"We're spending too much in Afghanistan, getting too little"

'We're spending too much in Afghanistan, getting too little'

(snip)

The Asian Development Bank's $3 billion Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline (TAP) project, which would carry Caspian Sea natural gas from fields in Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to a Pakistani port on the Indian Ocean, is one attempt to revive the fabled Silk Road.

According to Turkmen officials, Afghans would receive eight percent of revenues in the form of transit fees. But pipelines need service roads. TAP would run alongside the Herat-to-Kandahar highway, so the American and Saudi governments have committed $180 million of the estimated $250 million needed to pave it.

At present, Afghanistan, a Texas-sized nation of 17 million people, has only five marginally paved highways totaling 1,675 miles. (Texas has 79,185.) The Wakhan Corridor, the finger-shaped province that connects northeastern Afghanistan to China, doesn't even have a single dirt road to its name. In most areas, a road like the one I took to Taloqan is as good as it gets. But only one road in Afghanistan will host a multi-billion energy pipeline--and it looks like that's the only one we're going to pave.

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Where did the Centgas project go? Just got some new players and a new name....