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China Is Building Its Second Foreign Military Base In Pakistan Amid US Diplomatic Scandal
6
January, 2017
America’s
declining influence in the Middle East and the Pacific Rim has been
in hyperdrive this
week following President Trump’s tweetstorm against Pakistan.
On
New Year's day, Trump unleashed a series
of tweets accusing Pakistan
of harboring terrorists, and went so far as to threaten cutting off
the country’s financial aid. To make matters worse, U.S. Ambassador
to the United Nations Nikki Haley, also accused Pakistan of playing
“a double game for years,” and said President Trump would
withhold $225
million in aid to the country.
Trump’s tweetstorm
did not impress the Pakistani government: in response, it announced
that it would be evicting some 1.4 million Afghan refugees from the
country later this month. The Pakistani government also announced
closer ties with China, and would ditch
the dollar in
bilateral trade with China, a move that has threatened Washington’s
diplomatic relations with Pakistan.
And
now, according to the Washington
Times,
Pakistan will further boost economic and defense ties between Beijing
and Islamabad. The
report specifies that China is planning to build a military base in
Pakistan, which would be its second military base in the East. The
naval installation will be erected in a key strategic location: the
Pakistani town of Jiwani, a port near the Iranian border on the Gulf
of Oman and near the Straits of Hormuz, which resides at one of the
six proposed economic corridors of the One Belt One Road Initiative,
commonly called the Silk Road Economic Belt.
Plans for the base were advanced during a visit to Jiwani on Dec. 18 by a group of 16 Chinese People’s Liberation Army officers who met with about 10 Pakistani military officers. Jiwani is located on a peninsula about 15 miles long on a stretch of land with one small airfield.
China’s
economic strategy in the Jiwani region of Pakistan is as follows:
Plans
call for the Jiwani base to be a joint naval and air facility for
Chinese forces, located a short distance up the coast from the
Chinese-built commercial port facility at Gwadar, Pakistan. Both
Gwadar and Jiwani are part of Pakistan’s western Baluchistan
province.
...
The
large naval and air base will require the Pakistani government to
relocate scores of residents living in the area. Plans call for their
relocation to other areas of Jiwani or further inland in Baluchistan
province.
The
Chinese also asked the Pakistanis to undertake a major upgrade of
Jiwani airport so the facility will be able to handle large Chinese
military aircraft. Work on the airport improvements is expected to
begin in July.
The
naval base and airfield will occupy nearly the entire strategic
peninsula.
Jiwani
will be China’s second overseas military base, in addition to the
first foreign military base opened last year in Djibouti, a small but
tactically critical African nation near the Horn of Africa, where
China deployed troops for the first time last July. In doing so,
China has direct oversight and visibility of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait
in the Red Sea, which together with the Suez Canal and Strait of
Hormuz, is one of the planet’s most important oil chokepoints.
Washington has called China’s foreign military base expansion the “string of pearls” strategy. Meanwhile, as the world grows fed up with Washington's overseas policies, the Chinese are using this opportunity to roll out military bases in the Persian Gulf through the Indian Ocean, and in South East Asia.
Harrison
Akins, a researcher at the Howard Baker Center who focuses on
Pakistan and China, told Newsweek, “Chinese investment in Pakistan
is expected to reach over $46 billion by 2030 with the creation of a
[China-Pakistan Economic Corridor] connecting Balochistan’s Gwadar
Port on the Arabian Sea with Kashgar, in Western China.”
“Trump
will soon find that his ability to unilaterally exert pressure to
promote U.S. policy and security abroad is severely limited, as
Pakistan has increasingly relied upon China for economic and military
assistance,” Akins added.
So
as Pakistan pivots away from the US, both financially, diplomatically
and militarily, China is happy to step in and fill all the voids.
And
so, America’s fading influence has claimed its latest victim,
Pakistan. In one week, President Trump and Niki Haley have managed to
collapse the bilateral relations between Pakistan and the United
States, which has spurred China to pick up the broken piece and start
nation-building in Pakistan. And as China tastes diplomatic success,
the same blueprint will soon be applied to all other "US-allied"
nations in the region.
