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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
Balochistan the poorest province of Pakistan
By Humera Karim
Originally published March 24, 2014
Exclusive Article
This is a memorial republication of an article written by my dear friend Humera Karim of Quetta, whom I affectionately called my princess.
Humera wrote about Balochistan with the familiarity of someone who belonged to it, understood its contradictions and cared deeply about its people. I want to preserve this article not only because of what it says about Balochistan in 2014, but because it preserves a piece of her voice.
I have lightly edited the English for grammar, punctuation, paragraph structure and clarity. I will not rewrite her argument, soften her criticism or replace her expressions with my own. Where Humera’s wording carries irony, frustration, affection or political judgment, I have tried to leave that spirit intact.
Editor’s Note
This article was originally written by the late Humera Karim of Quetta, Balochistan, and published by PK Articles Hub on March 24, 2014. The original website is no longer online, but the article survives through the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.
It is republished by Akashma News with the permission of Humera Karim’s husband, Hashim Ali, as a tribute to her journalism and her commitment to the people of Balochistan.
Humera’s native language was Urdu. This republication has received only light editorial treatment for English grammar, punctuation, paragraph structure and clarity. Her argument, political commentary, irony, statistics as originally reported, and overall voice have been preserved as closely as possible.
The Provincial Assembly of Balochistan unanimously passed bills increasing the salaries and allowances of the chief minister, speaker, deputy speaker and members of the Provincial Assembly.
Balochistan is the poorest province of Pakistan.
According to a May 2013 report by the Social Policy and Development Centre (SPDC), the percentage of Pakistan’s population living below the poverty line had increased to 36.79 percent in 2013, compared with 29.76 percent in 2004–05. Balochistan remained at the top of the poverty list, with 45.68 percent of its population living below the poverty line.
In such circumstances, passing this bill should perhaps be highly appreciated because, in the poorest province, apparently the poorest of the poor are sitting in the Assembly.
In such circumstances, passing this bill should perhaps be highly appreciated because, in the poorest province, apparently the poorest of the poor are sitting in the Assembly.
Balochistan is a tribal society. Baloch areas, in particular, remain strongly influenced by Nawabs and Sardars compared with Pashtun areas. Baloch areas have also faced insurgency and have witnessed little development or infrastructure. In many places, infrastructure is difficult to find at all.
Baloch tribesmen are poor, but apparently the heads of the tribes—the Nawabs and Sardars—are the poorest of the poor.
Although the provincial government is led by the National Party under Dr. Abdul Malik, a non-Sardar and educated political leader, with Mir Hasil Bizenjo, known as a liberal and learned man, it remains a coalition government that includes Nawabs and Sardars.
Although the provincial government is led by the National Party under Dr. Abdul Malik, a non-Sardar and educated political leader, with Mir Hasil Bizenjo, known as a liberal and learned man, it remains a coalition government that includes Nawabs and Sardars.
During the previous five years of the Raisani government in Balochistan, we witnessed enormous development—but unfortunately, much of it seemed to occur in the corruption sector.
Every MPA received millions for development, and many certainly succeeded in developing themselves.
Meanwhile, Balochistan was increasingly transformed into a volcano. Law and order deteriorated while political leaders appeared preoccupied with their own development.
Meanwhile, Balochistan was increasingly transformed into a volcano. Law and order deteriorated while political leaders appeared preoccupied with their own development.
Balochistan became almost a mission impossible for the government that followed. The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz took what appeared to be a wise step by allowing the National Party to lead the provincial government.
The National Party was expected to introduce positive reforms. Inevitably, this also generated opposition from within the governing structure itself. Nawabs and Sardars were not accustomed to seeing a non-Sardar serving as chief minister, and accepting such a change was not easy.
As expected, Dr. Malik chose what appeared to be the wisest available path: maintaining a balance rather than entering into direct confrontation with these long-established centers of power.
For generations, Nawabs and Sardars have exercised tremendous authority over the fate of their tribesmen.
Since Balochistan was granted the status of a separate province, its Assembly has repeatedly included powerful tribal figures. When outside government, many speak loudly about Baloch rights. Once in power, however, their commitment to those same rights can become considerably less visible.
The salary bill is only a small example.
The common citizen cannot ordinarily afford to contest an election. In practice, only particular segments of society possess the financial and political resources necessary to reach the Assembly.
