Trilateral Agreement

Of course new regional alignment is in the offing in the presently most sensitive region in Asian Continent. India, Iran and Afghanistan have entered into a trilateral agreement which facilitates transport and transit corridor to landlocked Afghanistan and further on to the Central Asia. It has been a long wish of strategists to open vast Central Asian region to the warm waters of Indian Ocean. Though that dream remained with Russia for more than a century of the days of Great Game, yet it were the three regional countries – India, Iran and Afghanistan – that have agreed to translate the dream into realty.
United Nations’ unethical sanctions stand lifted from Iran. This does not mean only release of billions of Iran’s impounded money but also freedom to her to plan her developmental projects and foreign policy especially for the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. Iran is bound to play a crucial role in the regional strategies, particularly maritime strategies, as she can work as a watchdog of the most critical sea route on which about 70 per cent of the international trade is carried.
It goes to the political maturity the leadership in the three countries that have agreed into trilateral agreement on trade and transit route. After the creation of Pakistan, a new state carved out of Hindostan in 1947, Afghanistan came under a spell of transit crunch to the South and South East Asian world. The turmoil and instability in Afghanistan over last two decades and more made it clear that if the region was to be given peace and prosperity, and then it’s pre-requisite would be connectivity and transit eschewing the uncertain Pakistan and its North West traditional Khyber Pass route. Indo-Iranian strategists have been silently focusing on Chabahar, the Iranian port in the Indian Ocean part of the entry to Straits of Hormoz in Persian Gulf. Chabahar port is geographically located around 72 miles west of the Gwadar sea port on the Makran Coast of Pakistani province of Balochistan. Pakistan handed over the development of Gwadar port to China, and the strategy is to link it with the Karakorum Highway which China has already built and will now connect Gwadar with Urumchi in Xingjian, the western province of China. Political and military fallout of Chinese presence in the sensitive maritime region close to which 80 per cent of the Gulf oil passes to the international markets could not be overlooked. That has given importance to Chabahar, and India and Iran, both have understood the move on the Asian chessboard. Three-fourth of India’s crude oil imports come from Iran and the security of the Straits of Hormoz connects Afghanistan to the Indian Ocean to her south, and to the Central Asia to her north. This connectivity, bypasses Pakistan and as such, Pakistan’s strategic importance for Afghanistan and the Central Asian States and beyond will go through drastic change. Her route monopoly will come to an end. India’s relations with Afghanistan are a classical example of cooperation without interference.
But Iran is no less a beneficiary of this gigantic project in which India has committed 500 million US dollars. Iran will get a network of rail connectivity of her Sistan-Balochistan region and further to the southern border between Iran and Turkmenistan. It will give great and unsurpassed boost to Iran’s trade in Central Asia and beyond. Chabahar port, when functional will not only provide employment opportunities to the Iranians, Afghans and Indians, it will also open up Afghanistan’s mineral wealth for exploration and exploitation to the great benefit of Afghanistan. As trade and commerce increase, the space for insurgency and terrorism gets reduced. The importance of the agreement concluded by the three countries can be understood from the fact that the President of Afghanistan flew into Tehran to be present at the time of signing of the agreement. Iranian President, speaking to the press said that the trilateral agreement was not directed against any country in the region. Obviously, he meant Pakistan for reasons already explained in these lines.
Prime Minister Modi is very right in calling the agreement as opening a new chapter in the history and economy of the region. He is very right in saying that it will not benefit only the people of the three countries that have signed the agreement, but entire people on the globe will be benefited by it. Such will be the impact of Afghanistan opening up to the Indian Ocean that the entire security scenario could change. Cooperation among the three countries is based not on military alignment or on countering the rivalry of powers in the region, but on what may be called historical necessity. It paves the way for a great re-thinking among Asian countries about bilateral and multilateral cooperation. In particular, the landlocked Central Asia, which has as good natural resources to be exploited as Afghanistan has, will emerge as the decisive states in the region.
Iran’s commitment to collaborate with India in containing radicalism and terrorism is of great significance. It gives a new and changed face of Iran which will be hailed by the entire peace loving world. In final analysis, the world is now watching with great eagerness how the task of making the trilateral agreement operational is carried forward.

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