Shaukat Qadir
A hundred years ago, when the European empires were at their height and “wider still and wider” was the motto of every one of them, Britain and Russia were locked in a contest that became known as the Great Game. According to its unwritten rules, Russia had to attempt to secure a land passage through Persia or Afghanistan to the warm waters of the Gulf or Arabian Sea, providing its navy with a year-round port – and a means of threatening British India. The British, of course, had to try to stop them.
Surprisingly, a century later, when everyone thought the Great Game was now no more than a footnote of history, it seems a winner is finally about to be declared. Even more surprisingly, it is China.
Balochistan is Pakistan’s largest province, containing almost half of the total land mass of the country, yet it has a population of only about 10 million people, a mere sixteenth of Pakistan’s population. It borders Iran to the west, where it lies at the mouth of the Arabian Gulf; Southern Afghanistan to its north, and shares borders with each of the other three provinces of Pakistan. Its strategic significance as a staging post between central and southern Asia to the Middle East and Africa – and via the Suez canal to Europe – is clear.
What is more, for virtually the entire length of its coastline runs a deep shelf almost 300 metres deep in places. During Pakistan’s hostilities with India, this shelf enabled ships to hug the coastline under protection of the naval air arm before making a run into the port at Karachi.
Thanks to the deep waters of the shelf and its location in the west of Balochistan, relatively near the border with Iran and the Straits of Hormuz, the little-known port of Gwadar has recently taken on global significance. It is here that the Chinese are helping the Pakistan government build a modern port facility: Round One of the Great Game.
Gwadar port is being built in three phases to be completed by 2015, when it will have 26 berths. There has been much speculation that Pakistan has offered the Chinese a naval presence at Gwadar as an incentive for them to assist in its construction and also to build a coastal highway connecting Karachi to Gwadar. Round Two.
While there is no disputing that this would provide a major incentive for Chinese assistance, it does not account for the number of berths being built, which would be wasted without a significant increase in commercial activity.
Here, we need to look east to China itself. Historically, major industrial development in China has been along their east coast, for ease of shipping. However, conscious of the potential for unrest in the predominantly Muslim western province of Xinjiang in Central Asia, China constructed an oil pipeline from Kazakhstan to Urumchi, the provincial capital, and also set up an oil refinery there. Consequently, over the last 15 years there has been an enormous growth of industry in this region.
A cursory look at the map will confirm that Urumchi is almost equidistant from China’s eastern ports and Gwadar. However, while the eastern Chinese ports open onto the Pacific, leading directly to the Americas, to access European markets, the Middle East and Africa, Chinese ships need to sail through the Straits of Malacca across the Indian Ocean to reach the Gulf of Aden; a distance of almost 5,000 miles. Whereas, at Gwadar, they are not only at the entrance to the Arabian Gulf, but only 1,100 miles from the Gulf of Aden.
China already has a rail link from Urumchi to Almaty in Kazakhstan. A memorandum of understanding has been signed between Pakistan and China for a joint venture linking this line to a new rail track running parallel to the Karakoram highway ending at Havelian, from where Pakistan will provide a direct rail link to Gwadar. Game, set and match.
Thus not only all Chinese goods produced in western China, but also products from the bulk of Central Asia will be able to take advantage of this route, though the instability in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province will create difficulties. Once the rail link is constructed, Gwadar port will clearly have no difficulty filling all its available berths.
Analysts have frequently referred to Pakistan’s “strategic location”; linking, as it does, the Middle East, Central Asia, China, and South Asia. While Balochistan provides the only direct link to Iran and onwards to the Middle East, the truth is that without Balochistan, the remaining linkages that Pakistan provides to other regions are reduced to less than half their strategic value. The country’s only other major port at Karachi could never handle the magnitude of the potential commerce.
Whether through the volume of potential commercial activity, or the enormous untapped mineral resources in Balochistan – it has gas, iron ore, gold, copper, and coal, and is thought also to have oil – Pakistan’s prospects of economic prosperity in the future are inexorably linked to Balochistan.
Regrettably, not many decision makers in Pakistan display a consciousness of this fact; nor of the latent dissatisfaction among the Baloch people that has been festering for decades. The Great Game may not be finally over, after all.
Brig-Gen Shaukat Qadir is a former Pakistan army infantry officer
http://www.thenational.ae/article/20080811/OPINION/110180446/-1/SPORT
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