Daily Times

Doesn’t it just look like Mars?” says a Pakistan Army lieutenant colonel, as laborers toil under the blinding sun, building a road across the barren deserts of Balochistan.

Against a backdrop of scorched mountains, workers cut steel bars and prepare rock for crushing near a viaduct that crosses a dry river bed. In the distance, a truck kicks up dust, bringing materials to the site. Army vehicles patrol the road with signal jammers, while snipers scan the hills-the lair of armed separatists and bandits until a military campaign cleared most of them out a few years ago.

An excavator clears rocks on the sidelines of the M8 Motorway.

An excavator clears rocks on the sidelines of the M8 Motorway. Photographer: Asim Hafeez/Bloomberg

This is Chinese President Xi Jinping’s biggest gambit in his so-called One Belt, One Road project to rebuild the ancient Silk Road, a trading route connecting China to the Arabian Sea that slices through the Himalayas and crosses deserts and disputed territory to reach the ancient fishing port of Gwadar, about 500 miles by boat from Dubai.

The progress of the new trade route has been eyed with concern by India, which has forged a rival $20 billion plan with Iran to expand Iran’s Chabahar port, 100 kilometers along the coast. Tension between the two South Asian neighbors has been escalating, with both sides claiming some of their troops were killed by the other nation this month, the worst confrontations since 1999.

Xi’s plan envisages a network of ports, railways and highways snaking through Asia to Europe and Africa, that would lift China’s global standing and provide its companies with new markets and investment opportunities.

“The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is the flagship project for China’s Belt and Road initiative, essentially the only fully-developed section of the entire scheme, and hence an important test case for Xi Jinping’s ambitious plans,” said Andrew Small, a research fellow at the Washington-based German Marshall Fund and author of “The China-Pakistan Axis: Asia’s New Geopolitics”.

Pakistan needs the boost. Despite agreeing on a plan with the International Monetary Fund in 2013 that helped stabilize the economy, its industry is hampered by crippling power shortages, poor infrastructure and a downturn in global demand. Exports in the year ended June fell to $21 billion, the lowest level since 2010, according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics.

Frequent power blackouts have driven traditional industries like textiles to countries such as Bangladesh and Vietnam. Of the $46 billion planned investment in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, $35 billion is earmarked for energy.

The project includes coal-fired, solar and wind power stations and a network of highways running 3,000 kilometers down the length of the country, from the freezing passes of the Karakoram Highway to the Arabian Sea. They will run through Kashmir, an area claimed by both India and Pakistan that is subject to frequent border clashes, and restive Balochistan, which Pakistan annexed in 1948.

“The energy policy was there for anyone to come and invest, but others were just looking at the political risk,” Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal said in an interview in Islamabad on July 25. “China took a bet on Pakistan when others were shy.”

Security forces observe trucks transporting rocks for construction of the M8 Motorway.

Security forces observe trucks transporting rocks for construction of the M8 Motorway. Photographer: Asim Hafeez/Bloomberg

Pakistan is deploying 10,000 soldiers to the project, including a newly-created brigade of about 600 troops to guard workers and Chinese employees and escort trucks through Balochistan once the trade route is operating.

For China, CPEC offers a shorter route to the Indian Ocean, without going through the congested and strategically sensitive Strait of Malacca. It strengthens the bond with Pakistan, an ally that bridges South Asia and the Middle East. And it gives China a port in the Indian Ocean that could one day become a naval base.

For Pakistan, it brings soft loans to build power stations, roads and a deep-sea port and free-trade zone modeled on Shenzhen. It gives the nation a powerful ally in its never-ending squabble with India. And it brings the promise of private investment that will alleviate poverty in some of its least developed regions, helping curb the civil unrest that has bedeviled the country for decades.

“China sees Pakistan as an ‘iron brother’,” said Du Youkang, director of the Center for South Asian Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, and a former Chinese diplomat based in Islamabad and New Delhi. “China’s strategic priority in the region is to secure a trade route to the Indian Ocean which can bypass the overused Strait of Malacca and significantly reduce the travel time between China and the Middle East.”

The cornerstone of the project is Gwadar, 30 minutes from the border with Iran, or an eight-hour drive from Karachi along a two-lane coastal highway that twists through jagged weather-beaten hills and across arid dust-blown plains. Bought from the Sultanate of Oman in the 1950s, Gwadar is not connected to Pakistan’s power grid, using electricity imported from Iran, also a major source of fuel and consumer goods, much of it smuggled across the border.