Image Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons

Xinjiang, , Afghanistan and

Subramanyam Sridharan

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Introduction

Ever since Op. Bear Trap[1] which led to the induction, the eventual humiliating withdrawal of Soviet military from Afghanistan, that graveyard of all Superpowers, and the ultimate dismantling of the Soviet Union itself within a couple of years in the closing quarter of the previous century, jihadi terrorism, extremism and fundamentalism have engulfed this region of Af-Pak and beyond, spilling over into India, the Central Asian Republics (CAR), South East Asia, China, parts of Asia and Europe, Russia, the Levant et al. Three of the major players, apart from Wahhabi West Asian monarchies and Egypt, involved in the Afghan Jihad were the US, Pakistan, and China, each for their very own reasons. As the adage relentlessly proves, the hands that fed the snake were eventually bitten by it. The US was attacked on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, within its own supposedly impenetrable precincts and that country has not been the same again ever since. Pakistan, the ‘epicenter of worldwide terrorism’ has even been termed as the ‘Terrorist State’ [2] and is thoroughly emaciated today economically, barely managing to exist and that too due almost entirely to China, and is on the verge of being blacklisted by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), three decades after the Jihad ended. China has been now and then wracked by terrorism by the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) separatists and has been unable to eliminate them altogether even while going to extraordinary and inhuman lengths to retain within itself. This has earned it worldwide condemnation. ETIM was founded in c. 1997 with the three objectives of driving out the Han Chinese from East Turkestan, gaining Independence and establishing an Islamic State there. There is a profound thread that entwines China with Pakistan as far as the Uyghur situation goes in Xinjiang and the endeavor of this paper is to attempt to study that deeply along with its impact in Af-Pak. What also lends urgency to the understanding is the current developments in Afghanistan after the chaotic withdrawal of the US forces, the collapse of the Ashraf Ghani regime and the storming back of the Taliban, supported by China, Russia, Iran, and Pakistan. China’s main goals in Afghanistan now are seven-fold, in decreasing order of priority: prevent Islamist terrorism from spilling over into Xinjiang, provide a form of stability in Afghanistan and Pakistan (that is, Af-Pak) that suits its needs especially with regards to CPEC, access the mineral resources in Afghanistan while denying the same to others, fill in the voids created by the vacation of the US in Asia especially around its periphery, deny India any political space in Afghanistan, collude with Pakistan in further encircling India, and tighten its grip in Russia’s backyard. The current developments also give China an opportunity to further denounce existing notions of democracy in general and American ideology in particular. The History of East Turkestan Islamic Movement

On November 6, 2020, the US said that it no longer recognized ETIM as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) [3], an action that China has deeply resented. After the August 26, 2021, Kabul airport attack, the Chinese spokesman again alluded to this, “But it is regretted that the US has taken ETIM off its terror group list. China opposes the US applying a double standard in the fight against terrorism.” By a quirk of fate, the term ‘ETIM’ was itself coined by the then US Assistant Secretary of State, Richard Armitage, in c. 2002 while placing it on the UNSC 1267 List of terror organizations associated with Al Qaeda and the Taliban, when not only were the relations between the USA and China on an even keel but also the US needed Chinese assistance and approval in the prosecution of Al Qaeda which had carried out the 9/11 attacks.

