Pakistan’s Energy Crisis and U.S. Interests

OilPrice.com ^ | 09/09/2011 | John Daly

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On 7 October 2001, the opening phase of "Operation Enduring Freedom" U.S. military campaign began, which quickly drove the Taliban and its al-Qaida affiliates from Kabul on 12 November.

Since then, 1,760 U.S. troops have been killed in Afghanistan along with 942 International Security Assistance Force soldiers, a total of 2,702 foreign military dead, with no end in sight.

In a March 2008 article Richard Holbrooke, then a foreign policy adviser in Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, coined the term “Af-Pak” in an article to describe the broader regional context of military operations in Afghanistan, acknowledging that in order to win in Afghanistan, Pakistan to the east must be pacified as well.

Holbrooke’s neologism was a belated acknowledgement that U.S. military operations had in fact begun across the Durand Line, the Afghan-Pakistan border in 2004, which Pashtuns on both side of the border have regarded as an artificial construct since its unilateral declaration by British authorities in India in 1893. In 2004 the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's Special Activities Division undertook the attacks on targets in northwest Pakistan using unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) drones, primarily in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) along northwest Pakistan’s Afghan border.

Carried out with the connivance of Pakistani President Asif Zadari, the UAV attacks have intensified, greatly increasing anger throughout FATA.

Now however, there are faint glimmers of new thinking in Washington that two new weapons for the “hearts and minds” of Pakistanis may have appeared – the light bulb, and potable water.

If all goes well, then the U.S. government is to sign off on providing Islamabad with $1 billion to complete its Diamer-Bhasha dam, with the offer reportedly being finalized during the upcoming Pakistan-U.S. strategic dialogue on energy later this month. If approved, the project will be the U.S. government’s largest foreign aid project to Pakistan.

The Diamer-Bhasha dam straddles the Indus River Full article at: Pakistan’s Energy Crisis and U.S. Interests