Central Asia has no shortage of critical, politically fraught, logistically challenging, and financially important energy projects. There’s the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan India gas pipeline (TAPI) and the Central Asia South Asia Electricity Transmission and Trade Project (CASA-1000), both of which have been discussed in depth here at Crossroads Asia and feature in an excellent recent podcast from RFE/RL. But there’s another …

  Much to Islamabad’s chagrin, the message coming out from Washington is loud and clear. Pakistan is now being asked to pay for F-16 jets out of its own pocket. The message that the U.S. Congress is sending to Pakistan after it threatened to yank financing for F-16 jets ordered by the country cannot be more categorical. Pakistan can still …

  Michael Reilly On May 6, representatives of Taiwan’s Alishan Forestry Railway and Switzerland’s Matterhorn Gotthard Railway signed a “sister-railway” agreement in Taipei. Aimed at boosting technical cooperation and sharing marketing expertise between the two mountain railways, such an agreement would normally pass by unremarked outside railway circles and the local tourism industry. Indeed, the Alishan railway already has two …