Two Chinese engineers and a Pakistani killed in an attack near Karachi airport

Two Chinese workers and a Pakistani national were killed in a car bomb attack near Karachi airport an hour before midnight. Eleven people were injured in the blast, including another Chinese employee and four Pakistani security officials.

The blast, which hit seven vehicles, was claimed by the self-proclaimed Balochistan Liberation Army as part of its campaign to weaken the alliance between Chinese interests and the Pakistan government. In reality, the attack took place not in Balochistan but in the neighboring province of Sindh, where the Port Qasim Thermal Power Plant, where the victims worked, is also located.

The explosion was so big that it caused rumblings at Karachi Airport and forced the cancellation of any flights. In fact, officials tried to conceal the purpose of the attack for hours, while also pointing to the fuel tank as a possible accidental cause of the incident. An email sent by the Beluchi Armed Organization to the media put an end to the fabrications.

Chinese representatives in Islamabad and Karachi have demanded from the Pakistani government a “thorough investigation” into the terrorist act and “exemplary punishment” for its perpetrators, as well as proper security for its citizens. Last March, there were two major attacks against Chinese investments in Pakistan. One of them, an armed attack on the Port Authority of Gwadar, a Chinese-built Baluchi port that serves as a natural exit from the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

sugar manufacturing

Port Qasim Thermal Power Plant is funded by China and Qatar

A few days later, hundreds of kilometers further north, another explosion occurred in a bus on the same New Silk Road, killing five Chinese engineers working on the construction of the dam and their Pakistani driver. Same script, different actors, far away from Balochistan.

The Port Qasim Thermal Power Plant, now under target, has Qatari financial participation of 49%, but construction and maintenance is carried out by Power China (the Asian giant, one of the largest state-owned power companies). 51%. The region is also home to three nuclear reactors, two of which have been built by Chinese companies in recent years. There is a chronic problem of power cuts in Karachi, the country’s largest city. On the other hand, Pakistan is the only Muslim country with a nuclear arsenal.

Balochistan, rich in gas fields, is Pakistan’s largest and most depopulated province. The separatist movement became active again a few decades ago during the rule of General Musharraf. Since then, there have been at least fifteen attacks against Chinese interests in Balochistan or the neighboring metropolis of Karachi, one of which in 2022 killed three Chinese teachers from a Confucius Institute.

In any case, those who have suffered the brunt are the Pakistani security forces. Last August was the bloodiest month in the last six years, with 254 deaths due to terrorist attacks in Balochistan alone. It must be said that the Pakistan Army and its intelligence agencies have also crossed all red lines with endless arrests and extrajudicial executions in that province.

Baluchi nationalists, for their part, have killed about 250 civilians over the past two decades for being immigrants or Punjabi officials – like most Pakistanis – and for being confirmed or probable “thieves”. Smuggling, mainly of heroin and irregular immigrants to Europe – via Iran and Turkey – is the main source of income for the main Balochi guerrillas. However, they do not miss the opportunity to declare that they accept financing from anyone, including India.

There was a particularly surreal moment at the beginning of the year, when Pakistan and Iran exchanged shells, but not against their respective armies, but against Baluchi armed organizations taking refuge in the neighboring country. The Baluchi, like the Kurds, speak a language of the Iranian family similar to Persian and are culturally even more distant from the rest of the country than the Pashtuns – the Baluchis are the majority in the capital, Quetta – which has an Indic matrix.

China-Pakistan corridor

Balochistan is China’s natural outlet to the Arabian Sea through Gwadar.

Tensions between Israel and Iran once again highlight China’s dependence on Middle Eastern crude oil. It is estimated that Beijing has acquired 87% of Iranian crude at prices even lower than Russian oil, ignoring US sanctions, which has greatly increased Beijing and New Delhi’s order books since the invasion of Ukraine. Is more important.

In the medium term, the ports of Gwadar – in Pakistan – and of Sittwe – in Burma – should provide relief to the People’s Republic of China in the event of a possible blockade of the Strait of Malacca – if its tensions with the Republic of China worsen –, from Singapore to the US. Controlled by the Navy.

Meanwhile, in Burma, a civil war has intensified between the armed forces and dozens of ethnic guerrillas and narco-guerrillas – Protestant Christians, Buddhists and Chinese – since a coup three and a half years ago. Last August, another coup in neighboring Bangladesh freed a large number of Islamist prisoners, including many convicted of terrorist attacks. Something that in the medium term could reactivate the jihadist organizations of the persecuted Bengali minority in Burma (Rohingya in Bengali) and extend the fog of war to the Sittwe port and its gas pipelines that go directly to China.

Because of all these potholes, the result of terrorism, corruption and foreign interference, electric vehicles are proving to be a very quick – and irreversible – energy relief for China. Its open commitment to the electric car, as can be seen, is not only a result of its environmental concerns, although it has made a great contribution to improving the air quality in its cities, which was not breathable a decade ago. . Today, more than half of its utilities are electric or hybrid.

It should be added that Karachi has been the graveyard of foreign engineers on other occasions. In 2002, an attack in front of the Sheraton Hotel killed eleven French engineers from the DCN company inside the bus they were traveling in. The blast was blamed on Al Qaeda, but French justice had established years earlier that it was probably organized by the ISI, Pakistani military intelligence. This would be an act of retaliation because France had stopped paying the agreed secret commission for the sale of warships to Saudi Arabia when Jacques Chirac became president. During the trial it was revealed that this commission of 18% was round trip and at least a portion may have been used to finance candidate Edouard Balladur when his campaign manager was Nicolas Sarkozy.