Nations cannot become walls: MJ Akbar rails against Pakistan for blocking India-Afghan trade
Your excellency President of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan,
Your excellency chief executive of Afghanistan,
Your excellency foreign minister of Afghanistan,
Your excellency European commissioner for International Cooperation,
Good afternoon,
It is a privilege to join you all at this important side event. Thank you for inviting India and for the excellent arrangements made.
Our commitment to Afghanistan is abiding, as is our cherished desire to work with the people and government of one of our closest friends towards peace, stability and progress in Afghanistan and in our wider region.
Prosperity is our purpose; integration is the means. Prosperity in our view must have a primary focus: the youth. We have to rescue the future from tragedies of the past and uncertainties of the present. For this to happen, Afghanistan needs augmentation of its capacities, it needs infrastructure and resources, and most of all it needs connectivity and access to regional markets. This event on "Regional Integration and Prosperity", therefore, has a special significance.
India has dedicated its efforts and resources into bilateral cooperation with Afghanistan, with improvements of internal capabilities and provision of year-round regional connectivity. We have already completed significant development projects including scientific water management through dams and infrastructure projects like highways, worth over $2 billion. We have recently committed to $1 billion more.
This is the essence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s "neighbourhood first" policy. Afghanistan, historically, has been the wedge between East and West, the passage for seamless travel between India and Central Asia, West Asia and regions beyond. The harmonies of culture and trade created shared values and mutual prosperity.
This harmony of outlook and philosophy led to the unique humanitarian vision of Sufi Islam, which still connects the most revered Sufi shrines at Ajmer in my country with Mazar and Chisht-e-Sharif in Afghanistan and Mashad in Iran. It is because of this organic link that the poetry of Bedil and Rumi is as revered in India as it is in Afghanistan or Iran. India plans, around the Amritsar Ministerial of the Heart of Asia process, to host an event involving Islamic Sufi scholars from the region.
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| "India has dedicated its efforts and resources into bilateral cooperation with Afghanistan," MJ Akbar said. (In picture: Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Prime Minister Narendra Modi Photo: PTI) |
Development is what we do, rather than merely promise or plan to do. The Zeranj-Delaram road, with the potential to connect Iran to major cities of Afghanistan through the Afghan ring road was constructed by India.
An exciting and innovative future is taking shape through the recent trilateral India-Iran-Afghanistan agreement in Tehran in May 2016, which makes Chahbahar into a hub for immense economic opportunity. These steps reflect India’s sharp focus on strengthening Afghanistan’s economy with greater vibrancy.
Afghanistan’s exports have traditionally found their most lucrative market in India, up to Calcutta at the other end of the Grand Trunk Road. Afghanistan is much loved and respected in my country, where from childhood we are brought up on stories of "Kabulliwala" – the steadfast, courageous and honest friend from Kabul immortalised in the work of our national poet Rabindranath Tagore.
We have offered a special facility at our border at Attari for Afghan products coming to India via Pakistan. Unfortunately, this access has been blocked for political reasons by Pakistan. Nations cannot become walls aborting a trade and culture that is as old as written history, and as powerful as the lore etched in common memory.
But, we will continue to work with Afghanistan for assured and reliable access for Afghanistan’s products to India’s markets through land, sea and air. The full utilisation of Afghanistan’s transit rights as a member of WTO will enable greater prosperity. Those who deny transit hurt Afghanistan’s economy, with negative resonance for our larger region.
Afghanistan as the "Heart of Asia" also offers energy routes such as TAPI and CASA-1000 through the arteries of the region. Connecting the Afghan economy across the regional compass is the way towards comprehensive development and prosperity in the entire Eurasian region.
Connectivity, like progress, is not a zero-sum game. It is, in fact, a zero-plus opportunity.
Better connectivity is not an option, but an imperative. Those who impede connectivity have retrograde objectives.
Excellencies,
Peace is essential to development; terrorism is anathema to development. The scale of terrorism and violence unleashed against Afghanistan is of a magnitude that simply does not allow for easy project implementation, efficient delivery of assistance or the rapid inflow of investments into an economy that has huge resources and obvious potential.
The international community must ensure security if it wants stability and economic development in Afghanistan. We cannot underline ‘must’ often enough. We abandon this duty at our own risk, for the fangs of terrorism recognise no borders.
(The full text of MJ Akbar's speech at Brussels Conference on Afghanistan on October 5, 2016.)