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China had then taken the stance that neither the US nor the NATO could unilaterally attack Afghanistan. It had refused to lower its flag to half-mast at the UN Headquarters in New York as a mark of respect for the dead in the 9/11 attacks. It wanted proof that it was indeed Al Qaeda in Afghanistan that had masterminded the 9/11 attacks. As a quid pro quo to gain Chinese assent, the US offered to place the ETIM under the 1267 list and a deal was made. The US also placed ETIM on the US list of terrorist organizations in c. 2002 and even deported two to China. The Jiang Zemin’s period of Presidency in the 90s (President, PRC 1993-2003) had been particularly repressive for the Uyghurs who resorted to retaliation and violence especially as they began to dream of similar visions of freedom as the CAR nations after the breakup of USSR in c. 1992. Though ETIM had existed in various avtar before, it was only the c. 1999 meeting between them and Osama bin Laden which is considered significant and a turning point because they were supposedly offered support by Al Qaeda then [4]. After the reciprocal ‘understanding’ between the USA and the Chinese following 9/11, the Chinese began further tightening the restrictions on the Uyghurs using the ‘Global ’ (GWoT) as a pretext. This led to even more violence, particularly the 2009 rioting in Urumqi, following a Uyghur-Han incident in faraway Guangdong. The “People’s War on Terror” that Xi Jinping launched in Xinjiang in 2014 following a series of incidents there has completely undermined the lives of the Uyghurs. Restrictions on the practice of Islam, extreme surveillance, disappearance of Uyghurs, illegal detention, brainwashing through incarceration, mass-scale social- engineering, bonded labour, and controls on movements have been extensively employed by the State. While these were happening in Xinjiang, a part of ETIM took part in the Syrian operations along with Al Qaeda’s Jabhat Fateh Al Sham (Front for Conquest of Levant also known Jabhat al-Nusra) under a separate banner Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP). While ETIM concentrates only on gaining independence for East Turkestan from China, the TIP is affiliated with the ideology of Al Qaeda as a Salafist organization. As an epicenter for universal terrorism, Pakistan was also the crucible for TIP which was created there by c. 2008. In the Levant war, the Syrian government forces (known as SAA, Syrian Arab Army) were supported by China for the very purpose of eliminating the TIP. The TIP may be the other face of ETIM which the former cleverly shields in order to escape the various UNSC sanctions such as 1267 (1999) 1989 (2011) and 2253 (2015) which pertain only to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or Da’esh), Al-Qaida and associated individuals, groups, undertakings, and entities. But here we will make a distinction between TIP and ETIM. So, why are the Uyghurs fighting? The Turkic-speaking East Turkestan region was annexed by the Qing Emperor in the mid-18th Century. As is true of any Empire, much more the Chinese Empire, the edges, which are far away from the Han centre, which is the fertile east and the north-east, have never been under complete control of the emperor. It was the same case in East Turkestan too which the Chinese re-named as Xinjiang meaning ‘New Frontier’, in the last century. There were two periods of Independence for East Turkestan, between 1931 and 1934 first and later 1941-1949 when it existed as Turk Islamic Republic of East Turkestan (TIRET) and the Republic of East Turkestan (RET or ETR, East Turkestan Republic) respectively during those times. ETR was supported by the bordering Soviet Union. The idea of China has not been a fixed geographical entity over times. Though Xinjiang was given autonomy in 1955 and called as the ‘Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region’ (XUAR), Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) destroyed their native culture and religion. The culture revived only during the more tolerant Deng Xiaoping’s time. The ‘re-education’ program of the Cultural Revolution has been again picked up by Mao’s ardent protégé Xi Jinping, using tools such as facial recognition, mobile Apps, Artificial Intelligence (AI) etc., that were not available to Mao, and more than a million Uyghurs are currently under a ‘re-education’ detention program.

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Upon establishing the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) faced some dilemma over the issue of the ethnic minorities (minzu). Roughly 10% of minorities constitute the population of China and they live mostly in an arc from the North-East through North-West and South-West to the South all along the peripheries of core Han-China, that is from Manchuria through Inner Mongolia, East Turkestan (Xinjiang), Tibet, Yunnan, Guanxi to Guangdong. They thus offer a natural buffer against enemies and potential competitors such as Japan, Russia and India. During the Long March, in order to gain their support, Mao Zedong had announced the ‘autonomy’ scheme for the minorities once CCP was in power [5]. Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) came as a result of this promise in c. 1955 though Mao had skirted Eastern Turkestan during his Long March. The Great Leap Forward and the succeeding Cultural Revolution resulted in thousands of Uyghurs escaping to nearby ‘Stan’ regions of the USSR and even as far away as Turkey. As the mighty USSR collapsed by c. 1991 and as the ‘Stan’ regions gained Independence as Central Asian Republics, the Chinese got alarmed and tightened their control over Xinjiang to stop movements of terrorists and influx of arms and ammunition. In 1996, the CCP started the ‘Strike Hard’ campaign against crime all over China, but it created especially severe problems in Xinjiang. Pakistan’s Involvement with Xinjiang

