The residential area of Gwadar port in the Arabian SeaĬhina’s chain of naval facilities in the Indian Ocean is often dubbed its "string of pearls," and its projection of sea power secures its sea links to the Persian Gulf, the source of 60 percent of China’s crude-oil imports.Īny naval facility at Gwadar would allow Chinese sea power to extend west almost to the Persian Gulf itself at a time when tensions between Western powers and Iran - a major oil supplier to China - are at a peak. Small says China’s close military ties with Pakistan mean Beijing could expect to use Gwadar as a "semipermanent facility" for fueling and provisioning naval ships - much as China does elsewhere in the Indian Ocean, notably in Burma, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. "The security situation in the country as a whole, not just in Balochistan itself, means that is looking much trickier than it was when the project was first conceived, which puts some people on the Chinese side back on looking at the port primarily for its use as a potential naval facility," he says. But at the same time, Beijing has secured a string of port facilities in the Indian Ocean that increasingly allow it to project its own naval power westward.Īndrew Small, an expert on China and Pakistan at the German Marshall Fund in Washington, D.C., sees a strategic interest. The insecurity in Balochistan raises the question of whether both Islamabad's and China’s ultimate motivations for seeking the port are commercial or strategic.īeijing says it wants to use Gwadar as the hub of an energy corridor to its western province of Xinjiang. I think the government of Pakistan will have to address this reservation ultimately."Ĭurrently, Baluchis make up some 5 million of the province’s total estimated population of 9 million - a fraction of Pakistan's overall population of nearly 190 million. It is shared by the entire population of Balochistan. I think this reservation is not limited to the nationalist factions alone. "Our demands have been considered in the past. "Our demand has been that anybody working here should not have the right to vote for 30 years," Bizenjo says. But he worries the boom could attract more migrants from other parts of Pakistan at a time when the Baluchis fear becoming outnumbered at home.
Hasil Bizenjo, the vice president of the moderate Baluch National Party, supports Chinese investment in the port because it could help create local jobs. Balochistan for years has been torn by violence as armed separatist groups periodically attack Pakistani military outposts and sabotage gas and oil pipelines.Įven moderate Baluch leaders see a danger in China’s plans to now invest millions of dollars into developing Gwadar, a little-used port near the Iranian border, as a regional trade center and possible naval facility. Many Baluch nationalists accuse the Punjabis – a term they often use as a synonym for the Pakistani government - of treating Balochistan as a colony and stealing its energy and mineral wealth.
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