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Call it the Great Game, round three. The first such contest, famously chronicled by Rudyard Kipling, involved the 19th century struggle for dominance between the British and Russian empires over access to India and its lucrative trading routes. The second centered on the post-Soviet scramble for resources and influence in energy-rich Central Asia. Today, a third such round of geopolitical competition is emerging in South Asia, spurred by the vast energy potential of the post-Soviet space and the uncertain political disposition of Afghanistan.

Last month, this competition took a giant step forward when Afghan President Hamid Karzai met with the presidents of Turkmenistan and Pakistan, as well as with India's oil and gas minister, in the Turkmen capital of Ashgabat. The meeting netted an agreement to begin construction of a new natural gas route known as the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline in two years' time.

Practically overnight, it seems, the "Jasmine Revolution" that has swept over Tunisia has reshuffled the geopolitical deck in the greater Middle East.

Over the span of less than three weeks, protests over unemployment and political restrictions in the sleepy North African nation became a nationwide phenomenon, challenging the country's long-serving president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, and his ruling Constitutional Democratic Rally. In the face of this widespread dissatisfaction, Ben Ali blinked, making a number of major political concessions—among them, announcing he would step down as president once his term was up in 2014, and putting curbs on the national military's use of force in dealing with the protests (thereby effectively giving the opposition free reign of the streets). Rather than mollify his opponents, however, these conciliatory measures only served to embolden them, and less than 24 hours later Ben Ali had fled the country for the relative safety of Saudi Arabia. Since then, political turmoil has reigned, as remaining politicians have attempted to cobble together a durable interim government in the face of ongoing public discontent.

In the process, Tunisia's popular uprising has become a model of sorts. The catalyst for Tunisia's turmoil—the self-immolation of an unemployed 28-year-old vegetable seller—already has spurred copycats throughout the region (specifically, in Egypt, Mauritania and Algeria). And in many quarters, there is new hope of movement toward true democracy in the historically-stagnant Middle East. "Tunisia is now the model to follow for all Arabs," one hopeful Algerian has told Reuters. "The time for dictators and dictatorships is over."