The other emerging player

Anita Inder Singh

China has announced that it will deepen its Afghan role

PRESIDENT Obama's decision that American troops in Afghanistan will engage in combat with the Taliban if necessary comes nearly two months after Washington signed the Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) with the newly elected Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on September 30. Taliban violence has continued to rise and the Taliban have rejected Ghani's invitation for peace talks. 

Would a combat role for American troops dispel concerns (including in New Delhi) about the ability of Ghani's government to quash the Taliban? That is uncertain. There have been fears that the Afghan National Army (ANA) would not be able to resist the Taliban successfully without the American and Nato troops. 

According to the BSA, American forces can stay in Afghanistan 'until the end of 2024 and beyond', mostly in nine major land and air bases. But Washington's main intent has been that American troops train a 350,000-strong ANA. 

Afghanistan's weak economy will not be able to keep the country afloat, let alone defeat the Pakistan-backed Taliban insurgency. 

It was in this uncertain environment that Ghani made his first official trip abroad — to China — on October 29. The immediate occasion was the hosting by Beijing of its first international conference on Afghanistan. China then announced that it would deepen its Afghan role, that its aim was to advance the peaceful reconstruction of Afghanistan and to build a regional consensus on security and stability in Afghanistan. 

China has tried to revive the Istanbul Process, a regional cooperation mechanism designed to support 'a peaceful and stable Afghanistan'. Its 14-member countries include India, Pakistan, Russian, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Central Asian states. This year’s conference was the first annual ministerial conference to be held in China, providing Beijing with a good opportunity to initiate or contribute to the shaping of Afghan security. 

That prospect was sought and welcomed by Ghani. Surrounded by Iran, Pakistan, China, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, Afghanistan lives uneasily in a precarious strategic location. But it has vast mineral and gas reserves. Ghani hopes that a modernised Afghan infrastructure could transform his country into a regional land bridge. Afghanistan could then gain easy access to regional and global markets while collecting transit fees from commercial activities in Central and South Asia. 

China itself has good reasons to engage in Afghanistan. Afghanistan needs to be stabilised economically and also militarily — and it is in the economic and political spheres that China may be able to engage constructively. Like India, China will not deploy troops in Afghanistan. 

China has announced its support for infrastructure projects in that landlocked, war-torn, cash-strapped country. China has invested heavily in Afghanistan's copper reserves and oil fields. Interestingly, the state-steered Global Times declares that as China’s interests expand, it ‘cannot detach itself from dilemmas in international politics. This is the cost of being a major power and we need to get used to it.’ 

China is the biggest foreign investor in Afghanistan. It has taken the initiative on Afghanistan soon after earning some economic and diplomatic spurs by becoming the largest contributor to the BRICS bank and launched its own Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

The destabilisation of the elected Afghan regime will not be in the interests of China — or India. But India has been reluctant to supply arms to Afghanistan. And India's own need for Chinese — and other foreign —investment may have persuaded Ghani that China was a better financial and political bet than India. India itself needs Chinese investment to build up its infrastructure and China could invest $20 billion in India in the next five years. But that is less than half of the $46 billion it will plough into Pakistan, its 'iron friend', which is India's other rival in South Asia. So has China outflanked its rival India in Afghanistan? 

There is also the chance that China could use its clout over its all-weather friend, Pakistan, to persuade Islamabad to take the Taliban to the negotiating table. China, after all, wants to suppress Pakistani-trained Muslim Uighur separatist extremists in its Xinjiang province. 

Significantly, at the Chinese-sponsored international conference on Afghan reconstruction on October 30, the US welcomed ‘China's commitment to Afghanistan’. Secretary of State John Kerry takes the view that China, 'a critical player', could help stabilise Afghanistan, and cooperate with the US in upholding political cohesiveness and preventing Afghanistan from again becoming a safe haven.

Whether China wants, or whether it will be able, to persuade Pakistan's army to stop exporting extremists to the western province of Xinjiang and Afghanistan are the tough questions. If not, there is the chance that China could doubt the Pakistani military's intention or ability to tackle extremists. The iron friendship could turn out to be something more prickly or fragile. China's capacity to address extremism through investment in Afghanistan and pressure on Pakistan would then come into question.

In that event Beijing could discuss counter-terrorist measures with New Delhi and Moscow. This would displease Pakistan's military. For the moment it does look as though China has emerged as “the other” major player in Afghanistan. New Delhi, please take note. 

The write is a visiting professor at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution, New Delhi