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Gwadar — China’s footprint in Pakistan

* The new port is a boon locally, a potential military asset for Beijing and a worry to the US

Daily Times Monitor

LAHORE: A property boom has hit Gwadar because of the latest addition to it’s modest charms – a strategic new port on the Arabian Sea – almost all of it paid for by China, according to a report in The Los Angeles Times (LA Times).

The report says that the deepwater port has the potential to become a major shipping hub for Central Asia and China, particularly for the oil that China is sucking up to fuel its explosive growth. Gwadar, near the Iranian border, sits close to the entrance to the Persian Gulf and the Middle East, China’s biggest source of crude.

But officials in countries such as India and the United States are eyeing the port warily, seeing more there than mere commercial value, the report said, adding that the two countries fear its possible future use as a base for Chinese ships and submarines, given the close ties the governments of China and Pakistan have enjoyed for decades.

From Gwadar, analysts note, China could project its growing economic and military might westward, toward the Middle East, western India and eastern Africa, and down into the Indian Ocean.

According to the LA Times report, an internal Pentagon report leaked two years ago concluded that China was trying to establish a “string of pearls” along the rim of the Indian Ocean, ports that it eventually could use for military purposes. Besides Gwadar, Beijing has invested in ports in Myanmar, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

“At the moment, these are (just) fears,” Ashley Tellis, an Asia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said of potential Chinese military use of Gwadar’s new port. “But there is no logical reason why the Chinese would not contemplate the military benefits of such a facility for the long term.”

That Beijing considers the port in its national interest is amply demonstrated by the fact that it put up 80 percent of the $250 million in construction costs, is funding a new airport here and dispatched its communication minister to witness Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf inaugurate the port last month, with great fanfare.

“It is the friendship between China and Pakistan that has made my dream of Gwadar come true,” Musharraf said. “We thank you. We thank China.”

Backers of the project entertain visions of Gwadar as a new, more convenient gateway for trade from Chinese and Central Asian markets to points west. For China, closer access to the sea from its landlocked western territories, where a massive development campaign is underway, can save thousands of miles and days of travel for goods that would otherwise have to exit the country from the east on a much more circuitous route.

Optimists also hope that bringing prosperity might drain away some support for a militant secessionist movement in Balochistan that has given the Pakistani government headaches for years.

Construction of the port has been plagued by problems that do not augur well.

Delays in completing infrastructure works pushed back the port’s planned opening by more than a year and reportedly triggered complaints from the Chinese side. Security became a big issue when, in May 2004, three Chinese engineers were killed in a car bombing.

Despite the image of welcome that officials are trying to cultivate to attract investors and visitors, the security forces sometimes operate with a heavy hand. When an American reporter tried to visit Gwadar a few days after the port opened, police officers and intelligence agents stopped him at the airport and confined him to a hotel for several hours until US diplomats and apologetic Pakistani officials in Islamabad intervened. Because there is currently little industry in Balochistan to take advantage of the port, some analysts predict that it could take years before the economic benefits become widespread.

For China, the advantages of the new port are obvious. Gwadar would provide a more secure corridor for China’s fuel and energy supplies in the face of instability in the Persian Gulf and also down in the pirate-infested Strait of Malacca, by Indonesia, through which 80 percent of China’s oil imports now pass. From Gwadar, imports could travel overland up through Pakistan and into China.

Some analysts see a more strategic interest in Gwadar. They say it could play host to Chinese vessels, listening stations or an outpost from which Beijing could monitor the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, including the US Navy base on the remote island of Diego Garcia, a key launching pad for operations in the Persian Gulf. But a beefed-up Chinese military presence in Gwadar probably is years away, if it happens at all.

At the moment, the mad dash in Gwadar is not about geopolitics but about capitalising on exploding land values. Eager speculators and investors from Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi have flocked here; billboards tout shiny new housing projects yet to be built.

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