Pakistan Promised China a New Militarized Naval Base, Leaked Documents Reveal
"Highest level positive assurances" have been privately conveyed to China
In October of 2022, a pivotal year for Pakistan, military chief Qamar Javed Bajwa finally won what he had long been striving for: an official state trip to the United States. His mission was explicit; a document prepared for Bajwa ahead of the visit is titled, “U.S. Re-Engagement with Pakistan: Ideas for Reviving an Important Relationship.”
Bajwa especially wanted to reassure Washington that the Pakistani military was looking to the U.S.—not its rivals, China or Russia—as the country sought to escape the grip of an economic and political crisis. In a meeting with an assembly of think tankers and policymakers at the residence of the Pakistani ambassador in D.C., Bajwa, dressed in civilian clothing, expounded on the military’s favor for the U.S. over China. Bajwa promised that Pakistan would seek constructive ties with its rival, India, and other powers aligned with the U.S., emphasizing the Pakistani military’s cultural preference for Washington over Beijing. He spoke of his personal love for 1990s U.S. sitcoms—”Married With Children,” he said, was a particular favorite, according to one guest in attendance. And, to drive the point home, according to several people at the event, Bajwa added that he did not even like Chinese food.
The army chief had planned his retirement for November 2022, the following month. But his comments—reflecting Pakistan’s new stridently pro-U.S. posture—were catching the attention of Chinese officials, according to a collection of highly confidential internal strategic assessments, reports, and diplomatic cables produced between 2023 and 2024. Pakistan’s fraught relationship between two superpowers is laid out in the documents, which were provided to Drop Site by sources within the Pakistani security establishment and backed up by interviews with sources with direct knowledge of the government’s internal affairs.
From New York, Munir Akram, Pakistan’s representative to the United Nations, began reporting back cables highlighting “sarcastic” comments from his Chinese counterpart, who openly tweaked Akram about Pakistan’s sudden swing toward Washington. In private conversations with their Pakistani counterparts over the past year, as reported by Pakistani diplomats, Chinese officials have expressed displeasure with Islamabad for “switching camps”—rather than merely seeking open relations with both countries.
Now, with their U.S. gamble failing to pay off, Pakistani officials have become increasingly frantic in their efforts to repair relations with China, including, as the documents reveal, by granting China approval for a military base at the port of Gwadar—a major and longstanding strategic demand of Beijing—and authorizing joint military operations inside Pakistan.
Courting the U.S.
2021 was a rocky year for U.S.-Pakistan relations. Gone was President Donald Trump, who had taken a liking to Prime Minister Imran Khan, a fellow celebrity-populist who had served as Pakistan’s prime minister since 2018. The incoming Biden administration conspicuously distanced itself from Khan, despite public requests from Khan for a call with President Joe Biden.
And Khan, a vocal critic of U.S. foreign policy, eventually returned the disdain, especially when it came to the U.S.’s failed war in Afghanistan, which Biden was finally bringing to a close. Asked by an American reporter in June 2021 if U.S. drone flights could continue from Pakistan in the event of a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan—a key component of Biden’s “over the horizon” strategy of power projection in the region in the event of withdrawal—Khan replied flatly, “Absolutely not.”
The next February, Khan made a previously scheduled, but fatefully timed, state visit to Moscow that coincided with President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Khan’s insistence on finishing the trip and remaining neutral in the war enraged Washington.
In a meeting with Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S. just two weeks later, in March 2022, a State Department official, Donald Lu, conveyed his country’s displeasure, bringing up the possibility of a no-confidence vote to oust Khan from office. “I think if the no-confidence vote against the Prime Minister succeeds, all will be forgiven in Washington because the Russia visit is being looked at as a decision by the Prime Minister. Otherwise, I think it will be tough going ahead,” Lu said in comments later relayed to the military brass in a classified cable.
