Pakistan's 'pettiness' is strangling Indo-Afghan trade?

NEW DELHI: Pakistan appears to be using Afghanistan in its battle against India. It's strangling the tiny, struggling war-torn nation's trade with New Delhi, in a bid to assert its authority even as nations worldwide are coming down heavily against Islamabad's inaction against home-grown terror.

"Afghanistan is landlocked but thinks openly, Pakistan has access to the sea and thinks like a landlocked country," said Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani, in a talk yesterday at Delhi's Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses.

Ghani reiterated that Kabul won't take this lying down. "Afghanistan is at (a) crossroads, it's no longer a landlocked country, those who block us will be blocked. Why are we concerned that a country (Pakistan) can block two great nations (India and Afghanistan) from trading? Anyway, with Chabahar (port), (Pakistan's) monopoly will end." He was referring to Kabul's warning on Sunday that Afghanistan would shut Pakistan's transit route to Central Asian countries if it didn't allow Afghan traders to use the Wagah border for trade with India.

Pakistan, though, appears least bothered. Ghani said yesterday what he thinks of such a policy. "States do not behave like maligned non states actors vis-a-vis their neighbours", he said, making clear he was referring to Pakistan.

Recently, India wanted to supply 1.7-lakh-tonne wheat to Afghanistan. "We made a request to the Pakistan government. (But) we didn't get a reply," foreign secretary S Jaishankar said yesterday, ANI reported.

Raking up Kashmir
The Pakistan foreign office's response to that comment - published in Dawn newspaper today - is interesting. A spokesman told Dawn that Jaishankar's request "was made days before the ... killing of Burhan Wani."

What the killing of Wani, a Kashmiri terrorist, has to do with giving wheat to Afghanistan, the office didn't say. It added that there is no agreement with India for using Pakistan's land routes for supplies to Afghanistan.

"Instead of using the excuse of no response from Pakistan, India could have sent the supplies by open routes and it would have reached Afghanistan by now. India uses the excuse of humanitarian grounds, for which it has no respect," Pakistan's foreign office spokesperson Nafees Zakaria said, sticking Islamabad's nose in India's internal affairs again, by referring to Kashmir.

If that doesn't confirm Ghani's hypothesis that Pakistan is using Afghanistan as a pawn against India, then recent statements by other Pakistani officials pretty much do.

Kabul has often pressed Pakistan to allow India to become part of a proposed trilateral transit trade agreement between Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan, The Express Tribune said this week.

"Pakistan, on its part, insists India will not be welcome to the trade arrangement until diplomatic ties improve between the two arch rivals," The Express Tribune added.

A top Pakistan government official told Dawn categorically that there was no way Pakistan would accede to the Afghan President's demand to trade through Wagah. The official added that Ghani was practically asking that India be given concessions, and there's no way Pakistan will allow that. "Giving concession to India is unlikely at this stage," the official told the newspaper, alluding to worsening ties with Delhi.

"Connectivity through Wagah is still far away."