Pakistan army, Pasni port, and a sell-out to America

It makes little strategic and commercial sense for Washington to invest ina project in Balochistan. For the transactional US president, the numbers just don’t add up. They look even worse now as the war at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border heats up

- Tara Kartha

The new strategic gossip around the block, and there’s plenty of it when it comes to Pakistan, is the reported offer of the port of Pasni to the US to build it up asa route to secure critical minerals.

A report in The Financial Times does, however, say this idea is yet to be pitched off cially to the White House, but is being dis cussed with businessmen, a route that Paki stan army chief Asim Munir has used successfully in getting US President Donald Trump's attention.

All of this needs a little disaggregating to make sense of a deal that Pakistani officials are now trying to backtrack on, in an effort to appease China. As a war threatens on the Afghan border despite the current tenuous ceasefire, and the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Paki stan (TLP), a far-right populist political party, rampages across major cities, Paki stan’s desperation for a little handholding is intense.

The apparent reason for offering the port and developing it at a reported cost of some $1.2 billion through federal and US-backed funds is for shipping out critical minerals.

That deal, signed between US Strategic Met als (USSM) and Pakistan's army-run Fron tier Works Organization (FWO), is worth just $500 million, an amount that an earlier dictator, General Ziaul Haq, would have called peanuts, especially since it would entail Pakistan spending at least half of the total estimated costs of 3.8 billion Pakistani rupees.

It’s doubtful if Pakistan can afford to pay even half that figure. Nor presumably would a commercial enterprise want to pay up for something worth a quarter of that. But there are other aspects at work.

First, the USSM director has been quoted as saying that he had heard of Pasni and spoken to port officials from Karachi and Gwa dar. His company also wants to set up arefinery in Pakistan.