China-Pak corridor a threat to India’s assets

Arun Joshi

Tribune News Service

Jammu, April 23

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CEPC) which will connect Kashgar city of China to Gwadar port in Balochistan in Pakistan and help China to get its oil supplies from West Asia is not purely an economic project aimed at helping two all-weather friendly countries. It is fraught with dangerous impact on strategic assets of India in Jammu and Kashmir.

On the face of it, the CEPC is an economic corridor for it talks of highways, rail lines and oil pipes, but it passes through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir running parallel to the Line of Control that divides the Himalayan state between India and Pakistan.

Combined with more than $ 46 billion investment by China, Beijing has positioned its troops in Gilgit and Baltistan, ostensibly for the security of its personnel engaged in the construction of the corridor. This impacts India in more than one way on the strategic front, particularly the Siachen glacier, considered the highest battle ground in the world.

This glacier stands at a height ranging from 18,000 to 21,000 feet above sea level and the Karakoram highway runs adjacent to it. Pakistan has been eyeing the glacier, which it had sought to get back after mounting intrusion on Kargil heights to cut off Srinagar-Leh highway – the lifeline to the glacier. Its designs were defeated by the Indian troops who scripted a new history of mountain warfare and the US intervention when Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif pleaded with the then American President Bill Clinton for such an intercession.

Pakistan has been calling for the demilitarisation of the white mountains, and the Indian Army has made it clear that it would not be able to recapture the glacier once it is vacated under any diplomatic negotiations or international pressure. This has been communicated to the Ministries of Defence and External Affairs by the Army.

India cannot object to the growing economic ties between Beijing and Islamabad. But the way it is being done by transgressing its territory or the borderlines, there will be long-term consequences for India, feel strategic analysts in the Army, who cannot be quoted for they are not authorised to speak officially about such sensitive policy matters.

It is beyond their comprehension that why was there silence when Pakistan gifted 1,942 sq km of Kashmir’s territory under its illegal occupation to China for building the Karakoram highway that passes dangerously close to the Siachen glacier .

The western press has reported a number of times that “Chinese army personnel in the guise of engineers were in Gilgit and Baltistan.” This can have serious security implications for J&K, where separatists like Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Syed Ali Shah Geelani have spoken of the Chinese role in Kashmir.

China and Pakistan are strengthening their military ties in the region. The building of hydro-electric projects in Gilgit-Baltistan, where demographic change has taken place and where the interests of China and Pakistan converge, is an ominous signal for India.