The justification offered for increasing salaries and allowances referred to the rising cost of living, daily expenses, residential accommodation and transportation.
Apparently, then, it had become imperative to increase the salaries and privileges—not of the ordinary people struggling with those same costs, but of their already privileged representatives.
Balochistan is a geographically vast province with a scattered population. The absence of roads leaves many communities poorly connected with one another.
Many things considered basic human necessities remain unavailable to substantial numbers of people, including health care, education and clean drinking water.
The education system faces a severe shortage of secondary-school teachers and science lecturers. Many schools and colleges lack libraries, laboratory equipment and other educational facilities.
Some institutions even lack basic amenities such as safe drinking water and toilets.
At the time, Balochistan’s literacy rate stood at approximately 34 percent—an extremely low figure.
Security threats had also forced some Baloch teachers to migrate to other provinces, further weakening an already fragile educational system.
Health care presents another serious challenge.
The available medical facilities across the province were insufficient to serve a widely dispersed population of approximately eight million people at the time.
This produced a painful reality: hospitals throughout Balochistan often lacked even the basic resources necessary to treat people who could not afford private medical care.
Inadequate health and welfare services also placed children at particular risk. Insufficient medical care affected communities across the province, while health services available to poor Baloch families in both urban and rural areas remained inadequate.
The quality of care was further limited by shortages of technology, medicine and trained personnel.
It is unfortunate to report that hospitals across the province—including those in the provincial capital—faced severe shortages of beds, doctors, ambulances, professional staff, nursing services, free clinics and medicines.
People living near provincial borders sometimes traveled to other provinces simply to obtain basic medical treatment.
Districts including Bolan, Kech, Ziarat, Jhal Magsi, Musakhel and Panjgur had among the weakest government facilities for providing clean drinking water.
Electricity presented another challenge.
Load shedding in Balochistan could not simply be solved by increasing Pakistan’s overall electricity supply because the province also suffered from a weak transmission network.
A large proportion of Balochistan’s population was therefore deprived of services considered basic elsewhere.
Economic deprivation also contributed to political anger and unrest. When people have few opportunities to earn a livelihood, frustration inevitably grows.
As we know, the ordinary citizen rarely reaches the assemblies of our country. Sometimes it appears that the ordinary citizen cannot even reach the gate.
But let us remain specific to dear Balochistan.
If we examine the list of MPAs, most come from influential political or tribal backgrounds. Some may not formally be Nawabs or Sardars, but few could reasonably be described as so poor that they required increases not only in salaries but also in allowances and privileges.
We now wait to see what these elected representatives of the poorest of the poor will deliver after receiving their salary increases.
Perhaps these additional privileges will finally enable them to think about improving the lives of the people they represent.
Perhaps a miracle will occur, and they will remember Baloch rights while they are actually in power.
Having personally experienced the difficulty of meeting their own expenses during a period of rising prices, perhaps they will now consider those who live below the poverty line.
And perhaps that realization will motivate them to take meaningful action.
After all, these increases in salaries and privileges are made possible through the hard work of taxpayers.
And the taxpayer, once again, is the ordinary person.
Original publication;
Karim, H. (2014, March 24). Balochistan the poorest province of Pakistan. PK Articles Hub. Internet Archive Wayback Machine.
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
Pakistan’s Strategic Potential: A Path Forward Through Regional Alliances
By Akashma News November 3, 2012
UPADTED: November 14, 2024
Pakistan, a culturally rich nation with a strategic location spanning 340,509 square miles, features a 1,046-kilometer (650-mile) coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman.
Its educated population and emerging urban centers signify a country poised for significant influence in South Asia. However, Pakistan’s growth potential remains constrained by governance challenges and heavy reliance on external powers.
In an interview on Defense and Diplomacy, Major Raja Mujtaba, a dear friend and respected military figure, and Akram Zaki, a seasoned diplomat, discussed the paths Pakistan could take to gain self-sufficiency and regional power. They emphasized that Pakistan’s future lies in regional cooperation and reducing its dependency on the West. January 26, 2012
U.S.-NATO-Zionist Regime Alliance and Its Impact on the Muslim World
Mujtaba and Zaki addressed the complex global dynamics that Pakistan must navigate, including the alliance between the United States, NATO, and the Zionist Regime. They argued that this alliance has often led to actions targeting Muslim-majority countries, under the guise of fighting terrorism or safeguarding Western interests. Pakistan, located at a strategic intersection between Central and West Asia, has experienced firsthand the ramifications of such policies, particularly concerning U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and drone strikes within its borders.
