Pakistan using Kabul as pawn against India by blocking Indo-Afgan trade

New Delhi, Sept 16, 2016: It is really 'petty' of Pakistan to use Kabul as a pawn against India by blocking the trade. "Afghanistan is landlocked but thinks openly, Pakistan has access to the sea and thinks like a landlocked country," said Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani, on Thursday at Delhi's Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses.

Ghani further added that Kabul won't be taking this lying down. "Afghanistan is at (a) crossroads, it's no longer a landlocked country, those who block us will be blocked. Why are we concerned that a country (Pakistan) can block two great nations (India and Afghanistan) from trading? Anyway, with Chabahar (port), (Pakistan's) monopoly will end." It was solely referring to the warning given by Kabul on Sunday and that Afghanistan would shut Pakistan's transit route to Central Asian countries if it tries to block the Afghan traders to use the Wagah border to trade with India, mentioned TOI report.

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Pakistan doesn't really appear to be bothered by it. On Thursday, Ghani said what he thinks of such policy. He made it very clear that he is referring to Pakistan when he said, "States do not behave like maligned non-states actors vis-a-vis their neighbours."

TOI reports mentioned, recently India wanted to supply 1.7 lakh tonne of wheat to Afghanistan, to which foreign secretary S Jaishankar said, "We made a request to the Pakistan government. (But) we didn't get a reply."

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The response to foreign secretary S Jaishankar comment was published in Dawn newspaper on Friday. A spokesman told Dawn that Jaishankar's request "was made days before the killing of Burhan Wani."

Well, what exactly the killing of Wani, a Kashmiri terrorist, has to do with the wheat trade to Afghanistan, the officer didn't really say that. It added, there is no such agreement with India to use Pakistan's land routes for trading with Afghanistan.

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"Instead of using the excuse of no response from Pakistan, India could have sent the supplies by open routes and it would have reached Afghanistan by now. India uses the excuse of humanitarian grounds, for which it has no respect," Pakistan's foreign office spokesperson Nafees Zakaria said, sticking nose in India's internal affairs, by referring to Kashmir.

Apart from this, the recent statements by other Pakistani officials pretty much confirm the using of Afganistan against India in the battle.

A top government official of Pakistan told, there was no way by which Pakistan would accede to the Afghan President's demand to trade with India through Wagah.

– prepared by Pinaz Kazi of NewsGram. Twitter: @PinazKazi