China's pearl loses its
luster By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - The port project at Gwadar in
Pakistan's restive Balochistan province appears to
be in trouble. Baloch insurgents battling
Islamabad are opposed to the project and have been
attacking people working on it. Besides, some
differences appear to have cropped up between the
Pakistan government and the project's main funder
- China - over financial aspects of the project.
Gwadar is on Pakistan's
Arabian Sea coast, just 72 kilometers from Iran.
It is near the mouth of the Persian Gulf and is
400km from the Strait of Hormuz. The Pakistani
government identified
Gwadar as a port site way back in the
1960s, but it was only in 2001-02 that concrete
steps on the proposal were taken.
It
was the arrival of US troops in Afghanistan -
literally at China's doorstep - in the autumn of
2001 that spurred Beijing into action. China
agreed to participate in funding, construction and
development of a deepsea port and naval base in
Gwadar and in March 2002 Chinese premier Wu
Bangguo laid the foundation for the port. Its
engineers are engaged in the port's design and
construction.
China insists its interest
in Gwadar is purely commercial. No doubt it is
hoping that the port will transform the economy of
its landlocked Xinjiang province.
However,
Gwadar port has a far-larger significance in
China's scheme of things. It is said to be the
western-most pearl in China's "string of pearls"
strategy (this is a strategy that envisages
building strategic relations with several
countries along sea lanes from the Middle East to
the South China Sea to protect China's energy
interests and other security objectives), the
other "pearls" being naval facilities in
Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia and the
South China Sea. [1]
China's interest
in the Gwadar project stems from the port's
proximity to the Strait of Hormuz. A base at Gwadar
enables China to secure the flow of its oil - 60% of
its energy supplies come from the Middle East
- through the strait. More important, Gwadar
is said to be a "listening post" for the Chinese,
one that will enable Beijing to monitor movement
of US and Indian ships in the region.
Pakistan is eyeing
huge economic and strategic gains, with Gwadar poised
to become a key shipping hub at the mouth
of a strategic waterway. A port at Gwadar
provides Pakistan with strategic depth vis-a-vis India.
Gwadar is 725km to the west of Karachi port, making
it that much less vulnerable than Karachi to an
Indian naval blockade.
Not
surprisingly, the construction of Gwadar port and
Sino-Pakistan cooperation in the project are causing concern for
India, the United States and Iran. The Chinese
presence in the Arabian Sea heightens India's
feeling of encirclement by China. Iran fears that
the development of Gwadar port will undermine the
value of its own ports as outlets to Central
Asia's exports.
As for the US, it has been
uncomfortable with Chinese presence at the mouth
of a key waterway. And now in the run-up to a
possible war with Iran, Washington appears to be
eyeing Gwadar's naval facilities all the more. It
appears that the US is pressuring Pakistan to
reduce Chinese involvement in the project and to
involve Washington instead.
The New
Delhi-based online Public Affairs Magazine has
reported that the US "could be [pressuring]
Pakistan to outprice the Chinese from Gwadar to
take over the entire facility". Citing diplomats,
the report said: "Pakistan has now raised the cost
of Chinese participation to US$3 billion in
addition to the $1.5 billion yearly payment, which
China has refused, saying it is steep, and in
breach of the terms of the contract. China has
said that it had already agreed to offset
construction costs by giving Pakistan four
frigates, but Pakistan is unmoved, and offered to
return all the Chinese investment, if they would
have it that way."
Dismissing such reports
as "wishful thinking on the part of India", a
Pakistani government official told Asia Times
Online that the Gwadar project was "very much on
track" and that "Sino-Pakistan cooperation in the
venture remains strong".
But even if the
reported differences between China and Pakistan in
the Gwadar project were indeed "wishful thinking
on the part of India", the project is under fire
from Baloch insurgents.
Balochis are not
opposed to the Gwadar port project or other
megaprojects per se. What they are opposed to is
the way these projects have been conceived and
implemented. They resent the fact Balochis have
been excluded from the benefits of these projects
and that "outsiders" have grown rich by exploiting
Baloch resources. Balochistan's Sui gas reserves,
for instance, meet 38% of Pakistan's energy needs,
but only 6% of Balochistan's 6 million people have
access to it, and the royalties Balochistan
receives for its gas are very low, especially when
compared with what other provinces receive.
