The current status of the TAPI pipeline in Afganistan, to be completed by 2016 if the Taliban permits, or the Taliban is defeated, has been one of the unreported central issues regarding US involvement in Afganistan. US is currently in talks with Taliban which are probably going nowhere. Kissinger was apparently involved in the conceptualizing of the pipeline in the early nineties.
Conceived of by Kissinger in the early nineties, the pipeline (Tadjikistan, Afganistan, Pakistan and India) has been central to Afgan US interests from the beginning along with other infrequently mentioned issues and goals by US media. Current status of pipeline, to conceivably be completed by 2016 if Taliban cooperates, has other current issues among the partners to be resolved. Designed to bypass Russian interests, GAZPROM is attempting to be involved.
Somehow, the Obama administration and the media fail to report on what the rest of the world knows about Afganistan and the US involvement there:
http://www.oilandgaseurasia.com/news/p/0/news/11397/
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print/711066.aspx
http://www.oilandgaseurasia.com/news/p/0/news/11707/
http://www.turkmenistangascongress.com/
http://www.rferl.org/content/feature/2248838.html
More on the TAPI pipeline and other issues not well covered by US media from Pepe Escobar’s blog (he writes on the Asia Times)
http://intellibriefs.blogspot.com/2011/06/do-china-pakistan-pipeline-shuffle.html
excerpt:
“Sleepy (for now) Gwadar has been building up for years as the key node of the IP (Iran-Pakistan) pipeline, which used to be the IPI (Iran-Pakistan-India) or “peace” pipeline, before New Delhi got cold feet. For Washington, the prospect of a steel umbilical cord linking Iran and Pakistan has always been anathema.
What Washington wants - and has wanted badly since the Bill Clinton years - is the TAP (Trans-Afghan) pipeline, which then became TAPI (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India). Even millennial rocks in the Hindu Kush know TAP or TAPI will only be built when the war is over in Afghanistan, with the Taliban an inevitable part of the government.
In this ongoing, epic IP (or IPI) versus TAP (or TAPI) battle, what is never mentioned is that the winner after all may be... China.
New Delhi knows a pipeline crossing Afghanistan is, well, a pipe dream. But still it has not committed itself to IPI - in part because of relentless Washington pressure, in part because it does not trust Pakistan.
China, on the other hand, has already proposed itself for an IP expansion. This means that starting at Gwadar, another pipeline would be built, by the Chinese of course, crossing Balochistan and then following the Karakoram highway northwards all the way to Xinjiang, China’s Far West.”
THe whole article is worth reading, illuminating the difficulties and LARGER PURPOSES of our involvement there.
Earthquake coming to US interests in SW Asia, Afganistan, TAPI pipeline. Is Obama out of his league? Escobar reports interesting and significant info on challenges to the West, NATO, US by the new Chinese relationships:
http://jetigenweekly.blogspot.com/2011/06/eurasian-geopolitics-face-astana.html