China and the Great Game

by Haifa Peerzada

Almost all discussion of Afghanistan after 2014 hinges on the withdrawal of western forces. Yet into that gap a major power is stepping - China. China’s involvement in turn poses major questions, vis-à-vis Pakistan, India and their own point of friction - Kashmir.

The conflict in Afghanistan is becoming more complex by the day, spreading beyond its borders into south Asia. There are four main parties: the US, Pakistan, Afghanistan itself and the Afghan Taliban. Others, previously remotely involved, are increasingly drawn in - the most prominent being China.

China’s growth rate of close to 10 per cent per annum makes it a global economic hub with which to reckon, second only to the US. This may not however be socially sustainable as it perpetuates inequality in income, heavily concentrated in China’s southern coastal area. Moreover, the country’s ethnic cohesion is uncertain: apart from minority tensions, the Han majority is itself fractured among ethno-linguistic communities which have experienced sustained segregation.

Fear of becoming a target of non-state actors has put the authorities in Beijing on their guard. That fear was exacerbated by the recent violent attack in Tiananmen Square, allegedly by members of the Muslim Uighur community from Xingiang province in the north-west. While the Turkish Islamic Party claimed responsibility, the authorities blamed the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a group affiliated with Al-Qaeda. Such incidents exacerbate the socio-economic problems which may in the final analysis prove destructive for the instrumental legitimacy on which the power of the Communist Party rests.

The state has for long been concerned about the separatist movement in Xingiang - a concern enhanced by a fear of Afghanistan providing safe havens for Uighur militants. China sought to counter this by maintaining good connections with the Afghan Taliban and the Quetta Shura. For their part the Taliban are not keen on isolating China as it is the only non-Muslim country that has promised to give them political recognition and respite from UN sanctions - in return for not allowing any group to conduct any violent activity on its territory. This understanding seems however to be falling apart, with China fearing that Afghanistan may be slipping into another civil war, thereby creating space for militants to launch attacks on it. That may be why China supported the US-Taliban talks in Doha, however unsuccessful they proved.

Regional balancing

There has been a change in the trilateral relationship among Afghanistan, Pakistan and China. Earlier, China’s relations with the Taliban were dependent on Pakistan but its relationship with Kabul is improving and in 2012 it granted Afghanistan observer status in the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO), a paradigm shift in regional diplomacy. China has also diversified its intelligence communications in the region, earlier confined to Pakistan, to deal with the Uighur militants in Xingiang province. Meanwhile, the relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan has become estranged in the last few years. Pakistan’s concept of strategic depth has also been watered down, owing to its domestic problems with the Taliban. The border dispute between the two states over the Durand line has added to tensions, feeding insurgency at the borders.

The most stable country in south Asia, India, is also China’s rival in the region, which inevitably brings to bear its existential rivalry with Pakistan. The main bone of contention between India and Pakistan since 1947 has been the Kashmir conflict. Yet Kashmir is not just divided between India and Pakistan: China is implicated too.

 Map: Wikipedia

As an ally of China, in 1963 Pakistan ceded to it a northern area of Kashmir called Aksai-chin. Though China considers this a settled matter, India remains apprehensive about the China-Pakistan friendship. Stephen Cohen’s Shooting for a Century: Finding Solutions to The India-Pakistan Conundrum observes that for India Karakoram pass is critical to its security, concerned that China and Pakistan might seek to expand their influence through it. This also dictates the strategic importance of the Siachen glacier for India and its unwillingness to reach a settlement on it, despite positive signals from Pakistan.

Karakoram pass connects Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir with the Xingiang Autonomous Region. But China has also made incursions into the Ladakh area of Jammu and Kashmir, violating the Line of Actual Control, which clearly demonstrates its strategic design to expand its influence. Yet, keeping in mind its fear of spillovers from the Afghanistan conflict, it is highly unlikely China would press its expansion through Karakoram pass at the moment: the incursions seem rather to be an extension of politics in terms of bargaining from a position of strength. Peace in Kabul runs through Kashmir. This elicits more constructive Chinese participation in finding a sustainable resolution to the longstanding Kashmir dispute, rather than involvement in negative- or zero-sum bargaining.

The economic stake of China in Afghanistan is equally significant. State-owned Chinese companies like MCC, JCCL and CNPC have all expanded their corporate interests there, investing in various ventures tapping into natural resources. China has not hitherto been directly engaged with Afghanistan’s transition, relying on the now-departing US and its troops to secure those investments, but China’s access to central and west Asia’s natural resources is also through Afghanistan. India’s focus on economic development means it is similarly concerned as to how it meets its energy requirements. In other words, India and China both have an interest in maintaining strategic depth in Afghanistan.

