Re: Pakistan to join China-Russia Alliance (SCO)
Gwadar’s role in Musharraf’s strategy
The port of Gwadar has 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. 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. General Pervez Musharraf adroitly used the backdrop of the summit meetings of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) to talk up 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 Ahmadinejad 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. **Washington, of course, views the former as a near-term 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 AQ 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. 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 grand vision of Gwadar as the next Dubai. They mention that in 1976 Dubai was just another sleepy 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 behove 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 kilometres 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 Pakistan’s economy. However, this factor would only be of academic interest in 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 Pakistan’s 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.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006\06\25\story_25-6-2006_pg3_6