Now you see it, now you don’t
On May 12 Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif attended the inauguration ceremony of the Central Asia South Asia (CASA-1000) transmission line near Dushanbe. The $1.2 billion, 750-kilometre-long transmission line will allow Pakistan to import electricity from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan via Afghanistan to minimise the country’s electricity shortage. In a dramatic move on Wednesday Planning Commission opposed the Casa-1000 project describing it as expensive, against development of domestic energy resources and the West’s “handsome parting gift to Afghanistan at Pakistan’s expense”. The Commission warned that the project was being pushed forward to counter the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and gas import from Iran.
The CASA-1000 has been on the cards for several years, long before CPEC was conceived. In April last year the ECC approved in principle the signing of the required agreements. A team led by water and power secretary and comprising National Transmission and Dispatch Company engineers signed agreements in Istanbul with their counterparts from Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Nawaz Sharif made a special trip to Dushanbe last November where he told the Tajik president that Pakistan wants early implementation of CASA-1000. Why didn’t the Planning Commission lay its objections before the ECC to stop it from approving the project? Why didn’t Ahsan Iqbal warn the PM of the ‘sinister’ designs behind CASA-1000, thus ensuring that Nawa Sharif did not show enthusiasm for the project?
It seems that with Pakistan’s relations with Afghanistan and the US souring, the Planning Commission and some others have decided to wreck the Casa-1000 plan. Will things stop here? Is the Planning Commission going to do the same to TAPI gas pipeline which was also inaugurated by Nawaz Sharif in December last year? The Planning Commission can similarly argue that the project is yet another dangerous move by the US to sabotage CPEC.
A better approach would be to have multiple sources of power and gas. Pakistan needs gas from Iran as well as Turkmenistan. Similarly it should welcome power from China as well as from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.