Gwadar’s
Pivotal Role in Musharraf’s Emerging Political
Strategy
By Dr Ahmad Faruqui
Dansville, CA
General
Pervez Musharraf adroitly used the backdrop of
the summit meetings of the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization (SCO) to talk of Pakistan’s
location as an ideal hub for international trade
in energy and other products. In the years to
come, he said the nations of Central Asia, the
Middle East and South Asia would be able to use
the under-construction deepwater port of Gwadar
as a means of shipping their exports to world
markets. He argued that by so doing they would
be able to lower their shipping costs and move
goods faster to market, gaining an important competitive
advantage and building export revenues. Pakistan
would gain revenues through shipping charges and
through the economic development of the region
around Gwadar, making this a win-win outcome.
The tone and content of Musharraf’s speeches
represented a change in his rhetoric, since he
has mostly talked about terrorism and enlightened
moderation in prior speeches. At the SCO meetings,
he made sure he was seen with Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinajad and quoted as saying that
Iran had a right to pursue the peaceful uses of
nuclear energy. He also spoke of the need to push
forward with the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline.
In addition, while visiting the Hudong-Zhonghua
Shipyard in Shanghai where Pakistan’s first
four F-22P naval frigates will be built, he spoke
warmly of the “evergreen friendship”
between China and Pakistan.
These images and words were used to carefully
craft a distance between himself and the professed
policies of Washington toward Iran and Beijing,
which views the former as a near-term threat and
the latter as a long-term threat. This repositioning
may transform Musharraf’s domestic image
from being Bush’s poodle to an independent
statesman who has Pakistan’s interest at
heart and prove decisive in the next elections.
It may also give him some leverage vis-à-vis
the Americans, who have become quite demanding
lately on the need to question Dr. A. Q. Khan
and who have offered a nuclear deal to India while
refusing to give one to Pakistan.
The port of Gwadar has thus emerged as a pivotal
point in Musharraf’s political strategy.
Whether it is a necessary diversion from more
pressing domestic concerns or a central part of
his international economic and political agenda
is unclear. But what is quite certain is that
his government has put forward a very ambitious
plan for building the Gwadar port. Surprisingly,
this has gone largely unchallenged.
It entails the expenditure of billions of dollars
and may well be the largest single project to
be undertaken by Musharraf. The government has
laid out a grandiose vision of Gwadar as the next
Dubai. They mention that in 1976 Dubai was just
another sleeping village at the edge of a desert
known mostly for its fishing. Of course, there
is much hyperbole in this comparison. Were it
not proximate to the vast oilfields of the Gulf,
Dubai may never have become a world-class port.
And had it never become a global port, it would
not have become one of the world’s most
attractive business and tourist destinations.
It would behoove Pakistan’s Parliamentarians
to debate the merits of Gwadar. An informative
agenda would comprise a wide variety of economic
and geo-strategic questions. The first and foremost
question is an economic one: Is there sufficient
regional demand for the shipments of goods through
Gwadar? Related questions include: How much is
the volume of shipping going to grow in the region?
What are the chances that the goods will be shipped
from other ports? Even if the goods are bound
for the Arabian Sea, ports in Iran, Oman and of
course Dubai could be used. Turkish and Ukrainian
ports along the Black Sea present alternatives
as do Chinese ports along the Pacific. Admittedly,
Gwadar reduces the distance from the mid-point
of Xinjiang province to a seaport by about half
and may enable cheaper and faster shipment of
goods. However, before they can be shipped through
Gwadar, they would have to traverse through two
unstable provinces in another country where the
rail and road links are in poor shape.
An even more fundamental question is a geo-strategic
one: Why are the Chinese plunking millions of
dollars into the construction of a port at Gwadar?
Is it simply to save on shipping costs? Xinjiang
does not produce much economic output today and
it is unlikely to do so for at least another decade,
being the least developed part of China.
Is Beijing seeking to safeguard its sea-lanes
to the Persian Gulf? This is consistent with the
“string of pearls” theory that has
been put forward by the Pentagon. A Chinese naval
presence in Gwadar, achieved by making it a port
of call for their nuclear-powered submarines,
could draw Pakistan into the emerging Cold War
between Washington and Beijing.
Of course, the real reason for the port may be
the Pakistan navy’s desire to prevent giving
the Indian navy an encore performance of the 1971
war with India, in which it found itself blockaded
in the port of Karachi. Karachi, located barely
150 km from the Indian border, hosts the country’s
only naval dockyards, repair and overhauling facilities.
If the navy is bottled up, it cannot protect the
country’s sea lanes. Currently, more than
95 percent of traded goods are transported by
ships exclusively through Karachi.
The Admirals argue that any disruption of Pakistan’s
sea-lanes would cripple the Pakistan economy.
However, this factor would only be of academic
interest in the case of a full-scale war with
India. Thus far, all of Pakistan’s conflicts
with India have terminated in a few weeks. Disruption
of maritime trade would be the least of Pakistan’s
worries in a future conflict. A more pressing
problem would be posed by an American arms embargo
that would effectively cripple the Pakistani Air
Force. Without air cover, the Pakistani army would
cease to function as a fighting force in a few
weeks and the war would be lost.
During the 1980s, General Zia used Gwadar as a
pivot in his attempt to gain legitimacy for his
regime by drawing the US into the region. He portrayed
Gwadar as a primary driver behind the Soviet push
into Afghanistan, which he argued was designed
to get the Soviet navy a warm water port, something
that the Czars had only dreamed about. In one
of those ironic twists that history keeps turning
up, General Musharraf is now offering the same
port as a gateway to the Russians, the Central
Asian states and China, possibly as a means to
create some respectable distance between himself
and the Americans.
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