Iran's Chabahar vs Pakistan's Gwadar

[RiazHaq]

#Asia's new Great Game. #Modi #Afghanistan #India, #Pakistan #Iran #China #US #Chabahar #CPEC #CentralAsia


http://www.dawn.com/news/1264242

By Munir Akram


With a population of only around 50 million, Central Asia will not become a huge market for manufactured goods. It will be twice as expensive for India to send goods to Central Asia through Chabahar than it would be overland across Pakistan. Indian goods are thus unlikely to be competitive against Chinese products shipped overland.

Also read: Lessons from Chabahar

The strategic advantages for India are also questionable. Its influence in Afghanistan will be more dependent on Iran. Pakistan’s cooperation will continue to be essential to restoring peace in Afghanistan. Indian shipping lanes to Chabahar will be vulnerable to disruption. India’s limited influence in Central Asia will not dent that of Russia and China.

The new Great Game will increasingly revolve around China’s One Belt, One Road vision of land and sea connections between Asia, Europe and beyond. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is the first component of this ambitious project.

In comparison to the Chabahar route, the strategic and economic implications of CPEC are enormous. It will transform China from a one- to a two-ocean power; enable a part of its $4000 billion annual trade to circumvent the Malacca straits and other potential choke points in the Indian Ocean and shorten China’s supply lines to the Gulf, West Asia and Africa. For these reasons, if no other, China has a vital stake in Pakistan’s strategic stability and socioeconomic development. The Chinese commitment of $46bn for CPEC projects is but the first instalment of the massive capital which China is prepared to deploy in Pakistan.

Instead of being distracted by the moves of its adversaries, Pakistan must remain focused on the implementation of CPEC. This strategic enterprise should not be allowed to be stalled or delayed by external pressure or internal politics, inefficiency or corruption. It would be wise to create a separate and independent CPEC Authority which can be a ‘one-stop-shop’ entrusted with achieving CPEC’s enormous potential for Pakistan’s development. CPEC projects must go beyond infrastructure development to encompass manufacture, consumer goods, housing, health, textiles, finance and other sectors. To this end, the interaction between Pakistani and Chinese private- and public-sector companies must be actively expanded and intensified. Some of the externally imposed limitations on CPEC investment projects, such as restrictions on ‘sovereign guarantees’ for debt finance, need to be removed expeditiously.

CPEC faces threats from Pakistan and China’s adversaries. These will have to be met forcefully.

India’s opposition has been announced openly. New Delhi will continue to utilise Afghanistan as a base to destabilise Pakistan and undermine CPEC. The recent spate of attacks on Chinese workers in Pakistan is no accident. Pakistan will have to further enhance security for them and consider direct action to remove the Afghan-based threat from the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan.

Iran has assured that Chabahar is not designed to compete with Gwadar or CPEC. Pakistan and Iran can cooperate for mutual benefit: to end terrorism in Balochistan, expand trade, and construct the Iranian gas pipeline and a Gwadar-Chabahar economic corridor. However, Tehran often wants to run with the hare and hunt with the hound. Some recent events have sent disturbing signals which Pakistan cannot ignore.

To balance the growing Indo-Iranian relationship, Pakistan must maintain and reinforce its relationship with Saudi Arabia and Turkey. It would be in Pakistan’s interest to help in giving substance and form to the ‘Islamic coalition’ hastily formed by Riyadh. It should also convince the GCC states of the benefits of CPEC as a path to their closer connection with China.

America is and will remain a major player in the new Asian Great Game. ...