This “war on terror” approach, they noted, has contributed to destabilizing Muslim nations, creating a security dilemma that often pushes Pakistan and similar countries to adopt defensive postures. The political ramifications of this alliance have also extended to trade and defense policies, with U.S. influence pressuring countries to choose sides in conflicts, further complicating Pakistan’s foreign policy options.
Strengthening Regional Cooperation Through ECO and SAARC
Pakistan has been a member of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) for over 30 years. Pakistan has played an active role in both organizations and has hosted summits for both.
In response to these pressures, Mujtaba and Zaki stressed the importance of the Economic Cooperation Organisation (ECO) and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) as avenues for fostering resilience.
The ECO, which includes Pakistan, Iran, and Central Asian countries, offers a platform for collective economic development. As Mujtaba noted, historical and cultural linkages make the ECO a natural foundation for building economic self-reliance. By expanding trade routes and infrastructure projects, the ECO can help counterbalance Western influence, especially in the energy and defense sectors.
In addition, SAARC provides another framework for regional engagement. Mujtaba and Zaki suggested that granting China a permanent membership in SAARC could offset India’s influence and create a more balanced regional power structure. Furthermore, including Afghanistan in SAARC underscores the value of incorporating neighboring states with shared goals of peace, stability, and development.
The Gwadar Project and Strategic Defense Partnerships
One of Pakistan’s most promising projects is the Gwadar port, envisioned as a hub for oil and gas trade, ideally situated to serve the needs of the ECO and beyond. Mujtaba believed Gwadar’s success hinges on establishing pipelines from Central Asia and Iran, potentially transforming Pakistan into a pivotal player in the global energy market. Cooperation with China, a key partner through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), is essential for the success of this venture. Pakistan’s commitment to trilateral agreements with China and Iran, covering areas from defense to civil aviation and technology, could help strengthen its economic resilience and defense capabilities.
Imran Khan’s Imprisonment and
Pakistan’s Political Landscape’s internal challenges are compounded by the recent imprisonment of former Prime Minister Imran Khan. His detention, viewed by many as politically motivated, has brought Pakistan’s democratic system under scrutiny. Human rights advocates and international observers have called for transparency, arguing that his arrest is indicative of deeper issues within the country’s political environment.
Conclusion: A Vision for Pakistan’s Independence
Pakistan stands at a crossroads, balancing the influence of powerful global players with its aspirations for regional autonomy. Leaders like Major Raja Mujtaba envisioned an independent Pakistan, fortified through alliances with regional partners and rooted in economic self-reliance. As emphasized in the interview with Akram Zaki, Pakistan’s strategic goals can be achieved through deeper engagement with the ECO and SAARC, the development of Gwadar, and an assertive approach toward economic and political self-determination. Achieving this vision requires visionary leadership committed to Pakistan’s sovereignty and its rightful place as a significant regional player.
Raja Mujtaba’s Military Legacy and Passing
Major Raja Mujtaba, a well-respected defense analyst, and a Pakistani Army veteran left a notable legacy in military and defense circles. His career spanned critical military conflicts and intense international dynamics, often focusing on Pakistan’s strategic needs and its defense capabilities. Sadly, he passed away from cardiac arrest, leaving a void in both military and analytical communities. Mujtaba was admired not only for his contributions but also for his character, as described in a Veterans Today tribute, which highlighted his visits with Pakistani elites, TV interviews, and debates aimed at advocating for Pakistan’s strategic autonomy and collaborative defense efforts with nations like China and Iran. His death marked a profound loss to his friends, colleagues, and admirers worldwide.
Defense and Diplomacy on PTV world
Qadri’s march: Conspiracy theories galore
Posted on January 17, 2013 by Akashma Online News
Source Dunya News
The military has denied any link to Tahirul Qadri.
ISLAMABAD: To Pakistan s ruling party, a firebrand cleric camped outside parliament with thousands of protesters is looking more and more like the harbinger of their worst fear: a plan by the establishment to engineer a “soft coup”.
