58 See “Social, Economic and Educational Status of the Muslim Community of India,” Prime Minister’s High Level Committee Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India (November
2006).
59 The Students Islamic Movement of India, or SIMI, is the prime example of India’s homegrown Islamist terrorism. By most accounts, it receives some Pakistani assistance. See Animesh Roul,
“Students Islamic Movement of India: A Profile,” Terrorism Monitor, Jamestown Foundation, 4, no. 7 (April 6, 2006), http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews
%5Btt_news%5D=728.
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No Exit from Pakistan
irritant in Beijing’s relationship with Washington, just as it was throughout
much of the 1990s.60
A belligerent, anti-American Pakistan could also align with other dangerous
regimes like Iran and North Korea. The potential is real because in a way it has
already happened. Dr. A.Q. Khan’s notorious nuclear proliferation ring shared
nuclear know-how with both of these pariah countries (along with Libya) in the
1990s. More recently, the Iranian regime has tried to drive a wedge between
Pakistan and America. Shortly after bin Laden was killed, Iranian president
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared, “We have precise information that America
wants to sabotage Pakistani nuclear facilities in order to control Pakistan and
weaken the people and government of Pakistan.”61
So far, Iran’s siren song has had little appeal among Pakistanis. Islamabad
prefers not to alienate another of its well-heeled protectors, Saudi Arabia,
which is engaged in a strategic and sectarian conflict with Iran. There too,
however, Pakistan has the potential to destabilize the wider region. If Iran
develops a nuclear bomb, the Saudis will almost certainly seek to match it,
and the most likely source for Riyadh’s program would be Pakistan. One need
not go so far as some analysts, who claim that the Pakistani nuclear arsenal is
already a virtual “Sunni” bomb, to recognize that Saudi money and influence
could buy Pakistani security guarantees and even, in short order, nuclear-tipped
missiles deployed on Saudi soil.62 The sharing of nuclear technology need not
stop in Riyadh, since other oil-rich Arab states would want to get into the
act. If a nuclear arms race breaks out in the Middle East, an untethered and
irresponsible Pakistan would be most everyone’s favorite dealer.
In short, a breakdown in U.S.-Pakistan relations would hurt U.S. efforts to
build up a strong India, maintain a nonviolent relationship with China, and
avoid greater instability throughout the Middle East. Washington’s strategic
compulsions, especially the appeal of a closer relationship with India, will make
it hard to live with Islamabad. But a jilted Pakistan’s disruptive potential will
also make it hard to live without.
beijing’s long game
As U.S.-Pakistan relations hit a rocky stretch in 2011, Chinese officials in
Beijing and at the embassy in Washington, DC, made it very clear to anyone
who would listen that China had no interest in an outright rupture between
Washington and Islamabad. Part of the Chinese concern was over the prospect
60 Shirley A. Kan, “China and Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction and Missiles: Policy Issues,” pp. 3–9, Congressional Research Service, April 25, 2012, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/
nuke/RL31555.pdf.
61 “U.S. Has Designs on Pakistan’s Nukes: Iran,” Express Tribune, June 8, 2011, http://tribune
.com.pk/story/184086/us-plans-to-sabotage-pakistan-nuke-facilities-ahmadinejad/.
62 Bruce Riedel, “Saudi Arabia: Nervously Watching Pakistan,” Brookings Institution, January 28, 2008, http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2008/0128 saudi arabia riedel.aspx.
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From the Outside-In
189
that Beijing might find itself dragged into a conflict between Pakistan the United
States. Throughout much of the late Cold War and the post-9/11 era, Beijing
and Washington either stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Pakistan or worked
together to promote Indo-Pakistani restraint. That state of affairs was very
comfortable for China. Beijing knows it would have some tough decisions to
make in the event of an unhappy divorce between Washington and Islamabad.
But what does China want from Pakistan and South Asia over the long run,
particularly as its own power and influence grow? To answer this question,
some proper perspective is required. From Beijing’s vantage point, South Asia
seems very distant. China’s leaders do not wake up every morning thinking
about South Asia. They worry first and foremost about internal economic
and political stability, including everything from political opposition and labor
unrest to restive territories like Xinjiang and Tibet. Those issues command the
lion’s share of their time and energy.
To the extent that China devotes attention outside its borders, its priorities
begin with its eastern seaboard.63 There China faces a range of security issues
that tend to place it more or less at odds with the United States, such as Taiwan,
Japan, Korea, and nearby maritime disputes. After that, Beijing contemplates
global issues, such as trade and climate change, as well as defense and foreign
policy matters farther afield, starting along its western and northern land bor-
ders but increasingly extending to South and Central Asia, the Middle East and
even – when it comes to resource extraction and new markets – to Africa and
Latin America.