 

[pakdefender]

Chabahar is the new LCA

Our neighbours are master storytellers

Here are some more gems

Indians have reached the moon , they did a 'hard landing' of their probe ... in other words their probe crashed into the lunar surface and got smashed to bits ... but it was just 'hard landing' and india was shining

Indians have launched a space shuttle , on re-entry indians decided to 'just land it on the ocean' ... errmm ok , I suppose crashing into the ocean counts as 'just land it on the ocean'

 

[Odysseus]

China-Pak Economic Corridor: Why Gwadar Is An Overrated Port


SNAPSHOT

>The China-funded Gwadar port in Pakistan is unlikely to provide any meaningful economic or strategic advantage to the Chinese

>Most likely, it is only a ploy by Beijing to extract funds from the Pakistani government with tacit approval of the latter’s army

Having served in the Merchant Navy before joining the IAS, I can claim to have visited almost all the ports in the Persian Gulf, specially the oil terminals. At the height of Iran-Iraq conflict, we were picking up crude from Kharg, an Iranian island in the upper reaches of the Gulf, which is its major oil export point, just as Ras Tanura is for Saudi Arabia. So I claim an expertise in the area of analysing ports, specially from the point of view of logistics, and through my present calling, I can also now lay claim to understanding a bit of the strategic compass.

With that caveat, let us have a closer look at the frenzy which has gripped Pakistan. CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor) to them, is the panacea for all their economic ills and Gwadar is the best port in the world.

The frenzy is such that a even a reasonably sober twitter handle, @karachipost, came up with this:

Similarly, I read a piece today in The Diplomat by Muhammad Daim Fazilgiving five ridiculous reasons for the supposed superiority of Gwadar over Chabahar.

Let’s find a framework for this. What are the qualities a port needs to become a great one?

As per the Gwadar port website, it has 3 berths at present with a plan to add 3 more (a multipurpose, a grain, and an oil berth). Its projected draught is 12.5 metres with which it claims it will be able to handle 50,000 DWT (Dead Weight Tonnes, which denotes carrying capacity) vessels.

Chabahar has 10 berths already, and is expanding to include a deep water berth which would be able to handle VLCCs (Very Large Crude Carriers) of 22 m draught or more.

Let’s look at some of the other ports. Mumbai port has 26 cargo/container berths and 6 POL/chemical berths; Karachi has 12; Nhava Sheva has more than 10, and Dubai (Jebel Ali and Port Rashid), which Gwadar is supposed to be threatening commercially, has 102 berths, with VLCC POL supply terminals as well.

So we can quite clearly see that logistically, Gwadar is just a little dot.

Let’s now see the hinterland that the two ports would serve. Gwadar can have cargo headed for either Xinjiang, or for Pakistan’s internal consumption. The back of the beyond location of this port means that for a private business to switch from Karachi to Gwadar, comparable stevedoring and clearing agencies would be required along with a reliable rail link. That’s not happening any time soon. Even if the infrastructure is complete, the soft support system in a hostile terrain would remain hobbled for a long tie to come.

Comparison with Chabahar is not even warranted, as Chabahar is coming up as a transit port for all of Central Asia and Afghanistan. Muhammad Daim Fazil posits it as a port for India to access Afghanistan and Central Asia through Afghanistan. Only if he had looked at maps.

The route to Central Asia from Chabahar doesn’t have to go through Afghanistan at all. Moreover, it gives India an alternative route to Russia and the republics to its east, as well as to the 5 ex-Soviet nations. After Ukraine became independent, Odessa has come to be used less and less. Crossing the Suez has its own costs. So, the Iranian north-south corridor would be very useful for India and most south-east Asian countries. As a post on Quora said (Joseph Boyle):

“Gwadar is simply unlikely to ever be profitable. It means going an unnecessarily long, long way over the world’s highest mountains and through rebels to get to nothing - after all that you’re still separated by water. If you look at a globe and great circle routes instead of the deceptive Mercator projection, you see a direct, low, feasible route between China and the Middle East is going directly through Central Asia to Iran. Turkmenistan already has pipelines selling large volumes of gas to China, and is right next to Iran.”

Joseph Boyle On Quora

Singapore PSA found Gwadar unviable in the long run and left. China stepped in not because it found Gwadar viable, but because it looked at Pakistan as a client state and it was sure it would make Pakistan dance to its tunes. China does not even have much of a use for operating this kind of port because it is already operating a ten times larger terminal in Fujairah, UAE, just across the Gulf of Oman. China will use it only to exercise its hegemony over its willing client state.

