Brian M Downing
Wars are often fought over natural resources and peace agreements wrestle over them. And any settlement in Afghanistan will have to contend with them. China, aloof from the war but enmeshed in the economy, is positioning itself to be the biggest winner.
China already operates an immense copper mine in eastern Afghanistan and is developing an expansive iron mine not far from it. Recent events such as progress on a railroad connecting the northern province of Kunduz to the southern approaches of the Khyber Pass, and closer ties on military matters and flood relief, indicate that China is becoming more deeply involved in Pakistan and Afghanistan. This is fraught with opportunity for China but also with peril for it.
Afghan Resources and the World
China, widely considered more accommodating and less warlike than the US, has negotiated commodity deals and won lucrative oil contracts and exploration rights in various parts of the world. To the dismay of US neoconservatives, but the delight of many around the globe, Iraq has been more generous with its oil resources to China than to the US. Americans expected more favorable awards because they liberated Iraq, but Iraq rewarded a country that did not invade and occupy it.
Piqued by a largely forgotten geological survey conducted by the Soviet Union, the US did its own and found remarkable mineralogical riches, including rare earths and hydrocarbons. The contours of both surveys have been floating about Washington circles for quite some time and have undoubtedly caught the attention of counterparts in Beijing charged with fueling the country’s economic engine. Perhaps the main attraction is the oil and gas in the northern province of Kunduz – the northern terminus of the railroad China is building.
As much as one might hope to see Afghans develop their resources with a minimum of foreign involvement, their economic backwardness and social fragmentation give foreign powers tremendous bargaining power. Pervasive corruption – from elders in remote villages on up to the president in Kabul – ensures that business will be largely underneath the table. A seemingly powerless and artless figure in Kabul can act as a broker in allocating rights and properties to foreign countries – in exchange for certain considerations, of course.
China has obvious geographic advantages in the competition for Afghan resources – after all, the two countries have a common border. But that border is a small and remote remnant of the days of Kipling and confers no extraordinary benefit. Land routes through Tajikistan might seem promising, but that would entail long ground routes, not only through undeveloped parts of China but also through a Russian client-state and a region with the grumbling of early insurgency.
Pakistan, Afghanistan, and China
A more attractive option would be to make more use of roads long used to supply the mujahadin and NATO, which wind down from Kabul to the Pakistani port of Karachi – the present copper export route. But how to exploit resources in so dangerous a country? China will call upon its longstanding geopolitical partner in Pakistan – the army and especially the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
As is increasingly clear, ISI has long enjoyed a sound working relationship with Pashtun groups dating back to the mujahadin war with the Soviet Union (1979-1988). In the chaotic aftermath of the Soviet withdrawal, ISI built up the Taliban as a way to bolster its geopolitical position vis-à-vis India and protect trade with the new markets in the post-Soviet republics of Central Asia.
The relationship between ISI and the Taliban has never disappeared. It has only been covered up or denied to ISI’s partner in Washington, which for its part has made only occasional protestations or lived in denial, hoping that lavish gifts would one day end the sordid affair. But ISI’s disruption of negotiations between the Taliban on one hand and the US and the Karzai government on the other, has underscored ISI’s strategy: work with the Taliban and perhaps the Karzai government to effect a negotiated settlement; then rely chiefly on China to exploit Afghan resources and strengthen Pakistan’s position against India.
The Chinese copper mine in eastern Afghanistan offers insight into this partnership and its future. China obtained its license by bribing the appropriate minister in Kabul and then setting to work. It extracts huge amounts of ore then ships them south with little if any difficulty from Taliban and al Qaeda bands that roam the area. A cynic – or someone appreciative of local groups and the dynamics of trade and geopolitics – might suspect that ISI, insurgent groups, and China have reached an agreement, which though preliminary is promising.
