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.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia