In the foothills of the Caucasus mountains, a long line of broken mud cuts across the meadows. If you go anywhere near it, camouflaged guards carrying automatic weapons emerge from the forest beyond.
These guards in the Borjomi region of Georgia -- trained by US Army and SAS (British special forces) veterans -- are pawns in a new great game gripping Central Asia: their job is to protect the oil pipeline buried 3m below.
"A terrorist attack is the greatest threat we face," said the guards' commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Giorgi Pantskhava, an energetic Georgian in desert fatigues and aviator shades.
The US$4 billion BTC -- Baku Tbilisi Ceyhan -- pipeline went on stream yesterday. It is key in US plans to reduce dependency on OPEC oil producers in the turbulent Middle East. Pumping oil 1,609km from the Caspian sea to the Mediterranean through Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, it will avoid Russia -- increasingly seen by the US as a resurgent superpower prepared to use control of energy resources as a political weapon.
The pipeline -- 70 percent funded by the World Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and export credit agencies -- took three years to build and will carry up to 1 million barrels of oil a day to Western markets. Yet its position on the faultline between Russia and its estranged former Soviet neighbors makes it a shaky bet.
The fiercely pro-Washington government of Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili welcomed the BTC with open arms, said transit payments would help to kick-start the economy of the faltering ex-Soviet state.
Yet the pipeline, constructed and run by a BP-led consortium, has opened in the teeth of bitter opposition.
Green campaigners said the route passes too near to Georgia's Borjomi Gorge, a tourist spot with mineral water springs and abundant wildlife.
"If there is even a minor oil leak here then the reputation of the area will be irreparably damaged," said Vano Shalutashvili, of the Borjomi People's Democracy Institute, an organization that has fought for the pipeline to be diverted.
A leak on one section was detected in a test run this month.
Critics also said BTC passes too close to volatile breakaway regions in both Georgia and Azerbaijan, making it vulnerable to sabotage that could cause a catastrophic spill.
Locals are also furious with BP, claiming a host of problems from houses damaged by heavy traffic to polluted springs.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home