The past decade saw an unprecedented influx of Chinese capital into infrastructure investments, but the police, military, and intelligence services haven’t scaled their anti-terrorist capabilities accordingly. This isn’t due to those institutions’ lack of professionalism, but is purely the result of misguided priorities.
The “Baloch Liberation Army” (BLA) claimed responsibility for a terrorist attack against the Gwadar Port Authority complex in that eponymous southwestern Pakistani town last week. The targeted area represents the terminal point of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which is the Belt & Road Initiative’s (BRI) flagship project into which an estimated $62 billion is thought to have been invested thus far. The People’s Republic had lofty hopes of CPEC, but it’s yet to take off and might never will.
On paper, this megaproject links China with Africa, Europe, and West Asia without having to transit through the Strait of Malacca, which could be blockaded by the US Navy in the event of a crisis. In practice, however, it only functions as a means of electrifying and industrializing Pakistan with Chinese capital. The reality is that CPEC’s ambitious geo-economic vision never materialized due to a combination of Pakistani corruption and especially that country’s growing security challenges.
The second of these problems forms the focus of the present piece. It’s very worrisome that Pakistan’s military-intelligence services have yet to secure CPEC’s terminal port in BRI’s flagship project despite a full decade’s worth of trying. To be sure, it’s impossible to stop every terrorist attack, but the fact that this latest one targeted the Gwadar Port Authority complex shows that security remains insufficient. The terrorists infiltrated that town undetected despite it being surrounded by barren wasteland.
They presumably did so under the cover of begin locals or CPEC workers, but even so, it’s discouraging that they were able to successfully smuggle their arms and explosives into Gwadar as well. Security checks are reportedly strewn throughout Balochistan Province, in some cases being so inconvenient and intrusive as to engender genuinely grassroots protest from the Baloch people, but they failed to detect the terrorists and their smuggled equipment.
The timing of this latest attack is also concerning since it comes after Pakistan bombed Afghanistan in response to a recent attack by Afghan-based TTP terrorists, whose threat to the country began to metastasize last summer after they reportedly allied with the BLA. This most recent development therefore adds credence to the preceding suspicion of those two being in cahoots with one another. Consequently, the threat that CPEC faces is now much worse than ever, yet it’s not being thwarted.
The military-intelligence services continue prioritizing their crackdown against former multipolar Prime Minister Imran Khan’s PTI opposition party, which they began two years ago in April 2022 immediately after their post-modern coup against him. The de facto imposition of martial law in Pakistan after last May’s political unrest had no effect on the domestic security situation since 2023 was the deadliest year for Pakistani police and military forces in a decade.
Amidst this deterioration, it’s little wonder why CPEC hasn’t yet taken off nor might never will. The past decade saw an unprecedented influx of Chinese capital into infrastructure investments, but the police, military, and intelligence services haven’t scaled their anti-terrorist capabilities accordingly. This isn’t due to those institutions’ lack of professionalism, but is purely the result of misguided priorities. Until this changes, and it can’t be granted that it will anytime soon, CPEC will remain a disappointment.
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