With an explicit >signal to Pakistan to open up its trade access for Afghan trucks all the way to the Indian check posts at the Wagah-Attari border, Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani is doing more than talking about economic connectivity. His pointed remarks in an exclusive interview to this newspaper seemed to underscore possibilities of an alternative reality for South Asia, one in which all countries in the region open up the world for one another. Thus, while Pakistan could, if it chooses, offer the possibility of trucks moving from Kabul to Kolkata and Chittagong, it could equally open up opportunities for India to Central Asia, even as other countries in SAARC follow suit. While this may sound fanciful, the reality is that the only road blocks to such a vision are political and can easily be adopted on the ground. If Pakistan joins other SAARC countries to sign the Motor Vehicles Agreement and fully implements the Afghanistan Pakistan Transit and Trade Agreement (APTTA) it signed in 2011, the subcontinent could see a revolution on the roads. The call from President Ghani during his visit to Delhi comes at a particular ‘subcontinental moment’. Every SAARC nation has pitched in to help with Nepal’s urgent need for help in the aftermath of its earthquake. While India has taken the lead, rushing planes with relief just six hours after the tragedy struck, others have followed. Pakistan and Sri Lanka have rushed manpower and supplies with their own relief planes. Nature’s fury doesn’t recognise political borders, and neither should humans. In a welcome move, Prime Minister Narendra Modi discussed earthquake relief with Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on the telephone on Thursday. Mr. Modi did well to suggest a SAARC disaster management team and joint exercises on mitigating natural disasters.
Significantly, Mr. Ghani also spoke of building a subcontinental network to cooperate on fighting terror. The new and mutating threat from IS or Da’esh has ‘changed the game’, according to him. In the past, insurgencies or anti-national terror organisations threatened the state, but the “prize” now is not in defeating the state but in destruction. The only way to counter the threat is for these very states to unite in fighting it. The key challenge is to solve political differences so that all the countries of the region can remove road blocks to growth and build highways, energy pipelines and fibre optic i-ways which will bring prosperity to the region. Building connectivity economically and thereby politically will provide the key to a more integrated economic region, paving the way for better relations in the larger neighbourhood.
