pakistani interests in Afghanistan

“But the well understood bottom-line remains: India will evacuate from Afghanistan rather than get embroiled in battle there.” Indian Analyst

“In addition to the natural hatred which every Afghan feels toward a foreign invader, there is a strong underlying current of fanaticism. Unless promptly checked, (it) becomes at times, and especially against a Christian enemy, uncontrollable.” Afghanistan in 1880 British Field Marshal Lord Roberts, after British invaders had been massacred in Kabul.

“Like most members of NATO, India prefers to fight terrorism at home, rather than the go-out-and-get-’em approach that America has followed” Ajay Shukla

The Indians were asked to pack their bags and leave Afghanistan in 1995. They remember the evacuation well, and are packing their bags, just in case they have to do it again. The sickly scent of defeat wafting over the NATO building in NATO Germany was a cause of celebration in many quarters.

The division of NATO into two wings, one that wants to withdraw from Afghanistan, and the other that wants to stay in the relative safety of the Northern areas is a wedge that may drive a nail into the coffin on the Afghan operation.

NATO impotence and sqabbling was the aroma of victory for the Afghan nationalists and Pakistanis who want India to be evicted from Afghanistan.

The Trail of Terror from Delhi via Dushambe to Dera Khan in Pakistan

Attacks on Pakistan. The flow of terror from Ayin-Tajikistan to Indian consultates in Afghanistan, through British training camps in Helmund to Pakistan and to Iran. This Swat war (Kargill in reverse) was actually worse than the Indian invasion of international boundries in 1965. All inernational capitals did not like the Kargil liberation, but the silence over Swat was deafening. The Pakistanis were at first surprised at the strength and ferocity of the attacks against Pakistan since December. this wasn’t cavemen from Helmund, these were professioanl Special Services agents from India who were sniping at Pakistani forces and taking a havey toll. The first reaction was of panic.

How deep was this infiltratoin. How many Indian battallions were involved? Diplomatic pressure on India forced it to withdraw and reduce the quantity of insurgents. An emergency was declared in Pakistan in preparation for full scale war or long term operations. However the Indian inspired insurgency quickly melted away, and Baitullah Mehsud has been on the run and is mostly isolated from the main Taliban movement. Peace in Pakistan, and peace between Pakistanis is “bad news” for Delhi.

Indian policy makers are chagrined that the bases of the mercenary bases have been eradicated in Swat and other areas. At least one overt British mercenary training camp in Helmund has been shifted. Indian presence in Swat has been curtailed. While cross-border terror and Indian inspired suicide-bomber squads continues to come from Indian consulates in Afghanistan, the volume and strength of the infiltration has been diminished.

The Pipeline politics: Cutting India down to size!

On Saturday, Washington sent out a warning that reeked of mission failure. After six years of counter-terrorism operations, a senior Bush official categorically stated that the top leaders of the Taliban’s shura (council), including Mullah Omar, were living in Quetta in Pakistan; the Al Qaeda leadership, including Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, said the official, are living in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP).

Washington’s frankness was not directed at Pakistan alone; it was timed with the annual Munich Conference of the 26-country North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), where the US unsuccessfully prodded reluctant NATO countries to send troops into combat in southern Afghanistan. The combined armies of NATO number more than two million men in arms, but the alliance can barely muster up 26,000 soldiers in southern Afghanistan. Other than four countries – the US, the UK, Canada and Holland – the other NATO members are willing to send troops only to the relatively peaceful north of the country. The rift is growing bitter; on Sunday, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates called NATO’s very future into question, saying it could not continue as a two-tiered alliance of countries that fought and others that did not.

But Europe is unmoved, and the reason is two-fold. First, there is the mistaken belief that the global policeman, America, will continue to fight the difficult battles. And secondly, there is an understandable reluctance to get embroiled in Afghanistan, where the seemingly simple issues of relief and stabilisation have been complicated by local and regional power dynamics that outsiders simply cannot influence.

Take, for example, the difficult debate among Pakistan’s policymakers between those who see no option but to fight the Taliban in the areas bordering Afghanistan, and those who advocate making peace with them. Islamabad is caught in the cleft stick between getting into a bloody counter-insurgency war on the side of the unpopular Americans, on the one hand, or surrendering the tribal areas to self-avowed fundamentalists, on the other.

