An offer destined to be declined

China would be delighted at prospects of India joining CPEC as that would give a great boost to its bilateral trade

Amid escalating tensions between the two nuclear-armed states, Commander Southern Command Lt General Amir Riaz the other day invited India to join the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and ‘share the fruits of future development by shelving the anti-Pakistan activities and subversion’. He said, seemingly in a spirit of amity, that India should shun enmity with Pakistan and join the CPEC along with Iran, Afghanistan and other Central Asian countries and enjoy its benefits.

In the backdrop of the current tension-filled relations between India and Pakistan and the recent publicly declared attempts by New Delhi to isolate Islamabad internationally, it would, indeed, be too wishful to expect the offer extended by the Commander of our Southern Command to evince even the slightest interest in India, leave alone a note of ‘No, thank you!’ from New Delhi.

Perhaps, it was not even a serious invitation but just a rhetorical offer as a trade-off for India agreeing to stop its on- going alleged subversive activities in Balochistan which New Delhi is believed to have launched as a tit-for-tat against what it considers to be Islamabad’s alleged subversive activities in the Indian Occupied Kashmir.

Or was it, perhaps, a serious offer signalling a sea-change in our India policy, strategically cleared at the highest level? And what if India surprised us by responding positively and expressed its desire to join in the CPEC?

Indeed, one would like to believe, in the interest of the region and also that of the two belligerent neighbours, that it was not a rhetorical invitation but a well thought out sincere one dictated by Pakistan’s geo-economic interests disregarding its self-inflicted historic geopolitical pressures. And one would in the same spirit sincerely hope that India too would reciprocate the gesture equally sincerely encouraged by its own geo-economic interests ignoring its current geopolitical tensions with Islamabad.

Well then, if that is what is expected to follow from the offer made by Lt General Amir Riaz we would need to find the closest point at which India could link up to the CPEC. And that, perhaps, would be Lahore on the Eastern route that includes Gwadar, Basima, Khuzdar, Sukkur, Rahimyar Khan, Bahawalpur, Multan and Lahore/Faisalabad and Islamabad. And from Islamabad to Khunjerab-Kashgar road.

The CPEC, a trans-regional project, is expected to benefit three billion people of the region through enhanced regional connectivity. And China would surely be truly delighted at the prospects of India joining the CPEC at Lahore as that would give a great boost to the bilateral trade between China and India by bringing the Indian North and Northwestern market and the fledgling market of China’s North Western Xinjiang province very close to each other.

And once India had joined the CPEC at Lahore it would be more than a formality for Afghanistan as well to enter the CPEC at the same point which in turn would link up India with Afghanistan and beyond to Central Asia. This land route through Pakistan for trade between India and Afghanistan has been one of the most dearly sought after prizes by New Delhi and Kabul at least since the advent of President Ashraf Ghani. Perhaps both India and Afghanistan would not be averse to paying a political and/or economic price of our liking by way of trade- off.

However, for India to agree to join the CPEC it would first have to give up its opposition to the route passing through Gilgit-Balitistan, a region on which India has a claim as it considers it to be part of the disputed Jammu and Kashmir state. On the other hand, in order to even make the offer to India to join the CPEC Pakistan will have to give up its refusal to have any such physical trade route linkages with India unless New Delhi agreed to hand over the entire state of Kashmir under its occupation to Islamabad.

Similarly, in order to facilitate a smooth development of these linkages, Pakistan will also have to give up its reluctance to offer India what is called the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status — the very mention of which provokes the Defence of Pakistan Council (DPC) led by Hafiz Saeed to bring out hordes of protestors on the streets.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 24^th, 2016.

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