Xinjiang, China, Afghanistan and Pakistan
Image Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons Xinjiang, China, Afghanistan and Pakistan Subramanyam Sridharan P a g e 1 | 11 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 Xinjiang within itself.
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