Akashma Online News

Between Strategic Ambition, Political Friction and the Pakistan the World Rarely Sees

By Marivel Guzman | Akashma News

Before talking about ports, pipelines, China, military strategy or billions of dollars in investment, it is worth remembering something much simpler:

People already live there.

Across Pakistan, and particularly across Balochistan, generations of families have built lives under circumstances outsiders often describe through the language of instability, underdevelopment or insecurity.

But those words capture only part of the picture.

Life continues beyond the vocabulary of crisis.

People marry, raise children, cultivate land, tend livestock, fish, sew, weave, trade, teach and practice crafts handed down through generations. Communities adapt to political uncertainty, uneven development and changing economic conditions while preserving ways of life that often long predate the policies designed to transform them.

To understand Gwadar and CPEC from Pakistan and Balochistan’s point of view, those lives have to come first.

Balochistan has experienced insurgency, political unrest, economic disparities, uneven public services and repeated disputes over provincial authority and natural resources. The provincial government of Balochistan describes the region as historically underdeveloped relative to other parts of Pakistan while emphasizing the importance of agriculture, livestock, mineral resources and Gwadar to its future development.

Not every society measures a good life by the conveniences familiar to a metropolitan household.

For some families, continuity itself has value: land cultivated by previous generations, access to the sea, livestock, a family craft, a language, a village or a community in which everybody knows one another.

A fisherman may judge development less by the size of a new terminal than by whether he can continue reaching the sea and supporting his family.

A pastoral family may place greater value on land it has known for generations than on an apartment in a distant city.

A woman preserving embroidery techniques taught by her mother or grandmother may understand economic and cultural value in ways that cannot be measured by gross domestic product alone.

This does not mean hardship should be romanticized.

Lack of safe drinking water is not culture.

Lack of medical care is not authenticity.

Illiteracy is not tradition.

Poverty should not be celebrated simply because traditional life may appear picturesque from a distance.

The challenge is subtler.

Development offered is different from development imposed.

And progress means little if the people expected to experience it have little voice in defining what progress should mean.

That is the human question beneath Gwadar.

To some outside observers, Pakistan is a country defined by corruption, military interference, political instability and insurgency.

To enthusiastic proponents of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC, Pakistan is the indispensable bridge between western China and the Arabian Sea — a country whose geography could reshape regional trade.

Both perspectives describe elements of a much larger reality.

This article approaches that reality from another direction:

from Pakistan and Balochistan outward.

That means looking first at Pakistani and Balochistan government records, local political discussions, community livelihoods and voices rooted in the province, and then examining the strategic ambitions of Islamabad and Beijing.

The purpose is not to determine whether development itself is good or bad.

The more important questions are:

Development for whom?

Defined by whom?

And who ultimately shares in its benefits?

My Pakistan Began With People, Not Geopolitics

I have never traveled to Pakistan.

Yet Pakistan became very personal to me long before I began researching CPEC.

Two Pakistani friends gave me very different windows into the country.

One was the late retired Maj. Raja Ghulam Mujtaba, founder of the OM Center for Policy Studies and its online publication Opinion Maker.

Raja had served in the Pakistan Army before moving into information technology and strategic analysis. In a 2011 interview published by Opinion Maker, his biography described his military service and subsequent work as an adviser on information systems for the Kuwait Air Force. He spoke extensively about Pakistan’s political weaknesses, national potential and strategic position.

Raja Mujtaba Speaks to Fortress — Opinion Maker

Raja represented one Pakistan to me: the Pakistan of sovereignty, national security, military strategy and the conviction that the country possessed considerably greater potential than outsiders often recognized.

But Raja was not uncritical of Pakistan.

In that same interview, he criticized political leadership and argued that Pakistan possessed substantial natural and human resources but lacked the political vision necessary to use them effectively.

The other Pakistan I came to know was through Humera Karim of Quetta, whom I affectionately called my princess.

Humera showed me Balochistan from inside.

She understood Quetta, tribal and traditional communities, the challenges encountered by women, metropolitan Pakistan, and the social distance that could exist between Balochistan and Pakistan’s larger urban centers.

Before her later work with the United Nations refugee agency, Humera worked in communications with the Pakistan Red Crescent Society in Balochistan.

