Terra incognita no more? La fascia costiera del Makran/Baluchestan fra dinamiche di influenza e questioni di sicurezza

[Autom. eng. transl.] Makran, the coastal region of Pakistani Baluchistan, overlooking the northern reaches of the western Indian Ocean, constitutes an essential hub for connecting the latter with the Asian hinterland. A poor and marginal area, marked by profound political instability, it has seen its importance progressively grow over the years. In particular, since the end of the 2000s, a significant volume of investments has begun to be directed towards it, as part of the project for the construction of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). The port of Gwadar, near the border with Iran, constitutes, together with the Makran Coastal Highway, the main one of these projects and is one of the symbols of Beijing's political and economic commitment to the realization of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) . Despite the benefits that these projects have brought on an economic and infrastructural level, the Makran remains, however, a problematic area. Despite a rich endowment of natural resources, Makran is significantly poorer and less developed than the rest of Pakistan. With the rest of Baluchistan, Makran also shares a difficult relationship with the government in Islamabad; a relationship that, in the mid-2000s, led to a resurgence of endemic guerrilla warfare in the region. In the following years, this guerrilla war was accompanied by a growing rate of sectarian violence, partly linked to the spillover of Afghan instability, partly to that of the violence which, in the same period, affected the neighboring territories of Iranian Sistan-va-Baluchestan , where an active resistance movement against the authorities in Tehran has been operating for some time. The ability to address these issues effectively is an important step in capitalizing on Makran's geopolitical potential; a potential increased by the tensions that the risk of a closure from the Strait of Hormoz periodically fuels. The proximity of Gwadar to the Iranian port of Chabahar (the only significant Iranian port outside the Gulf) constitutes another critical point, also in light of the capital that, since 2016, India has invested in the modernization and strengthening of its infrastructure. From this perspective, a possible scenario is that of a long-distance confrontation between New Delhi and Beijing for control of the access routes to the internal territories of Middle Asia; a confrontation that passes through the coastal strip of the western Indian Ocean and which can have important repercussions on the international role of Iran and Pakistan.