( Espacial Report )
In our country, in today's Pakistani territory, the British laid a railway line from Karachi to Ko Thadi in 1861 and started train service. In 1961, during the rule of President Ayub Khan, the centenary of railways was celebrated. At that time, Pakistan Western The Eastern and Eastern Railways were developing rapidly in the region and the plan to run an electric train from Lahore to Khanewal was nearing completion. The railway system in Pakistan was stable and standard. Until 1970, Pakistan Railways was for-profit and the largest government department, which began to decline in the 1970s and the railway department went into deficit instead of profit.
In 2011, when Pakistan Railways was one and a half centuries old, I wrote a book called "Rail of a Century" which was published in the same year. At that time, the railway department was almost 50% destroyed. Due to the depletion of oil in railway locomotives, trains often stood at stations for eight to ten hours.
Hundreds of kilometers of railway tracks were closed during this period and some are still closed but at the same time a train from Turkey and Iran from Islamabad to Istanbul under the 2009 plan ran in August 2010 and immediately Bangladesh and India He requested Pakistan to facilitate the transportation of goods through this railway line to Iran, Turkey, and later to Central Asia and Europe after expansion, but since then the governments coming up to 2018, No train has run since then, while many rail connectivity projects have been completed in various countries around the world, with China playing a key role.
In countries like Japan, the USA, Spain, France, and China, the speed limit of passenger trains has been increased to 450 km per hour. Our neighbor India has started train service up to thousands of feet in the foothills of the Himalayas, Occupied Kashmir and other areas, and in some parts of India, the speed of passenger trains has been increased to 250 mph, while India has railways in countries like Afghanistan and Iran. Started big track laying projects.
China has started railway service from Central Asia to Iran. India is trying to compete with China with the support of the United States, Britain and their allies, but our governments were under pressure from unknown Western countries. That we not only destroyed our entire railway system but also put the project on hold after the lone train run under the ECO Economic Cooperation Organization in 2009 and 2010.
While the Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi established relations with Iran and paid an official visit to Iran in 2016 and during this visit a railway project agreement was signed between Iran Railways and IRCON Indian Railway Construction Limited. Iranian Sistan and Baluchistan near Gwadar. I am the Iranian port of Chabahar on the Makran coast near the Arabian Sea and the Strait of Hormuz on the Persian Gulf. Under this agreement, a railway track was to be laid from Chabahar to Zahedan, the provincial capital of Iranian Sistan and Baluchestan.
The project to lay 628 km of the railway line at a cost of 1. 1.6 billion was signed in 2016 and the agreement was set for completion on July 15, 2022. It should be noted that Zahedan is the second city of Iran after our last border town Taftan on the Pak-Iran border, after Taftan the Iranian territory begins and the first city is Mir Java which became Pakistan after the demarcation of the border in the sixties. Gave to Iran and in the British era when Rohri, Sibi, Quetta in Balochistan then from Quetta to Chaman on Afghan border, Sibi Harnai section, Bostan Tarub section laid railway lines, World War II started in 1914. As it was happening, the British started laying the Iranian railway line from Quetta keeping in view the strategic position of the area.
This railway line was laid 32 km west of Quetta from Spizand to Zahedan city of Iran in the west. At that time its length from Quetta to Zahedan was 700 km, now its length up to Taftan is a little more than 612 km. This railway line was named the War Line after World War I. Trains have been playing on this track since 1922. From the founding of Pakistan until 1985, the Zahedan railway station was staffed by Pakistan Railways, with a passenger train departing from Quetta on Saturdays and returning on Wednesdays, while goods trains ran almost daily. Now occasionally a train runs on this track. Here India had to lay the railway line from Chabahar to Zahedan.
District Chaghi is bounded on the west by Zahedan and on its northwest by the Iranian border with Afghanistan and from here the distance to Zaranj region of Afghanistan is 950 km while its total distance to Turkmenistan is 1827 km ie here the middle part from Afghanistan. Is followed by Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, while the sea distance from Chabahar to Dubai is 353 nautical miles and to Karachi, 456 nautical miles, and the distance between Chabahar and Mumbai is 845 nautical miles.