I knew that period personally. Humera sent me drafts to proofread and polish in English, including material prepared around the Pakistan Red Crescent’s community work. Literacy, skills-building and assistance to local communities were recurring subjects in the material I remember working on with her.

Those drafts remain part of my personal archive and memory of our friendship; I distinguish that firsthand recollection from the publicly archived material cited in this article.

Her later published work shows remarkable continuity.

In a 2020 UNHCR report from Quetta, a skills-development program for Afghan refugee and Pakistani women provided occupational training intended to improve income-generating capacity and economic independence.

UNHCR — Skills Development Project for Refugee and Local Women in Quetta

In another article, Humera documented a young Afghan refugee woman in Quetta who continued her education despite intense resistance and eventually pursued medicine. The story was not simply about schooling; it showed how change can occur within a traditional community when determination, education and eventual community acceptance intersect.

Humera Karim — Breaking Barriers: A Young Refugee Woman Fulfils Her Medical Career Dream

That story reminds me very much of the Humera I knew.

She never romanticized social restrictions imposed on women.

But neither did she speak about traditional communities as though they were people waiting for civilization to arrive.

She understood that people may want education, medicine and economic opportunity while still valuing family, community, language and tradition.

That distinction became important to me long before I began investigating Gwadar.

Humera Karim’s 2014 Balochistan
Humera also left something particularly valuable for this investigation: her own contemporaneous assessment of her province.
On March 24, 2014, she published “Balochistan the Poorest Province of Pakistan” on PK Articles Hub. The original website is no longer operating, but the article survives through the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, allowing readers to consult Humera’s original 2014 wording exactly as it appeared at the time.
Original archived article

In September 2026, I republished the article at Akashma News as a memorial tribute to Humera, with the permission of her widower, Hashim Ali. Because Urdu was Humera’s native language, the republication received careful editing for English grammar, sentence structure, punctuation and terminology while preserving her argument, political criticism, irony and distinctive voice.
The intention was not to rewrite Humera, but to make her original analysis more accessible to English-language readers without changing the substance or spirit of what she wrote.
Edited memorial republication at Akashma News:

These projects matter.

But a project ledger cannot by itself answer the human questions.

Does a fisherman retain reliable access to his livelihood?

Do local families obtain water and electricity?

Can a young resident obtain the training required for the new economy developing around the port?

How much employment remains local?

How much authority do provincial and municipal communities have over decisions affecting their land and coastline?

These are not arguments against development.

They are questions about what development actually means once the construction crews leave.

Progress Is Not a Neutral Word

Governments speak of progress.

Investors speak of development.

Strategists speak of connectivity.

Economists speak of growth.

But those words do not necessarily mean the same thing to everybody.

A highway can mean opportunity to one family and disruption to another.

A port can mean national revenue to Islamabad and economic uncertainty to a fishing community.

A technical institute can open possibilities for young residents while simultaneously signaling that the economy around their families is changing rapidly.

None of this means Balochistan should be frozen in time.

Young people in the province have the same right to education, health care, communications, technology and economic opportunity as anyone elsewhere.

But choice matters.

Modernity offered is different from modernity imposed.

Development shared is different from development merely passing through.

And respecting traditional life does not require preserving deprivation.

Humera’s own journalism demonstrated that distinction.

She supported literacy.

She supported education.

She wrote about women developing economic independence.

She documented people challenging restrictive customs.

But she did so while remaining rooted in the communities she was describing.

That is a very different approach from assuming that outsiders already know what those communities ought to become.

Pakistan’s Critics Are Not Wrong About Governance Problems

A Pakistan-centered account should not become an exercise in denying Pakistan’s problems.

Corruption, patronage and governance failures are legitimate subjects of scrutiny.

But there is a significant difference between documenting failures within institutions and declaring an entire nation institutionally worthless.

Pakistan possesses functioning federal and provincial governments, courts, universities, ports, regulatory authorities, public statistical agencies and infrastructure institutions.

Some perform better than others.

Some are vulnerable to corruption or political pressure.

Institutional capacity and institutional weakness can coexist inside the same state.

That complexity is more useful than caricature.

Pakistan’s Military Cannot Be Removed From the Political Story

Pakistan’s military also occupies an unusually influential position in national politics.

