The Dasu attack in Pakistan, which took lives of nearly a dozen Chinese nationals, while 26 others were injured, was Beijing’s worst terrorist attack on its nationals working overseas. The suicide attack on a bus taking them to the work site of the Dasu Hydropower Project last July had strained the bilateral ties between Pakistan and China. While the government has tried to downplay its effect on the ties, its latest attempt to compensate Chinese nationals who died and were injured only points otherwise. The government is under no legal or contractual obligation to compensate the victims. The Dasu project too does not fall in the scope of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and is being funded by the World Bank.
But despite that the government has proposed four different compensation options, which includes compensating according to the China’s compensation package for own nationals working in that country, which amounts to $6.1 million. Other options go up to the amount of $20.3 million for compensation. However, neither of the four options amount to the compensation China had demanded following the attack – $38 million. The work on the project has also been stalled since.
The Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) under the chairmanship of Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin was supposed to decide in favor of one of the options on Wednesday. But the meeting was postponed as the minister had contracted the coronavirus. This will be the second time that a federal government in the country compensates terror attack Chinese victims. In 2004, then government had paid $100,000 to the family of a Chinese national who had lost his life in a terrorist attack on the Gomal Zam Dam Project. The injured had received $50,000 in compensation.
Though years apart, in both incidents Islamabad had tried to downplay the terrorist attack. While the 2021 incident was initially reported as an accident caused by a gas leakage, the 2004 attack saw the government reporting that the two Chinese engineers were freed only to be refuted by China’s official news agency, which had reported the killing of all hostages. This coupled with Pakistan’s failure to protect Chinese nationals have acted as major irritants in bilateral ties between the two traditional allies. Attacks on Chinese nationals are deliberate attempts to spread terror and strain the relationship between Islamabad and Beijing. While the ECC decides on what options to choose, the government too should devise a strategy to ensure such incidents of terror are not allowed to repeat.
