BLOG
June 21st, 2017
Via Future Directions International, a look at China’s decision to back Pakistan’s development of the North Indus River Cascade (NIRC), which involves building five dams in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK):
Back in May of this year, China pledged to back Pakistan’s development of the North Indus River Cascade (NIRC), which involves building five dams in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). China pledged to invest US$50 billion in the Cascade Project and a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed during the Belt and Road Initiative conference back in May. The project was discussed in Beijing at the National Energy Agency and it was decided that China’s Three Gorges Corporation would spearhead the construction of the five dams. This month, Pakistan’s Planning Minister, Ahsan Iqbal, in an interview with Reuters, said that work on the Diamer-Basha dam, the biggest dam in the project and running through PoK, will begin next financial year. In March 2017, India announced it would fast-track US$15 billion worth of hydro projects in Kashmir.
Comment
In March this year, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi fast-tracked hydropower projects worth US$15 billion in Kashmir, defying Pakistani concerns that the dams would limit the flow of water from rivers into Pakistan. Approval for the dams had lagged for years, but Pakistan’s inability to curb terrorist attacks in Kashmir originating from Pakistan pushed Modi to advance six hydropower projects in the space of three months. Pakistani policymakers, forever fixated with India, were compelled to counter India with their own share of decisiveness. Two months later, Pakistan announced that China had promised to finance the five dams that make up the NIRC and a month after this announcement, declared that the largest dam of the project, located in PoK, would start construction in 2018.
Curiously, Pakistan’s thinking behind the development of the NIRC has resonances with its nuclear program. Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, elected in 1971, inherited a war-ravage economy and a desperate Pakistan looking for a new political, cultural and economic future. Despite Pakistan’s economic inability to support a nuclear weapons programme, Bhutto famously declared: ‘if India builds the bomb, we will eat grass or leaves, even go hungry, but we will get our own’. The book “Eating Grass: The Making of the Pakistani Bomb”, by Feroz Khan, outlines that international efforts to prevent Pakistan from acquiring a nuclear bomb only emboldened Pakistan’s scientific community and the country as a whole. Pakistan, above all else, valued becoming a self-sufficient nuclear power whose weapons programme was a Pakistani product, albeit with some help from foreign partners. Acquiring a bomb, apart from addressing its security concerns, was meant to show India that Pakistan was prepared to dedicate what economic resources it had and sacrifice short-term prosperity to stay on par with its neighbour. Pakistan has, and will continue to, demonstrate its resolve and strength by paradoxically increasing its own economic vulnerability; Pakistan’s nuclear programme has been a way for the country to show its neighbour that no matter how much India attempts to outstrip Pakistan, Pakistan will have no problem sacrificing resources necessary to stay abreast.
The NIRC project is, to an extent, similar to Pakistan’s nuclear thinking. Though the dam projects are expected to generate thousands of megawatts of power, reports reveal that the NIRC will actually reduce Pakistan’s food and water security. The NIRC project is an extremely costly one, but if Pakistan is to have any chance of countering India’s damming movements, then once again, a construction feat equal or greater than India’s, that at the same time demonstrates a willingness to sacrifice, is needed. The fact that, at least in the short term, Pakistani agriculture and river flow will be jeopardised paradoxically exhibits strength. Pakistan’s economy is one of the most water-dependent in the world, yet the country is one of the most water-starved (the biggest sector in the economy, agriculture, consumes 90 per cent of water supplies). Climate change (and here) will reduce food and water security further.
Pakistan is prepared to make huge short-term domestic sacrifices to ensure the country does not fall behind India. Even though the country is one of the most water-stressed in the world, a damming project that possibly exacerbates this further will demonstrate Pakistan’s strength as a country. The dams will bring benefits, but a foreign policy centred on India that uses sacrifice as a way of signalling strength will not bring long term growth. The dams may check India, but the sacrifices to the environment, food and water security ensure that is all Pakistan gets.