Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India signed on December 11, 2010 two agreements (an Intergovernmental Agreement and Gas Pipeline Transmission Agreement) for constructing the Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India Gas Pipeline (TAPI). However, the ongoing civil wars in Afghanistan and in the northern part of Pakistan through which the TAPI will have to pass have created a major security obstacle to its construction and its normal operation if and when it is built. Given all the indicators that suggest the continuity and expansion of these armed conflicts into the foreseeable future, the TAPI will unlikely become a reality by 2014 as envisaged by signatories. This reality calls into question the significance of the December 2010 agreements.
Map: TAPI and IPI Pipelines
The December agreements seem to be more political in nature, intended to secure certain objectives more than anything else. They include dissuading India once and forever from importing gas from Iran through the proposed Iran-Pakistan-India Gas Pipeline (IPI), now turned into the Iran-Pakistan Gas Pipeline (IP) after India’s 2009 withdrawal from the project (the wisdom of which is still questioned by many Indians). Discouraging Pakistan from implementing the IP pipeline would remove the possibility of China’s importing gas from Iran through this infrastructure. As is well known, China has invested heavily in Iranian upstream projects. Canceling the IP would also exclude Iran as a transit route for Turkmen gas exports. In essence, the December agreements were meant to slow down Iran’s rise as a regional power with a higher status by limiting its energy exports, the major source of foreign currency for its government.
As an envisaged pipeline project for exporting Turkmen gas to India via Afghanistan and Pakistan, the TAPI has been floating around since the early 1990s when the Soviet Union’s fall and Turkmenistan’s independence paved the way for its future realization. However, its main stakeholder (UNOCAL) shelved the project in 1998 when the Taliban’s major offensive to control the Afghan territory bordering Turkmenistan (then under the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance) failed. This failure and the continued Afghan civil war turned the TAPI into a pipe dream with no chance of realization in the foreseeable future.
The Taliban’s fall in November 2001 created the hope for an end to Afghanistan’s instability and thus helped revive the project, leading to the conclusion of an agreement for its construction in December 2002 by Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Nevertheless, despite the backing of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the project has remained a pipe dream in the absence of the single major prerequisite for its realization: security. Contrary to initial hopes, the Taliban's fall did not end the civil war in Afghanistan; it only changed its protagonists. The Taliban and like-minded extremist armed groups (Hezbi Islami) allied with Al Qaida have since challenged the power and authority of the Afghan government and its supporters, the US and the members of the International Security Assistance Force, in a bloody war which has denied peace and stability to a large and growing part of Afghanistan. For all practical purposes, the Afghan government and its foreign allies have lost control of Pashtun-dominated eastern and southern Afghanistan to the Taliban and its allies, which control these regions in one form or another. With a high degree of success, these destructive groups have sought to expand their power to other parts of the country or to destabilize them through numerous violent acts. Consequently, many other parts of the country, with the partial exception of the three Tajik-dominated Afghan provinces bordering Iran, have become the scene of fierce armed conflicts.
To have a clear understanding of the TAPI’s transit route to India, add to the above the deteriorating security situation in Pakistan’s territories that neighbor Afghanistan, namely Baluchistan Province and North West Frontier Province (NWFP). In particular, the NWFP h