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Gwadar, CPEC and the Balochistan Question
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
CPEC Logistics Capacity: Karakoram Highway vs. the Proposed Trans-Karakoram Rail Link
By Marivel Guzman | Akashma News
Photo credit: CPECInfo / China-Pakistan Economic Corridor information portal
Source image: https://cpecinfo.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/karakoram-highway.jpg
A Supplementary Technical Analysis to “The Strategic Nexus of the New Silk Road”
Prepared: September 11, 2026
1. Scope Note
The source document supplied for this analysis (Guzman, 2026) addresses CPEC’s geopolitical framing, Gawadar’s naval/commercial role, and Pakistan’s debt exposure to Chinese IPPs — it does not contain freight-throughput, TEU, or rail-engineering data. The figures below are drawn from separate research (government statements, NHA/Pakistan Railways disclosures, and peer-reviewed capacity modeling) to answer the logistics-specific questions posed. Where projections are estimates rather than confirmed government figures, this is flagged explicitly.
3. Highway Capacity: The 10 m → 30 m Widening Program
The Raikot–Khunjerab Section (335 km) was upgraded under a **$327.74 million China Eximbank loan** (total project cost ~$491–500 million), completed in November 2013. This project widened the roadway from 10 meters to 30 meters, added 32 new bridges (27 rehabilitated), and was designed to keep the route passable year-round and suitable for heavy, long-body freight vehicles.
Further upgrades are ongoing or planned:
Thakot–Raikot section (~240 km): MOU-stage realignment and upgrade, discussed during 2023 high-level visits, cost estimated in the billions of rupees.
Hasan Abdal–Mansehra section: NHA is reviewing dualization/rehabilitation of the existing carriageway to relieve congestion and slow-moving freight trailers.
Attabad Lake realignment section: Chinese-financed realignment, expected multi-year timeline.
Net effect: the KKH’s Pakistani alignment (N-35, 887 km) is being converted piecemeal from a narrow, seasonally vulnerable mountain road into a wider, hardened freight corridor — but full end-to-end dualization is not yet complete.
4. Bottleneck Analysis: Khunjerab Pass and the Thakot–Raikot Chokepoint
Altitude and seasonal closure (historical bottleneck):
– Khunjerab Pass sits at roughly 4,700–5,000 m, the highest paved international border crossing in the world.
– Under the 1985/2013 border protocols, the pass was traditionally open only April–November, closing December–March due to snow and low-oxygen conditions — a structural constraint on annual freight capacity.
– Following an October 2023 announcement at the Belt and Road Forum, China and Pakistan agreed to convert Khunjerab to **year-round operation; this took effect starting December 1, 2024. However, implementation has been uneven — the pass has also seen ad hoc closures tied to trader disputes over customs procedures (e.g., a multi-month suspension in 2025 over new scanning fees at Sost, resolved that October).
– Practical effect: even after the year-round policy, the corridor remains vulnerable to (a) residual heavy snowfall requiring active clearance, and (b) customs/administrative friction at Sost.
Engineering bottleneck (current capacity constraint):
A 2025 peer-reviewed capacity study (Adeel et al., *Scientific Journal of Silesian University of Technology – Transport*, 2025) modeling the Burhan–Khunjerab route specifically for a 2035 horizon found:
– The Thakot–Raikot section — not Khunjerab itself — is the critical bottleneck, with a modeled additional capacity of roughly 9,519 trucks/day at Level of Service “C” before saturation.
– Under trade-growth assumptions, the corridor is projected to carry about 7.93% of China’s total trade value** and 6.39% of trade tonnage by 2035 if current capacity-expansion plans proceed.
– Statistical relationships derived: each $1 million annual increase in Pakistan’s trade correlates with ~1.3 million ton-km of additional road freight; each 1-million-ton increase in trade volume adds ~1,684 million ton-km of freight movement.
Takeaway: Khunjerab’s altitude/weather profile is the *headline* bottleneck in public narratives, but the *binding engineering constraint* identified in recent modeling sits further south, at Thakot–Raikot — the still-unupgraded middle section of the highway.
No freight currently moves by rail across the Khunjerab/Kashgar frontier — this is a proposed, not operational, corridor.
