ISLAMABAD - While Pakistan wants China to build a naval base at its
southwestern seaport of Gwadar in Balochistan province, Beijing is more
interested in setting up military bases either in the Federally Administered
Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan or in the Federally Administered Northern Areas
(FANA) that border Xinjiang province.
The Chinese desire is meant to contain growing
terrorist activities of Chinese
rebels belonging to the al-Qaeda-linked East Turkestan
Islamic Movement (ETIM) that is also described as the Turkistani
Islamic Party (TIP).
Beijing believes that similar to the United States military presence in
Pakistan, a Chinese attendance would enable its military to effectively
counter the Muslim separatists who have been operating from the tribal
areas of Pakistan for almost a decade, carrying out cross-border
terrorist activities in trouble-stricken Xinjiang province.
There
have been three high-profile visits from Pakistan to China in recent
months; the first by Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar; the second by
President Asif Ali Zardari and the third by the director general of the
Inter-Services Intelligence, Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha.
The
Pakistani visits were reciprocated by the September 28 visits to
Islamabad by Chinese Vice Premier Meng Jianzhu and Public Security
Minister Meng Jianzhu. This was prompted by two bomb blasts in Kashgar
city of Xinjiang province on July 30 and 31 in which 18 people were
killed.
The explosions provoked senior government officials in
Xinjiang to publicly claim for the first time in recent years that the
attackers had been trained in explosives in ETIM/TIP camps run by
Chinese separatists in the Waziristan tribal regions of Pakistan.
The
Chinese allegation was described by many in the diplomatic circles of
Islamabad as a clear sign of the growing impatience of Beijing with
Islamabad's failure to control radical groups operating within its
borders.
The Chinese charge was made on the basis of a confession
by a Uyghur militant arrested by the Chinese authorities. Pakistan
swiftly extended all possible cooperation to Beijing against the
ETIM/TIP network. "Terrorists, extremists and separatists in Xinjiang
province constitute an evil force," said an August 1 statement issued by
the Pakistani Foreign Ministry after Chinese President Hu Jintao rang
Zardari to express his grave concern over the growing activities of
"terrorists" belonging to the Pakistan-based ETIM/TIP network.
In
a subsequent video released on September 7, ETIM/TIP corroborated
earlier Chinese claims that it was involved in attacks in Xinjiang in
July.
The ETIM/TIP, run by natives of Xinjiang province, a
Muslim-dominated region three times the size of France, is fighting
against the settlement of China's majority Han ethnic group in the
western province, describing its struggle as a freedom movement.
The
ETIM/TIP maintains that the Chinese are a colonial force in Xinjiang
province - which it refers to as Turkistan - and emphasizes Islam over
ethnicity. Though the ETIM/TIP network on the Pakistan-Afghanistan
border has been much weakened in recent years in the wake of the killing
of many of its top leaders in US drone attacks, hardcore Uyghur
militants are still shuttling between China and Pakistan, mainly because
Xinjiang province shares a border with Pakistan.
The ETIM/TIP
presence in Pakistan was first confirmed when one of its founding
leaders, Hasan Mahsum alias Abu Muhammad al-Turkistan, was killed by
Pakistani security forces in South Waziristan in October 2003.
The
next one to be killed by the Americans in a drone attack was Memetiming
Memeti alias Abdul Haq al-Turkistani, the ETIM/TIP chief, who was
targeted in North Waziristan on February 15, 2010. Abdul Haq was
succeeded by Abdul Shakoor Turkistani, a Chinese Uyghur, who is well
known for his friendly terms with major Taliban groups in Waziristan.
He
has taken control of overall command of Chinese and Uzbek militants in
North Waziristan, due to his past association with the late Abdul Haq
and late Tahir Yuldashev of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.
Beijing
believes that the Chinese rebels operating from the Pakistani tribal
areas are well-connected to al-Qaeda, which not only trains them but
also provides funding.
