BAKU, Azerbaijan, Aug.17
By Leman Zeynalova – Trend:
The Taliban will still be interested in buying gas, and electricity from Turkmenistan, and also electricity from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, but again, the future behavior of the Taliban will show whether the governments in Central Asia wish to continue to export electricity to Afghanistan, or in Turkmenistan’s case possibly gas, though there is no pipeline yet, the US expert on Central Asia Bruce Pannier told Trend.
“I think the bigger problem will be can the Taliban government pay for this gas or electricity. Afghanistan is going to lose a lot of international funding and aid because of the Taliban takeover and they might find it difficult to come up with money to pay for energy imports,” said the expert.
Regarding the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) project, Pannier noted that for now, and for many months to come, TAPI is essentially a dead project.
“It is difficult to see who would be willing to invest large amounts of money in the construction of the pipeline. There are questions about what Taliban rule of Afghanistan will be like and it will take some time to see this clearly. The Taliban have been offering neighboring states and other countries further away many guarantees, but these promises were easy to make when the Taliban were not in control of the country. Now that they are in control, how will they govern the country, what will their policies be toward foreign militant groups inside Afghanistan, some of which fought alongside the Taliban for many years? Until these and other matters become clear, no one will want to risk spending huge amounts of money on TAPI. I think India will probably leave the project now. New Delhi has never had good ties with the Taliban. Turkmenistan will still be interested and Pakistan also, but again, no one is going to give a Taliban government the amounts of money necessary to build the pipeline on Afghan territory,” he added.
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