Amidst news of worsening Pakistan-Afghanistan ties, and New Delhi and Kabul’s Taliban regime losing inhibitions, Beijing has thrown a new piece in the jigsaw puzzle, or rather a bombshell – the $60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) will be expanded into Afghanistan.
CPEC, part of China’s ambitious multi-modal trade, transit, and connectivity One Belt One Road (OBOR) project, which aims to build an unhindered trade link between China and Europe through arteries of land and sea routes, is Beijing’s most prized asset or crown jewel in Pakistan.
With this, China aims to bypass West controlled straits and chokepoints, recreating what historian Peter Frankopan terms ‘The New Silk Route’. The Chinese port in Gwadar, Baluchistan, is a very crucial node for the mega project because of its connectivity to Iran and the gulf states.
Why Afghanistan?
Questions arise as to why Beijing, perceived as a 3D chess player abiding by Lao Tzu’s ‘Art of War’, successfully marinating Marx, Markets, and Confucius into a stew, is keen to expand its pet infra & connectivity project into the ‘graveyard of empires’, the landlocked strategic crossroad between South Asia and Central Asia.
Beijing’s outreach towards the Taliban is not a new development. In 2021, a high-level Taliban delegation, including the outfit’s co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, met Wang Yi, the Chinese Foreign Minister in Tianjin, a major industrial city near Beijing. It was at this point when the previously don’t-kiss-and-tell relationship turned into a scandalous affair of the town.
China was also the first country to establish diplomatic relations with the ‘New Taliban’ in Afghanistan. Journalist Stanly Johny’s book ‘The Comrades and the Mullahs’ focuses on the growing ties between China and Taliban, and their desire for win-win outcomes. Pakistan, as expected, is the complex middle layer and interface – a pliant irritant for China, and the source of tensions for Afghanistan.
What can the Taliban, an assorted band of spartan Islamists hailing from the Pashtun tribal heartland near Kandahar, following a tribal Pashtunwali code as sternly as the Italian mafia follows Omerta, have to offer to the Chinese merchants and mandarins?
From a security point-of-view, China aims to keep a check on Xinjiang/East Turkestan separatism. Another key priority is to thwart the flow of Afghan militants or aid into Baluchistan, which threatens to destabilize China’s pet project. Needless to say, India and China will be caught in crosshairs in Afghanistan.
No regime in the political history of Afghanistan, including the Taliban, has had a favourable view of Pakistan for a host of reasons. From the monarchists to communists, to the Northern Alliance guerrillas, and now Taliban 2.0, Kabul doesn’t acknowledge the British drawn Durand Line, the boundary separating Afghanistan from Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Islamabad’s active role in perpetuating instability, conflict, and being the launchpad and logistics hub of foreign invasion twice, first in 1979, and then post 9/11, stirs resentment and revulsion in the hallways of power in Afghanistan.
The Hidden Ace?
The relations between the two neighbours are far from cordial. Pakistan, however, may hold a bargaining, or blackmailing, chip – over three million Afghan refugees living from Peshawar to Karachi.
Since 2023, Pakistan has stepped up the deportation and repatriation of Afghan refugees. It is estimated that over 8 lakhs have been sent across the border. Interestingly, Iran is also deporting Afghan refugees back home and has the Taliban’s nod. Though the sudden mass influx from Pakistan will strain the already shoddy and under-equipped public services, even if it may be the least of the Taliban’s concern.
China aims to turn Pak and Afghanistan into working partners under its aegis, inducing them both with development loans, investments, and infra projects.
Untapped rare earth metals buried in Afghanistan, projected to be worth $1 trillion, must be another long-term Chinese gambit. From electric vehicles to smart robotoids and new-age battery tech, China is ahead of the West mainly because of its ownership and control of the entire mine-to-factory supply chain.
The upshot of this new matrix added to Chi-Pak, or the China-Pakistan Axis as Andrew Small terms it? This deadly threesome comprises an aspiring superpower, a semi-functional debt sink, and a ravaged country with primitive medieval norms and prevalent war-lordism.
China, which is stitching this patchwork, sees it as artistry and gamesmanship akin to arranging tiles together in the Chinese board game Mahjong. There’s definitely more than meets the eye and a lot of concealed dynamite. The domino can tumble anytime due to the weakest and most volatile link in the chain.
If history is any guide, the leisurely Mahjong with a few shots of potent baijiu – that distilled Chinese liquor, can turn into messy and high-adrenaline Buzkashi, the traditional Afghan sport, where teams of horse-riders compete to carry the carcass of a sheep across the goal post.
