Why Gilgit-Baltistan is about to become a geostrategic jewel once again – Part 1

Read Part 2 here.

~

The Pakistanis responded by immediately turning the region into something like a colonial holding, telling the locals that their region is now disputed, and until and unless the United Nations resolves the Kashmir dispute through a plebiscite, it cannot be merged with Pakistan as its legal part. That decision had kept the region severely underdeveloped and made some of its people sorely resentful of Pakistan for 73 years now.

Last month’s announcement reverses that policy, effectively saying that the region is no longer disputed and is now a part of Pakistan – an act that mirrors Narendra Modi integrating Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh as Union Territories by scrapping the Article 370 of the Indian constitution that gave Kashmir its temporary special status until the resolution of the Kashmir dispute.

The policy change appears to be the result of a Pakistani estimation that global power has once again returned to G-B’s neighbourhood: given the rise of China and India, and a resurgent Russia under Vladimir Putin. The most powerful of them all, China, recognising G-B’s strategic position for the Belt Road Imitative (BRI), is reportedly behind Pakistan’s decision to make it a province.

To assess the implications of Pakistan’s decision, understanding G-B’s strategic position is important. We can do that by revisiting the centrality of G-B in the 19^th century Great Game between Russia and British India, and then throw light on the contemporary strategic importance of the region for China and Pakistan on one hand, and the opponents of the BRI, including the United States (US) and India. This contest makes the region a critical strategic prize. In the final section, the article reviews the key interests of Pakistan, India, China, Russia, and the US in G-B.

China, the paramount power in the region, is no stranger to G-B’s strategic entanglements. In the 19^th century it tried to control the region and found itself pushed out by stronger powers. So much so that it was forced to give up its suzerainty claims over Hunza and Nagar – G-B’s northernmost districts. It was up against Russia and British India, powers stronger than itself, which eventually prevailed over the region. China remembers that history lesson, that’s why it has moved swiftly and quietly to secure G-B for its economic and strategic interests. China is aided in this endeavour by the goodwill it enjoys among the people of G-B.

For a mountainous and mostly uninhabitable piece of land, G-B’s strategic position is truly enviable. British historian John Keay writes,

“High above the snowline, somewhere amidst the peaks and glaciers that wall in Gilgit-Valley, the long and jealously guarded frontiers of India, China, Russia, and Afghanistan and Pakistan meet. It is the hub, the crow’s nest, the fulcrum of Asia.”

Traditionally, since ancient times, it has enjoyed an important geo-political position. From the Silk Route, the Great Game, to now the Western containment of Chinese efforts, it has attracted global attention. One route of the Silk Route passed the South of Yarkand along the Northern Eastern parts of high G-B, over the Karakoram Pass into Len, (now under India’s control). The energy rich Central Asia is just at its doorsteps separated only by a 35-km wide strip of Wakhan, the Afghan territory. Russia is also part of its larger neighbourhood. In the renewed geo-political landscape, the region will host the geopolitical battle between China-Pakistan and the America-India alliance.

1877-1947: G-B’s strategic salience 150 years ago and the Great Game

In the second half of the 19^th century two global powers, British India and Russia, jostled for control of G-B’s northernmost districts of Hunza and Nagar, in what is known as the Great Game. The Chinese, still weak at the time, sought to defend their interests in the region, but were forced out easily, even when they had historically the longest connections with the region.

Exchange of tributes was common and the Mir of Hunza was given a jagir estate in Yarkand by the Chinese. But the advent of the Great Game expelled the Chinese from the region once and for all. But the Chinese have never publicly surrendered their claim of Hunza being their feudatory to this day – only indirectly doing so by agreeing with the current boundary with Pakistan in the 1963 border agreement. It is not a well-publicised fact but Pakistan’s borders with China are provisional and will be reviewed when the Kashmir dispute is resolved.

Russia sent emissaries on diplomatic-cum-espionage missions to the region to secure its support and to harass British India. For the British, this area was among its most “...sensitive possessions in the last century, both in the scheme of defense of British India, and as base for Britain herself to pursue a forward policy in Asia”.

The British were suffering from Russophobia, and felt that the Russians could invade British India by coming down through the ‘Roof of the World’ – the Pamir Mountains. The presence of a Russian captain Gromchevsky in Hunza irked the British military explorer Francis Younghusband. The British rested only after realising that the passes were impossible for a large army to cross.

Of the two powers, the British had control over the region through the Maharaja of Kashmir’s forces. In order to counter Russia and China, Lord Lytton, the British Viceroy, sent John Biddulph to Gilgit to manage and report on matters of Hunza, Nagar, and the Pamirs. He had explicit orders to prevent the Russians from accumulating in the Pamiri region and watch the passes into Gilgit, Ladakh and Chitral. Hearing of the presence of Russian military explorer, Captain Gromchevsky in Hunza-Nagar, British army officer Col. Durand is famously reported to have said that the, ‘...great game had begun.’

In 1877, John Biddulph tried in vain to convince the ruler of Hunza, Ghazan Khan, not to host the Russians and the Chinese. Some years later, another British officer, Francis Younghusband, however, was able to make an agreement with the Mirs of Hunza and Nagar not to allow the Russians and the Chinese in their states, in exchange for a monthly pension of Rs. 500. The Mir of Hunza was only allowed an interaction with Chinese Yarkand where he held estates. But the Chinese, for their part, considered this part of G-B as their feudatory. The British were determined to deny the Chinese even their nominal claim over the region as evidenced by a letter Viceroy Lord Dufferin sent to the India Office in London.