The military, which had initially backed Khan’s emergence as prime minister, had already been irritated by his increasing self-assertion over the country’s foreign policy—long recognized as their own turf. The sense that his policies were now sabotaging their own relations with the U.S. sent them into action.
As the military set the stage for a no-confidence vote to depose Khan, Bajwa signaled a new direction. Days before Khan’s ouster, the army chief appeared in Islamabad at a security conference for a televised speech. “The best equipment we have is the American equipment. We still have deep cooperation with the U.S. and our Western friends,” Bajwa said to a crowd of journalists and security officials, in a rebuke to Khan’s own commentary on the bilateral relationship. “Months back the U.S. Air Force was here for a routine exercise with our air force.”
In March, Bajwa had personally met with China’s defense minister, who came to Pakistan to affirm the Chinese military’s ongoing partnership with Pakistan. Despite that cooperation, Bajwa made painfully clear at the April national security conference, Pakistan would prefer U.S. weapons.
“China of course is a very important neighbor and has helped us in many ways,” Bajwa said, before adding, “Our military cooperation with China is growing because we are denied equipment from the West. Many of the deals which were concluded have been cancelled. So what do we do?” He cited an example of Turkish defensive helicopters that Pakistan had attempted to buy, but which had American-made engines. “It’s a very good machine,” he said, but the U.S. blocked the deal. “So what do we do? Either we wait or go somewhere else; either go to Russia or go to China. We prefer to maintain a balance.”
Though a classified internal Pakistani intelligence assessment judges China to be a more “natural strategic ally” than the U.S., with whom Pakistan is deemed to share limited interests, the Pakistani military has prized its close relationship with the U.S. since the Cold War era. The U.S. and other Western countries are major destinations for investments (including proceeds from financial corruption), education, and family residency for Pakistani elites, including members of the security establishment. Pakistani elites store much of their wealth in the United Kingdom and the United States, both of which have shown a willingness to confiscate such holdings in the event that international relations sour, as Russian oligarchs conspicuously learned. Separate from any cold assessment of the national interest, these personal ties have long been seen as a major factor influencing Pakistan’s foreign policy approach.
When it came to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Bajwa put public space between himself and Khan. Khan had recently thundered at a major rally, “Why would we condemn Russia? Are we your slaves that we would do whatever you say?” Bajwa called Vladimir Putin’s aggression “very unfortunate.”
“Despite legitimate security concerns of Russia, its aggression against a smaller country cannot be condoned. Pakistan has consistently called for an immediate ceasefire and cessation of hostilities,” he said.
Days later, the no-confidence vote went through, with several of Khan’s party members switching sides under pressure from the military. The deposal of Khan, while sending Pakistan into a political tailspin that continues to this day, marked a turning point in the military’s private push to reset its ties with Washington.
Bajwa’s pivot to the U.S. initially seemed to pay off. In September 2022, with Khan out, the U.S. approved a sale of spare parts for F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan worth almost half a billion dollars. A quid pro quo would also see Pakistan provide munitions for the war effort in Ukraine in exchange for U.S. support for an International Monetary Fund bailout to aid Pakistan’s ailing economy.
And a month after the F-16 agreement, Bajwa found himself in Washington, where he met with top Biden officials, including Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.
In conversations with U.S. officials around that time, Bajwa agreed to a longstanding U.S. demand to curtail Pakistan’s ballistic missile program in order to alleviate Washington’s concerns about the possibility that Pakistani long-range missiles could one day threaten Israel. This concession was previously reported by Pakistani journalists and later confirmed by sources to Drop Site News.
Since taking over from Bajwa in November 2022, Asim Munir has accelerated attempts at rebuilding ties with the U.S. while engaging in a violent crackdown on supporters of Imran Khan and his party the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or PTI. This crackdown has seen the PTI itself banned, Khan and his wife imprisoned, the flagrant rigging of a national election, and ongoing violent attacks targeting reporters, civil society activists, and other perceived enemies of the military in Pakistan and abroad. (The crackdown also included the banning of Drop Site News.)