In their eyes, Muhammad Tahirul Qadri seems like the perfect candidate for such a mission. A practised orator who has electrified crowds with his anti-corruption rhetoric, the doctor of Islamic law leapt into action to back the last power grab by the army in 1999.
The aim this time, some politicians suspect, is to use Qadri to bring down the current administration and provide a pretext for the handpicked caretaker cabinet.
“What we are seeing is dangerous and evidence that the third force is up to its tricks again,” said Mahmood Khan Achakzai, a politician who has been a frequent critic of the army s record of interfering in politics.
The military has denied any link to Qadri, and army chief General Ashfaq Kayani has built up a reputation for standing more aloof from politics than predecessors who have not hesitated to dismiss civilian governments. Pakistan has been ruled by the military for more than half of its 65 years as an independent nation.
Critics note, furthermore, that the ruling Pakistan People s Party (PPP), which has a long record of confrontation with the military, has often been quick to portray itself as a victim of bullying by the military to distract attention from its shortcomings.
But the timing of Qadri s return from six years of living in Canada, just a few months before elections are due, and his role in supporting a 1999 coup by former army chief Pervez Musharraf have nonetheless rung alarm bells.
Qadri, who led a convoy of buses carrying thousands of protesters into the capital, Islamabad, on Monday, has repeatedly demanded that the army should have a say in the formation of an interim administration that is due to oversee the run-up to elections in May.
“You meet army officers in the night; I m asking that you consult with them on the caretaker set up under the sunlight,” Qadri said in a speech on Tuesday in remarks clearly addressed to the government.
The PPP s fears over the potential for military meddling centre on the impending formation of a caretaker cabinet.
Pakistan passed a constitutional amendment last year that requires the government and opposition to agree on the
composition of the temporary administration.
The amendment is designed to prevent any ruling party exploiting the advantages of incumbency to manipulate elections
by using state power to skew the playing field.
The PPP and the Pakistan Muslim League, the main opposition party, have spent months negotiating a list of mutually
acceptable names for the transitional cabinet, including a number of politicians noted for resisting military rule.
“The PPP has lost three generations of leaders fighting against dictatorships,” said a senior member of the PPP. “You
think we will give up now? We will take up this battle at all levels.”
Meanwhile, military officers privately do little to conceal their contempt for the PPP, whose government has been unable to end militant violence, bring down sharp food price inflation or get the economy on track since it took power in March, 2008.
They are also dismissive of the Pakistan Muslim League.
One officer, speaking in a personal capacity, said the army had no desire to seize power but might be forced to play a role
as mediator between political factions if the cleric s protests trigger a prolonged crisis.
“If this gets worse, then the army may have to intervene (as a moderator),” he told Reuters.
After years of suspicion and ill-will between the generals and the PPP-led coalition led by President Asif Ali Zardari, Qadri s protests have seemed to signal a shift in the political landscape, with unpredictable consequences.
“We can t say who is behind him. But all we know is that he can t pull this off without backing from someone,” Maulana
Fazlur Rehman, the veteran leader of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, Pakistan s biggest religious party, said on television.
The political temperature soared even higher on Tuesday when Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry ordered the arrest of Prime
Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf in connection with a corruption case. Authorities have yet to carry out his instructions.
An aide to Ashraf said the military was behind this move as well, but the chief justice is known to be independent-minded.
If Qadri succeeds in bringing down the government, then a man whose name had faded from the limelight since he left
Pakistan for Canada in 2006 will have sabotaged the PPP s bid to be the first civilian government to complete a full term.
That would undermine Pakistan s struggle to bury the legacy of decades of military dictatorship by building institutions
strong enough to resolve the nuclear-armed country s multiple crises.
The military has a track record of picking interim administrations in past decades that have then overstepped their
mandates by hounding the army s political opponents or manipulating elections.
Army officers in Bangladesh, which was part of Pakistan until it broke away in 1971, have used a similar approach to
appoint a technocratic government to implement reforms.
But some commentators and Western diplomats argue that times have changed and the military has lost the appetite for
embroiling itself in struggles with increasingly assertive political parties and a hyperactive media.
“The military has no interest in disrupting the path to elections: in fact their interest is the opposite, supporting
the transfer of power from one elected government to another, which is a political milestone in Pakistan s history,” said
Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistani ambassador to Washington.