If today the Afghan Taliban were to assert that they have never been associated with the ETIM, they would probably be technically right. There has been an alphabet soup of terror groups that has been operating in Af- Pak region since 1979. Pakistan itself has at least three dozen major terror groups. The Afghanistan part of Af- Pak has hundreds of warlords and terror groups such as the Haqqani Shura, Hizb-e-Islami of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Jamiat-e-Islami, the Northern Alliance, the Herat shura of Ismael Khan etc. While the Mujahideen of the 80’s were the creation of the US and the ISI with assistance from Wahhabi West Asian Islamist countries and China, the Taliban of the 90’s has been the sole creation of the ISI with wink and nod from the USA. Gen. Naseerullah Babar has been involved in the creation of both, especially the latter of which he is the father figure. He also created the Harkat-ul-Ansar (HuA), the Kashmir-centered Pakistani jihadi terror Tanzim was also created by him. Gen. Naseerullah Babar, was a close confidante of Ms. Benazir Bhutto and was the Interior Minister in her cabinet. While in the military service, he headed the Frontier Corps which was responsible for the security of NWFP (now known as Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, KP) and Balochistan provinces of Pakistan. He had earlier been involved with handling terror in the northern border areas of Afghanistan when Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was the PM. So, one can easily see what crucial roles he had played in germinating terrorism in Af-Pak and Kashmir. The Taliban were created by him and Benazir Bhutto using the madrassas of Jama’at-Ulema-e- Islami-Sami (JUI-S at Akora Khattak) of Maulana Sami-ul-Haq and JUI-F, Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman (Dera Ismail Khan). The Pakistani Army saw to it that its pro-Sarkari (that is, pro-Pakistan Establishment) terrorists never got entangled with China. That's the reason that China supported both Lashkar-e-Tayba (LeT) and Jaish-e- Mohammed (JeM) to the hilt in the UNSC 1267 Committee because it didn't want to create a bad blood between these vicious groups and itself lest Xinjiang would explode even more. China wants to be friendly with LeT & JeM leadership. More than a decade back when Qazi Hussain Ahmed was still leading the Jama'at-i-Islami (JI, the fountainhead of modern-day jihadi terrorism founded by Maulana Abu ala Al-Mawdudi in the early part of last century) in Pakistan, China invited him to Beijing in c. 2009 and entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with him [6]. It later did the same with Jama’at-Ulema-i-Islami-F (JUI-F) of Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman, one of the chief patrons of the Taliban [7]. It does not want these groups to extend any help to ETIM and China has succeeded in that effort. P a g e 4 | 11