Pakistan holds multiparty elections, but outside political-rights assessments continue to describe the armed forces as exercising substantial influence over government formation and public policy. Freedom House’s 2026 assessment explicitly identifies extensive military influence while also noting security threats from militant organizations.

Freedom House — Pakistan 2026

Pakistan CPEC Secretariat — Gwadar Projects

This is Pakistan’s principal official project inventory for Gwadar under CPEC. It separates completed projects from those under construction and those still in the pipeline, making it particularly useful for distinguishing physical infrastructure already delivered from future strategic ambitions.

Open the official CPEC Gwadar project inventory

https://web.archive.org/web/20140329043245/http://www.pkarticleshub.com/2014/03/24/balochistan-the-poorest-province-of-pakistan-2/

UNHCR — Skills Development Project for Refugee and Local Women in Quetta, 2020

This report documents vocational training for Afghan refugee and Pakistani women in Quetta and illustrates the community-development themes that characterized Humera’s later professional work. It provides concrete evidence of efforts to combine skills, livelihoods and women’s economic participation in Balochistan.

UNHCR Quetta skills-development report

Humera Karim — “Breaking Barriers,” UNHCR, 2021

Written by Humera in Quetta, this story follows a young refugee woman who continued her education despite strong social resistance and eventually pursued medicine. It is particularly valuable to this article because it illustrates Humera’s ability to criticize restrictive customs without reducing an entire community to those customs.

Breaking Barriers — UNHCR

Humera Karim — Girls’ Education in Saranan Refugee Village, UNHCR, 2018

Humera reported on a community elder who encouraged families to educate their children, particularly girls, and advocated skills development to make the community more self-sufficient. The story demonstrates that traditional communities themselves can become agents of change rather than simply objects of outside development policy.

Humera Karim’s UNHCR education report

Open the Gwadar Port and Free Zone project

CPEC Secretariat — Development of Gwadar Port and Free Zone

This source documents the 2,281-acre free zone, investment registrations and initial industrial production. It provides the official Pakistani account of Gwadar’s intended evolution from a port into an industrial and commercial complex.


Dawn — Balochistan Multi-Party Conference, Sept. 13, 2026

This contemporary Quetta report records discussions among several political parties concerning security, constitutional issues, economic conditions, resource control and political rights. Its importance is that calls for dialogue and greater attention to provincial grievances are coming from political actors operating within Pakistan, not solely from armed separatist organizations.

https://opinion-maker.org/2011/04/raja-mujtaba-speaks-to-fortress/?utm_source=chatgpt.com)

Tony Lazaro — Letter Responding to TIME, 2012

Lazaro’s response is used as an example of a longstanding argument over how Pakistan is represented internationally. He did not deny violence or governance problems; instead, he argued that universities, businesses, students and economic activity also belonged in the picture.

Read Tony Lazaro’s full response

https://goodnews.pk/2012/01/29/tony-lazaros-letter-to-the-editor/

TIME subsequently published a substantially shorter reader response under the heading “Not All Bad in Karachi.”

TIME — Not All Bad in Karachi

https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/asa33/1057/2026/en/?utm_source=chatgpt.com)

Raja Mujtaba — “Raja Mujtaba Speaks to Fortress,” Opinion Maker, 2011

This interview provides Raja Mujtaba’s own account of his military and professional background and his views of Pakistan’s political leadership, strategic potential and national identity. It gives the article an identifiable Pakistani national-security perspective rather than relying solely on outside descriptions of the country.

Read Raja Mujtaba’s Fortress interview

Gwadar Port Authority — Port Operations

The authority reported in April 2026 that Gwadar had three operational berths and capacity for vessels of approximately 50,000 deadweight tons. This source is important because it helps distinguish Gwadar’s present commercial capabilities from the much larger petroleum and logistics corridor frequently depicted in strategic projections.

Open Gwadar Port Authority operational updates](https://gwadarport.gov.pk/events.aspx

CPEC Secretariat — Gwadar Eastbay Expressway

The official project page describes the expressway as the principal road connection between Gwadar Port, the free zone and Pakistan’s national highway network. It also reports 2,000 project jobs, including 1,700 local positions, making it relevant to the question of whether infrastructure creates direct economic participation for local communities.