I do not foresee a gas or oil pipeline from Gwadar to Xinjiang as a part of the CPEC, at least not yet. China is concentrating on pipelines from Kazakhastan. Its principal silk route runs via Urumqi-Kashgar-Almaty-Tashkent-Ashkabad-Tehran. From Ashkabad, Chabahar is directly connected.

So, Chabahar connects everybody to everybody. That’s the reason Iran offered a connectivity to Pakistan as well, which I am sure Pakistan would find offensive. Gwadar by comparison is just a provincial port for Pakistan over high mountains which even China would not find viable.

Another oft-repeated argument in favour of the CPEC is that it is a good strategy by China to bye-pass the Malacca choke. This makes no sense either, as China’s consumption areas lie nearly 6,000 kilometres to the east from Kashgar, the northern point of CPEC. In the event of a war, both China and Pakistan would do well to remember that Malacca straits at its narrowest choke point below Car Nicobar is 200 km wide, but the CPEC is just 75 kms away from north Kashmir - well within the range of BVR missiles, Prithvis and Brahmos. Gwadar lies directly in the line of Indian Navy, and would be the second one to be blockaded - After Karachi that is.

China would definitely factor that in its strategic calculations. The CPEC infrastructure is passing through a territory which legally belongs to India, and it would be easy for India to blockade Gwadar.

Now, let’s discuss CPEC’s economic calculations. China plans to put in $46 billion over 10 years. $34 billion would build up a power capacity of around 17,000 MW (though I have also heard figures of 7 and 10K MWs). The agreements are not on the table (so much for transparency). We don’t know whether there is any element of a grant involved. From whatever sketchy information is available, it looks like a combination of loans for road and rail infra, and power plants to be built by the Chinese for which Pakistan has given a sovereign guarantee to buy all the power produced at a fantastic rate of PKR 18 per unit (INR equivalent 11.53). Even the power plants which are going to be all thermal variety are going to be put up at a minimum of $2 billion per GW (1 GW=1000 MW).

India routinely builds its thermal power plants at less than $ 1 billion per GW. The average rate per unit on the India power trading exchange has been INR 2.50 for over a year. Bangladesh is buying 1100 MW from India at INR 6 per unit. This is a classical colony-making exercise by China, which Pakistan establishment and the Army is quite excited with.

So, it looks to me as if the CPEC is purely a marketing exercise by China to rip off some good money from Pakistan for its thermal power companies which have to dismantle their old plants in the mainland to meet the emission norms agreed to by China at the Paris meet. It gives an excuse to the Pakistan Army to rip off more money from the exchequer in the name of providing security and strengthening its occupation of Balochistan. It has got an 11 percent raise in its budget in a year in which GDP grew by 4.7 percent.

India need not even discuss this. The CPEC route passes through a treacherous terrain prone to landslides. All India needs to do is to target its missiles on N35 of Pakistan, otherwise better known as the Karakoram Highway.

So my advice to my Pakistani friends is - please don’t parade the CPEC and Gwadar to the world. It’s not your salvation, it’s your cross.

http://swarajyamag.com/world/china-pak-economic-corridor-why-gwadar-is-an-overrated-port

 

[RiazHaq]

#India and #Iran Slow to Develop #Chabahar Port as #China Builds Rival Hub at #Gwadar. #CPEC http://bloom.bg/2dHPVbw via @markets

When the leaders of India, Iran and Afghanistan gathered in Tehran in the spring for a ceremony marking India’s development of a strategic Iranian port, they recited Persian poetry and said their partnership would “alter the course of history.”
On a recent visit, roughly 13 years after India first agreed to develop the port of Chabahar, a single ship floated at the main jetty. Most of the cargo containers scattered in an asphalt lot bore the logo of the state-owned Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines. In an adjacent harbor, a dozen wooden dhows, or traditional fishing boats, bobbed in the water.
Months after the ceremony in May and pledges by India to inject $500 million into the project, the much-heralded port of Chabahar remains a sleepy outpost – as well as a shadow of the Chinese-built port of Gwadar, 100 kilometers (62 miles) to the east across Iran’s border with Pakistan.
“What you’re seeing is the problem with many of the Indian commitments abroad,” said Sameer Patil, an analyst at Gateway House, a research organization in Mumbai. “Once a prime minister makes that commitment, the parties find it difficult to move the process forward. The Indian bureaucracy takes its sweet time.”

