Page 2 of 2 Taliban force a China switch
By Peter Lee
Subsequently, three Chinese were murdered in an attack on a rickshaw factory in
NWFP in apparent retaliation for the ongoing siege.
The Chinese government apparently decided that the escalating violence against
Chinese and the disturbing presence of Uyghur separatists had to be dealt with
firmly - by Pakistan. Beijing splashed gory pictures of the Peshawar attack
across the media and on the websites of Chinese consulates around the world and
demanded action from the Musharraf government.
In what is now recognized as a watershed moment symbolizing the rupture between
the Pakistani government and the fundamentalist Islam infrastructure it had
nurtured, Musharraf ordered an assault on the mosque on July 10 by 15,000
troops
personally loyal to him that cost upward of 100 lives (perhaps even 1,000) and
the death of several of the mosque's key leaders.
In the wake of the traumatic assault, the Chinese government took the
remarkable step of having its ambassador, Luo Zhaohui, deny Chinese involvement
in the decision to attack the mosque, something that would be unlikely to
convince or mollify the Taliban: "We enjoy very cordial relations with the
ruling party here and likewise we maintain friendly ties with other segments of
the society, including the political parties of the opposition."
Pakistan's security apparatus, including Hamid Gul, ex-chief of the ISI and the
"Godfather of the Taliban", made heroic efforts to plant stories that the
outrages against the Chinese had been carried out by double agents inside the
Taliban trying to drive a wedge between Islamabad and Beijing on behalf of
Washington and/or New Delhi.
However, the abduction of two Chinese telecommunications engineers, Zhang Guo
and Long Xiaowei, in NWFP by the Pakistani Taliban on August 29 of last year
apparently marked the crossing of a new threshold. The Taliban reportedly
demanded the release of 136 hostages and ransom in return for the release of
the Chinese.
Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani's exasperated comment in parliament in
the aftermath of the seizure of Zhang and Long revealed the traditional
conceptions about Chinese immunity from these outrages, as well as exposing the
gulf between Pakistani attitudes towards China and the United States: "You are
always going on about America being your enemy. So why did you kidnap our
Chinese friends?"
However, it appears that China may have lost the privileged status that it
previously enjoyed in Pakistan and Pashtun Afghanistan thanks to its alliance
with Pakistan and the good offices of the ISI.
A quote in a study by security expert B Raman provides an interesting contrast
between the deferential handkissing by the Taliban and Hekmatyar in the case of
the massacred Chinese road workers in 2004 at Kunduz and the casual defiance of
the kidnappers of the two Chinese engineers in 2008:
Muslim Khan, who
described himself as a spokesman of the TTP [Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan] in the
Swat Valley, claimed that the Chinese engineers were in the custody of the TTP,
which would be shortly announcing its demands for their release. Initially he
said: "Our aim is to hit the government's interests wherever they are. We kidnap
everyone irrespective of whether he's Pakistani or Chinese and we'll
continue to do this until they stop killing our people." (Emphasis added.)
It also appears that the Taliban were deliberately putting the China factor
into play by seizing the hostages.
Shortly after the kidnapping, The News reported:
"We are getting angry
at the lack of interests of the governments of China and Pakistan and
will close doors for negotiation, if they do not hold serious talks for
solution to the issue," a top militant commander told The News. (Emphasis
added.)
A few weeks later, The News followed up:
The
sources said they had not reached any deal for the Chinese so far, though they
had been holding negotiations for the release of the engineer. The talks were,
according to the sources, being held between the central leadership of the TTP
and the Chinese authorities. The sources denied any contact with the
government despite the latter's claim to be making hectic efforts to secure the
release of Long. (Emphasis added.)
This gives the appearance
that the Taliban wished to use the hostages to establish direct contact with
Beijing, exploit the vulnerability of Chinese interests in the region to
intimidate China, discredit the Zardari government by demonstrating its
inability to protect them, and encourage the Chinese to involve themselves in
Taliban matters to help pressure Pakistan's civilian government.
Zardari acknowledged as much in an op-ed published under his name in the China
Daily on February 23, 2009: "[T]errorists have specifically targeted some of
our Chinese friends who were working in Pakistan to drive a wedge between the
two countries and peoples."
Aware of the weakness and instability of the Zardari government - and unhappy
with its marked pro-US tilt - China appears to be reaching out to other
stakeholders in the Taliban mess. A commentary in the People's Daily on
February 23 contained a clear statement of China's desire that the threat of
Islamic militancy be neutralized through concerted multilateralism instead of
by a quixotic US-led military campaign of extermination.
It warned the President Barack Obama administration not to rely solely on a
unilateral hard power surge to solve the Afghan problem, and urged the United
States to stabilize Pakistan, conciliate Russia, and be realistic in defining
acceptable outcomes for Afghanistan.