Pakistan Ditches Dollar In Trade With China In Retaliation For Trump Twitter Meltdown
4
January, 2015
Less
than a day after President Trump slammed Pakistan on Twitter for
failure to combat terrorism, stating,
"It's not only Pakistan that we pay billions of dollars to for
nothing, but also many other countries, and others," and after
it was revealed that the US will withhold $255 million in
aid, Pakistan's
central bank announced it will be replacing the dollar with the yuan
for bilateral trade and investment with China.
"SBP
has already put in place the required regulatory framework which
facilitates use of CNY in trade and investment transactions,"
the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) said in a press release late
Tuesday, ensuring that imports, exports and financing
transactions can be denominated in the Chinese currency.
"The
SBP, in the capacity of the policy maker of financial
and currency markets, has taken comprehensive policy related measures
to ensure that imports, exports and financing transactions can
be denominated in yuan," Dawn
news, Pakistan's most widely read English-language daily, announced
while quoting the SBP press release.
Image
source: WION News
As
we reported
in December,
Pakistan has been contemplating the move since last month's formal
launch of the Long Term Plan for the China-Pakistan Economic
Corridor (CPEC), signed by the two sides on November 21. The CPEC is
a flagship project of China's Belt and Road initiative - the 3,000
km, over $50 billion corridor which stretches from Kashgar in western
China to Gwadar port in Pakistan on the Arabian sea.
At
that time the agreement was signed Pakistan's Minister for
Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal said that while Pakistani
currency would be used within the country, China
desired that bilateral trade should take place in yuan instead of
dollars, in yet another push to de-dollarize what China considers its
sphere of influence. "We
are examining the use of yuan instead of the US dollar for trade
between the two countries," Iqbal said in what was the earliest
tip-off of this week's bombshell news, and added that the use of yuan
was not against the interest of Pakistan. Rather, it would
"benefit" Pakistan.
But
the timing couldn't be more interesting, with
the White House's rhetoric on Pakistan putting the longtime and now
increasingly strained defense alliance between the US and central
Asian country center stage. Less than two weeks after China and
Pakistan launched their CPEC initiative, Trump said in a New
Year's Day tweet, "The
United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion
dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing
but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools. They give
safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little
help. No more!"
The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!
In
response to the tweet the chairman of Pakistan's Senate Defense
Committee fired back, calling Trump
the "mercurial
leader of a declining superpower" while
accusing him of merely "raving and ranting." Trump has
broken ranks with prior administrations going back to the Cold War -
who have taken great care to maintain a positive though uneasy status
quo with the nuclear power - and in brazen tone called out Pakistani
authorities for looking the other way on terrorism, especially
regarding their long acknowledged support to
the Taliban and toleration of jihadist groups along the pashtun
tribal lands Af-Pak border border like the Haqqani network.
Ironically, however, Pakistan's ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) and
the CIA were once in the same trenches when it came to
supporting mujahideen fighters the region throughout the 1980's.
Pakistan
has long been forced to rely on an external patron as the ultimate
guarantor of its security vis-Ã -vis India and in recognition of the
international legitimacy of its disputed borders (foremost being
the Durand
Line),
bouncing back and forth between either China or the United
States.
But
clearly the latest tensions as well as US plan to cut foreign aid,
precipitated in the US administration's eyes by Pakistan being among
an expansive list of US aid recipients that voted to support the
December 22 UN resolution condemning the US recognition of Jerusalem
as Israel's capital, have not only created a vacuum in terms of
waning US influence in the region, but have allowed China to cement
itself as both economic and political guarantor in the region.
Notably,
on the same day Trump accused Pakistan of giving "safe haven to
the terrorists" Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng
Shuang immediately came to Islamabad's defense, saying the
country "made great efforts and sacrifices for combating
terrorism" and urged the international community to "fully
recognize this."
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