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| India-Pakistan |
| New Pakistani port draws mixed reviews |
| 2007-05-13 |
| By the waters of the Arabian Sea, a remote Pakistani fishing town is being transformed into a massive deep sea port to cash in on the inexorable rise of the Chinese economy. Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz recently claimed Gwadar could "change the map of shipping in the world" and serve as a regional energy hub for shipping and refining oil from the Gulf. Tribal insurgents are suspected in the killings of six Chinese workers in the Baluchistan province since the project got off the ground five years ago — including a May 2004 bombing that killed three Chinese engineers. "It will greatly benefit China‘s trade to Europe, Africa and Middle East," said Moonis Ahmer, an international affairs professor at the University of Karachi. "It will also give a boost to the economy in southwestern Pakistan." "You can never rule out the strategic use of the port if China has sufficient economic interests in the region that it wants to protect," said Ayesha Siddiqa Agha, a Pakistani defense analyst. "But that would provoke India, which it does not want to do." China, which has long-standing ties with Pakistan, has financed $198 million of the total cost of $248 million to build the port, with the rest covered by the Pakistan government. Much of the transport infrastructure needed to link Gwadar with Pakistan‘s northern neighbor is yet to be built, but potentially, it will nearly halve the overland distance from China‘s landlocked western provinces to the sea: from about 2,500 miles to China‘s east coast, to just 1,250 miles south to Gwadar. The link road should be complete within five years, says Ahmed Baksh Lahri, chief of the Gwadar Development Authority. Longer-term plans also call for road and rail links from Gwadar that would pass through strife-torn Afghanistan to Central Asian states. That should transform the local economy beyond recognition, but Gwadar‘s 70,000 residents are skeptical. Fishermen — the main vocation here — complain they have already lost out. "The port area was our prime fishing area and we used to make thousands (of rupees) every day, but not now," said Lal Bakhsh, a fisherman in his 40s, explaining they now had to cast their nets further afield in the Arabian Sea. Currently it appears the chief beneficiaries of the Gwadar‘s boom are outsiders. Qasim Khan, who comes from northwestern Pakistan, runs a prosperous real estate business. He said investors from big cities like Lahore and Karachi were buying tracts of land in Gwadar, anticipating values will appreciate sharply. That is a source of resentment among ethnic Baluch. Militant tribesmen in the province, Pakistan‘s poorest, are already waging a low-level insurgency, accusing the central government of pocketing too much revenue from Baluchistan‘s natural gas reserves. |
| Posted by:ryuge |
| #2 This resulted in a fast one by George W. Bush. The Chinese shelled out the big bucks for this modern deep water port, along with its construction, as critical to the Chinese economy. But because the US has been cozying up to Pakistan, they have made the port available for the use of the US navy--which means that any Chinese ships using it will be under our close scrutiny. Chinese OPSEC isn't that great outside of China, so who knows what intelligence goodies we might get out of the deal. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2007-05-13 10:14 |
| #1 Joint Pak/Chinese Naval base? I can well imagine the number of nuclear warheads the Indians have assigned to this juicy target. The road link to China via the Kakoram pass in Kashmir.. the tunnels and bridges will be the aim points for the new land attack version of the BrahMos cruise missile. |
| Posted by: John Frum 2007-05-13 10:01 |