One morning in Mullah Band town, an old fishing settlement on the Gwadar coast, four fishermen sit playing cards while others are busy cleaning their nets. They have gathered on a large, roughly 300 sq ft covered structure known as dhoria. Open on all sides and raised on cement pillars some eight feet high, this is where local fishermen collect every morning, and again at dusk after their work is done. The Eastbay Expressway, which cost $168 million and is part of the $62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), is a stone’s throw away.
But for local fishermen gathered on the dhoria, the Eastbay Expressway — having cut off their open access to the Arabian Sea which is now reachable only through a concrete passageway — is a constant reminder of how ‘development’ has brought them little benefit.
It was therefore rather fitting that the dhoria introduced Maulana Hidayat-ur-Rehman to the wider public. He is the local Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) leader who led a 32-day long protest in the heart of Gwadar port town by tens of thousands of Baloch demanding their rights. A video that went viral on Sept 15 shows the maulana on the dhoria looking navy and army officials in the eye while discussing the people’s demands, one of the principal ones among them being local fishermen’s rights.
(As of now, it seems the maulana has been given space by some quarters to do politics and hold protests on the issue of illegal trawling in order to replace the Baloch nationalists in the port town, where they have traditionally dominated the political sphere. Compared to the nationalists, the maulana’s JI credentials have helped him become acceptable in the corridors of power, even though he is doing politics in the name of Baloch rights.)
At the dhoria, Rafique Baloch, a garrulous fisherman in his 60s with henna-ed hair comes to watch his compatriots playing cards. They look despondent while discussing the fishermen’s plight. “Can you see the port from here?” Rafique asks, pointing to the three berths coming up in the shadow of the Koh-e-Batil mountain overlooking the hammer-head shaped Gwadar town. “That used to be the best fishing and breeding spot where we used to catch lobsters, shrimp, and prawn all year round. We gave it to the state, for the sake of development. Now that development is ousting us from Gwadar itself.
“On top of that, we aren’t allowed to go out to sea when there’s VIP movement. In fact, sometimes after we’ve been out fishing the whole night, and are returning to shore to unload our catch at Gwadar Fish Harbour, we’re made to wait at sea on our boats from dawn to dusk on the pretext of VIP movement. We run out of food and water while waiting because we take limited provisions with us.”
Then there is the menace of illegal trawling. Deep-sea trawlers are not allowed to fish within 12 nautical miles of a country’s maritime boundary, but the practice has been going on since years with impunity. The arrival of 12 new Chinese trawlers at Karachi harbour in October 2020 had exacerbated the fishermen’s concerns.
Local fishermen complain that the trawlers make a beeline for the best spots. Some of these locations are nestled among what they say are the mountains on the seabed off Gwadar. One of them is in fact called Koh-i-Dap (the mouth of the mountain). “Trawlers arrive there and deprive us of the fish,” alleges Gulzar Baloch, while unloading his catch at Gwadar Fish Harbour. “When they come across us, they throw chunks of ice and small stones at us and chase us away.”
Another fisherman adds: “Sometimes they forcibly take away our catch from us.” Pakistan divides its sea into three zones: zone-1, up to 12 nautical miles, falls in the domain of Sindh and Balochistan; zone-2, between 12 to 20 nautical miles, is a declared buffer zone; while zone-3, from 20 to 200 nautical miles, is controlled by the federal government. More than half the country’s 990km-long coastline is in Balochistan. With no licence required to fish in Sindh’s waters, local and foreign trawlers have almost gobbled up fish stocks there. Most are now looking to Balochistan’s waters.
In Gwadar town, known as the crown jewel of the $62bn CPEC, Qadir Baksh R.B. is a local leader of an organisation called the Gwadar Mahigeer Ittehad, which fights for the fisherfolk’s rights. “Illegal trawling is backed by a gigantic mafia that has been operating since decades,” he remarks. “Unfortunately, all governments, including the current one, are hand-in-glove with the criminals.”
Interviews with fishermen suggest that before the widespread protests in Gwadar, trawlers used to rule the waters off its coast. However, their numbers decreased signficantly after Maulana Hidayatullah listed an end to illegal trawling as the first of the protestors’ demands. That spurred the government and security establishment into action, which gave the fishermen some relief. But according to a group of fishermen and social activists, matters are reverting to ‘business as usual’, with trawlers from Sindh once again depriving the local fishermen of their livelihood.
