As Chabahar falters, geography reaffirms Pakistan’s centrality to regional connectivity
ISLAMABAD:
The arrival last week of Noor Ahmed Noor in New Delhi – the first Afghan chargé d’affaires appointed under the Taliban government – marked a quiet but momentous 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 of 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 said it all.
The optics highlighted a quiet but significant change: the steady strengthening of ties between India and the Afghan Taliban regime.
The Taliban, once seen in New Delhi as Pakistan-backed proxies, are now being drawn in as part of India’s changing regional calculus. With relations between India and Pakistan frozen and ties between the Taliban and Pakistan deteriorating markedly, 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 odds offers leverage against Pakistan and a renewed foothold in Afghanistan. For the Taliban, closer ties with India promise diplomatic diversification and less over-reliance on Pakistan.
However, this convergence faces a harsh geopolitical limitation: geography.
Afghanistan is landlocked and overwhelmingly dependent on Pakistan for access to global markets. While Pakistan has historically allowed the transit of Afghan goods to India, it has never allowed Indian goods to reach Afghanistan through its territory. This structural reality has long frustrated both Kabul and New Delhi and fueled their search for alternative routes.
The most ambitious of these alternatives was the Chabahar port in Iran.
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, India and Afghanistan deteriorated further, efforts to operationalize Chabahar were intensified.
Last year, an Indian state-owned company signed a new 10-year deal to operate the port, and the Taliban subsequently joined the deal, reviving hopes that the long-delayed project would finally pay strategic dividends.
Those hopes now appear to be fading.
According to a recent report by The Economic Times, India has quietly withdrawn from its active participation in Chabahar due to fear of possible US sanctions on Iran.
Notably, India’s Ministry of External Affairs stopped short of directly refuting the report. Instead, the 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 this as symptomatic of a deeper contradiction in India’s foreign policy.
“While 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 the 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 take precedence over any principled policy; so when things get ugly, New Delhi relents.”
The Chabahar episode also exposes the limits of India and Afghanistan’s long-standing ambition to bypass Pakistan. Johar maintains that the very idea was wrong from the beginning, according to experts.
“This idea of bypassing Pakistan has always been more political than practical. You cannot ignore geography,” he said.
“Pakistan offers the shortest, cheapest and most viable sea route to Afghanistan and also to Central Asia. Chabahar was only promoted as an alternative, but it could never match the logistical advantages of Gwadar.”
He also pointed to Iran’s own regional perspective, noting that Tehran has repeatedly emphasized that Chabahar and Gwadar are complementary rather than competing projects.
“The latest developments simply highlight that Pakistan remains critical 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 special 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 uneconomical and was 40 to 45 percent more expensive than the Karachi port or the land route via Wagah. Until now, 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 reduces its stake in Chabahar, Kabul’s already limited trade options will be further reduced, forcing it to once again rely on Pakistan’s ports, roads and transit infrastructure.
“Afghanistan has the right to pursue various options and we want Afghanistan to connect with Central Asia and its other neighbors,” Johar said.
“But geographically and historically Pakistan has always been central to 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 dependency but as an opportunity for mutually beneficial regional integration, provided Kabul addresses Pakistan’s key security concerns.
“To do this, Kabul will have to adopt a more responsible attitude and ensure that there is no flow of terrorism from its territory to Pakistan,” he added.
The quiet unraveling of the Chabahar project also raises uncomfortable questions for India. If New Delhi’s vaunted strategic autonomy collapses under the weight of sanctions risk, its ability to sustain independent regional initiatives remains in doubt.
Despite all the symbolism surrounding the engagement between India and the Taliban, harsh geographical, economic realities and external pressure continue to influence the results, according to analysts.