This regional balancing complicates the bilateral relationships between the countries involved, which include formidable axes of non-cooperation: Afghanistan-Pakistan, India-Pakistan and China-India. In such a scenario, increased engagement on the part of China and India, as two great Asian powers, needs to be gauged properly to create a balance of power so that it assists a smooth transition for Afghanistan. Chinese engagement in bilateral efforts in south Asia is already under way, on ‘counter-terrorism’ with India as well as Pakistan. India and China also signed a Border Defence Co-operation Agreement, which again shows a commitment towards pushing friendly ties, yet in a way that is not inimical to the other’s interests. But merely co-operating bilaterally would not suffice to overcome the negative effects of regional balancing.

A new balance of power could be achieved by multilateral participation in organisations like the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation and the SCO, while co-operating bilaterally on issues of common concern as far as the conflict in Afghanistan is concerned - through ‘counter-terrorism’, trade, development and even training and assisting the Afghan National Security Force so that it can viably take over from the International Security Assistance Force. This would also reduce the deficit in trust among the countries involved.

The regional nexus and the US

Another dimension of rebalancing at a global level which affects the balancing at the regional level is the bilateral relation between China and the US. The latter’s ‘pivot’ to Asia is not just about containment of China and indeed need not come at its expense. The US-China bilateral relationship is far more strategically important than many understand, encompassing more areas for co-operation than discord. These cover a wide range of activities, from the economic arena to issues of global concern for both. While relations may be fraught with tensions, as the US may not appreciate the expansionist design of China, it has always played a dominant role in Asia and it was in this scenario that China grew as a potential counterpart in the region. In fact, the US is encouraging China to increase its engagement in Afghanistan, in the context of the withdrawal of US troops.

The US rebalancing actually allows a balance of power in south Asia as the US presence prevents China from indulging in any miscalculation or provocation, while assuring its neighbours - especially India - that China’s ambitions are not in any way inimical. This in turn may lead to a greater regional co-operation on issues of common concern, while favouring the resolution of areas of discord.

Such a best-case scenario where great world powers are involved already seems to be under way, as China increases its presence in south Asia. Having made its presence felt, China will not withdraw. How that will play out post-2014 remains to be seen. But China’s increased engagement in south Asia is not only desirable but inevitable and the opportunities it raises need to be captured strategically.

Haifa Peerzada is a lawyer and holds a masters in International Relations and Security from the University of Birmingham. She currently practices law at the High Court of Jammu and Kashmir, India and is also a visiting lecturer of peace and conflict studies at IUST, India.

This article first appeared on openDemocracy 27 December 2013.

US imperialism and Iraq’s descent into civil war

by Bill Van Auken

US Soldiers prepare to enter a building in Fallujah, Iraq. Author: Johancharles Van Boers (source: Wikimedia Commons)

A decade after the US military waged two barbaric sieges of Fallujah, the Iraqi city is once again facing a bloody armed conflict.

The army of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has massed artillery and tanks on Fallujah’s outskirts and has already bombed and shelled civilian neighborhoods, inflicting an unknown number of casualties. Thousands have fled the city in fear for their lives, and the United Nations has warned that the cut-off of water, food and fuel is creating a humanitarian catastrophe. Maliki has vowed to launch a full-scale assault on the city unless its inhabitants succeed in persuading armed insurgents to surrender.

In April and again in November-December of 2004, Fallujah was turned into a killing field by the US occupation. From the air it was pummeled by AC-130 Specter gunships, F-16 fighter jets and Apache attack helicopters. On the ground, a force of over 10,000 US troops backed by tanks and artillery was assembled to attack the city. Bombs, missiles and white phosphorous shells—chemical weapons banned under the Geneva conventions—were unleashed against the population. Hospitals and ambulances were targeted.

In the end, fully one out five buildings in the town were destroyed, while two-thirds of what remained were damaged. Hundreds of thousands were turned into homeless refugees. At least 120 US troops were killed in the two sieges, while no accurate count of how many thousands of Iraqis were killed has ever been made.

Much of the US media coverage of the current situation in Fallujah, Ramadi and elsewhere in Iraq’s western Anbar province, has begun from the standpoint of what a shock and disappointment these events represent, given the enormous “sacrifice” made by the US occupation to pacify the area a decade ago. The Iraq war is once again being cast as a humanitarian venture aimed at fighting terrorism and bringing democracy to the Iraqi people.

The barbaric attack on Fallujah constituted a war crime. In its aims, scope and ferocity, it was comparable to the kind of collective punishment meted out by the Nazis against resisting populations in occupied Europe. It was emblematic of the criminal character of the entire US war. Foisted onto the American people with lies about non-existent “weapons of mass destruction” and ties between Baghdad and Al Qaeda, the war was a premeditated act of aggression launched to further US imperialist aims to assert hegemony over the Middle East and its vast energy reserves.