Temporary reprieves have happened in the past as well. The trawlers are owned by powerful businessmen, retired army officers and politicians, making it difficult for the authorities to end illegal fishing. However, the issue has worked to the advantage of the Maulana Hidayatullah, who is also aware that putting an end to it is not possible. In the recent local government elections, he rightly used the fishermen’s woes, especially illegal trawling, to defeat his opponents in Gwadar.
Gwadar locals, fishermen among them, have been capturing the trawlers’ resurgent activities on their mobiles to force the government, particularly the fisheries department, to act. Sharing the videos on social media, they lament the authorities’ inaction, accusing them of either being bribed into silence or else unable do anything on some other account. The height of injustice is that sometimes the government tries to intimidate the locals for filming the trawlers.
One of them is Sajid Umer Baloch, a teenager from the tiny fishing village of Churbandan in Gwadar district, 25 kilometres from Pasni town. He made a video of a trawler that he spotted off the Churbandan coast and shared it on several Whatsapp groups and other social sites because, he told local reporters in his hometown, the trawlers were wiping out the catch in their traditional their fishing areas and leaving nothing for their older generation for whom the sea is their means of livelihood. He added that the trawlers are also fishing illegally within 12 nautical miles. “Eight levies officials in two Corolla cars approached me in Churbandan and asked if I had made the video and shared it,” he said.
Local fishermen accuse the provincial government of being indifferent to their misery. They claim that sometimes they themselves take the initiative to intercept foreign vessels inside the country’s maritime zone. Once, when they spotted three trawlers in Pasni and told the operators to go away, they were attacked with shovels and steel pipes.
Chinese trawlers’ presence?
At the beginning of 2021, a video showing Chinese trawlers in Balochistan’s waters went viral. The authorities detained five such vessels which were allegedly involved in deep-sea fishing.
In an interview with Dawn in Karachi, Chinese Consul General Li Bijian says: “The Chinese trawlers were fishing in international waters. Stormy conditions at sea forced them to enter Pakistan’s waters in the Gwadar area. Through our consulate in Karachi they communicated their request for safe passage to the federal government and the Coast Guards. Having been given permission, the trawlers stayed for a few days in Gwadar before leaving. Chinese companies have instructions to abide by the law and fish in international waters, and avoid doing so in territorial waters of regional countries.”
According to Mr Bijian, China has always been interested in the betterment of fishermen along the Balochistan coast, which is why they provided them with small boat engines, fishing nets, special incubators and marine life-saving kits and other material.
While lauding the quality of sea food available in Pakistan, he describes the techniques of fishing used here as outdated; fishermen, he said, need to upgrade to large fishing vessels, for one thing. “This could be an example of cooperation — Pakistan imports large fishing boats from China while Pakistan exports sea food to China.”
Mr Bijian also offers Chinese investment in the fisheries sector, suggesting the setting up of a cold chain processing and warehouse system to improve the quality of seafood which China would be willing to import. “We have a massive population and there is a huge demand in China for seafood which our fishing industry is unable to meet.”
A recent study by Stockholm University forecast that by 2030, China is likely to need up to 18 million tonnes additional seafood to meet the rising demand — a demand it will meet in part by expanding its distant fishing operations.
Foreign trawlers have been scouting for fish in Balochistan in the past. But the addition of Chinese trawlers to the list does not augur well for our fishermen. In October last year, before the Gwadar protests, Mr Bijian had revealed that his country had been providing assistance to fishermen in Gwadar for the last several years. But the assistance, which included 15 boats and solar panels, has failed to address fishermen’s concerns about deep-sea fishing by Chinese trawlers. The practice has depleted fish stocks in the waters off Gwadar, especially those from Sindh that are in the sea sometimes for weeks.
Haji Khudad Wajo, a fisherman in Gwadar, concedes that the community received some assistance, but emphasises it is “unacceptable at the cost of our livelihood. Deep-sea trawling, whether by local or Chinese trawlers, will wipe out [the fishermen community] from the map of Gwadar once and for all.”…