Former cricket champion Imran Khan, now Pakistan’s prime minister, is playing his toughest game. Days ago he spoke on the phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin of the Pakistan Stream Gas Pipeline Project and of collaboration in the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization), but the line from the United States remains silent (“Joe Biden has not called me, what reason would there be ? “). Beijing, the fourth element of the “Troika Plus” for peace in Afghanistan, risks becoming the most serious problem to be managed, moreover, at home.
Beijing is a strategic asset for Islamabad
China is a strategic asset to give stability to the country and the region, especially now that Kabul, in the hands of the Taliban, has plunged back into chaos, and in 50 years of diplomatic relations celebrated on 21 May last, the superpower has been the benefactor of the economy of Pakistan.
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But Imran Khan is sitting now more than ever on a powder keg, at the crossroads of opposing extremisms, in the port of Gwadar, in the backward region of Balochistan, the attacks of the independence activists of the BLA (Balochistan Liberation Army) have started again and Islamabad accuses India, always, to support them economically by supplying them with weapons.
The most violent was that of November 2018 at the Chinese consulate in Karachi. In April, however, the Beijing ambassador’s hotel was targeted. Suicide attacks in recent days have killed two children in Gwadar, while the fury of the locals has lashed out against the Chinese accused of fraudulent fishing and of cutting off the water of the port, which has remained dry.
It happens in Gwadar, precisely in what is considered the flagship of the Chinese Belt & Road initiative and the point of arrival on the sea of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), under attack by the Balochistan terrorists.