Much will depend on whether Qadri has enough rhetorical firepower left to persuade his followers to maintain their
protest, or whether the government decides to order the police to apply pressure to disperse them.
“There is nothing wrong with raising your concerns and protesting,” said Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira. “But
if you try to hold the capital hostage and disrupt the lives of its people, the law will take its course.”
American Perspective
Posted on September 18, 2012 by Akashma Online News
by Todd Shea
A little perspective for my fellow Americans to consider regarding the impressions they are fed by the media, and the facts and realities which are constantly withheld in what I call “the lies of omission”:
Since this story about the anti-Islam film made the World headlines, I have been in Karachi, Pakistan all week for many meetings related to my Humanitarian mission in Pakistan. Karachi is a metropolis of over 20 million people, one of the largest cities on the planet.
There are perhaps a couple thousand or less who have engaged in any violence related to the film. I have been running around all over Karachi (even in the so-called “dangerous” areas) and literally thousands of people have seen me walking around in public areas, sitting in the car at traffic lights, going for a bite to eat with friends, walking into office buildings for meetings, going to gas stations or convenience stores, feeding stray cats, playing music for kids and buying small flocks of birds from street vendors and setting them free which creates a feeling of joy for everyone within the vicinity, even if they do look at me like I’m a bit nutty.
But NO ONE has been rude or angry towards me. I haven’t changed anything about my routine and have zero security. I even happened upon a couple of the peaceful demonstrations against the film yesterday.
Not a single person has come up to me and threatened me or even so much as given me a dirty look. People greet me, smile and wave back to me and treat me with the genuine kindness and respect that any Human Being would want to be treated with.
I love Karachi. It’s a great city with great people. New York has bad and misguided people, LA and Miami and Chicago have them too, and so does Karachi. But all of these cities share so much in common because they have mostly decent ordinary people who do their best to get through each day surviving and taking care of there families.
No doubt it’s a lot tougher for most Pakistanis to take care of their families than it is for your average American, but I can assure you that if you visited Karachi, you would also find this city to be a vibrant and fascinating place with beautiful gardens, shopping malls, bustling urban commerce, and amazing waterfront eateries and a major port and transit hub for Asia and the Middle East.
There are places here that are absolutely wonderful and Americans have no idea about them because the Western media doesn’t ever tell us about them- they would rather suck up your hard earned Dollars selling hate and peddling fear to exaggerate and exploit every situation that will continue justifying unnecessary wars and destruction they eagerly cover for the gluttonous financial gain of a few powerful individuals and corporations and those who make bullets and bombs) by portraying Pakistanis and Muslims with articles about subjects such as “Muslim Rage” than to show you the overwhelming majority of the 19,998,000 Human Beings in Karachi, Pakistan who are almost universally outraged by the film but are NOT protesting violently and tearing up their own city. And based on my experience, I’m convinced it’s pretty much the same situation everywhere else in the Muslim World, otherwise it would be a much worse situation than just a relative few incidents perpetrated by a small number of violent idiots when compared to the 1.5 billion Muslims living on Planet Earth.
So rest assured, Karachi is still here- it has its big city troubles but it’s not on fire, and it will still be here tomorrow and the day after and the day after and the day after that until the fateful day that we all collectively self destruct with some kind of advanced weaponry or God finally gets tired of watching too many of us using up our energies destroying our planet and hating each other and making millions of children suffer and letting thousands die of preventable disease, hunger and poverty every day and decides to pull the plug on us all, having failed the big test.
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American Musician Todd Shea has developed a reputation for being the ‘go-to guy for relief’, an accolade that has come with his unique dedication for helping out with disasters around the world from places like Sri Lanka and India to Japan and Pakistan. His life and work make for a great narrative as he traipses all over Pakistan with medicines and music to bring not only physical relief, but emotional and psychological too.
Todd Shea, an American who came to volunteer in Pakistan after the 2005 earthquake, a disaster that killed 80,000 people. In 2000, Shea established a charity hospital in Kashmir called CDRS, or Comprehensive Disaster Relief Services, which provides quality healthcare services to the people in the remote and earthquake-affected areas in northwest Pakistan. And now, it has expanded to more areas of Pakistan.
