Pakistan Reader# 486, 26 December 2022
D. Suba Chandran
While the militant attacks in Balochistan, like the latest one that happened on Sunday, get the main page space in the national dailies, the ongoing protests in Gwadar, fail to get similar attention – both in the national media and politics.
On 24 December, Balochistan’s home minister reached Gwadar to negotiate with the local protestors. According to a Dawn news report dated today (26 December), the talks have failed to make progress. Maulana Hidayat-ur-Rehman, leader of the protest movement even refused to meet with the minister, complaining the Baloch government as not serious about the issue.
For the last two months, local Baloch people have been engaged in a sit-in, as a part of what is referred to as “Gwadar Haq Do Tehreek” (Gwadar Rights Movement). The protests have been taking place in front of the Gwadar port and also in front of the new international airport. Both sites have been a part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). There was a similar protest in 2021 during the same period, leading to some concessions by the provincial government. But the protests returned in November 2022.
The protestors’ demands are almost the continuation of what they wanted in 2021. It includes reducing Gwadar city’s checkpoints, ending deep-sea trawling, fishing by non-Baloch, and relaxing in the Pakistan-Iran border trade. The provincial government made some promises on these issues, but the protestors are not satisfied with the performance. Dawn quoted Rehman mentioning the following as genuine Baloch issues: “These are issues of the Baloch. There is no trade at the Pakistan-Iran border. There are still a great number of checkpoints. The issue of illegal trawling still persists.”
Why is the problem in Gwadar persisting?
First, the nature of the protest movement. The protestors are not monolithic; from middle-class working backgrounds to those who are engaged in formal and not-so-formal trade with Iran, and the fishermen, they come from different vocations, but with the same problem – the State apathy.
Second, the problem is the heterogeneous nature of the demands but also the political space to address them by the provincial leadership. The Baloch government has little or no space on all three issues - check-posts in Gwadar, deep sea trawling (along with fishing by non-Baloch), and border trade (legal and illegal). The decisions are taken in Islamabad, or worse in Rawalpindi, and not in Quetta.
Third, more than the space, it is also the capacity of the provincial government and its interest. Of the four provincial assemblies in Pakistan, Balochistan should have the least space for political manoeuvring; this has been a part of a deliberate strategy at the national level led by political and security actors. From the extraction of natural resources to the use of geographic assets (as in the case of Gwadar and other CPEC projects), the Baloch provincial assembly has nominal or no control.
Fourth, an added problem is where Islamabad stands on Balochistan. The federal government in Islamabad should play a larger role in addressing the problem in Gwadar; unfortunately, there is not much of a national concern – both at the political and at civil society levels. The outsourcing of security space to the Establishment by the federal government and the importance of CPEC projects further limit the role of Islamabad, even if it wants to intervene.
Fifth, the politicization of the demands and its leaders. Genuine local demands get politicized and ethnicized. When the protestors get termed as “Baloch” who are against the non-Baloch presence in Gwadar, or the leaders (for example, Maulana Hidayat-ur-Rehman) get labelled as people with political ambitions or under foreign infleunce, the real issues get coloured. Perhaps, with a purpose.
So, what do the above five issues mean for the protests in Gwadar? Like the militancy and nationalist upheaval elsewhere in the province, this will also become another slow-burn issue in Balochistan.
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