Karzai’s position is uncertain – in this matter and indeed in general. He is one of the most venal heads of state of our day, but that can be forgiven in world affairs, as numerous cases in the developing world show. More problematic, however, is his ineptitude. He has failed to cobble together a viable government and has presided in Kabul while a growing insurgency engulfs it.
Karzai, for all his venality and incompetence, might have a role in the Sino-Pakistani partnership, even though the Taliban, his family’s nemesis, is a major part of it. Karzai does have a smattering of support in the south, where his family has long been prominent among the Popalzais. Other Pashtun tribes such as the Wardak and Shinwari have also supported Kabul. Karzai can work with Pakistan to make the Pashtun regions safe for mining operations, which all will benefit from.
Further, Karzai has ties to, though not the trust of, non-Pashtun peoples in the north and west. Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazarras have important positions in the government, the result of their prominence in the forces that ousted the Taliban in 2001. The northerners’ acceptance of a Sino-Pakistani partnership is questionable and Karzai may be called upon to ask for cooperation or at least acquiescence, though northerners are wearying of Pashtun rule. Perhaps most importantly, he has the authority to expel any country opposed to a Sino-Pakistani partnership.
Perils of the Game
No country that has gone into Afghanistan has left without a thorough lesson in the law of unintended consequences. The British sent an army to bring the country to heel; one man made it back through Khyber. The Soviet Union pushed for reforms that would strike most outsiders as moderate, even progressive; a national revolt and social disintegration ensued. The US sought to give the Soviet Union its Vietnam; it succeeded, but in so doing laid the foundation for al Qaeda and global jihadism.
A Sino-Pakistani condominium could lead to a partition of Afghanistan – de facto or de iure. Many of the northern peoples now regard the Pashtuns of the south and east as having grabbed hold of government by dubious census data claiming them a majority. Pashtun rulers from the nineteenth century to the Daoud government of the seventies enjoy little affection or respect.
Today, northerners see the Pashtun as once again lining up with the Taliban, who rode roughshod over much the north, leading to anti-Taliban insurgencies and a stalemate with resistance groups in a northern redoubt. Karzai is deemed unfit to govern and the Taliban will be opposed with force if need be. Both the Taliban and Karzai are seen as treacherous vassals of Pakistan and suspicion is falling on its overlord in the east.
A partition would not be an entirely unwelcome event, in or out of the country. But it would pose the potential for a regional conflict between the Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazarras, and other non-Pashtun peoples on the one hand and the Taliban and Pakistan on the other – with China plunged into the middle of an ancient conflict.
A growing Pakistani and Chinese presence in Afghanistan will not sit well with India. After all, what many see (or saw) as a front in the war on terror, Pakistan and India see as integral to their decades-long conflict. China may see Afghanistan as conferring obvious economic advantages but also geopolitical ones in its equally lengthy rivalry with India.
Both China and India support restive groups in its rival’s territory and Afghanistan may constitute a new theater of operations. Indian intelligence’s claim of Chinese troops performing flood relief work in Pakistan might remind Indians that in 1964 the US pondered deploying combat troops into S. Vietnam, under the guise of flood relief, in order to fight the growing insurgency there.
China hopes to harness the Taliban-based insurgency but it may confront or even cause new ones. A protracted presence by any outside group triggers suspicions and misunderstandings that could build into armed opposition against a new influx of unbelievers. Pashtun tribes hostile to the Taliban – there are many – might need little goading in this regard, but they would enjoy support from northern peoples, India, and perhaps even the US. (India is already supporting Baloch separatist groups in western Pakistan.)
China will also find a number of Uighurs, a Turkic group from China’s western province of Xinjiang, already fighting in al Qaeda bands along the Af-Pak frontier. Chinese assets and personnel would attract additional Uighur guerrillas from Xinjiang down through the Fergana Valley (itself undergoing militant ferment) into eastern Afghanistan – the site of many Chinese interests. But of course Pakistan might be in a position to eliminate the Uighur presence in al Qaeda.
