The China-Pakistan Axis: Asia's New Geopolitics

by Andrew Small

  Technically, Afghanistan is China’s neighbour, but only just. They share a tiny sliver of a border at the Wakhjir pass, 47 miles long, which has been closed to through-traffic since the founding of the PRC. On the Chinese side, the Karakoram Highway runs close by, winding its way towards the nearby Khunjerab pass and on into Pakistan. China’s frontier patrols have use of a recently built road that turns off by the border,32 but this new construction is not the result of any undeclared plans to open the route up: it is to make it easier for the security services to keep the border sealed. On the Afghan side is the Wakhan corridor, a narrow, mountainous, sparsely populated salient that forms part of Badakhshan province. The infrastructure there is even less developed—a rough road finishes 100km away from the Chinese border.33

  The two countries have not actually been neighbours for that long. The only reason a China-Afghanistan border exists at all is because of the 1895 agreement between London and St Petersburg to keep their two empires geographically separated, with Wakhan as a buffer.34 The deal involved neither the Chinese nor the Afghans, and elicited complaints at the time from the emir of Afghanistan about being stuck with “the Kirghiz bandits in the Wakhan”.35 Tajikistan and Pakistan are now the states kept apart by the thin strip of land. The border area is underdeveloped for good reason. For decades, Afghanistan has represented a security threat to China because of either the military presence of a strategic rival or the risk of Islamic militancy spilling over into Xinjiang, and more recently both at the same time. While the Afghan government has approached Beijing about the possibility of putting a direct transit route in place, China’s reluctance to contemplate doing so has deep roots.36 The closed border has proved a reliable means of containment.

  For the first decades of the relationship, Afghanistan was largely peripheral to China’s interests. Kabul recognized the new Chinese government relatively quickly, on 12 January 1950, but Beijing moved slowly to respond, with diplomatic relations only being formally established in 1955.37 In contrast to its policies in many other countries in the region, China gave little support to communist parties in Afghanistan, its non-aligned status for a time sparing it the Cold War machinations in which China felt prompted to involve itself elsewhere. The two sides reached a border agreement in the flurry of Chinese diplomatic activity that took place after the war with India in 1962, but although subsequent years saw an exchange of state visits, a treaty of non-aggression, and agreements reached on trade, aid and economic cooperation, it remained a thin relationship that rarely drew attention in Beijing.38 That started to change in the 1970s, as a series of convulsions in Afghan politics appeared to draw the country closer and closer to the Soviet Union. Each time there was a changeover of government in Kabul—the 1973 coup, the 1978 Saur revolution, and Hafizullah Amin’s seizure of power in 1979—China had doubts over whether to extend recognition to the new regime, and feared that if Moscow’s hand was not actually behind the coups, it was only a matter of time before Afghanistan became a full Soviet ally.39 The outright invasion in December 1979 at least provided greater clarity on that count.

  As it would a quarter of a century later, Afghanistan moved from being a country that China felt it could safely ignore to being geostrategically central. As one Chinese media outlet put it at the time: “It is precisely because Afghanistan is of vital importance to the Soviet global strategy that the Soviet Union has taken the risk of seizing it.”40 Some of the language that Chinese officials used openly at the time in their assessment of Moscow’s intentions and the impact of its military occupation on China’s interests would be used again privately after 9/11 to refer to the United States. While Afghanistan’s geostrategic location was believed to have provided the general rationale for the Soviets’ actions, its particular effect on China was “encirclement”, especially when combined with Moscow’s presence in Asia.41 The building of long-term bases was seen as proof of the Soviet Union’s intentions for a permanent presence, which would help it gain “a strategic edge over China and Pakistan”.42 Unlike the United States though, the Red Army occupied the Wakhan corridor, building an air base in Badakhshan, and creating anxieties about another front across which Soviet attacks on Chinese territory could ultimately be launched.43 Beijing also feared that Moscow would push on from landlocked Afghanistan towards the Indian Ocean. As Geng Biao, the Chinese Vice-Premier, put it: “If the Soviets’ barbarous aggression goes unchecked, the next target is Pakistan.”44 The solution was resistance. China would give massive support to the Afghan rebels, who would “explode the myth of the invincibility of Soviet hegemonism,” Xinhua declared in 1980.45