Amid this turmoil, Pakistan’s military establishment has also been torn by internal discontent and power struggles. This August, Pakistan’s former spy chief Faiz Hameed was arrested by the military on charges of abusing his office. The detention of Hameed, an individual seen as close to Khan, represented an exceedingly rare arrest of a senior member of the security establishment on corruption charges.
Hameed was the head of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence during a particularly fraught period of its relationship with the U.S., overlapping with the chaotic collapse of the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan. Hameed himself was pictured visiting Kabul during the Taliban takeover, a spectacle widely interpreted as rubbing salt in the wound of an American defeat. He is now facing military court martial on accusations of graft and misuse of authority.
Private Assurances to Beijing
The military’s growing indulgence of the U.S. quickly put Pakistan in a difficult situation with Beijing, whose own relationship with Washington was becoming more hostile. In August 2022, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took a provocative trip to Taiwan. As a close ally, China urged Pakistan to offer a full-throated condemnation. Wary of offending the U.S. at a critical moment, even at the expense of harming their ties with the Chinese, Pakistan demurred, offering only a mild public comment on the matter.
In recent years, Pakistan had also made moves directly at odds with Chinese strategic interests in the region. On August 5, 2019, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi officially removed Kashmir’s special status. It was not just a provocation to Pakistan but also to China, as it called into question China’s territorial claim to India’s disputed Ladakh region, where Chinese and Indian troops would engage in deadly clashes the following year.
In February 2021, Bajwa initiated a ceasefire along the Kashmir “Line of Control,” a move that greatly pleased U.S. policymakers as it allowed India to focus its resources solely on the Chinese front. And in April 2021, Bajwa allowed the acting U.S. ambassador to visit Gwadar—another diplomatic coup for the U.S. and an affront to China, which was pushing for the port to be developed as a strategic asset.
Classified cables provide frank assessments of the moribund state of the once-robust Pakistan-China alliance. An internal report from 2023 found that ties between the nations, publicly described as close allies, had experienced “gradual erosion” and had become “particularly cold” over the previous year.
The tensions can’t be sourced to Pakistan’s U.S. relationship alone, but are also due to Pakistan’s internal economic and security troubles, as well as China’s expanding footprint in the country.
Over the past decade, Pakistan has become home to a Chinese-backed infrastructure building project known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC. Yet despite billions in investment, results on the ground have been underwhelming. While economic growth has been meager, Pakistan’s government has grown critical of China for saddling it with debt to fund expensive projects. Now, as the military establishment struggles to raise capital, it is trying to convince China and other creditors to favorably renegotiate their loan terms, including by restructuring its debt to alleviate the crippling balance of payments crisis in the country.
Internal reports emphasize Pakistan’s wish that its relations with the U.S. and China not be “zero-sum.” “What the Pakistani military prefers is to be able to maintain a balance between their Chinese and U.S. military relationships,” said Adam Weinstein, deputy director of the Middle East program at the Quincy Institute and an analyst on Pakistan. “They believe that if things are balanced, both sides will have an incentive to keep relations strong.”
Despite this preference, a classified internal Pakistani intelligence assessment judges China to be a more “natural strategic ally” than the U.S., with whom Pakistan is deemed to share “limited” strategic interests.
Facing such loss of trust from a key ally, the documents also show that Pakistan’s military-backed government privately promised Beijing a long-coveted concession: a Chinese military base in the key port city of Gwadar. Gwadar is a key node in China’s Belt-and-Road Initiative—the last stop in a land corridor through Pakistan that would connect China’s economy westward, and make it less reliant on shipping transit in the South China Sea.
In return, Pakistan asked for a major upgrade in economic and military assistance from Beijing in order to insulate Islamabad from the fierce reaction from the U.S. such a deal is expected to provoke.
