Beijing's headache over Afghanistan and Pakistan

After focusing on the opportunities opened up by the US withdrawal, China now has to contend with the new winds of war between Kabul and Islamabad, which are also affecting the thousands of Chinese working on one of the most important routes of the Belt and Road Initiative. Meanwhile, the Taliban are recruiting contingents from the Uighur diaspora.

Dushanbe (AsiaNews) - As journalist Abubakar Siddiq comments in Azattyk, China saw the American withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 as an opportunity to extend its influence in the region, gaining access to mineral wealth and ensuring greater security for its borders from the actions of extremist groups.

Now, however, Beijing's interests are threatened by new armed clashes between Afghanistan and Pakistan, which also target Chinese workers and companies near the borders, including on the Tajikistan side, thus involving the entire Central Asian region.

Pakistan is an important ally of China, and Beijing wants to find the key to normalising relations between Kabul and Islamabad through economic cooperation mechanisms. Marvin Weinbaum, director of research on these countries at the Institute for the Near East in Washington, notes that “China's ambitions depend on stability in relations between the two countries in permanent conflict, which is not happening”, with clashes ongoing since October that have caused the deaths of dozens of people.

Pakistan has closed its borders with Afghanistan, and there are fears of an all-out war between the two countries, with tensions not seen in years. The Pakistanis accuse the Afghans of offering hospitality to the extremist group Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is unleashing an increasingly powerful insurgency within Pakistan.

After the October armistice, clashes continue to flare up along the border, and at the end of November, the Taliban accused Pakistan of air strikes on Afghan territory, killing a dozen people, almost all of them children.

Weinbaum says Beijing is particularly concerned that these clashes could derail all infrastructure projects in these countries, an important part of the new vision of “middle corridors” for commercial transport, and it appears that “China currently has no leverage to normalise this situation”.

The China-Pakistan Kpek corridor is under construction with an investment of billion as part of the larger Belt & Road Initiative. Islamabad has received about billion since the corridor was launched in 2015.

Thousands of Chinese citizens work in Pakistan, where local authorities have formed special police units to protect them, with hundreds of checkpoints and passageways, and a series of restrictions around the mega-projects underway.

China has therefore concluded an agreement for the extraction of oil and rare earths in Afghanistan, meeting the Taliban government's severe shortage of economic resources. The intention is to extend the Kpek to Afghanistan, seen as a bridge between South and Central Asia.

Since 2022, China has reactivated the high-level diplomatic forum for cooperation between Pakistan and Afghanistan, acting as a mediator in several meetings between the foreign ministers of the two countries, with numerous appeals for abstention from any kind of conflict.

The director of the Khorasan Diary website, Ihsanulla Tipu Mehsud, also believes that “China's priority is to defend its interests in the region, which may be reflected in global projects”. Extremist groups are growing rapidly, including those directly aggressive towards the Chinese, and the north-eastern Afghan province of Badakhshan is in danger of becoming a major hotbed of fighters.

Badakhshan is a mountainous region bordering Pakistan and is the only land route connecting Afghanistan with the Chinese province of Xinjiang. Five Chinese workers were killed in two attacks here, and others were injured while working for a Chinese-Tajik gold mining company, and this is not the first case of clashes in the area.

The number of Uyghur workers employed on these sites is unknown, but the Taliban are gathering contingents from the Uyghur diaspora to launch attacks from various regions of Afghanistan, making the situation increasingly dramatic.