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Gwadar: The engine of change in Balochistan
Posted by Baloch on Wednesday, April 13 @ 15:36:50 CEST
GWADAR: The deep water port is ready and open for business. As it prepares to receive ships and cargo, it is already starting to have a major impact on the city and region even as some local people step up their efforts to air their grievances.
For hundreds of years, Gwadar has been a sleepy fishing village. Alexander the Great is said to have passed through here on his way back to Macedonia. Over the centuries, Gwadar saw many rulers come and go, and finally the ruler of Muscat annexed it in 1797. In 1958, Pakistan bought Gwadar from Muscat for Rs90 million and made it a part of the province of Balochistan. Gwadar is situated at the mouth of the strategic Straits of Hormuz and is 72 km west from the Iranian border. The town is flooded with Iranian goods, ranging from motorcycles to petrol to all types of food and clothing items - all at incredibly cheap prices. After all, they are smuggled. But smuggling will cease to be the mainstay of Gwadar's economy once the port becomes functional.
THE JOURNEY
A journey begins with a single step and our 700 km journey to Gwadar started at the outskirts of Karachi. A simple and freshly minted sign showed us the way.
The road to Gwadar is known as the Makran Coastal Highway and it is only four months old. For us, this road and route to Gwadar was uncharted territory. The map helped us get a basic idea about the famed town we were headed to, but the long trip ahead remained unknown. The Frontier Works Organisation, also known as FWO, built this impressive highway in four years. Before the highway opened for traffic, this region in the southern tip of Pakistan remained cut off from the rest of the country except through air. The land journey took many days. In this sense, the new Coastal Highway has penetrated undiscovered terrain. And the terrain is stunning. Vast flat lands flank the highway for miles and miles with not a soul - or a vehicle - in sight. The harshness of this terrain is matched by its desolation and rugged beauty. As we drove on, the flat lands gave way to rocky hills. At first sight, it appeared as if giant carvings had been made on the side of these hills-symmetrical and aesthetic designs etched on rock. But soon one realizes these are nature's work. No-one knows the origin of these designs. Was it water at some period in time that drew these carvings, or was it the effect of air and wind over thousands of years? Maybe, one day a geologist will find the answer. The road snaked up the mountain and as it turned a corner, we got our first glimpse of the Arabian sea. The water is clear and the waves gentle, as they brush the isolated shores. From this point onwards, the highway travels near the sea, at times skirting around the hills and then winding its way back near the coast. At a point, the hills merged into a desert, which rolled onto the beach. A few local people moved about and an occasional bus passed by. Other than that, there was silence.
A few miles ahead, the highway hit a T junction. This is where the official Makran Coastal Highway starts. A monument and a plaque denote the official opening of the highway. But it was only a few months after this opening that this highway suffered serious damage. The torrential rains and flooding, which wreaked havoc across the country, washed away some chunks of the highway. Some call it the work of nature, others blame faulty engineering. We hit the damaged portion an hour or so later. A bridge there is still standing, but a chunk of the road has been washed away. Trucks have made their own detour, grinding through the dusty path and clambering back on the metalled portion for their onward journey to Gwadar. Repair work is underway but I couldn't see any as I headed back to our bus. The heat was catching up.
As dusk approached we made a stopover for tea at a roadside café. The owner of this place is going to be a rich man one day. And if he has good aesthetic sense, he will retain the look of his stall. The thatched roof and the matted seating blended in perfectly with the natural surroundings, as in fact did the strong cup of tea. The stall is right beside the highway and the only one of its kind for miles and miles. It won't be surprising if a few months and years down the road, this stall can transform into a proper café, a perfect place for hungry and thirsty travelers. It was tempting to sit there longer and soak in the ambience, but daylight was fading and we still had some way to go. It had been a long day and it was unlikely that we would reach Gwadar before nightfall, which was our original plan. But the road was clear and the signs pointing to the right direction. There was of course, no street lighting...
THE PORT
The town of Gwadar is not impressive by any standards. The new port is a different story altogether. The Director General of the Gwadar Port Authority is an affable gentleman by the name of Abdul Razziq Durrani, and he offered to show us the brand new Gwadar port. Phase 1 of the port is ready. According to press reports, it was supposed to be inaugurated by the Chinese Prime Minister during his recent visit to Pakistan, but senior government officials say that was not the case. A top source told me in Islamabad that the official opening of the port is still a few months away. The port has been constructed at a cost of $248 million. China has paid $198 million while Pakistan has contributed $50 million. China also offered expertise in the form of technical staff. Plus they have given the bulk of the equipment. Their work done, most of the 450 Chinese personnel have left for home. Director-General Durrani told me that phase 2 of the port will be constructed adjacent to Phase 1. It will be bigger. But for now, some ships have already started berthing at this port. Pakistan Petroleum, which is exploring off shore gas, is using the port loading and off-loading equipment fairly regularly. Director General Durrani said the Gwadar port had the potential to be a major port for the region. Dredging is already underway to make it a truly deep water port. Durrani said a network of roads linking the port to Afghanistan and Central Asia was being constructed, although they were lagging somewhat. Durrani also spoke at length about how the port would generate employment for the town and the region as well as help transform the city into a vibrant metropolis. "Can you imagine a small town like Gwadar is already experiencing traffic jams," he said. Gwadar's port holds great promise. It can earn millions of dollars for the country every year and transform this sleepy village into a vibrant international harbor. This is the stuff dreams are made of. A stream of ships and tankers berthing here, unloading their bulk cargo through these giant cranes, from where they will be trucked to distant lands. Thousands of people disembarking from these ships and spending days and weeks in this town, spending money, shopping, hotelling and transforming this town into a truly international city.