On TEU capacity: No official, engineering-grade TEU throughout projection specifically for the Kashgar–Havelian rail line has been published in government or peer-reviewed sources found in this research. Public statements to date describe the line only in route-length and strategic terms, not container-volume terms — the project remains pre-feasibility/MOU stage rather than at the design stage where TEU modeling would normally be produced. Any TEU figure attributed to this rail link in third-party commentary should be treated as speculative rather than an official target; I’d flag any such number to you rather than present it as sourced. If you need a comparative estimate, an alternative is to benchmark against ML-1’s confirmed capacity uplift (32→171 trains/day) and the trade-tonnage growth rates in Section 4 as a proxy for potential rail demand — I can build that model if useful.
7. Government Targets Toward 2030
– CPEC’s overarching route — 3,218 km of roads, railways, fiber-optic lines and pipelines linking Gwadar to Kashgar** — carries an official completion horizon of **2030**, per Pakistani government statements dating to the corridor’s 2015 launch.
– China’s cumulative investment/contribution under CPEC has been projected by Pakistan’s Planning Commission Centre of Excellence to exceed $100 billion by 2030** (up from an initial $46 billion, revised to $62 billion as of 2018 estimates).
– No single, current, official document was found in this research that sets a specific **TEU or tonnage target for 2030** on the Karakoram Highway or the rail corridor specifically; targets that do exist are expressed in dollar-value trade terms and megawatt/kilometer infrastructure terms rather than container throughput.
8. Caveats
– Figures on cost, length, and dates come from a mix of government statements, wire reporting, and one peer-reviewed engineering study; some (e.g., project costs, MOU-stage segment lengths) have shifted between sources over the corridor’s 15-year history and should be treated as approximate.
– The absence of a published TEU projection for the rail link is itself a finding — it indicates the project has not reached the design stage where such projections are normally produced, not that the figure exists but was simply unavailable to this search.
The Strategic Nexus of the New Silk Road
CPEC Logistics Capacity: Karakoram Highway vs. the Proposed Trans-Karakoram Rail Link
Under Siege: The Security Crisis Threatening CPEC and Gwadar Port
Balochistan the poorest province of Pakistan
The “All-Chinese” Swap: Fact-Checking the Labor Myths in Overseas Lithium Mining
Muslims Killing in Burma and our Social Media
Published on August 15, 2012 by Akashma Online News
Re-blogged from FarazAhmed.com
Muslims Killing in Burma and our Social Media
Muslims Slaughter by Buddhist Debunked – Fake Pictures exposed
Faraz Ahmed July 14, 2012 328
In now a days people are posting pictures with captions like Muslims killing in burma, Muslims slaughted by Buddhists in Burma..
I have search reality of few pics and found following:
A picture shared on facebook:
I have found original version here:
http://www.tibetancommunity.be/news/chinaquake.html
This picture was taken in 2010 regarding Earthquake in China and tibetians community help and rescue in China. Now Islamic political parties and some other elements are sharing this image as Muslims killing / slaughter in Burma.
A view of another widely spreaded picture with caption of “More then 1000 people killed in Burma” which also has a fake caption.
Original Image and Website:
This picture is of year 2004 nearly 8 years old about riots in Thailand.
http://tarikh100.blogspot.com/2011/11/blog-post_5836.html
One more image is spreading on social media with logo of Jamat-e-Islami having caption “terrorists of Budhism of Burma kills 500 Muslims”
Well this image is also one of incident occur in Thiland (2nd January 2009)
A view of images shared in this article:
One more image spreaded on Social Media regarding Muslims Killing in Burma
This picture is also misleading original picture was from Riots in Thailand and taken in 2003:
http://www.islammemo.cc/zakera/moslimoon-mansioon/2003/01/30/1134.html?lang=en-us
One more misleading image shared on facebook with caption “A Muslim was burned in Burma and Journalist are Taking pictures instead of saving him “
The original image was taken when Chinese president visit India:
By sharing all these doesn’t mean that Muslims aren’t killed in Burma but what I mean is we are sharing everything without verification and authenticity of image.
Added: 07-18-2012
I have found more more picture (07-18-2012) so Iam sharing it here.
The real image was regarding 9/11 attacks and arrests of Tajikis and Uzbiks.
