We begin crossing oil and gas fields off my itinerary, deeming them too "insecure" to visit, including oil fields very near to the city of Mazar-i-Sharif and the entire province of Kunduz. "Insecure," I have quickly learned, is code for "Taliban." As the director general of the Afghan Oil and Gas Survey tells me, "There is nothing else causing insecurity."
The US Pentagon is the de-facto lead US agency pushing the development of Afghanistan's oil and gas sector. Jim Bowen, a Houston oilman hired by the Pentagon to guide a November 15 international oil and gas contract tender process, confirmed for me that these attacks are in fact on the rise. "Certainly, as the [oil and gas] sector develops, the sector is creating targets, there is no doubt about that," Bowen tells me. "But exactly how one defines 'Taliban' is open to interpretation."
Sitting in Kabul shortly before my departure, I speak with Javed Noorani, extractive industries monitor for the Afghan NGO Integrity Watch. He confirms Bowen's analysis: As the oil and gas sector draws increasing public attention, so too have Taliban attacks grown. But identifying who is supporting those Taliban, "be they Pakistani, Iranian, or homegrown, is not so simple."
The result is clear, and far from unique to Afghanistan: As development of the oil and gas sector has risen, so too has violence and insecurity.
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