A 2023 report by the U.S. Institute of Peace found that Beijing had become Islamabad’s chief supplier of conventional weapons, strategic platforms, and sophisticated weapons with offensive strike capabilities, as well as a partner in the joint development of next-generation military aircraft. Military cooperation between the two states rivals that of China’s higher-profile relationship with Russia, the report assessed.
Pakistan views the stalling of Gwadar as the major factor harming the relationship. The talks on Gwadar have been taking place in a forum called the “Consultation on Strategic Defence and Security Cooperation” or “2+2 dialogue.” A classified document from 2023 confirms that the government of Pakistan have already given “highest level positive assurances” to their Chinese counterparts for strategic utilization of Gwadar “in due time.” The document adds that Pakistan “principally stand[s] by” this commitment. Pakistani officials have also been internally instructed to recognize the importance of Gwadar in China’s global military strategy, and to inform their Chinese counterparts that their need for “joint strategic utilization” of the port will be met.
Internal documents also show that Pakistan has been considering Beijing’s request for the creation of joint Chinese-Pakistani security companies that can operate inside Pakistan, in the wake of several deadly attacks on Chinese engineers in the country.
Two previous rounds of the 2+2 Dialogue ended without any progress on China’s principal demand of creating a military base at Gwadar, as Pakistani officials resisted Chinese pressure to accept a demand that would entail loss of sovereignty over the territory. But in the latest round, hosted by Islamabad in January of this year, Pakistan, much-weakened by political infighting and economic stress, acquiesced to the Chinese demand, agreeing to the future deployment of Chinese military assets at the port.
The January talks stalled on the issue of how to implement the agreement—kicking the can down the road to the next major meeting.
In June 2024, Munir paid Xi Jinping a call in Beijing. According to a readout, their discussion had a “focus on building an upgraded version of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), so as to promote deeper and more substantive progress in the high-quality cooperation on CPEC and help boost Pakistan’s economic and social development.”
In response to inquiries from Drop Site News, the Chinese Embassy in D.C. gave the following statement: “In principle, China and Pakistan are all-weather strategic cooperative partners and ironclad friends. Under the guidance of the leaders of the two countries, China and Pakistan have in recent years had close high-level exchanges, steadily advanced practical cooperation, conducted fruitful and high-quality cooperation on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, and maintained sound communication and coordination in international and regional affairs. Gwadar Port is a business cooperation project between China and Pakistan based on equality and mutual benefit. Meanwhile, as an important part of the CPEC, Gwadar Port follows the principles of consultation and collaboration for shared benefits, openness and transparency.”
“We hope that with concerted efforts,” the Chinese Embassy’s statement continues, “Gwadar Port will achieve further progress, become a regional trading hub and industrial cooperation base and play a greater role in promoting regional development and prosperity.”
The Pakistani Embassy did not respond to a request for comment.
Playing Both Sides
Beijing’s ambitions for Gwadar have long concerned Washington. Gwadar lies at the mouth of the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz on the shore of the Arabian Sea. A military base there would transform China’s ability to project force beyond its own region and free it from dependence on maritime energy shipping routes in Southeast Asia, while undermining Washington’s strategy of containment against Beijing.
A 2020 report by the U.S. Naval War College highlighted the risk of China turning Gwadar into a “strategic strongpoint” that would grant it access to the Persian Gulf region in a future war. The report noted that Chinese investment in Gwadar to date “does not depend primarily on commercial returns,” and was strategic in nature. The conclusions mirror U.S. intelligence assessments finding that China has sought to create a network of military and naval bases around the world.
The Naval War College report also contained an important caveat: The ability to develop Gwadar into a full-blown strategic hub hinged largely on future decisions by Pakistan’s leaders to increase their political commitment to China and allow it to be militarized. “If China-India and China-US relations continue to deteriorate rapidly, China may well determine that a confrontational posture is inevitable,” the report said. “In this case, overt militarization of China’s presence at Gwadar—perhaps in response to a terrorist incident or a threat in the Strait of Hormuz—might look appealing, even if it provoked harsh counter-measures.”
