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2 China
drops the Gwadar hot potato By
Peter Lee
The occasion of Pakistan Prime
Minister Yusuf Gilani's official visit to China
was an opportunity for both parties to stake a
claim to a post-United States future as the
closest of allies, with a shared commitment to a
stabilized Afghanistan and recovering Pakistan.
Chinese state media gave spectacular
coverage to the visit as a sign of its
geopolitical significance. The Chinese government
contributed to the sense of occasion with the kind
of gesture the Pakistani military - smarting from
the humiliation of the killing of Osama bin Laden
by American Special Forces inside Pakistan -
appreciates the most: a promise to expedite
delivery of 50
Chinese fighter jets.
Then Pakistan's Defense Minister Ahmed
Mukhtar put his hoof in it:
"The Chinese government has acceded
to Pakistan's request to take over operations at
Gwadar port [in Balochistan province] as soon as
the terms of agreement with the Singapore Port
Authority (SPA) expire," Associated Press of
Pakistan (APP) quoted Defense Minister Chaudhry
Ahmad Mukhtar as saying in a statement.
According to APP, Mukhtar said Pakistan
appreciated that the Chinese government agrees
to run the port, but would be more grateful "if
a naval base is constructed at the site of
Gwadar for Pakistan." [1]
His remarks
set off alarm bells around the world, as pundits
dusted off the "string of pearls" analogy
describing China's alleged efforts to create a
network of military-ready ports, and raised the
specter of the Chinese dragon bathing his
vermilion claws in the milk-warm waters of the
Indian Ocean.
China promptly issued a
denial - about building the naval base, at least -
that made the whole episode look like another
spasm of incompetence by President Asif Ali
Zardari's administration. [2]
It also
forced China's quasi-official nationalistic
mouthpiece, Global Times - which had uncritically
picked up on the Associated Press of Pakistan
report - to do some backtracking, backfilling and
blustering:
Beijing recently denied a rumor that
the Pakistani government has invited it to build
a naval base at the port of Gwadar. But this
doesn't stop some of the Western countries and
India, China's regional competitor, playing with
the so-called China threat theory.
[I]f
the world really wants China to take more
responsibilities in Asia-Pacific region and
around the world, it should allow China to
participate in international military
co-operations and understand the need of China
to set up overseas military bases. Peace is
China's only military interest and the
international community should keep this in
mind. [3]
It looks like Mukhtar badly
overreached in his attempt to convince the
administration of US President Barack Obama of
China's willingness to replace the US as
Pakistan's official best friend forever.
It may simply be that he was just trying
to be helpful, and get Pakistan out of an
embarrassing jam on the operation of Gwadar.
There are three likely reasons and one
unlikely reason why China has little interest in
helping Pakistan play the Gwadar card, either as a
commercial or military property.
The
unlikely reason was floated by The Times of India.
It linked the port project to the attack by
militants on the Mehran naval base in Karachi this
week, apparently in an attempt to publicize the
fact that Chinese engineers are assisting the by
now globally unpopular Pakistani military:
Apparently jolted by the Taliban
attack on Pakistan's naval base, China on
Tuesday indicated it would not invest funds on
creating another naval base in that country.
[4]
The linkage between the two events
probably does not extend beyond the shared use of
the three words "naval base" and "China".
As we shall see, deadly peril is a fact of
life for Chinese personnel at Gwadar already.
China would be unlikely to reverse a major
strategic decision because 11 Chinese helicopter
technicians were in transitory peril more than
1,000 kilometers from Gwadar during an attack
intended to embarrass the Pakistani military and
destroy two US surveillance planes as retaliation
for the raid that killed Bin Laden.
As for
the likely reasons for Chinese wariness:
First and foremost, Gwadar is a failed
commercial port - built with over US$200 million
in unenthusiastic Chinese aid - in the middle of a
wilderness that nobody visits. [5]
In the
most recent court case that has bedeviled the port
and its operator - Port of Singapore Authority or
PSA - it was alleged that the only way to get
business to Gwadar - for what purpose and to whose
benefit it can only be imagined - was to divert
cargo from Karachi:
Since PSA has failed to attract
commercial vessels to Gwadar Port, it is
reported and in common knowledge that the
government at the expense of the public
exchequer is subsidizing and artificially
creating business for PSA by diverting different
cargoes of urea and wheat (otherwise destined
for the ports at Karachi) to Gwadar Port which
reportedly resulted in a loss of at least Rs
2,500 [US$40] per ton in extra, unnecessary and
unwarranted costs to the public exchequer. PSA
has failed to make any investment in additional
facilities at Gwadar Port contrary to the tall
claims at the time of award of the CA to PSA, it
added. [6]
The cash-strapped Pakistani
government apparently reneged on a deal to develop
a free-trade zone at the port, ditched plans to
build transportation infrastructure connecting the
port to the interior, and failed to follow through
on a no-cost transfer of developable land at the
port to the operators. The unhappy operators, PSA,
have been subjected to accusations of
non-performance it dismissed as unfounded, and
harassing lawsuits inspired, it alleges, by
interests from the competing port of Karachi.
Pakistan's Supreme Court has instructed
the Gwadar Port Authority to cancel PSA's
concession. If a new operator could be enticed
into taking over the port, it is extremely
unlikely that PSA would insist on serving out its
contract until 2047.
Pakistan is
understandably keen to find a new operator pronto
for the troubled commercial port.
