Whether India likes or not, the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is making quiet progress. There are no indications whatsoever that Beijing is factoring in New Delhi’s objections, which primarily rest on the fact that a part of the $ 46 billion project is being built in the disputed territory, namely POK and Northern Areas.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself took up the issue with Chinese President Xi Jinping when they met at Hangzhou (capital of Zhejiang Province on China’s south-eastern coast) ahead of the G20 summit in early September. The basic thrust of Indian case is that both countries need to be ‘sensitive’ to each other’s strategic interests. This is easier said than done given the present chill in India-China relations.
Anyhow, the Bamboo capitalist has already conveyed to Islamabad that India’s concerns do not matter much. “No need to worry over India’s protests. CPEC is an important project for both of us and will continue as it is,” a senior Chinese foreign ministry official told his Pakistan Chinese counterpart, The Nation, a Lahore daily reported on Sept 19.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying also spoke on the issue at her Aug 31 briefing but she was economical on truth and details as always.
CPEC “targets no third country”, she said and added that it (Corridor) would work “for connectivity, regional peace and development.” At the same time she remarked: “Our position on Kashmir issue is consistent. This issue is left-over from history between India and Pakistan. It needs to be resolved between India and Pakistan through consultation”.
Hua Chunying’s assertion doesn’t gel with the strident tone of Chinese media and strategic scholars on the CPEC. A scholar of a think tank attached to the Chinese foreign ministry has warned that China may militarily get involved and take joint steps with Pakistan if “Indian factor” is found in disrupting the corridor.
Within Pakistan, however, the concern is less about India factor and more about civil-military differences vis-à-vis security for the Corridor. There is also an apprehension that the anger of neglect by smaller provinces may impede CPEC implementation. About it a little while later.
IRAN FACTOR
As always India has woken up from its diplomatic slumber over CPEC a day too late. It should have put its diplomatic act together in April 2015 when the project was announced as a part of ‘One Belt, One Road’ (OBOR) initiative. Not when even Iran is interested to join the CPEC band wagon.
Tehran’s interest was conveyed by President Hassan Rouhani to Pakistani Prime Minister when they met in New York on the sidelines of UNGA meeting. Iran sees CPEC as an opportunity to broad base its economic ties particularly energy exports. It is a window to emerge out of its isolation though China with its Yuan in trouble is no longer the white knight in shining armour.
Iran believes that Chinese built Gwadar and India built Chabahar can survive side-by-side. This assessment may be open to question but from the limited Tehran perspective, it cannot be disputed. Because, Gwadar’s orientation is Middle East market for China while Chabahar is designed to help India to tap into Afghan and Central Asian markets by by-passing Pakistan.
The first phase of CPEC is slated for completion by the end of 2020. Estimates show that CPEC investments can stimulate a 15 percent increase in Pakistan’s GDP by 2030. This is a big amount for a country which has been living on doles right from its birth in 1947, and has become a basket case with a ‘failed state’ tag to boot.
In all the 2,000-km long China Pakistan Economic Corridor connecting Kashgar and Gilgit with Gwadar will feature 330 entities comprising eight logistic infrastructure projects, 22 energy projects, and six industrial projects besides a new look Gwadar city.
CIVIL –MILITARY DIFFERENCES
The Pakistan Army is involved not only in security drill but also in construction activity. Bulk of the road-building contracts in Balochistan and other volatile areas in the country have been awarded to the Army – owned construction company, Frontier Works Organisation (FWO). Just eight but key Corridor projects like the Gwadar port are coming up in Balochistan where separatists are active and have claimed 44 lives including 26 soldiers, with road side bomb blasts and attacks on construction sites. In November 2015, the official figure was 25 killed, indicating that the toll had accelerated this year, a security analyst said.
As pointed out at the very outset Civil-military differences may impede CPEC implementation. Plans for operationalising the Special Security Division (SSD) for the Corridor have been held up by civil-military wrangling, Dawn says quoting multiple sources.
The role envisaged by the military for the SSD is to advise, guide and ‘indirectly’ control the civilian law enforcement agencies in issues related to the security of CPEC projects. Besides, the SSD can act as ‘first responders’ in cases of threats to critical projects.
The Nawaz Sharif government is said to be not comfortable with such a wide ranging Terms of Reference (ToR), which in effect will expand ‘military’s influence on law enforcement agencies at the cost of civilian administration’s authority’.
So there has been no progress on ToRs that govern the working of the SSD, the raising of which was announced after Chinese President set the ball rolling on the Corridor last year. There were to be two SSD Wings – one in the North covering the area between Khunjerab Pass on the Pakistan-China border and Rawalpindi, and the other in the South for the remaining stretch.
The army has established the SSD-North but it has not been commissioned as yet. The government is reportedly holding back the executive and financial approval for the SSD-South, Dawn said in its front page dispatch on 19 September, 2016.
It takes more than a year to raise a security division anywhere and Pakistan is no exception. That means if the approval is given now, the SSD-South focused on the restive Balochistan will not be functional even as the $28.6 billion early-harvest projects would be racing for completion by end 2017.