The agreement, however, fell apart because Hunza and Nagar prevented passage of the British mail and diplomats through their territory between Kashgar – which was part of the agreement. Not just that, on January 20, 1888, a combined force of Hunza and Nagar laid siege to the Kashmir garrison at Chaprote near the border with Kashmir’s territory.

The British government then sent Captain Lockhart to assess the situation, who also repeated Biddulph’s recommendation of war with Hunza and Nagar, which finally happened in 1891. It was a risky military move under Col. Durand in one of the most difficult military campaigns the British ever made. The forces of Nagar engaged the British forces near Nilt Nagar with brave Nagari tribesmen showing exemplary valour against the British forces. Durand was nearly killed, but the British eventually won the war due to treachery from Nagar’s side. The war is known variously as the Anglo-Nagar war, Anglo-Burusho war and the Hunza-Nagar campaign, but the locals remember it as Jangir-e-Lay-e-Jang. The region remained under British control until 1947.

1947-2013: G-B’s strategic decline

Of all the states, only British India had a true understanding of the strategic importance of G-B, therefore, some allege that as part of their world strategy, the British at their departure conspired to keep G-B in Pakistani hands to deny the pro-Soviet socialist Jawaharlal Nehru’s India from sharing a border with the socialist power, the Soviet Union. Not just that, the Soviets back then were believed to be on good terms with Mao Tse Tung’s Red Army, which was about to take control of the Xinjiang Province that borders G-B. India would never have allowed the British to use their territory against communism, but Muhammad Ali Jinnah had already agreed to cooperate with Britain on matters of defence. Also, it was argued that the pro-West Jinnah and his new Muslim-majority country would be naturally averse to the godless communists. As was later seen, the British assessment was right. During the Cold War, India remained nominally non-aligned, and actually enjoyed warm relations with the USSR, while Pakistan joined the West by entering the SEATO and Baghdad Pact.

Around World War II, however, all three powers were weakened and distracted. The British withdrew from India, the Soviets got entangled in the Cold War with the US, and China descended into a devastating and long civil war between the communists and the nationalists. This resulted in a steep fall of G-B’s strategic importance, because the region was important only in relation to its neighbouring powers and had no intrinsic value of its own. Not only did G-B lose its strategic significance, it was divided up among themselves by India, Pakistan and China. Ladakh and the Valley of Kashmir came under Indian control, Muzaffarabad, Gilgit and Baltistan under Pakistan, and Aksai Chin had already been under China’s control from before the partition.

G-B thus disappeared from the radar of policy makers of Russia, India and Pakistan – the two successor states of British India. Even Pakistanis, who had acquired Gilgit without any effort, treated G-B as an unimportant mountainous wasteland appended to the Kashmir issue. It was useful only for its Muslim votes in case the UN held a plebiscite on Kashmir. For about 61 years, it was referred to as the ‘Northern Areas’, robbing it of the name locals preferred. It was in 2009 that the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) led federal government of Pakistan officially changed its name from the ‘Northern Areas’ to Gilgit-Baltistan, after intense public pressure from G-B.

G-B has never been under a single political authority in its history. Even after coming under Pakistan’s control, it remained without any single meaningful political authority until the nomenclature change in 2009 began to excite the people of the region into believing that. The region is still highly diverse with cross cutting regional, sectarian, and linguistic variations, making the formation of a single national imagination difficult and national integration hard. About two million people who inhabit the region belong to diverse races, sects, tribes, and speak different languages; hence they do not possess a unifying subnational imagination or identity. Culturally, G-B is closer to Central Asia than Punjab or Sindh. The landscape and climate resemble Central Asia. The people are of Mongolian or Turkic origin, or Eastern European descent. That’s why G-B appears to be such a misfit in the scheme of Pakistan’s federation.

The Pakistani government for its part negatively reacted to this. Instead of working on the formation of positive links and commonalities, it went on to systematically erase G-B’s history and physical monuments by destroying certain historical places of pride for the locals in order to establish a shopping mall in Gilgit city’s heart – and to impose an artificial resemblance with Pakistan. The military heroes who had led the mutinying against the Maharaja and joined Pakistan are slandered because they had asked for the region’s due share from Pakistan and protested its mistreatment of G-B.

2013- present: GB’s return as a strategic battleground

As the global power returns back to Asia, it comes to G-B’s two immediate neighbours: China and India. With the energy rich Central Asia close by and Russia just above it, G-B is surrounded by four nuclear armed countries. Together, their share of global GDP is expected to be over a third of the total. The only missing actor from the Great Game period is Britain, or its successor power, the US, which felt left out as early as 1958, as stated so clearly by an article in the Foreign Affairs magazine at the time,

“...With the extension of the mutual frontiers of the Soviet Union and China, now in friendship and ideological alliance, a new center of gravity likely to influence strongly the balance of the world has developed in Central Asia. Both Britain and the United States are intensely concerned with the decisive area but neither has now any direct access to it.”

That explains the heightened interest in G-B in the policy circles of New Delhi, Islamabad, Beijing, Moscow and Washington. Alignment on G-B is typical of US-China dynamics. Pakistan and China are on one side, and the US and India are on the other side. Vital interests of all these countries are at stake in G-B. A brief review of their main interests will be presented in the second part of this article.