Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan Mr. Ajay Bisaria was at the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry on Friday and said Indo-Pak trade could reach its potential of $30 billion, as estimated by the World Bank if the two sides eased visas for their traders. The two neighbors trade only $2.2bn directly while smuggling accounts for an exchange worth many times over. Meanwhile, the two indulge in the shameful practice of harassing each other’s diplomats and boasting of bilateral carnage on the ceasefire line in Kashmir.
Mr. Bisaria also joined the cricket enthusiasts of Pakistan dying to see India and Pakistan playing cricket by saying if the bilateral relations improved the two sides may allow their cricket icons to confront each other on Pakistan’s deserted cricket stadiums that the world would be keen to watch on TV. His Pakistani counterpart in New Delhi Mr. Sohail Mahmood has also said something similar.
But the two diplomats may actually be engaged in assessing the strategic “damage” the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and the Indian-assisted port of Chabahar in Iran could be doing to their countries. The India-China bilateral trade touches $86 billion and continues to ply through the bottleneck of the Strait of Malacca in Southeast Asia, but it could go through Pakistan like the goods from the Gulf. Pakistan is building CPEC while refusing to accept the change it will bring in its identity as a state; and India, together with President Trump, is keen to see it as a Chinese trespass.
Iran’s former foreign minister Kamal Kharazi swears that Chabahar is not a rival project to CPEC and that Pakistan should complete the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline that was once the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline and was considered a regional game-changer before the Yemen war started causing the two confessions of Islam to square off against each other, dragging Pakistan away from its true regional destiny.
Published in Daily Times, April 3rd 2018.