The report appears unbelievably true notwithstanding the abject surrender of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to the Army Chief Raheel Sharif on foreign policy matters.
This is not for the first time that the two Sharifs are at logger heads on a security related problems though. Gen Raheel Sharif launched Operation Zarb-e-Azb against the ‘Bad Taliban’ on June 15, 2014 ignoring Prime Minister Sharif’s efforts for negotiations with the Taliban in pursuance of his electoral promise.
The military top brass has been publicly accusing the government of ‘tardiness’ in the implementation of the National Action Plan devised after the Peshawar school massacre in December 2014.
SQUABBLIN PROVINCES
For the Chinese, more worrisome than the Army-civil discord is the squabbling between the provinces over the CPEC projects and benefits. The Nawaz Sharif party- Pakistan Muslim League (N) committed a self- goal, in a manner of speaking by grounding as many as 176 ventures accounting for more than bulk of the CPEC projects in Punjab, the Sharifs home base.
The alignment of the Corridor that cuts through the entire north-south length of Pakistan has been made to benefit Punjab the most. Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have been allocated 103 projects and 19 projects while resource rich but backward Balochistan’s share is, as already stated, just eight projects.
BALOCHISTAN WORRIES
Pak based Baloch leaders are not opposed to the Corridor per se but are sceptical about its utility to their region. Like their counterparts in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, formerly North-West Frontier Province, (NWFP), the Balochis see the CPEC as Punjab centric.
Sardar Akhtar Mengal, former Chief Minister of Balochistan has thundered: “If the federal government does not accept the rights of Baloch related to the CPEC then its outcome would be the same as Kalabagh Dam”. The reference is to the dam project that has been in the limbo because the Punjab proposal has no takers in other provinces.
Understandably, Baloch leaders in exile are most vocal in opposing the Corridor. “It is an illegal project”, declared Mehran Marri, a Permanent Representative of Balochistan at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC). He wants the international community to rally behind his cause since “China and Pakistan have no legal right to construct any project on Baloch soil”.
Noted Pakistani analyst, Shahzada Zulfiqar, avers that the Corridor has the potential of turning Balochis into a minority particularly in Southern Balochistan. “According to government sources, 3-4 million people would migrate to Gwadar from other parts of the country. That would tantamount to converting the local population into a minority in their own land.”
WALIKHAN PROTESTS
Elsewhere also, the opposition to CPEC is no less pronounced. The Awami National Party (ANP) Chief Asfandyar Wali Khan is planning massive protests in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan, Sindh and FATA against discrimination in the distribution of projects. The protest show will kick-start from Peshawar on Oct 4, 2016.
Asfandyar Wali Khan is particular that the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) should be given due share in the Corridor. “FATA should also get benefit from the CPEC as it has suffered the most in the war against terrorism,” he told a news conference in Peshawar after a meeting of the ANP central core committee.
GILGIT DEMANDS
The Gilgit-Baltistan (GB), formerly Northern Areas, (NA), is also exercised over CPEC injustices. It is offering more than 450 km of land to CPEC.
“What we want is G-B’s due share and that’s not a crime,” says Sultan Raees, who heads the Awami Action Committee (AAC), an alliance of around 23 small and not so small religious, nationalist and political groups.
The Army chief Raheel Sharif recently visited Gilgit to participate in a seminar on CPEC. But he did not utter a word about G-B’s share. Rees and other AAC leaders are expectedly upset.
“We aren’t going to budge an inch from our stance,” he said in Gilgit on Sept 17. His assertions cannot be brushed aside as routine rhetoric.
Formed in 2014 during the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) government, the AAC protested for 13 days and made Islamabad concede its demand for lower wheat price.
CHINESE WORRIES – HOMILIES
The intra-province discord has become a concern to China, which is investing heavily in its all-weather friend. Beijing, however, notes that some of the concerns raised by provinces are legitimate. It has already intervened once last year to make Pakistani leaders see reason.
“Consider CPEC in its totality. It is a game changer. Settle your differences and all provinces will benefit in the end” the Chinese counselled the CPEC critics who were invited to Beijing.
The homily had few takers going by the latest turn of events. Now we are hearing voices from within the Chinese establishment for a calibrated but subtle rethink on CPEC to put pressure on Pakistan.
“China may not want to put too much focus on the region At the very least, it would be unwise to put all its eggs in one basket”, Global Times, which reflects official thinking said in a dispatch on Sept 13 while on the subject of challenges facing CPEC in Pakistan.
The daily noted that the present challenges do not mean that that China should give up on the idea of CPEC. “China may need to start taking more gradual and steady steps in the CPEC, but at the same time the country should be more aggressive in seeking cooperation with various Southeast Asian countries, Vietnam included”, the signed dispatch by a staff member said.
The Global Times commentary coincided with the six-day visit of Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc to China. Difficult therefore to miss the two diametrically opposite signals – a warning to Pakistan to set its CPEC house in order in time and an olive branch to Yuan hungry SE Asia nations particularly Vietnam to soften up their opposition to China in the South China Sea.
– By Malladi Rama Rao
(This commentary first appeared on Power Politics, a Delhi magazine)