At this time that a flurry of activity is undertaken by the Afghan president Karzai, mending, confirming and expanding his relations with the West, a true economic development project namely extension of railway service from Central Asia to Afghanistan has come up. Afghan government should grasp the opportunity, work on the project earnestly and let it not become another failed idea like the extension of the gas pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan and beyond. Economic development programs also are the most feasible alternatives to solving problems of nations in turmoil. Afghanistan can once again play its role as the main link bringing Central Asia closer to the world down south and beyond in a way that this time it would benefit the region as a whole.





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Historically Afghanistan has been called the crossroads of Asia. It has faithfully met the obligation of the nickname throughout centuries and has witnessed the passage of hundreds of caravans laden with commercial goods destined for countries on either end of the road called the Silk Route. These caravans did not only make exchange of goods between the West and the East possible, but also made human contact and exposure to widely differing cultures of the nations through which they traveled possible. So if on the one hand, spices from India were sold in Italy and Chinese silk adorned the ladies in the castles of the rich and the courts of the kings in Europe, Europeans got a glimpse of the oriental philosophies and religions, works of art and ways of life and spread out some of their own traditions and cultures in the countries of the East. And what was the role of Afghanistan in all of this? It was the main link, a link which was used by Alexander the Great in his quest for conquering the world and who traveled east from Afghanistan, while Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes took their war westward through Afghanistan, and other warriors and conquerors who fought their fights on this land. And while in peace Afghanistan prospered and benefited from the exchanges, during wars it suffered great losses and deep destruction of its physical being not to mention the massacres of its people and the destruction of its centers of civilization. But all of this was in the past.



In late 18 and then in the 19 and 20th centuries Afghanistan found itself again in the middle of wars, local, national and international. Colonial wars and politics were fought and played here in this south-central Asian country that served as the gateway to the colonial prize sub-continent of India. The Great Game being one of the great examples of these political and military adventures of the superpowers of the time was also played in Afghanistan, between Tsarist Russia and Britain.



In the recent past namely during the last thirty years of its life, Afghanistan fell pray to the schemes of new adventures by the Soviet expansionists and Western concerns and interventions. Local interests of selfish neighbors helped make the conditions worse.



And then the 9/11 happened. Arab terrorists sponsored by Al-Qaeda attacked the United States of America in New York and Washington D.C. The attack and the reaction to it by the United States changed the world as we knew it.



It definitely changed Afghanistan. The US in punishing the Taleban regime in Afghanistan for providing of safe haven for the Al-Qaeda leaders living in Afghanistan at the time, attacked Afghanistan, toppled the Taleban extremist regime and helped bring about a new democratic order in the country. But the fix was not perfect. The proclaimed war on terror that started to be fought in Afghanistan is continuing for now about nine years. No definitive end is in sight. Afghanistan's democracy has not worked in the way it was expected and the government has failed to meet the needs of either security or economic development. Political uncertainty reigns and the nation is suffering under conditions of insecurity, warlordism, lack of a central controlling authority to enforce laws and is crushed between and among competing forces fighting for turf, for control of regions and for collection of taxes depriving the government from exercising its authority. Corruption prevails and prospers. Afghanistan comes second in the list of 182 least developed countries of the world. President Karzai is hopeful that a proposed peace Jirga in his country this month would provide some solutions for the above and reduce the burden of responsibility from his own shoulders!



Now in addition to a series of diplomatic activities including trips by President Karzai of Afghanistan to India, the United States and Great Britain as intense efforts to mend shaky links in relations especially with the United States and hoping to reaffirm the effort to conduct the much advertised peace Jirga in Kabul at the end of the month, there are news of physical development plans like the extension of railway tracks into Afghanistan from Central Asia. This is of significance in that these tracks will be standard tracks ready for links southward and westward from Afghanistan. This in a way would provide a physical network that would in practice bring central Asia closer to south Asian countries and even the warm waters of the Indian Ocean. This would for the first time be a step in the right direction which would benefit the whole region and its central link namely Afghanistan. Afghan government should take up this issue as a priority and work for its implementation.



It also reaffirms the theory that war is not the only solution to huge developmental problems of peoples and nations; economic planning is a more desirable alternative. 5/17/2010