Because China has so many other priorities, its relationship with Pakistan
is marked by a stark asymmetry. Pakistani leaders, military and civilian, pay
frequent visits to Beijing, often toting long wish lists for financial and military
assistance. Top Chinese leaders rarely make it to Islamabad. From 2007 to
2013, the Chinese premier visited Pakistan only twice.64 Over the same period,
Pakistan’s president and prime minister together visited China over a dozen
times.65
As discussed, it is clear why Pakistan needs China. It is less obvious what
China gets or expects to get from Pakistan. The imbalance was less pronounced
in the past. Pakistan was useful to China in its early post-revolutionary days as
63 Nathan and Scobell identify a similar list of Chinese priorities in “How China Sees America,”
pp. 33–4.
64 On occasion China has sent some important delegations to Pakistan. In October 2012, for instance, Li Changchun, a member of the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China led a two-day trip to Islamabad. See Qamar Zaman, “Sino-Pak Relations: Chinese Call for Boosting Partnership,” Express Tribune, October 18, 2012, http://tribune.
com.pk/story/453178/sino-pak-relations-chinese-call-for-boosting-partnership/.
65 “High Level Visits,” website of the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Beijing, China, http://www.pakbj.com/pakistan chi
na.php?men=2; “Pakistani PM Gilani Meets Chinese State Councilor Dai Bingguo,” Xinhua, December 24, 2011, http://news.xinhuanet
.com/english/china/2011–12/24/c_131324947.htm.
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No Exit from Pakistan
an impoverished communist outcast. In the early 1960s, Pakistan International
Airlines flew to Beijing, providing a unique air link between China and the
non-communist world. If not for Pakistan’s surreptitious assistance, Kissinger’s
secret mission to China in July 1971 might not have been possible.66 Also on
the diplomatic front, Pakistan has supported China in multilateral settings like
the UN, rustling up votes from other Muslim-majority states in defense of
Beijing’s position on sensitive matters like Tibet and Taiwan.
For decades, China and Pakistan have also been united in their desire to cut
India down to size. Hawkish Indians are not entirely wrong to see Pakistan
as the western half of an unfriendly Chinese embrace. Military and nuclear
cooperation between Islamabad and Beijing took off in the years following
the Sino-Indian war of 1962. Over that period, China has been Pakistan’s
largest arms supplier.67 Military drills and war-gaming sessions between the
People’s Liberation Army and the Pakistan Army are commonplace, and the
two have entered into co-development and production agreements for weapon
systems like the JF-17 fighter aircraft and Pakistan’s main battle tank, the
Al-Khalid. These deals are less strategically valuable for China’s military than
for its defense contractors, who are reaping the benefits of Pakistan’s insecurity
through a range of supply contracts with the Pakistani army.
China benefits from Pakistan in other ways too. China depends on the
Pakistani military and ISI for information and analysis of events inside Pakistan
and Afghanistan. Lessons learned from Pakistan’s extensive counterinsurgency
operations along its border with Afghanistan are being related to officers of
the PLA, which lacks recent firsthand experience in these areas.68
The Sino-Pakistani relationship also has its points of tension. Beijing fears
that Pakistan’s internal problems could threaten China. Pakistan is the training
base and haven for militant anti-Chinese outfits like the East Turkestan Inde-
pendence Movement (ETIM), a Uighur separatist organization operating out
of China’s Xinjiang Autonomous Region. At least from China’s point of view,
Islamabad has not always shown adequate commitment to killing or capturing
these groups. After the July 2011 ETIM attacks in the city of Kashgar, Xinjiang,
a local Chinese provincial official publicly suggested that the perpetrators had
trained in Pakistan.69 This unusual Chinese outburst sounded remarkably like
Washington’s routine refrain that Pakistan must “do more” against terrorists
based on its soil.
For the present, China also has countervailing interests in South Asia that
make Beijing less eager to put all its eggs in Pakistan’s basket. As China’s interest in economic growth and trade has grown, it has placed a greater priority on
66 Kux, Disenchanted Allies, pp. 190–2.
67 SIPRI Arms Transfer Database, Importer/Exporter Trend-Indicator Value table, http://armstrade.sipri.org/armstrade/page/values.php.
68 Based on author conversations, Beijing, April 2011.
69 Michael Wines, “China Blames Foreign-Trained Separatists for Attacks in Xinjiang,” New York Times, August 1, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/02/world/asia/02china.html?_r=2
&pagewanted=all.