Chabahar was supposed to be an easy win: India would bankroll a hub to rival the China-Pakistan partnership at Gwadar, Iran would get a major ocean port outside the Strait of Hormuz and spur growth in its poor eastern region, and Afghanistan would gain road and rail links to a deep-water port that could boost its war-ravaged economy. But more than a decade on, the strategic asset is languishing, even as China sinks $45 billion into the China Pakistan Economic Corridor that winds down to Gwadar.

“The slowness comes from these small things,” said Mosadeghi, who heads the economic section at Iran’s embassy in New Delhi. “Both sides want to expedite this.”
For Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chabahar could aid his goals of integrating South Asia’s economies and boosting India’s stature in the region. However, the slow pace of its development has drawn criticism.
“With China and Pakistan developing Gwadar just a few kilometers away, India cannot afford either delay or inattention to this vital port,” said Shashi Tharoor, a lawmaker with India’s opposition Congress Party and chairman of a parliamentary committee on foreign affairs.
Chabahar could be a linchpin for the region’s economy. It’s close to the western Indian ports of Kandla, Mundra and Mumbai and could help India’s farmers get cheaper access to fertilizers and other commodities from central Asia and beyond.

 

[barbarosa]

Chabahar will be easy access to Iran for CIA.

 

[Śakra]

All pakistanis who support iran should visit iran once in their life to see what type of response they get there!

Elaborate?

 

[RiazHaq]

GWADAR: First Chinese ship finally arrived at Gwadar port that is center of $46 billion China-Pakistan economic corridor (CPEC) project between Beijing and Islamabad, Samaa reported Sunday.
The project is the beginning of a journey of prosperity of Pakistan. The economic corridor is about 3000 Kilometres long consisting of highways, railways and pipelines that will connect China’s Xinjiang province to rest of the world through Pakistan’s Gwadar port.
To strengthen economic activities at the port, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has recently unveiled five developmental projects for Gwadar.
These are Free Trade Zone, Business Complex of Gwadar Port Authority, Pak-China Government Primary School Faqir Colony, Sawar and Shadikor dams and Gwadar University.
Gwadar, the nerve centre of CPEC, is fast transforming into an international city. Gwadar has the potential to become a world class sea port and a place which is not only important for Pakistan, but also for the region and the world. – Samaa

http://www.samaa.tv/economy/2016/10/first-chinese-ship-docks-at-gwadar-port/

 

[wiseone2]

GWADAR: First Chinese ship finally arrived at Gwadar port that is center of $46 billion China-Pakistan economic corridor (CPEC) project between Beijing and Islamabad, Samaa reported Sunday.
The project is the beginning of a journey of prosperity of Pakistan. The economic corridor is about 3000 Kilometres long consisting of highways, railways and pipelines that will connect China’s Xinjiang province to rest of the world through Pakistan’s Gwadar port.
To strengthen economic activities at the port, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has recently unveiled five developmental projects for Gwadar.
These are Free Trade Zone, Business Complex of Gwadar Port Authority, Pak-China Government Primary School Faqir Colony, Sawar and Shadikor dams and Gwadar University.
Gwadar, the nerve centre of CPEC, is fast transforming into an international city. Gwadar has the potential to become a world class sea port and a place which is not only important for Pakistan, but also for the region and the world. – Samaa

http://www.samaa.tv/economy/2016/10/first-chinese-ship-docks-at-gwadar-port/

Turning a water parched place into major port is a questionable exercise

 

[GumNaam]

Turning a water parched place into major port is a questionable exercise

 

[wiseone2]

View attachment 344119

there is a reason 25 million Pakistanis live in Karachi and 185,000 live in Gwadar

 

[GumNaam]

there is a reason 25 million Pakistanis live in Karachi and 185,000 live in Gwadar

People move back and forth.

