Khurram Husain: What’s up in Gwadar?

By Dilip -

SOMETIME around the first week of December, the residents of Gwadar woke up to find work taking place to build a large metal fence that would stretch from just north of the old airport and extend westward along a road known as the Balochistan Broadway Avenue. The total length of the fence would be 24 kilometres, and according to what the locals were able to gather, it is planned to extend in a straight line along the central divider of Broadway Avenue and then cut straight south to the sea. Along the way, it will cut two habitations of 30 to 40 houses into two parts, one part inside the fence and one outside.

The master plan for Gwadar includes three special zones, known as the Gwadar Port Free Zone (2,280 acres), GIEDA Industrial Zone (3,000 acres) and EPZA export processing zone (1,000 acres). As part of the infrastructure development programme for these three zones, a series of projects are envisioned, including construction of roads, utilities, warehouses and security. In the project description, fencing is given as one of the elements of the security plan.

But the strange thing is that the fence is being built nowhere near any of these three zones. Nobody seems to know who is building it since it does not feature in the provincial or federal development projects. Some press reports cite ‘sources’ saying it is being built at the behest of the Chinese, who are keeping a wary eye on the security situation in the region since three separate militant groups came under one umbrella in November 2018, and then went on to launch a series of assaults starting with the attack on the Chinese consulate in Karachi, followed by the one on the Pakistan Stock Exchange building, and then a series of small ambushes on army and FC personnel in Kech, Turbat, Panjgur, Ormara, and so on...

https://www.dawn.com/news/1598832/whats-up-in-gwadar

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