Todd Shea is the Chief Operating Officer of SHINE Humanity, a US-registered nonprofit that specializes in disaster relief and long-term sustainable healthcare initiatives in developing countries. He began life as a vocalist, songwriter and guitarist. He was in
New York City on September 11th, 2001 to perform at a world famous live music establishment, CBGB’s Gallery. Instead, he ended up working at the site of the fallen World Trade Center for almost a week, assisting first responders by delivering anything
they needed to keep them going, from ice to contact lens wash and medications. Realizing that he had an ability for acquiring and coordinating needed items efficiently in a chaotic and disastrous situation, Todd put his music career on an indefinite hiatus to
work in Sri Lanka after the Tsunami, and in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. In October 2005, Todd was compelled to go to Pakistan immediately after the earthquake as a logistics coordinator for a Pakistan-American medical response team. After seeing the magnitude of the need and having fallen in love with Pakistan and its people during the emergency response phase, Todd founded Comprehensive Disaster Response Services (CDRS) in the Spring of 2006 and serves as its Executive Director. Todd currently works and resides in Islamabad, providing primary care and an Innovative Community- Based Healthcare Empowerment Project to different rural and disaster striken areas of Pakistan who would otherwise be without adequate healthcare services.
In April 2009, SHINE Humanity was registered in USA and Todd joined as the COO. Todd and SHINE Humanity deployed in Haiti in January 2010 and are working in Pakistan to provide relief aid to victims of the floods through mobile medical units, livelihood initiatives, and food and non-food assistance. The agency hopes to transition into longterm rehabilitation programs focussed on mother/child care in the areas served.
The Trojan Horse that Landed In Iran
Posted On December 09, on Akashma Online News
The Trojan Drone or Demonstration Model
Building the robot planes themselves was relatively easy. Much tougher was writing the software needed to fly the drones. “The operating system is the part that’s hardest to deal with,”
Drones are Spies on the air, steel birds that fly at low altitude and can pick up signals of conversations from cell phones, cordless phones, digital radios, digital TV’s sets and they have the capabilities to take images using infrared technology, and snap pictures as small a few pixels, this amazing and surprising disturbing technology that have taken away the peace of mind, sleep and every bit of privacy to the citizens of the world. These steel birds have the spies agencies and best reverse engineers (theives) of the world fighting each other for the software and hardware blue prints.
This technology has been around since the early 1900 but not until was built by Boeing become public.
Some recent unveiled information suggested that the early spies programs were stripped away from German secret technology too advance to be from human minds.
Drones in the skies are called messengers of death, they are used every day in the skies of Gaza Palestine, to terrorize and kill innocent civilians. They are use to spy and to destroy infrastructure. All under the disguise to kill “Militants” than in Israel terms are “Terrorists”, but in reality every person that works for the government such security personnel are considered the Bad Guys. Gaza does not count with a formal army, it is not allowed under previous agreements signed by Yaset Arafat.
In Pakistan and Afghanistan are used every day by US, this information is never reported in the Paid Media, those drones have killed thousands of people in the last 10 years since the invasion of Afghanistan.
The tensions between Pakistan and US at its highest point, the use of drones in Pakistani territory is an everyday practice. The killing of civilians goes unreported in the remote villages bordering Afghanistan.
We are made believe that Pakistan and US are enemies, the Propaganda Machine AKA News reports indicate this fact, but if you dig little further you find out that is farther from the truth. US legal and illegal financial aids goes back decades. The Network of illicit sources of money can be found in the War Complex Industry backed it up by the Bank Industry.
“With the official blessing of George H. W. Bush as the head of the CIA, Adham transformed a small Pakistani merchant bank, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), into a world-wide money-laundering machine, buying banks around the world to create the biggest clandestine money network in history.” History Commons
In Libya the US Drones attacked and immobilized the convoy that was transporting Col Gaddafi, and the NATO illegal attacks of drones in sovereign territory of Libya was the cause of destabilizing the government by the mercenaries paid by the west.
With $14 trillion in the hole and a slew of wars seemingly no one wants America to be in, what better way for the United States to spend their money by putting $23 billion into spy planes?
The US will drop billions on defense spending with the purchasing of 55 Global Hawk drone planes over the next few years. Each of the four dozen-plus spy crafts comes at a price tag of $218 million apiece — ten times the price of the largest armed attack drone.
