Why Pakistan may fully tilt towards China as the Taliban rules Afghanistan
For a few weeks more, the U.S. and its allies will be dependent on Pakistan for supply routes and other assistance for its troops and personnel in Afghanistan. Over the past decade, in return for such assistance, Pakistan got nearly $8 billion from the U.S. Agency for International Development, making the U.S. the largest foreign donor to Pakistan. In addition, Pakistan got billions more of other U.S. funding as well as funding from other Western countries.
Meanwhile China has aggressively pursued economic ties with Pakistan, notably the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. This consists mainly of setting up power plants and highways and is part of China’s East Asia to Europe Global Belt and Road Initiative. Since 2015, Pakistan has received $19 billion in Chinese infrastructure funding, which has reduced the power blackouts that crippled large parts of the Pakistani economy.
Unlike the U.S. aid in grants that do not add debt burden or balance of payment challenges, the Chinese funds are in the form of interest-bearing loans which Pakistan will have to repay. Some U.S. politicians and policy makers as well as Western analysts view the Chinese funding as a debt trap. They point to Sri Lanka as an example. In 2017, Sri Lanka, facing a severe foreign exchange deficit, granted China a 99-year lease on its Indian Ocean port of Hambantota, in return for $1.1 billion.
Yet, all major Pakistani political parties – and more importantly its military - favor accepting Chinese funds. This is partly because Western agencies and companies are unwilling to risk making major business investments in Pakistan.
While Imran Khan is the elected Prime Minister, it is the military which effectively controls political - and economic - power in Pakistan.
On the political side, since the first coup in 1958, the military has intermittently ruled Pakistan for decades. Even during times when it is not in power, the military continues to control all major government decisions. In 1999, for instance, the army removed Nawaz Sharif as Prime Minister and assumed power, because he pursued peace talks with India and asked the army to withdraw from a conflict with India.
Ever since the formation of Pakistan in 1947, following the partition of the sub-continent, the Pakistani military has sought to expand its political influence by claiming to protect the country from India. So, like the Hindu nationalists in India, the military in Pakistan tries to fan tensions between Pakistan and India as well as Muslims and Hindus, in order to expand its political power.
The military’s stature in society is also boosted by the Pakistani government’s reliance on it for basic services. Prime Minister Imran Khan, for instance, asked the army to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic and deal with locust swarms attacking food crops.
In the economic sphere, the armed forces have accumulated billions of dollars of private assets and business interests in Pakistan, ranging from construction firms to breakfast cereal, writes Ayesha Siddiqa in her book Military Inc.: Inside Pakistan's Military Economy. A former director of research for the Pakistan navy, she is a research associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
Since 2007, when Siddiqa’s book (cover in photo) was first published, military control over the Pakistani economy has expanded both wider and deeper.
Now, with the U.S. and allied troops withdrawing from Afghanistan, the West will no longer be dependent on Pakistan as a supply channel. So, they are unlikely to continue giving billions of dollars in aid to Pakistan – except perhaps to try to neutralize Pakistan’s nuclear weapons armory.
Pakistan, or at least the military, has already tilted sharply towards China. This is not surprising since the military benefits from Chinese funding. In fact, in 2019 the military took over control of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), through a presidential decree which bypassed parliament. In 2021, the parliament approved an authority, controlled by the military, to run the CPEC.
China is expected to spend a total of $62 billion on the corridor. Companies run by the army also win lucrative CPEC contracts. Pakistan is one of the most corrupt countries, according to Transparency International.
For China, the corridor with Pakistan is a key part of its $1 trillion Belt and Road Initiative, ostensibly aimed at boosting its business and economic interests in 70 nations in Asia, Africa and Europe.
However, China is also clearly advancing its military and other strategic interests, including building fighter jets and satellite-based navigation and monitoring systems.
As part of the corridor, China has access to the Pakistani port of Gwadar, which it financed and built. The port is near the entrance to the Persian Gulf, a crucial shipping lane for transport of global oil and natural gas supplies from the Middle East. It is also at the top of the Arabian Sea, which borders the West coast of India.
in 2018, General Qamar Bajwa, chief of staff of the Pakistani army, met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing. Following the meeting, Bajwa said that China’s Belt and Road, with the Pakistan corridor as its flagship, “is destined to succeed despite all odds and Pak Army shall ensure security of CPEC at all costs…while we work for peace we need to stay strong to thwart designs of all inimical forces challenging our resolve and we greatly value Chinese support in this regard.”
Speaking of the growing economic ties between the Pakistani military and China, Ayesha Siddiqa, the author of Military Inc, told The Financial Times that Pakistan is “in a phase of hybrid martial law… The military is taking decisions without any accountability.”
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