“Pakistan provides the best possible route for the Ce ntral Asian states to reach the warm waters of the Arabian Sea for their trade,” said Dr Adam Saud, the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Bahria University. He was speaking at a roundtable on developing relations between Afghanistan and Central Asia organized by the Institute of Regional Studies (IRS) here on Wednesday.
Dr Saud was of the view that the Central Asian Republics (CARs) could not use the Iranian route for their trade through the warm waters of the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea because of the Western sanctions against Iran. He added, however, that Afghanistan will continue to remain a source of concern in terms of trade connectivity for CARs because of the likelihood of terrorist violence in Afghanistan and the country’s poor physical and institutional infrastructure.
