Chabahar: Liberating the ‘cockpit of Asia’

India has every reason to pat itself on the back after the successful back-to-back “hearts and minds” visits to Iran and Afghanistan by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as part of India’s outreach to regions in this country’s “near abroad”.

It has led to the finalisation of a series of trilateral agreements to provide Indian assistance by way of finances and technical knowledge for the development of Chabahar Port located on the Persian Gulf in Iran and inauguration of the Salma Dam project in adjoining Afghanistan to provide irrigation in the parched south-west region of the country around Herat.

But what is undoubtedly overall a well-crafted diplomatic and economic initiative by India also carries an equally significant strategic component as well. This is an aspect that has been underplayed by the Indian side in public pronouncements on both occasions.

Chabahar Port in Iran is also a strategic roadhead to Afghanistan. It is important in the context of India’s overall national security objective — of bypassing Pakistan and connecting directly with Afghanistan and the countries of Central Asia beyond.

A road link between Chabahar on the Persian Gulf running through Iranian territory to a suitable terminal point in landlocked Afghanistan would establish such a link. This will be an “end run” circuit which, if mutually developed by India and Iran, would open for India, Iran, as well as Afghanistan the option of an access route totally bypassing Pakistan.

This will liberate Afghanistan from perpetual politico-strategic dependence on Pakistani goodwill, a “sword of Damocles” which can be withdrawn at short notice depending on circumstances. It is a factor that is very much to the common benefit of the three countries involved.

Such a development would, of course, be a total anathema for Pakistan, for whom hostility towards India is an unwritten but overarching directive principle of both national security as well as foreign policy. Pakistan’s approach has been structured around a philosophy of “strategic depth” regarding India, which requires an Afghanistan controlled by Pakistan or its surrogates.

During the Cold War, Afghanistan was regarded by the United States as a proxy battleground for “third party” wars to contain the spread of Communist ideology and Russian influence. It was a strategically suitable country, being located on the Central Asian perimeter of the Soviet Union itself, as well as with a common border with Pakistan, at that time a member of Seato and Cento and a favoured ally of the US.

Pakistan was employed in a “plausibly deniable” role as a sanctuary and launch pad for a “long war” against Russia in Afghanistan, after the latter militarily intervened in December 1979 in support of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, established after overthrow of King Mohammad Zahir Shah. The Long War against the Soviets in Afghanistan lasted from 1979 to 1989, ending with the withdrawal of all Russian troops from the country.

The Afghan War 1979-89 was created by the clashing Cold War imperialism of the US and the Soviet Union, and resourced by the US through Saudi Arabian paymasters.

The Afghan War created the mujahideen, who subsequently mutated into the Taliban, and would attack the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1979 and the Twin Towers in New York on September 11, 2001. The doctrines of radical Islam now threaten not only Afghanistan itself, but menaces many other countries as well, including secular India and Shia Iran.

Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence is heavily involved in Afghanistan. It has made substantial efforts and resources towards the creation and training of proxies — a task for which they received substantial material and logistics support from the US during the Cold War lasted, as also from Saudi Arabia, and some Gulf countries. This support is now coming from individual “private charities”, principally located in oil-rich Saudi Arabia, and some Gulf countries.

India must view Chabahar as a strategic asset, a vital component of an integrated sea-cum-land transit system providing connectivity and access to Afghanistan. The system should incorporate both the Iranian port city as well as the 140-km Zaranj-Delaram road built by India’s Border Roads Organisation. This will directly connect it with Delaram in Afghanistan, on the Soviet-built Ring Road, now known as “Highway 1” in the Afghan road system.

Highway 1 connects in one circular sweep the Afghan cities of Kabul, Ghazni, Kandahar, Herat and Mazar Sharif with offshoots linking with Jalalabad and the historic Khyber Pass on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

The road was constructed as a 2,200-km trunk military highway for rapid movement of troops, equipment and supplies to all major cities in the country.

But the Achilles’ heel of the entire system is the Zaranj-Delaram road, which is vulnerable to raids and attacks by the Taliban as well as various other armed tribal factions which freely roam the countryside, each with their own ilaqa over which they defy the central authority in Kabul. They impose their own tolls and taxes on all transport using the roadways.

Another closely interwoven factor in the complicated security equation are the covert activities of the ISI of Pakistan operating in various parts of the country through warlords and surrogates like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and his Hezb-e-Islami, Jalaluddin Haqqani and the Haqqani network, local warlords whose rivalries have turned Afghanistan into a latter-day “Cockpit of Asia”.

The situation in Afghanistan is obviously unsatisfactory from the Indian perspective. But New Delhi has to persevere in its efforts to support the Kabul government under President Ashraf Ghani in his fight to defend the independence and integrity of that beleaguered country. Here too, as in Kashmir, Pakistan and its agencies will be the main challenge to Indian interests.

The writer is a former Chief of Army Staff and a former member of Parliament