Daily Times Editorial Feb 1, 2013

US pressure no longer working? In an interesting turn of events, the federal cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf, has taken two decisions that indicate that Washington may no longer be able to call the shots on everything related to Pakistan. One decision is to hand over Gwadar Port to a Chinese company after the contracted Port of Singapore Authority (PSA) failed over many years to operationalise the port. General Musharraf is believed to have handed over the project on the Mekran coast to the Singapore entity after the US exerted pressure to get the Chinese out of an area at a stone’s throw from the Straits of Hormuz, through which the bulk of the Gulf’s oil passes on its way to the international market. PSA claims in its defence that it had been unable to operationalise the port because it was not allocated the land it requested for full development and operationalisation. The land issue in Gwadar is a sensitive one ever since the project first started, the accompanying development of Gwadar city attracting land speculators and investors from all over Pakistan in the hope of windfall profits, the land having been obtained from local owners at dirt-cheap prices. This resentment still simmers, adding to all the other complaints the Baloch people have of being deprived of their land, resources, and rights. The handover to a Chinese company is a case of the project returning full circle to where it began, the concerns of the US notwithstanding. China provided 75 percent of the initial $ 250 million for the project. The Chinese company that has won the contract is expected to invest further to bring the port online. The problem though with the port is that no planning or implementation has gone into providing the inland infrastructure that could really make the port viable and take some of the pressure off Karachi and Bin Qasim ports to the east. However, in the absence of road or rail links from Gwadar port to the rest of the country, goods imported via Gwadar have to travel overland along the Mekran Coastal Highway to Karachi before being shipped north to the rest of the country, a route that defeats the very purpose in terms of cost and time that the Gwadar port was intended to fulfil. Now that the Chinese have moved back in, one hopes the federal and provincial governments and the port authorities will ensure that the Chinese contractor puts in place plans to train and induct local people to boost employment and allow some of the benefits of the project to trickle down to local citizens, thereby earning a lot of goodwill and allaying some of the resentment the project has left lingering in its wake. The other decision the cabinet took is to approve a government-to-government agreement with Tehran to build the Pakistan portion of the Iran-Pakistan (IP) gas pipeline. On this project too the US has been trying to exert pressure on Pakistan to abandon the project, given the state of Washington’s relations with Iran and the concerted efforts by the US and its western allies, not to mention Israel, to prevent Iran from developing what is alleged to be a nuclear weapons programme. The Iranians of course consistently deny this and argue their programme is purely for peaceful purposes and they have no intention of going down the nuclear weapons route, which they reject on the basis of their late leader Ayatollah Khomeini’s instructions as well as their religious conviction that such weapons are anti-humanity and anti-Islam. The Pakistan federal cabinet has set up a high-powered committee to analyse the IP project further. The Islamabad-Tehran deal is worth $ 1.5 billion for laying the 785 kilometres Pakistan segment of the pipeline that will deliver 750 million cubic feet of natural gas per day by January 2015. International finance for the project being hard to come by because of the known hostility of the US and the sanctions threatened against any country or company that engages with Iran, the latter has offered $ 500 million financing repayable in 20 years, with Iran's Tadbir Energy actually building the pipeline through its sub-contractors. Almost half of the remaining $ 1 billion will be arranged through a Chinese loan and about $ 500 million will be raised y Pakistan through a gas infrastructure development cess. While it is a welcome sign that Pakistan has taken these decisions in its own interest and without being deterred by US pressure, this may not be an inappropriate moment to point out that both projects on Balochistan’s soil should remind us once again that the province is going through very troubled times. In the interests of Balochistan’s as well as the country’s development and progress, it is imperative that peace return to the province by talking to the insurgents and conceding their genuine demands, addressing their genuine grievances, some dating back to the very emergence of Pakistan, and embracing our Baloch brothers instead of trying to drive them into 'paradise' at the point of a bayonet.