The not-so-great game
By Alexander Benard, Eli Sugarman
Wednesday, October 5, 2011 - 1:29 PM
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In about a week,
the Afghan Ministry of Mines will announce that the China National Petroleum Corp.
(CNPC) -- the largest state-owned Chinese company -- has won the rights to
develop and explore several oil fields in the Amu Darya basin in northern Afghanistan.
How was CNPC able
to win a tender for such a strategic resource in a country where the United
States wields tremendous influence? Amazingly, one reason is that the U.S. Defense Department,
whose Task Force on Business and Stability Operations, which is charged with resuscitating
the economies of Afghanistan and Iraq, designed and oversaw a tender process
that played to the strengths of Chinese state-owned companies over Western
private ones.
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