Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkmenistan have approved the route for a trans-Afghan pipeline, the Turkmen energy minister said on Friday. At a meeting in the Turkmen capital Ashgabat, the pipeline’s steering committee said the 1,650-kilometer project would travel through Herat and Kandahar in Afghanistan, and on to Quetta and Multan, according to Tachberdyi Tagiyev.
| Now that's gonna be a project — laying a pipeline through rugged country, surrounded by savage tribesmen, while wild-eyed Islamists wave guns in front of them and swarm behind them to blow up what they've done, beturbanned warlords and holy men line up demanding rake-offs and "transit taxes"... |
The Asian Development Bank, which is sponsoring a series of feasibility studies on the project, had pushed instead for a northern route through the Afghan cities of Shibergan and Kabul, then Islamabad and Lahore. But Afghan and Pakistani representatives rejected that route because it would take the pipeline over Afghanistan’s mountains and the treacherous Salang Pass. The project was originally contemplated in the 1990s but abandoned when the US fired cruise missiles into Afghanistan in 1998 in pursuit of Al Qaeda network. The US strongly backs the pipeline, and is also hopeful India will be enticed to join and be added to the route — so that it will also help quiet tensions between India and Pakistan.
| See that? See that? I was all about gas, all along! |
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