CPEC is not just CPEC

Building up on the conversation that was held in the shape of a conference on CPEC in Government College, Lahore this week, this column would like to stress on the notion that CPEC is not just CPEC. It can not only be seen from the lens of economy, GDP growth, and infrastructure or power sector development for it may well be the realisation of a new Pakistani identity.
Scholars looking at the question of national identities have long argued that despite having a Muslim majority, Islam has not been able to bind the Pakistani society together as was envisaged by the Islamists a few decades before today. Nor – unlike India where her founding fathers “established its identity on the basis of an India ness” giving a ‘multi-cultural nod’ – has Pakistan been able to find its identity in the Indian sense.
What some scholars have therefore pointed out is that Pakistan needs to locate its identity in a geographic cohesion in and around the Indus Valley. Others have suggested to re-imagine Pakistan as an extension of the historical Silk Route that connected traders between China on the east with Iran, Afghanistan and beyond on the west.
While the former view has not gained popularity amongst policymakers, the latter seems to have gathered traction – albeit without much fanfare; nor has this view seeped into the popular notion as yet. But recall that a certain National Trade Corridor project – that envisaged something like CPEC without the official brand name — was initiated in 2007 aiming to connect Pakistan’s coastal cities in the South with China in the South.
Speaking to BR Research on the matter, former Finance Minister, Dr Salman Shah once said that he expected that the projects once completed, will convert Pakistan into a trading hub of the region and would act as unifier of the region
Shah brought to light the importance of connecting cities by suggesting building a motorway from Karachi to Khunjerab Pass (at Pak-China border), which will connect the whole country. “When this motorway will be built, there should be a major city after every 100 miles, which would then act an engine of growth for the entire area,” Shah told BR Research in Business Recorder’s Fiscal Review 2011.
Academicians and policy advisors such as Ijaz Nabi also advocate the same, arguing to revitalise the once-vibrant cultural and commercial centres that existed hundreds of years before the formation of Pakistan as a state.
Speaking to BR Research in 2011, Nabi said he is positive that Pakistan will gain from opening trade routes with rapidly growing countries like China and India, adding that closing up trade routes also equates to wasting the potential of natives, such as ‘pathans’, who have traditionally been tradesmen and money lenders.
Explaining his position, Nabi said, although Pakistan never existed as a state before 1947, the region was still vibrant because of the three cultural and commercial centers throughout history.
“One is in the north, what was called the Gandhara valley, Peshawar, Abbotabad, Taxila etc. It is very vibrant and it was vibrant continuously through history. Then in the center, Multan and later Lahore were very vibrant and then upper Sindh, where Sufi saints ran off from the Mongols to settle there,” he opined, adding that these centres linked what was to their west and with what was to their east.
In Nabi’s opinion there is a great need to capitalise on the country’s north-south network, which he thinks is “stronger than anywhere else in the South Asia”, and also open up the east and west borders. “If west and east are re-opened, the regions will regain their original vibrancy,” he said. And potential “50 to 60 years of growth” would be equally distributed in and around the three historical regions within the country.
Ergo, if CPEC is indeed critical to the re-imagination of Pakistan’s identity, then not only it needs to be more transparent with the fruits of CPEC shared across the country – as against one or two regions – but it should also be touted as such to harness popular opinion. And if the CPEC is not located in theme of re-imagining Pakistan’s identity, and only seen as an economic corridor, then could Pakistan be losing an opportunity to solve its identity crisis?