Likewise, the Gwadar project does not seem
to be transforming Baloch lives for the better.
Baloch nationalists see Gwadar as "a non-Baloch
project", one that has been conceived and
implemented without provincial approval or
participation, in which "outsiders" have gained
the most. They point out that land in Gwadar is
being sold at throwaway prices to non-Baloch
civil-military elites.
There is
concern, too, that the Gwadar project would leave
Balochis a minority in their homeland. As the
Baloch leader, the Khan of Kalat, pointed out in
an interview to the Pakistani daily Dawn, the
entire project would need at least a million people,
and with Gwadar being a town of 60,000, people
from "Karachi, mostly Urdu-speaking", would be
brought in.
Not surprisingly, then,
the Gwadar project has been repeatedly targeted by
Baloch insurgent groups such as the Baloch
Liberation Army (BLA), the Baloch Liberation Front
and the Baloch People's Liberation Army.
Insurgents have struck repeatedly with bombs and
rocket attacks. In 2004 for instance, Gwadar
airport was the target of rocket attacks.
Several of the insurgent attacks in Gwadar
have targeted Chinese working on this project.
About 500 Chinese engineers are employed in
Gwadar. On May 3, 2004, three Chinese engineers
were killed and nine others injured in a bomb
blast by the BLA. On May 14 last year, four bombs
went off in Gwadar. Then in October, several
Chinese engineers had a narrow escape when the
vehicle in which they were traveling missed a
landmine. The following month, insurgents launched
a rocket attack on a Chinese construction company
in the Tallar area of Gwadar district. The Chinese
engineers and other staff escaped unhurt but
several vehicles were damaged.
In
total, according to official data, there were 187
bomb blasts, 275 rocket attacks, eight attacks on
gas pipelines, 36 attacks on electricity-transmission
lines and 19 explosions on railway lines in 2005.
At least 182 civilians and 26 security force
personnel died in the province during 2005.
An interesting aspect about Baloch
nationalist insurgents, who are by and large
secular, and the religious militants is that
while both view China as an enemy, their
opposition to Chinese involvement in the Gwadar
project differs. Tarique Niazi, a specialist on
resource-based conflict, said: "Baloch
nationalists, for instance, are opposed to the
Chinese government for advancing its strategic
goals at the expense of their freedom and
autonomy. But several religiously inspired groups
are opposed to the Chinese government for its
putative persecution of the Uighur Muslim minority
in the autonomous region of Xinjiang."
The
kidnapping of two Chinese engineers in October
2004 by members of the East Turkistan Islamic
Movement (ETIM) is said to have been a response to
Pakistan's killing of ETIM chief Hasan Mahsum, to
whom it had provided shelter in South Waziristan,
on Beijing's request.
While India, Iran
and the US might be wary of the Sino-Pakistan
cooperation in Gwadar, internal opposition to the
bonding seems far greater, as indicated by the
ferocity and frequency of attacks on the Gwadar
project and Chinese employees there.
With
the Baloch insurgency growing in intensity and the
Pakistani government's military approach to the
problem only fueling Baloch resentment and the
insurgency further, it does seem that even if the
Gwadar port project is, as officials claim, "on
track", it will be near impossible to realize its
full potential.
Note [1]
In Bangladesh, China is building a container port
facility at Chittagong and is "seeking much more
extensive naval and commercial access", according
to reports. In Myanmar, China is
building naval bases and has electronic
intelligence-gathering facilities on islands in the Bay of
Bengal and near the Strait of Malacca. In
Cambodia, China signed a military agreement in
November 2003 to provide training and equipment.
In Thailand, Chinese navy ships took part in a
joint search-and-rescue exercise with the Thai
navy in the Gulf of Thailand December 13, 2005.
The drill, the first between the two navies, was
launched after a Chinese navy ships formation
concluded a four-day visit.
Sudha
Ramachandran is an independent
journalist/researcher based in Bangalore.
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