UNZ: 21-08-2024,
- China is frustrated with Pakistan’s inability to protect Chinese workers on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which has slowed progress due to violence and instability.
- Pakistan has launched an anti-terrorism campaign targeting the Pakistani Taliban (TTP), but tensions with Afghanistan complicate efforts to secure the region.
- Central Asia is developing alternative trade routes, like the trans-Afghan railway and the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), to bypass Pakistan if instability persists.
The Communist Party of China is officially atheist but China’s premier, Li Qiang, recently had a “come to Jesus” meeting with Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif.
China is frustrated by Pakistan’s inability to protect Chinese workers on the $62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a key part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Aside from killing Chinese citizens, the violence has contributed to CPEC’s slow rollout in a country that needs more electricity, more clean water, more good roads, and, well, more everything, but is “out of friends and out of money,” according to The Economist.
In response to China’s scolding, Pakistan unveiled an anti-terrorism campaign to suppress the Pakistani Taliban, the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), an ally of the Afghan Taliban and responsible for 700 attacks that killed 1000 people in 2023. The TTP operates partly from Afghan territory so Pakistan will have to attack TTP hideouts on Afghan soil at a time when relations are smarting from Islamabad’s 2023 expulsion of over 540,000 Afghan refugees.