Having failed to secure a guarantee of legal immunity for remaining US troops, Obama ordered the last of them withdrawn from Iraq little more than two years ago. The Iraqi people, however, have been left to deal with the bitter legacy of nearly nine years of US military occupation. Meanwhile, Washington’s quest for hegemony in the region has continued, most notably through the war to topple Muammar Gaddafi in Libya and its fomenting and support for a war for regime change against the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. In Fallujah and Ramadi, the consequences of the crimes of US imperialism, both past and present, have come together in an explosive form.

The confrontation, presented by the corporate media as a struggle against Al Qaeda terrorists, has deep roots in the sectarian divisions that were instigated by the US war and occupation as part of a deliberate divide-and-rule strategy. They succeeded in pitting Iraq’s majority Shi’ite population against the minority Sunnis, while the Kurdish minority in the north has been allowed to pursue regional autonomy, while conflicts over borders and rights to oil wealth threaten to erupt into civil war there as well.

The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, installed under the US occupation, has pursued an openly sectarian agenda, ruthlessly purging leading Sunni political figures, using the security forces to crack down on the population of Anbar and branding protests against these abuses of power as acts of Al Qaeda terrorism.

At the end of December, the Maliki regime touched off the present conflict by moving to arrest Ahmed al-Alwany, a prominent Sunni member of parliament in Ramadi—killing his brother and five bodyguards in the process—and then on December 30 sending in security forces to break up a protest encampment that had existed in the same city for months, killing at least 17 more.

Amid seething popular anger, armed groups, including both the Al Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) and local tribesmen, seized control of police stations, drove out the security forces and set up local checkpoints, effectively taking over Fallujah and much of Ramadi.

The Obama administration has responded by declaring its full support to Maliki and rushing weapons, including Hellfire missiles, drones and other equipment to his military. It is exerting maximum pressure on Congress to end its delay on shipment of Apache attack helicopters and F-16s to the regime. That this weaponry, in the hands of a regime that has become ever more sectarian and authoritarian, may soon be used to massacre civilians has presented no obstacle to the Obama White House.

Washington has presented its military aid as an imperative driven by the threat of Al Qaeda, with Secretary of State John Kerry describing those who have seized Fallujah as “the most dangerous players in that region.”

The reality is that such aid is one of the principal means of control and influence that Washington still exerts over Baghdad. While the troops have left, a 1,000-man Office of Security Cooperation-Iraq based at the US embassy remains, including both US military personnel and contractors. It has managed hundreds of military sales contracts amounting to over $9 billion since the end of the occupation. US contractors, most of them ex-special operations troops, remain “embedded” with Iraqi forces as “advisors.”

As for the supposed threat from Al Qaeda, that is also largely of Washington’s own making. The ISIS has been vastly strengthened by the US-backed war for regime change across the border in Syria, where it has been armed and funded by the US’s closest allies, particularly Saudi Arabia. The hypocrisy and cynicism of US policy in the region is summed up in Washington’s denunciation of Syria’s bombardment of ISIS forces in Aleppo, even as it rushes more missiles to Iraq so that Maliki can bomb them in Fallujah.

Embodied in this glaring contradiction is the dual use that Washington makes of Al Qaeda, employing it as a proxy where it suits is purposes—as in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and more recently in Libya and Syria—and then using it as a bogeyman to justify intervention, as in Afghanistan and Iraq a decade ago and once again in Iraq today.

The prospect that US imperialism may be able to further warm its hands over the fire it has ignited in Fallujah was indicated by the New York Times on Monday, in an article highlighting the “common enemies” shared by Washington and Tehran in Iraq. It suggested that the rapprochement between the US and Iran can extend beyond a deal on the Iranian nuclear program into turning Iran into a force for “stability” in the region.

Such a realignment, however, would hardly resolve the deep social, political and class conflicts tearing apart the Middle East, and would only be exploited by US imperialism to further its broader quest for global hegemony, particularly through confrontation with China.

This article first appeared on World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) on 9 January 2014, and was republished with permission.

Indringende beelden van de Palestijnse volkerenmoord

Photo: Abid Katib/Getty Images

Beelden beklijven. Beelden zeggen meer dan tekst. Bovenstaande foto maakt deel uit van de “Fuertes imágenes del Genocidio Palestino” van de Argentijnse historica Laura Lezcano.

Aan de hand van een reeks foto’s tekent de historica een analyse op van de systematische genocide van het Palestijnse volk door Israel. De slachtoffers van het nazisme zijn de volkerenmoordenaars van vandaag, aldus een kernachtige uitspraak van Lezcano.