Will India And China Jointly Work On A Railway Line In Afghanistan?

During Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to China last month for an informal summit with President Xi Jinping in Wuhan, the two leaders had agreed to join hands for economic projects in war-torn Afghanistan. However, no details on the projects under consideration were revealed by the two sides.

According to Business Standard, the joint project that the two may take up soon in Afghanistan is a railway line. The project was a part of a $2.9 billion, 30-year lease awarded to two state-owned Chinese companies to extract copper ore in Afghanistan. As part of this project, a consortium of China Metallurgical Group and the Jiangxi Copper Company was to construct a railway line connecting the town of Hairatan (neighbouring Uzbekistan) to Torkhan (on the border with Pakistan). The railway line was to be built to enable easy movement of ore.

A link was planned from the line constructed by China to enable access to Chabahar to facilitated the movement of ore mined by India as part of a $10 billion project at Hajigak, the largest iron oxide deposit in Afghanistan.

However, the China-Afghanistan deal, finalised in May 2008, hasn’t led to any movement on the ground. Just months after the contract was signed, copper prices in the global market fell from $9.60 a kg to $6.60, forcing the Chinese consortium responsible for the project to re-strategize.

Additionally, the worsening security situation in Afghanistan presents another challenge to the project. Carrying out large-scale construction in rural areas, which remain vulnerable to attacks from the Taliban, the Islamic State and Uzbek jihadists, is likely to prove difficult. In the country’s Logar province, where the deposits leased out to China are located, the Afghan security forces and the Taliban are battling for control, leaving little scope for economic activity.