Thus, Pakistan and China, which have
cooperated for a long time in the field of counter-terrorism, have
intensified their efforts to nip the terrorism in the bud, especially
after the Kashgar blasts.
In fact, it was in the aftermath of the
May 2 US raid which killed al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in his
Abbottabad hideout that Islamabad started playing its China card
aggressively, perhaps to caution Washington against pushing it too hard.
Shortly after the Abbottabad raid, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza
Gillani traveled to Beijing.
Accompanying Defense Minister Ahmed
Mukhtar had stated on May 21 that whatever requests for assistance the
Pakistani side made, the Chinese government was more than happy to
oblige, including agreeing to take over operations of the strategically
positioned but underused port of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea on expiry of a
contract with a Singaporean government company.
He disclosed
that Pakistan had asked China to begin building a naval base at Gwadar,
where Beijing funded and built the port. "We would be grateful to the
Chinese government if a naval base is constructed at the site of Gwadar
for Pakistan," he said in a statement. Mukhtar later told a British
newspaper in an interview: "We have asked our Chinese brothers to please
build a naval base at Gwadar port."
Knowledgeable Defense
Ministry sources in Islamabad say that by having a Chinese naval base in
the Gwadar area, Pakistan intends to counter-balance Indian naval
forces.
However, diplomatic circles in Islamabad say Beijing,
which has no military bases outside its territory and has often been
vocal in criticizing American moves for operating such bases, first
wants to establish military bases in Pakistan, which could be followed
by the setting up of the naval base.
Therefore, Chinese Defense
Minister Liang Guanglie promptly dismissed (on June 6) suggestions that
Beijing was carving out a permanent naval presence in India's
neighborhood.
Answering questions at the 10th Asia Security
Summit, organized by the London-based International Institute for
Strategic Studies, Liang disclaimed moves to build naval bases at Gwadar
and at a Sri Lankan port. Emphasizing his credentials as a member of
the Chinese State Council and Central Military Commission, he said:
We will have a very serious and careful study of an issue of such
importance to the government and the military like the reported move for
establishing naval bases in Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Indeed, we will
have exact plans and set up a panel to discuss it if the move were for
real. However, I haven't heard of it.
Asked by Manish
Tewari, the Indian Congress party's spokesman, to spell out China's core
interests in South Asia and the Indian Ocean area, Liang said:
The core interests include anything related to sovereignty, stability
and form of government. China is now pursuing socialism. If there is any
attempt to reject this path, it will touch upon China's core interests.
Or, if there is any attempt to encourage any part of China to secede,
that also touches upon China's core interests related to our land, sea
or air. Then, anything that is related to China's national economic and
social development also touches upon China's core interests.
The Chinese desire to have military bases in Pakistan is not a new one and has been discussed in the past.
An
article published on the official website of the Chinese central
government (www.gov.cn) on January 28, 2010, signaled that Beijing
wanted to go the US way and set up military bases in overseas locations
that would possibly include Pakistan. The obvious purpose would be to
exert pressure on India as well as counter American influence in
Pakistan and Afghanistan. The article stated:
Setting up
overseas military bases is not an idea we have to shun; on the contrary,
it is our right. It is baseless to say that we will not set up any
military bases in future because we have never sent troops abroad. As
for the military aspect, we should be able to conduct a retaliatory
attack within the country or at the neighboring area of our potential
enemies. We should also be able to put pressure on the overseas
interests of potential enemies. With further development, China will be
in great demand of military protection.
Analysts say although it
might not be politically feasible for the Pakistani government to
openly allow China to set up military bases on its soil, Islamabad might
allow Beijing the use of its military facilities without any public
announcement as a first step.
The Chinese demand to set up
military bases in Pakistan has gained momentum at a time when the Indian
military leadership is already raising a hue and cry over the alleged
presence of People's Liberation Army (PLA) troops in the
Pakistan-administered part of Kashmir as well as in the FANA, which was
earlier called Gilgit and Baltistan.
