Even as battle raged across Afghanistan last week, Gwadar Port, now operated by a Chinese company, continued to ship fertilisers to the landlocked country, the Global Times reported. A total of 500 tonnes of fertilisers were shipped out of the port’s warehouse by a fleet of Pakistani trucks during the past week, a source at the port told the Global Times. Gwadar Port is a key project of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a flagship project of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Since its operation, the port has begun to play a new role as an efficient transit stop and time-saving trade port for land-locked Afghanistan. Its shipments of fertiliser started in January 2020. Fertiliser shipments, destined for Afghanistan are leaving the warehouses intermittently due to border closures. But this business was not cut off despite the fighting between Taliban fighters and Afghan government forces last week, according to the port’s source. Zhou Rong, a senior researcher at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at the Renmin University of China, saw the unbroken trade flow through this international corridor, even during times of war and conflicts, as a validation of the advantages of trade. “What happened just showed that normal trade between nations should not be blocked regardless of the situation,” Zhou said, noting that the Taliban knew it should not set up roadblocks for trade which is beneficial for Afghanistan’s war-torn economy.