President Xi Jinping. The federal government contends that the western alignment will be incorporated into the plan at some stage. Consider, however, that the long-term plan for the implementation of the 51 agreements extends up to 2030. This means that if the western alignment will be incorporated into the CPEC at all, as things stand it would not be before 2030. This is a long time to wait for opponents who are threatening dire consequences if their demand of incorporating the western alignment into this plan is not met.
Let us give some margin to the federal government for adopting the eastern alignment. The law and order situation in the districts along the western alignment is not envious. Add to this the poor existing physical and human resource infrastructures in districts like Zhob and D I Khan and it becomes quite understandable why the government would have been unable to sell that alignment to prospective lenders/investors. Now this begs the question whether poor security and physical and human resource infrastructure should be a reason to ignore those areas or more of a reason to do the complete opposite. This is precisely the point of the detractors of the current eastern alignment of the CPEC.
The complaints of important political players from Balochistan and KP should not be brushed under the carpet. The federal government is seriously ill-advised to call the detractors of the current alignment of the CPEC enemies of development in the country as that will only aggravate their reaction. Similarly, statements by federal ministers about both the eastern and western alignments being part of the CPEC are not much helpful either as they only add to the already abundant confusion about the CPEC.
The opponents of the current alignment, on the other hand, will have to realise that the federal government has its limitations in accommodating their demands. The Karakoram Highway will be connected with the rest of the country through existing and new networks of motorways. The groundbreaking of the first leg of the Burhan-Mansehra motorway was performed by the prime minister last year. It will be connected with the existing Peshawar-Lahore motorway. Work on the Lahore-Karachi motorway, which will connect Lahore with Karachi via Khanewal, Multan, Sukkur, Khairpur and Dadu, has already started.
The Lahore-Multan section of the motorway has been nearly completed, while land has been acquired for the Multan-Sukkur and Sukkur-Dadu sections. There is an existing motorway (called M-7) between Dadu and Karachi which will be connected with the new Multan-Dadu motorway. Now all this road network cannot simply be pulled out and put some place else. These ongoing projects will have to be completed now – whether detractors like it or not.
There appears to be a way to accommodate the demands of the opponents though, and that is the railway. According to the CPEC, the Karachi-Peshawar railway track is supposed to be upgraded at an estimated cost of $3.7 billion. While not an insignificant project, it would just be upgrading an existing railway line and complementing the motorways network that is being constructed under the CPEC. Gwadar might be connected with this railway line, but no agreement has been signed about it yet. The silver lining here is that the upgrade of Karachi-Peshawar railway line project is still in the feasibility stage and not halfway done like the motorways projects under the CPEC.
So why not connect Gwadar inland via a railway line instead; and that too via the Quetta-Zhob-D I Khan route? Once operational, Gwadar would be in serious need of a rail link with the rest of the country; therefore, it should take priority over upgrading an existing railway line for Karachi, which could only be in need of improved efficiency to utilise its full potential.
On the other hand, connecting Gwadar with the already operational Jacobabad-Quetta railway line would provide it with a much needed inland rail link and would also provide a few more marginalised areas of Balochistan some economic opportunity. The abandoned Quetta-Zhob railway line could be revived, and extended all the way up to D I Khan from where it could veer east and connect with the existing railway network from Bhakkar to Attock or go straight north towards Bannu, Kohat, and Peshawar with the construction of a new rail link. These decisions are for railway engineering experts to make.
The point is that if there is a possibility of making such a railway line operational, it needs to be seriously looked into. For all our security-conscious observers, this might sound like a long shot but this exactly is the caveat in the suggestion that it would put the ball in the court of the provincial governments of Balochistan and KP for ensuring security of the project on the way to its completion as well as later on during its operation.
Since they would be getting this on their own demand, the two provincial governments would want to push their respective governments hard on ensuring its security. The burden of making it happen will thus be shifted from the federal to the provincial governments of the two concerned provinces. The road network east of Indus and the railway line west of it could be an effective way to get out of the controversies surrounding this project which is of immense national and regional importance.
The writer is a research analyst at the Institute of Regional Studies, Islamabad.