Security of Pak-China projects, Chinese citizens given to army

ISLAMABAD: The security of Pak-China economic projects and Chinese citizens in Pakistan has been handed over to the Pakistan Army.
According to Director General Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Major General Asim Bajwa, the special security division will comprise nine battalions and will be headed by a major general.
The government has decided in principle to ensure fool-proof security for engineers working on the economic corridor project. The special security division will comprise personnel from the army, police and civil armed forces.
President Mamnoon Hussain has approved the formation of the security battalion for Chinese citizens which will start its work within three days.The DG ISPR told a private news channel that Rangers will also be a part of the security plan.
The channel reported that a force of 10,000 personnel had been formed for the purpose. The security battalion will be headed by a major general who will report to the General Headquarters in Rawalpindi.
The report said 5,000 personnel for the security battalion will come from the army’s Special Services Group (SSG).According to sources, Chinese President Xi Jinping during his meetings with the Pakistani leaders had raised the issue of security of Chinese citizens in Pakistan. President Mamnoon had assured his Chinese counterpart that a decision in this regard had already been taken which will be implemented soon.
There are real security concerns over much of the Pak-China Trade Corridor, which relies on developing Gwadar — control of which was passed to a Chinese company in 2013.The port lies east of the Strait of Hormuz, through which much of the Middle East’s crude production passes.
But linking Gwadar to the rest of Pakistan and on to the western Chinese city of Kashgar, 3,000 kilometres away, would involve major infrastructure work in Balochistan, which has been dogged for over a decade by a bloody separatist insurgency.
Baloch rebels, who oppose Gwadar’s development, have in the past blown up numerous gas pipelines and trains and attacked Chinese engineers.Andrew Small, author of “The China-Pakistan Axis”, said China’s recent experience of working in Pakistan had given it a good idea of which projects could proceed in spite of security worries.
“China is certainly not completely confident that all the projects will be protected, but they think these security problems are one of the main reasons that it’s so important that they move ahead, for the sake of Pakistan’s stability,” he told AFP.
Even if not all the projects envisaged in the corridor plan went ahead, Small said, “the scale is so large that it should still have a major economic impact regardless”.And while the Chinese projects dwarf an American assistance package to Pakistan of $5 billion that began in 2010, Small said Beijing was not interested in supplanting Washington in the region, preferring to see the US maintain its support.