Worried about militants sneaking into a restive Chinese region from war-torn Afghanistan, Beijing is in talks with Kabul over the construction of a military base, Afghan officials said, as it seeks to shore up its fragile neighbor.
The military camp is to be built in Afghanistan’s remote and mountainous Wakhan Corridor, where witnesses have reported seeing Chinese and Afghan troops on joint patrols.
The freezing, barren panhandle of land — bordering China’s tense Xinjiang region — is so cut off from the rest of Afghanistan that many inhabitants are unaware of the Afghan conflict, scraping out harsh, but peaceful lives.
However, they retain strong links with their neighbors in Xinjiang and with so few travelers in the region local interest in the Chinese visitors has been high, residents said.
China’s involvement in the military base comes as Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) seeks to extend Beijing’s economic and geopolitical clout.
The Chinese are pouring billions of US dollars into infrastructure in South Asia.
With Afghanistan’s potential to destabilize the region, analysts said any moves there would be viewed through the prism of security.
Beijing fears that exiled Uighur members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement are passing through the Wakhan into Xinjiang to carry out attacks.
It also worries that Islamic State group militants fleeing Iraq and Syria could cross central Asia and Xinjiang to reach Afghanistan, or use the Wakhan Corridor to enter China, analysts said.
Afghan and Chinese officials discussed the plan in December last year in Beijing, but details are still being clarified, Afghan Ministry of Defense deputy spokesman Mohammad Radmanesh said.
“We are going to build it, but the Chinese government has committed to help the division financially, provide equipment and train the Afghan soldiers,” he said.
A senior Chinese embassy official in Kabul would only say Beijing is involved in “capacity-building” in Afghanistan.
NATO’s US-led Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan declined to comment, but US officials have previously welcomed China’s role in Afghanistan, noting they share the same security concerns.
Members of the Kyrgyz ethnic minority in Wakhan said in October last year they had been seeing Chinese and Afghan military patrols for months.
“The Chinese army first came here last summer and they were accompanied by the Afghan army,” said Abdul Rashid, a Kyrgyz chief.
The Afghan army arrived days earlier “and told us that the Chinese army would be coming here,” he said. “We were strictly told not to go near them or talk to them, and not to take any photos.”
China fears militancy could threaten its growing economic interests in the region, Kabul-based Center for Strategic and Regional Studies researcher Ahmad Bilal Khalil said.
“They need to have a secure Afghanistan,” he said, estimating Beijing had provided Kabul with more than US$70 million in military aid in the past three years.
Beijing has also flagged the possibility of including Afghanistan in the US$54 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) linking western China to the Indian Ocean via Pakistan.
“The anti-terrorism motivation is an important one, but it’s not as important as the bigger move to boost the CPEC,” Hong Kong-based political analyst Willy Lam (林和立) said.
Kabul is also keen for Beijing to have a “more active role,” said Andrew Small, author of The China-Pakistan Axis.
It hopes China would use its “special relationship” with Islamabad to encourage the Pakistani military, who wield significant influence over Afghanistan’s insurgents, to “force the Taliban into peace talks,” Small said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in