Brigadier Arun Bajpai
By activating the First phase of Chabahar Port in Iran while China is still working on Gwador Port in Pakistan, once again India has proven that when push comes to shove, not even Chinese can beat Indian enterprise. How important this port is to Iran, gets demonstrated by the fact that no less a person than Iranian President Hassan Rouhani inaugurated this first phase on Sunday the 3 Dec 2017. Let there be no doubt that this is a great leap forward by India in this strategically important activity, affecting India, Iran and Afghanistan directly.
Taking advantage of its geographical location, Pakistan has been acting difficult with India by denying it transit land route through it for trade with land locked Afghanistan and oil rich central Asian countries as also towards Russia and Europe. All the Indian requests to Pakistan to allow the transit had been falling on deaf ears. Worst was the case with Afghanistan, a totally land locked country. The Afghan trucks were allowed only up to Afghan-Pakistan border. After that all items to be traded with India had to be off loaded from Afghan transporters into Pakistani trucks who brought the goods to Indian border in Punjab and then went back empty. Needless to say this made Afghan items costly in Indian markets. Even for regional and global trading; only port available to Afghanistan was Karachi in Pakistan. Here again Pakistan was creating problems for Afghanistan.
The other aspect equally important was strategic. China is building China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) at an investment of 46 billion dollars in Pakistan, linking its Xinxiang province with Gwador port of Pakistan in Baluchistan, located 3000 kms away with road and rail network and oil pipeline. This network encircles India .A matter of great strategic concern for us. However by opening Chabahar Port located just 85 kms away from Gwador port of Pakistan, in Iran and connecting it to Afghanistan and thereafter to Central Asian countries, India has counter encircled Pakistan. No wonder Pakistani media is very upset with this development.
Importance of Chabahar port route, which by passes Pakistan, can be gauged by the fact that recently India sent 110000 tons of wheat to Afghanistan from Mumbai. It reached Afghanistan in just two days time. India and Afghanistan have already ratified the Trilateral Trade and Transit treaty involving Afghanistan, Iran and India. Iran is expected to ratify it soon. Truth is that this particular development could have taken place almost a decade back. But then America and European countries were hell bent on imposing sanctions on Iran on nuclear issue. As a result India had to put this project in cold storage.
Now even US is for this new Chabahar route. This enables US in future to supply its troops located in Afghanistan via Chabahar, by passing Pakistan. There is just no doubt that opening of Chabahar port route, by passing Pakistan will ramp up trade between India, Iran and Afghanistan. This port will also help Afghanistan in its regional and global trade.
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