Open the Eastbay Expressway project record

https://www.dawn.com/news/2029470/multi-party-conference-voices-concern-over-balochistans-law-and-order

Amnesty International — Jiand Baloch, 2026

Amnesty reported that student activist Jiand Baloch returned after an 11-day enforced disappearance and described it as the third such episode involving him. This source is used specifically as an attributed human-rights allegation and not as evidence characterizing every Pakistani security operation.

Open Amnesty International’s Jiand Baloch report

Humera wrote bluntly.

She discussed poverty, political privilege, tribal elites, corruption, insufficient roads, education, health care, shortages of clean drinking water and weak electricity infrastructure.

Her criticism was unmistakably local.

It was not an outsider looking at Balochistan and announcing what was wrong with it.

It was a woman from Quetta writing about problems she believed her own province needed to confront.

Her article is particularly useful when placed beside the Government of Balochistan’s later statistical record.

The provincial Bureau of Statistics has produced a Trend Analysis of Development Statistics of Balochistan, 2010–2023, alongside its Socio-Economic Indicators of Balochistan series.

The timing is almost ideal for historical comparison.

Humera was writing in 2014, within the period covered by the 2010–2023 statistical review.

Her article therefore provides something statistical tables cannot:

a human account from inside Balochistan while those conditions were being experienced.

The provincial statistics provide the longer trajectory.

Government of Balochistan — Trend Analysis of Development Statistics of Balochistan, 2010–2023

Government of Balochistan — Socio-Economic Indicators of Balochistan 2024

Balochistan covers approximately 347,190 square kilometers, or 43.61 percent of Pakistan’s total land area, while its 2023 population was approximately 14.89 million. Federal Pakistani data confirm both figures.

About 10.28 million people — roughly 69 percent of Balochistan’s population — lived in rural areas according to 2023 census-based provincial reporting.

Education statistics illustrate the rural-urban divide particularly clearly.

Census-based figures put Balochistan’s overall literacy rate at 42.01 percent, compared with 55.86 percent in urban areas and 35.74 percent in rural areas. Rural female literacy was reported at 26.59 percent.

Yet the broader development record also documents infrastructure expansion.

That distinction matters.

Balochistan has not stood still since Humera wrote in 2014.

Nor have the disparities she described simply disappeared.

Read together, her article and the provincial statistical record provide a far more useful picture than either source alone.

Humera gives us the human baseline.

The statistics give us the development trajectory.

Gwadar: The Geographical Temptation

Gwadar’s attraction to Pakistani and Chinese strategists becomes immediately apparent on a map.

The port sits on Balochistan’s Arabian Sea coast, near the approaches to the Persian Gulf and some of the world’s most important energy-exporting states.

China, meanwhile, depends heavily on long maritime supply chains connecting energy producers with Chinese markets.

The idea of using Pakistan as an alternative trade and energy corridor is older than CPEC itself.

During President Pervez Musharraf’s 2006 visit to Beijing, Pakistan publicly promoted the concept of using Gwadar as an energy and trade connection toward western China.

The idea was simple in geographical terms:

Middle Eastern energy could reach Gwadar by sea and, in theory, eventually travel north through Pakistan toward Xinjiang.

But geographical simplicity does not mean engineering or economic simplicity.

That distinction remains essential today.

Gwadar Is Not Yet China’s Operating Oil Gateway

Gwadar is frequently depicted on geopolitical maps as though crude oil already arrives at the port and flows directly through Pakistan into China.

That is not the present commercial reality.

The Gwadar Port Authority reported in April 2026 that the port had three operational berths and could accommodate vessels of up to approximately 50,000 deadweight tons, with modern container and general-cargo equipment installed.

Gwadar Port Authority — News and Operational Updates

These are genuine commercial facilities.

But they are not the same thing as an operating trans-Pakistan crude-oil corridor.

The distinction matters because the strategic idea is real while the complete petroleum system remains prospective.

Gwadar’s significance therefore derives partly from what exists today and partly from what Pakistan and China hope the port may eventually become.

CPEC Is Not Merely an Idea

The opposite claim — that China has built nothing of consequence in Pakistan — is equally difficult to sustain.

