If you're a recently laid off pipeline worker in the United States we have some good news and bad news.
First the good news: you can still work on a pipeline!
Now the bad news: to get the pipeline job you have to join the Taliban.
On his first day in office, President Biden canceled permits for the Keystone XL pipeline. Environmentalists and anti-fossil fuel activists should not have applauded his move.
Biden’s move was both political theater and an indulgence of his liberal base. But his hypocrisy was stunning even for a politician who has spent a half-century in Washington. Consider that while the Biden administration is killing a pipeline from which the public could benefit, Biden is promoting a pipeline to enrich both one of the world’s worst dictatorships and a group responsible for thousands of U.S. deaths.
The government has apparently brokered a meeting between the Turkmenistan government and the Taliban for a trans-Afghanistan pipeline to bring Turkmen gas across Afghanistan and Pakistan to India. If this scheme sounds familiar, it should: It was the same deal that now-Special Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad sought to make with the Taliban in the years before the Sept. 11 terror attacks when he was a consultant for the Unocal Corporation.
Khalilzad’s scheme was bad policy two decades ago, and it is even worse now.
Put aside environmental arguments and consider profit. Freedom House’s latest Freedom in the World report ranks Turkmenistan as among the world’s worst offenders, below even North Korea in terms of freedom and civil liberties. To promote the export of Turkmen gas is to entrench its regime even further. Part of the deal is then paying the Taliban protection money or transit fees for the pipeline transiting Afghan territory. Not only would this undermine the elected Afghanistan government even further, but it would also reward the Taliban for insurgency to the tune of tens of millions of dollars each month. Who needs Russian bounties on U.S. soldiers when the State Department has crafted a scheme to reward the Taliban beyond their wildest dreams?
Afghanistan's National Directorate Security (NDS) escort a group of suspected militants who are accused of planning attacks on government and security forces after their arrest in Jalalabad, Afghanistan on January 23, 2019. Afghan security forces have detained six alleged Taliban militants and seized a suicide vest and ammunition during an operation in Ghani Khil district of Nangarhar province, an official said.(Photo by Wali Sabawoon/ Nurphoto) (Photo by Wali Sabawoon/NurPhoto via Getty Images)