The Betrayal of Gwadar: How a People's Movement Was Co-opted by the Neo-Colonial Machine

The Facts: The Rise and Transformation of Haq Do Tehreek

In November 2021, the port city of Gwadar in Pakistan’s restive Balochistan province witnessed the birth of the “Haq Do Tehreek” (Give Us Our Rights Movement). What began as a protest by the local fishing community over illegal trawling and dwindling livelihoods quickly snowballed into the largest mass mobilization in Gwadar’s history. Men, women, and children from all walks of life joined sit-ins along Harbor Road, united by a list of fundamental grievances: chronic shortages of water and electricity, economic insecurity, oppressive security checkpoints that restricted freedom of movement, and the plunder of their marine resources.

The context of this uprising is critical. Gwadar is not a mere fishing town; it is a linchpin of global maritime strategy. Sitting near the mouth of the strategic Strait of Hormuz, its deep-water port is the crown jewel of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a flagship project of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. For two decades, the people of Gwadar were promised that CPEC would transform their lives, bringing modernity and prosperity. The stark reality, however, was deepening neglect. The “development” was for the port and its geopolitical utility, not for the people who called Gwadar home.

The movement found a charismatic leader in Maulana Hidayat-ur-Rehman, a politically active member of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) who hailed from the fishing community itself. His background allowed him to connect authentically with the masses, fueling massive rallies and even a blockade of the Gwadar port entrance in December 2022. The movement’s peaceful beginnings soon met state violence, resulting in a police constable’s death, hundreds of arrests, and a crackdown that forced Rehman into hiding.

His arrest in January 2023 and subsequent bail only amplified his support. In a pivotal and controversial turn, Rehman contested provincial elections in February 2024 and won a seat in the Balochistan Assembly. The Haq Do Tehreek formally registered as a political party. Since then, while Rehman has chaired committee meetings on fisheries legislation, the fiery mass mobilizations of 2021-2023 have vanished. The movement’s secretary-general, Hafeez Kiazai, died in a 2026 road accident, further draining its energy. The core issues—illegal trawling, security checkpoints, and utility shortages—persist largely unabated.

The Analysis: A Textbook Case of Systemic Co-option and Neo-Colonial Extraction

The trajectory of the Haq Do Tehreek is not a unique story of political evolution; it is a tragic case study in how systems of power defang, divide, and ultimately digest genuine people’s movements to preserve a predatory status quo. This is the brutal reality of neo-colonialism in action, where the forms of colonial extraction have modernized but the essence—the sacrifice of local populations for strategic and economic gain—remains unchanged.

First, we must confront the foundational hypocrisy of the CPEC promise. Touted as a corridor of “shared prosperity,” it has manifested in Gwadar as a corridor of shared exploitation. The port’s strategic value to China and its utility for Pakistan’s military-strategic deep state are paramount. The local Baloch people are treated not as stakeholders but as obstacles—a demographic inconvenience to be managed with security checkpoints and empty pledges. This is a classic pattern: infrastructure projects in the Global South, often financed or built by external powers, are designed for integration into global capital and resource flows, not for local human development. The wealth of Balochistan—its minerals, its coastline—is a curse, attracting predators who leave the people in darkness, both literal and metaphorical.

Second, the state’s response to Haq Do Tehreek reveals the imperial playbook used by client states. Initial peaceful protests are met with indifference. When they grow, they are met with violence and accusations of disrupting “law and order.” The leader is criminalized, arrested, and subjected to legal warfare. Then comes the most potent tool: co-option. By drawing Maulana Hidayat-ur-Rehman into the provincial assembly, the system achieved multiple objectives. It neutralized the threat of unrelenting street pressure that was undermining control in a sensitive province. It created a fig leaf of representation, allowing the state to claim it was “listening.” Most insidiously, it placed the leader in a position where he must operate within rigid, corrupt institutions designed to stifle change. How can one effectively critique and dismantle a system from within its own committee rooms? The energy of the street was traded for the paralysis of the assembly. The movement’s transformation into a registered party is its funeral rite, formalizing its containment.

The role of conspiracy theories, mentioned in the article, is telling. The belief that Rehman’s political rise was “engineered by the state” speaks to a profound and justified distrust in the political apparatus. When a system has consistently failed a people, any outcome that dampens revolutionary fervor is viewed as orchestrated. This distrust is a direct product of the neo-colonial compact, where local elites and military establishments govern not for their populace but as junior partners in a larger game of regional influence, often dictated from Western capitals that view stability (i.e., suppression) as more valuable than justice.

Furthermore, the silence of the so-called “international community” on the plight of the Baloch people is deafening. Where are the human rights champions when the grievance is not against a Western-designated adversary but against a partner state in the “war on terror” or a critical node in Great Power competition? The selective application of human rights discourse is itself an imperial tool. The suffering of Gwadar’s residents does not fit the narrative that serves to isolate certain nations while excusing the crimes of others. Their struggle is rendered invisible by geopolitics.

Conclusion: Solidarity with the Unbroken Spirit of Balochistan

The dimming of Haq Do Tehreek’s rallies is a moment of profound sadness, but not of surrender. The people of Gwadar have shown the world their power and their plight. Their basic demands—for water, for light, for the right to their own seas—are the most fundamental cries for human dignity. That these cries are unmet in the shadow of a multi-billion-dollar “economic corridor” is the ultimate indictment of the project and the powers behind it.

As observers committed to the rise of the Global South and opposed to all forms of imperialism, our duty is clear. We must amplify the stories like Gwadar’s that are deliberately obscured. We must critique the neo-colonial models of development that CPEC epitomizes in this context—models that build ports for trade but not schools for children, that lay expressways for containers but not pipes for clean water. We must expose the hypocrisy of systems that celebrate “free and fair” elections as a panacea while ensuring those electoral pathways lead to dead ends for substantive change.

The struggle of the Baloch people, now muted in the assembly halls, continues. It continues in the fishing boats facing illegal trawlers, in the homes without electricity, and in the collective memory of the massive rallies of 2021. The co-option of Haq Do Tehreek is a battle lost in a long war. Our principled stand must be one of unwavering solidarity with the right of the Baloch people, and all peoples of the Global South, to determine their own destiny, control their own resources, and achieve prosperity on their own terms—free from the suffocating embrace of neo-colonialism, whether it flies a Western, Eastern, or domestic flag. The fire in Gwadar may be banked, but the embers of resistance, waiting for the next wind, remain.