Plagued by recurring security issues, Beijing’s more than a decade old ambitious China-Pakistan Economic Corridor [CPEC] project suffered yet another setback last week when a suicide bomber rammed his explosive laden vehicle into a convoy carrying Chinese engineers working on the Dasu Hydro electric project near Besham city in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa [KP] province. In this attack, five Chinese and one Pakistani national lost their lives in this attack.

Coming hard on heels of suicide attacks on the Turbat air base and Gwadar port, this incident has once exposed the woeful inadequacy of the security arrangements that increases vulnerability of Chinese nationals working on CPEC projects. This is because the latest attack isn’t the first time that Chinese nationals working on the Dasu Dam project have been targeted; in 2021, an explosion in a bus carrying Chinese nationals left nine of them dead.

Overall responsibility for ensuring security of those working on CPEC as well as the assets of this project is that of the Pakistan army for which it also has a host of paramilitaries as well as intelligence and law enforcement agencies under its command.

In September 2016, Rawalpindi created an additional force [34th Light Infantry Division] exclusively for providing protection to Chinese nationals working on CEPC. However, when this 15,000 strong mammoth force [commonly referred to as Special Security Division or SSD] was unable to provide the requisite degree of security, the Pakistan army created yet another similar sized SSD in 2019.

Surprisingly, despite putting a whopping 30,000 soldiers [along with several others] on the job of ensuring safety of Chinese nationals working on CPEC projects, instead of showing discernable decline, there’s been a phenomenal spike in both the intensity and frequency of attacks. This clearly indicates that armed groups are giving the Pakistan army more than a run for their money.

Islamabad has tried every trick in the book to water down its own security lapses by blaming foreign “hostile agencies” and at times has........

© Eurasia Review