India on CPEC; Obama’s Mosque Visit; Start of US Presidential Primaries

[Riaz Haq]

How does India feel about China-Pakistan Economic Corridor called CPEC? Is Modi government involved in disrupting CPEC? Is insurgency in Balochistan a part of Indian efforts to sabotage China’s short direct access to the Indian Ocean? What does the Times of India editorial titled “Engage the Dragon on Balochistan” say about thinking in Delhi?

Why did President Barack Obama wait to visit a mosque until his eighth year in office? Was this decision triggered by a leading Republican candidate Donald Trump’s attacks on Muslims? What did Obama say about attacks on Muslim Republicans?

What is the primary elections process prior to general elections in the United States of America? Who are the likely 2016 general elections candidates of Democratic and Republican parties? Who is most likely to win?

Viewpoint From Overseas host Misbah Azam discusses these questions with panelists Ali H. Cemendtaur and Riaz Haq (www.riazhaq.com)

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[Ajmal Khan]

this region has to feed almost half opulation of the world , so corridor from china to gawader and same corridor from New delhi to Kabul is the activity which would balance the prosperity and power in the region

[Riaz Haq]

To protect #Chinese investment, #Pakistan military leaves little to chance. #CPEC #Balochistan #TTP http://reut.rs/1QlZSBX via @Reuters

A senior security official in the town of around 100,000 people said a further 400-500 soldiers had been recruited as a temporary measure to protect Chinese nationals.

On a recent visit, an SUV carrying Chinese visitors was escorted by two police cars and an army vehicle, while police blocked traffic at every crossroad along the route. It was not clear who the passengers were.

Keeping foreign workers and executives safe in Gwadar, which has expanded significantly over the last 15 years largely thanks to Chinese investment, is relatively straightforward.

The same cannot be said of the corridor as a whole.

Its western branch passes north through Baluchistan province, where ethnic Baluch separatist rebels are opposed to the CPEC project and chafing under a military crackdown.

It skirts the tribal belt along the Afghan-Pakistan border where Islamist militant groups including the Pakistan Taliban and al Qaeda have long been based, and takes in Peshawar, scene of some of the worst insurgent atrocities of recent years.

The main responsibility for securing the corridor, vital to Pakistan's long-term prosperity, lies with a new army division established in the last few months and numbering an estimated 13,000 troops.

Pakistan's Planning Ministry does not yet have specific estimates on how many jobs the CPEC will create in Pakistan, although officials believe the project could generate hundreds of billions of dollars for the economy over the long term.

Some of the police, army and paramilitary reinforcements deployed in the last year have been stop-gap measures while the new Special Security Division builds to full strength.

Enhanced security goes beyond Gwadar and across Baluchistan, an arid, sparsely populated province bordering Iran and Afghanistan which sits on substantial deposits of untapped natural gas.

"We have tightened our security in those areas where the corridor is supposed to pass. We cannot allow Pakistan's economic backbone to be held hostage," Sarfaraz Ahmed Bugti, the provincial home minister, told Reuters.

The tough approach means anger is growing among separatist rebels and the broader Baluch community, a potential problem for the military as it pursues a two-pronged approach: amnesty for rebels willing to disarm and hunting down those who are not.

"We consider the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor as ... an occupation of Baluch territory," said rebel spokesman Miran Baluch, a member of the Baluchistan Liberation Front (BLF), adding its fighters would attack anyone working on the project.

"Thousands of Baluch families have been forced to flee the area where the CPEC route is planned. (The) Baluch (people) will not tolerate such projects on their land."

The low-level insurgency has hit development in the province for decades. In recent violence, five soldiers were killed by a remote-controlled bomb some 50km (31 miles) east of Quetta last month.

Also in January, two coastguards died in a bomb blast in Gwadar district, although in both cases it was not possible to determine who was behind the attacks.

Army chief General Raheel Sharif, who launched a prolonged assault on Islamist militants after Taliban gunmen massacred 134 pupils at a school in Peshawar in late 2014, will hope a sharp fall in violence nationwide will also benefit the CPEC.

Militant, insurgent and sectarian groups carried out 625 attacks across Pakistan in 2015, down 48 percent from 2014, said an independent think-tank, the Pak Institute for Peace Studies.

[Riaz Haq]

#Pakistan Sees Growth Surging to 7% as #China Invests Billions. #CPEC #Economy #GDP http://bloom.bg/20FGmpv via @business

Pakistan will see its annual economic growth rate surge to 7 percent in two years as it reaps the benefits from China and others investing more than $40 billion in infrastructure, according to the Finance Ministry’s top bureaucrat.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government is showing investors he’s serious about implementing economic reforms by heading toward completion of an International Monetary Fund loan program, Finance Secretary Waqar Masood Khan said in an interview in Islamabad on Wednesday.
“We still face challenges in achieving a higher growth," Khan said. “Compared to our potential, our growth rate is significantly low.”
Sharif is targeting growth of 5 percent for the current fiscal year ending in June, an eight-year high, as he works with the IMF to turn around an economy hindered by energy shortages and terrorism. China’s plans to invest $46 billion in an economic corridor are fueling optimism that growth is set to reach new heights.
Since Pakistan started taking IMF loans in the 1950s, it has struggled to see them through. It came close under former military president Pervez Musharraf, who didn’t take the last installment of that loan.
Khan said completing an IMF loan program “is always very tough." He declined to say whether the government would seek to borrow more from the IMF in the future.
“We will cross the bridge, when we come to it,” he said.
Khan doesn’t see hurdles in selling a stake in national carrier Pakistan International Airlines Corp., a condition for the release of IMF loan installments. Protests by the national carrier’s employees last month halted its flight operations.
"It is evident that there is more interaction required between the stakeholders,” he said. “The government’s commitment to bring strategic partner in PIA and other power companies is there and would be accomplished through a consultative process.”
The Sharif government has raised about $1.5 billion selling its remaining stakes in banks such as United Bank Ltd. and Habib Bank Ltd. That has helped increase the central bank’s foreign reserves to about $16 billion, Khan said.