Last year, I had the opportunity to visit Pakistan’s embassy in Beijing, with journalists from my country. There, the then Pakistan’s ambassador to China, Moinul Haq, had a lot to say about the port town of Gwadar.

While responding to questions, he said there is a romance for Gwadar in China, and that Gwadar is increasingly discussed with Chinese officials during his conversations. According to Chinese officials, he said, Gwadar will be a second Shenzhen, which is among the busiest container ports in the world.

I do not know about the romance, but one thing is clear: both Pakistani and Chinese officials have discussed Gwadar a lot ever since the announcement of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a multibillion-dollar project worth at least $62 billion.

But notwithstanding the fact that it is labelled as the jewel in the crown of the CPEC, one of the major components of Beijing’s transnational Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Gwadar’s ground realities paint quite a different picture. The damage caused by recent torrential rains speaks volumes about the abandonment of the residents of Gwadar in the overall development of the port town.

Despite being labelled the crown jewel of CPEC, Gwadar’s infrastructure and planning shows the same mistakes as other Pakistani cities, evidenced by the devastation caused by recent torrential rains

POOR PLANNING

For instance, the developments taking place in Gwadar are all about road construction. Roads such as the Marine Drive Road and the Gwadar Eastbay Expressway, to name just a few, have been constructed in the hammer-head shaped port town and areas surrounding it. Most of these roads have been constructed at locations that are elevated from the inhabited areas.

Gwadar is surrounded by the sea and these roads often block the natural flow of water from the inhabited areas when it rains, since there are no sewerage and drainage systems to transport the rainwater into the sea. This is why Gwadar is flooded whenever it rains excessively, and this is what happened in the last week of February, when it rained for around 30 hours. Officials said the district received around 180 millimetres of rainfall during that time.

Akbar Baloch, who lives in the Faqir Colony area of the city, echoes the complaints made by most of the residents of this port town. He wryly dismisses the grandiloquent claims about Gwadar’s development. “We live in a ditch and lack basic amenities,” he tells Eos.

The rains were a stark reminder of the shortcomings of the city’s infrastructure, as urban flooding wreaked havoc, with a large number of kutcha [mud-brick] houses washed away, he says. According to official sources, around 450 such houses were completely destroyed, while another 8,200 houses across the district were partially damaged in the flooding.

Most of the residents of Faqir Colony, including Akbar’s family, have shifted to safer locations. Akbar’s house, too, is still filled with water, with his children living with his relatives.

“We continue to remain at the mercy of God,” he says, adding that the latest calamity was yet another reminder of the neglect faced by Gwadar. “We haven’t had any assistance, except a little help in the form of tankers to pump out water from our houses,” he says.

Another resident, Bilal Baloch, has a similar story to tell. The walls of his house have been destroyed and his house remains flooded to this day. “My room, where I am living, is cracked,” he tells Eos. Like others, he has sent his children to some other safe locations, to live with relatives. “We already have regular power outages and water supply issues. This is likely to make the situation worse,” he adds.

SKEWED DEVELOPMENT

The fisherfolk community of Gwadar have, in the past, protested against the poor planning and skewed development, including against the construction of the Eastbay Expressway, which has since been completed at a cost of $168 million.

The protests were against the construction of these roads as the original plans would have blocked the fisherfolk’s access to the sea. As a result, Chinese officials allowed three passageways. It is these three passages that provided an outlet for the rainwater to make its way to the sea.

“It seems like the interest of the government and the Chinese in Gwadar are only commercial, except giving a little benefit to the locals in terms of vocational training and constructing a hospital in the town,” Gwadar-based social activist Nasir Rahim Sohrabi tells Eos. “That is why the torrential rains wreaked havoc in Gwadar.”

Following the rains, Nasir has been visiting different areas of Gwadar in order to assess the extent of the damage. He says his findings suggest that the local people have been ignored in the development of Gwadar and the CPEC-associated projects. “Despite the mantra of development, the main town in Gwadar still does not have any infrastructure to speak of,” he adds.

COSMETIC SOLUTIONS

As happens in the wake of most disasters, the government announced a relief package, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Balochistan Chief Minister Sarfraz Bugti visited the port town.

Similarly, Chinese officials say they have donated relief supplies to Gwadar. The Chinese Consul General in Karachi, Yang Yundog, tells Eos that Gwadar is significant to the overall CPEC, which is why they have been donating to the calamity-hit area.

“We have invested a lot in Gwadar under the CPEC projects, which can benefit the locals,” he says. “There are some locals who complain about the CPEC. However, the CPEC has generally benefitted the locals.”

But locals have mostly decried this cosmetic approach, calling for long-term solutions as opposed to reactive solutions such as compensatory packages.

Dr Hafeez Jamali is a Quetta-based social anthropologist who wrote his thesis on Gwadar. It was titled A Harbour in the Tempest: Megaprojects, Identity and the Politics of Place in Gwadar, Pakistan.

While speaking to Eos in Quetta, he explains in detail as to why Gwadar gets inundated when it rains. He points out that, on average, Gwadar receives very little rain, as it is situated in one of the arid regions of the province. “This is why neither the people nor the government are mentally prepared when it rains a lot, and it becomes a challenge, and the recent torrential rains are a case in point,” he says.

Dr Jamali explains that Gwadar is a small sliver of land, and most of the constructions, including by those who live there, have been on the natural routes of the waters. “There are no channels for the rainwater to find its way to the sea,” he says.

At the same time, the development potential of Gwadar has resulted in an influx of people to the port city from across the district and elsewhere in the country. “That is why there has been an increase of population in the port town,” he says. The 2023 census puts Gwadar district’s population at 300,000, with more than 60 percent living in the urban areas.

The infrastructure and facilities have failed to keep pace with the population’s needs, says Hafeez. “Naturally, as it rains, the water flows into the sea from the west to the east. [The construction] has choked the natural exits of water, and the population adjacent to the Eastbay Expressway is dense, and this further chokes the flow of rainwater to the sea,” he explains.

The lack of proper urban planning in Gwadar mirrors the fate of most of Pakistan’s cities, which have often deteriorated and faced similar natural calamities for the very same reasons. Nothing is ever learnt from past mistakes, it seems.

Akbar Baloch is unsure about the situation changing anytime soon. He says the residents have become immune to such calamities and have lost faith in promises and claims made by officials — Pakistani and otherwise — about the future of this ‘crown jewel’ town.

The writer is a member of staff.
X: Akbar_notezai

Published in Dawn, EOS, March 24th, 2024