The China-Pakistan Axis: Asia's New Geopolitics (17 page)

Heightened tensions in Xinjiang, concerns over ETIM safe havens, anxieties over whether militant groups in the region might turn on China: this was a scenario that smacked of the 1990s. Beijing instinctively turned to its old playbook: pushing Pakistan to crack down on Uighur groups; using the ISI’s reach into the world of militancy to dissuade them from attacks; and approaching militants through other intermediaries in Pakistan. The problem was that none of these levers worked the same way that they did ten years before.

Few people illuminate China’s problem more clearly than the man Beijing invited to the Chinese Communist Party’s International Department in April 2010. Maulana Fazal-ur Rehman, whose photo with Wang Yang, now one of China’s four vice-premiers, is cheerfully displayed on the IDCPC’s website, would have seemed a natural person to approach.
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For the last two decades, Fazal-ur-Rehman had managed to straddle the worlds of militancy and mainstream Pakistani politics. In the 1990s, he was chair of the national assembly’s Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, where he spent much of his time lobbying and deal-making for the Taliban.
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In 2006, he was the man Musharraf turned to when he needed support for the Pakistani government’s efforts to strike peace deals with the militant groups that would go on to form the TTP.
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In 2007, it was the Chinese themselves who were desperately seeking his support to help secure the release of the Red Mosque hostages. But in the aftermath of the Lal Masjid operation, as the divide between the Pakistani government and the new wave of Pakistani militants widened, keeping a foot in both camps became a great deal harder. In April of that year, a mysterious rocket attack was launched on his home in Dera Ismail Khan.
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A few months later, Pakistani intelligence discovered Fazal-ur Rehman’s name on a Taliban hit list.
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In April 2011, he was the target of two attacks in two days.
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On the first occasion, a suicide bomber killed twelve and injured more than twenty members of a group waiting to welcome him in Swabi, barely minutes before he arrived. The next day, twelve more people were killed as another suicide bomber struck a police van providing security for Fazal-ur Rehman’s convoy in Charsadda. A few weeks later, Pakistani
security officials confirmed that he was now “top of the new hit list prepared by the Taliban leadership”.
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By the time China had got round to cultivating him as a broker who could help navigate its own complex relationships with Islamic extremists, it was already too late.

The same was true of the Pakistani government and intelligence services. Relations with the Kashmiri groups that operated under the ISI’s direct patronage were still intact, along with a spectrum of groups in the Afghan insurgency, but in the aftermath of the Red Mosque siege they had entered a state of open warfare with other militant groups. Even formerly trusted ISI intermediaries such as Colonel Imam, a founder of the Taliban, or Khalid Khawaja, another intelligence liaison between the military and the militants, were not safe—both men were killed in North Waziristan by the TTP, despite the direct pleas from Mullah Omar and Sirajuddin Haqqani that Baitullah Mehsud, the TTP leader, spare Colonel Imam’s life.
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Inevitably, as the Pakistani state’s relationship with various militant organizations has fractured, its capacity to persuade them to steer clear of the Uighurs’ cause has diminished. As the next chapter explains, these groups have been willing to make a specific target of China—especially its economic activities in Pakistan—if it helps to exert pressure on the Pakistani government. They have certainly not been deterred from affording protection to Uighur militants.

Few of the Uighurs in Pakistan have any connection to militancy. The bulk of the Uighur community, numbering a couple of thousand, is in Rawalpindi, and operates under the close watch of the Chinese government. Particularly since 9/11, the Chinese embassy in Islamabad has maintained a strong interest in them, extending benefits such as funding for scholarships and school fees, collecting precise information about the numbers and locations of Uighurs in Pakistan, and establishing an “ex-Chinese association”
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to manage its contacts.
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But while this community has its own political divisions over relations with the Chinese government, they are carefully monitored, and are largely naturalized in Pakistan anyway. The real concern is with the tiny group of people in Waziristan seeking to launch attacks in China.

