Turkmenistan, Afghanistan resume work on multibillion-dollar gas pipeline project

By Islamuddin Sajid

ISLAMABAD (AA) – Turkmenistan and Afghanistan on Wednesday resumed work on the multibillion-dollar Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline project.

The inaugural ceremony was held in Turkmenistan's Salim Cheshma area and attended by the Taliban administration's acting Prime Minister, Mullah Muhammad Hassan Akhund, the chairman of Turkmenistan's upper chamber of parliament and former Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, and Foreign Minister Rashid Meredov.

Earlier, Akhund and his high-level delegation, including acting deputy Prime Minister Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, arrived in Salim Cheshma, where Turkmen Foreign Minister Meredov and other officials greeted him, according to Hamdullah Firat, deputy spokesperson for the Afghan Taliban, in a statement posted on X.

"The TAPI project, first proposed during the previous administration of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, has encountered numerous challenges over the last twenty-five years. Today, the project has reached a critical stage of preparation, preparing it for immediate implementation," Firat said.

He added that the interim Taliban administration is dedicated to making the Afghan people's dreams a reality.

The two countries also inaugurated some other projects in the oil, gas, energy and transport sectors.

The much-delayed project was first signed in 2010, but work was stalled because of technical and financial complications and disagreements, mainly between archrivals Pakistan and India.

However, the four countries agreed to restart work on the TAPI pipeline project, which connects Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India, in 2015, with a new deadline of 2017.

Nonetheless, the deadline was extended due to partners’ disagreements and the Taliban's war against the US-backed Afghan regime, which ended with the withdrawal of foreign forces and the escape of Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani and his Cabinet members in August 2021.

In a meeting in Kabul in November 2022, acting Afghan Foreign Minister Maulvi Amir Khan Muttaqi and Pakistan's then-State Minister for Foreign Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar agreed to resume work on the project.

In an interview with Russia 24 TV in January, Russia's special envoy to Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov also expressed Moscow’s desire to be part of the TAPI project.

The $7 billion project aims to bring natural gas from the Gylkynish and adjacent gas fields in Turkmenistan to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India.