Thursday, Feb 20, 2003
India and Afghan railroads
By C. Raja Mohan
KABUL Feb. 19. Amir Abdur Rahman who ruled Afghanistan in the last decade of the 19th century had decreed that any Afghan who travelled by rail would be punished by death. A hundred years later, the new rulers of Kabul are dreaming of railways. They hope India will help them build a rail network connecting Afghan cities to one another and the world.
Afghanistan does not even have a mile of railway. The rejection of railways was a conscious national policy that was set in stone by Abdur Rahman. His prohibition on rail travel was part of defending Afghan national sovereignty.
As the Great Game unfolded in the 19th century, Russia and British India began to extend railroads towards Afghanistan. Abdur Rahman would have none of it. He insisted that railway construction should be delayed until such time Afghanistan could defend itself.
Abdur Rahman and successors preserved the national sovereignty by denying rail access to Afghanistan. But they lost the historic advantage of Afghanistan- its strategic location on the trade routes of Asia. Today as Afghanistan begins pulling itself together after nearly a quarter century of conflict, its leaders want to exploit the vantage point of their nation. "My dream is for Afghanistan to rediscover its role as a bridge" between the Subcontinent, Persian Gulf, and Central Asia, Hedayat Amin Arsala told visiting Indian reporters. The courtly Mr. Arsala, who had served with the World Bank and as the foreign minister of Afghanistan in the early 1990s, is now one of the Vice-Presidents of the Afghan Government. Once immediate relief is brought to the people, Mr. Arsala says the focus must be on building infrastructure for transport and transit trade across the country. "That will help realise our natural potential" at the cross roads of Asia, Mr. Arsala said.
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In the current focus here on creating infrastructure, railroads might be some distance away. The immediate sweepstakes are about constructing roadways. Many countries including India and Pakistan have got contracts for road building in Afghanistan. The United States along with Japan and Saudi Arabia are refurbishing the southern crescent of the ring road that connects the capital to other cities. The $180 million project will upgrade the road from Kabul to Herat via Kandahar.
Pakistan is working on the spur linking the ring road to Jalalabad and Peshawar. India is building a road from Delaram south of Herat to the Iranian border to the west. From there the Iranians are upgrading the link to the new port at Chah Bahar being developed on the Arabian Sea. The triangular project between New Delhi, Teheran and Kabul to develop the trade route through Iran has given land-locked Afghanistan a huge new opportunity to reduce its sole dependence on Pakistan for transit. The dynamic Commerce Minister of Afghanistan, Syed Mustafa Kazemi, told Indian reporters that Kabul had pinned a lot of hopes on this project, which is expected to be completed in two to three years. The Chah Bahar port and the road network in Afghanistan will also provide India access to Central Asia.
"We would like to peacefully use our location and transform Afghanistan as a hub of transit trade in the region", Mr. Kazemi said. The Afghan strategy, according to Mr. Kazemi, is to "develop trade routes through all neighbouring countries".
There is deep disappointment here at Islamabad's opposition to transit trade with India through Pakistan, at a time when Kabul is desperately looking for new markets and investments to change the economic fortunes of Afghanistan.
* * * India is in a position not only to boost the road infrastructure in Afghanistan but also play a part in bringing railways to this nation. Mr. Kazemi pointed to the plans of India and Iran to build a railroad that will link the Chah Bahar port to Faraj on the Iranian rail network. Mr. Kazemi hopes that the Iranian rail network, which is linked to Europe and Central Asia, can also be brought into Afghanistan in the near future. In the late 19th century, the ''Forward School'' in British India hoped to take railroads from the Subcontinent into Afghanistan to secure the interests of Empire.
As India discovers the opportunities for a "Forward Policy" in Central Asia, if only in a commercial and diplomatic sense, developing road and rail access to Afghanistan through Iran has become a matter of high national priority. Unlike in the past Afghanistan sees these links as a matter of national survival and advance. For India it is a rare opportunity to overcome the geographic barrier that Pakistan has become in reaching out to Eurasia. Iran has recognised that it can gain from this transit trade between India and Central Asia. New Delhi needs to take up the big idea of road and rail access to Afghanistan on a war footing.
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