IN THE MID-1990s, the eyes of the world turned to central Asia, to countries most people could barely spell let alone place on a map – Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan. These countries, newly liberated from the Soviet Union, were said to be home to fabulous energy reserves.
A report from the US State Department claimed that offshore the Caspian Sea there were reserves of as much as 200 billion barrels of oil – enough to rival reserves in the Persian Gulf.
Suddenly, the future of the Caspian littoral states, and of their oil, became a matter of great importance to the west and, in particular, the US. In 1998, the CEO of Halliburton, Dick Cheney, said: "I cannot think of a time when we have had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian."
Commentators quickly dubbed the jostling between nations and oil companies for position...
