Text Fwd:[Rick Rozoff] NATO Trains Afghan Army To Guard Asian Pipeline

Rick Rozoff blog
Dec. 19, 2010

NATO Trains Afghan Army To Guard Asian Pipeline
Rick Rozoff
On December 11 the presidents of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkmenistan and the energy minister of India met in the Turkmen capital of Ashgabat to bring to fruition fifteen years of planning by interests in the United States to bring natural gas from the Caspian Sea to the energy-needy nations of South and East Asia.

Presidents Hamid Karzai, Asif Ali Zardari and Gurbangulu Berdimuhammedov along with Indian Union Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Murli Deora signed agreements - an Inter-Government Agreement and the Gas Pipeline Transmission Agreement - to construct a natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and Pakistan to India. The initials of the first three countries involved lend themselves to the project's acronym: TAP, now known as TAPI.

The Inter-Government Agreement "enjoins the four governments to provide all support including security for the pipeline." [1]

The next day, Wahidullah Shahrani, Afghanistan's Minister of Mines and Industries, confirmed that "Afghanistan will deploy about 7,000 troops to secure a major transnational gas pipeline slated to run through some of the most dangerous parts of the war-torn country." [2]

Speaking at a press conference in the Afghan capital, Shahrani added: "This huge project is very important for Afghanistan. Five thousand to seven thousand security forces will be deployed to safeguard the pipeline route....We will also keep an eye on the security situation....If more troops are needed, we will take action." [3]

Four days later U.S. Army Colonel John Ferrari, Deputy Commander of Programs for the NATO Training Mission - Afghanistan, was quoted on the U.S. Defense Department's website stating:

“Our mission is to help the government of Afghanistan generate and sustain the Afghan army and police, all the way from the ministerial systems - essentially, their version of the Pentagon - through their operational commands, down to the individual units.” [4]

Colonel Ferrari disclosed at the same time that in the next few days the U.S. Army "will finally award a much-delayed $1.6 billion contract for a private security firm to supplement [the] NATO training command’s efforts to professionalize Afghan cops." The lucrative bid, according to an American news source, "touched off a bureaucratic tempest between Blackwater/Xe Services and DynCorp, which held an old contract for the same job...." [5]



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