India and Pakistan:
Pipe Dream or Pipeline of Peace?

Toufiq A. Siddiqi

In spite of steady economic progress and accelerating rate of growth in India and Pakistan in recent years, their per capita income is still less than a tenth of that in the developed world.1 Continued economic growth is the key to eliminating poverty and maintaining stability on the Subcontinent. This growth, however, is dependent on access to affordable and reliable energy sources that are not available domestically. Many have begun to look to a natural gas pipeline from the rich fields of the Persian Gulf and Central Asia to the Subcontinent as a potential solution.

Even though the economic benefits provided by a pipeline are clear, there are immense political obstacles to such a project. A pipeline from Central Asia would have to pass through politically unstable Afghanistan, as well as Pakistan, whereas one from Iran or the Emirates would have to pass through most of Iran and Pakistan before reaching India, whose leaders fear that the pipeline would give economic leverage to Pakistan in any future political crisis. Others believe that a pipeline could serve as an important confidence-building measure and facilitate the improvement of relations between the two countries-a veritable "pipeline of peace." This article argues that measures could be taken to largely depoliticize the pipeline, and enable it to be built for the economic benefit of India, Pakistan, and the rest of the region. It could then serve as a building block of peace between these two hostile neighbors.

Toufiq A. Siddiqi is President of Global Environment and Energy in the 21st Century, Adjunct Senior Fellow at the East-West Center, and affiliate graduate faculty member at the University of Hawaii. He has been Regional Advisor for Energy at the United Nations ESCAP, Senior Fellow at the East-West Center, and Associate Professor at Indiana University, Bloomington.