China's Quest For Oil Moves To Central Asia

by Franz Schurmann

(PNS) -- Before the end of this month, Chinese prime minister Wen Jiabao will have gone to the once sleepy Pakistani fishing village of Gwadar, not far from the Iranian border. He will inaugurate one of the biggest energy projects in the world.

Gwadar is not far from areas in Pakistan where Al Qaeda activities have been on the rise. Already, Chinese engineers are being attacked in Gwadar. Some analysts worry that growing scarcity of resources will spark more warfare around the world. But China's need for oil and its willingness to make deals with whomever has it could be a calming influence globally.

China is financing another huge energy project with substantial piles of capital in the Persian Gulf region, an area that the U.S. Navy dominates. Gwarda is just outside the oil-rich Persian Gulf. China might feel nervous about U.S. bases springing up in Central and West Asia, and want to safeguard an access to the Persian Gulf through Gwadar. In that sense, China and the United States are hostile to each other. But if America is also helping protect Chinese engineers and workers, then they are "friendlies," like coalition partners in Iraq.

Washington, Beijing and Islamabad are all mum about who is hostile to whom. The reason is that both America and China are hostile to each other in certain sectors (e.g, Taiwan) and friendly in others, as in Gwadar. And Islamabad is happy that America and China remain its long-term, powerful allies.

According to Tarique Niazi, who analyzes South Asia issues for the Jamestown Foundation think tank, the project when finished will cost an estimated at $1.16 billion. China so far has pitched in $198 million and Pakistan $50 million for the project's first phase. China also has invested another $200 million into building a coastal highway that will connect Gwadar with Pakistan's biggest port, Karachi.

On the surface, the Gwadar project seems a doomed venture. Quasi-wars are going on in Belochistan, Pakistan's most western province, in a region called the South Waziristan SW. Gwadar is not far from SW. Last year, three Chinese engineers were killed in Gwadar and then two others kidnapped, although only one was killed, suggesting the militants in the region are open to making deals.

Last year a high American official finally shed some light on what is going on in SW. John Lehman, former Secretary of the Navy said, "There is an American presence in the area [the SW], but we can't just send in troops. If we did, we could have another Vietnam, and the United States cannot afford that right now. SW is a region filled with Taliban and Al Qaeda members." He also acknowledged that Pakistan's security services also are filled with many who agree with bin Laden's beliefs and would aid him if U.S. Special Forces entered the region.

Even as the American military keeps scoring small victories in Afghanistan, the Taliban are restoring solid political networks in Afghanistan and the SW. The Taliban are ultra-nationalists, with their eyes mainly fixed on Afghanistan. But in Pakistan's SW, the Taliban gain strength from Pakistan's Pathans, who not only speak Pashto but are the same people as Afghanistan Pashtuns. In the l950s, the new state of Pakistan did not fear an attack by India so much as one from Afghanistan, aided and abetted by the Pathans, who would create a new political entity, "Pushtoonistan." What Westerners call "Al Qaeda" shares the political turf in SW with the Taliban.

Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao is going to inaugurate the Sino-Pak project in Gwadar. But he is not unaware of the Taliban. He was already a high government official in 2001, when Beijing and the Taliban signed a memorandum of understanding for economic and technical cooperation. That was announced the same day the airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center.

Now, four and a half years later, should anybody invest in the Gwadar project? There is a chance that a "yes" instead of a "no" could save the world. It doesn't take much imagination. Not long from now we are going to see angry masses at gasoline pumps. And that could lead to terrible bloodshed, because people all over the globe cannot do with without their car.

The United States knows this as well. Not long after the Taliban took over Afghanistan in 1996, a delegation of Taliban came to Houston to discuss the possibility that Texas oil and gas companies would consider building long pipelines that could carry both oil and gas from Turkmenistan. Nothing came of the Taliban-Texan talks. But the port where that oil was to be loaded into ships is none other than the deep-sea port being built in Gwadar.