166 people were killed by snow falling off mountains in the Salang Pass north of Kabul

166 people were killed by snow falling off mountains in the Salang Pass north of Kabul, triggering a massive rescue operation. The authorities say that they expect to find more bodies as they wind down the rescue operation. The area has been hit by more than 12 avalanches since Monday. Correspondents say that it has been one of the country’s worst natural disasters. Freezing conditions The ferocity of the avalanches was so great that windows of cars and buses were smashed while some tumbled into the valley below, officials say.Many of the dead were killed as their vehicles plunged down the mountainsides, while others perished in the freezing conditions.

Rescuers are using bulldozers, pick axes and shovels in the search for survivors. The highway that winds through the mountainside remains littered with abandoned or snow-packed cars. Interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary said that scores more vehicles remain buried beneath massive snow floes and they could contain more bodies. “The latest information we have is that 166 people were killed and 125 others have been rescued and taken to hospital,” he told the AFP news agency. “We’re not clear yet on how many cars are still under the snow, but police have been working on recovery since yesterday and are hoping to bring the operation to an end soon.

“There is fear there will be more dead bodies in the vehicles that are being pulled out of the snow,” he said. An army battalion backed up by heavy machinery and other digging equipment had been deployed to the pass for rescue and recovery work, a senior defence ministry official said. He said that although the road has now been cleared, it remains closed to the public to allow for emergency efforts. Rescuers are searching farther afield for victims in cars, trucks and buses that were pushed far off the road, officials say.

Some 2,500 people have been rescued so far. The area is often affected by heavy snow and has been hit by avalanches in the past, the BBC’s Martin Patience says from Kabul. The road through the Salang Pass is the only major route over the Hindu Kush mountains linking southern Afghanistan to the north and Central Asia that remains open throughout the year. Reaching 3,400m (11,000 ft) at the pass, the road is one of the highest in the world. It was finished in the 1960s with Soviet help.

SYDNEY Energy giant PetroChina Co. Ltd. has pulled out of a $40 billion deal to buy natural gas from a project off Australia

SYDNEY Energy giant PetroChina Co. Ltd. has pulled out of a $40 billion deal to buy natural gas from a project off Australia, leaving Woodside Petroleum Ltd. looking for new customers.Reasons for letting the preliminary agreement lapse were not given, but analysts said Tuesday it was probably because PetroChina had become dissatisfied with the cost in the two years since the deal was signed.Woodside informed Australia’s stock exchange on Monday that an early stage agreement for the Browse Basin liquefied natural gas project off Western Australia state had not been settled by a Dec. 31 deadline and had now lapsed.A spokesman for PetroChina Ltd. in Beijing, Liu Weijiang, said on Tuesday he had no information on the deal and asked a reporter to call again later.Under the September 2007 agreement, PetroChina would potentially buy up to three million metric tons (3.3 million tons) of LNG per year from the project for up to 20 years.At the time, it was one of Australia’s largest export deals with an estimated worth of AU$45 billion ($40 billion).Since then, deals between prospective developers of the massive gas reserves on Australia’s so-called Northwest Shelf and customers have accelerated, with companies in China, Japan and South Korea signing on to multibillion dollar, two-decade agreements last year.The lapse of the PetroChina deal means that the terms, including price, for a large chunk of the Brown Basin gas are once again fully open to negotiation.

“The deal was good at the time, but in the past two years things have been changing rapidly,” said Peter Kopetz, energy analyst with Western Australia-based State One Stockbroking.PetroChina would probably look for other sources of gas, said Yang Wei, an oil industry analyst at Guotai Junan Securities in Shanghai.”I think it’s probably that the price is not right. It’s too expensive,” he said.PetroChina in August reached a $41 billion deal to buy natural gas from another project in the same region, that is being developed by Chevron.Chinese energy companies have signed a multibillion-dollar string of deals to import oil and gas from the Gulf, Africa, Central Asia and elsewhere to feed the demands of the country’s rapidly growing economy.Woodside had hoped the Browse project would be in production by 2012, but the company said Monday this timeline was no longer realistic, and a final investment decision by partners including Woodside, Chevron, BHP Billiton and Royal Dutch Shell would not be made until mid-2012.

