By: Kayhan Int’l
For long centuries, if not millennia, Iran and Hindustan (India) shared a lengthy border running from the Hindukush ranges of south-central Asia to the shores of the Indian Ocean overlapping the Makran-Sindh coastline.
It was but natural for the two ancient civilizations to enjoy good neighbourly ties, trade-cultural-lingual exchanges, and constant migration of scholars, artisans, statesmen, and soldiers of fortune, generally from Persia to the Subcontinent.
As late as the first half of the 18th century, Qandahar was the main border crossing between the mighty Safavid and Moghal Empires when Afghanistan was not yet born, while desolate Baluchistan, where in 1947 Iran was to have a common frontier with a new neighbour called Pakistan, was considered a remote and under-developed area by the two powers.
Well that was a leaf from the past on the rich legacy of which the present relations in this strategic area could be defined by the four modern countries of Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.
While Pakistan, for unexplained reasons that include outside pressures, mainly by the US and the billion-dollar bribes of the pseudo state called Saudi Arabia, has been deferring its own national interests by failing to capitalize on the hydrocarbon bonanza that Iran offers; Afghanistan despite being under American occupation and India brushing aside Washington’s threats of penalization have decided to forge solid commercial ties with the Islamic Republic which was evident by Tuesday’s meeting in Tehran between senior officials of the three countries for activating the Chabahar project.
The three countries share the view that a full operationalization of the trilateral port project is beneficial to all.
If landlocked Afghanistan sees the Chabahar Project as opening the way for billions of dollars in trade and cutting its dependence on foreigners for aid as well as stemming the illicit opium trade, India eyes Iran as the vital bridge to the landlocked Central Asian republics as well as to the rich mineral resources in Afghanistan, to which it has already won the rights to exploit, including an iron mine.
Once the railroad is completed from Chabahar to Hajigak in Afghanistan, it will facilitate commercial exchanges as well as iron ore exports, resulting in the economic development of the region.
As a result transit, roads, customs and consular matters would be speeded up, decreasing the logistic costs for all three sides to the agreement.
India is intent on investing as much as 500 million dollars in the project, since New Delhi understands that ties with Iran are part of the long term planning, whether the US likes it or not.
Afghanistan has also realized that sooner or later the American occupation has to end, which means ties with the neighbours are of paramount importance irrespective of the machinations of outside powers.
Iran has left open the doors of cooperation with Pakistan and the day Islamabad realizes that regional ties should take precedence over the pressures and bribes of outsiders, the natural gas pipeline could be activated to meet the industrial and home consumption needs of the Pakistani people, including those of Baluchistan.
That is the reason, the US, Saudi Arabia and the Zionist entity have joined together to wreck the stability of the region, as is evident by the kidnapping of the Iranian border guards by terrorists based in Pakistan’s Baluchistan.
The sooner Islamabad decides to cooperate with Tehran in flushing out the terrorists from its soil the better for neighbourly ties, because in the not too distant future, neither the US will be a superpower terrorizing our region, nor will Israel exist in Palestine, which also means the spurious entity called Saudi is surviving on borrowed time before eventual evaporation.
In the meantime, Iran, Afghanistan and India have decided to proceed with the project for the collective development of the three countries.
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