The Working Group on the Future of U.S.-Russia Relations’ Report
Central Asia stands out as a comparatively “nontoxic” region where there are limited, but not insignificant, opportunities for U.S.-Russia collaboration both bilaterally and within multilateral frameworks: in the space industry, civil security, job-creation mechanisms and rural human capital, and knowledge sharing for instance. Any proposal of U.S.-Russia cooperation in a concrete domain will have to be made in a tri- or-multipartite...
... Iran might play a role here.
The idea to build a gas pipeline across South Asia is nothing new. There is already the off-and-on Peace pipeline from Iran to Pakistan and further to India (known as IP Gas), as well as the TAPI gas pipeline (involving Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India). It should be noted that Iran and Turkmenistan, the gas producers for both projects, have already conducted the requisite work, and the relevant pipelines have already been laid. The problem is buyers and transit countries ...
... Russia
Currently, Turkmenistan is among the post-Soviet countries that is experiencing a sharp escalation in religious extremism. This problem is linked to several factors: 1) in 2014–2015, forces linked with ISIS appeared on the border between Turkmenistan and Afghanistan, which is populated by Turkmen tribes; and 2) Salafi propaganda is
on the rise in Turkmenistan
. Unfortunately, due to the country’s insular nature, the international community has no reliable information on the situation inside Turkmenistan....
... twenty years Turkmenistan has been making a number of more or less successful attempts to diversify its supply routes, for example, through the Trans-Caspian pipeline.
An undeniable highlight of the past year has been the December 2015
launch
of the Turkmenistan Afghanistan Pakistan India pipeline project, also known as TAPI. A highly ambitious initiative with its roots going back to the former President of Turkmenistan, the gas pipeline project has been positioned as a pipeline for peace, a means of connecting ...
... tensions among the populations of post-Soviet countries
[3]
, economic problems, corruption, cronyism, and other factors, it is difficult to seriously discuss their effective ability to counter the threats of extremism and terrorism that emanate from Afghanistan.
Of all the Central Asian states, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan appear to be the most vulnerable in this respect, due to their proximity to Afghanistan, setting aside for a moment the fact that these two former Soviet republics have porous borders open both to drug trafficking and to the flow of illegal ...