It was the Tehrik-e-Taliban-Pakistan (TTP) and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) which gave asylum to the ETIM terrorists at the behest of Osama bin Laden, though they were all collectively referred to under the umbrella term, 'Taliban'. That is why if Taliban could make the claim that they never supported the ETIM, it might be technically correct. As far back as c. 2001, China had established close relationship with the Taliban in Afghanistan with the sole aim of ensuring that Islamist jihadi radicalism radiating from Af-Pak did not affect Xinjiang. However, that Tuesday, September 11, 2001 changed every Chinese calculation. The Chinese had almost reached a deal with the Taliban to force the IMU to close down the training camps for the ETIM in return for which the Chinese promised to re-build the USAID-funded Kajaki Dam Hydroelectric power plant in the Helmand province that had been damaged in the war. The IMU had been created by Juma Namangani, an ex-Soviet paratrooper who had fought in Afghanistan as part of the Soviet forces, and led by Tahir Yuldashev, a militant leader from the Ferghana Valley of Uzbekistan, after Namangani’s elimination. Gen. Naseerullah Babar had operated in these areas in the 1970s to harass the Afghan government during Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s time as relationship between Afghanistan and Pakistan had always been deeply fraught. After the Afghan Jihad, these terror units established by Gen. Babar began to turn their attention towards Russia and China. The Chechen troubles to Russia are too well known. China could clamp down news reports from Xinjiang more effectively and therefore we do not know how bad the situation there was. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the independence of the Central Asian Republics in 1991 added to the worries of China regarding security and terrorism in Xinjiang. China established the Shanghai Five (a group of five nations in 1996 comprising of itself, Russia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan & Kyrgyzstan) to address its Uyghur fighters backed by the Central Asian support groups. Later, this group became SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization). By early 2004, as the USA took its eyes off Afghanistan to attack Iraq (in fact, the Americans never deployed ground forces to prevent the Taliban and Al Qaeda from crossing over to Pakistan even in c. 2001), this TTP, IMU and ETIM combination had taken shelter in the badlands of South and North Waziristan, notoriously lawless even by the pathetic standards of the then North Western Frontier Province (NWFP). The Pakistani Army never wanted to enter Waziristan and when it did so because the TTP was putting enormous pressure on the Pakistani state with waves of high profile terror attacks (Marriott Attack in Islamabad, Attacks on Punjab Police, on PNS Mehran, Karachi Airport, Peshawar Army School etc.), they suffered humiliation as top level officers were captured by the IMU and TTP and humiliating public events were organized where the Army commanders appeared along with the TTP commanders and where the Pakistani Army accepted the conditions laid down by the TTP in order to have them released. After that the Pakistani Army withdrew from there. The TTP, like their Afghan Taliban brothers, were so fanatical that none other than the legendary figure of the Mujahideen Col. Imam of the ISI was murdered by them. Next to go was Sq. Leader Khawaja of the ISI, after having been similarly accused as Col. Imam, of being an American agent! The city center of Swat was known as Khooni Chowk (Bloody Square) because of the constant bloodbath there. By 2009, the ‘bad Taliban’ were hardly 100 Kms from capturing Islamabad. When the Pakistani Army eventually launched a massive Zerb-e- Azb operation against the ‘bad Taliban’ in c. 2014, it was again at the behest of China because it wanted to eliminate the IMU which was sheltering the ETIM. So, what prompted the Chinese to read the riot act to the Pakistani Army in c. 2014? Xi Jinping’s Involvement

Xi Jinping's very first visit to Xinjiang was marred by Uyghur separatists, as knife wielding ETIM jihadis killed dozens in Kunming Railway Station (March 2014) and an SUV carrying Uyghurs had earlier exploded in P a g e 5 | 11

Tiananmen Square (October 2013) right under the benign face of Mao with smoke billowing for some time, especially when Pakistan Army’s Chief Gen. Kayani was visiting Beijing on the very same day on his 'farewell visit'. Earlier, on June 27, 2013, there was an attack on the police in Lukqun, near Urumqi, in which 24 people died. In April 2013, two dozen people died in a violence in Kashgar. Then, on April 30, 2014, an explosion ripped through the Urumqi Railway Station killing three and injuring 79. Three weeks after the Urumqi Railway Station explosion, an open market was bombed killing 31 people. Such a fiery welcome to the new President, Xi Jinping, must have infuriated him. The TIP Chief Abdullah Mansour was located in FATA in c. 2014 and was giving interviews to international news organizations claiming responsibility for the Tiananmen SUV incident and praising the other attacks [8]. The Chinese too, with their investigation, traced all these attacks to Pakistan and demanded stern action. The incoming Chief of Pakistani Army, Gen. Raheel Sharif had therefore no choice but to act in North Waziristan. In the meanwhile, in c. 2016, China announced that the Afghan Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG) had gone defunct, after the killing of Taliban Emir Akhtar Mansour by a US Predator. A new military quadrilateral mechanism involving China, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan was established. China claimed that the involvement of Tajikistan was to plug the hole that existed for Islamist terrorists between Xinjiang & Tajikistan and Tajikistan & Afghanistan. In October 2016, China also conducted the first ever joint bilateral military exercise with the Tajik Army in the Badakhshan region which borders Afghanistan and China along the Wakhan corridor [9]. It was also reported that China was not only training and sending weapons to the Afghan National Army (ANA) but also stationing advisors there. Effectively, the USA was shunted out of the QCG. The Uyghur separatists were said to be enjoying US protection in Syria where they were fighting along with Al Nusra. This might have also raised some red flags for China. In the meanwhile, there was a suicide attack on the Chinese embassy in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan on August 30, 2016, by suspected Uyghur separatists. Chinese authorities vowed to “firmly strike” against perpetrators of this suicide car bombing. All the above led China to alter its stance in the 2017 BRICS meeting after resisting India so vehemently at Goa in October 2016, and earlier occasions too, on the question of directly referring to Pakistan, LeT and JeM in the joint communique. Only a month earlier Uri attack had happened with 19 Indian Army bravehearts being martyred, but China wouldn’t relent. The September,2017 BRICS joint communique at Xiamen [10] referred to, "Taliban, ISIL/DAISH, Al-Qaida and its affiliates, including Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), the Haqqani network, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), TTP and Hizb ut-Tahrir (HuT)" as terror groups. But, even subsequently, China continued to block the UNSC demand for including Masood Azhar in the 1267 List! May be, China had to make an exception at Xiamen because it had to concede to the strong demands of India as a quid-pro-quo for it to include other groups of interest to it such as Daesh, ETIM, IMU. Pakistan and ETIM

