As U.S. military operations in Afghanistan drag on, a
strengthening relationship between Pakistan and China has emerged
as tensions between the former and the United States continue to
grow.
Of particular interest are the trilateral meeting just held
between Chinese, Saudi and Pakistani intelligence officials in
Islamabad and a two-day visit to Pakistan by the Chinese Deputy
Prime Minister Meng Jianzhou. Both of these developments come in
the midst of growing concern among U.S. officials about the problem
of ISI (Pakistani intelligence) support for a militant group known
as the Haqqani Network, which has bases in Pakistan and conducts
operations against American and Indian targets in Afghanistan.
For example, the Haqqani Network is widely suspected of being
behind the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul in 2008, and more
recently cell phone trails have established that members of the
organization were in contact with Pakistani intelligence before and
during the assault on the U.S. embassy in the Afghan capital this
month.
Pakistan’s response, however, has been to deny any links between
the ISI and Haqqani Network, while accusing the United States of
creating the group in the first place. In fact, Jalaluddin Haqqani,
the godfather of the organization, was already a devotee to
jihadist ideology by the mid-1970s, aiming back then to overthrow
the government of Mohammed Daoud Khan, who had seized power from
King Zahir in 1973 and established an Afghan republic.
Thus, the militants behind the Haqqani Network (including some
Chechen, Palestinian and Yemeni fellow fighters) were already
active well before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the
subsequent joint CIA-ISI enterprise of providing support to various
mujahideen warriors in their jihad against the Soviet occupation
forces in the 1980s.
Although the leadership of the Pakistan Army is now firmly
refusing to take any action against the Haqqani Network in the form
of a military offensive in North Waziristan, Pakistan’s Interior
Minister Rehman Malik has vowed to attack and pursue Muslim Uighur
militants who operate in China’s western province of Xinjiang but
take refuge and undergo training in Pakistan’s border areas with
Afghanistan (often in cooperation with al-Qa’ida and other Islamist
militant groups that have firm footholds in Pakistan). As Malik
himself put it, “We will strike very hard against them [the Uighur
militants]. Anybody who is the enemy of China is the enemy of
Pakistan.”
Strengthening ties extend to the realm of arms deals, and now
even entail the deployment of Chinese troops in Pakistani
territory. For example, in May, China agreed to provide 50 new
JF-17 Thunder multi-role fighter planes to the Pakistan Air Force
(PAF) “immediately” (a deal had been signed earlier, but during the
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Gilani’s visit to China discussion
was also raised over the possibility of further Chinese supplies to
the PAF of J-20 Stealth and Xiaolong multi-purpose light fighter
aircraft). It would appear that as Pakistan increases its military
cooperation with China, the country is distancing itself from
American military support and aid. Indeed, it is expected that the
presence of U.S. military personnel in Pakistan will be halved.
As for the stationing of Chinese troops in Pakistan, it is
estimated that there are currently around 11,000 soldiers of the
People’s Liberation Army in Pakistan’s northern province of
Gilgit-Baltistan and in Pakistani Kashmir, facilitating the opening
of branches of Chinese banks and construction of concrete
residential houses for these troops. This development should
primarily be understood in light of the fact that engineers are
working on a railroad that is intended to extend from the port of
Gwadar in the southwestern province of Balochistan (a port that
will be very important for future Chinese proximity to the Persian
Gulf) all the way into western China.
Once Pakistan’s strengthening alliance with China in opposition
to what is perceived as a U.S.-India axis is taken into account,
the policies of the Pakistani military and intelligence towards the
various Islamist militants based or operating in Pakistan become
very easy to explain. The inconsistency of refusing to launch an
offensive against the Haqqani Network while vowing to hunt down
Uighur militants has already been noted. Beijing certainly has no
problem with ISI backing of the Haqqani Network: so long as the
group harms Indian influence and interests in Afghanistan, so much
the better for China. China, after all, feels the need as an ever
growing economic power to compete with India for Afghanistan’s vast
mineral reserves, having already invested $3 billion in the vast
Aynak copper mine.
Now we can also see why the ISI and Pakistan Army safeguard and
protect the Taliban Shura and other Islamist militants based or
operating in Balochistan (especially in and around the provincial
capital of Quetta), for they serve as good proxies against the
Baloch nationalist insurgency. The Baloch insurgency not only
regards Pakistani rule and the presence of Punjabi settlers as an
occupation but also is justifiably outraged at the fact that the
indigenous population is largely deprived of income from
Balochistan’s massive copper reserves, which are being developed
and exploited by China and the Pakistani central government.
Pakistan’s desire to counter India applies to Punjab province as
well, where a host of Islamist militant organizations (e.g.
Lashkar-e-Taiba) enjoy the patronage of the ISI and the provincial
government headed by Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif.
These groups have often provided safe havens for militants
returning from Afghanistan (as well as those in the border regions
who have been given escape routes and early warnings by the
Pakistani security forces during operations as part of a double
game to win American financial support), allowing many Islamist
militants to set up their own seminaries in south Punjab. The
predictable result of all this has of course been the increasing
destabilization of Punjab itself, giving rise to a phenomenon known
as the “Punjabi Taliban” that has bombed Sufi shrines, inter
alia.
The emerging picture is clearly one of a Sino-Pakistani
partnership aligned against what is seen as a U.S.-India axis
designed to limit Pakistan’s assertion of its interests in
Afghanistan, Kashmir and parts of India on account of an
expansionist policy known as “strategic depth,” which has always
been espoused by the Pakistani military and intelligence and is
rooted in Pakistan’s perception of its identity as an Islamic
state. These developments could well lead to what some analysts
have termed a “looming superpower clash” between the United States
and China over Afghanistan and the wider regon, triggered by
Pakistan.
