Afghanistan seeks access to the Caspian Sea
Read on the website Vestnik Kavkaza
Ashkhabad promises Kabul to build a transcontinental gas pipeline in 3.5 years.
Victoria Panfilova, an observer of Nezavisimaya Gazeta, exclusively for Vestnik Kavkaza
The President of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, has officially visited Turkmenistan. He talked to his Turkmen colleague Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov about construction of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline and transport communications. This is logical, as Afghanistan is seeking access to the Caspian Sea.
Ashraf Ghani, who came in power in October 2014, has placed his bets on development of relations with neighboring countries. He has already agreed with President Berdymukhamedov about extension of their cooperation. According to Berdymukhamedov, the trade turnover between the countries exceeded $1 billion in 2014; and there are all the conditions for a doubling of the index this year. Turkmenistan exports oil products to Afghanistan through special terminals on the border; it also provides the northern provinces of the country with discounted electric power. Turkmenistan is finishing construction of another terminal for oil export and a new gas-turbine electric power station; it will significantly extend exports of energy resources to Afghanistan.
Speaking about TAPI, both sides are interested in it. Ashkhabad promises Kabul to build a transcontinental gas pipeline in 3.5 years. Construction should start this year. According to the vice-premier of the Turkmen government on Energy, Baimurad Khodjamukhammedov, almost all preparation works have been completed on TAPI – contracts on imports and exports of Turkmen gas were signed; the TAPI Ltd Consortium was established and registered; and the final task is to choose a leading company of the consortium. “The tender for defining the leader will be announced on February 10-11 2015 at the meeting of ministers in Islamabad,” Khodjamukhammedov stated at the current summit. This major energy project will enable Ashkhabad to diversify its gas exports. At the same time, Kabul will get investments and new jobs, as well as solutions for some social problems and the general development of the Afghan economy.
However, experts believe that geopolitical risks place in question the fulfillment of the project. For instance, Omar Nessar, the director of the Center for Afghanistan Studies, told Vestnik Kavkaza that “talk about TAPI project started long ago; but till relations between India and Pakistan are normalized and the situation in Afghanistan is stable, TAPI will remain a project in theory rather than in practice.” As for transport connections between Afghanistan and Turkmenistan, according to Omar Nessar, Kabul really needs access to the Caspian Sea; and the issue was discussed at the presidential talks as a priority, while talks about TAPI could be a cover for this or other wide-scale projects.
Ahead of his visit to Ashkhabad, Ashraf Ghani addressed MPs of the lower chamber of the Afghan parliament and said that Kabul should do its best to extend economic cooperation with neighboring countries in the region. Presenting applicants for positions in the Cabinet of Ministers to MPs, the President called the struggle against poverty one of the priority directions in the activity of the new government. He added that they shouldn’t expect financial support from the West for resolution of the problem. “Ghani hopes that access to the Caspian Sea will extricate Afghanistan from crisis. Moreover, the President has been an author and initiator of transport projects in Eastern and Southern Asia since the 1990s; being an official of the World Bank, he showed great interest in this direction. Thus, the project of access to the Caspian Sea is an affair of honor for him,” Omar Nessar thinks.
Construction of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan railway, which was started in 2013, could encourage the project. It is planned to be joined with the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars transport route. Afghanistan’s striving the railway to be joined through the South Caucasus is quite logical as well. China also shows its interest in the project. Probably Beijing will be a sponsor of it. Fulfillment of the project could be a significant factor of stabilization in Afghanistan.“Under such circumstances, fulfillment of the TAPI project could become realistic, as security problems in both projects will be solved in complex, and Beijing is interested in this,” Arkady Dubnov, an expert on Central Asia, told Vestnik Kavkaza. According to him, we should pay attention to the last Chinese initiative in the context – the organization of talks between the new authorities in Kabul and Taliban under Beijing’s moderation.
Speaking about the prospects of Turkmenistan and Afghanistan’s access to the West, experts don’t see a problem in this.“Turkmenistan, as well as Kazakhstan, uses ferries across the Caspian Sea. The Caspian Sea is not an obstacle for them. Turkmen trains come to the Caspian shore, are transported by ferries, and then go through Azerbaijan, Georgia, and other ports of the Black Sea to Kars,” Andrei Kazantsev, the director of the Analytical Center, told Vestnik Kavkaza.