The Hill Times, April 14th, 2008

Economist identifies Afghanistan as a strategic ‘energy bridge’ for the transport of natural gas from Central Asia to South Asia.

The Parliamentary debate surrounding Canada’s mission in Afghanistan has ignored the role of the “New Great Energy Game” and Afghanistan’s strategic importance in the region as an “energy bridge” for the transport of natural gas, says an MP.

Last week in the House, in a debate on a Liberal opposition motion on the creation of a Special Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan, NDP MP Paul Dewar (Ottawa Centre, Ont.) said that the geopolitics of energy supplies has been left out of the House debate on Afghanistan, and referred to a recent report by international energy economist John Foster, titled “Afghanistan and the New Great Energy Game.”

Mr. Dewar said the new House committee on the Afghanistan mission, which MPs voted to create last week with no opposing votes, should look into Afghanistan as an “energy bridge,” and what influence energy supplies may have had on why Canada is in Afghanistan.

“If we are to have an honest debate in this country about why we are in Afghanistan, the whole issue of Afghanistan, which John Foster calls an ‘energy bridge,’ [it] needs to be laid out,” Mr. Dewar said. “Is this something that the government is committing us to, the combat mission in the south, because of commitments on energy security?”

In an interview with The Hill Times, Mr. Dewar said that the energy question was dealt with in early debates on Afghanistan after Sept. 11, 2001, but the role of energy in Afghanistan has become lost over the years. “We haven’t had a fulsome debate beyond getting more troops,” he said.

Mr. Foster’s report, based on a presentation he delivered to the Group of 78, a Canadian peace organization, in Ottawa on Jan. 29, identifies Afghanistan as a strategic “energy bridge” for the transport of natural gas from Central Asia to South Asia.

He writes that there is a geopolitical “rivalry,” or a “New Great Game” for energy resources in the region, which began after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, and involves controlling the flows of energy resources north to Russia, west to Europe, east to China, and south through Afghanistan. Turkmenistan, for instance, has the world’s fourth largest natural gas reserves, and Kazakhstan has largest oil reserves in Central Asia.

Mr. Foster’s report says that the U.S. supported a consortium led by American company Unocal to move natural gas through Afghanistan, and negotiated with the Taliban to do so between 1997 to August 2001. “For more than a decade, the United States has been working towards a pipeline to move natural gas from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan and India,” it says.

The project, called the TAPI pipeline, takes its name from the countries involved, namely Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India, and is proposed to pass through the Helmand and Kandahar provinces of Afghanistan, now two of the most unstable areas of the country.

“The [President George H. W.] Bush administration saw the Taliban regime as a source of stability for the proposed pipeline. It demanded that the Taliban form a government of national unity,” Mr. Foster writes.

U.S. negotiations with the Taliban failed in August 2001, just before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in New York, and, “Just after that, the U.S. ousted the Taliban, with the assistance of the Northern tribes. Pipeline planning continued under President [Hamid] Karzai,” the report says.

Mr. Foster writes that Washington has been “pushing hard” for plans to build pipelines under the Caspian Sea from Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to Azerbaijan. The American influence is opposed by Russia because it could mean a failure for Russian designs on a “strategic triangle” between Russia, India and China.

David Emerson (Vancouver Kingsway, B.C.), International Trade minister and chair of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) Cabinet Committee on Afghanistan, told The Hill Times last week that he hasn’t been studying the role of energy in Afghanistan.

“I haven’t been focusing on that particular issue. I’ve been focusing much more on the Canadian mission and the transition to 2011. Perhaps at some point that issue will come up on the radar screen, but so far it really has not,” he said.

Mr. Emerson said that Afghanistan has the capacity for substantial and legitimate wealth and employment creation, and moving toward a “credible, democratic, rights-oriented governance system.” However he acknowledged that will be a struggle with so much of the country’s economy driven by drugs and corruption.

When asked whether he would like to see economic development in Afghanistan that would include the construction of the pipeline, Mr. Emerson said: “I don’t want to comment specifically on the pipeline but I certainly would very much want, and I’m sure that the Government of Canada would very much want, to see the development of a legitimate, legal economy that can sustain a credible, viable state.”

The pipeline has significant potential as Afghanistan’s largest development project, Mr. Foster writes, and revenue from it could help pay for education and infrastructure. It could also help meet the energy needs of India and Pakistan, spurring economic cooperation between the rival countries. “So it’s potentially good for peace,” the report says.

Official talks about the proposed TAPI pipeline continue. Both The Hindu and the Indo-Asian News Service reported on April 4 that Indian vice-president Hamid Ansari was to travel to Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan this month in part to discuss the pipeline project. “Technical discussions are underway,” he said.

“[In] Canada nobody talks about the pipeline. Politicians have remained silent,” Mr. Foster writes in his report. “So has the press. Even a major report on Afghanistan, presented in Febraury 2007 by the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence, failed to mention the pipeline. In fact, there was no mention of energy, oil or gas either.”

The Conservative government, like the Liberal government before it, which that launched Canada’s mission in Afghanistan, has been emphasizing security, democratic and human rights, and peace in Afghanistan.

“Afghanistan tops the government’s foreign policy agenda, that is clear. Canada’s whole mission is part of a UN sanctioned, NATO-led coalition that is helping Afghans rebuild security, governance and prosperity,” Laurie Hawn (Edmonton Centre, Alta.) the Parliamentary secretary to the National Defence minister, said during last week’s debates. “This is a complex, multi-faceted mission. It is certainly the most dangerous operation Canada has undertaken in a generation, and arguably the most difficult. However, Canada has risen to the challenge and we are playing a leadership role.”

Liberal MP Bob Rae (Toronto Centre, Ont.), his party’s foreign affairs critic, dismissed any suggestion that Afghanistan’s importance as an “energy bridge” was a motivating factor for the war or Canada’s presence there.

“I think that the interest in Afghanistan, from a Canadian perspective, has everything to do with the instability in Afghanistan, and the fact that it was that instability in Afghanistan that gave rise to an attack on the United States in 9/11,” Mr. Rae said, adding that the reason Canada remains is to build stability and human rights in the country. However he said that if opportunities arise for economic development in oil and gas, that would not be a negative initiative for the country.

“One of the things we know is that if we don’t create stability and the rule of law, economic development will be very, very difficult. That may include a pipeline, but there’s lots of possibilities. I mean, Afghanistan is a country that’s very rich in minerals, but there’s no opportunity to explore, to do any mining, because of the tremendous instability, the poverty, and there’s no infrastructure,” Mr. Rae said.

Mr. Hawn said in the House last week that it would be misleading to suggest that there has not been a fulsome debate in the House. “We are the only government that has debated the mission in Afghanistan in this House—twice,” he said.

Mr. Dewar said he couldn’t be sure why the issue is not receiving much debate, but he added: “I think perhaps people are saying that the whole slogan ‘No blood for oil’ is ridiculous, and [asking] whether you can associate the two. I don’t believe it’s all about natural gas, but I believe that’s part of it.”

Mr. Dewar said that he believes MPs and many in the news media are not aware of the high-stakes battle for energy resources in the region. “It’s lot of MPs, and society in general, and I’ll say even the fourth estate here,” he said, adding that the issue has been raised at NATO, in the Asian media, and to a smaller degree, in the European press. “Perhaps it’s one of those things that’s not a quick, obvious connection to make.”

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