Black Hole of The North

Nawaz Sharif’s ‘pivot to kashmir’ isn’t random. It is a calculated move in the new great game as India and Pakistan jostle for position, and Gilgit-Baltistan becomes a vital Chinese pawn.

- Wajahat S. Khan

The status of Gilgit-Baltistan (G-B) in the grand scheme of the Pakistani state is, for lack of a better term, a black hole. Since 1947, the territory’s position has been compromised by the Islamic republic’s desire to exercise power and control in an on-again, off-again cycle that has been linked to Pakistan’s larger plans for Jammu & Kashmir. Though reforms (most recently in 2009, under Yousaf Raza Gilani’s Pakistan People’s Party administration) have taken place to grant the residents of Gilgit-Baltistan greater autonomy, the relatively peaceful region’s political structure remains predominantly in the hands of the federal government. Surely, G-B does not have the political or military wounds Balochistan has suffered. But in the new Indo-Pak dynamic of vicious bilateralism, it will continue to be used by New Delhi in a tit for tat, rightback-at-ya for Pakistan’s positioning as Kashmir heats up.

Bordering both China and Afghanistan, Gilgit-Baltistan has obvious geopolitical significance for Pakistan (and India). But as China rolls out its One Belt, One Road pilot project via the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and pursues greater economic initiatives in the region with the full cooperation of the civilians in Islamabad and the generals in Rawalpindi, the question of Gilgit-Baltistan’s constitutional status remains ambiguous. Will its residents be granted Pakistani citizenship? Will the region itself be granted provincial status? Or, is it merely an economic pawn, exploited to its full potential by neighbouring countries, and picked up and dropped according to the whims of the central government?

NAWAZ 2.0 AND THE BITTER NEW BILATERALISM