Ships weighing 250,000 tons cannot anchor here. Such ships either have to go to the United Arab Emirates or are anchored in deep seawater and taken to Bandar Abbas by ships weighing 100,000 tons. Iran wants to get rid of Chabahar from the need of the UAE and on the one hand, it wants access to Russia and Central Asia and on the other hand, it wants to reduce its population and especially the burden of Bandar Abbas by making Chabahar a free trade zone as compared to Gwadar. Iran is also naming it the Golden Gate, while India's plan was to reach Chabahar, the only Iranian port on the Arabian Sea, from the port of Mumbai, very close to Gwadar, to Afghanistan, and then to Central Asia. And this railway line will be further expanded later.
On the other hand, in February 2016, the train from China reached Tehran, the capital of Iran, after a distance of 10399 km and an altitude of thousands of feet, covering a distance of 10399 km to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. The beginning
This is the ancient Silk Road. As far as the Indo-Iranian railway line was concerned, at the same time when Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, his policies against Iran became tougher, and President Trump signed the JCPOA Agreement. What Obama did with Iran, along with the veto powers of the European Union, Germany, and the Security Council was canceled, then the Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi also started abstaining from Iran and did not start work on this project. Iran will not be able to take any action on this delay because Iran has weak diplomatic and economic relations in the world, but on July 15, 2020, the Iranian Minister of Transport and Urban Development Mohammad Islami canceled the project.
India is shocked by Iran's decision in terms of quartet strategy and its monopoly dream of reaching Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia has been shattered, which India is setting up here against China and Pakistan through the Chabahar project. Was Another reason for Iran withdrawing the Zahedan railway project from India to Chabahar is a 25-year agreement with China to invest 400 400 billion in Iran. In this context, the regular program of ITI train ie Istanbul, Tehran, Islamabad train has also started again from March 2021.
As far as Pakistan-Iran is concerned, the railway network in Iran was formed much later, especially after the revolution in 1979, while before the independence from Pakistani territory, from 1922, passenger trains and freight trains from Kota to Zahedan, Iran. Few people know that until the sixties, Iran was a poorer and more backward country than Pakistan.
The RCD Regional Cooperation Development Cooperation Agreement between Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan was signed in July 1964. Since then, the Quetta-Taftan highway has been called the RCD Highway.
By 1979, major changes had taken place in the region. The monarchy ended in Iran. The military government came to power in Pakistan and the former Soviet Union deployed troops in Afghanistan. Thus, by 1985, the RCD had become a dysfunctional organization. In 1985, the RCD was renamed the ECO-Economic Co-operation Organization, which included Pakistan, Iran, and Turkey, as well as Afghanistan after 1990, when the former Soviet Union disintegrated. The newly independent Central Asian states of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan also joined. The total area of these ten ECO countries is 7937197 square kilometers with a population of 520000000.
The annual GDP is 6. 6.3 trillion and the majority of the population in all ten countries is Muslim. These countries are rich in oil, gas, and other resources, and compared to the Middle East and Arab countries, there is democracy instead of monarchies and the literacy rate is higher and the religious, historical, cultural ties between the people of these countries are deep and old. Are
Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey are the countries that have important sea routes and ports that can facilitate trade with Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan by sea.
Similarly, Pakistan's position in the 'C-Pack' One Belt One The road project is at an intersection that is connected to the Pak-China border from Khanjarab to the railway track, Hawaiian, Dera Ismail Khan to Zhob, Boston, Quetta. ITI will be connected to the railway network from ITI ie Istanbul, Tehran, Turkey.
