China to fund base in Afghanistan

[Hindustani78]

China to fund base in Afghanistan

Beijing, January 10, 2018 21:24 IST
Updated: January 10, 2018 21:25 IST

http://www.thehindu.com/news/intern...afghanistan/article22413549.ece?homepage=true



Counterterrosrim base in Badakshan to check cross-border infiltration
China will fund construction of an Afghan counterterrorism base in Badakshan province to block cross-border infiltration of the ethnic Uyghur militants.

Fergana News Agency (FNA) has quoted Gen. Dawlat Waziri of the Afghan Defence Ministry as saying that China will provide financial support to build the base, whose precise location inside Badakshan, in northern Afghanistan, is yet to the determined.

Gen. Waziri said that the Chinese side would cover all material and technical expenses for this base — weaponry, uniforms for soldiers, military equipment and everything else necessary for its functioning.

The decision to build the facility was taken during last month’s visit to China by Afghan Defence Minister Tariq Shah Bahrami.

During his visit late last month, Mr. Bahrami met his Chinese counterpart Chang Wanquan, and Xu Qiliang, Vice Chairman of China’s Central Military Commission.

According to China Military Online, a website affiliated with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), Gen. Xu said during his meeting with Mr. Barhami that China was willing to “strengthen pragmatic cooperation in areas of military exchange and anti-terrorism, and safeguard the security of the two countries and the region, making contributions to the development of China-Afghanistan strategic partnership of cooperation”.

FNA said that Mr. Bahrami and his Chinese counterpart, Gen. Chang Wanquan agreed that their counter-terrorism focus should not only be confined to Badakshan, but Afghanistan’s entire northern region.

Afghan analysts said that the largest group of Uyghur militants already resides in Badakhshan, from where they can rapidly shift to China. The Afghan Defence Minister’s visit follows the first meeting of the foreign ministers of China, Pakistan and Afghanistan last month. “China has been able to establish itself as honest broker in the eyes of the Afghans,” a source told The Hindu.

 

[Hindustani78]

March 2017 article

Chinese troops appear to be operating in Afghanistan, and the Pentagon is OK with it
By: Shawn Snow   March 5, 2017
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/...n-afghanistan-and-the-pentagon-is-ok-with-it/

WASHINGTON — There is mounting evidence that Chinese ground troops are operating inside Afghanistan, conducting joint counter-terror patrols with Afghan forces along a 50-mile stretch of their shared border and fueling speculation that Beijing is preparing to play a significantly greater role in the country's security once the U.S. and NATO leave.

The full scope of China's involvement remains unclear, and the Pentagon is unwilling to discuss it. "We know that they are there, that they are present," a Pentagon spokesman said. Yet beyond a subtle acknowledgement, U.S. military officials in Washington and in Kabul would not respond to several detailed questions submitted by Military Times.

This dynamic stands in stark contrast to the two sides' feisty rhetoric over their ongoing dispute in the South China Sea, and to Washington's vocal condemnation of Russian and Iranian activity in Afghanistan. One explanation may be that this quiet arrangement is mutually beneficial.

Both the Chinese and Afghan governments have disputed reports of joint patrols inside Afghanistan. Those first surfaced late last year when India's Wion News published photos claiming to show Chinese military vehicles in a region called Little Pamir, a barren plateau near the border. Reuters, an international news agency, also recently documented the development.

The vehicles were identified as a Dongfeng EQ 2050, which is the Chinese equivalent of a U.S. Humvee, and a Norinco VP 11a, which are like the mine-resistant MRAPs developed by the U.S. military last decade. China maintains that while its police forces do conduct joint counter-terrorism operations along the border, based on existing bilateral agreements between the two nations, the People's Liberation Army does not.

But then there's this peculiarity: In January, Chinese media circulated a report about Chinese troops allegedly rescuing a U.S. special forces team that had been attacked in Afghanistan. The story is likely bogus propaganda, and U.S. officials in Afghanistan say no U.S. personnel have been part of any operations involving Chinese forces, but it would seem to underscore the two countries' shared interest in combating terrorism there.

In this screen grab from India's Wion News, a Chinese Norinco VP 11a mine resistant vehicle patrols in the Afghanistan-China border region. (Screen grab via Wion News)

But why is China even interested in Afghanistan? There are two motivators: security and commerce.

The first, says Franz-Stefan Gady, a senior fellow at the East-West Institute, centers around China’s desire to eradicate a Uyghur militant group known as the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, which has been active throughout the region for many years. Its feud with the Chinese government dates to 1949. The U.S. State Department designated it a terrorist organization in 2002. More recently, Uyghurs fighting with the Islamic State in Iraq have vowed to wreak havoc back home in China.

