TRADING FOR STABILITY: WHY PAK-AFGHAN TIES SHOULD PIVOT TO ECONOMICS.

KARACHI -- In international relations it is a common axiom that a state can change its friends but it cannot replace its neighbours due to geographical compulsions. If neighbours cannot be replaced, ideally a state should enjoy at least cordial relations with its surrounding states if not the best relations. Moreover, if strategic and territorial issues between neighbouring states cannot be reconciled due to political and historical reasons, states sharing borders must have very strong economic relations, particularly trade, for the benefit of their respective populations. Geo-economics in the contemporary era is thus the underlying factor for neighbours to maintain cordial relations.

Pakistan and Afghanistan are two neighbouring states with a history of volatile relations due to geopolitical and historical factors. However, both the countries are geographically interlinked in such a way that they have no other option but to have close trade relations at least. Afghanistan is a landlocked country located on the crossroads of South Asia and Central Asia. Pakistan is a sizable country having a long coastline. Pakistan and Afghanistan share a border more than 2,600 kilometres long, mostly straddling rugged mountainous terrain. For ages, this has been a porous border till fencing of the border by Pakistan recently. This has significantly decreased the cross border illegal movement of people and goods.

There are around 18 trading points on the Pakistan-Afghanistan international border. These include two big border crossing points at Torkham and Chaman. The first is located in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province connecting Pakistan's Khyber district with Jalalabad, a city in Afghanistan'z Nangarhar province. The Chaman border point is located in Balochistan province connecting Pakistan's Chaman district with Afghanistan's Kandahar province. Afghanistan also shares its border with Iran, which also has a long coastline but the length of the Afghan-Iran border is 921 km, nearly one-third of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Thus Afghanistan has been nearly dependent upon Pakistan for its international trade through the former seaports. This has been one of the greatest dependency of the Afghan state.

Afghanistan is relatively a smaller country with a population of around 40 million whereas Pakistan is the fifth largest country of the world, with a population of more than 230 million. Moreover, Pakistan is also far more developed in terms of the size of its economy, infrastructure and economic institutionalisation.

Current status of Pak-Afghan trade

Pakistan and Afghanistan trade relations are regulated by an interim arrangement known as Afghanistan-Pakistan Transit Trade Arrangement (APTTA) signed in 2010. Before that, trading ties between the two sides had been regulated by the Afghanistan Transit Trade Agreement of 1965. However, both Pakistan and Afghanistan had had issues with the 1965 trading...