Nothing brings foes together like the lust for fossil fuels but the shelf life of such makeshift alliances is hard to predict. The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline planned from Turkmenistan to India, by way of Afghanistan and Pakistan, will be a litmus test for the pull of positive economics over set geopolitical agendas. TAPI, for sure, is great news for energy starved South Asia but it risks turning into a coercive tool to strong-arm downstream partners when relations sour. Once online in 2019, TAPI will funnel 33 billion cubic metres of gas along 1,800 kilometres of pipeline from Turkmenistan’s Galkynysh field to Fazilka in Indian Punjab. It will pass through Herat and Kandahar in Afghanistan, cross borders into Quetta, then Multan and finally Fazilka. This route, as you can imagine, poses sizable security headaches. Foremost, the Taliban, who viciously spring back to life every time someone pronounces them dead. Also, we have the nationalist insurgency in Balochistan. South Asia’s fluid and often stormy dynamics foreground the TAPI project. Pakistan and Afghanistan, for example, have spent most of 2015 locking horns over who supports which brand of militancy. Like his forerunner Hamid Karzai, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani accuses Islamabad of letting the Haqqani network and Taliban use Pakistani soil as a springboard to launch attacks in his country. As recently as December 8, Ghani alleged to reporters in Kabul that Pakistan had been waging an “undeclared war” with its western neighbour for the last 14 years. Likely prompted by the US and China, Ghani mellowed his Heart of Asia (HoA) Conference speech, admitting the uptick in the Afghan insurgency could be an “unintended consequence” of the Pakistan army’s cleanup operation. He, however, is a dove among the many mistrustful hawks in Kabul, especially within Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security (NDS). The intelligence agency is against improving ties with Pakistan or the Taliban, which NDS considers two sides of the same coin. In a visible sign of dissent, NDS Chief Rahmatullah Nabil resigned two days before Ghani’s trip to Pakistan, protesting the futility of seeking peace with an ostensibly deceitful neighbour. The Afghan establishment further believes Islamabad oversells its ability to stage-manage the Taliban to curry favour with the US and China. However, both Prime Minister (PM) Nawaz Sharif and Adviser for Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz have offered guarded responses to the Taliban question recently, stressing that Pakistan has some influence, but no control. Indeed, if Islamabad wanted to prove its Taliban leash, then the latter’s siege of Kandahar airport that left 70 dead the same day as the HoA conference, displayed a serious communication gap. More astonishing is the sudden sea change in Indo-Pak relations. In October, after PM Sharif’s United Nations speech where he proposed a four-step plan to defuse tensions in Kashmir, Indian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup retorted: “To demilitarise Kashmir is not the answer, to de-terrorise Pakistan is.” Indian PM Narendra Modi’s allergy to the K-word is also public knowledge, so there must be something in Parisian waters. After a brief tête-à-tête between the two PMs at the Paris Climate Conference (COP21), it seems cross border jingoism was just a ghastly nightmare and we are best friends again. In August, Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj was unwilling to green-light National Security Advisor (NSA) level talks unless the agenda precluded all mention of Kashmir. Now, after the HoA, she has announced India’s readiness to engage in a “comprehensive bilateral dialogue”, including Kashmir. PM Modi himself wants to “turn the course of history” with Pakistan, remarkable as that sounds. Still, it is unlikely that he greases the wheels of rapprochement without external pressure, namely from Washington and perhaps Moscow. Some commentators opine that the White House wants India and Pakistan to start talking peace again so they can cooperate in stabilising Afghanistan. Certainly, India has billions invested in Afghan minerals and infrastructure, and, to an extent, Pakistan justifies its Haqqani connection as a counter to Indian spy agency RAW fomenting alleged unrest in Balochistan and FATA. Moreover, Washington is antsy about Pakistan’s rapidly growing nuclear arsenal, which obviously aims at India in quid pro quo deterrence. Pakistan, then, will only slacken the pace of production if India does likewise. Either party signing the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) may be a pipe dream for now but some bilateral understanding could scale back both stockpiles. New Delhi is not tagging along out of sheer altruism either. It expects concessions from the international community for cooling temperatures in South Asia. These may include renewed momentum for India’s membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), progress towards a permanent UN Security Council (UNSC) seat or a bigger slice of the UN’s Green Climate Fund. Of course, TAPI will serve the common good in South Asia. The only question is how long India, Pakistan and Afghanistan can stick to a common definition of what is good for them. The writer is a freelance columnist and audio engineer based in Islamabad