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“The United States would provide about $200 million to get the ball rolling. The Pakistani government hopes that would attract private investors and help from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.
Money isn’t the only problem facing the Diamer-Bhasha Dam. Its location is in the mountainous Gilgit-Baltistan region, adjacent to the Jammu-Kashmir state that India administers and claims as its territory. The entire border area, including Gilgit-Baltistan, has been in dispute since the India-Pakistan partition of in 1947. In any discussion of where a nuclear war might start, Kashmir is always a contender.
And then there is China, India’s not-so-friendly neighbor to the north. China is investing heavily in Pakistan. For India, the only thing worse than having the United States and the World Bank helping to build a dam in Pakistan would be for the Chinese to build it.
There’s little doubt that had the Diamer-Bhasha Dam been in place over the last two years, it would have mitigated flooding that killed an estimated 2,000 Pakistanis. Nor is there any doubt that energy-starved Pakistanis could use the 4,500 megawatts of power that the 890-foot-tall dam would generate.
Ninety percent of the $20.7 billion that the United States has sent to Pakistan to buy its cooperation in the War on Terror has gone to the Pakistani military, though military aid lately has been suspended.
Meanwhile, the Chinese buy friends in Pakistan by building nuclear power plants. The Saudis build mosques and sell them cheap oil. The United States sends them F-16s and bombs them from drone aircraft. We could use some good PR in the civilian population.”
Read more: stltoday.com
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