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China’s Uighur Unrest Is Opportunity for Afghans
By MATTHEW ROSENBERG
NOV. 5, 2014
KABUL, Afghanistan — Since the British first tried and failed to subdue Afghanistan in the 19th century, stumbling into a costly Afghan war seems to have become a mandatory step for global power players. The Soviet Union did it in the 1980s, and the American battle here has passed the 13-year mark.
Now, China seems to be taking its turn in coming to grips with Afghanistan’s role in its national security.
No one expects China to be sending troops any time soon, even with the United States and NATO pulling out the last of their combat forces at year’s end. But China has taken a major step in formalizing closer relations with the Afghan government: Last week, it said it planned to provide billions of dollars in new economic and security assistance.
That is being taken as good news by American officials, who have sought to encourage China to take a larger role in Afghanistan beyond just trying to develop the country’s mineral wealth. And Afghan officials, whose economy is in dire shape and whose government is struggling to pay its bills, are eager to find a new source of aid and investment.
A major factor in China’s stepped-up involvement with Afghanistan is a growing alarm in Beijing over Islamist militancy among Uighurs, a Muslim ethnic group from northwestern China, analysts say.
Since 2001, a smattering of Uighur militants have fought in Afghanistan and elsewhere. And Chinese officials blame a Uighur separatist group, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, for a spate of attacks that have killed hundreds of people in China over the past two years.
Some experts say Chinese fears that the Uighur separatist cause might spread widely among other militant groups are overblown. But where some see unfounded fears, the Afghans have sensed an opportunity to secure a new, rich benefactor.
Further, interviews with Afghan officials suggest that they also hope to use the presence of Uighur militants here to drive a wedge between China and Pakistan, which has aided and sheltered the Taliban in the past and is a longstanding ally of Beijing.
In the past year, Afghanistan’s main intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security, has persistently flagged to Beijing each and every one of the dozens of Uighurs who it says were caught by Afghan forces fighting inside the country. And Afghan and Western officials familiar with the effort say that the intelligence agency has painstakingly prepared dossiers for Chinese officials, laying out evidence tracing the militants back to Islamist training camps inside Pakistan.
The subject was atop the agenda last month when Rahmatullah Nabil, the acting director of the Afghan intelligence agency, quietly visited Beijing before President Ashraf Ghani’s first state trip to China, officials familiar with the negotiations said.
Then, after a meeting last week between Mr. Ghani and President Xi Jinping in Beijing, Chinese officials said the two had agreed to jointly press the fight against Uighur militants.
“In the area of security, President Ghani expressed readiness and staunch support from the Afghan side in China’s fight against East Turkestan Islamic Movement terrorist forces,” Kong Xuanyou, a Chinese Foreign Ministry official, told reporters after the meeting, according to Reuters.
Mr. Nabil said it was “a big achievement” that the Chinese government was now listening to the Afghans about Uighurs who were being trained in Pakistan.
“A big number of Uighurs were arrested, and during the investigation they were talking about where they received training, how they received training,” he said in an interview before his most recent visit to China. “We think they are preparing themselves, which is a big issue for the Chinese.”
He added that the new Afghan government was trying “to manage” the issue, which is precisely what Mr. Ghani appears to have done during his visit to Beijing. There, China pledged nearly $330 million in aid through 2017, a sharp jump from the $250 million it had provided in the past 13 years.
China also said it was planning new commercial investments along with an unspecified amount of increased security assistance. Afghan officials say that aid will go far beyond the limited help Beijing had previously provided, much of which focused on counternarcotics efforts.
But in doing so, China will also take on bigger risks. So far, the Chinese government has found only trouble with its limited investments in Afghanistan. Its most significant investment to date was a $3 billion concession awarded to the China Metallurgical group to mine a rich vein of copper in an area south of Kabul that is thick with Taliban.
That was seven years ago. And in the intervening years, the Chinese have done little to move forward with the project, put off by the threat of Taliban attacks and the general chaos of doing business in Afghanistan. Commitments to build housing for villagers who would be displaced by the mine and to build a railway line and a 400-megawatt power plant have yet to be fulfilled. Afghan officials have in the past year talked of possibly renegotiating the contract.
Still, Mr. Ghani unsurprisingly struck a positive note about China’s newfound willingness to aid Afghanistan upon his return home last weekend.
A closer relationship, he told reporters, would help Afghanistan toward becoming “an intersection for Asia, as it was during the time of the Silk Road.”
Yet the importance of the ancient network of routes that connected Europe and Asia began nose-diving around the time the Portuguese mastered the compass, opening sea lanes that could connect the far corners of Europe with the outer reaches of Asia. It quickly became clear that the risk posed by pirates was more manageable than the bandits and unreliable tribes whose main source of wealth was plundering caravans as they lumbered across the mountains and deserts of Central Asia.
The camel caravans were long ago replaced by trucks. But the banditry remains, and the raging Taliban insurgency has left stretches of the old Silk Road as dangerous as they have ever been. American projects aimed at creating what officials liked to call a New Silk Road in the past 13 years have yielded little beyond talk and misspent money.
Mr. Ghani, in his comments to reporters, acknowledged that peace was needed to ensure any kind of sustained economic development in Afghanistan, be it spurred by Chinese renminbi or American dollars.
Asked directly about whether he had asked China to become more involved in putting pressure on the Taliban — and in pressing Pakistan to do more to push the Taliban’s leadership to negotiate — Mr. Ghani was careful to avoid specifics. Instead, he spoke of the miseries of war and said, “We are tired of blood.”
Then he added, “The only one who can be effective in peace is the one who has good relations with all sides.”
