By James M. Dorsey
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Heightened tension in Kashmir and evidence of a Chinese
military presence on the Tajik and Afghan side of their border with China’s
troubled north-western province of Xinjiang are putting on display contradictions
between the lofty principles of the People’s Republic’s foreign and defense
policies and realities on the ground.
The escalating tension between Pakistan and India puts to
the test what Pakistan and China tout as an “all-weather friendship.” The test
will likely occur when the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an international
anti-money laundering and terrorism finance watchdog, debates an Indian demand
that the South Asian nation, already grey-listed, be put on the organization’s
black list.
With the attack and its aftermath unfolding as FATF this
week concluded a meeting in Paris, the Kashmir incident is expected to really
play out in June when the group is certain to discuss a report that is expected
to provide what India considers evidence
of Pakistan’s alleged culpability for this month’s attack on a bus in Kashmir
that killed more than 40 Indian paramilitary personnel as well as Pakistani
backing for the group believed responsible for the assault and other militant
organizations.
Pakistan has denied the allegations and offered
to help investigate the Kashmir incident.
China, however, despite refusing
to prevent FATF from grey-listing Pakistan last year, will find it
increasingly difficult to defend its shielding of Pakistan in the United
Nations and could be caught in the crossfire as it continues to protect Masood
Azhar, the leader of Jaish-e-Mohammed, the group believed responsible for the
Kashmir attack.
Like in the past, China this week rejected
an Indian request that it no longer block designation of Mr. Azhar by the UN Security
Council as a global terrorist. China asserts that Indian evidence
fails to meet UN standards.
Nonetheless, China’s shielding of Mr. Azhar risks it being
perceived as violating the spirit of the 2017 summit in Xiamen of BRICS
countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – that for the first
time identified
Pakistan-backed militant groups as a regional security threat.
Question marks about China’s approach to the countering of
political violence and militancy also reflect on China’s justification of its
brutal crackdown on Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang.
Concern that militant Uyghurs, the predominant Turkic Muslim
minority in Xinjiang, including foreign fighters exfiltrating Syria and Iraq,
could use Central Asia as an operational base has prompted China to violate its
declared principle of not wanting to establish foreign military bases.
China has been believed to be involved for several years in
cross-border operations in Tajikistan and Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor, both
of which border on Xinjiang.
A Washington Post report this week, based on a visit by one
of its correspondents to the Tajik-Chinese border provided evidence
of China’s military presence on the Tajik side of the dividing line. "We've been here three, four years," a Chinese soldier told the
reporter.
Evidence of the long-reported but officially denied Chinese
military presence in Tajikistan comes on the back of China’s increasing effort
to put in place building blocks that enable it to assert what it perceives as its
territorial rights as well as safeguard Xinjiang and protect its mushrooming
Diaspora community and overseas investments that are part of its Belt and Road
initiative.
The evidence in Tajikistan, moreover, follows the
establishment of a military base in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa
and facilities
in the South China Sea that bolster China’s disputed territorial
claims.
“Beijing is
quietly establishing a security presence in CA (Central Asia) that
is broader and deeper than just facilities or hundreds of PLA (People’s
Liberation Army) soldiers on the ground,” said Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace scholar Alexander Gabuev.
Potentially, China’s military expansion into Central Asia
could complicate relations with Russia that sees the Eurasian heartland, once
part of the Soviet Union, as its backyard. Continued expansion would call into
question a seeming Chinese-Russian division of labour that amounted to Russian
muscle and Chinese funding.
Like China, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
appeared to be nibbling at the edges of that understanding on a
visit to Central Asia this month in which he dangled investment, economic
assistance and security guarantees.
Mr. Lavrov’s travels followed a
visit to Uzbekistan in October by President Vladimir Putin that
produced US$27 billion in commercial deals.
“Russia would be smart to rethink its policy towards CA, and
base new approach on support for sovereignty of local states. If Russia won't
view the 5”(Central Asian) states as its subjects, they are likely to seek
greater engagement with Moscow to balance Beijing's econ/sec influence,”
Mr. Gabuev said, referring to China’s economic and security interests.
Dr.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International
Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture,
and co-host of the New Books in Middle Eastern Studies podcast.
James is the author of The Turbulent World
of Middle East Soccer blog, a book with the same title and a co-authored
volume, Comparative Political Transitions between Southeast Asia and
the Middle East and North Africa as well as Shifting
Sands, Essays on Sports and Politics in the Middle East and North Africa
and recently published China
and the Middle East: Venturing into the Maelstrom