Uighur militants in Pakistan may only number in the tens—Chinese officials in Pakistan have talked about estimates of between forty and eighty people.
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Unlike the Afghan Taliban, whose roots and relationships in the tribal areas of Pakistan were extensive, when ETIM militants fled after the US invasion of Afghanistan they were in a position
of near-complete dependency. ETIM members are virtually wholly reliant on the IMU for their shelter and supplies, and the IMU in turn needs local militant commanders to provide their blessing and protection. Initially this was in the Wana region of South Waziristan, but after tensions with one of the Waziri tribal leaders, Maulvi Nazir, they were expelled in 2007
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and forced to set up in North Waziristan instead, under the protection of the Pakistani Taliban leader, Beitullah Mehsud.
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Doubts about their capacity to launch attacks, and their autonomy to decide to do so even if they were able to, are pervasive among terrorism experts in Pakistan and China. “A single spark can start a prairie fire” was the justification given by one Chinese expert—quoting Mao—of the relentless focus on such a small, depleted band.
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But there was little suggestion that they are currently an active threat.

Beijing has nonetheless leaned hard on Pakistan to deal with the handful that remain. A retired Pakistani general described the 2008–09 period as “the most difficult period in the [Sino-Pakistani] relationship that I can remember” owing to China’s constant pressure on the Uighur issue, first in the run-up to the Olympics and then over a perceived threat to China’s National Day celebrations.
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The issue for China goes beyond the capacity of the militants themselves. ETIM’s very weakness poses the standing question: why can’t or won’t the Pakistani army just wipe them out?

The issue has become perhaps the greatest sore point in the China-Pakistan relationship. Some on the Chinese side are understanding of the Pakistani government’s explanation—that operations in North Waziristan are too difficult to undertake but that they are genuinely doing all they can apart from a full-scale military intervention in the tribal areas. Others are simply cynical, suggesting that if the army dealt with the threat too comprehensively it would make Pakistan less useful to China, giving the Pakistani government reason to allow a manageable, small-scale ETIM presence to persist.
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But a more disturbing explanation is also advanced: that religious sympathies may be superseding Islamabad’s commitment to the bilateral relationship, and even endangering the secular-strategic rationale that underpins it. “We see it in their eyes when we’re sitting in the meetings. They’re not comfortable with what we’re asking,” claimed a Chinese expert who is close to the PLA.
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“When we provide them with intelligence on ETIM locations they give warnings before launching their attacks,” noted another, in a complaint that would be familiar to
Western officials.
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China has even received evidence of ISI agents visiting ETIM training camps.
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“We certainly think there’s a strong chance that they have contacts and relationships with ETIM and the Uzbeks,” said another Chinese analyst.
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Accusations of Pakistani support for militants in Xinjiang go back a long way too. In 1990, when the Chinese arrested two Pakistani nationals in Xinjiang for inciting unrest, they were infuriated to learn that the two men were ISI operatives—“former operatives”, they were quickly assured.
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Fairly or not, Pakistan’s approach to the Uighur issue has become the totemic example for those on the Chinese side who have started to raise broader concerns about the creeping “Islamisation” of the Pakistani army. It is one thing for China to provide comprehensive military assistance to an avowedly India-centric army, but quite another if elements in that army have goals that extend beyond the logic of balancing and deterrence towards the demands of
jihad
. “We’re not worried about the generals, we’re worried about the brigadiers,” argued one Chinese expert. “The generals were already old enough for their habits to be set by the time Zia came in. They drink. They send their children to study in the United States or Great Britain. The younger ones are sending their children to study in the Gulf.”

For China it risks becoming a losing proposition either way. A Pakistani military that grows ever more closely enmeshed with an Islamist and militant agenda undermines China’s basic strategic goals in South Asia. A Pakistani military that can no longer keep China off the terrorist target list, that has even become a target in its own right, undermines China’s security at home and the safety of its projects and personnel abroad. And it is the latter threat that has posed the biggest problems for the weakest pillar of the China-Pakistan relationship—the economy.