The Spy business is More expensive than feeding the American people, and against all Odds the American Government and others choose the Spy Business. The Profits are too high to pass.
The US Defense Department is only just one client of the many from around the world of this booming industry that it is “saving Lives” on the Offensive side of the war, according to “Official Sources”. The unmanned vehicles are remote controlled miles away from the target and they do not recognize innocent civilians from military targets, at least that’s what the number of collateral damage show in the latest incursions of these drones in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Gaza, Libya and other hot spots.
Is the US exporting its secretive spy technology to other countries? The latest News on the Drone in Iran hands sound too good to be truth. The two scenarios that I draw in this “fiasco” if is true, which I doubt very much is that the best way to demonstrate the product to a higher profile client of the war industry is to bring the drone to Iran. Or if we really are pursuing to invade Iran what best way to infiltrate their deep secret militarily Installations. Taking pictures of every inch of their installations, picking signals, voices, faces, frequencies, transferring of high sensitive Data and other important information.
In this advance era of frequencies, sophisticated software, Satellite technology, and lack of resources we can expect everything, Including treason from the War Makers Aka Weapon Manufactures. Just a Thought.
Iran is airing a video showing an American Drone in pristine conditions, we must wonder how a drone that can move to a extreme velocities can land inside enemy territory without getting one scratch, or without crashing. This devices are so precise in its functioning, they are manage by remote control using the latest technology, they are integrated with, cameras, microphones, infrared and frequency sensors, and they probably count with self destructive mechanism.
The Trojan Horse
Still seeking to gain entrance into Troy, clever Odysseus (some say with the aid of Athena) ordered a large wooden horse to be built. Its insides were to be hollow so that soldiers could hide within it.
Once the statue had been built by the artist Epeius, a number of the Greek warriors, along with Odysseus, climbed inside. The rest of the Greek fleet sailed away, so as to deceive the Trojans.
One man, Sinon, was left behind. When the Trojans came to marvel at the huge creation, Sinon pretended to be angry with the Greeks, stating that they had deserted him. He assured the Trojans that the wooden horse was safe and would bring luck to the Trojans.
Only two people, Laocoon and Cassandra, spoke out against the horse, but they were ignored. The Trojans celebrated what they thought was their victory, and dragged the wooden horse into Troy.
That night, after most of Troy was asleep or in a drunken stupor, Sinon let the Greek warriors out from the horse, and they slaughtered the Trojans. Priam was killed as he huddled by Zeus’ altar and Cassandra was pulled from the statue of Athena and raped.
There are more than 17, 000 satellites in our skies, those are the ones publicly known and used for defense, weather, communications, GPS, Data Transfer and other categories. But those numbers don’t reveal the countless others used for spies activities.
Real Time Satellite Tracking
Can Floods Lead to Taliban Resurgence
Can Floods Lead to Taliban Resurgence
By Sajjad Shaukat
On the onset, let me correct it that there are no Taliban in Pakistan, all that we are facing are criminals and terrorists pushed in here by Indo-Israeli network operating in Afghanistan. The western media who are under Zionist control have labeled them as Taliban only to defame this name that we use for students. It is highly objectionable to brand the criminals as Taliban. If this be the case then every student would be taken to be a terrorist then where would we educate our children and what would we call them? But for the sake of this paper I will refer them to as Taliban though they are not.
Pakistan has made numerous protests to the US and NATO command in Afghanistan to reign them in but to no avail.
The recent floods in Pakistan have provided a new level of devastation, especially in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa where more than 4 million people have been affected by this natural disaster. The emerging landscape in areas where the water has receded is one in which bridges, roads, schools, health clinics, power facilities and sewage systems have been ruined or seriously damaged.
While Pakistan’s high officials and foreign media said that overall impact of the floods now exceeds that of the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, but at the same time some foreign media has started a propaganda campaign that by availing the opportunity, the Taliban can again return and organise themselves. They are likely to get the sympathies of the flood-affected people.
In this connection, under the caption, ‘Flooding’s devastation in Pakistan is seen as opportunity for Taliban’, The Washington Post reported on August 9, 2010: “The slow-motion disaster underway in Pakistan as floodwaters seep into virtually every corner of the nation has devastated basic infrastructure and could open the door to a Taliban resurgence.”