When it comes to terrorism, Pakistan’s signature is everywhere. So, it is no wonder that it is there too in neighbouring Xinjinag which is the only province of China with which Pakistan has a border. Ironically, neither the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir whose Khunjerab Pass provides the connectivity to Kashgar, nor the Xinjiang province in which Kashgar is located belongs to their respective countries! Ever since the 1970s, Xinjiang and Pakistan have mutually influenced each other increasingly significantly as we will see below. A complicated story begins with the arrest of Huseyin Celil [11], a Uyghur-Canadian, on a trip to his wife’s family in Uzbekistan in 2006 and handed over to the Chinese for ‘terror’ related activities. The Chinese court that tried P a g e 6 | 11

him in Xinjiang’s Urumqi condemned the terrorist-training camps for ETIM terrorists being run in Pakistan. In May 2007, and unfortunately for him, the then Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz happened to be visiting China when the Chinese Premier brought up the issue of training for the ETIM in Pakistan. In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Pakistan and China had set up a Joint Working Group (JWG) on counterterrorism. Soon after PM Shaukat Aziz’s return, a meeting of the JWG was called for to discuss the issue and the then Interior Minister of Pakistan, Mr. Sherpao, was about to visit Beijing for the same in late June. Disaster struck at that point. Just about two months prior to his trip to Beijing, he was targeted by the Taliban on April 29. Though he survived the massive assassination attempt, 31 others were killed, bringing home rather starkly the fact that none was safe in Pakistan and the Chinese worries were genuine. The disaster that struck Pakistan just before Sherpao’s visit to Beijing came from the extremists and terrorists of Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in the center of Islamabad. The Lal Masjid had already become the hub for the Punjabi militants (later to be called Punjabi Taliban) who had close contacts with the Taliban and the warlords in the Af-Pak area. They kidnapped seven Chinese women and one Chinese man who were working as masseurs in massage parlors, for ‘immoral activities’ and took them to the Lal Masjid. China was angry. China’s anger was not unjustified because Chinese citizens had been targets for various jihadi terrorist groups of Pakistan before. In March 2004, the US had released all the Uygur jihadis it had captured from Afghanistan as well as an important Taliban commander Abdullah Mehsud (of the Mehsud tribe of South Waziristan) from its Guantanamo Bay detention center. The released Uyghurs were never returned to China. The first of a series of troubles in Pakistan started for the Chinese after that. Abdullah Mehsud had been recruited into jihadi terrorism by none other than Tahir Yuldashev, the chief of the dreaded Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), the protectors of ETIM. The Al Qaeda had relocated the IMU into the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of the NWFP and they had established a formidable base there. The brutal Uzbeks were already 2500 strong. After 9/11, Al Qaeda terrorists came in large numbers from Afghanistan and settled down in South Waziristan. Waziristan then became a training ground for ETIM. There were also the ‘Punjabi Taliban’ located there. The moniker ‘Punjabi Taliban’ (as opposed to the Taliban who were all Pakhtoons) applied to a group of Punjab-based terrorist organizations Harkat-ul-Jihadi-Islami (HuJI), Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) which had developed a hatred for the Musharraf regime for betraying the Islamist jihadi causes and aligning with the kufr (infidel) Americans. Between April 2002 and December 2003, the Pakistani President Gen. Musharraf survived four assassination attempts and a coup. As these were organized by terrorist groups based in South Waziristan, the Pakistani Army decided to take them on in early 2004 and attacked first the town of Kaloosha in South Waziristan where the IMU were entrenched. But, March 16, 2004, ended up disastrously as the Waterloo for the South Waziristan Scouts of the Frontier Corps at Kaloosha as the IMU, Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters made a mincemeat of them killing over eighty. It was with very great difficulty that the Scouts extricated themselves. This seminal debacle led to immediate cessation of all the operations and a peace deal which the Peshawar Corps Commander personally signed after publicly embracing Nek Mohammed, the Taliban leader. For another decade, the Pakistan Army did not venture into these badlands. The Kaloosha incident was a touch stone of the rivaaj (tribal customs) of the Pakhtoonwali Code which emphasizes badal (revenge) and melmastia (hospitality for guests). Both were evident, in the protection given to the IMU (and by implication, ETIM) guests on that March 2004 Day. In October 2004, Abdullah Mehsud, a few months after his release, kidnapped two Chinese engineers working in the Gomal Zam Dam project in South Waziristan’s border with Afghanistan. In the commando operation by the Pakistani Army, one Chinese was killed.

