RAIL LINK TO INDIA

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22511, 15 December 1947, Page 5

RAIL LINK TO INDIA

CONNECTION WITH SOVIET NEW YORK, Nov. 24. A railway winding across some of the world’s highest mountain ranges, through mountain passes of over 14,000 feet, is being built by Afghanistan to, connect India with Russia. The Torkam-Kabul section is now being built, according to the Khyber Mail, of Peshawar, and the projected “steel trail” will link Peshawar, in India to Samarkand, in the Soviet Union. That this grandiose project is undertaken by ,the Government of Zahir Shar of Afghanistan just when the British are leaying India is no mere coincidence. / British authorities in India have always been most sensitive to any increase in the potential threat from the north—such a danger being clearly increased by the building of a railway linkine India to Soviet Russia. Ex-King Amanullah of Afghanistan (who now lives in poverty-stricken exile in Rome) was planning to build just such a railway in 1928 when revolt threw him from the Afghan throne. The revolt —said to have been engineered by British agents—had an outwardly religious aspect: Amanullah, who was just back from a tour of Europe, was said to have outraged devout Moslems by his attempt to introduce waistcoats. Amanullah went to Italy, where Mussolini granted him a pension, which the Government of Premier Alcide de Gasperri has now discontinued. Meanwhile, both the wearing of vests and the buildink of the Afghan railway link between India and Russia were aban« doned. -