Chinese President Hu Jintao's recent overseas trip included a high-profile
swing into Saudi Arabia, which is working to mediate a deal that would have the
Taliban repudiate al-Qaeda and enter the Kabul government.
Closer to home, the Chinese Communist Party hosted a delegation from Pakistan's
leading Islamic political party, the Jamaati-i-Islami (JI) in Beijing, Xi'an
and Shanghai in February.
China was certainly pleased with JI's unambiguous endorsement of China's
Xinjiang policy and the two parties signed a memorandum of understanding and
the JI's office advised:
Both parties have agreed upon four principles
including independence, equality, and mutual respect and not to interfere in
the internal matters of each country ... Both sides assured full support to
China's national and geographical unity, and fully backed China's stance on
Taiwan, Tibet and Xin Jiang issues.
Back in the NWFP, Qazi
Hussain Ahmad, the head of JI, heaped praise on China while skating over the
awkward issue of an alliance between an Islamic party and a godless communist
state (like the one JI had conducted jihad against in Afghanistan).
Qazi said the JI respected China's independence and geographical authority and
that China had to be assured that bilateral friendly relations would not be
affected if the JI came to power as the JI could prove to be a more dependable
friend since it was not under control of any foreign power.
CBS reported the spin on the meeting:
A senior JI leader speaking from
Mansoora, the party's headquarters in Pakistan's Punjab region, told CBS News
that the agreement which was signed this month "makes us accept finally and
formally that China's internal affairs are not our business". While confirming
the JI's agreement with the Chinese Communist Party, one senior Pakistani
intelligence official who spoke to CBS News on condition of anonymity said,
"This is a major event for Pakistan and for China. It formally ends what I
consider a very bad chapter in Pakistan's relations with China."
It is unlikely that the motivation for the agreement, perhaps midwifed by the
ISI, was to obtain protection for China's interests in Pakistan and Afghanistan
and Xinjiang.
If the Pakistan Taliban are rescinding China's traditional immunity to attack,
the JI - whose brief from the ISI excludes the Taliban, and whose modernist
Islamicism is far removed from the Taliban's theological obscurantism - is not
the go-to party for China.
The significance of the agreement - and the involvement of "one senior
intelligence official" - probably indicates that China anticipates a festering
crisis in the Taliban-controlled Pashtun areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan and
doesn't expect that the Zardari administration will be especially responsive or
effective in helping China with its security issues.
Therefore, instead of relying on Pakistan's central government, Beijing is
upgrading its direct contacts with the non-Taliban sectors of Pakistan's
civilian polity, Islamist political parties, and intelligence apparatus.
It may also mean that China is considering placing a cautious bet with one of
the most important non-Taliban Pashtun insurgent commanders in Afghanistan,
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
At the political level, the JI is allied with Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim
League. The other major Islamic party, the Jamiat-i-Ulama-i-Islam, has joined
the Zardari government. If Zardari falls, the JI would be the main Islamic
partner in the new ruling coalition.
Beyond this implicit endorsement of the anti-Zardari coalition, China's pact
with the JI revives the historic link between China, the ISI, the JI and
Hekmatyar.
During the anti-Soviet jihad, Hekmatyar was strongly favored by the ISI and
received the lion's share of aid Pakistan funneled to the mujahideen - perhaps
US$600 million worth.
When the flow of secret dollars became a flood and the demand for arms and
ammunition became so great that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) could
not satisfy it from the usual clandestine sources, China became Hekmatyar's
primary supplier of everything from bullets to AK-47s to mules.
The Soviet-backed government in Kabul estimated that Afghanistan was flooded
with $400 million worth of weapons provided by China. The Chinese government
also provided 300 advisors and trainers for the mujahideen in camps run by the
ISI on the Pakistan side of the border. Purportedly, 55,000 fighters passed
through these camps.
Today, the unpredictable Hekmatyar, who has survived the jihad, the civil war,
defeat at the hands of the Taliban, exile in Iraq, an assassination attempt by
the CIA, and return to Afghanistan as an insurgent leader, is the great hope of
all parties as the only Pashtun strongman untainted by al-Qaeda and possibly
capable of taking on the Taliban.
As a result, despite his status as a declared terrorist with a $25 million
price on his head, Hekmatyar has been wooed by the President Hamid Karzai
government in Kabul, the Saudis, the Pakistanis, the ISI, the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization, the United Kingdom, the US and, perhaps now, through its
JI link, by China.
By appearing to take sides in the Pakistan and Afghanistan mess, China is
taking a considerable risk, not just to its reputation as the universal friend
of all factions, but to its interests and the lives of its citizens inside
Pakistan and Afghanistan.
If China persists in tilting away from the Zardari administration and from the
Taliban to a nascent third force in regional security, it will be an indication
of how dangerous it believes the current crisis to be.
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