India remains an important player in the New Silk Road project which hopes to integrate the Afghan economy into that of Central and South Asia. But can it succeed without the US's help? America seems to have given up on the initiative
The Dialogue may have been designed to bring both countries on the same page as they increase their engagement in Central Asia, but New Delhi knows well that Beijing has long since raced ahead of it. In fact, India lags behind not just China but all other major players in the region — definitely the US and Russia but also Iran and Turkey. This is despite the fact that India has civilisational ties with Central Asia that go back centuries; more recently, New Delhi has also made a conscious effort towards strengthening its presence in that region. The Government of India’s official Connect Central Asia policy was unveiled by Minister of State for External Affairs E Ahamed at the India-Central Asia Dialogue in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek in June 2012. More than a year later, the policy remains more aspirational than it is in the actual.
Yet, a strong presence in Central Asia is important for India for two key factors: Energy security and military security. In the first case, India currently receives almost all of its oil and gas from West Asia but given how volatile that region can be, it is a good idea to look for other suppliers. Moreover, as the country’s energy demands continue to grow, New Delhi has no choice but to tap into other sources. In this context, energy-rich and proximate Central Asia is best positioned to become India’s next big oil and gas supplier.
China faces much the same challenges (growing economy, growing population) — except that it seems to have responded to them much better, as is evident from the deep inroads that it has already made into the Central Asian energy market. Beijing’s two trillion-dollar-strong foreign exchange reserves and a ruthlessly efficient Government not encumbered by the demands of democracy, have meant it has consistently managed to out-bid New Delhi in oil deals not just in Central Asia but across the world. For example, just weeks before the dialogue in Beijing, India lost to China the world’s largest oil find in five decades — the giant Kashagan oilfield in Kazakhstan.
In November 2012, India’s state-run ONGC Videsh Limited had struck a deal with America’s ConocoPhillips to buy the latter’s 8.4 per cent stake in Kashagan for five billion dollars. However, the deal fell through in July when the Kazakh Government itself stepped in and informed ConocoPhillips that its own national oil company, KazMunaiGaz, will buy the American company’s stake for the same amount. Kazakh law allows the Government certain pre-emption rights as a result of which it has the authority to buy any oil asset for sale in the country at the price agreed on by the buyer and seller. KazMunaiGaz will now sell that stake to China National Petroleum Corp for a reported $5.3-5.4 billion.
But China is only one of India’s problems in Central Asia. What has most significantly limited New Delhi’s diplomatic efforts in that region is a stubborn Pakistan which has wholly refused India overland access to Central Asia, through Afghanistan. Ideally this would have been the shortest route for India; however, that is not to be — one of the big reasons why the ambitious Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India oil pipeline project, for example, has been a non-starter.
Consequently, New Delhi has had to look for new routes that bypass Pakistan altogether. Towards that end, the North-South Transportation Corridor which connects India to the Central Asian region through Iran was envisaged as a game-changer. Initiated in 2003, this project aims to connect the port in Mumbai to the Iranian ports of Chabahar and Bandar Abbas through maritime transport, and then develop road and rail networks linking these two ports with Afghanistan and other Central Asian republics. Some initial progress was made in this regard — India’s Border Road Organisation invested $136 million to set up a road link from Zaranj to Delaran which was inaugurated in 2009. This 215km long road is a crucial part of what is known as Afghanistan’s garland road network that goes around the country connecting Herat to Kabul via Mazar-e-Sharif and Kandahar. But this road link apart, the North-South Transportation Corridor has mostly been gathering dust for a decade now.
In the meantime, the Chinese have aggressively built similar road and rail networks penetrating deep into the heart of Central Asian Region. The Karakoram Highway, which is under-construction in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and stands a direct threat to India’s security interests in that region, is also essentially an extension of this plan, and so is the Gwadar port in Pakistan that is being developed as a counter-balance to the Chabahar port in Iran, located less than 200km away.
This brings us to military-security aspect of India-Central Asia dynamic. As of now, India’s military footprint in that region is next to nothing. New Delhi had sought to shore up its prospects by taking over the Ayni air base in Tajikistan which would have given tremendous strategic depth in the region but its plans have most definitely been thwarted by Russia, the big brother in the region. India began renovating the Ayni air-field, located just outside the Tajik capital of Dushanbe, in 2004 and up until the end of 2010, Indian engineers were still working there. However, in the last three years, the Tajik Government which depends considerably on Moscow for financial aid, seems to have made clear that it will only let Russia use the air-base.
India’s other military assets in the region include a military hospital in Farkhor, also in Tajikistan. Set up in 2001 to treat Northern Alliance members fighting the Taliban, it was shut down after the US removed the militant group from power. But in recent years, there have been talks of re-opening that field hospital.
The India-Tajik relationship is as far as India’s military presence goes in that region. And while there have been some positive indications of improving that footprint, it is unlikely to change significantly in the near future. Not only because China and Pakistan will do all that they can to limit India’s presence but also because Russia will probably not go all out to support India. The US is the only country which has unequivocally stated that it would like India to emerge as its regional partner (this explains Russia’s reluctance) especially post the 2014 Afghan pullout.
India remains an important player in its New Silk Road project that hopes to integrate the Afghan economy into that of Central and South Asia. But America’s diminished clout at this point (the NSR project has been all but discarded) it is unclear how far Washington, DC will be able to help on the ground. In other words, India is on its own.
(This article was published in the Op-ed sector of The Pioneer on August 22, 2013.)
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