Even in the absence of international complications, China and Pakistan will have to referee countless disputes between conflicting Pashtun tribes, sub-tribes, and clans. Pashtun social organization has been shattered by thirty years of war as many tribal elders and landed notables have emigrated or been killed. Most young men find the Kalashnikov and RPG launcher more appealing than the plow or shepherd crook.
Insurgencies near Chinese interests would preferably be handled by Taliban forces, perhaps with the help of Pakistani Frontier Corps and advisers. But should they fail to safeguard those interests, China might face the old dilemma of standing by or sending in its own advisers. And then perhaps a few battalions just to defend a handful of bases. . . .
Beijing might benefit from a residual appreciation for paradox found in Taoist thought. However, the intoxication of rapid growth may have encouraged the political leadership to bear any burden to fuel the economy. As for the generals, unfamiliarity with major conflict since the close of the Korean War and subordination to an unheroic committee of a manufacturing elite might embolden them to fight any foe. Caution in world affairs might have been relegated to a past of proverb-quoting literati.
Pakistan, China, and the US
Where would this Sino-Pakistani partnership leave the US, which of course feels it has legitimate claims on Afghan resources? From the ISI perspective, the US cannot be relied upon to remain in the region: it quit back in the early nineties and will likely begin a pullout next year. Better to work with China. For its part, the Great Game’s recent entrant cannot overly antagonize its largest trade partner.
Pakistan would benefit from a US exit from Afghanistan, especially if it could be done without gravely reducing US aid and trade benefits. Supporting US/NATO efforts has led to the Pakistani Taliban turning against their former ISI benefactors, which has led to costly and lengthy campaigns in the Swat Valley and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
Several months ago, al Qaeda was a spent force along the Af-Pak line. Its numbers were small and sinking lower as fighters left for more promising campaigns in Yemen and Somalia. Today, they are on the rise, especially in Karachi, through which NATO logistics flow, through which ore exits for China.
Any Sino-Pakistani arrangement will favor the Pakistani military and push aside or increasingly marginalize civilian rule. After all, it is the military and ISI, not the civilians presiding intermittently in Islamabad, who have longstanding partnerships with insurgent groups in Afghanistan and who already have control many of the businesses that will share in the exploitation of Afghan resources. China will have no qualms about dealing with the military but it must wonder about its partner’s long-term ability to deal with growing popular pressures.
Relying heavily on Pakistan presents problems. China’s partner is increasingly unstable and recent floods have worsened matters. Pakistan has a wobbly political system atop which rest equally-inept landholding and military elites who alternate control but accomplish little in the way of political development. Separatist movements percolate in the west and in the North-West Frontier Province where Baluch and Pashtun groups, respectively, are increasingly disaffected by Islamabad’s failures.
China may find itself in the unenviable position of holding together a country of 170 million multi-ethnic and increasingly restive people – an undertaking that will add to the costs of production to the north. The US will likely cooperate in this effort, despite China’s maneuvers in Afghanistan.
Some policy makers and strategists might ponder the US’s fiscal difficulties and related global overreach and welcome China’s assumption of a greater role in propping up Pakistan, which would come at the expense of its troublesome probes in East and Southeast Asia. And any Sino-Pakistani maneuver that reduced the US presence in Afghanistan and reliance on Pakistan might well be deemed a godsend.
A US departure from Afghanistan would be hailed by most Pakistanis, whose antipathy toward the US, or at least its policies, has become super-heated by their country’s cooperation with the US and by drone attacks along the Af-Pak line. Political development might actually proceed better without US troops nearby, but of course US aid would remain welcome.
The US could be awarded a secondary role in developing resources in southern and eastern Afghanistan or have its enterprises confined to the non-Pashtun north and west, especially in the event of partition. Alternately, the US may be merely granted some parting gifts and asked to leave by yet another government it helped install. The Great Game isn’t easy. The US is coming to understand that, and one day China, though seemingly an adroit player today, may learn it as well.
©2011 Brian M Downing