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Sherpao went ahead with his visit to Beijing, unmindful of the blast. The Daily Times of Pakistan, in its Editorial dated June 29, 2007 said, “The federal interior minister, Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao, during his visit to Beijing, got an earful from the Chinese minister of public security, Zhou Yongkang Zhou, who asked Pakistan for the umpteenth time to protect Chinese nationals working in Pakistan. The reference was to the assault and kidnapping of Chinese citizens in Islamabad by the Lal Masjid vigilantes. The Chinese minister called the Lal Masjid mob ‘terrorists’ who targeted the Chinese, and asked Pakistan to punish the ‘criminals’”. Even as the Lal Masjid stand-off was continuing, religious extremists shot dead three Chinese auto workers in Peshawar city itself on July 8th. The situation was getting worse and China's ambassador in Islamabad urged Pakistan to "round up the culprits, properly handle the follow-up issues and take effective measures to protect all the Chinese in Pakistan". By the time the Lal Masjid drama ended on July 10, 2007, the Chief Cleric of Lal Masjid and 150 of his students had died defying the Pakistani commandos. This led to the fusion of the Punjabi militants with all those already present in FATA and calling themselves as the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a formidable force which attacked the Pakistani state for almost the entire next decade. About a week after the Lal Masjid drama ended, the TTP carried out a massive suicide attack against the Chinese in Gwadar region on July 19, 2007, resulting in the killing of 24 Pakistanis. The attack on the Chinese in the Gwadar area had happened before too but they were carried out by Baloch separatists who had several grouses against the federal government regarding construction of the Gwadar port, profit-sharing from the exploitation of Sui natural gas as well as a sense of neglect of the region by Islamabad. For example, there was an attack on a bus carrying Chinese engineers in Gwadar in May 2004 killing three of them. Gen.Musharraf wrote to Chinese President Hu Jintao, “This most reprehensible act has further fortified our determination to intensify efforts to defeat terrorism and extremism” [12]. He took a series of military actions which finally led to the killing of Balochistan’s undisputed leader Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti in August 2006. In 2014, the newly appointed Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang made Pakistan his first pit stop in his foreign tour. Among many agreements signed was the one to activate Defense and Security Consultation Mechanism involving the exchange of high-level military visits between the two countries to deepen anti-terrorism cooperation. In order to enhance the level of anti-terrorism cooperation, they signed an agreement to establish Sino-Pak border Posts. On the intervening night between June 8 and 9, 2014, TTP attacked the Jinnah International Airport, Karachi. This was the last straw on the Pakistani camel’s back. The Pakistani Army launched a determined assault on the TTP in an operation called Zerb-e-Azb (Sharp and Cutting). The Inter- Services Public Relations’ ( ISPR) public statement said, “many ETIM terrorists and their affiliates have also been killed in the strikes.” Immediately, China acknowledged the Pakistani ‘sacrifices’ and ‘positive contributions’ made by Pakistan in fighting against terror. A month earlier, Pakistan had called ETIM a common enemy of both China and Pakistan. A year later, the Pakistani Defence Minister Khwaja Asif said, “We believe they (ETIM) have all been eliminated. The fight against ETIM is our own fight. It's not only China's fight. It's a joint fight against ETIM, between Pakistan and China, so there is absolutely no difference of opinion on the elimination of ETIM from our tribal areas”. However, the ETIM threat in Pakistan does not appear eliminated completely. In c. 2017, the ETIM issued a threat to the life of the Chinese Ambassador in Islamabad [13]. On November 23, 2018, three suicide attackers stormed the Chinese consulate in the Pakistani city of Karachi, killing two civilian bystanders. However, the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) claimed responsibility. On April 21,2021, coinciding with the ascendancy of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the TTP attacked Hotel Serena at Quetta with a car-borne suicide bomber targeting the Chinese Ambassador Nong Rong though he escaped [14]. The TTP owned up the attack [15] which killed five people and wounded twelve. Three months later, the TTP was believed to have carried out a more deadly attack on a bus carrying 40 Chinese engineers and workers to a dam construction site at Dasu in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa on July 14, 2021. The dead included nine Chinese P a g e 8 | 11