Again I Like to mention that POSTING THESE FAKE IMAGES DOESN’T MEANS THAT MUSLIMS ARE NOT KILLED IN BURMA, THE ONLY REASON OF SHARING THOSE IMAGES IS TO SHOW HOW SOCIAL MEDIA AND POLITICAL PARTIES ARE MANIPULATING IMAGES.
Neglecting Home while giving away the Wealth and the Power, All In The Name Of Profits and Slavery
Posted by Marivel Guzman
Is China the Next Superpower-The Sleeping Dragon
We will celebrate Labor Day in China
Slavery in The Corporate World-In the Name of Profits
When corporate America thought that saving few dollars on salaries will make them stronger in the world market, they miscalculated the downfall of their power. Power vested on them when they controlled the world with Mr Dollar.
It is not the same to play with toys make in china for 3 cents a piece and to play with toys made in the US for 3 dollars. The 3 cents toys will brake because the quality is not included in the price, the salary might be included because slave hands are used to make those toys. ‘All in the name of profits’.
The mentality that everything could be made in China grew to a devastating proportions for United States, We the United States of North America sent our manufacturers to China, even some of the Military gadgets were to be made in China, critical technology for the Defense Department was even ‘Made In China’
Where were the strategists of the government in the last 20 years, China was in an accelerated race buying our government bonds owing with this a piece of our economy and weakling up our World Power. Wait! Did we knew that we will be using slave labor? Didn’t we abolished slavery almost 100 years ago, that’s what our History says, don’t we commemorate Abraham Lincoln with big fanfare? We are hypocrites, some even go to Church every Sunday, they repent of their sins weekly but in the in the week they shop in “Wall Mart” the worse slave trader and Domestic Economy Killer. Maybe there is something you should know
“Even if China’s population multiplies many times, she is fully capable of finding a solution; the solution is production,” Mao Zedong proclaimed in 1949. “Of all things in the world, people are the most precious.” The communist government condemned birth control and banned imports of contraceptives.
China One Child’s Policy
Well that statement was slogan after a few years, when the One Child Policy become effective after on and off periods, read the article in its entirely, there is information that you won’t find, but if you read between the lines you can understand the negative consequences of that policy, you will not read about the millions and millions or “Illegal Chinese Man and Woman” that born out of state permit, their parents did not have money to pay the exorbitant fines that they were required to pay for having braking the “Law”, but we ask ourselves in United States of North America we have strong groups that are against abortion, don’t we? but in China abortions are mandatory when you are found pregnant and you have already your “ONE Child”. This story is not about abortion, or Chinese laws but about Profits made with slave Chinese Labor, Yeah! if you as a parent broke the law and you did not pay the fine to the government for having more than one child, which is most common case because usually the couples that get pregnant out of the policy are the poorest in the Chinese Society, these babies are born without birth certificate, and without birth certificate you simply do not exist, that makes you Illegal Chinese in China, you can not go to school because you do not exist, and when you reach working age which is by the way very early age for these Illegal Chinese they become part of the slave trade in China that abuse their status, and we the Corporations of the world not only the Corporate America some other First and Second World Countries are taking “advantage” of these slaves. All in the name of profits. These Illegal Chinese of China are under paid if they get any pay at all, they are used for the most dangerous jobs and they can not complain after all they do not exist.
There are horrible stories about These slaves that tired to being Illegal in their countries they venture to the outside world only to fall in a more grotesque form of slavery, Sweat Shops They leave China in containers filled with fish or whatever material is good to cover the contraband, those stories you don’t see in the news, you has to go out of your way to find the story. The sharks, the human traffickers don’t touch their heart when they empty the containers with the inert bodies of these humans that want a better life. They leave the Mother Land with the promise to get them jobs in America, the traffickers charged them tens of thousands of dollars that are like a dead debt, they are kept in inhumane conditions, mostly without pay until they pay back the “FEE”. Sure there are laws against these practices but they are overlooked, All in the name of Profits.
Our Capitalist Societies are ready to receive the carcasses of the survivals, there will always be an employer that will “Risk” to pay the fines for accepting slave labor, at the end profits is always bigger than the fines.
