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China fills U.S. void in Afghanistan but from wrong side – report

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After America’s hasty exit from Afghanistan, leaving the Bagram base, which was the nerve center of its longest war, almost unannounced and in the shadow of night, a series of articles began to appear in the American press: Will China take advantage of the US void in Afghanistan?

This question is also asked in editorials in the Indian press, which maintains its particular tension with China over both border and political problems, and with Pakistan, a Chinese ally and who is really another of the big players in Afghanistan left behind by the United States and NATO.

Beyond American anxiety in the context of growing geopolitical rivalry between powers, it is a legitimate question.

The truth is that China has begun to make a move to increase its active participation in the country. Historically very reluctant to send its troops to external conflicts, unlike the United States, it is highly unlikely that it will embark on a conflict such as that in Afghanistan, considered a “huge risk”. 

“Many people in the Chinese government are afraid of being dragged into Afghanistan. They have the idea that the US [leaves Afghanistan] so that China picks up the pieces and repeats the mistakes of the US and the Soviet Union,” says Andrew Small. Analyst for Asia at the European Council on Foreign Affairs. 

But even so, China is considering options: what has it missed in Afghanistan?

Last week, a delegation from the Taliban, led by Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi himself in northeast China’s Tianjin city. Following the high-profile meeting, which lasted two days, Yi claimed that “Afghan Taliban is an important military and political force in Afghanistan”, fueling, de facto, the international political stature of the Taliban. It was not the first time that China had met with the Taliban, with whom it has held talks in the last decade, but it was the first time that it has done so in such a public and cordial way.

China does not tend to view Afghanistan through the prism of opportunities, but rather of facing threats. The US presence [in Afghanistan] was understood as a geopolitical threat, but also as the lesser of two evils. retired, China is concerned on several fronts, according to Small. 

They are not, as in other scenarios of Chinese geopolitical expansion (as in Africa), the opportunities for possible economic investments, expansion of the New Silk Road or the control of natural resources. It is a threat: terrorism.

In just two months, the Taliban have strengthened their control over almost 85% of the country’s territory, often due to the inability of the Afghan government forces to react. The Taliban also control several external borders, such as those of Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Iran, as well as the border with China, a thin strip of land with no border posts or infrastructure. 

With the Taliban’s undoubted advance on the ground, China does not want Afghanistan to become a ‘safe haven’ for Islamic or separatist terrorist groups that could affect Chinese interests, not only in terms of the exiled Uighur groups in China’s Xinjiang province, but also its economic interests in Balochistan and other areas of Pakistan. And to prevent outbreaks of terrorism in China, Beijing talks even to the devil.

“Beijing also maintains relations with the Afghan government, but they know that the Taliban are a political force in the country that they have to deal with,” says Small.

Among China’s concerns is the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), as China calls extremist Uighur militants.

According to estimates by the UN Security Council, the various groups of the ETIM numbered around 3,500 combatants, some based in Afghanistan – although most of the attacks that have been registered in China have been entirely internal. Even so, China has redoubled its efforts against the group’s international expansion or support, expanding its anti-terrorism and even military relations with Central Asian countries. 

In fact, China has deployed troops on the border between Tajikistan and Afghanistan, to prevent terrorists trained in the Taliban camps in Afghanistan from using the Central Asian routes.

But the terrorist threat against China goes beyond Uighur groups. The Taliban have a long relationship with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Pakistani insurgents (some 5,000 fighters, according to the UN) who, from the Afghan border, attack foreign interests in Balochistan, where the Chinese operate the port of Gwadar. 

Last May, they claimed responsibility for a car bomb attack in a hotel where the Chinese ambassador to Pakistan was staying. At the same time, Baloch separatist groups (under the umbrella of Baloch Raaji Ajoi Sangar (BRAS) or Baloch National Freedom Front have reaffirmed their anti-China attitude, with various attacks against Chinese economic interests in Pakistan, totalling more than 60,000 million of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) launched in 2015.

China’s relationship with the Taliban dates back to the 1990s, but so far it has not been “successful” in containing terrorism, Small says. Unlike their relations with Pakistan or with other Central Asian governments, the Taliban are a more complex interlocutor and whose ambitions go beyond normal politics, an “uncomfortable” interlocutor for China: “Success has been ‘mixed’, China has not succeeded in getting the Taliban to expel or execute [members of groups considered terrorists by China], but it has ‘lowered’ the bar a bit. China knows there are limitations to what the Taliban are willing to do.”

Because the Taliban also gain in that relationship with China, especially international legitimacy, but not only. China, as a member of the G5, is important in terms of the policies of joint economic sanctions that it wants to apply to the Taliban and, in the longer term, can be a key investor in infrastructure. Beyond managing to seize the largest proportion of Afghan territory, the Taliban are also trying to demonstrate – to their domestic public, but also in a hypothetical international defence of a Taliban state – that they are capable of managing the territories they are conquering, maintaining part of the state structure and even restoring some basic services such as running water, electricity or garbage collection.

This same week, the Taliban seized their second provincial capital, levelling up their “conquests” after securing mostly rural territories. In the long term, good relations with China could mean investments from Beijing, which, as has been seen in other parts of the world, often neglects the human rights record of the governments in which it invests.

Silk Road diversion?

“If the situation were more benign, in terms of security, China would have more economic interests for Afghanistan, a country that offers interesting possibilities: it is a ‘hub’ country for transport hubs through Eurasia, there are also considerable natural resources. .. But the security situation has never made this possible. China is realistic about [Afghanistan’s economic] promise,” Small says.

China has mining interests in the Aynak copper mine and energy projects in Amu Darya, which have however been stagnant for many years. Last month, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian confirmed that Beijing and the Afghan government are having discussions on the option of extending the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) to Afghanistan, with the construction of highways (from Kabul to Peshawar ), trains (to Kandahar) and pipelines. 

This expansion could multiply the flow of cargo on the New Silk Road, but the truth is that Beijing can wait, and this has been made known to an Afghan government desperate for Chinese investment: economic stability must precede new economic commitments seriously.

Afghanistan is called the “Graveyard of Empires.” From Alexander the Great to the United States, through Genghis Khan, the British or the Soviet Union, great empires of the time tried to invade and control Afghanistan to end up hitting a wall of blood and sand. 

China doesn’t want to be next, but can it avoid it?

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