In 2022, the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee published a report on Chinese influence in South Asia. It noted that Chinese ships had already begun utilizing the port in Gwadar and highlighted the implications for the U.S. of a full-blown future Chinese military presence there. A military base at Gwadar would allow China “to maintain a permanent presence in the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman, expanding the naval footprint of its attack submarine and refueling capabilities,” the report said.
The U.S. Institute of Peace report from 2023 also noted that the political barriers to establishing a base there for China were “surmountable and diminishing over time.” It also noted the massive strategic benefits to the Chinese navy of having a presence at Gwadar in the event of a major war, including the ability to launch retaliatory blockades against U.S. shipping and energy interests in the Middle East.
“The PRC and Pakistan have a longstanding relationship. We do not ask Pakistan—or any country--to choose between the United States and the PRC,” the U.S. State Department said in a statement provided after publication, noting that it couldn’t comment on “purported classified documents or comments by unnamed sources.”
The information reviewed by Drop Site does not indicate whether concrete steps have yet been taken to move forward with the militarization of Gwadar, a move that would likely poison Pakistan’s future ties with the U.S., while antagonizing many inside Pakistan who would object to a perceived sacrifice of the country’s sovereignty.
Pakistani officials have also sought to reassure the U.S. over the port, including by permitting ongoing visits of U.S. diplomats to Gwadar. In September 2023, U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Donald Blome visited Gwadar along with a military attaché, in part to “learn about port operations and development plans.”
“Due to strategic reasons, the Pakistani relationship with China will always be close,” said Weinstein from the Quincy Institute, adding that a major concession to China on Gwadar, “would cause an uproar in Congress and put immense pressure on Pakistan’s relationship with the U.S.”
An Unending Economic Crisis
Worsening relations with China may have been a price the Pakistani military was willing to pay for the benefit of closer ties with the U.S., but those closer ties do not appear to have provided much in the way of benefit. One of the expected upsides for the government of its turn back toward the West was securing an IMF bailout loan worth $7 billion. As of early September 2024, the Pakistani government has been unable to secure the IMF’s requirements for extending the loan.
This August, Pakistani government sources vented frustration to the media over their failed reconciliation with the U.S., lamenting the meager benefits that mending ties had brought. Government sources told the Express Tribune that “Pakistan’s reliance on the United States to secure the IMF package was not yielding the results.” This week, the IMF announced a decision to consider Pakistan’s loan request at an upcoming meeting slated for September 25, raising hopes that a deal may still be secured.
Pakistan’s private concessions to China come as the U.S. State Department has continued to publicly defend the military regime from criticism over its role in rigging elections this February, gross human rights abuses inside the country targeting the press and civil society, and an ongoing crackdown on supporters of now-imprisoned former Prime Minister Khan. That crackdown now includes credible threats to Khan’s life, as he continues to be held in government custody despite repeated rejection by the courts of the charges against him.
“We believe good governance, long-term capacity building, and sustainable market-based approaches that let the private sector flourish are the best paths to sustained growth and development,” the State Department told Drop Site News in its post-publication statement. “Our partnership with Pakistan spans the full range of regional and bilateral issues, including increasing trade and investment, strengthening security cooperation, promoting regional security and stability, building climate resilience, supporting democracy and human rights, and expanding people-to-people ties.”
The rigging of elections this February was met with general indifference in Washington, as has the ongoing suppression of press and political activism in the country. On the economic front, Pakistan’s imploding economy has consumed Western aid with nothing to show for it but soaring inflation, blackouts, an internet slowed to a crawl, and joblessness.
This story was updated to include a U.S. State Department statement provided after publication.
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As always, I would ask anyone who disagrees with me to provide an example of them doing anything that doesn't serve this purpose.
No one has. Not one.
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