The Post further elaborated, “Over the past year, Pakistan’s army has succeeded in driving Taliban fighters
out of key
sanctuaries in South Waziristan and the Swat Valley. But the damage from the floods could jeopardize those gains, unless infrastructure is quickly rebuilt—an undertaking that will cost billions of dollars and will probably take years.”
However, it is misperception of The Washington Post including other western media as the fact of the matter is that the flood in Pakistan cannot lead to the Taliban resurgence. In this context, army officials are of the opinion that they are aware that the Taliban could try to seize the opportunity but they will not let that happen. Brig. Gen. Tippu Karim, who is overseeing relief efforts for Swat and other northwestern areas made it clear saying: “We have not let down our guard. The safeguards are still in place… reconstruction will be the top priority as soon as Pakistan can get past the immediate challenge of rescuing stranded residents and providing them with food and shelter.”
These floods have diminished the propaganda of the west and the militants against Pakistan, because Pakistan’s armed forces which are helping the flood victims round the clock and have visited various camps—focusing on evacuating people from flood affected areas, distributing food, water, medicine and conveying dead bodies. The relief efforts particularly addressed the Northern Areas, evacuating hundreds of stranded people every day. In this respect, Pak Army has been performing excellent services in the flood-affected areas, which include more water bottles, ready-to-eat meals and cartons of dry rations and boats. Apart from army, Pakistan Air Force helicopters besides evacuation and distribution also delivered medical staff and medicine. PAF has continued the relief operations in the flood affected areas of the country. The entire C-130 fleet along with helicopters is engaged in flood relief operations.
Pakistani navy boats spread across miles of flood waters as the military took a lead role in rescuing survivors from a devastating disaster
It is mentionable that the Pakistan military which had played a dominant role during natural disasters such as in the earthquake of 2005 has come to the fore during the present floods.
It is notable that our army which has already broken the backbone of the Taliban in Buner, Swat, Dir, South Waziristan and other tribal agencies through successful military operations is now busy in fighting Taliban insurgents in some areas. Despite its engagement in a different war, Pak Army has been performing a remarkable job in the regions which have been affected by the floods.
The women and men from troubled areas have highly appreciated all Pakistan’s armed forces, saying that they are saving them. Besides, various leaders of the civil society, political parties and media of our country including the general masses have also immensely praised the positive role of Pak Army in connection with the areas affected by the floods.
Islamic charities including ones that are known fronts for banned militant groups have also begun distributing assistance in some areas, as have western nongovernmental organizations. But for the most part, residents said they are receiving no aid at all from these entities.
It is of particular attention that more than 10 million people have been affected by the present floods. And billions of dollars are needed to rehabilitate the homeless people, reconstruction of roads, bridges, schools, hospitals and other infrastructure, while being a developing country, Pakistan government lacks resources in this regard. This fact has also been realized by the United Nations Organisation which recently revealed that destruction caused by the floods in Pakistan is more than that of the tsunami.
There is no doubt that although some countries, particularly the United States have provided aid to Pakistan in relation to the flood-affected areas, yet it is not enough and they have only fulfilled formality in this respect. For example, the US military has sent six helicopters, 91 troops and hundreds of thousands of meals from neighboring Afghanistan to help with relief efforts in Swat. In fact, each district which was cut off from the others, where the communications networks were jammed and where local roads were destroyed needs much help. Thousands of displaced villagers are still waiting for aid.
As regards the resurgence of the Taliban, the current army leadership is very clear that there is a war that needs to be waged. If Pakistan’s armed forces leave the flood victims to their fate and if the only saviors for them are charity funds of terrorist organisations then there could be chances of Talibans’ return. And sooner than later, these organisations can start recruiting some of them into their ranks. But quick action by our defence forces has diminished the prospects of Talibans’ resurgence. Besides, people of the affected areas know very well that criminal activities of the Taliban militants such as kidnappings, beheadings, car-snatchings etc. had made life miserable. They wanted to impose their own self-style system of Shariah which was quite opposite to the real Islamic values. Hence, people have no sympathy for the Taliban and they do not favour return of these militants.
Now the right hour has come that setting asides politics and without waiting for foreign aid—by recognising the scale of disaster and suffering which is so huge, we must donate and help the flood victims.
Sajjad Shaukat writes on international affairs and is author of the book: US vs Islamic Militants, Invisible Balance of Power: Dangerous Shift in International Relations