Pakistan’s official CPEC Secretariat lists a substantial portfolio of completed infrastructure.

In Gwadar, completed projects include development of the port and free zone, the Gwadar Smart Port City Master Plan, Pak-China Technical and Vocational Institute, Eastbay Expressway, Pak-China Friendship Hospital, a 1.2-million-gallon-per-day desalination plant and the New Gwadar International Airport.

Pakistan CPEC Secretariat — Gwadar Projects https://cpec.gov.pk/gwadar

https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/asa33/1355/2026/en/

Amnesty International — Dad Shah, 2026

Amnesty alleged that Dad Shah, brother of human-rights defender Fozia Baloch, was forcibly disappeared and that relatives were subsequently harassed while seeking information. As with the Jiand Baloch case, the article attributes these claims explicitly to Amnesty rather than presenting unresolved allegations as independently established facts.

Open Amnesty International’s Dad Shah report

https://goodnews.pk/2012/01/29/tony-lazaros-letter-to-the-editor/

TIME — “Not All Bad in Karachi,” 2012

TIME later published a much shorter reader response from Lazaro. Reading the published excerpt alongside his longer submission illustrates the article’s broader point that editorial selection can substantially shape how a country and its people are perceived.

Read TIME’s published response
—

https://cdn.bospnd.balochistan.gov.pk/resources/publications/2024/socio-economic-indicators-of-balochistan-2024-1777026030506.pdf

Humera Karim — “Balochistan the Poorest Province of Pakistan,” March 24, 2014

Humera’s archived article is the central historical voice in this investigation. Written from Quetta during the period covered by the provincial development statistics, it addresses poverty, political privilege, tribal power, education, health care, infrastructure, water and the frustration she associated with economic deprivation.

Read Humera Karim’s archived 2014 article

https://cdn.bospnd.balochistan.gov.pk/resources/publications/2026/uploaded-file-2026-1777010446020.pdf

Government of Balochistan — Socio-Economic Indicators of Balochistan 2024

This publication provides provincial and district-level socioeconomic indicators and is particularly useful for examining population, education, health, infrastructure and rural-urban differences. It anchors the human discussion of Balochistan in the province’s own official statistical record.

Open Socio-Economic Indicators of Balochistan 2024

https://freedomhouse.org/country/pakistan/freedom-world/2026

This matters particularly in Balochistan because questions of political representation, resource control and economic development have long overlapped with national-security policy.

When political grievances are understood principally through a security framework, political solutions become more difficult to develop.

Balochistan Is Where Development Meets History

Gwadar does not sit on empty strategic terrain.

It sits in Balochistan.

The province contains distinct political histories, ethnic communities, tribal traditions and longstanding arguments concerning autonomy, resource control and relations with Pakistan’s federal government.

Those disputes existed long before CPEC.

CPEC inherited them.

The political landscape is also far more diverse than the word “separatism” suggests.

There are armed separatists.

There are Baloch nationalist parties operating within Pakistan’s political system.

There are federalists.

There are tribal leaders.

There are human-rights activists.

There are business owners.

There are fishermen and laborers.

And there are millions of ordinary people whose principal ambitions may have considerably more to do with their families than with geopolitical ideology.

No single faction can speak automatically for all of them.

Quetta, Politics — and My Princess Humera

In September 2026, leaders from numerous political parties gathered in Quetta to discuss Balochistan’s deteriorating security environment and broader constitutional, political and economic concerns.

The meeting addressed provincial resources, political and democratic rights, economic problems and security. Participants argued that force alone could not resolve Balochistan’s longstanding difficulties and called for political dialogue involving leadership trusted by the population.

Dawn — Multi-Party Conference Voices Concern Over Balochistan’s Law and Order, Sept. 13, 2026

https://time.com/archive/6641033/not-all-bad-in-karachi/

The importance of Lazaro’s response is not that one visitor’s observations disproved reporting about violence.

They did not.

His point was that selection shapes perception.

Show only violence and corruption, and Pakistan becomes nothing but violence and corruption.

Show only airports, highways and Chinese investment, and Pakistan becomes a development advertisement.

Neither is journalism.

Pakistan Does Not Need Romanticism. Neither Does Balochistan.