THE CITY
An international city needs international infrastructure. Gwadar, as it is today, does not exactly fulfill these requirements. It is like any other small town in Pakistan. Narrow streets and alleys dotted with cramped shops, mud-walled houses and heaps of trash. Bare foot children play outside, unaware that their environment is about to change drastically. And the man who is planning and mapping the change is Ahmad Bukhsh Lehri, the Director-General of the Gwadar Development Authority. I met him in his office, which is usually crowded with people wanting to buy and sell land and develop properties and housing schemes. Nature has made Lehri's work easier. Gwadar has two coasts, the East Bay and West Bay. They form neat semi circles and are divided by a strip of land where the present town of Gwadar is located. East Bay is where the new port has been built. The area behind the bay will be used for all port-related activities and structures like warehouses and offices. West Bay is where all the development is in its very early stages. Today, the bay is just an isolated beach with a dilapidated road ringing part of it. But in a short period of time, this bay will be filled with hotels, restaurants, and other recreation facilities. The land behind this bay is being developed into posh housing schemes, commercial areas, broad highways and a web of flyovers. Director-General Lehri took us on a tour of the city, to show us the works already underway. The main artery, called Jinnah Avenue, is being leveled. Lehri said this avenue would be something like Islamabad's Blue Area or Karachi I.I Chindrigar Road. It will be lined with commercial plazas, office buildings and shopping centres. As a result of this rapid development, land prices in Gwadar have skyrocketed. A horde of developers and property agents have descended on the town, and a lot of manipulation and bungling has also been reported. Officials here admit that land scams are a big concern, and they are trying their best to improve their systems of checks and balances to protect the interests of the investors.
POLITICS
There are some other people here who feel their interests are not being looked after. I went to meet one such person. Ghafoor Hote is the District President of the Balochistan National Party, Mengal group. And he represents a body of opinion, which says the local people of Gwadar are being neglected as this massive development takes place in their hometown.
Hote says he and his party are not opposed to the port per se because they realise the benefits that will accrue to them. They just feel that the local people of Gwadar have been neglected and sidelined. Hote also fears the locals of Gwadar, and of Balochistan, will become a minority in their own province if people from all over the country are allowed to come here to work on the port and then given voting rights. He says this is how the demographics changed in Quetta when the Afghan refugees flooded in, got Pakistani ID cards, and now can vote and enjoy all the rights of the citizens.
I asked him what he proposed should be done, and he said people should come to work here but they should not get voting rights. He drew a parallel with Dubai where workers from outside cannot have all the rights that locals have howsoever long they stay here. But Hote then checked himself to say that Dubai was different in the sense that it was hosting workers from abroad. But his argument was that locals should be given preferential treatment, which at present they were not.
From his office I headed off to meet another nationalist who wields a lot of influence in the town. Mir Hussain Ashraf is the Provincial Vice President of Nawab Akbar Bugti's Jamhoori Watan Party and a former federal minister. He also has some reservations about what is happening in Gwadar.
"How can a young man from Gwadar compete with someone from Islamabad," he asks. The point being, he says, locals should not be expected to get jobs on sheer merit. They should instead be given preferential treatment for jobs at the port. Ashraf says they will continue to protest till they are given their due rights. Some protests turned ugly earlier this month. The Coast Guards raided a warehouse to confiscate what they said were smuggled goods. In reaction, local traders turned violent, burnt and ransacked a few shops belonging to non-locals and held a tense standoff with security agencies. Only deft handling by the local authorities defused the situation.
How genuine are these grievances of the nationalists? And how are they being addressed. To find out, I went to see the District Nazim of Gwadar Babu Gulab Baloch at his house overlooking the sea. The Nazim had been in a spot of trouble himself the day before. A group of men angry at some property dispute, had roughed up his staff and damaged his office premises. But the Nazim appeared unruffled when I met him. He said it was unreasonable for the nationalists to oppose the port, but admitted that some of their grievances were genuine. But in the same breath the Nazim said President General Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz were making sure that everything was worked out to the satisfaction of all. He said he had met with the parliamentary committee on Balochistan headed by Senator Mushahid Hussain, and the committee was also aware of the grievances.
Officials in Gwadar however, say the few law and order problems that have occurred in city do not have much to do with the opposition to the port. As such, they say, these problems are rooted in day-to-day issues and are tackled on the same basis. Brig Farooq Ahmad Mir is the Chief Security Officer and he oversees and coordinates all law enforcement agencies in the area. He was all praise for the people of Gwadar and Balochistan and said he and his staff were able to keep peace in the area with the cooperation of the local people.
As we wrapped up our exhaustive visit, some things had become clear to me. Gwadar and its people are going through a historic moment. If the plans materialise, this small town at the edge of Pakistan - a town which has not experienced even the basics of modernisation, could transform into a truly international and cosmopolitan city. This dramatic transformation will have far-reaching repercussions for the town, province and country as a whole. Gwadar could become the engine of change for Balochistan, and it could also prove that economic and social development can end up solving even the most hardened political problems. What can be more exciting than to see an underdeveloped, undereducated and backward tribal society standing on the edge of international success. This is the story of this sleepy fishing village called Gwadar. |
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