Contributed by Blog reader
Josh Visser, CTV.ca News Staff
"A U.S-backed pipeline would be an inviting target for the Taliban and al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan, and the planned project would run directly through Kandahar, the volatile region that Canada has promised to defend through 2011.
Afghanistan and three other countries agreed in April to build a US$7.6-billion natural gas pipeline starting in 2010 that would deliver gas from energy-rich Turkmenistan to energy-hungry Pakistan and India.
The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline is strongly supported by the U.S. because it would block a competing pipeline from Iran that would bring oil to India and Pakistan. It would also reduce Russia's dominance of the energy sector in Central Asia.
A U.S-backed pipeline -- more than 500 kilometres of it -- in Afghanistan would be an inviting target for Taliban and al Qaeda operatives there. It would be very difficult to defend.
But Ottawa and the military have been quiet about what could be one of the biggest changes to the operational paradigm in Kandahar, despite plans for such a pipeline going back a decade........."
Think-tank questions Afghan pipeline feasibility, beneficiaries
"Fields of unmarked landmines and an unchecked insurgency stand in the way of what could be Afghanistan’s largest development project, a Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives report states.......
Stephen Staples, founder of the Rideau Institute on International Affairs, a research and advocacy group on public-policy issues, wrote an introduction for the CCPA’s report.
“How the heck are they going get a pipeline 1,700 kilometres through Afghanistan on the route that they’re proposing, which goes right through the insurgency?” Staples asked in a telephone interview with the Straight. “It’s utter folly, really.”............"
Josh Visser, CTV.ca News Staff
"A U.S-backed pipeline would be an inviting target for the Taliban and al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan, and the planned project would run directly through Kandahar, the volatile region that Canada has promised to defend through 2011.
Afghanistan and three other countries agreed in April to build a US$7.6-billion natural gas pipeline starting in 2010 that would deliver gas from energy-rich Turkmenistan to energy-hungry Pakistan and India.
The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline is strongly supported by the U.S. because it would block a competing pipeline from Iran that would bring oil to India and Pakistan. It would also reduce Russia's dominance of the energy sector in Central Asia.
A U.S-backed pipeline -- more than 500 kilometres of it -- in Afghanistan would be an inviting target for Taliban and al Qaeda operatives there. It would be very difficult to defend.
But Ottawa and the military have been quiet about what could be one of the biggest changes to the operational paradigm in Kandahar, despite plans for such a pipeline going back a decade........."
Think-tank questions Afghan pipeline feasibility, beneficiaries
"Fields of unmarked landmines and an unchecked insurgency stand in the way of what could be Afghanistan’s largest development project, a Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives report states.......
Stephen Staples, founder of the Rideau Institute on International Affairs, a research and advocacy group on public-policy issues, wrote an introduction for the CCPA’s report.
“How the heck are they going get a pipeline 1,700 kilometres through Afghanistan on the route that they’re proposing, which goes right through the insurgency?” Staples asked in a telephone interview with the Straight. “It’s utter folly, really.”............"
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