Daily Times

Just as the Qadirpur gas well in Sindh sent out its first signals of depletion, Pakistan and Iran have moved forward on the gas pipeline project that will bring Iranian gas from its Pars reserves to Pakistan. It took time, but both sides agreed earlier this year that Iran will pump nearly 800 million cubic feet of gas daily to Pakistan at a price pegged to 78 percent of the current crude oil price.
The pipeline will present no problems for Iran which has already built a part of it from its south in the direction of Pakistan, but Pakistan will have to raise money for the 800km the line will cover from the Pak-Iran border to the national grid at Nawabshah. It will be a public-private venture which, if not thwarted by international pressure, can be the most strategic pipeline in the world, bringing India, Pakistan and China together.
In June this year, Iran and Pakistan agreed finally to the following: 1) Iran will provide gas to Pakistan for a period of 25 years; 2) The project, expected to kick-off during September 2009, was targeted to be completed by June 2014; 3) The revised route of the pipeline is Iran-Gwadar-Bhong; 4) The overall length of pipeline stands revised at 2,100km because of the Makran coast diversion.
If there was any doubt about the seriousness of intent of Iran it was removed by the fact that Iran has already completed 900km of the pipeline on its territory. There were complications inside the Iranian government and a difficult phase of getting to understand the mechanism of price-setting. Iran was a bit inward-looking regarding its natural resources and was perhaps also attracted to the prospect of selling gas to Europe, while Pakistan had to overcome its mental barrier on the price of energy in general, dating back to the paranoia created by the price fixed for the IPPs by the PPP government in the 1990s.
The Iran-Pakistan pipeline has become strategic because it will link Iran to the economic survival of Pakistan. The tilt that was seen in the Pakistani stance in favour of Saudi Arabia after the 1980 tension in the Gulf will now be corrected, moving from disequilibrium to equilibrium. It is expected that India, not succeeding in finding alternatives, will finally join the pipeline, and that China will begin to supply gas to its eastern province from this pipeline which will then have to be extended.
One will have to think of equilibrium rather than disequilibrium because Iran is going through its own transition of correcting its approach to global politics. From its latest overtures to the IAEA, the UN nuclear watchdog, a new approach may be in the offing. If the pipeline brings prosperity to Pakistan, India will hope to get out of the “conditionalities” imposed on it in the Hyde Act 2006 — enabling the Indo-US nuclear deal — which tells the Administration in Washington to bend India to following America’s policy on Iran.
It is to be noted that India did not feel “insulted” over the Hyde Act conditionalities. And that the Kerry-Lugar Act 2009 contains no conditionalities restraining Pakistan from accepting the Iranian gas pipeline. The pipeline can do two opposite things: it can intensify America’s anti-Iranian diplomacy in the region, or it can remove the rough edges from the policies Iran and America follow against each other. Iran can recognise that in the Taliban it has an enemy in common with America. Pakistan’s pragmatic approach of acting as a “friendly” state to both Iran and America can actually enhance its diplomatic profile in the region.
Pakistan will soon know how crucial to its survival the Iranian gas pipeline will be. On this point it will simply not bend to any American pressure, which means that Washington will have to rethink its policy of sanctions against Iran. But inside Pakistan, the problems arising in Balochistan will likewise assume greater importance. Balochistan will have to be pacified, not through central coercion, but through a better economic deal to Quetta and by addressing the problems that have arisen there because of decades of neglect.
All pipelines transform. Pakistan will have to learn to live in peace with its neighbours, disarm its private armies named dangerously as “lashkar”, “jaish” and “jund”, and let the militants know that the only “lashkar” in Pakistan is the Pakistan Army. Islamabad’s current approach to India for a dialogue is therefore a sensible beginning. g

Clinton’s encounter with media

After the way the channels handled the TV appearances of the US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, the verdict has to go in favour of the latter. The encounters were arranged as battles. The TV channels lost, and Ms Clinton has gone home satisfied that she has weathered a great storm of orchestrated anti-Americanism with success. The result was foreordained. The anchors aspired to a uniformity of approach and succeeded wonderfully well in achieving it.
Unfortunately, Ms Clinton’s encounter with students was no better. The educational institutions are brainwashed with the one-sided propaganda churned out by the TV channels and the Urdu press. Hence, once the rational answer met an emotional query, the onlookers were bound to be disappointed with the Pakistani performance. At one point she asked if anyone in the auditorium filled with students could tell how much America had donated for the IDPs of Malakand. No one answered. She wanted to know what happened to the $300 million.
Some restraint was shown even by the TV anchors who have been telling the Pakistani audiences that America is in fact funding the Taliban and Al Qaeda to kill Pakistanis so that it could, with the help of Blackwater, grab Pakistan’s nuclear weapons from Kahuta. That was real courtesy. They could have asked her the address of the prison in the US where Osama bin Laden was being kept as the Americans invaded the lands of the Muslim nation looking for him.
Ms Clinton could fault the American diplomats stationed in Pakistan for not spreading the good word about American assistance effectively. But she also should look at her visit in the perspective of the general American image in the world in the aftermath of the Neocons of President George Bush. Considering how queered the pitch was, it was a successful first big outing of the Secretary in Pakistan. *