Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, accompanied by his Army Chief Gen. Raheel Sharif, Balochistan Governor Muhammad Khan Achakzai and Balochistan CM Nawab Sanaullah Zehri, and a host of Pakistan’s top civilian and military leadership inaugurated the opening of trade at Gwadar port in Balochistan on November 13. A key project under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and a subset of China’s ambitious One Belt One Road Initiative, the port itself was originally opened in March 2007 by the then President Pervez Musharraf. Funded almost entirely by China, the 3,000 km long CPEC comprises a network of high speed highways, railways and pipelines that will connect China’s Xinjiang province to the rest of the world through Gwadar port.
However, violent protests by Baloch tribals who believe that they are being shortchanged by the project ensured that the project moved ahead in fi ts and starts, amidst very high security and attacks on Chinese engineers working on the site. A day before the inauguration, over 52 people were killed in a suicide attack at a shrine some 750 kilometres south of Quetta, the capital of Balochistan. On Saturday, the fi rst massive convoy carrying goods from Kashghar, Xinjiang, reached Gwadar safely from Gilgit- Baltistan, amidst heavy security. The economic corridor through the Karakoram pass gives China access to the seas not just from landlocked Xinjiang, but also mainland China through Tibet.
It would also provide a gateway to the energy rich Caspian region and the Central Asian republics. New Delhi, which sees the port as part of the Chinese ‘String of Pearls’ aimed at encircling India, worries that Chinese warships could soon dock at Gwadar, and allow Beijing to have presence in the Persian Gulf through which a majority of the world’s shipping enters the energy markets of Europe, Americas and Asia. But at the moment, it can only wait and watch.