Game changer? Pak army has hailed CPEC as the “fruit” of Gen Sharif’s vision.

IN October 1994, Gen Naseerullah Babar, Pakistan’s influential interior minister in the Benazir Bhutto government, sought to open trade and transit routes to Central Asia by sending a convoy of the Pakistan army-owned national logistics cell trucks across chaotic Afghanistan into Turkmenistan. The convoy led by the ISI’s leading Afghanistan operative, Colonel ‘Imam’, was stopped by Mujahideen commanders before Kandahar but the fledgling Pakistan-promoted Taliban chased the commanders away and captured Kandahar. The Taliban, as Pakistan’s instrument, was on its way to control Afghanistan in the next few years but Pakistan’s historic aim of using its location to become a trade and transit route for Central Asia continues to remain a distant dream. Will the same fate befall the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) which Pakistan is touting as a “game changer” for the country? Or will it evolve into an effective trade route via the Gwadar Port, on Pakistan’s Makran coast, to Xinjiang and northwest China? These questions are now pointedly relevant, for, on November 13, Gwadar was opened up, albeit for the present largely symbolically, for trade activities under the CPEC. PM Nawaz Sharif and army chief Raheel Sharif werepresent on the occasion; this, at a time, when tension between Nawaz and the army is running high. Significantly, the Pakistan army’s information wing hailed the CPEC as the “fruit” of General Sharif’s vision.The absence of the Chinese leadership at Gwadar though indicates that the occasion was designed to quell growing scepticism about the CPEC in sections of Pakistani opinion. This is also borne out by what Maj-Gen Muhammad Afzal, director-general of the Frontier Works Organisation (FWO) of the Pakistan army — responsible for the construction of a large part of the CPEC’s road network  — told Pakistan’s leading newspaper, Dawn: “We pushed it to counter the despondency that was coming to surround the project. Too many people were airing views that this project is not viable or not going to materialise”.In typical army fashion, reminiscent of the Babar convoy, the FWO decided to organise one Chinese convoy and two from Pakistan to reach Gwadar to load cargo on two ships berthed there. The cargo largely from China was destined to the EU, the UAE, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. The Chinese convoy crossed into Pakistan via the Khunjerab Pass and travelled on the Karakoram highway and reached Gwadar, as did the Pakistan convoys originating in Lahore and Sialkot through Balochistan. Instead of the Punjab-Sindh alignment of the CPEC the route through Balochistan to Gwadar was deliberately chosen. This was to signal to the Baloch that their interests would not be neglected. It is also to indicate to China and other countries that the Pakistan army which has raised a special force for the CPEC and its projects was competent to ensure its security.Chinese President Xi Jinping formally announced the CPEC during his visit to Pakistan in April 2015. It will involve an investment of around $50 billion to develop the port, vastly upgrade a large part of the road system of Pakistan that would link the port to the Chinese border and add around 11,500 MW of power at a cost of $33 billion. The latter will be undertaken by private Chinese entities on a commercial basis. The CPEC also envisages upgradation of Pakistani railways with the ambitious aim of joining it with Chinese railways in Xinjiang. Gas pipelines are also contemplated along the Karakoram Highway into Xinjiang. There is little doubt that the Chinese and the Pakistani leaderships are committed to quickly pursue the different energy generation as well as the road linkage projects. Work has begun on many of them but political questions as well economic are being raised about the CPEC. The Baloch are particularly concerned that the CPEC will be one more instrument to exploit their resources and further change the province’s demographics to their disadvantage. Some voices are being raised about if the CPEC will ever develop the volume of traffic to become commercially viable. Cost projections of freight overland on the CPEC and from Gwadar are not as yet known. The terrain too in Gilgit-Baltistan is very difficult. Despite the scepticism the Chinese consider the CPEC  as of strategic value and will seriously develop its connectivity component, especially the Gwadar Port. They will take a long term view and not look for short or medium term commercial viability. It will thus transform the foundation of Sino-Pak ties which was hitherto based on shared hostility towards India. Now a positive element, independent of India, is being added to this relationship. This has major strategic consequences for India. Some tensions have grown in US-Pakistan ties as the latter has continued to refuse to rein in the Afghan Taliban. Consequently, Pakistan has leaned even closer to China. On its part China is deeply concerned at growing India-US ties across all sectors and is worried about the Indian role in the latter’s approach to “contain” it. This has pushed China to draw Pakistan still closer and to clearly signal its stakes in Pakistan’s stability and well being through the CPEC. China has also obliquely cautioned India against seeking to disrupt the CPEC. India has objected to it as it will go through Pakistan-occupied areas of J&K.How far will this forward approach infuse Chinese actions on developing Gwadar as a naval staging post? Certainly, Pakistan, which has never hesitated in offering its facilities to the US, will not be reluctant to allow China to use Gwadar in this manner. It will be prudent for Indian strategic planners to take this aspect in their calculations as they look to India’s role in the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. A signal to China and Pakistan that respect for security of important interests is a two-way street will not be out of place. In the connectivity game the CPEC is an undoubted boost for Pakistan. However, it does not help in furthering its objective in gaining connectivity to Central Asia via Afghanistan. This is notwithstanding plans for Afghanistan getting connected to the CPEC in the future. President Ashraf Ghani has said as long as Pakistan continues to deny India and Afghanistan full mutual access he will not agree to Pakistan using Afghanistan to freely transit to Central Asia.Meanwhile, India needs to energetically work on the Chabahar Port for assured access to Afghanistan. There seems to be little progress in the past six months since Prime Minister Narendra Modi joined the Iranian and the Afghan Presidents to witness the India-Iran agreement to develop Chabahar. India can only be tardy in implementing the deal at the cost of its national interest.The writer is a former Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs