Pakistan's crumbling security situation threatens relations with China

On March 26, 2024, Pakistan experienced its fifth militant attack in just 10 days, resulting in a total of at least 18 deaths among civilians and security personnel. What is more worrying for Pakistan is the target of these latest three attacks. Although they occurred in the separate provinces of Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, all were aimed at Chinese interests.

The security situation in Pakistan has been spiraling out of control for over three years now. The mass attacks have increased alongside the political chaos that has gripped Islamabad since the ouster of Imran Khan in April 2022. During this tumultuous period, China has been the only major power willing to stand unequivocally alongside Pakistan, but even that relationship appears to be on the brink of dawn. of fracture after the resurgence of violence in recent months.

Beijing's willingness to support Islamabad in recent years should not be misinterpreted as blind loyalty on the part of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The CCP is instead determined to make the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), arguably the centerpiece of the entire Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the success of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. With investments totaling over $60 billion, China has attempted to chart a path from Xinjiang to Balochistan, where, via the Gwadar port, the CCP will have access to the Arabian Sea. Official messaging on CPEC from the Pakistani government and Chinese state media has highlighted the project's mutual benefits for both countries, from improved infrastructure and greater connectivity to massive job creation.

However, research by independent analysts has raised questions about the real benefits of this project for Pakistan, highlighting the colossal debt that Islamabad has accumulated in the process.

Mutual support

Despite this, China has continued to emphasize the value and importance of CPEC, and Xi Jinping himself has reaffirmed his country's desire to see the project through to completion. Taking a step back from the region, the success of CPEC is essential if China wants to present itself as a reliable and valuable ally to other countries in the world, and particularly those in the South.

Similarly, Pakistan needs China's support simply to keep its economy afloat, with the country benefiting from fiscal support worth $21.3 billion, making it the third largest recipient of development aid from Beijing. However, continued militancy along the CPEC route has threatened this relationship, and with some Chinese companies having already halted their operations, such attacks have moved from the realm of national security to that of national survival.

Mass attacks causing casualties have increased alongside the political chaos that has gripped Islamabad since the ouster of Imran Khan in April 2022.

When the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan, neither Pakistan nor China anticipated the period of severe instability and violence that would accompany the transition of power, however clear it may have appeared to observers elsewhere. Pakistani officials even promised ironclad security to Chinese workers just weeks before the United States withdrew from their neighbor. Yet since the fall of Kabul in August 2021, terrorism has increased astronomically across Pakistan, peaking in 2023 with a six-year record in deaths. Militant attacks killed nearly 1,000 civilians and security personnel last year.

Worse still for China, Pakistan prohibits Chinese private security companies from operating inside the country as well as Chinese nationals from carrying weapons for self-defense. This contrasts with the situation of American diplomats who were allowed to carry firearms in the 2010s, when terrorism was at its peak in the country.

Latest serial attacks

The March 26 attack, in which a vehicle carrying Chinese workers in Shangla, northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, was rammed by another packed with explosives, was the latest in a series of attacks targeting an ambitious CPEC project to build a dam on the Indus.

The Pakistani driver and the five Chinese nationals killed in the attack were part of a convoy en route to Dasu, home of China's large hydroelectric dam under construction since 2019. In 2021, another bus carrying Chinese engineers to the same site was destroyed by a militant from the Pakistani branch of the Taliban, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). While no group immediately took credit for last month's attack, the similarities to the 2021 attack are hard to ignore, as is the province's proximity to Afghanistan, where the TTP has been accused of operating from it.

The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa attacks are not isolated incidents. Rather, they are part of a broader trend of anti-Chinese sentiment that is reflected in the Pakistani activist landscape. Less than a week before the attack in Shangla, in the southwestern province of Balochistan, eight armed fighters from the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) attempted to enter the port authority compound in Gwadar. These militants, who were part of the BLA's suicide squad, known as the Majeed Brigade, struck at the heart of China-Pakistan cooperation, with the Gwadar port representing the crown jewel of the entire CPEC.

Again, like the attacks on the Dasu hydroelectric project, the Gwadar port in Balochistan has been the focus of attention for militants in recent years. Last August, the BLA unsuccessfully targeted a convoy of Chinese workers with an explosive and gun attack. Much of these groups' animosity toward the Chinese presence in Pakistan comes from resentment toward the policies of Pakistan's central state.

Balochistan has sought independence from Pakistan since the country's creation in 1947 and has since felt neglected by the Punjab-dominated bureaucracy and military that rule the country.

Therefore, in the eyes of the disgruntled Baloch, China's recent presence is seen as a new policy of extraction by the central government, where the resources of the province are taken at the cost of minimal reward to the local inhabitants and for the maximum benefit of the central government. This feeling is made even worse when many in Pakistan and abroad view CPEC as having largely failed, with allegations of corruption and a majority of projects still unfinished.

Deep instability

Having invested so much in Pakistan over the past decade, China is arguably too entrenched in the country to withdraw completely. However, bilateral relations are more tense than at any time in recent history. The Taliban's return to power in Afghanistan marked the start of a period of deep instability in Pakistan, with endemic militancy across the country, but particularly in the provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, where the Chinese presence is most intense. strong.

China will now demand even more from Pakistani authorities regarding the safety of their workers and major construction sites, putting even more pressure on already unequal relations. The extent of China's diplomatic power over Pakistan was on full display when the Chinese embassy was able to summon Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif hours after the Shangla attack last month. If Pakistan is to satisfy its increasingly important ally, then it can expect to play a more subservient role in bilateral relations in the months to come.

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