  China was already starting to agitate against the Soviet presence even before the invasion, and as early as April 1979 the United States had learned from Afghan sources of Beijing’s willingness to supply weapons to the mujahideen.46 In the 1980s that would be substantially ramped up, and Afghanistan became a central front for China. In what has been described as one of the most important clandestine operations in the PRC’s history, Beijing became the arms-supplier-in-chief for the guerrilla war against the Soviet Union.47 In the early years of the campaign in particular, when the United States was trying to downplay the scale of its involvement, Washington not only wanted to avoid having US weapons turning up on the battlefield, but also sought to source them from other Communist countries, providing deniability of US involvement.48 This necessitated purchases from states like China that were able to provide Soviet-designed weapons. The range provided by Beijing was extensive, from AK-47s and RPG-7s to 107mm rockets and 60mm mortars. At Pakistan’s request, the Chinese even brought back into production a single-barrelled rocket launcher that the PLA itself had discontinued.49 Easily handled by one man, it would play a vital role in the mujahideen’s attacks on Kabul. Until 1984, China provided the bulk of all the arms and ammunition supplied,50 and continued to supply them on such a scale that large unused caches were being found in Afghanistan more than a decade after the Soviet withdrawal.51 The coalition of countries involved in the operation was broad, with weapons coming from Egypt and Israel, among others, but China was in the central group. Along with the CIA, the ISI, and the Saudi General Directorate, “There were four intelligence services that met every week in Islamabad”, according to Afghanistan scholar Barnett Rubin.52 China’s activities in Afghanistan even had the imprimatur of the CPC red aristocracy: the man who acted as an assistant military attaché in Islamabad in the early 1980s, facilitating liaisons with the ISI during the mujahideen’s campaign, was Mao Zedong’s grandson, Kong Jining.53 While strategic considerations were important—Deng Xiaoping expressed his desire to turn Afghanistan into a “quagmire” for the Soviet Union—China also profited handsomely from the weapons sales.54 The money came from the United States and Saudi Arabia, and is estimated at $100 million a year for the Chinese military in the first few years of the campaign alone,55 “huge profit margins”, as Steve Coll describes them, during a period when it was desperate for cash.56 Arms purchases were agreed with the CIA station in Beijing, and although a small proportion of them, typically 10–15%,57 were provided as “aid”, the American officials negotiating the deals found that Beijing drove a hard bargain.58

  Nominally, China’s direct involvement was limited. Most of the weapons were sent by sea to the port at Karachi, at which point the ISI took over.59 The only exceptions were a few air-freight deliveries and the supply of Chinese mules, which were sent down the Karakoram Highway before being used as a means of transport for weapons and supplies across the mountains into Afghanistan.60 Pakistan was determined to control the flow of arms to its preferred groups, as well as the strategic direction of the war, and some Pakistani officials insist to this day that China’s direct relationships with the mujahideen were restricted to the small Maoist faction, Shola e Jawed or “Eternal Flame”.61 One notable member of that group, Rangin Spanta, went on to become Afghanistan’s foreign minister and national security adviser under President Karzai,62 but most of them were kille
d by Pakistan’s closest allies among the mujahideen, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e-Islami, in the bloody infighting in Peshawar that followed the war.63 China’s interest however went well beyond the Maoists, who ultimately received little serious support. Beijing is believed to have infiltrated ethnic Tajik military officers into Afghanistan in order to circumvent Pakistan’s restrictions and establish direct links with groups that would go on to form the Northern Alliance.64 Ahmed Shah Masoud, one of the leading commanders, was known to be among the direct recipients of Chinese military aid.65

