China ‘belting’ Pakistan on the road to debt trap

Gwadar Port in Pakistan occupied Balochistan

SALEEM SAMAD

The political debacle of the ambitious Gwadar International Port built by the Chinese is yet to be fully operational in Pakistan. It was found that the challenge was unbearable and that the threat perception has increased in the Balochistan province.

The security threat posed by Baloch separatists and armed nationalists demanding the independence of Balochistan has caused a ripple of fear for the future of the Gwadar Port and its connectivity with Central Asia.

Recently, “all-weather friends” China and Pakistan signed a precursor deal to develop the Karachi coastline at the cost of $3.5 billion -- what is being called another debt trap. China’s shift from Gwadar to Karachi has prompted Pakistan’s prime minister Imran Khan to dub the “jackpot” project “a revolution” in his Tweet to develop Karachi’s coast.

China puts strategy over investment and ignores profits. The Chinese Communist Party’s leadership has shifted from high-risk lending to hedging its bets. China’s President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) project seems to have hit a speed bump after reaching Gwadar. In fact, BRI is losing steam. Malaysia has cancelled projects worth $11.58bn. Similarly, Kazakhstan shook their head to say no to a $1.5bn investment, followed by Bolivia, which has turned down projects worth $1bn.

Some countries admit that they have fallen into a debt trap and the mega infrastructure is being colonized, like the $306.7m Hambantota International Port in Sri Lanka built by China in November 2010.

In 2016, a 70% stake of the port was leased to China Merchants Port Holdings Company Limited (CM Port) for 99 years for $1.12bn. The lease has recently been questioned by Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who now wants the port back.

Nearly 35% of the projects are struggling with corruption and protests, while several other countries are contemplating quitting BRI debt trap projects. Many countries where China has offered ambitious BRI proposals could not contemplate where and when they were going to fall into a debt trap. Pakistan is one of them. They know where the trap is. The Sunni Muslim majority nation knows they are falling into China’s debt trap. Despite the debt trap, a strong pro-Chinese lobby promotes Chinese megaprojects, while the politicians have to swallow the Chinese red pills.

The $62bn Gwadar project envisages linking with the persecuted Uyghur Muslims in East Turkistan (now Xinjiang Province) of China, and is being built through disputed territory in Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and Balochistan. Balochistan was once an independent country, before Pakistan’s independence in 1947 and its forcible occupation in March 1948.

Recently, China is extremely concerned about the safety and security of its personnel engaged in construction in China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects, including the Karakoram Highway linking with Gwadar.

Gwadar has been leased to China for 43 years and the prospect of the Chinese navy converting the port as a strategic base will invite greater security issues, as China has a grand plan to expand its maritime presence in the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman --  a major global oil trade route.

The United States and its allies in the Gulf reckon China’s hegemony in the Gulf will be a security concern. America thinks the presence of the Chinese navy will provide military backup to Iran’s naval patrol in the Persian Gulf, from yet another Chinese-built Chabahar port in Iran, not far from Gwadar.

First published in the Dhaka Tribune, 9 November 2021

Saleem Samad, is an independent journalist, media rights defender, and recipient of the Ashoka Fellowship and Hellman-Hammett Award. He can be reached at <saleemsamad@hotmail.com>; Twitter @saleemsamad

India Citizenship Bill challenges Bangladesh secular polity

Why did the Indian defense minister so grossly mischaracterize Bangladesh?

SALEEM SAMAD

Bangladesh’s government was assured time and again that the controversial Indian National Register of Citizens (NRC), specially made for identification of illegal Muslims from Bangladesh residing in Assam state, would not jeopardize bilateral relations between the two neighboring countries.

The race to table and pass the Non-Muslim Citizenship Bill or Citizenship Amendment Bill by the Indian parliament, allegedly to make a demographic shift, seems to migration experts to be an issue for Bangladesh to be embarrassed about.

The bill seeks to grant Indian citizenship to non-Muslim refugees -- Hindus, Jains, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Parsis -- from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan if they have fled their respective country due to religious persecution.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in New Delhi pioneered this bill as one of its priorities upon assuming power in 2014.

In an interview broadcast on India Today TV and Aajtak TV, Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh stated that the three countries (Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh) are “theocratic Islamic states” and “minorities are facing harassment.” Their “state religion is Islam.”

Rajnath Singh told Rahul Kanwal, news director, India Today and Aajtak on December 9, that the bill is for the people of Indian origin living in Bangladesh, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, where Muslims are not persecuted.

TV interviewer Rahul Kanwal argued with Rajnath Singh that the Baloch and the Ahmadiyya Muslims are also persecuted in Pakistan, why are they left out? 

He nonchalantly responded that they (Baloch and Ahmadiyya) are Muslims and India has no role to play.

The TV journalist did not hesitate to snap that the ruling party is following the footsteps of Jinnah’s infamous two-nation theory dividing united India into Hindu and Muslim states, which plunged the nation in chaos and crisis.

The influential BJP leader contradicted himself and said: “BJP respects the Indian constitution. It doesn’t discriminate on the basis of religion.”

“There is no contradiction in this bill, India is a secular state. We are not looking at it through a religious lens.” He reiterated that the bill is for the people who are of Indian origin, living in Bangladesh, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and are facing persecution.

The shocking remark was made in December when the nation finally established a secular, democratic, and pluralist society after the brutal birth of Bangladesh in 1971.

Such an outrageous remark was unexpected from a senior leader like Rajnath Singh who had made an official visit to Bangladesh on July 14, 2018, and had an audience with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in Dhaka.

The top official of the Indian government must have understood that the state constitution is still secular.

Since 2009, Sheikh Hasina’s ruling Awami League and her government strictly believes in a secular polity.