nationals [16]. Xi Jinping delivered a written message to Pakistan on this issue and also sent a team of fifteen criminal investigation specialists to the site. This attack led to the Chinese contracting firm suspending the work on the project indefinitely. The Chinese Foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, nicknamed the ‘Wolf- Warrior’, said that the Pakistani Taliban was listed as a terrorist group, whereas the Afghan Taliban were a political military organization seeking to stop foreign interference in the country and remained in contact with the Afghan government. Under pressure to make a distinction between the two Taliban forces, the Chinese have to indulge in such word play. As usual, Pakistan’s foreign affairs ministry initially said the bus had fallen into the ravine “after a mechanical failure resulting in leakage of gas that caused a blast” [17] reminiscent of the earlier decade when regular bombing attacks in Pakistan were attributed to ‘short circuit in air vacuum’! Conclusion

The purpose of this article is threefold: to highlight the history and role of ETIM within China, the support ETIM has received from the Taliban, Pakistan and the Af-Pak region and the way the Chinese government operated in bringing pressure on various entities especially Pakistan to take strong action against the ETIM. The pressure on Pakistan’s Gen. Musharraf led to enormous pain for Pakistan that has lingered for more than a decade now. The acquisition of the Gwadar port, the necessity to build the CPEC, and the strategic importance of Gilgit- Baltistan have added to the pressures of China and Pakistan to keep the ETIM and its associates at bay. The latest incidents as well as its long and terrible history prove that Afghanistan would be a complex affair that would not be a cakewalk for any of these three players – China, Taliban and Pakistan - as also the others on the periphery like India, Iran, Russia and the ‘Stan’ countries. The Cold War 2.0 dynamics would also affect the nascent Great Game 3.0 in Af-Pak – Great Game 1.0 was between the two non-Asian Empires Great Britain and Tsarist Russia (1830-1907), Great Game 2.0 was again between two non-Asian Superpowers the USA and USSR (1979-1989) – as the withdrawal of the US from the region would not easily translate into Advantage- China by any means. Turkey has voiced concerns about treatment of the Uyghurs, the West Asian monarchies are alarmed with the growing proximity between their religious rival, Iran and China. Russia will constantly be looking over its shoulders with respect to China’s intentions in its backyard, the CAR countries and Afghanistan. Even the Shia Iran, in spite of the USD 400B investments from China, would be concerned with the Chinese nexus with the Deobandi Taliban. And, of course, India would be distinctly worried about the nexus between China, Pakistan, and the Taliban. While the US is at the center of the muddle, the other two QUAD nations also have significant reasons to be worried by the developments in Afghanistan. China seems to be putting Asia and even beyond in great danger for its only and simple expedient of protecting its ‘New Frontier’, by allowing the Taliban to have a free rein in Afghanistan. A very dangerous period is ahead for everyone.

