A newly inaugurated, allegedly state-of-the-art international airport in one of Pakistan’s most restive regions appears to have no significant plane traffic in it since its first arrival in late January, multiple reports revealed this week, and has left locals confused and concerned for what it means about their future.
The New Gwadar International Airport is located in Balochistan, home to a separatist terror group and a port that the Chinese Communist Party has identified as critical to its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Pakistan is one of the most enthusiastic participants in the BRI, a global debt trap scheme in which China ensnares poor countries into its control using predatory loans, and has its own wing of the BRI named after it: the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
The government of Pakistan has steadfastly supported the development of CPEC with the exception of the term of former Prime Minister Imran Khan, a radical Islamist populist who dramatically cut the BRI budget in his government, although not without paying lip service to China’s alleged wisdom and development foresight. It has faced tremendous challenges to finance BRI projects and significant security problems, particularly in Gwadar, where the separatist Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) has made Chinese citizens a target.
The New Gwadar International Airport is estimated to have cost Pakistan $240 million in Chinese financing to build.
Islamabad went ahead with officially opening the airport in October 2024, anyway, and it welcomed its first flight on January 21. The Indian newspaper Hindustan Times reported on Tuesday, expanding on earlier coverage from the Associated Press (AP), that the airport appears to get almost no use, describing it as the home of “ghost terminals” and seemingly no airplanes.
“The city continues to struggle with basic infrastructure issues, including unreliable electricity and a shortage of clean water, while the airport’s large capacity seems unnecessary for the area’s small population,” it observed.
The AP, visiting Gwadar, found the locals confused about the project at best, and alarmed at their potential displacement or colonization at worst.
“An airport with a 400,000 passenger capacity isn’t a priority for the city’s 90,000 people,” the agency observed. “People are on edge; activists claim there are forced disappearances and torture, which the government denies.”
Claims that the project created “local” jobs have gone unproven and locals lament that the airport has nothing to do with them.
“The port has been around for 20 years and now the international airport has been constructed, but not one person from Gwadar has been employed there … not even as a watchman,” one man, Abdul Ghafoor Hoth of the Balochistan Awami Party, told the AP.
The Chinese government promoted the BRI as a way for Pakistan to eradicate terrorist violence, particularly radical Islamic terrorism. In Balochistan, the growing Chinese presence, and accompanying Pakistani military operations, appeared to have inspired a new wave of terrorism against Chinese colonialism. When the U.S. State Department designated the BLA a terrorist organization, it listed several attacks targeting Chinese nationals by the group, including “a suicide attack in August 2018 that targeted Chinese engineers in Balochistan, a November 2018 attack on the Chinese consulate in Karachi, and a May 2019 attack against a luxury hotel in Gwadar, Balochistan.”
The BLA continued to attack Chinese targets in subsequent years, including Chinese outposts unrelated to the BRI. In one of the most shocking such attacks, a female suicide bomber identified as Shari Baloch attacked the Confucius Institute at the University of Karachi in April 2022, killing four people, three of them Chinese nationals. The BLA took responsibility for the attack; Confucius Institutes are academic centers the Chinese government uses to spread communist ideology.
The opening of the New Gwadar International Airport fell victim to security complications, as well. On October 6, 2024, just as officials had planned to inaugurate the project, terrorists detonated an improvised explosive device in Karachi, in an attack directly targeting a convoy carrying Chinese workers arriving in Pakistan. The bombing killed two Chinese citizens and injured several others.
The attack outraged the Chinese government, which blamed the BLA for the attack and demanded Islamabad “conduct a thorough investigation of the attack … severely punish the perpetrators … [and] take practical and effective measures to ensure the safety of Chinese citizens, institutions and projects in Pakistan.”
Locals speaking to the AP complained that, in the aftermath of the attack, Gwadar has seen an influx of Pakistani military officials who harass locals in an attempt to prevent further attacks.
This photo taken on Sept. 14, 2024 shows an interior view of the empty New Gwadar International Airport in Gwadar, Pakistan. (Ahmad Kamal/Xinhua via Getty Images)
“The city is a jumble of checkpoints, barbed wire, troops, barricades, and watchtowers,” AP said of Gwadar. “Roads close at any given time, several days a week, to permit the safe passage of Chinese workers and Pakistani VIPs.”
“We are asked to prove our identity, who we are, where we have come from,” one local lamented. “We are residents. Those who ask should identify themselves as to who they are.”
Pakistan held an inauguration ceremony for the airport “virtually” in October following the convoy bombing. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif attended the virtual ceremony alongside Chinese Prime Minister Li Qiang and celebrated the airport as “another gift from China.”
A month after that ceremony, the Pakistan Express Tribune reported that the Pakistan government had no plan for commercializing the airport to welcome airlines or to develop businesses such as restaurants and other stops within the airport for passengers.
Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal reportedly issued an irate statement chastising the Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority (PCAA) and Pakistan Airports Authority (PAA) for apparently doing little to ensure the airport be functional a month after its “inauguration.”
“The government’s vision is to establish the airport as a central point for long-haul flights,” the newspaper reported. “However, essential passenger facilities, such as food outlets, baggage wrapping, car parking, lounges, and transportation, remain underdeveloped.”
The airport did not accept an arriving flight until next January. A Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flight arrived from Karachi on January 20 carrying 46 passengers and was hailed as a tremendous advance by Sharif’s government, which insisted that the airport would help in “connecting Pakistan to global markets and facilitating trade, tourism, and economic development.”
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