Therefore, it should have been difficult for Rajnath Singh to misread Sheikh Hasina’s government’s pluralist polity.

We are not denying that the Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Adivasis (indigenous people), and also Ahmadiyya Muslims are sporadically attacked by religious zealots, who often slam the minorities for blasphemy. 

The AL government promptly took action against the perpetrators. The law enforcement agencies, local leaders, and civil society remained vigilant against such religious bigots to resist the vandalism of religious minorities’ properties and desecration of temples.

Simultaneously interfaith, secularism, and conflict resolving dialogues are held in vulnerable regions of the country. 

Also, PM Hasina has urged the imams and religious leaders to carry the message of tolerance and peace enshrined in the religion of Islam.

Still, now there is no official reaction to the statement of India’s top official. Such a prompt reaction is not expected from the political leaders of Bangladesh, nor the authorities.

First published in the Dhaka Tribune, 11 December 2019

Saleem Samad, is an independent journalist, media rights defender, recipient of Ashoka Fellow (USA) and Hellman-Hammett Award. Email:

Baloch, Sindh, Pashtun nationalist dreams shattered after the arrest of Bangabandhu

SALEEM SAMAD

While living in exile in Canada during the ultra-rightist government of Khaleda Zia and later 1/11 military-backed caretaker government in Bangladesh, I was curiously exploring the political agendas of the nationalist organizations spearheaded by Pakistan born Sindhi, Baloch, and Kashmiri leaders who were living in exile in the US and Canada.

In 2005, I was first invited by the Sindh Foundation, and again by Baloch International in 2007 in Washington DC. I also attended the World Sindhi Institute conference in Toronto, Canada in 2006.

I was requested to speak out about the genocide, war crimes, and rape committed by marauding Pakistan military in collaboration with their henchmen Jamaat-e-Islami during the brutal birth of Bangladesh in 1971.

I deliberately took opportunities to participate in several protest rallies, mostly organized by Free Balochistan, United Kashmir, and Free Sindh movements in Washington DC, New York, and Toronto and spoke on atrocities committed by the Pakistan army. The rallies were told that the Pakistan army was committing atrocities in Balochistan similar to the ones experienced in Bangladesh.

The thousands of Baloch nationalist leaders and activists living in North America and Europe dream to regain the independence of Balochistan, which they lost in March 1948 after the Pakistan army invaded the princely Kalat State and acceded the country. Balochistan became the largest province of Pakistan with rich mineral resources.

My story is centered on an elderly person, Rasool Bux Palijo, a Sindhi nationalist and a renowned lawyer. He was introduced to me in 2005 by my friend Munawar Laghari, founder of Sindh Foundation in Washington DC.

Rasool Bux Palijo was Pakistan’s Marxist leader, scholar, and writer. He was a leading human-rights lawyer and was the founder and chairman of Awami Tahreek, a progressive leftist party.

He and his party Awami Tahreek played a crucial role against the “illegal Pakistan Army crackdown” in Bangladesh and also in Balochistan.

Politician Rasool Bux Palijo dashed from Karachi to Dhanmondi Road 32 to hold crucial parleys with Bangabandhu during post-1970 elections. He stayed for two weeks in Dhaka and met the acclaimed leader Sheikh Mujib. 

Bangabandhu passed extremely busy hours with party meetings and political leaders visiting the crowded residence overlooking Dhanmondi Lake. Palijo took the opportunity to talk to Bangabandhu during his break for tea, lunch, and dinner, at what is today Bangabandhu Bhaban.

After having words from Bangabandhu that he would ensure the political rights in the framework of provincial autonomy, based on the six-point mandate, he and others returned to Karachi with satisfaction to achieve political autonomy in the Sindh region.

In January 1972, the popular Sindhi leftist leader wrote his first-ever book on Bangladesh war crimes and organized a peasant protest in Sindh for the freedom of his political comrade Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, also demanding trial of military officials accused of war crimes.

Another regional party Jeay Sindh, founded by charismatic leader GM Syed, was a nationalist political party in the Sindh province of Pakistan, demanding freedom of Sindhudesh from Pakistan.

Sindhudesh is an idea of a separate homeland for Sindhis who lived in the Indus basin centuries before Alexander the Great invaded Sindh in 326 BC.

The Sindhi nationalist dreamed of the creation of a Sindhi state, which would be either autonomous within Pakistan or independent from it. GM Syed’s movement collapsed after the bloody War of Independence of Bangladesh.

Bangladesh independence architect Sheikh Mujib promised the Baloch, Sindh, and Pashtun nationalist leaders that he would ensure their political autonomy if only he could lay his hands on the government after the 1970 elections.

Unfortunately, the Pakistan junta betrayed Bangabandhu and the dreams of Balochis, Sindhis, and Pasthuns were shattered after the “Operation Searchlight” crackdown. What followed were his subsequent arbitrary arrests and detention in Mianwali prison in Pakistan throughout the 1971 Liberation War.

Both GM Syed and Rasool Bux Palijo were imprisoned and tortured in 1971 for extending political support to Bangabandhu. Both Sindh nationalist leaders died, leaving behind a tumultuous political legacy for Sindh.

GM Syed was posthumously conferred a “Friends of Liberation War Honour” by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, a recognition for his role in the independence of Bangladesh. Several other Baloch and Pasthuns leaders were also honored for their contribution in 1971.

The new generation of Balochi, Sindhi, and Pasthun nationalists still admire Sheikh Mujib as a “role model” but regret that he could not be their savior.

First published in the Dhaka Tribune, 26 August 2019

Saleem Samad, is an independent journalist, media rights defender, also recipient of Ashoka Fellow (USA) and Hellman-Hammett Award. Twitter @saleemsamad