Geopolitics and security of energy routes

Jasjit Singh

One of the most profound impacts of the tragic terrorist attacks on the United States on 11th September and the consequential war against terrorism has been to alter once again the geopolitics of energy and its supplies from Central Asia-Iran.

Afghanistan has been the object of a “Great Game” played differently by different actors over nearly two centuries now. Pakistan’s willingness to play the role of frontline state against the government in Afghanistan in the 1970s and the Soviet Union in the 1980s was heavily conditioned by the expectations of economic gains from exploiting the vast energy resource base north of Afghanistan.

The US had pursued a policy of containment of Iran since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Controlling Afghanistan presented Pakistan with the promise of a twin advantage (besides pleasing its benefactor, Saudi Arabia): a near exclusive control over access to the energy resources of Central Asia, and support of US containment of Iran by ensuring that energy routes do not flow through or from it.

This would have hopefully provided Pakistan with not only the economic benefits of transit and control of supplies, but also leverage in its relations with the sole super power after the collapse of Soviet Union. At the same time, since the market for the oil and gas resources of Central Asia and Iran would really lie in India, control over their supply would help to either deny its access to India or do so on terms controlled if not dictated by Pakistan. It was this reality that provided the rationale for its concept of “strategic depth” legitimised with religious ideology.

It is against this background of the new “Great Game” that Pakistan found in 1993 that the Mujahideen groups it had supported and nurtured for nearly two decades were no longer willing to listen to Islamabad after assuming power in Kabul. Most of them, in fact, looked to the outer world and India when they were not fighting among themselves (which happened most of the time). This bred the grand strategy of creating the Taliban with active participation of its own military. Extremist religious ideology and hard-nosed geo-economics and geopolitics came together to provide a powerful combination of strategy which held many attractions for the sole super power. But the euphoria of September 1996 did not last long because the Taliban had their own agenda in common with the radical religious extreme in Pakistan army and society. The rest is history.

The problem for energy deficient India was how to get oil and gas across from Iran and Central Asia and the geopolitics of energy supplies intruded into economic logic. Pakistan is geographically placed across the energy routes to India. And the relations between Pakistan and India, if anything, worsened after the former started in the mid-1980s to employ terrorism in India as an extension of its politics and foreign policy. It was inevitable that serious concerns about the security of energy supplies would emerge with a hostile Pakistan astride these routes and with jehadi militant groups armed with military-specification weapons and supported by the regime likely to provide deniability to violent disruption of India’s potential economic jugular.

On the other hand, any objective examination of the issues involved indicated that the overland routes of supply of oil and gas through Pakistan to India offered the optimum solution. The undersea route carries the maximum costs and risks. Technologically, the deep-sea pipeline from Iran (or even the Arab states) option remained not only unproven but also difficult to build. The cost of laying such a pipeline would have to be borne more or less equally by two partners: the producer and the consumer. And so would also the risks.

Pakistan or its ISI-created militant groups could sabotage such a pipeline with impunity and the assurance that India would hardly be in a position to send a protest note to Islamabad if the pipeline was interdicted in international waters. Given the adversarial relations between Iran and Taliban regime, the risks of Taliban action against such pipeline remained great. For the Al-Qaida which could plan and execute terrorist attacks on World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, hitting Iran-India pipeline under the sea next door would present few challenges.

The shallow sea pipeline is not acceptable to Pakistan on security reasons. The surface route across the sea remains a viable option. But the cost of liquefying natural gas, transporting it across the seas in tankers and then de-liquefying it on the other end and again pumping it across the geographic spread of India would be higher than transportation by overland pipes. The optimum solution to oil and gas supplies from Iran-Central Asia, therefore, remains across overland pipelines through Pakistan. And this is where the events since 11th September have opened new opportunities.

First, the war by the international coalition led by the United States against terrorism has placed terrorists on the defensive and down the losing slope. This war will have to be taken to its logical conclusion of eliminating international terrorism. Dismantling of the Taliban regime and the process of establishing a moderate broad-based government in Afghanistan which would not be hostile to Iran or India would alter the geopolitical dynamics that have driven the events for two decades. Pakistan’s economy has been under severe pressures for more than a decade. The income from transit royalties would provide a long-term benefit. But the costs of construction and maintenance would have to be shared by at least three countries with multinational energy majors deeply involved, and Pakistan would have to pay for nearly 700-900 km of the pipeline.

It cannot do so without the involvement of international financial institutions which would naturally have a stake in the security of supplies. Pakistan would also share the risks and stand to lose heavily if supplies through pipelines are disrupted. On the other hand, the risk of terrorist attacks disrupting overland pipelines is greater inside Indian territory rather than in Pakistan. This problem in any case exists with respect to all pipelines laid in India whether they are internal or are routed from Pakistan or Bangladesh.

Second, Iran’s relations with Afghanistan and Pakistan now would be free of the Taliban factor and it is better placed to apply pressure for co-operative policies. But Afghanistan is likely to take quite some time to settle down after nearly three decades of internecine conflict. The real opportunity, therefore, lies in priority steps to finalise an Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline as the first priority. A 200-km gas pipeline already exists from Turkmenistan to Iran. This could be linked into the grid from Iran to India. Legal and other measures for security of the pipeline are available; and if Pakistan cuts the supplies, India has the option to retaliate by shutting off Indus waters that constitute Pakistan’s economic lifeline. Additional safeguards can be introduced by inviting Saudi-UAE investments in gas-fed industry projects in West/Northwest India. What is needed is diplomacy at high gear to find solutions to energy deficiency in India.

(The writer is former Director, Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi)