Gwadar attack
Rashed Rahman
The attack on
the Pearl Continental (PC) hotel in Gwadar, Balochistan on May 11, 2019 has
opened up a whole can of worms and raised troubling questions about the China
Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the continuing low-level nationalist
insurgency and the future of the province. First, the facts, some of which are
disputed in the garbled reporting on the incident. Three heavily armed gunmen
from the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) attacked the only five-star hotel in
the strategic port city, killed a Navy soldier and four hotel employees, wounded
two army captains, two Navy personnel and two hotel employees, and after an
almost 12-hour gun battle, were themselves killed. Why did the operation take
so long against this meagre number of attackers? Where there or were there not
foreign and Pakistani guests/investors in the hotel, including 40 Chinese? How
was it possible, despite reportedly having donned security forces uniforms, for
the BLA gunmen to gain access to the heavily secured hotel in broad daylight?
These and other troubling questions have yet to be satisfactorily answered, the
ritual statements of the military and government notwithstanding.
Gwadar port
represents the crown jewel of CPEC, a corridor that links China’s western
province of Xinjiang with the Gulf. Representing some $ 60 billion Chinese
investment in Pakistan, it is clearly of crucial importance to Pakistan.
However, the Baloch nationalist movement opposes CPEC as the latest example of
Pakistan exploiting the resources of Pakistan’s largest in area but poorest
province to the detriment of the local people.
Of late there
has been a surge in the number of attacks by the Baloch nationalist insurgent
groups, which reportedly is linked to the launch of the second phase of CPEC. In
August 2018, a suicide attack by BLA was carried out on a bus carrying
employees of the Saindak Copper-Gold Project in Dalbandin, Chaghai. In November
2018, BLA militants attacked the Chinese Consulate in Karachi, killing two
policemen and two civilians. On April 18, 2019, around a dozen gunmen singled
out and killed 14 bus passengers, including 11 personnel of the Navy, Air Force
and Coast Guards near the town of Ormara on the coastal highway. Not only do
these attacks signal a surge in the militants’ attacks, they also point to the
virtual or actual suicidal nature of the assaults, in which certain death
awaited the attackers. This is of course going against the grain of guerrilla
warfare principles, in which self-preservation is given such high priority.
This development may be a reflection of desperation, since the traditional
means of guerrilla warfare are proving difficult in the face of the military’s
modern technological and firepower capability, or a deliberate turn towards
spectacular, high profile attacks, even if they end in the death of the
guerrillas, to provide the oxygen of publicity to a movement otherwise left
gasping for coverage.
Speaking of
coverage, the Director General (DG) Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR)
Major General Asif Ghafoor thanked the Pakistani media for its ‘responsible’
coverage of the incident. The DG is not famous for saying things he does not
mean, but it bears reflection how the incident was in fact ‘covered’ by the
Pakistani media. No TV channel carried the news until the next day along with
the newspapers, despite the fact that foreign news channels had broken the
story soon after the attack was launched around 5:00 pm on May 11. More than
likely, the channels were under ‘instructions’ not to provide live coverage, a practice
in line with current controls over the media.
Lack of coverage
deprived citizens of their right to know, and the next day’s media coverage
provided so many contradictory bits of reporting as to raise fresh questions in
the mind. First and foremost, it became difficult to decipher whether the hotel
had foreign and Pakistani guests/investors staying or not. Denials of the
presence of any guests by the hotel spokesman and the authorities were
challenged by initial media reports that at least 70 guests were in the hotel,
including 40 Chinese. But this bit of information later disappeared, to be
swamped by the tide of denials and assertions that only hotel staff was
present. How then to explain the statement that kept popping up intermittently
during the operation that all guests had been safely evacuated? It may well be
that there were foreign and local guests, including some Chinese personnel, but
the implications of revealing the threat they had been subjected to proved too
hot a potato and was finally quashed.
The most
troubling question that arises is how, even in the camouflage of security
uniforms, the attackers were able to access one of the most heavily guarded and
secured areas of Gwadar, itself one of the heaviest guarded places in Pakistan?
The reason we surmise from the reports that the clearing operation took so long
has to do with the deployment by the attackers of improvised explosive devices
at all entry points to the fourth floor of the hotel where they made their
final stand. It may also be that the security forces were concerned first and
foremost to evacuate any guests before launching an all-out final assault on
the attackers.
CPEC offers
tremendous opportunities for both Pakistan’s and Xinjiang’s development. But a
large part of its 7,000 kilometres route passes through Balochistan. As the
Gwadar incident shows, no amount of security can completely prevent random
attacks. If Gwadar, despite its high security, is not completely safe, how can
the entire length of the CPEC, particularly in Balochistan, be secured?
Informed
analysts have been arguing themselves blue in the face that the nationalist
insurgency in Balochistan should be distinguished from the
religiously-motivated terrorism that afflicts the country and attempts to find
a political solution to what is essentially a political conflict be pursued
despite the difficulties. And consoling oneself with the usual ‘foreign hand’
mantra is not going to facilitate matters either. The people of Balochistan
have long standing and some recent grievances regarding their political rights,
enforced disappearances, provincial autonomy (an unfulfilled aspiration that is
pushing the Baloch youth in a separatist direction), control over their natural
resources, treatment as a federating unit and as citizens. None of these,
separatism aside, are issues that cannot be tackled within the four corners of
the law and Constitution. Not even attempting this historic task is tantamount
to running the risks of a growth of separatist sentiment amongst the Baloch
people, a trend that if it sets in widely, may prove hard to reverse.
rashed-rahman.blogspot.com
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