Pakistan, CA promote co-operation

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Central Asia’s co-operation with Pakistan has grown in several areas, with analysts identifying energy, trade, and efforts to counter terrorism and drug trafficking as key elements in the relationship.

“In recent years, the Central Asian countries and Pakistan have moved closer together politically, economically and socially,” said Aikhan Kirbetov, a North Kazakhstan State University economics instructor. “This co-operation is mutually beneficial.”

Central Asia, he said, sees a need for economic co-operation with Pakistan because it has access to the Indian Ocean.

“Besides, Central Asia is interested in co-operating with Pakistan in fighting international terrorism; Pakistan, for its part, is greatly interested in gaining access to Central Asian energy,” Kirbetov said.

Pakistan, currently with observer status, seeks to become a full-fledged member of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO), Tajik analyst Mirzokhon Boboyev said.

“Membership ... is a priority for Pakistan and much sought by the Central Asian nations,” he said, “particularly because the SCO’s political and economic goals include combating international terrorism, enhancing security all across Asia, fighting drug trafficking, and promoting economic relationships.”

The formation of transport ties across Central Asia is a priority in Pakistani-Central Asian co-operation, with Islamabad focusing on construction of trunk roads across Afghanistan, Sabir Boidzhanov, a political scientist at the Kyrgyz National University, said.

He cited Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev as repeatedly calling on the SCO member nations to meaningfully contribute to the organisation’s acquiring an integral regional transport-and-transit system “that would not only facilitate communication among (our countries) but would also attract greater volumes of international transit trade.”

“The availability on the Arabian Sea shore near the Persian Gulf of a port via which up to 40% of the world’s oil is trans-shipped is important not only to Pakistan, but to Central Asia too,” Rustam Makhmudov, deputy director of the Uzbek Centre for Political Studies, said, referring to Pakistan’s Gwadar. “(It) is at the intersection of highly important regions – the Middle East with its rich oil reserves, and the South Asian and Chinese consumer markets.”

In the early 1990s, Kazakhstan, China and Pakistan signed an international transit agreement for the Karakoram Highway connecting these countries, Makhmudov recalled.

“The highway was not exploited to full capacity at the time,” he said. “In 2008-2009, the Pakistani government considered modernising the Karakoram Highway to make it an all-weather route. Doing so would have helped connect Kazakhstan ... to (Gwadar) and to (the rest of) Pakistan.”

Exploitation of the highway would make it possible to lay oil and gas pipelines alongside it, ultimately giving Kazakhstan access to the ocean, the analyst added.

CASA-1000, transport infrastructure eyed

At present, Pakistan’s number-one economic project within the SCO is CASA-1000 – a planned Central Asia-South Asia power transmission line to supply power from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to Pakistan and Afghanistan, Kirbetov said.

Another project, Boidzhanov noted, calls for building a highway and railway from Tajikistan to Pakistan via the Wahan Corridor in north-eastern Afghanistan, which is to become a new Silk Road for the neighbouring countries and a window into Central Asia for Pakistan.

“The Central Asian countries, too, are interested in widening the corridor through Afghanistan and Pakistan, given a normalisation of the situation ... in Afghanistan,” he added. “Pakistan would welcome any transport projects having Pakistani ports as their destination points.”

The persistent crisis in Afghanistan remains a major barrier to establishment of direct links between Pakistan and Central Asia, Uzbek economist Ganisher Elbekov observed.

“Continuing instability and increasingly strong Islamic extremist pressure on the Central Asian countries ... doom (Pakistani-Central Asian) ties to stagnation and blur prospects for co-operation,” he said.

“The current level of trade and economic relations between Central Asia and Pakistan ... is limited, as a rule, to the signing of a variety of bilateral and multilateral agreements that remain on paper,” said Sergei Yezhkov, a political scientist and editor of the Uzmetronom website.

But ties have improved, Kirbetov contended. “Trade has grown at least three- to fourfold in recent years,” he said. “The sole factor preventing further growth is the Taliban’s and other groups’ terrorist activity.”

Uzbek-Pakistani trade reached US $40.1m (Rs. 3.6 billion) in 2010, while that between Kyrgyzstan and Pakistan and between Kazakhstan and Pakistan reached US $4.9m (Rs. 442.2m) and US $32.4m (Rs. 2.9 billion), respectively, he recalled.

Ample opportunities to further increase trade exist, Elbekov said.

“Apart from oil and gas, Pakistan could import ferrous and non-ferrous metals from Central Asia ... as well as uranium ore; machine tools and parts made in Tashkent; and Kazakhstani wheat,” he said. “The Central Asian countries, in turn, could import (Pakistani) textiles, mineral fertiliser, sugar, and some technologies.”