Five Chinese workers lost their lives on Tuesday when a suicide attacker drove a vehicle into their convoy in northern Pakistan. This was the most recent in a series of terrorist assaults that highlight the security issues Pakistan faces in protecting Chinese personnel. The Chinese workers were employed on the Dasu dam, a hydroelectric project on the Indus River in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. The convoy was travelling from Islamabad to Dasu when it was attacked around 1 p.m., as revealed by the officials.
Over the past week, terrorist attacks also hit a Pakistani air force base and a strategic port in the country’s southwest, where China has invested billions in infrastructure projects. The string of attacks has tested the close economic and strategic ties between the two nations. China is estimated to have spent around $62 billion on projects in Pakistan, primarily to construct a transportation corridor through Baluchistan to a new Chinese-operated deepwater port in the Pakistani town of Gwadar.
This was the second deadliest attack on Chinese workers engaged on the dam project, after a prior suicide attack on a convoy in 2021 killed nine Chinese workers. No group immediately claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s attack. The driver of the vehicle was also killed. Kamran Bokhari, a senior director at the New Lines Institute in Washington said, “This latest attack on Chinese nationals in Pakistan heightens growing fears in Beijing about the bleak future of its tens of billions in investments in the country. China has had a front-row seat in witnessing Pakistan’s social, political, economic and security meltdown. What is happening in Pakistan, along with the situation in post-U.S. Afghanistan, represents a serious threat to Chinese interests in the broader South and Central Asian regions.”
#BREAKING: First Visuals from the suicide bombing against Chinese Nationals in Besham City of Shangla District of Malakand, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan. Five Chinese Nationals (Engineers) killed in the attack as per initial details. Difficult for Pakistan to downplay the news. pic.twitter.com/SAd8NsGdHM
— Aditya Raj Kaul (@AdityaRajKaul) March 26, 2024
The attacks over the past week were part of the rising violence from militant and terrorist groups in Pakistan, which have become more active and violent since U.S. troops withdrew from neighbouring Afghanistan in 2021 and the Taliban seized power. Much of the violence has been carried out by the Pakistani Taliban, an ideological ally and twin of the Taliban in Afghanistan, as well as the Baluchistan Liberation Army, a militant separatist group that operates primarily in Baluchistan Province. Baluch separatists have targeted Chinese workers in recent years, claiming that they are pillaging natural resources like gold and access to the sea that should exclusively belong to the people of Baluchistan.
