As Chabahar falters, geography reasserts Pakistan’s centrality in regional connectivity
ISLAMABAD:
Last week’s arrival of Noor Ahmed Noor in New Delhi – the first Afghan chargé d’affaires appointed under the Taliban government – marked a quiet but consequential moment in regional diplomacy, signalling 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 of India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA). The MEA later released a photograph showing Noor Ahmed Noor standing besides the 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 Pakistan-backed proxies, the Taliban are now being engaged as part of India’s evolving regional calculus. With India-Pakistan relations frozen and Taliban-Pakistan ties sharply deteriorating, 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 offers 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 Afghan goods transit to India, it has never permitted 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.
During 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 soured, efforts to operationalise Chabahar intensified.
Only last year, an Indian state-owned company signed a fresh 10-year agreement 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 quietly pulled back from active involvement in Chabahar due to fears of potential US sanctions on Iran.
Notably, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs stopped short of directly rebutting the report. Instead, MEA spokesperson offered carefully worded responses that neither confirmed nor denied an Indian exit, a silence that has only reinforced speculation that New Delhi is recalibrating under external pressure.
Johar Saleem, Pakistan’s former foreign secretary, sees the development as symptomatic of a deeper contradiction in India’s foreign policy.
“While these are media reports rather than policy 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 another manifestation of India’s strategic hypocrisy in the name of strategic autonomy, where narrow interests prevail over any principled policy; that is why, when push comes to shove, New Delhi buckles.”
The Chabahar episode also exposes the limits of India and Afghanistan’s long-standing ambition to sidestep Pakistan. Johar argues that the very idea was flawed from the outset, 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 for Central Asia as well. Chabahar was only being 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 stressed that Chabahar and Gwadar are complementary rather than competing projects.
“The latest developments simply highlight that Pakistan remains central to regional connectivity, regardless of New Delhi’s political preferences,” Johar added.
Asif Durrani, Pakistan’s former ambassador to Iran, echoes this assessment and places particular emphasis on the economics of connectivity.
“India used Chabahar Port as a ruse to denigrate Pakistan’s geographical advantage in Central Asia,” Durrani said.
“However, upon completion, India found that this route was not economical and was 4045 per cent more expensive than 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 implications are stark. If India scales back its involvement at Chabahar, Kabul’s already limited trade options shrink further, pushing it back toward reliance on Pakistan’s ports, roads and transit infrastructure.
“Afghanistan has a right to seek various options, and we want to see Afghanistan connecting with Central Asia and its other neighbours,” Johar said.
“But geographically and historically Pakistan has always been critical for its trade and connectivity. Our ports, road networks, and transit infrastructure provide Afghanistan with the most efficient access to global markets.”
He stressed that this should not be framed 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 unravelling of the Chabahar project raises uncomfortable questions for India as well. If New Delhi’s much-touted strategic autonomy collapses under the weight of sanctions risk, its ability to sustain independent regional initiatives comes into doubt.
For all the symbolism surrounding IndiaTaliban engagement, the hard realities of geography, economics and external pressure continue to shape outcomes, according to analysts.