By MATTHEW ROSENBERG
NOV. 5, 2014
KABUL, Afghanistan — Since the British first tried and failed to subdue Afghanistan in the 19th century, stumbling into a costly Afghan war seems to have become a mandatory step for global power players. The Soviet Union did it in the 1980s, and the American battle here has passed the 13-year mark.
Now, China seems to be taking its turn in coming to grips with Afghanistan’s role in its national security.
No one expects China to be sending troops any time soon, even with the United States and NATO pulling out the last of their combat forces at year’s end. But China has taken a major step in formalizing closer relations with the Afghan government: Last week, it said it planned to provide billions of dollars in new economic and security assistance.
That is being taken as good news by American officials, who have sought to encourage China to take a larger role in Afghanistan beyond just trying to develop the country’s mineral wealth. And Afghan officials, whose economy is in dire shape and whose government is struggling to pay its bills, are eager to find a new source of aid and investment.
A major factor in China’s stepped-up involvement with Afghanistan is a growing alarm in Beijing over Islamist militancy among Uighurs, a Muslim ethnic group from northwestern China, analysts say.
Since 2001, a smattering of Uighur militants have fought in Afghanistan and elsewhere. And Chinese officials blame a Uighur separatist group, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, for a spate of attacks that have killed hundreds of people in China over the past two years.
Some experts say Chinese fears that the Uighur separatist cause might spread widely among other militant groups are overblown. But where some see unfounded fears, the Afghans have sensed an opportunity to secure a new, rich benefactor.
Further, interviews with Afghan officials suggest that they also hope to use the presence of Uighur militants here to drive a wedge between China and Pakistan, which has aided and sheltered the Taliban in the past and is a longstanding ally of Beijing.
In the past year, Afghanistan’s main intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security, has persistently flagged to Beijing each and every one of the dozens of Uighurs who it says were caught by Afghan forces fighting inside the country. And Afghan and Western officials familiar with the effort say that the intelligence agency has painstakingly prepared dossiers for Chinese officials, laying out evidence tracing the militants back to Islamist training camps inside Pakistan.
The subject was atop the agenda last month when Rahmatullah Nabil, the acting director of the Afghan intelligence agency, quietly visited Beijing before President Ashraf Ghani’s first state trip to China, officials familiar with the negotiations said.
Then, after a meeting last week between Mr. Ghani and President Xi Jinping in Beijing, Chinese officials said the two had agreed to jointly press the fight against Uighur militants.
“In the area of security, President Ghani expressed readiness and staunch support from the Afghan side in China’s fight against East Turkestan Islamic Movement terrorist forces,” Kong Xuanyou, a Chinese Foreign Ministry official, told reporters after the meeting, according to Reuters.
Mr. Nabil said it was “a big achievement” that the Chinese government was now listening to the Afghans about Uighurs who were being trained in Pakistan.
“A big number of Uighurs were arrested, and during the investigation they were talking about where they received training, how they received training,” he said in an interview before his most recent visit to China. “We think they are preparing themselves, which is a big issue for the Chinese.”
He added that the new Afghan government was trying “to manage” the issue, which is precisely what Mr. Ghani appears to have done during his visit to Beijing. There, China pledged nearly $330 million in aid through 2017, a sharp jump from the $250 million it had provided in the past 13 years.
China also said it was planning new commercial investments along with an unspecified amount of increased security assistance. Afghan officials say that aid will go far beyond the limited help Beijing had previously provided, much of which focused on counternarcotics efforts.
But in doing so, China will also take on bigger risks. So far, the Chinese government has found only trouble with its limited investments in Afghanistan. Its most significant investment to date was a $3 billion concession awarded to the China Metallurgical group to mine a rich vein of copper in an area south of Kabul that is thick with Taliban.
That was seven years ago. And in the intervening years, the Chinese have done little to move forward with the project, put off by the threat of Taliban attacks and the general chaos of doing business in Afghanistan. Commitments to build housing for villagers who would be displaced by the mine and to build a railway line and a 400-megawatt power plant have yet to be fulfilled. Afghan officials have in the past year talked of possibly renegotiating the contract.
Still, Mr. Ghani unsurprisingly struck a positive note about China’s newfound willingness to aid Afghanistan upon his return home last weekend.
A closer relationship, he told reporters, would help Afghanistan toward becoming “an intersection for Asia, as it was during the time of the Silk Road.”
Yet the importance of the ancient network of routes that connected Europe and Asia began nose-diving around the time the Portuguese mastered the compass, opening sea lanes that could connect the far corners of Europe with the outer reaches of Asia. It quickly became clear that the risk posed by pirates was more manageable than the bandits and unreliable tribes whose main source of wealth was plundering caravans as they lumbered across the mountains and deserts of Central Asia.
The camel caravans were long ago replaced by trucks. But the banditry remains, and the raging Taliban insurgency has left stretches of the old Silk Road as dangerous as they have ever been. American projects aimed at creating what officials liked to call a New Silk Road in the past 13 years have yielded little beyond talk and misspent money.
Mr. Ghani, in his comments to reporters, acknowledged that peace was needed to ensure any kind of sustained economic development in Afghanistan, be it spurred by Chinese renminbi or American dollars.
Asked directly about whether he had asked China to become more involved in putting pressure on the Taliban — and in pressing Pakistan to do more to push the Taliban’s leadership to negotiate — Mr. Ghani was careful to avoid specifics. Instead, he spoke of the miseries of war and said, “We are tired of blood.”
Then he added, “The only one who can be effective in peace is the one who has good relations with all sides.”