***** REFERENCES

(All links accessible as of August 26, 2021)

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[1] “Afghanistan: The Bear Trap: The Defeat of a Superpower”, Mark Adkin, Mohammad Yousaf, 2008 ISBN-10 : 0971170924 [2] “India calls Pakistan a 'terrorist state' as 17 soldiers die in Kashmir”, The Guardian, Sep. 18, 2016 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/18/india-accuses-pakistan-of-being-terrorist-state-17-die- kashmir [3] “US removes East Turkestan Islamic Movement from list of terror organisations”, Dipanjan Roy Chowdhry, Economic Times, Nov. 7, 2020 https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/world-news/us-removes-east-turkestan-islamic- movement-from-list-of-terror-organisations/articleshow/79093495.cms?val=3728&from=mdr [4] “Could China be the Next Al Qaeda Haven?”, ABC News, Jan. 6, 2006 https://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=79654&page=1 [5] “Becoming China: The Story Behind the State”, Jean-Marie Gescher, ISBN 978-1-4088-8723-3 [6] “Pakistan’s Jamaat-i-Islami to Preach Islam in China”, DAWN, Apr. 4, 2009 https://www.dawn.com/news/937790/pakistan-s-jamaat-i-islami-to-preach-islam-in-china [7] “Senior Chinese political advisor meets Pakistani JUI delegation”, Global Times, Jul 4, 2010 https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/519626.shtml [8] “Turkestan Islamic Party Expresses Support for Kunming Attack”, The Diplomat, Mar. 20, 2014 https://thediplomat.com/2014/03/turkestan-islamic-party-expresses-support-for-kunming-attack/ [9] “China Holds Anti-Terror Exercises on Afghanistan-Tajikistan Border”, Eurasia News, Oct. 24, 2016 https://eurasianet.org/china-holds-anti-terror-exercises-afghanistan-tajikistan-border [10] “BRICS Leaders Xiamen Declaration”, Sep. 4, 2017, Ministry of External Affairs, Govt. of India www.mea.gov.in/Uploads/PublicationDocs/28912_XiamenDeclaratoin.pdf [11] “10 years later, family of Canadian in Chinese prison still looking for answers”, Global News, Mar. 17, 2016 https://globalnews.ca/news/2581707/10-years-later-family-of-canadian-in-chinese-prison-still-looking- for-answers/ [12] “Bomb Kills 3 And Injures 11 In Pakistan”, New York Times, May 4, 2004 https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/04/world/bomb-kills-3-and-injures-11-in-pakistan.html [13] “China Fears New Envoy In Pakistan Might Be Attacked; Asks More Security”, Press Trust of India, Oct. 22, 2017 https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/china-fears-new-envoy-in-pakistan-might-be-attacked-asks-more- security-1765582 [14] “Deadly Blast Hits Pakistan Hotel, Missing China’s Envoy by Perhaps Just Minutes”, New York Times, Apr. 21, 2021 https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/21/world/asia/pakistan-hotel-bombing-china-ambassador.html [15] “Pakistan Taliban claims deadly blast at luxury hotel”, The Hindu, Apr. 22, 2021 https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/bombing-in-hotel-parking-lot-in-sw- pakistan/article34380236.ece

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[16] “China urges Pakistan to ‘severely punish’ bus attackers after blast kills 13, including nine Chinese nationals”, South China Morning Post, July 14, 2021 https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/diplomacy/article/3141052/blast-hits-bus-carrying-chinese-workers- pakistan-killing-least [17] “Pakistan bus ‘blast’ kills at least 12, including nine Chinese”, Al Jazeera, Jul. 14, 2021 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/7/14/chinese-nationals-among-several-killed-in-pakistan-blast- report

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