  China was also involved in one of the decisions that would be seen as a turning point in the war. In January 1986, Senator Orrin Hatch visited Beijing, accompanied by a phalanx of US officials from the CIA, the NSC, and the Defense and State Departments who were managing the covert programme in Afghanistan, on a mission to secure Chinese support for the escalation of the mujahideen’s campaign.66 A group of administration officials, and their supporters on Capitol Hill, were concerned that the mujahideen were losing the war and needed to be armed with more sophisticated weaponry in order to turn the tide. In particular, they wanted to see them provided with Stingers—a portable, shoulder-fired weapon that could launch heat-seeking missiles at Soviet helicopters and transport planes.67 This was a controversial proposal in the United States, where cautious officials were concerned about the Soviet reaction to the introduction of highly visible US weapons, and the possibility that the missiles, if diverted outside Afghanistan, could be used against NATO forces in Europe or even to shoot down passenger aircraft.68 The road to consensus in Washington ran through Islamabad, and the road to Islamabad ran through Beijing. General Zia had not actually asked for the missiles, which was a telling argument used against the hawks:69 Pakistan, after all, was the country most immediately at risk of Soviet retaliation, and Zia himself was afraid that the missiles might be used by terrorists against his own plane.70 China’s support, it was believed, might prove persuasive. Hatch met the head of Chinese intelligence to urge his backing for the increase in the provision of US assistance to the mujahideen, particularly a new wave of operations that involved ISI officers accompanying the Afghan rebels on their guerrilla strikes. Hatch then asked if the Chinese would agree to support the Stinger supplies and “if he would communicate his support directly to Pakistani President Gen. Mohammed Zia ul-Haq as part of a coordinated lobbying effort”.71 In Hatch’s lively account, “His eyes lit up. His face hardened. ‘We acquiesce’ he barked out.”72 It took “months of secret negotiations”73 with the Chinese and with Zia before everyone was satisfied that the risk was worth taking, but China’s willingness to persuade Pakistan to request the Stingers “cleared the way” for their introduction.74 The ISI’s Afghanistan Bureau Chief described it as the “single most important unresolved matter in defeating the Soviets on the battlefield,”75 and the decision to give the the green light would prove to “tip the balance on the battlefield” in the mujahideen’s favour.76

  As with the United States, China’s agenda in Afghanistan at the time was purely geopolitical, and once the Soviet Union embarked on the withdrawal of men and matériel in June 1988, leaving only the rusting hulks of tanks and MiG 21s behind, China’s involvement rapidly wound down. Two months later came the infamous plane crash that killed the US Ambassador, Arnold Raphel, and Pakistan’s President, Zia ul Haq. And on 15 February 1989, Boris Gromov, commander of the 40th army, became the last Soviet soldier to walk across the Friendship Bridge and out of Afghanistan.77 While China’s formal diplomatic representation survived the early years of the Najibullah government, it quickly washed its hands of the matter as Afghanistan slid into civil war.

  For most of the 1990s, China was officially absent from Kabul. The only remnants of its presence were three Afghan employees who still received payment twice a year from Beijing to tend to the old embassy, which had been the unfortunate victim of stray rockets as a result of its backing onto the presidential palace.78 Even the Chinese dogs there had been shot, one by the mujahideen, one by the Taliban.79 Towards the end of the decade, however, Beijing embarked on a process that might have seen its diplomats setting up again at their old address in Wazir Akbar Khan under contentious circumstances. Had it not been for 9/11, there was a good chance that China would have ended up being the first non-Muslim country to recognize Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.

  Despite the Pakistani army’s deep involvement in backing the movement, Chinese officials had never been enthusiastic about the Taliban’s rise. The ideological and security threat that the fundamentalist militia could pose to Xinjiang and the wider region was clear well before they took power, and when the Taliban made their decisive breakthrough in the civil war, the Islamabad connection was not enough to line Beijing up behind the new regime. While the fall of the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif in May 1997 provided sufficient excuse for Pakistan to extend diplomatic recognition to the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” and prod Saudi Arabia and the UAE into doing the same, Beijing demurred. 80 There seemed little reason to push back against the near-global consensus that had been arrayed against the Taliban since their first days after sweeping into Kabul in 1996 were marked by the imposition of its peculiarly brutal version of sharia law, and the execution and mutiliation of former president Najibullah, who was seized from the UN’s compound.81 Following the Al Qaeda bombings of the US embassies in Nairobi and Dares Salaam, as pressure mounted on the Taliban over their provision of sanctuary to the terror group, China happily backed the UN Security Council’s decision to establish a comprehensive set of sanctions against them.82 It had its own, more direct concerns than Osama Bin Laden. After the Taliban takeover, Afghanistan had become a base for ETIM and other Central Asian militants affiliated to them, such as the IMU, and the training camps that the Uighur group established were in locations—including places in and around Kabul—that left no ambiguity about the fact that they operated with the consent of the country’s new masters.83