The disproportionate rationale that living in a Capitalist Society driven by consumerism has to produce profits No Matter what, to keep the status Quo of being strong society because we are Capitalist, because we abuse our labor, after all the base of Capitalism rest on the sweet of the worker, right? So making more profits is an extension and maybe a solidification of our Capital System, well has proven to be wrong. We wanted to make 3 cents toys instead of 3 dollars toys. Why the economist, the analysts of our system did not oversaw that while we will be saving in manufacturing cost we will be killing our system of consumption.
We end up feeding two monsters; the Slave Trade and Creating a huge unemployment rate that will eventually will lead us to a social unrest like the one we just saw developed in the middle east just in the last few months. Maybe we won’t see the crowds marching with sticks and flags demanding jobs, no in North America we have other ways to demand justice, in here we Riot, we Strike, we Boycott and the most importantly in North America “We Consume” we could paralyze our Cities if we use “OUR BUYING POWER”, ‘WE STOP DRIVING ONE DAY”, “WE DON’T BUY GAS ONE DAY” and we will Shape North America back in Check…
The Corporations opened the gates of the factories and disbanded millions of workers as if they were a herd of animals to go graze in the grass without worrying that they needed to make money to buy the 3 cents toys. Eating grass (welfare system) was not going to give them extra pennies to buy Chinese toys. Isn’t it common sense, that to maintain a capitalist society you need to support the base of it, which is the worker class, I mean! common Harvard graduates, Bankers didn’t you oversaw your wrong doings. You took the bread from the table and took the baking oven, what were you expecting to starve to death the workers! and …..replace them with slaves? I don’t think that you were thinking that you will be crating a sub-society of sub-humans that were going to be fighting to survive, and I did not think that you wanted to take the Economy Power from the US and give it to CHINA? Was that part of the plant? Don’t you know Globalist Bankers, Thieves and Associates that we live in an organism “society” that evolve, we move with the times, with the changes, we are not robots that you take the battery and we stay to rust,
No! No! we ALL are humans and if “YOU” even thought that creating this “CHAOS” of world you still will have the control using the War Complex Machine as a backing tool, making the “PEOPLE” believe that we don’t matter, that we are SLAVES only to follow the whip of your control. Can the tanks force us to Drive?, Can the United States Army can come to our homes to force us to go buy Gas or unnecessary food?
United States of North America Vs China. Can their armies be competing for world control?
China’s demonstration of military might and authoritarian muscle on October 1st, its national day, was one recent example of how its judgment can go awry. The parade of thousands of goose-stepping troops through central Beijing, along with military hardware intended mainly to intimidate America and its quasi-ally Taiwan, was a throwback to the imagery of cold-war days. It did not help that dissidents were rounded up and the public kept away from the event
Such scenes touch raw nerves in America, where intellectual and political opinion has long been bitterly divided over how to assess China’s rise. Left-wing Democrats, alarmed by China’s human-rights abuses, find themselves in league with right-wing Republicans who see China as a new Soviet Union, to be distrusted and contained. The October 1st extravaganza also worried a third, more centrist, camp: those who see the Communist Party’s resort to nationalism as a sign of its weakness and of China’s vulnerability to upheaval that could have damaging global consequences. Sleeping Dragon/China
Can the War Complex Machine subsist without workers? Will the World Powers subsist without “Believers” think about it
A Nation without “We the People” Has No Power.
Can unemployment brake the economy of a nation?, You bet It can. But the Will of the People Can Straighten the worse case of Corruption, abuse, intolerance, negligence, ignorance, and Deaf Leaders. Be the Owner of your Destiny, Take Control Back to your hands, The Power to the People is coming back. Be a dissenter voice, and add your voice to the already growing grassroots movements. We Can Do It.
Peace To All
Wake Up America
The Next Knock Out, Forclosure & Banks Bail Outs, Wars & Profits, Accidents/Catastrophes and More!
Posted on April 1, 2011 by Marivel Guzman
The Wars,Earthquakes,Tsunamis,Nuclear and Oil Accidents,Revolutions, all paying off well. “Blue chips achieving the best quarterly gains since 1998”. OH! Bad News for Jobless American, 6,000 Americans lost benefits, but don’t worry! “Seasonally adjusted 388,000, which was mostly in line with analysts’ previous estimates”. So it makes it OK, because they Estimated it. Statistics are Fake Numbers to Numb your MIND
U.S stocks traded mixed in the last trading day of the first quarter, with blue chips achieving the best quarterly gains since 1998.
