Days-long protest in Pakistan’s Gwadar continue over curbs on Iran border trade

QUETTA: A protest sit-in in the southwestern Pakistani port city of Gwadar entered its 10th day on Monday, with participants calling for free trade with Iran via land and sea borders as well as uninterrupted electricity supply and access to clean drinking water.

Gwadar is a coastal town in Pakistan’s impoverished Balochistan province where China is developing a deep-sea port. Despite the largescale development work, residents of the town have for years complained of a lack of employment opportunities and basic facilities like clean drinking water and electricity.

Pakistan shares an 904-kilometer-long border with Iran via land and sea, which is used for informal trade between the two countries. Formal trade between Pakistan and Iran has been nominal due to US sanctions on Tehran, but the area is dominated by informal trade of Iranian oil, food items and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), transported through various border crossings in the Makran and Rakhshan divisions.

District Gwadar shares a sea border with Iran while Balochistan’s Kech and Panjgur districts share a land border. In the past, locals in Gwadar used boats to travel into Iran to bring home Iranian oil and food items. They crossed over into the neighboring country after showing their Pakistani national ID cards (CNICs). 

In August this year, authorities in Gwadar introduced a token system under which only registered boats, around 600, can daily cross into Iran through the Kantani Hor sea route. Locals say the new system has led to unemployment in the district as many can’t afford the tokens, which can cost up to Rs60,000 $215.

“We have been protesting for the last ten days because our people have lost their jobs since the government announced this new token system,” Houth Abdul Ghafoor, a local politician who has been leading the All-Parties Alliance protest since Dec. 13, told Arab News, describing the system as “official bribery.”

“More than three million people in Makran division are linked with border trade with Iran because we don’t have industries and other employment sources. The border restrictions are causing food and oil shortage in the coastal city.”

Jawad Ahmed Zehri, the Gwadar assistant commissioner, said the government had formalized border trade with Iran by registering boats so that all traders could benefit equally.

“Small traders are now directly benefitting from this token system as influential traders previously prevented smaller businessmen from crossing through the border,” Zehri told Arab News. “Now everyone can travel on his allotted number.”

Asked about talks between the administration and protesters, Zehri said the government would not engage with those pressurizing the government to abolish the token system.

The participants of the Gwadar sit-in said they are also protesting power and water shortages in the port city.

“We demand provision of basic facilities like education, water, electricity and job opportunities,” Maulana Hidayat-ur-Rehman, a provincial lawmaker from Gwadar, said.

Gwadar has witnessed regular days-long protests in recent years against the lack of basic amenities and alleged violations of human rights and extrajudicial killings by security agencies, who deny the charge. 

Separatists have been waging a decades-long insurgency in Balochistan, accusing the government and army of exploiting the impoverished province’s mineral wealth, accusations both reject.