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The pitfalls of transit trade
The
memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed by the Pakistani and Afghan
foreign ministers in Washington on May 6 on the conclusion of a new
transit trade agreement by the end of the year raises several
questions which the government has still not answered
satisfactorily. The fact that the signature took place in the
capital of a third country and that the Pakistani public had been
kept in the dark about the preceding negotiations was unusual. To
add to the mystery, news about the MoU was broken at the trilateral
meeting not by the Pakistani or Afghan side but by US Secretary of
State Clinton. Then, at the press briefing given by her later that
day, she declared that Washington was determined to bring the
transit agreement to a “resolution” – an extraordinary assertion
given the fact that the United States is not a party.
More than one month after the MoU was signed the government has
still not clarified the key question whether Pakistan will grant
transit facilities to India for trade with Afghanistan via the land
route. At the first round of talks held in Islamabad on May 14,
Pakistan accepted the Afghan draft of the agreement as the basis for
negotiations. This draft includes the Wagah-Torkham rail and road
routes among those on which transit trade will be permitted. (Since
the agreement is still being negotiated, that does not mean that
Pakistan has agreed to this route).
The international law on transit rights for land-locked states is
quite clear. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea
grants to the land-locked states the freedom of transit to and from
the sea only. Pakistan is therefore not required to provide to
Afghanistan access to or from a third country such as India.
Pakistan has nevertheless allowed the use of the Torkham-Wagah route
for Afghanistan’s exports to India in order to support the Afghan
economy and as a gesture of friendship for the Afghan people. No one
in Pakistan would argue for the withdrawal of this facility.
The need for a new transit trade agreement with Afghanistan to
replace and upgrade that was signed in March 1965 is also evident. A
lot has changed since then: new ports in Pakistan, the development
of container traffic, the shift from rail to road transport and the
emergence of energy-rich independent countries in Central Asia. But
when Clinton called the signing of the MoU a historic event, it is
doubtful she was referring to these developments.
The key issue is whether Pakistan should accord transit facilities
to India for trade with Afghanistan by the land route. As the
Foreign Ministry and the Commerce Ministry have pointed out, this is
first and foremost a bilateral matter between Pakistan and India.
But Zardari is not known as one who follows the professional advice
of his own officials when Washington dictates a different course.
The public silence on this issue of Zardari, the prime minister and
the foreign minister has only deepened public misgivings that
another sell-out of national interest may be in the works to
ingratiate Zardari with Washington.
The principal reason why Pakistan has withheld the grant of transit
facilities to India ever since independence is that it would further
Delhi’s traditional goal of encircling Pakistan. This consideration
still holds. The encirclement of Pakistan is part of India’s wider
great power ambitions. These ambitions, which received open
encouragement from Washington under the Bush administration, date
back much earlier. Before the overthrow of Daoud in 1978, India was
actively involved in encouraging Afghan irredentism against
Pakistan. In recent years, Delhi has been trying to foment
insurgency in Balochistan.
India has now been assigned a key role in Obama’s Af-Pak strategy
and is to be a member of the contact group for Afghanistan and
Pakistan proposed by the US president last March. To the delight of
the Indians, Holbrooke misses no opportunity to stress the
importance of the Indian role in Afghanistan or to heap praise on
Delhi for its contribution to the reconstruction in Afghanistan.
The Indian special envoy told an Indian magazine last April that
India had a role in not only Afghanistan’s reconstruction but also
in discussing its future. He added gleefully, if a little
prematurely, that all western countries had accepted that without
India, it would not be possible for them to have a solution in
Afghanistan. He seems to have been reading Curzon, the British
Viceroy to India from 1899-1905, who declared in a lecture in 1909
that India must exercise a predominant influence over the destinies
of Persia and Afghanistan.
Curzon, otherwise reviled by Indian nationalists for having
partitioned Bengal, is revered in the foreign policy establishment
for his grand strategic vision for India. The central position of
India, its magnificent resources, its teeming multitude of men, its
great trading harbours and its reserve of military strength, Curzon
said, were precious assets which India could also use to veto any
rival in Tibet and to exert pressure upon China. Jawaharlal Nehru
embraced this vision and declared India to be “the pivot round which
the defence problems of the Middle East, the Indian Ocean, and
Southeast Asia revolve.” But Nehru forgot that Curzon was speaking
not of an independent India, then a very distant dream, but one
under British tutelage and came to grief when he tried to apply
Curzon’s prescriptions to Tibet in 1959 and to China in 1962.
The Indian aim of penetrating Central Asia is also aimed to a large
extent at encircling Pakistan and keeping it under pressure.
Recently, India has also received encouragement from Washington to
strengthen its presence in this region. In parallel, Washington has
been urging Central Asian countries such as Tajikistan and
Kyrgyzstan to deal with India. India now has two bases in
Tajikistan, at Aini near the Tajik capital and at Farkhor,
Tajikistan, close to the border with Afghanistan.
Despite the advances made by India in the region, Pakistan has the
advantage of having geography on its side. The Wagah-Torkham route
is only 520 km long and is the shortest transport link to
Afghanistan for India. It has not lost its importance after the
construction of the Delaram-Zaranj road by India in Afghanistan. To
bypass Pakistan, India still has to pass through Iran, whose
willingness to provide India with a foothold in the region is not
without limits.
Clinton held out the prospect of economic development if Pakistan
opens the Wagah-Torkham land corridor to India. But the fact is that
it would most likely hurt Pakistan’s economy by opening the gates
for the smuggling of Indian products into Pakistan. Those in
Pakistan who favour granting transit rights to India, such as an
editorial in the Daily Times (May 8) and an op-ed in Dawn (June 5),
also claim that Pakistan will be adequately compensated by the
transit fees it will be able to charge. They seem to miss the point
that the strategic gain that India will be able to make in
Afghanistan and Central Asia cannot be offset by any monetary
compensation in the form of transit fees.
The article in Dawn also expresses the view that transit trade, like
bilateral trade and investment, will give India major stakes in
Pakistan and give Delhi a reason to be ‘sympathetic’ to Pakistan’s
position on Kashmir. This is not just a fallacy. It is completely
unrealistic. No country ever gives up anything out of gratitude. If
we want India to be accommodating on Kashmir, we have to stand our
ground, not throw away our advantages.
Pakistan has never linked the opening of the Wagah-Torkham route to
a resolution of Kashmir. What it can and should do is to make it
clear to Delhi (and Washington) that it will only consider opening
the land route to India once it renounces the policy of using Afghan
soil to subvert and destabilise Pakistan and starts respecting the
norms of international law on inter-state relations and good-neighbourliness.
But as long as Zardari is in the presidency, there is no assurance
of that happening.
The writer is a former member of the Pakistan Foreign Service.
Email: asifezdi@yahoo.com
The
News: Sunday, June 14, 2009
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