IN an interview with the CNN, telecast on April 23, President Musharraf talked about the significance of Pakistan’s geographic location. He said it provided the shortest route to the land- locked countries of Central Asia which looked for access to the world. Their route was through Pakistan. The President said that India was looking for dealing with Afghanistan and with the Central Asian Republics and its route was through Pakistan.
He further stressed the point by saying that India was interested in getting gas from Iran for which the route too was through Pakistan. So, he said, our geo-strategic importance cannot be reduced. We have understood that and therefore we have constructed a new port at Gwadar, which is almost at the mouth of the Gulf.
He regretted that South and Central Asia were not at present economically cooperating and also were not linked with the rest of Asia which was internally co-operating and growing fast.
Pakistan’s geographic location which is being talked about so much now a days has always been important. It has been eternal. Its advantages to Pakistan itself and to the surrounding regions have been self-evident, rooted in history. The high mountains in the north and west which once acted as formidable barriers act no more so, thanks to the modern technology which provides new highways of contacts.
Pakistan at its birth found itself in a unique position of offering the option of acting either as a bridge or a divide between central and west Asia and South and South East Asia. The whole area had just crossed or was about to cross the threshold of imperial slavery into freedom. Unfortunately the political forces that led the Muslim India’s freedom struggle were so weak and disorganized that soon after the liberation the power of state slipped into the hands of civil-military bureaucracy.
This combination of rulers threw away the opportunity of manoeuvring through the clashing policies of the two co-existing super powers — the United States and the Soviet Union. Instead of becoming the bridge we opted to act as a perpetual divide. Our rulers allowed the best geographical location to be wasted away when they decided to join the US-led Baghdad Pact (later Central Treaty Organization).
We deliberately adopted a policy of not only isolating ourselves from development “in Central Asia but also denied access to others through our territory. If we are denied so far the advantages of our location and technology we are to blame; for the denial has been the result of our own conscious decisions although these did not serve our national interests. These decisions were taken in the interest of our super power ally, the US, whom it suited to isolate the Central Asian Republics from the rest of the world. These also suited the coterie of the rulers in Pakistan to prevent socialist influences of the system prevailing there until recently. This coterie of rulers comprising entrenched feudal lords and their newly emerging civil and military bureaucrat comrades felt threatened from the new ideas.
Now with the dissolution of the Soviet Union the threat has disappeared and the US has gained entry into these republics. It needed further strengthening its grips over the resources of the countries to our north and west to turn this presence in the backyards of China and Russia — perceived future challenge to its sole super power status —- into permanent bases.
The present realization of geographical importance of our location does not seem to be the outcome of genuine re-thinking of our national interest but of its temporary convergence with that of the super power. Its temporary nature became evident from the US ‘advice’ against the laying of the oil pipeline from Iran at a time when negotiations between Islamabad and Tehran had sufficiently advanced. Not much has been heard about this pipeline after the ‘advice’.
Our Central Asian policy kept us away from the road network, electricity grid and oil transmission system that were constructed in the central Asian Republics in the second and third quarter of the 20th century despite the offers reportedly made by the USSR for linkage with the newly built Afghan highways.
The failure of our Central and South Asian policies has cast us dearly. It helped tot establish physically the presence of the only super power on our western border which had been secure and calm - despite many ups and downs in our relations with Kabul —- until the results of our policy began to unfold in the late seventies of the last century. It ruined Afghanistan first through jihad and later through a decade long civil war. Even when the events seemingly turned favourable to us with the US invasion, we found ourselves totally unprepared to take advantage of the opening of the marked of the Central Asian republics and provide transit trade facilities to South East Asia and India.
Meanwhile, alternative routes have been and are being developed by others to fill the vacuum created by the dissolution of the Soviet Union. We are again the loser. In our foreign policy, politics always occupied priority and economics a distant secondary position. This situation is reflected in the destinations of our exports. Pakistan has borders with five countries — China, India, Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan — whose population is close to 2.4 billion which comes to about 40 per cent of the world population.
Substantial part of this population falls within the middle income group. Every kilometre of Pakistan’s border area can benefit if we have a rational economic policy and corresponding infrastructure in our border areas. However our border trade is less than 0.5 per cent and crossing points are few and hundreds of kilometres away from each other. Illegal border trade is many times more than the legal trade. There seems no urgency to plug this black hole, the reason being the wrong policies and the involvement of powerful interests in the illegal border trade.
Our total formal trade with our neighbours too is far less than its potential. Pakistan is perhaps the only country which has the least trade with its immediate and other neighbours.
The realization of the importance of our geographical location now, it is hoped, will not be transient, corresponding to the requirements of the super power but would lead to the necessary alterations in domestic and foreign policies and bring about a change in the perspective of those who implement these policies.
