Gwadar port’s prospects are solid despite security costs for Pakistan and China
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Pakistan’s Gwadar Port has been attracting a lot of national and international attention for the past two decades for being a central piece of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and owing to its position in the multi-billion-dollar global network of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). While the emergence of Gwadar in Chinese geopolitics, and apparently a search for an alternatively secure, dependable, and integrated route to Central Asian land and railway routes is a new phenomenon, its value as a strategic port was not lost to the post-independent political leaders of Pakistan even in the first, formative decade of the nation.
At that time, the port city and an area of 15,210 km along the coast were part of the Sultanate of Oman across the Arabian Sea. For that reason, it was part of an Arab Middle Eastern country for 174 years. Muscat had full administrative control; it collected taxes, provided security, and functioned as a sovereign power. Gwadar was a geographical enclave surrounded by Pakistani territory with only a sea communication line with Oman. Pakistan had an eye on this territory, owing to historical claims of Kalat, one of the princely states of Balochistan, but didn’t do much to change the status until 1958. As the story goes, the Khan of Kalat had gifted this region in 1792 as a jagir, an estate to a runaway price, Sultan bin Ahmad, who had challenged his father but failed to dislodge him.
Interestingly, the Khan had brought this coastal zone under his authority only a few years before extending the favor to the prince. The geopolitics of this region would have been very different if Oman had retained its sovereignty over Gwadar, just 208 nautical miles from the Muscat port. It became more embedded in the long-term strategic thinking of Pakistan than the Sultan on the opposite side of the Arabian Sea. When Pakistan approached the Sultan through the good office of Britain, it found him willing to ‘sell’ the area but for a price. After negotiations for six months and the payment of GBP three million, the two countries signed a deal on September 8, 1958. In today’s context, it seems the Pakistani leaders demonstrated profound strategic thinking and immense foresight in acquiring Gwadar in a friendly and peaceful manner. Even today, the people of this region have great admiration and love for Oman, which has remained a big source of employment, even in the armed forces of the Sultanate.
It is not without a grand strategic vision that China is investing an estimated $65 billion in CPEC projects.
Rasul Bakhsh Rais
Pakistan kept the development of Gwadar Port on the back burner for decades for other strategic priorities, investing incrementally at a slow pace. The spurt came with China’s interest in ‘reviving the Silk Road,’ which is a much broader intercontinental vision than tracking the lost footprints of the ancient trade caravans. The BRI, as the grand strategic vision of China is referred to, has multiple complexes of roads, ports, railways, energy pipelines, and market integration in Central Asia and beyond. Gwadar is a far more significant symbol of the ‘deeper than oceans and higher than mountains’ friendship between China and Pakistan than mere port access for the transit of Chinese goods from the Xinjiang region. There are speculations that Beijing might be granted a ‘base’ under some secret deal that Pakistan has persistently denied over the years, but depending on how the wider strategic environment within the West and South Asia evolves, one cannot rule out any such possibility in the future.
However, its importance as an outlet to the sea for landlocked Afghanistan, Central Asian states, and most importantly, for the far-off Western regions of China through the CPEC infrastructure cannot be underestimated. It is not without a grand strategic vision that China is investing an estimated $65 billion out of the 600 billion earmarked for BRI in CPEC projects, which include establishing economic zones, power plants, airports, motorways, and railways connectivity with China and Central Asia.
Since 2013, China has been granted control of the Gwadar Port to operate and further develop it. It has been fully operational for the past five years with the capacity of docking ships with deadweight tonnage of 20,000, which is in the process of being improved for 70,000 deadweight tonnage. Adding to this international accessibility, China has built Gwadar International Airport, where all aircraft types can land. The visiting Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang inaugurated it virtually on October 13, terming it a ‘gift’ to Pakistan. China and Pakistan continue to invest heavily in CPEC despite security concerns for Chinese citizens and Pakistani workers that the Baloch separatist groups have been targeting. It seems there is no turning back from taking this massive project forward, no matter the security cost.
The rise of Gwadar as a regional hub depends on two factors: first, how China and Pakistan integrate it with the second phase of CPEC, and second, how the landlocked regional states view it as a shortcut, cost-effective, easy, and secure access route to the sea. For that, one has to wait for more time.
– Rasul Bakhsh Rais is Professor of Political Science in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, LUMS, Lahore. His latest book is “Islam, Ethnicity and Power Politics: Constructing Pakistan’s National Identity” (Oxford University Press, 2017).
X: @RasulRais