China
has been floated as a potential replacement for
PSA virtually since the inception of the contract,
long before Mukhtar's statement; but China is
unlikely to be enthusiastic about taking the port
off PSA's hands except as an expensive favor to
Pakistan.
It would not only take an
immense expenditure - perhaps $2 billion - to link
Gwadar to inland economic centers in Pakistan,
western China and Central Asia; the effort would
be largely zero-sum for Pakistan, taking business
away from Karachi. The strategic justification for
China - that Middle East crude could be landed at
Gwadar, thereby avoiding the perils of the Straits
of Malacca, and pumped or trained over the
Himalayas at a capital cost of $30 million per
kilometer in the more difficult stretches - seems
more Pakistani wishful thinking than China's
planning. [7]
Mukhtar might have been
trying to sweeten the bitter commercial pill of
taking over the commercial port by dangling the
prospect of an advantageous cooperation between
Islamabad and Beijing on a naval base.
He
also may have been trying to placate the Pakistani
navy at the same time by building a base for it at
Gwadar, since the navy's reported unwillingness to
surrender 582 acres (236 hectares) of prime land
have been cited as a key obstacle to happy and
harmonious development of the port. [8]
If
so, Mukhtar's brainstorm, instead of pleasing
everyone, will probably end up pleasing no one -
especially the Chinese.
Which brings us to
the second explanation for Beijing's lack of
enthusiasm.
China is attempting to promote
American military retreat from Afghanistan, and a
reduced US security footprint in Central and South
Asia. Showcasing Sino-Pakistani ties was supposed
to serve as a declaration that the region's
priorities were shifting from a massively
destabilizing war effort led by the United States
to an infrastructure and social development effort
supported by China to the benefit of Pakistan as
well as Afghanistan.
Raising the
possibility that China was going to militarize
Gwadar provided the US with an incentive to stick
around and work out the kinks in its military
relationship with Pakistan, instead of pulling up
stakes.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign
Affairs categorically knocked down the naval base
story, as Dawn reported:
BEIJING: China said on Tuesday that
it had not heard of Pakistan's proposal for
China to help it build a naval port at the deep
water port of Gwadar.
"Regarding that
specific cooperative project, I have not heard
of it," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu
told a regular news briefing in Beijing.
"It's my understanding that during the
visit last week this issue was not touched
upon," she said. [9]
Thirdly, Gwadar
is in Balochistan ... and Balochistan is a loaded
gun at the head of Pakistan and China that will go
off if either country tries to make geostrategic
hay with the port.
Pakistan's army seized
Balochistan in 1948. Through five different bouts
of hot insurgency and martial law, Pakistan
asserted control over the region - and maintains
control today - with its usual combination of
brutality, incompetence and smug indifference,
allegedly disappearing, torturing and murdering
any Balochi leader of stature.
The entire
province only has 6 million people - in a nation
of 170 million - and their concerns and priorities
are largely swept aside by the Pakistani
government.
The Balochistan vibe is
something along the lines of Afghanistan with an
ocean view: mineral wealth, violence and
resentment. Independence sentiment, or at least,
independence rhetoric, is a staple of Balochi
discourse.
In a similar but more subtle
replay of the "you say Myanmar, I say Burma"
clashing nomenclatures, "Balochistan" is the
official name of the Pakistani province;
"Baluchistan" is frequently the preferred spelling
for independence advocates.
Supporting
Balochistan independence is also something of a
cottage industry among strategic thinkers in the
United States.
Their motives are rather
transparent - unless one believes that ardent
support of Balochi independence can be reconciled
with utter neglect of the aspirations of that
other land of the dispossessed, the one that
happens to be administered by India: Kashmir.
An independent Balochistan would be
another case of substandard American
nation-building, along the lines of Kosovo and
Southern Sudan. But it would, like them, serve a
negative purpose: weakening a disliked regime and
denying a significant strategic asset to a
competing power.
Independent Balochistan
would achieve a trifecta of sorts. In addition to
discommoding Pakistan and China, it would
encourage agitation for independence across the
Pakistani border among the Balochis of eastern
Iran.
To support the independence of
Balochistan - which would involve a radical
dismemberment of Pakistan - a supporting narrative
to merge the Baloch and anti-terror themes has
been created to delegitimize the Pakistani state
and challenge its right to territorial integrity.
It goes like this:
The extermination of
Islam-tinged terrorism is the world's existential
errand in South and Central Asia.
Pakistan
is infected with the radical Islamist virus.
By this framing, Pakistan is said to have
two - and only two - alternatives.
One is
to engage in a civil society revolution to root
out extremists and the military-security complex
that shelters them. This scenario is predicated
upon rapprochement with a benevolent and generous
India to knock the ideological, economic and
national security props out from under Pakistani
hardliners - and their Chinese enablers - and
remake Pakistan as a vibrant, multi-ethnic
democracy.
As Pakistani scholar Hami Yusuf
articulated the position:
Policymakers have long acknowledged
that the only way to ensure South Asian peace
and prosperity is by normalizing relations
between Pakistan and India. The chances for
boosting trade, cooperating in Afghanistan,
launching water- and energy-sharing projects,
and eventually addressing disputed borders and
transnational threats such as climate change are
extremely low if Pakistan and India remain
locked in an arms race spurred by Chinese
contrivance. [10]
As the outpouring of
official Pakistani satisfaction with Gilani's
visit shows, the position described by Yusuf is
not yet a "policymaker" consensus - unless vast
swaths of the Pakistani and Indian military and
security apparatus are excluded from the
definition. For that matter, better to exclude the
Pakistani people as well.
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