Pakistan does not need protection from criticism.

It needs accurate description.

Balochistan deserves the same standard.

Traditional life should not be romanticized.

Women should not be expected to accept discrimination because a practice is described as culture.

Children should not lose access to education in the name of preserving tradition.

Families should not lack clean drinking water because deprivation is confused with simplicity.

But outsiders should also resist the assumption that every community wishes to become a version of Karachi, Islamabad, Beijing, London or Los Angeles.

Attachment to land, fishing, livestock, language, craft or village life does not mean that a person has failed to understand progress.

Sometimes it means that progress has been defined differently.

That distinction is at the heart of this investigation.

Gwadar’s Future Runs Through Balochistan

The future of CPEC will probably not be determined by a single dramatic announcement.

It will develop gradually.

By cargo volumes.

By investment.

By electricity.

By water.

By employment.

By fisheries.

By land.

By local government.

By mineral and resource revenues.

By political representation.

By security.

By whether armed movements choose politics over violence.

By whether the state chooses negotiation where negotiation is possible.

And by whether development leaves communities with more choices rather than fewer.

Gwadar may eventually become a major strategic and commercial gateway for the China-Pakistan partnership to the Arabian Sea.

But that gateway stands in Balochistan.

Its future cannot be separated from the people who live there, the livelihoods they already possess, the resources beneath their land and sea, and the political arrangements under which development proceeds.

Gwadar may become a major regional logistics center.

It may eventually form part of a wider energy corridor connecting Gulf markets with western China.

Or some of those ambitions may prove economically or politically impractical.

The outcome is not predetermined.

What should already be clear is this:

Balochistan is not an empty corridor waiting for development to pass through it.

It is a living society whose people have histories, livelihoods, political disagreements and competing visions of their own future.

Any China-Pakistan project that hopes to endure must account for that reality.


—

References and Source Notes

The following sources form the documentary foundation of this analysis. They combine Pakistani and Balochistan government records, contemporary reporting, archival journalism and primary material written by Humera Karim. The annotations explain why each source matters rather than merely listing links.

Government of Balochistan — Trend Analysis of Development Statistics of Balochistan, 2010–2023

This provincial statistical study provides the long-term development timeline against which Humera Karim’s 2014 observations can be compared. It allows the article to distinguish persistent structural problems from areas where measurable infrastructure expansion occurred over the following decade.

Open the Government of Balochistan 2010–2023 report

Balochistan the poorest province of Pakistan

https://akashmanews.com/2026/09/19/humera-karim-balochistan-poorest-province-pakistan-2014/⁠

https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/asa33/1057/2026/en/

These allegations should be reported as allegations documented by Amnesty International, not transformed into a characterization of every Pakistani security operation.

The same evidentiary discipline must apply to armed groups.

Political grievances do not justify violence against civilians.

State security concerns do not erase political grievances.

A serious examination of Balochistan has to hold both realities at once.

Could China Play a Different Role?

China has an obvious interest in stability around CPEC.

That does not mean Beijing can simply impose a settlement between Islamabad and Baloch political actors.

Pakistan regards Balochistan as an internal political and security matter, while China traditionally emphasizes national sovereignty.

But major investors inevitably influence the environment in which development takes place.

China can prioritize local employment.

It can support vocational education.

It can encourage consultation.

It can finance water, health and municipal infrastructure alongside commercial infrastructure.

And it can recognize that economic security and political legitimacy are connected.

A community that sees itself as a participant in development has a very different relationship to a project than a community that believes development is simply being done to it.

The Pakistan the Headlines Miss

The tendency to reduce Pakistan to crisis is not new.

In 2012, Australian businessman Tony Lazaro objected to a TIME portrayal of Karachi that he believed focused disproportionately on violence and dysfunction.

Lazaro did not argue that Pakistan lacked serious problems.

His argument concerned proportion.

His original response described Pakistani universities, students, businesses and exporters he had encountered during visits to Karachi and Islamabad and argued that these realities also belonged in any meaningful portrayal of the country.

Tony Lazaro — Letter to the Editor Responding to TIME

https://cpec.gov.pk/gwadar?