The U.S. military is not expressly targeting China's adversary though its continued presence in Afghanistan does further China's objective by helping to secure the country and deny sanctuary to rogue terror groups. Today, there are about 15,000 U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, down from nearly 130,000 during the war's peak. They're spread across a handful of bases, focused on teaching the Afghans how to fight their enemies independently. A separate U.S-led counter-terror mission is focused on taking out high-profile leaders within al-Qaida and its affiliates.

But as coalition forces have pulled back, security has eroded, leaving ripe conditions for militants — be it the Taliban, al-Qaida or Uyghurs — to move in. The top American commander in Afghanistan, Army Gen. John Nicholson, last month called the 15-year war a stalemate, raising the possibility that the U.S. and its allies could once more expand their footprint. Long term, however, the goal is to extract. "Beijing," Gady said, "has expressed repeated concern over the diminished Western foot print in Afghanistan."


Border security and broader stability are of prime concern to China, said Sung-Yoon Lee, a professor of U.S.-East Asia relations at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. So its "law enforcement actions inside Afghanistan in cooperation with Pakistan, as the U.S. draws down, serve Beijing's interests quite well." The U.S. is dependent on this assistance, he said. "Hence, there's no compelling reason for China not to resort to military force in its unstable western neighbor."

Chinese Gen. Li Zuocheng, left, and U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley review an honor guard at the Bayi Building in Beijing, Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2016. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

 

[Hindustani78]

Kabul, February 2

http://www.tribuneindia.com/news/wo...e-in-remote-afghanistan-officials/537638.html

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 say, as it seeks to shore up its fragile neighbour.

The army camp will 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 neighbours in Xinjiang, and with so few travellers in the region local interest in the Chinese visitors has been high, residents told AFP on a recent visit there.

China’s involvement in the base comes as President Xi Jinping seeks to extend Beijing’s economic and geopolitical clout.


The Chinese are pouring billions of dollars into infrastructure in South Asia. With Afghanistan’s potential to destabilise 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 (ETIM) 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 to enter China, analysts say.

Afghan and Chinese officials discussed the plan in December in Beijing, but details are still being clarified, Afghan defence ministry deputy spokesman Mohammad Radmanesh said.

“We are going to build it (the base) but the Chinese government has committed to help the division financially, provide equipment and train the Afghan soldiers,” he told AFP recently.

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 told AFP in October 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, adding that he had seen vehicles flying Chinese flags.

The Afghan army arrived days earlier “and told us that the Chinese army would be coming here”, he said, adding: “We were strictly told not to go near them or talk to them and not to take any photos.”

Rashid’s account was confirmed by other Kyrgyz, including another chief Jo Boi, who said the Chinese military spent almost a year in Wakhan before leaving in March 2017.

Both Chinese and Afghan officials deny the claims, with China’s defence ministry telling AFP that the “Chinese army is not engaged in any military operation in the Wakhan Corridor”.

With little access to the corridor, Kabul provides almost no services to those who live there—but the Chinese, Boi said, have been bringing “a lot of food and warm clothes”.

“They are very good people, very kind,” he told AFP.

After their March visit, he said, they returned in June for roughly a month. “Since then they come every month... to distribute food.”

China fears militancy could threaten its growing economic interests in the region, Ahmad Bilal Khalil, a researcher at the Kabul-based Center for Strategic and Regional Studies, told AFP.

“They need to have a secure Afghanistan,” he said, estimating Beijing had provided Kabul with more than $70 million in military aid in the past three years.

It recently flagged the possibility of including Afghanistan in the USD 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,” said Willy Lam, a political analyst in Hong Kong. — AFP

 

[Armand2REP]

The US offered India the chance to take over Afghanistan. India said no thanks, now it looks like the Chinese are moving in. Missed opportunity or crisis diverted?

 

[kalakaar]

It's very close to Porki occupied Kash. This is the high time. India delays more loses for ever.

Indians are known for their pu**y policies. Not from today but from day 1 and this is why India can't be a part of UNSC. Their government officers don't enjoy working in the office they make policies to get rid of extra work and keep it pending for successor.

The US offered India the chance to take over Afghanistan. India said no thanks, now it looks like the Chinese are moving in. Missed opportunity or crisis diverted?

They have not learnt from mistakes past thousand years and they are not going to learn it either. The are introvert people.