­Gwadar’s security premium will swallow its commercial promise

­Gwadar’s security premium will swallow its commercial promise

Gwadar is being marketed in Pakistan as if a burst of traffic automatically translates into strategic success. That is a familiar Pakistani habit: take a temporary uptick, attach a grand narrative to it, and then pretend the narrative has become reality. But ports are not judged by publicity. They are judged by predictability. And Gwadar remains trapped in a province where security is not a background variable but the main operating condition. T…