Unfortunately, our Bostan, Zhob narrow gauge railway track was closed in 1985. Then when Owais Ghani became the Governor of Balochistan, he informed the then President Pervez Musharraf about the plan to lay a broad gauge railway line here. At that time this 285 km track was costing Rs. 10 million per km according to PC One and this work could have been completed in just one year. There were people close to him who had a capital of more than Rs 2.85 billion and even if one of them was on a contract basis for eight to ten years, that is, on the basis of earning revenue for the trains running on this track up to this point. If we talked, it would become a track.
Now in March 2021, the ITI train started by the government with the cooperation of Turkey and Iran. The length of the Turkish railway line is 1990 km. The length of the track in Iran is 2600 km and the total length of the railway line in Pakistan is 1950 km. Is.
This railway line will enter Balochistan via Islamabad, Lahore, Rohri, Jacobabad. The railway track from Islamabad to Rohri can be said to be standard because this track has been tested on the basis of daily trains arriving and departing to Quetta. The railway line is very old. The whole area consists of rocky mountains and deserts. This railway line from Spiznand to Zahedan was laid by the British in 1914 and the train service from here started in 1922, ie almost one hundred years are being completed.
At that time, the British were in danger of invading the Ottoman Caliphate and Germany from here in the First World War. The same was the case in the Second World War when the railway line was given full attention again. It should be noted that the British Had laid the railway line on the basis of a huge deficit in the whole of Balochistan and in severe weather conditions and as long as the British rule remained here but in the whole of Balochistan the railway was in constant deficit and its deficit to the railway companies operating in other parts of India. Was met by deducting a certain rate of profit. Now that is not the case and whether it is Bostan to Zhob section or Spizand to Taftan if the railway service is standard then these railway lines are profitable.
Pakistan is not paying attention to the railways at the moment, although at the moment the railways are booming all over the world again because in the next few years the use of fossil fuels will be abandoned all over the world. Motor vehicles are coming on the roads. They are battery powered and the battery is charged. For the past half-century, trains in the United States, Europe, Canada, Japan, and other developed countries have been running on electricity, and since these trains run on their own tracks.
Therefore, they receive uninterrupted power through the direct wire, which is much more powerful than electric-charged batteries, which is why trains in developed countries now reach speeds of up to 450 kilometers per hour, which is the air. Half the speed of the plane, then the journey of the train is safer than the road traffic, so now more attention is being paid to the railways in the world, which is now less cost-effective and faster.
If we look at the development of railways in the last twenty years, only our neighbors Iran, Afghanistan, India, China have built thousands of kilometers of new railway lines and laid them at such high and difficult places. The human intellect is stunned.
Even today, coincidentally, the train from Turkey to Iran via Pakistan is as important today as it was during the Turkish Caliphate. In today's context, the importance of ITI train service is as important as in Russia, China, Central Asia, the Middle East, and South Asia is far more interconnected and more prosperous in terms of economic, industrial, and trade activities, then today most of these countries have their own railway system which can be extended to other countries. To be connected to the railway system.
Pakistan's railway lines are connected to India and Iran and in the future, there is a strong possibility that Pakistan railway lines will be connected to China and Afghanistan soon. As far as Istanbul, Tehran, Islamabad train service is concerned, it is basic. Is an eco-country project that will soon be joined by Central Asian countries, including Afghanistan, as well as the ITI project in the near future under China's One Built One Road, C-Pack project from China and Central. Under the Russian Commonwealth in Asia, Russia will also be connected to the world's longest railway line, while access from Turkey to Western Europe and from Russia to Eastern Europe will be possible under the railway network.
The United States is still the world's largest economy and defense, but China is now the world's second-largest economy, and according to some experts, if that continues, China will be the world's first economic power by 2025. Russia currently ranks second in defense and military, and China third.
103 years after World War I, 75 years after World War II and 22 years after the end of the Cold War in 1990, the alignment between the two groups in the countries of the world is largely complete. It was a critical crisis year in which there was talk of a third world war. It is almost certain that this war will not be fought on the borders but under proxy war in the future as well. That is, just as the Hijaz Railway was damaged during the First World War, so too will the ITI train project be damaged.
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