Key words of the passage: fertilizer; trade; Pakistan; Taliban

Even as battle raged across Afghanistan last week, Pakistan’s Gwadar Port, now operated by a Chinese company, continued to ship fertilizers to the landlocked country, the Global Times learned.

A total of 500 tons of fertilizers were shipped out of the port’s warehouse by a fleet of Pakistani trucks during the past week, a source at the port told the Global Times on Monday.

Located in Pakistan's southwest province of Balochistan, Gwadar Port is a key project of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a flagship project of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Since its operation, the port has begun to play a new role as an efficient transit stop and time-saving trade port for land-locked Afghanistan. It shipments of fertilizer started in January 2020.

During the past week, the Taliban’s swift military offensive surprised observers worldwide. The Taliban has declared the war in Afghanistan over after its fighters swept into the capital, Kabul, and President Ashraf Ghani fled the country, Aljazeera reported on Monday.

Fertilizer shipments, destined for Afghanistan are leaving the warehouses intermittently due to border closures. But this business was not cut off despite the battles between Taliban fighters and Afghan government forces last week, according to the port’s source.

Chaman, Pakistan’s border town with Afghanistan, the second-busiest entry point and main commercial artery to the sea, has been subject to multiple closures and reopenings since the Taliban seized the border town of Wesh on the Afghan side.

The closure resulted in a number of trucks carrying goods from and to Afghan stranded at the border, according to media reports.

“We read from news that the border at Chaman reopened. Anyway traders have been transporting fertilizers out from our port. Maybe they can pass the border directly, or they chose to wait at the border,” said the source at the port, adding that the fertilizer shipments are part of a batch of 20,000 tons of goods in transit offloaded at the port in June.

Zhou Rong, a senior researcher at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China, saw the unbroken trade flow through this international corridor, even during times of war and conflicts, as a validation of the advantages of trade.

Source: Global Times