Gwadar - A Strategic Airbase?
The author does make a bit of a leap in his logic, but his assessment does sound plausible at least.
Militarising Balochistan : outlookindia.com
The following details of this project have since become available from an article titled Militarisation of Balochistan" written by columnist Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur in the Post of February 1, 2007:
* The Chinese will be building the airport 26 km away to the north-east of the existing airport towards Pasni.
* Disregarding the normal procedure, a sum of Rs.1.05 billion for the acquisition of 6,500 acres of land has been released to the Military Estate Officer in Quetta instead of to the Civil Aviation Authority. The land for the airport has already been acquired by the Military Land and Cantonments Department. The JFK airport in New York, one of the largest in the world, covers an area of only 4,930 acres. The land on which the proposed new Gwadar airport will be located is much more than the land on which the JFK airport is located and twice the size of the land on which London's Heathrow airport is located (2,965 acres). In Heathrow, one plane lands or takes off every 46 seconds. Such heavy commercial traffic is never visualied in any airport of Pakistan even in the medium and long terms. Such a huge airport near Gwadar would, therefore, have other objectives. It will serve as a mammoth airbase.