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stability throughout South and Central Asia. Beijing has counseled restraint to
Pakistan with respect to contentious issues like Kashmir. Well-placed Pakistani
sources suggest that China’s quiet support for nascent peace talks between New
Delhi and Islamabad from 2003 to 2007 played an important part in bringing
Musharraf’s regime to the negotiating table, as part of a process that appears
to have made more progress than any before it.70
Given that in 2012 China did over five times more trade with India than
with Pakistan, and that Beijing and New Delhi see eye-to-eye on a number
of global issues like trade and climate change, this prioritization of interests
makes sense.71 China may never choose a relationship with India over one with
Pakistan, but it would prefer never to make such a choice at all. China would
naturally prefer to have the best of both worlds.
In the future, however, as China extends its trade and military activity
throughout the region, it is possible that Pakistani territory will be useful
to China in new ways. Pakistan offers direct, albeit treacherous, land access
from western China to Central Asia. The Chinese envisioned the value of
this route in the 1960s, when Chinese and Pakistani workers started a nearly
two-decade-long project of building the 1,300 kilometer Karakoram Highway,
which (weather permitting) linked Islamabad with Kashgar.72
At any given time, roughly 10,000 Chinese engineers are at work inside
Pakistan on a range of other projects, from infrastructure to mining. The most
celebrated of these projects is the new port at Gwadar in southwest Pakistan,
which was built almost entirely with Chinese investment.73 Lacking connecting
roads or rail lines, Gwadar has yet to take off in any serious way, but it does
at least have the potential to connect China’s western provinces to the Arabian
Sea. As Robert Kaplan imagines the future in his influential book Monsoon,
Gwadar could become “the pulsing hub of a new silk route, both land and
maritime: a mega-project and gateway to landlocked, hydrocarbon-rich Central
Asia – an exotic twenty-first-century place-name.”74 And Gwadar is not the
70 Steve Coll, “The Back Channel,” The New Yorker, March 2, 2009, http://www.newyorker
.com/reporting/2009/03/02/090302fa_fact_coll.
71 For Sino-Indian trade, see Ananth Krishnan, “India’s Trade with China Falls 12 %,” The Hindu, January 10, 2013, http://www.thehindu.com/business/Economy/indias-trade-with-china-falls-12/article4295117.ece; on Sino-Pakistani trade, see Shoaib-ur-Rehman Siddiqui, “Pak-China Bilateral Trade Crosses $12 Billion Mark for First Time,” Business Recorder, January 28, 2013, http://www.brecorder.com/top-news/108-pakistan-top-news/103614-pak-china-bilateral-trade-crosses-12-billion-mark-for-first-time-.html.
72 In January 2010, the highway was submerged by a lake created when a landslide blocked the nearby Hunza River. At present, the road is passable only by ferry. See “The Highest Highway, Day Three,” Economist, October 18, 2010, http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2010/
10/karakoram diary 1.
73 Sanjeev Miglani, “In Pakistan’s Gwadar Port, Chinese Whispers Grow,” Reuters, May 26, 2011, http://blogs.reuters.com/afghanistan/2011/05/26/in-pakistans-gwadar-port-chinese-whispers-grow.
74 Robert Kaplan, Monsoon: The Indian Ocean an
d the Future of American Power (New York: Random House, 2010), p. 71.
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No Exit from Pakistan
only grand scheme for transportation corridors that is being dreamed up by
the Chinese and Pakistanis.75 Over time, Pakistani ports and highways could
turn into essential lines of communication for a new Chinese land empire.
In short, Beijing wants to maintain its “all-weather” friendship with Pakistan
and it probably has designs on a long-term future in which Pakistan offers a
land route to the Arabian Sea, a stepping-stone to Iran and Central Asia, and
access to India’s western flank. But for the time being, Beijing clearly wishes
to accomplish these ends without sacrificing regional stability, finding itself at
odds with Washington on yet another issue, or forfeiting a peaceful, lucrative
trading relationship with India. An exclusive, narrow alliance with an isolated
Pakistan, particularly one at odds with the United States, would not be China’s
preferred way to achieve either its short- or long-term goals.
india’s independent streak
As in China, India’s people and top political leaders are, at least for the moment,
preoccupied with domestic development and stability. Barring a crisis, almost
everything else comes second.
India has changed a great deal in recent years, but a visit is still an assault
on the senses. Outside the gated preserves of tranquility in New Delhi’s most
posh hotels, people, animals, and vehicles all compete for space in a constant
buzz of activity. There is life everywhere you look. Compared with the gleam-
ing, modernity of China’s Pudong district, most of India’s landscape still feels
primitive.
To read Tom Friedman’s adoring descriptions of India in the New York
Times, you might expect that India’s high-tech city of Bangalore really has
achieved a level of development to rival Boston, or that Chennai can be com-
pared to Chengdu and Chicago. Friedman is right that some of India’s high-tech
Daniel S Markey Page 40