In August 2009, the Pakistan
government passed the Gilgit-Baltistan Empowerment and Self-Governance
Order to grant self-rule to the people of the area and create an elected
legislative assembly. Gilgit-Baltistan thus gained de facto
province-like status without doing so constitutionally.
Gilgit
Baltistan province borders Pakistan's Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province to the
west, Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor to the north, China to the east and
northeast, Pakistan-administered Kashmir to the southwest, and Jammu
Kashmir to the southeast.
Although the supposed Chinese military
presence in Pakistan's northern areas of Gilgit Baltistan has been a
matter of intense speculation in India, it was on October 5 that Indian
army chief General V K Singh went public for the first time with the
Indian establishment's assessment of the kind of Chinese presence in the
northern areas of Pakistan. "Around 4,000 Chinese including troops of
the People's Liberation Army are present in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir,"
Singh told journalists in New Delhi.
However, senior Foreign
Office officials of Xinjiang told this writer during a briefing in
Urumqi, the capital of the province, that the Indian army chief's claim
was fallacious and must be based on some misunderstanding.
Despite
the fact that diplomatic ties between China and India have improved in
recent years, they are still at odds over territorial claims from both
countries dating back to the India-China border war in 1962.
While
India and Pakistan control Pakistan-administered Kashmir (Azad) and
Jammu Kashmir states respectively, China claims part of northeastern
Kashmir that it says is a part of Tibet. Therefore, Beijing is highly
critical of India's support for the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai
Lama, who fled Tibet in 1959 and set up a government in exile in the
northern Indian hill town of Dharmsala.
The Indian army chief was
not the first senior military official to have talked about the alleged
Chinese presence in the northern areas of Pakistan.
In April
this year, Northern Army Commander Lieutenant General K T Parnaik, while
addressing a seminar in Jammu and Kashmir, said that the Chinese
footprint in Pakistan-administered Kashmir was increasing steadily and
its troops were actually present along the line of control (LoC) that
divides the disputed Kashmir area.
"The Chinese presence in
Gilgit-Baltistan and the northern areas of Pakistan is increasing
steadily. There are many who are concerned about the fact that if there
was to be hostility between India and Pakistan, what would be the
complicity of the Chinese. Not only are they in the neighborhood, but
the fact is that they are actually present and stationed along the LoC,"
Parnaik said.
Zhang Xiaodi, the director general of the foreign
affairs office in Urumqi, told this writer in a meeting on October 10
that there is no truth in the allegations leveled by Indian military
officials. "There are only Chinese construction teams working in the
northern areas of Pakistan on certain development projects being carried
out by Pakistan and China jointly. The presence of People's Liberation
Army troops there is out of question."
At the same time, there
are those in the Pakistani Embassy in Beijing who view the Indian army
chief's allegation against the backdrop of the Pakistan army's recent
decision to include for the first time Chinese troops in military
exercises along the border with the Indian states of Punjab and
Rajasthan; the 101 Engineering Regiment of the PLA took part in
exercises with their Pakistani counterparts in August this year.
Analysts
say China's deepening strategic penetration of Pakistan and the joint
plans to set up not only new oil pipelines and railroads but also naval
and military bases, are enough to set alarm bells ringing in New Delhi
and Washington. The repercussions are particularly stark for India
because both Beijing and Islamabad refuse to accept the territorial
status quo and lay claim to large tracts of Indian land that could come
under Chinese sway once Beijing is allowed to establish military bases
in Pakistan.
The fact that Gilgit and Baltistan is located in the
Pakistani-administered part of Kashmir presents India with a two-front
theater in the event of a war with either country. By deploying troops
near the LoC and playing the Kashmir card against New Delhi, Beijing is
clearly signaling that Kashmir is where the Sino-Pakistan nexus can
squeeze India.
Amir Mir is a senior Pakistani journalist and the
author of several books on the subject of militant Islam and terrorism,
the latest being The Bhutto murder trail: From Waziristan to GHQ.