Investors were concerned that a possible inflation risk might hurt the U.S. economic recovery as oil prices on Thursday hit the highest level since September 2008. Meanwhile, the market stayed uneasy as many markets-affecting issues, such as the nuclear leakage incidents in quake-hit Japan and unrest in the Middle East and North Africa, remained unsettled.
The CBOE Volatility Index, widely considered the best gauge of fear in the market, fell below 18.
On the economic front, the U.S. jobless data last week showed the jobs market was still on the track of improving. The Labor Department posted that initial claims for state unemployment benefits slipped 6,000 to a seasonally adjusted 388,000, which was mostly in line with analysts’ previous estimates.
Meanwhile, the Commerce Department said new orders for manufactured goods fell 0.1 percent to 446 billion dollars, after an upwardly revised 3.3 percent gain in January.
As for stocks, basic materials still led the gainers on Thursday. Transportation and energy sectors were also among the biggest winners but financial shares were down 0.23 percent as the Federal Reserve Bank of New York rejected American International Group’s plan to repurchase a risky set of mortgage-backed securities late Wednesday.
Frauds and Bonuses
AIG settles longstanding fraud cases for $1 billion
Isn’t is neat?, this Giant Insurance American Insurance Company engaged in one of the biggest frauds on American history and make billions on the scam and settle for 750,000 Millions. Plus get Bail Out Money.
And the Big Bonuses and Bribes started rolling in the high circles of corruption, high up in the the floors of the tallest buildings.
So Who Win and Who Loose? We the People Loose and The Bankers Win.
But what about the “Natural Disasters”!, Weather Defense System, Ring Any Bells? HAARP could accidentally lose control of the Frequencies that Generates? Maybe and cooking the Earth at very low frequency is a dangerous Business to engage, unless they have a magic wand to stop the process once is unleashed. How much of control does HAARP has over their Giants Antennas? Could they generate a strong Earthquake able to shake the sea beds and created a Giant Wave?
The United States Navy and Air Force have joined with the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, to build a prototype for a ground based “Star Wars” weapon system located in the remote bush country of Alaska.
The individuals who are demanding answers about HAARP are scattered around the planet. As well as bush dwellers in Alaska, they include: a physician in Finland; a scientist in Holland; an anti-nuclear protester in Australia; independent physicists in the United States; a grandmother in Canada, and countless others.
And who win and who lose, Insurance Companies, The International Monetary Fund will come to the rescue, …Say Again!…Bankers will rescue the devastated Countries, and those countries will need some food to survive..Guess!
MONSANTO comes to the rescue donating infected (Genetically Modified Seeds)…
The base of any species survival reside in the SEED. When we modify the structure of development of its genes we are creating a molecular conflict with its environment and its ability to evolve and adapt to the surroundings that were in place before its modification.
Monsanto have played in this field for quite some times, in its efforts to monopolize the supply of seeds, control its development and future behavior in a specific type of soil, which have also been modified to create the conditions for the new structure to grow.Monsanto can change the genes of a particular specie of seed, and maybe change the soil where it will be developed, but Monsanto can not possible control all the conditions in the environment; such the weather conditions that are required to create healthy plants, microscopic organisms that by normal natural law live in certain types of soils.
Monsanto More Dangerous than War Itself
China might be the WWIII Winner, if we survive it. Think Again. The Sleeping Giant? After all all the civilized world sent, their manufactures to China, All kind of “Made in China” the Whole World got inundated with electronics, clothing, toys, gadgets, even babies. Now we have a Giant Country that own most of Government Bonds of the Civilized World. We made China Strong, and we all weaken our Countries. And Now What?
Huang Haiyuang, a senior researcher
who has traveled widely in
the West, summarized seven PLA technological
priorities:
information operations and warfare
air and missile technology
precision guided munitions
defensive weapon technology
unmanned aerial vehicle technology
military space technology
naval carrier (air-to-ship integration).
China Liberation Army: Looks At The Future
by C H A R L E S F. H A W K I N S
Armageddon! Nope…We The People are The Sleeping Giant…Time To WAKE UP..and Take Control of your Future, or others will do for you.
