The Struggle to Build the TAPI Gas Pipeline Through Afghanistan

AI Summary

The TAPI Gas Pipeline project aims to transport natural gas from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to South Asia, but progress is slow due to challenging regional conditions. The initial construction phase covering a segment from Turkmenistan's border to Herat faces logistical and geopolitical hurdles.

Amid a thicket of hopeful rhetoric surrounding the construction of a trans-Afghan pipeline that would carry natural gas from Turkmenistan to South Asia, tangible signs of progress are hard to find. The pipeline, known as TAPI (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India), has been on the drawing board for decades, and construction of the first leg of the route, a 153-kilometer stretch from the Turkmen border at Serhetabat to the western Afghan city of Herat, is by most accounts inching along. Turkmenistan’s paramount leader, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov,…