Until last week, Islamabad was fighting the good fight. But on Thursday, the Pakistani Army signed a cease-fire with Taliban commander Beitullah Mehsud, the man who proudly claims to control an army of suicide bombers and who Islamabad itself blames for the murder of Benazir Bhutto.

The ceasefire has immediately de-escalated the fighting in Pakistan’s NWFP. That is good news for the Pakistan Army, but even better news for Afghan Taliban commanders who rely on safe havens on the Pakistani side of the border for manpower and provisions. The Afghan Taliban will gain strength and sustenance from this cease-fire; the cease-fire in North Waziristan in 2006 allowed them to launch their fiercest ever offensives in Afghanistan that year. These complex regional interlinkages make most European countries reluctant to risk their soldiers’ lives in such a shifting and uncertain battlefield.

Bonn and Paris have also noted that regional powers like India, with a far more direct stake in Afghanistan, have steadfastly refused to join the fight. India has committed close to three quarters of a billion dollars in the carefully considered reconstruction of that ravaged country. But NATO’s more cautious members would have noticed that India’s National Security Advisor, MK Narayanan, who addressed the Munich Conference on Sunday, spoke about the interconnect between Al Qaeda and terrorist outfits that target India – the Lashkar-e-Toiba, the Jaish-e-Mohammad, the Harkat-ul-Jehad-e-Islami – but not about sending troops to Afghanistan.

Today, New Delhi is already facing up to the possibility that Afghanistan could fall to the Taliban and, like in the late 1990s, it may have to close its embassy and pull Indian nationals out of that country. Senior foreign ministry officials have already begun totting up the gains and losses of the last six years in Afghanistan. One of the gains they focus on is the building of strong linkages with the Pashtun community, and even with the more moderate elements within the Taliban. New Delhi’s flow of aid has won many friends within a country that is naturally well disposed to India. But the well understood bottom-line remains: India will evacuate from Afghanistan rather than get embroiled in battle there.

Like most members of NATO, India prefers to fight terrorism at home, rather than the go-out-and-get-’em approach that America has followed. This despite signals from extremist networks that a jehadi victory in Afghanistan would translate into a stepped up jehad in J&K. Former ISI chief, Lt General Hamid Gul, one of the architects of the Kashmir insurgency has called for a renewed push in Kashmir, which, he says, will be possible after the US leaves Afghanistan

But for now, the US stands fast and India benefits daily from that presence. History will mock one of George W Bush’s most ill-judged speeches, when he declared victory in Iraq from the flight deck of the aircraft carrier, USS Abraham Lincoln, on 1st May 2003. Later in that speech, in a statement that has already been forgotten, Bush said, “Other nations in history have fought in foreign lands and remained to occupy and exploit. Americans, following a battle, want nothing more than to return home.” Ajai Shukla: Will India again leave Afghanistan?

The implications of the IMU activity in Pakistan

The Grand Bargain? Pakistan key to Afghan Great Game

Tough lessons in geography

India is not the only country that secretly hopes that America stays on for now in Afghanistan.

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Wednesday said it welcomes China’s participation in a gas pipeline project involving Iran, irrespective of whether India decides to take part in the venture.

The Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline was originally envisaged to transport Iranian gas to India and Pakistan. India has not participated in the last few rounds of discussions on the project following differences with Pakistan over a transit fee to be paid for the Iranian gas.

In recent weeks, reports have suggested that the Indian government will hold talks on the project with the new administration to be formed in Pakistan following the February 18 general election.

A senior Iranian official on Tuesday said China is keen to join the pipeline project and if New Delhi does not take a decision soon, Beijing would replace it in the deal.

Foreign Office spokesman Mohammad Sadiq told a weekly news briefing, “India is still interested in the IPI project. If there are prospects of China joining the IPI project with or without India, we will welcome it.”

Pakistan, Sadiq said, is committed to the pipeline because of its desire to achieve energy security. “We will welcome China joining (the project),” he said.