Orient Express

The great game was largely about promoting, and preventing, the integration of inner Asia with the Eurasian rim lands. If the European powers sought to push road and rail links into Central Asia, many states in the region feared that connectivity meant colonisation.

Afghanistan, for example, sought to preserve its political independence by deliberately foregoing the modernisation of internal transport links and prohibiting them with the outside world. Since the end of the Cold War, expanding the road and rail network in Afghanistan and Central Asia and building oil and natural gas pipelines have become a major international and regional objective. China, Russia, the United States, and the European Union have all tried to shape the new transport and energy corridors. Although progress on the ground has not matched the hype on the energy and transport corridors, last week’s launch of a trial run of the train link from Pakistan to Turkey through Iran may turn out to be consequential.

The train is moving 20 containers on its maiden journey from Islamabad, and will deliver 14 to Tehran and six to Istanbul. Its journey will end a fortnight after it was flagged off in Pakistan as an ‘epic event’. During the first trial run railway experts from the three countries are expected to assess the performance and problems along the 6500 km route.

As the second largest economy located at the cross roads of Asia, India could benefit from and boost the productivity of the new Asian transport corridors that aim to link Singapore and Vietnam with Western Europe through the inner regions of China, Russia and Eurasia.

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