Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov strictly adheres to the policy of his predecessor, Saparmurat Niyazov. The present leader of the country, who bears the official title of Arkadag, translated as patron from the Turkmen language, does his best to ensure that the state entrusted to him remains permanently neutral. The policy of neutrality has led Turkmenistan…
The Afghan Civil War spilling over into Turkmenistan. The Taliban reportedly chased approximately 100 members of the Afghan Border Forces into Turkmenistan following heated fighting in the province of Badghis that also saw the insurgents – which are officially recognized as terrorists by the UN and the Russian Federation in spite of the latter recently…
Russia and Pakistan signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) late last month to carry out a feasibility study for prospectively building a $10 billion undersea gas pipeline that Moscow hopes will eventually connect Iran, Pakistan, and India. The megaproject was first floated last November during President Putin’s visit to Tehran at the time, and the…
China expressed an interest in joining the TAPI gas pipeline. Pakistan’s Daily Times reported that China would like to build a branch line through the neighboring country once the original project is completed, which would apparently be less costly than constructing another one directly from Turkmenistan. In the event that it comes into fruition, which…
One of the top roller-coaster sagas in what, some years ago, I christened Pipelineistan, has yielded a definitive twist. The US$8 billion,1,814-kilometer Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline (TAPI) was officially inaugurated on Friday, in full pomp, and with proceedings broadcast live on Afghan TV, on the Turkmen-Afghan border close to Herat. Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani hosted Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan…
For those who follow geopolitics closely you will know something about the IPI pipeline. IPI stands for Iran-Pakistan-India. I could write a book detailing the twists and turns of U.S. and Russian foreign policy on the history of the delays to this pipeline. They stretch back a decade at least. So to see RT today…