  Pakistan had been assuring China that this problem was amenable to negotiation. If Beijing was willing to open channels to the increasingly embattled regime, a deal of sorts might be reached. The Taliban were in desperate need of money and international legitimacy. The United States had curtailed the early diplomatic and commercial flirtations that had once given the Taliban hope that their impeccable anti-Iranian credentials, along with the promise of a pipeline deal, might provide them with a path to respectability in Washington.84 Even Saudi Arabia had pulled out its diplomatic representative from Afghanistan as a result of Mullah Omar’s recalcitrance over Osama Bin Laden.85 For China, the depth of its isolation could be turned into an opportunity. “We urged China and the Taliban to establish formal contacts so that their mutual mistrust can be eliminated,” said one Pakistani diplomat cited by Ahmed Rashid, “the Taliban pose a threat to nobody and want the best of relations with China”.86

  The value of a discreetly expanded relationship was already in evidence in the aftermath of the 1998 US cruise missile attacks on terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. Pakistan gave China access to a stray missile that landed on its territory, but Chinese agents also found willing salesmen on the other side of the border as they sought to recover whatever they could from the Tomahawks.87 These contacts took more open form in early February 1999, when a group of five Chinese diplomats flew into Kabul for a preliminary set of meetings with Taliban officials. Afterwards, China announced the opening of formal trade ties, flights between Kabul and Urumqi, and the provision of food aid.88 At the end of the year, there were rumours that the PLA had agreed to provide low-level military support to the Taliban, via Pakistan, in return for the cut-off of training assistance for Uighurs.89 But China proceeded cautiously. Tang Jiaxuan, the Chinese Foreign Minister, turned down a chance to meet his Taliban counterpart when he was on a visit to Pakistan in 2000.90 Instead a much lower-level diplomat who was accompanying him, Sun Guoxiang, the Deputy Director of the Foreign Ministry’s Asia Department, met the Taliban’s ambassador i
n Islamabad, Sayyed Mohammad Haqqani.91 Haqqani assured Sun that they would not allow anyone to use Afghan territory against Beijing: “Some foreign enemies of the people of Afghanistan and vested interests are bent upon creating misunderstanding and differences between the two friendly countries by leveling false and baseless allegations.”92 But the decisive assurances that Beijing sought could only come from the very top: Mullah Omar himself.

  The preparations for a meeting with the Taliban’s reclusive leader were made in Islamabad. Following the first round of UN sanctions, the Taliban’s embassy there had become their principal diplomatic outlet to the world. The Chinese ambassador to Pakistan, Lu Shulin, an Urdu speaker who had studied at Karachi University in the 1960s, conveyed an official request for a meeting through his Afghan counterpart, Abdul Salam Zaeef. In his autobiography, Zaeef would describe the Chinese ambassador as “the only one to maintain a good relationship with the embassy and with [Taliban-run] Afghanistan”.93 Additional groundwork was laid in an “unofficial” visit to Kandahar in November 2000 by a delegation from the think-tank attached to China’s ministry of state security, the Chinese Institute of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR).94 The following month, the intelligence agents and academics were followed by Lu Shulin himself, who visited Afghanistan as part of a three-man team. In Kabul, he met a powerful group of Taliban leaders, including the Vice-president of the Council of Ministers, Mullah Muhammad Hassan Akhund, who oversaw the defence, intelligence and security apparatus, and the Interior Minister, Mullah Abdul Razzaq Akhundzada.95 The two men would later become members of the Quetta Shura, the Taliban’s ruling body in exile. After his visit to Kabul, Lu took an Ariana flight down to Kandahar, the birthplace of the movement and the country’s de facto capital, where he became the first senior representative of a non-Muslim country to meet the Taliban’s amir, and one of only a tiny handful of non-Muslims that Omar ever dealt with. This fact became vividly clear to the Chinese diplomats when they presented him with a gift, in the shape of a small camel figurine, to which he reacted as if they had handed him “a piece of red hot coal”, believing the representation of a living being to be idolatrous.96