 

[wiseone2]

People move back and forth.

figure out why people live in karachi and no one lives in Gwadar

 

[GumNaam]

figure out why people live in karachi and no one lives in Gwadar

Because all the investments were in karachi up until now.

 

[Moonlight]

figure out why people live in karachi and no one lives in Gwadar

Pathetic argument.

Soon you will see businessman moving there. After starting a mega project, it requires so much time to work like a major city. Karachi is backbone of Pakistan and now Gawader will also be the backbone of Pakistan's economy.

 

[kabooter_maila]

http://www.riazhaq.com/2016/05/comparing-irans-chabahar-and-pakistans.html

Chabahar port in Iran is only about 100 miles from Gwadar port in Pakistan. Both are natural deep sea ports in the Arabian sea.


Gwadar Extends into Deep Sea with East & West Bays



Eastern Half of Gwadar Port


Gwadar port's planned capacity when it is completed will be 300 to 400 million tons of cargo annually. It is comparable to the capacity of all of India's ports combined annual capacity of 500 million tons of cargo today. It is far larger than the 10-12 million tons cargo handling capacity planned for Chabahar.


Completed Gwadar Berths & Cranes



To put Gwadar's scale in perspective, let's compare it with the largest US port of Long Beach which handles 80 million tons of cargo, about a quarter of what Gwadar will handle upon completion of the project. Gawadar port will be capable of handling the world's largest container ships and massive oil tankers.




Gawadar port is being built in Pakistan by the Chinese as part of the ambitious $46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) that will eventually serve as Hong Kong West for growing Chinese trade with the Middle East and Europe. CPEC will also enable Pakistan to bypass Afghanistan to trade with Central Asia through China across China's borders with Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.


Gwadar Port Authority Building

Chabahar is ostensibly an Indian effort to build a port in Iran to bypass Pakistan for India's trade with landlocked Afghanistan and other Central Asian states. Prime Minister Modi has committed $500 million investment in Chabahar, a tiny fraction of the Chinese commitment for Gwadar. A trilateral agreement was recently signed in Tehran by Indian Prime Minister Modi, Iranian President Rouhani and Afghan President Ghani.

Trade with Afghanistan through Afghan-Iran border in the West will probably remain a pipe dream given that 1) most of Afghan population lives in east and south close to the border with Pakistan and 2) Afghanistan has very poor infrastructure making it very difficult to move cargo across land from west to east and south of the country.

Pakistan suspects that India's real objective in Iran is to locate its intelligence agents under the cover of Chabahar port construction workers to sabotage China-Pakistan Economic Economic Corridor (CPEC) and support Baloch insurgency to destabilize Pakistan. These suspicions were strengthened when Indian spy Kulbhushan Yadav, operating under the fake name Husain Mubarak Patel, was arrested in Balochistan in March this year. Yadav confessed he was operating as an undercover RAW agent from his base in Chabahar, Iran.

If Iran does nothing to stop Indian covert activities from its soil against Pakistan, Iran-Pakistan relations could suffer irreparable harm. Efforts to sabotage CPEC will not please China either, and the Chinese are far more important to Iran as trading partners than India. This should give pause to hardline anti-Pakistan sectarian elements in Tehran.

Here's a video about Gwadar Port Project:

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Gwadar as Hong Kong West

China-Pakistan Industrial Corridor

Indian Spy Kulbhushan Yadav's Confession

Ex Indian Spy Documents RAW Successes Against Pakistan

Saleem Safi of GeoTV on Gwadar

Pakistan FDI Soaring with Chinese Money for CPEC


http://www.riazhaq.com/2016/05/comparing-irans-chabahar-and-pakistans.html

Things are settling down now. Chabahar is going to work as satellite port for Gwadar port. Chabahar is not deep water sea port in any case. Only small ships can sail there. Indians are assumed to have been dropped on Iranian feet. Iran will actively participate in CPEC.