Chabahar will be used as “carrot and stick” with Pakistan. Afghanistan wants to have Pakistan on-board this project, but if security issues become a grave concern, then this very same port project would work as a “stick” for the Afghan neighbour that has been working on the Gwadar port project just 60 km from Chabahar. For India, the Chabahar port project is not just important for economic reasons, but more so it has to do with geo-strategic positioning of the port and the competition she faces from the joint venture between Pakistan and China in Gwadar.
“Afghanistan is well connected through waters and through land. As Afghanistan has been a traditional bridge in the region, we don’t want anyone to be left out,” Afghan envoy to India Dr Shaida Abdali said.
The India-Iran-Afghanistan trilateral trilateral transit agreement on Chabahar was signed in May this year and the Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, who was in Amritsar on 4 December to attend the sixth edition of the Heart of Asia conference, will be making a presentation on the importance of Chabahar and the trilateral agreement to shore up support and participation from various countries in the region and the world to enhance Afghanistan’s economic capabilities. The Sunday Guardian has learnt that Japan and Poland have already shown interest and hence the project should not be looked at with a narrow perspective. That there is potential for it to attract international investors was emphasised upon by a senior official. Also what is on the cards is an international summit on Chabahar.
It was the Afghan Ambassador to India Shaida Abdali who proposed the idea of a summit on Chabahar in 2015 itself. He said: “The idea was that in order to ensure that this transit trade agreement is not about the three countries, but the region and beyond to realise a regional, international economic integration, it was officially agreed in the ministerial trilateral in October 2016 and it was decided that either India or Iran will host it. The summit could happen in early 2017.”
The event could be held in Chabahar itself giving the world an opportunity to see the potential that Chabahar holds. “We are already working with the governments of Afghanistan and Iran to do an event in Chabahar itself, sometime in the near future which involves not merely governments and experts, but also brings together industry and also showcases Chabahar for other countries which can benefit from the enhanced connectivity through Chabahar,” said Gopal Baglay, Joint Secretary of the division that handles Iran.
The stakeholders in the project want to ensure that Chabahar could be the counter to Pakistan’s Gwadar port project though many worry about the speed of execution of the project. Sources say, India should not lose the momentum of Chabahar and give others the time to create impediments by optimising their own projects and creating alternatives (Gwadar). A highly-placed official said that the international community will have to look at both projects in terms of the assessment on output and who will benefit most from Chabahar or Gwadar. The biggest advantage that Chabahar has is that it does not run through an unstable region such as Balochistan where investments might not be secure. Hence, economic and security environment would be important factors for international and regional players to participate, said the official.