Chabahar: Port of Good Hope

During my stay in Kabul for over a year on a consulting assignment, one experienced first hand the immense love and respect that Indians get and the confidence that India as a country inspires in the Afghans. This is in sharp contrast to the feelings towards Pakistan and its citizens.

A lot of hope is riding on the Chabahar port. In fact one heard many Afghans rue the fact that Pakistan restricts the supply of grains to Afghanistan at its land-border posts thereby limiting availability and  pushing the prices out of reach of the common man. They were optimistic that once Chabahar port is operational, such shortages and high prices will be a thing of the past.

The Chabahar port will not only enhance the availability of food grains to the Afghan citizen, it will also provide a gateway to international markets for its agriculture produce, carpet industry and minerals thereby making the economy grow.

Further,it appears that the US is not going to be leaving Afghanistan anytime soon.It has also been talking about a greater role and involvement of India in bringing back normalcy to Afghanistan. Therefore, notwithstanding US's relations with Iran, I would expect that it would use this port for maintaining its troops stationed there. And India could be acting as the bridge between Iran and US.  To remind the readers, Pakistan has been prone to blackmailing the US over providing passage to supplies through its sea and land ports.In fact there have been disruptions to the supply routes in the past to extract concessions from the US.Such a step would make Pakistan irrelevant for the US war on Taliban. Pakistan would lose its lever over the US and then the latter can go full blast to eliminate the Taliban and the ISIS in Afghanistan..

Of late Shias have been the target of repeated attacks in Afghanistan. The IS has had a hand in these attacks. Iran is reported to have been hiring Shias from Afghanistan to fight the ISIS. Thus it will only be too happy to support any measure that will bring the menace of ISIS to an end. It is on this premise that I base my conjecture that Iran could permit the  US to use Chabahar as a port for maintenance of its troops in Afghanistan. 

The challenge before the Afghan government is the evacuation of goods from the Zahedan border to the interiors of Afghanistan. While there is a road link existing and  there are plans to construct rail-links, providing security will be the main concern.

Afghanistan is investing heavily in the power sector, especially the Renewal Energy sector. It is also revamping its power transmission, distribution and metering infrastructure. It is a huge opportunity for the Indian firms to build a market for power equipment. This port will facilitate transportation of heavy machinery too.

All said and considered, the port is certainly going to be a game and 'fate-changer' for all parties concerned, locally and internationally. It is indeed the 'Port of Good Hope'.