Quick thinking and the biscuit diplomacy

Many moons ago, when I was researching the fallout of the terrorist attack of the 11th of September 2001, one particular snippet of information jumped out and stuck with me. Overshadowed by the wars and the pivots in international policy, the world had largely overlooked a little bit of gamesmanship that was being played out between two old rivals – India and Pakistan. It was a little incident whose concluding chapter was finally written in October 2017.

The History

The year 2001 ended so differently from the way it started. In January that year, Pakistan and the Taliban (who were controlling Afghanistan) were close allies. The USA was cognizant yet unperturbed by what was going in in Afghanistan.

Then the World Trade Centre attacks happened. Never before did a terrorist attack have such immediate global consequences. Some countries had to quite literally rewrite their international policies overnight. New lines were being drawn in old sands.

The Setup

In December 2001, after the United States of America attacked and vanquished the Taliban in Afghanistan, a new administration was installed to oversee the post-war redevelopment of the country. The new Afghan administration was looking to establish economic ties with India which was quickly growing as an economic power in the region. Pakistan was not happy about this because geographically it shared its two longest borders with India (on the east) and Afghanistan (on the west). It didn’t want India’s sphere of influence to extend to its western border as well, and it was willing to do whatever it could to prevent this.

The Game is afoot

Afghanistan was recovering from the ravages of the war in late 2001. The World Food Programme (WFP) and other relief organisations had quickly swung into action. India, wanting to quickly establish friendly ties with Afghanistan, pledged WFP’s largest ever food donation of 40,000 tonnes of wheat intended for Afghani children. Pakistan wasn’t happy.

But Pakistan had an ace up its sleeve – geography. The quickest way to send wheat from India to Afghanistan was through Pakistan, and the Pakistanis were aware that even if they couldn’t influence the newly-developing bilateral ties, they could inconvenience everyone involved. Pakistan blocked the transit of wheat through Pakistan stating that Indian wheat was afflicted by the Karnal Bunt fungal disease, and they further asserted that because of the contagious nature of this disease, the wheat would need to be quarantined.

This was a purely political move, as there was nothing wrong with the Indian wheat (In late 2003, Pakistan actually needed to import wheat from India to offset its domestic production shortfall). Time was of the essence as wheat was perishable.

Game on!

With the clock ticking, India and the WFP came up with a rather brilliant solution – to convert the wheat into biscuits. For the purpose, India enlisted the help of 3 factories – Cremica Agro Foods, Anmol Bakers, and Modern Foods. These factories were paid for their efforts in wheat, and 9500 tonnes of high protein biscuits were produced to be delivered.

Anticipating another confrontation with Pakistan, a plan was devised to circumvent Pakistan entirely to avoid any further delay. The biscuits (along with 15,000 tonnes of rice and some medicines) were sent to the Kandla port in Gujarat, India. From there they were sent by sea to Iran, from where they were to be transported by land to Afghanistan where they could be distributed to malnourished children.

Pakistan had played their hand as best as they could, but they had been Deus-ex-machina’d.

The conclusion – 15 years in the making

Pakistan continued making it inconvenient for India to transact with Afghanistan through the years by not providing a transit route, denying the free movement of even essentials like medicine. But in October 2017, the Chahabar port in Iran which was strategically developed by India began operations. All trade with Iran and Afghanistan would now be conducted through this port circumventing, Pakistan entirely. Pakistan had been rendered obsolete by its own stubbornness.

Pakistan had been diplomatically outmaneuvered.

Credits:

WTC memorial photo by Dennis Leung
Afghan children photo - AFP