Kabul Connect in Beijing

http://www.newindianexpress.com/columns/Kabul-Connect-in-Beijing/2014/11/07/article2510925.ece

By Harsh V Pant

Published: 07th November 2014

Last week Afghanistan’s new president Ashraf Ghani reached out to China with a four-day visit to the Asian powerhouse. There was high-flying rhetoric as Ghani said his country viewed China “as a strategic partner, in the short term, medium term, long term and very long term”. President Xi Jinping reciprocated by hailing Ghani as an old friend of the Chinese people with whom China prepared to work towards “a new era of co-operation”, and “to take development to a new depth”. Afghanistan and China signed four agreements on trade and commerce relations, bilateral economic ties, humanitarian aid, and travel permits for public servants. Despite China’s concerns that a deteriorating security situation could threaten greater investment, it agreed to give Afghanistan $327 million in aid over the next three years—$81.8 million in 2014 and the remaining sum between 2015-2017. More significantly, China also agreed to act as a mediator between Afghanistan and Pakistan while Ghani pledged to help China fight its own Islamic militants.

China is interested in playing play a larger role in Afghanistan, long seen as primarily a US responsibility after its 2001 invasion. With the impending departure of the western troops from Afghanistan and Taliban gains threatening to stoke Islamic militancy in China’s western Xinjiang region and cut off mineral resources valued as high as $3 trillion, there are new pressures in China’s Afghanistan policy.

Both Beijing and Kabul recognise each other’s importance. Afghanistan has requested assistance from the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in its fight against the Taliban. Providing assistance to Afghanistan may form a part of Xi Jinping’s wider plan to establish a 6,437km “Silk Road” economic belt to connect the Far East with Europe by way of Central Asia. Security concerns have prevented Chinese investments in Afghanistan from getting off the ground. State-owned China Metallurgical Group spent $3 billion to mine copper at Mes Aynak, about 30 miles south of Kabul, only to see the project stalled because of insurgents and the discovery of Buddhist artifacts at the site. China National Petroleum Corp., the nation’s largest oil company, agreed in 2011 to develop Afghanistan’s Amu Darya basin, a project the government estimates will yield about $7 billion in profits.

In September 2012, China’s then security chief, Zhou Yongkang, became the first senior Chinese leader to visit Afghanistan in almost five decades. With this visit, Beijing was signalled an end to its policy of “masterful inactivity” vis-à-vis Kabul. During Zhou’s visit, Beijing announced a pact “to train, fund, and equip Afghan police”, underscoring China’s growing interest in Afghanistan’s internal security affairs. China has also started holding trilateral consultations with Pakistan and Afghanistan on regional security. Much like the rest of the region, China was worried about the withdrawal of western forces from Afghanistan as it fears a broader destabilisation of the region. The growing problems in Pakistan have also alerted China to the reality that its leverage over Pakistan may not be enough to manage the regional turmoil. As tensions have risen in Xinjiang, the perceived Pakistan link to Uighur militancy has led to a reassessment of China’s approach towards Afghanistan, especially as concerns are rising in Beijing that Islamabad has not been very effective in controlling the training of Uighur militants in Pakistan.

Since 2001, China has adopted a hands-off policy towards Afghanistan, preferring the US to do most of the heavy lifting. It does not want a serious involvement in Afghanistan but it also does not want a victory for the extremists, given its negative impact on China’s problems with Uighur separatists in Xinjiang. Besides the $3-billion Aynak copper mine project, China also did not make a significant attempt to project its economic power in Afghanistan. But as the departure of western forces from Afghanistan has come nearer, China has upped its game. It was in 2007 that the state-owned China Metallurgical Group Corporation secured a 30-year lease on Mes Aynak in Afghanistan’s Logar province. Though progress has been was slow and Afghan insurgents have targeted the mine, Beijing is expecting to extract $100 billion worth of copper from the site. The China National Petroleum Corporation has also helped Afghanistan in setting up the country’s first commercial oil production site, which was likely to extract 1.5 million barrels of oil annually from 2013.

China’s appetite for resources will make sure that Afghanistan, with over $1 trillion dollars in potential mineral wealth, gets adequate attention from Beijing. With China’s backing, Afghanistan became an observer in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. China signed a strategic partnership agreement with Kabul in 2012. More significantly, Beijing has access to the Taliban via Pakistan, having been the only non-Islamic nation in touch with Mullah Omar in the late 1990s. Viewing a political settlement in Afghanistan as increasingly vital for protecting its economic and security interests in the region, Beijing has been quietly expanding its links with the Taliban and seeking assurances that its interests would be secure if the Taliban returned to power. It remains far from clear if, as Afghanistan’s security environment unravels post-2014, Beijing would be able to utilise Afghan resources for its economic sustenance without incurring significant costs.

Turbulence in Xinjiang, such as the riots between Han Chinese and Muslim Uighurs in 2009 and the continuing instability in the region, is indeed forcing Beijing to pay greater attention to the sources of international terrorism in Pakistan, given the prospect of Islamist extremism spilling over from Afghanistan and Pakistan into the restive autonomous region of western China. China’s concerns about Islamist militancy on its western border have been rising over the past few years and the security environment in Afghanistan and the larger Central Asian region remains a huge worry.

But interestingly, China has not embedded its Afghan policy in the larger regional context. It refuses to discuss Pakistan with India to ensure its privileged relationship with Pakistan remains intact, and US-China cooperation on Pakistan and Afghanistan too remains minimal. This will make it difficult for China to act as an independent mediator between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Whatever ensues, China is upping its game and New Delhi better take notice. India will have to make an equally powerful outreach to Kabul to ensure that its equities are preserved in a rapidly transforming regional landscape.

The author is a professor in international relations, department of defence studies, King’s College, London.