Woodside said an agreement for CPC Corporation Taiwan to buy up to three million metric tons (3.3 million tons) of LNG per year for up to 20 years from the Browse project was still in place, and the company was looking for more customers.”Woodside remains in ongoing discussions with other Asia-Pacific LNG customers in relation to potential sales from its portfolio of Australian LNG developments, including the Browse project,” Woodside said in a statement.Woodside shares closed just shy of 1 percent higher on Tuesday at AU$47.97.(AP)

Afghanistan and Pakistan face decisive year at now

Fighting in Afghanistan is due to intensify as more US troops arrive

People in the South Asia region will be holding their breath in the new year. If both nations fail to achieve a modicum of political stability and success against extremism and economic growth, the world will be faced with an expansion of Islamic extremism, doubts about the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and major questions about US prestige and power as it withdraws from Afghanistan. The challenges for both countries are deeply interlinked and enormous.The primary task is whether both countries can work together with the Western alliance to roll back the Taliban and al-Qaeda threat they face. That in turn rests on the success of the US and Nato’s new strategy in both countries over the next 18 months as President Barack Obama has pledged to stabilise Afghanistan’s political and economic institutions and start handing over Afghan security to the Afghan armed forces, starting in July 2011.

Karzai undermined

For that to happen much will depend on whether the West is able to find effective government partners in both Islamabad and Kabul.

So far the prospects are not all that hopeful.President Hamid Karzai has emerged as the victor after intensely controversial elections that undermined his domestic and international credibility, while the Afghan army is still far from being able to take over major security responsibilities.

There will be renewed political wrangling as the West and the Afghans have to decide whether to hold parliamentary elections in the new year. The Afghan army is still undermanned, undertrained and has yet to be equipped with heavy weapons and an air force.

The Afghan army also suffers from 80% illiteracy and a lack of recruits from the Pashtun belt, which are essential if the army is to be effective in the Taliban-controlled southern and eastern parts of the country.

In the midst of what will certainly be a hot and possibly decisive summer of fighting in 2010 between Western forces and the Taliban, the other primary tasks of providing jobs and economic development, while building sustainable capacity within the Afghan government to serve the Afghan people, will be even more important and difficult to achieve. The Taliban strategic plan for the summer is likely to be to avoid excessive fighting in the south and east which is being reinforced with 30,000 new American soldiers.

Instead, the Taliban will try to expand Taliban bases in the north and west of the country, where they can demoralise the forces of European Nato countries that are facing growing opposition at home about their deployment. The militants will also stretch the incoming US troops – forcing them to douse Taliban fires across the country – while they try to create greater insecurity in Central Asia.

Pakistan crisis

At the same time the Pakistan military, which now effectively controls policy towards India and Afghanistan, shows no signs of giving up on the sanctuaries that the Afghan Taliban have acquired in Pakistan.Without Pakistan eliminating these sanctuaries or forcing the Afghan Taliban leadership into talks with Kabul, US success in Afghanistan is unlikely.

Pakistan itself faces a triple crisis
acute political instability – President Asif Ali Zardari may soon be forced to resign, which could trigger long-term political unrest
an ever-worsening economic crisis that is creating vast armies of jobless youth who are being attracted to the message of extremism
the army’s success rate in dealing with its own indigenous Taliban problem.

The key to any improvement rests on the army and the political forces coming to a mutual understanding and working relationship with each other and providing support to Western efforts in Afghanistan. However, for the moment that appears unlikely while the army is hedging its bets with the Afghan Taliban, as it is fearful about a potential power vacuum in Afghanistan once the Americans start to leave in 2011.

Other neighbouring countries – India, Iran, Russia and the Central Asian republics – may start thinking along the same lines and prepare their own Afghan proxies to oppose the Afghan Taliban, which could result in a return to a brutal civil war similar to that of the 1990s. Pakistan’s fight against its own Taliban is going well but that is insufficient as long as the army does not move militarily or politically against the Afghan Taliban or other Punjab-based extremist groups now allied with the Taliban.

Impasse

Pakistani calculations also involve India – and the failure of both nations to resume the dialogue halted after the 2008 attacks in Mumbai (Bombay).

India fears that extremist Punjabi groups could launch another Mumbai-style attack and are demanding that Pakistan break up all indigenous extremist groups that fought in Indian-administered Kashmir in the 1990s.

Islamabad is refusing to do so until Delhi resumes talks with it. The Obama administration has so far failed to persuade India and Pakistan to resume a dialogue or settle their differences and if that remains the case in the new year, Pakistan is more than likely to continue defying US pressure to help with Afghanistan.

There is growing anti-Americanism in Pakistan despite Washington’s pledge of an annual $1.5bn aid package for the next five years. With the present lack of security in Pakistan – and the volatile mood towards the US and India that is partly being fuelled by the military – it is difficult to see how US aid can be effectively spent or how other economic investments can take place.

At present there is an enormous flight of local capital from both Afghanistan and Pakistan that has increased since the Obama plan was announced.
The recent arrests in the US and Europe of suspects linked to the Afghanistan-Pakistan region indicate that the world could face a wider extremist threat if it fails to effectively stabilise Afghanistan and help Pakistan towards a quick economic and political recovery.