Pakistan-occupied Jammu & Kashmir (PoJK), along with Gilgit-Baltistan (GB), forms the northern backbone of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), giving Pakistan critical transit access between Xinjiang and Gwadar. The region hosts two major hydropower projects Karot (720 MW) and Kohala (1,124 MW). Both classified as priority CPEC investments supported by multi-billion-dollar Chinese financing. Pakistan promotes these projects as evidence of internal development and as a crucial component of a broader connectivity spine linking China to the Arabian Sea. However, the reality on the ground reveals a heavily securitized development model.
Pakistan has deployed extensive military and paramilitary forces across PoJK, GB, and Balochistan, embedding permanent security grids for CPEC protection. Since 2017, the Special Security Division (SSD) has been tasked with guarding a 5 km radius around CPEC sites, institutionalising a military footprint that prioritises infrastructure protection over civilian governance. This security architecture includes roadblocks, surveillance, intelligence-based operations, and tight control of movement.
The drive to secure northern passages roads, tunnels, Optical fiber Cables network, and hydropower corridors has amplified the security-development nexus. Military-linked commercial networks have acquired land near project sites. With repeated allegations of land seizures, forced displacement, and fencing of ancestral property.
In Balochistan, reports document harsh counter-insurgency operations, including village demolitions, blockades, forced labour, and punitive raids in regions like Khuzdar and Zehri. Civilian casualties, large-scale displacement, and enforced disappearances continue to escalate social grievances. In PoJK and GB themselves, Pakistan’s response to public unrest has been forceful. Waves of protests over taxation, electricity tariffs, wheat shortages, and political marginalization have been met with police crackdowns. Rangers deployment, mass detentions, and media censorship. GB’s constitutional ambiguity grants Islamabad unchecked authority in land and resource allocation, enabling rapid military intervention whenever dissent emerges. This governance model entrenches political exclusion, fuels resentment, and heightens instability in territories Pakistan claims to administer democratically.
Long-term fiscal exposure adds another layer of risk. CPEC hydropower projects come with significant tariff commitments, Chinese loans, and dependency on external capital binding. Pakistan’s future energy pricing and limiting economic autonomy. With security costs rising and local dissatisfaction deepening, Chinese stakeholders face increasing reputational and operational challenges.
While marketed as a gateway to prosperity and connectivity, the region has instead become a theatre of militarized development, political suppression, and economic dependency. The securitization of PoJK, GB, and Balochistan underscores the fragility of Pakistan’s approach one that prioritizes strategic corridors over people, and coercive control over meaningful development.
CPEC was introduced to the world as a massive economic opportunity, but what is happening in Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (PoJK), Gilgit-Baltistan and Balochistan tells another story one India cannot afford to ignore. Far from being a development corridor, CPEC has become a military corridor, reshaping the security landscape close to India’s borders and pushing China deeper into South Asia’s most sensitive terrain. Pakistan proudly showcases the Karot and Kohala hydropower projects as signs of growth in PoJK.
Yet the real picture behind these multi-billion dollar ventures is a mix of financial strain, local displacement and growing military involvement. These projects have locked Pakistan into long-term tariff commitments to Chinese companies, and they have justified a heavy troop presence in regions already lacking democracy and basic rights. For India, the concern is not the electricity Pakistan claims to generate, but the strategic environment these projects help create.
The northern stretch of CPEC runs through areas that Pakistan administers without the consent of the people living there. Gilgit-Baltistan remains constitutionally undefined, giving Islamabad and Rawalpindi full control over land and resources. This ambiguity has become convenient for both Pakistan and China. It allows them to operate without accountability, build infrastructure without consultation and deploy security forces without question. Every new road, tunnel and fibre line is guarded by armed troops, creating a security belt across territory that legally belongs to India. Balochistan shows what happens when Pakistan decides to “secure” development at any cost. Reports from the ground speak of forced evictions, burnt homes, and mass disappearances during military operations.
Entire villages in areas like Khuzdar and Zehri have been uprooted. People have been pushed aside to make way for roads, pipelines and port expansion. These actions reveal the true foundations of CPEC: control, coercion and fear. Instead of addressing local grievances, Pakistan responds with more soldiers, more raids and more crackdowns. This instability does not stay within the boundaries of Balochistan; it affects the wider region and shapes the mood of Pakistan’s internal politics, often spilling into its dealings with India. In PoJK, recent protests over electricity prices, taxation and daily hardships were met with tear gas, arrests and surveillance. The message from Pakistan’s establishment was clear CPEC comes first, people come later.
Such actions expose the hollowness of Pakistan’s claims of championing Kashmiri rights. When its own citizens in PoJK demand dignity, Islamabad responds with force, not dialogue. For India, this contrast matters. It highlights the difference between development driven by democratic engagement and development imposed through military pressure. The growing Chinese presence in the region must also be viewed with caution. CPEC gives Beijing long-term physical access to areas adjoining the Line of Control and regions close to Ladakh.
It creates opportunities for intelligence gathering, dual-use infrastructure and logistical support that could be activated in times of crisis. China and Pakistan call this “connectivity,” but for India it is clearly a strategic alignment with long-term implications. CPEC was expected to transform Pakistan’s economy. Instead, it is transforming Pakistan’s military posture and deepening its dependence on China. The cost is being paid by the people of PoJK, Gilgit-Baltistan and Balochistan, who are losing land, rights and voice.
Pakistan wants the world to see glass towers and new highways. What it hides is the growing anger, the resentment and the fear that simmers beneath. In the end, the corridor that Pakistan celebrates as a symbol of progress has become a corridor of control. For India, recognising this reality is essential. CPEC is not simply a foreign investment project.
It is a strategic instrument that alters ground realities in territories under illegal occupation and brings China closer to India’s doorstep. Understanding this shift is not just a matter of foreign policy. It is a matter of national security.