Time To Solve A Vexing Foreign Policy Conundrum

Any sloth in executing the Chabahar project will be a strategic mistake.

- Sanjay Kapoor

FOR MOST OF the hour-long journey, Rashid (not his real name) concealed his excitement about speaking with the visitor he had ferried from Iran’s Konark airfield – a wobbly landing strip straight out of a Wild West film – to Chabahar port. As he came close to the swanky Firdaws Hotel located in the port’s free zone, Rashid couldn’t control his urge to speak. In accent-free Hindustani (he called it Urdu), he asked me, “Are you from India? Here everyone speaks in Urdu.”

Such an interesting initiation to Chabahar, a port city on the shore of the Oman Sea in Iran’s Baluch-Sistan province, made amply clear its strategic location and why India is promising to invest $20 billion in developing the port and other industries in its sprawling free zone. Chabahar allows India to side-step Pakistan, which blocks its access to Afghanistan and Central Asia. Translated as ‘four springs’, the port has been described by medieval traveller Al Beruni as the entry point to the Indian subcontinent. Pakistan’s Gwadar port, in which the Chinese are investing $46 billion, is barely 72 km away. Proximity to Pakistan’s Baluchistan not only sustains the Urdu of Baluchis like Rashid, but also relationships. Iranians get a 15-day visa to visit Pakistan for weddings and. in some cases, for treatment.