Afghan gasline: signs of thaw in stalemate

Dawn, Jan 12

By Our Staff Correspondent

WASHINGTON, Jan 11: There are some signs of progress in the stalemate over the construction of a gas pipeline through the Taliban territory, with the US, Iran, Russia and Pakistan working together to defuse the issue of women's rights, the Washington Post said on Sunday.

Unocal, the US company with worldwide operations, has pressed ahead on several fronts, it said, including announcement of the an international consortium to build the 790-mile gas line from Turkmenistan to Pakistan, and beginning of training for Afghan men in Nebraska to run the project.

Turkmenistan has approved Unocal's plan, and Pakistan wants to buy the gas, the Post said.

It said in early December four Taliban leaders stepped from a helicopter onto an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, operated by Unocal, to inspect the latest deep-water drilling technology.

"This improbable partnership between a modern American corporation and a militant religious group with social views often described as medieval has become entangled in US strategic policy and domestic politics.

The Taliban and Unocal want to build a $4.5 billion pipeline network carrying Caspian Sea oil and gas across Afghanistan to the Indian subcontinent. The Clinton administration supports the route, which would help free the new nations of Central Asia from dependence on Russia, avoid alternative routes across Iran and bring needed energy to Pakistan and India.

Yet in a vivid illustration of the new political complexities of the global economy, that foreign policy vision has butted up against a domestic obstacle: the outrage of women's organizations over what they call "gender apartheid," the Taliban's barring of women and girls from schools, hospitals and public places.

Such groups as the Feminist Majority and the National Organization for Women have mobilized to prevent the Clinton administration from recognizing the Taliban government unless it radically changes its treatment of women. Without that recognition, international lending institutions are unlikely to finance the project and Unocal's plans will be stymied, according to state department and company officials.

The impasse also reflects an emerging pattern in which US policy toward Central Asia, site of the world's largest untapped oil and gas reserves outside the Middle East, must heed powerful grass-roots constituencies at home.

In the case of the lucrative trans-Afghan pipeline, it is activist American women repelled by the Taliban who may hold the key. "I don't remember US organizing an international issue like this before," said Eleanor Smeal, who heads the Feminist Majority, a nonprofit political action group with 30,000 members.

The efforts include organizing protests outside the embassies of Afghanistan and Pakistan, mobilizing women's groups across the United States to pass resolutions condemning the Taliban, lobbying Congress and the United Nations and meeting with state department and White House officials.

US, Afghan and European women's groups also are working to make the Taliban treatment of Afghan females the focus of International Women's Day on March 8. And Unocal has been pressed to make room for Afghan women in pipeline construction training programmes.

The passions aroused have created a political dilemma for the Clinton administration as it balances foreign policy interests against political considerations. Clinton and Vice President Gore campaigned aggressively on the issue of violence against women in 1996, and women have voted far more heavily than men for Democratic candidates in recent national and local elections.

But administration officials have left the door open to working with the Taliban if certain conditions are met, including reconciliation with opposition factions still controlling the northern third of Afghanistan. "The Taliban will not change their spots, but we do believe they can modify their behaviour and take into account certain international standards with respect to women's rights to education and employment," Karl F. Inderfurth, assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs, said in an interview with the Post.

Officials said a settlement does not appear near but added that the United States, Iran, Russia and Pakistan have been working together in recent months to end the stalemate, with some signs of progress.

In November, Unocal began training Afghans to build the line. The Taliban stands to collect $50 million to $100 million a year in transit fees if the pipeline is built, according to Marty F. Miller, a Unocal vice president. The project also would provide thousands of jobs.

Unocal and its main partner, the private Saudi-owned oil company Delta, also have been involved in behind-the-scenes diplomatic efforts to make peace between the Taliban and its remaining opponents in northern Afghanistan, according to congressional and other sources. The goal, these sources say, is to create conditions for a broadbased government that could win formal recognition from the United States.

The chief Taliban representative in this country, Abdul Hakim Mujahid, dismissed the furore in a recent interview. "Ninety-nine per cent of Afghan women are supporting the Taliban policy toward women," he said, with resistance to that policy stemming from "only one per cent of Afghan women tied to a communist style of liberation."

In mid-November, Unocal launched a $900,000 training programme run by the University of Nebraska at Omaha to train 137 Afghan men in pipeline-building skills. The programme managers hope to begin training women for clerical jobs and support services this year, according to Thomas E. Gouttierre, head of the university's Afghan studies centre.

Unocal also is financing several projects to train women as teachers in Taliban-controlled areas; the company said it intends to provide jobs to Afghan women as well as men.

While Unocal manoeuvres through the domestic political and foreign policy shoals, the company faces competition in Afghanistan from another consortium led by the Argentine oil company Bridas, sources said.

Bridas, which had signed a deal to build a trans-Afghan pipeline with the previous government in Kabul, has indicated readiness to finance the project and start construction without formal Western or UN recognition of the Taliban government, according to oil industry analysts.

Bridas's main partner is a Saudi company associated with Prince Turki Faisal Saud, head of the Saudi intelligence service, a connection that reportedly gives Bridas impressive access to financing.

The Argentine company has filed a lawsuit in Houston charging that Unocal, in pursuing its proposed pipeline, disrupted agreements that Bridas had reached with the Turkmen and Afghan governments. Unocal has denied the charges.

"We will do the project with the company that starts the work earliest," Maulvi Ahmad Jan, the Taliban's acting minister of mines and energy, said in an interview.