As Chabahar falters, geography confirms Pakistan’s centrality in regional relations
ISLAMABAD:
Last week’s arrival in New Delhi of Noor Ahmed Noor – the first Afghan chargé d’affaires appointed under the Taliban government – marked a quiet but consistent moment in regional diplomacy, signaling a subtle recalibration in India’s engagement with Kabul at a time of shifting geopolitical alignments.
Soon after landing, Noor Ahmed Noor met senior officials from India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA). The MEA later released a photograph showing Noor Ahmed Noor standing next to India’s joint secretary for Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran, a carefully choreographed image that spoke volumes.
The optics underscored a quiet but significant shift: the steady warming of ties between India and the Afghan Taliban regime.
Once viewed in New Delhi as Pakistani-backed proxies, the Taliban are now being engaged as part of India’s evolving regional calculus. With India-Pakistan ties frozen and Taliban-Pakistan ties severely strained, both New Delhi and Kabul appear to be testing a tactical reset to advance their respective strategic interests.
For India, engagement with the Taliban at a time when Kabul and Islamabad are at loggerheads provides leverage against Pakistan and a renewed foothold in Afghanistan. For the Taliban, closer ties with India promise diplomatic diversification and reduced overreliance on Pakistan.
Yet this convergence faces a hard geopolitical constraint: geography.
Afghanistan is landlocked and overwhelmingly dependent on Pakistan for access to global markets. While Pakistan has historically allowed transit of Afghan goods to India, it has never allowed Indian goods to move to Afghanistan through its territory. This structural reality has long frustrated both Kabul and New Delhi and driven their search for alternative routes.
The most ambitious of these alternatives was Iran’s Chabahar port.
Under Ashraf Ghani’s administration, Afghanistan, India and Iran signed a trilateral agreement to develop Chabahar as a gateway bypassing Pakistan. After relations between Pakistan and both India and Afghanistan further deteriorated, efforts to operationalize Chabahar intensified.
Only last year, an Indian state-owned company signed a new 10-year deal to operate the port, and the Taliban subsequently joined the arrangement, reviving hopes that the long-delayed project would finally deliver strategic dividends.
Those hopes now appear to be fading.
According to a recent report by The Economic Times, India has been quietly withdrawing from active involvement in Chabahar due to fears of potential US sanctions against Iran.
Notably, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs stopped short of rejecting the report outright. Instead, the MEA spokesperson offered carefully worded responses that neither confirmed nor denied an Indian exit, a silence that has only fueled speculation that New Delhi is recalibrating under external pressure.
Johar Saleem, Pakistan’s former foreign minister, sees the development as symptomatic of a deeper contradiction in India’s foreign policy.
“Although these are media reports rather than political signals, they reinforce what many have long pointed out – that Chabahar was politically oversold without being commercially promising,” Johar said.
“Given US sanctions, India’s economic engagement with Iran was always suspect. What we are seeing now is yet another manifestation of India’s strategic hypocrisy in the name of strategic autonomy, where narrow interests trump any principled policy; that is why New Delhi buckles when push comes to shove.”
The Chabahar episode also exposes the limits of India and Afghanistan’s long-standing ambition to bypass Pakistan. Johar argues that the idea itself was flawed from the start, according to experts.
“This idea of bypassing Pakistan has always been more political than practical. Geography cannot be wished away,” he said.
“Pakistan offers the shortest, cheapest and most viable route to the sea for Afghanistan and also for Central Asia. Chabahar was only touted as an alternative, but it could never match Gwadar’s logistical advantages.”
He also pointed to Iran’s own regional outlook, noting that Tehran has repeatedly emphasized that Chabahar and Gwadar are complementary rather than competing projects.
“Recent developments simply highlight that Pakistan remains central to regional relations, regardless of New Delhi’s political preferences,” Johar added.
Asif Durrani, Pakistan’s former ambassador to Iran, echoes this assessment, placing particular emphasis on the economics of accession.
“India used Chabahar Port as a ruse to denigrate Pakistan’s geographical advantage in Central Asia,” Durrani said.
“However, after completion, India found that this route was not economical and was 40-45 percent more expensive than the Karachi port or the land route through Wagah. So far, India’s private sector has been reluctant to use Chabahar due to its high cost and long distance.”
For Afghanistan, the consequences are stark. If India scales back its involvement in Chabahar, Kabul’s already limited trade opportunities will shrink further, pushing the country back towards relying on Pakistan’s ports, roads and transit infrastructure.
“Afghanistan has the right to seek different opportunities and we want to see Afghanistan connect with Central Asia and its other neighbors,” Johar said.
“However, geographically and historically, Pakistan has always been critical for its trade and connectivity. Our ports, road network and transit infrastructure provide Afghanistan with the most efficient access to global markets.”
He emphasized that this should not be seen as dependence but as an opportunity for mutually beneficial regional integration, provided Kabul addresses Pakistan’s core security concerns.
“For that, Kabul will have to adopt a more responsible attitude and ensure that there is no outward flow of terrorism from its soil to Pakistan,” he added.
The quiet unraveling of the Chabahar project also raises uncomfortable questions for India. If New Delhi’s much-touted strategic autonomy collapses under the weight of sanctions risk, its ability to sustain independent regional initiatives comes into question.
For all the symbolism surrounding India’s engagement with the Taliban, the harsh realities of geography, economics and external pressures continue to shape the results, according to analysts.