It was well past midnight when suddenly Prime Minister Chou En-Lai walked into the guesthouse without any protocol, saying he had come for a private talk with an old friend. During the meeting I asked him what was his thinking about the Middle East, especially the Chinese trade with these countries…I pointed out that most of China’s trade was through the port of Shanghai which was far off from these countries. The nearest outlet for China’s trade with the Gulf was Karachi, not Shanghai, if you see the map. I explained to him that there was an ancient trade route but lost to modern times, not only for trade but for strategic purposes as well
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Ghulam Faruque, Pakistani Commerce Minister
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No matter how hard they try to turn Gwadar into Dubai, it won’t work. There will be resistance. The future pipelines going to China will not be safe. The pipelines will have to cross our Baluch territory, and if our rights are violated, nothing will be secure
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Nisar Baluch, General Secretary, Baluch Welfare Society
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Investors are like pigeons, when a government frightens them with poor decisions they all fly off together
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Zhu Rongji to General Musharraf, 2001
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At the peak of the Cultural Revolution, in August 1968, the Pakistani Foreign Minister, Mian Arshad Hussain, arrived in Beijing bearing a gift
for Mao Zedong—a basket containing Pakistan’s national fruit, roughly four dozen mangoes. Mao himself was not fond of mangoes, but he had another purpose in mind for them. The fruits were divided up by his head of security, Wang Dongxing, and presented to the Capital Worker-Peasant Mao Zedong Thought Propaganda Teams.
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Mao had directed military chief Lin Biao to establish these army-led units in order to suppress the activities of the Red Guards, but discerning which of the competing centres of power Mao favoured at the time was not always straightforward. The propaganda team sent into Qinghua University had seen five of their number killed and hundreds wounded in their first foray against the bottle-and-grenade-wielding students, who didn’t yet know that they had lost Mao’s support.
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The delivery of the Pakistani mangoes on 5 August was therefore a portentous moment. It is claimed by the
People’s Daily
that the workers responded rhapsodically: “These are not simple mangoes, they are the rain and dew; they are the sunshine.”
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With the fruit came definitive evidence of Mao’s personal blessing for their efforts to subdue the warring student factions. It signalled the end of the Red Guards’ violent and chaotic role in the Cultural Revolution. Over the next year the PLA fully took over the process of winding down the excesses of the student vanguard’s activities, and millions of youths, including a 17-year-old Xi Jinping, were sent down to the countryside for “re-education”. China as a whole was swept up in “mango fever”. Replicas of the fruit were made in the name of the Beijing Municipal Revolutionary Committee and sent around the country.
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Badges and posters were created displaying workers bearing the mango platter. A factory in Henan started producing a line of “Golden Mango” brand cigarettes, which continues to this day.
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Attempts to preserve the original fruits were made, not altogether successfully. The arrival of replicas in Chengdu was greeted by half a million people.
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When Pakistan next found itself at the centre of a Chinese mango fever, it would be in the belly of one of modern capitalism’s most powerful forces: Walmart. A sample of Pakistani mangoes shipped in July 2012 had earned “overwhelming success” in the Chinese stores of the behemoth from Bentonville.
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The first 40-ton container delivery arrived from Karachi the following month, with a similar amount due to follow every week for the duration of the season. “Pakistan’s mangoes have become a centre of attraction in the largest retail chain of China…where the king of fruit is being offered for sale,” announced Durrani Associates,
a major Pakistani fruit exporter, “China can be the biggest market of Pakistani mangoes and within three years exports can be doubled.”
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One article in the Pakistani press breathlessly related that this would add “millions” to Pakistan’s balance of payments, after “years of struggle” to break into the Chinese market.
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There was a hitch, though. Elsewhere in Asia, a rising low-cost competitor was hitting Pakistan’s superior but pricey fruit exports. “We have lost the Asian markets slowly and gradually due to the strong hold of Chinese mangoes,” lamented the CEO of one of Pakistan’s other leading fruit exporters, Harvest Tradings. “Every year we find new markets theoretically but practically, due to the lack of required infrastructure and strict conditions of other nations on exports of the fruit, we haven’t been able to tap those markets.”
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