Pakistani Peninsula Conjures Up Visions of Naval Base

Ever since American airmen and sailors first saw this place during World War II, it has been admired--perhaps even coveted--as potentially an ideal naval base.

This is little wonder: the Gwadar Peninsula juts out into the Arabian Sea like a massive clenched fist on a narrow arm of land. Behind the sheer rock palisades are two natural harbors, one on the east, the other on the west. “No matter which way the wind blows, you have a natural protected harbor,” a Western diplomat said with admiration recently.

Gwadar’s strategic setting near the mouth of the Persian Gulf makes it an even more attractive site for a naval base, a perfect complement to the American base on Oman’s Masirah Island, directly across the Gulf of Oman.

For the last several years, perhaps the most persistent rumor spread by enemies of Pakistani President Zia ul-Haq has been that he has allowed the United States to build a secret base in Gwadar. The rumor persists despite the fact that villagers in this isolated fishing and smuggling town say they have seen no more than a handful of Westerners, let alone Americans, in the past five years.

Fueling the story has been the commencement of a $40-million U.S. Agency for International Development road-building project leading into the rugged terrain of Baluchistan, surrounding Gwadar. A road of sorts exists now through the rocky--mostly desert--land, but the trip from Karachi, 350 miles away, takes several days.

The AID project linking the Baluchistan cities of Bela and Turbat is part of a $3.2-billion military and economic assistance package. Critics of the project, who contend that the road is aimed at enhancing the strategic possibilities of Gwadar (connected to Turbat by a passable road just as Bela is connected to Karachi), say it is an example of how economic aid can be converted to military use.

Workers in other aid programs and refugee agencies based in Quetta say there are far more important needs in Baluchistan--drinkable water for example, and health care--than a new road. American aid officials say the road is one of the few projects specifically requested by the Pakistani government.

So far, the only activity on the project is construction of a small AID compound in Turbat and the stationing of an American couple there. “This is not a Cam Ranh Bay project,” one American official said, exasperated by the talk of secret military purposes and referring to a base built by the United States in Vietnam in the 1960s and now used by the Soviet navy.

Until a few years ago, it was the Soviet Union that was more often rumored to have its eyes on Gwadar as a naval base--the fabled warm water port that has been an ambition since the days of Czarist Russia. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December, 1979, a popular theory was that the Soviets planned to use Afghanistan as a steppingstone to their dream of a port on the Arabian Sea.

Baluchistan, Pakistan’s largest but least-populated province, was beset with a tribal Baluchi insurgency through most of the mid-1970s that resulted in an estimated 8,000 deaths--3,000 Pakistani troops and 5,000 Baluchi rebels.

One theory was that, using their base in Afghanistan, the Soviets would arm the rebels and fuel their cause for a separate state. Support for this idea has faded recently as there have been few signs of Baluchi nationalist activity.

President Zia’s program of increased government aid in this most remote and backward place may have helped cool the passions. Baluchistan now gets more government funding per capita than any other province of Pakistan.

On the surface, at least, Gwadar and its fishing port remain untouched by all the rumors and intrigue.

Although the Pakistani government has a strict general ban on foreign travel to Gwadar, ostensibly because it is situated only 50 miles from the Iranian border, two American reporters managed to visit the city recently.

The reporters spent an afternoon ambling through the streets and bazaars of the ancient village before they reported to Pakistani authorities and were politely told to leave on the next morning’s flight back to Karachi.

There were no ships in Gwadar’s harbor, only the fishing dhows of the region and one motor-powered launch belonging to the district commissioner. The carcasses of perhaps a dozen dogs, killed in a city cleanup program, lay on the long, dramatic beach. Perched high atop one of the cliffs overlooking the city, a small Pakistani naval reconnaissance post was visible.

But no American base. No Cam Ranh Bay. No Soviet warm water port.

Before the reporters arrived, none of the residents could remember the last time there had been an American in the city.

“Wait,” said Ghulam Yasim. “About five years ago there were about 500 Americans here. They had equipment working in the bay. And then they left.”

But a friend contradicted him: “No, brother, those were Japanese.”

The Japanese Embassy in New Delhi confirmed that in 1979, a small Japanese fisheries development team had spent a year studying the Gwadar harbor.