Afghan pipeline raises security questions
By Travis Lupick
Global Research, July 21, 2008
straight.com
Afghanistan’s ambassador to Canada says NATO’s military mission has nothing to do with a proposed massive pipeline project that will bring natural gas to his country’s neighbours. In a phone interview with the Georgia Straight, Omar Samad said the $7.6-billion pipeline won’t be finished before Canadian troops are scheduled to leave Afghanistan in 2011.
“So I fail to see what the relationship of this pipeline is with the Canadian mission,” Samad said from Ottawa.
On June 19, the left-leaning Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives published a report questioning the feasibility of the pipeline project, given the strength of the Taliban insurgency. Samad, however, said that the Afghan army and local security forces would provide security for the pipeline. “If there is a need to do something different,” he continued, “we will discuss it with whomever will be interested to do so, down the road…beyond the Canadian mission.”
The proposed Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-India-Pakistan pipeline (TAPI) could generate as much as $300 million in annual revenue for the Afghan government, Samad said. Afghanistan’s National Development Strategy lists the country’s projected domestic revenue for March 21, 2008, to March 20, 2009, as $887 million.
Many of the contributors to this thread should rethink thier ideas of pipelines, us dumb Canadians have been saving a pipeline route and helping to neutralize the rightfull owners/stakeholders. Isn't that at odds with what our Dept of Sucking Bankers has been telling us. The Canadian public has been under the impression that we've been over there instructing Afghans about the wonders of the modern western consumer society and sending millions of children to schools not to mention Wal-Fart and Tim Snortins.
On the money, again dark.