Pakistan CPEC Secretariat — CPEC Energy Projects

The official energy portfolio documents completed and proposed electricity-generation and transmission projects associated with CPEC throughout Pakistan. It demonstrates that the China-Pakistan economic relationship has already produced substantial physical infrastructure even though the proposed Gwadar-to-China petroleum corridor remains unrealized.

Open the official CPEC energy-project inventory

https://www.cpec.gov.pk/energy

Gwadar Port Authority — Development Projects

The port authority’s own project inventory records completed and ongoing infrastructure, including the Eastbay Expressway, desalination facilities, technical training, fisheries assistance and further port expansion. It provides a useful Pakistani primary source for determining what has actually been constructed at Gwadar.

Open Gwadar Port Authority development projects](https://gwadarport.gov.pk/project.aspx

Balochistan the poorest province of Pakistan

This gives readers a choice: they can examine the surviving 2014 archival version or read the authorized, lightly edited Akashma News edition prepared more than a decade later.
Humera’s article is particularly valuable because it was written during the period later examined by the Government of Balochistan’s 2010–2023 development statistics. Her observations therefore provide a contemporaneous human account against which more than a decade of provincial data can now be compared.

The official CPEC energy portfolio also lists major completed electricity-generation and transmission projects across Pakistan, including the 1,320 MW China Hub power project in Balochistan.

Pakistan CPEC Secretariat — Energy Projects https://www.cpec.gov.pk/energy

Gwadar’s Eastbay Expressway was designed to connect the port and free zone directly to Pakistan’s national highway system. The CPEC Secretariat reports approximately 2,000 jobs associated with the project, including 1,700 local jobs.

CPEC — Gwadar Eastbay Expressway

https://www.cpec.gov.pk/project-details/32)

The Gwadar Port Free Zone covers approximately 2,281 acres. Official project records report dozens of registered enterprises and several companies beginning production.

CPEC — Development of Gwadar Port and Free Zone

At the same time, the project remains incomplete.

Breakwaters, dredging, additional water infrastructure, fisheries facilities and other projects remain under construction or in planning.

The most accurate description therefore lies between celebration and dismissal:

Gwadar is neither imaginary nor finished.

The Human Side of Infrastructure

Pakistan’s own CPEC records increasingly acknowledge that infrastructure alone cannot define success.

The official portfolio includes vocational training, medical facilities, drinking water, solar projects and other social-development initiatives alongside highways, ports and power generation.

The Gwadar Port Authority also lists completed projects including water-supply infrastructure, vocational facilities and 2,000 boat engines provided to fishermen.

Gwadar Port Authority — Development Projects

https://www.dawn.com/news/2029470/multi-party-conference-voices-concern-over-balochistans-law-and-order

Reading about that meeting brought back memories of conversations with Humera.

We often talked about visiting one another.

I wanted to see Quetta — her Quetta.

But Quetta was never the obvious meeting place.

Humera told me that foreign visitors could face security restrictions and special permission requirements in Balochistan, and our conversations usually turned instead toward meeting in Karachi or Islamabad.

At the time, it seemed like a practical travel problem.

Years later, it carries another meaning.

Quetta was Humera’s hometown.

It was where she lived and worked and understood communities I knew largely through her stories.

Yet even something as ordinary as two friends planning to meet could be shaped by Balochistan’s political and security environment.

I never had the opportunity to meet Humera, but I knew Quetta through her eyes.

Those conversations remain part of how I understand the province today.

Security and Human Rights: Two Realities at Once

Pakistan faces genuine armed violence in Balochistan.

Separatist organizations have attacked Pakistani security forces, civilians, infrastructure and Chinese interests.

Those security threats cannot be removed from an honest account of CPEC.

Neither can allegations concerning state conduct.

In August 2026, Amnesty International reported that Baloch student leader Jiand Baloch returned after disappearing for 11 days. Amnesty described it as his third enforced disappearance and attributed the incidents to his peaceful activism.

Amnesty International — Jiand Baloch, Aug. 6, 2026

https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/asa33/1355/2026/en/

Amnesty separately alleged that Dad Shah, the brother of human-rights defender Fozia Baloch, was forcibly disappeared in April 2026 and that relatives experienced harassment while seeking information about him.

Amnesty International — Dad Shah, May 29, 2026