AFGHANISTAN: LAND OF COOPERATION

(Published on Eurasia Review - August 10, 2014)

On July 4, Beijing hosted the dress rehearsal for the Fourth ministerial meeting of the “Istanbul Process”, a regional platform created in 2011 to encourage cooperation between Afghanistan and some of its neighbors, namely China, Russia, Kazakhstan, India, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey and more, but that also sees the participation of extra-regional countries (with important names such as USA and UK) and international entities acting as “supporting-partners”.

Waiting for the real meeting to take place in the port city of Tianjin at the end of August, the hottest topic at the latest gathering was the difficult political transition of Afghanistan, which after the elections in April, the second ballot in June and the alleged electoral frauds, will have to wait until the new vote count to know the name of its new president. In the meantime, half of 2014, the last year marked by a massive US troops presence on the national soil, has already gone by. By the end of December the number of American armed forces should decrease to less than 15,000 units. This perspective concerns Beijing, for whom the stability in Central Asia is of primary importance, both for business and for national security matters. The new Great Game has increasingly less the characteristics of an intense match of risk and is starting to look more like a community of interests among superpowers to keep the region from sinking into chaos.

How much the PRC cares about the Afghan stability is proved by the decision to appoint a special envoy for Afghanistan. Sun Yuxi, a Chinese diplomat with ambassadorial experience in Afghanistan  and India, will help “ensure lasting peace, stability and development for Afghanistan and the region,” PRC’s Foreign Ministry said. This is the latest diplomatic move after a series of high-profile meetings: the outgoing leader Hamid Karzai and Chinese President Xi Jinping met during a CICA (Confidence Building Measure in Asia) summit dedicated to peace in Asia and hosted in May by Beijing that is increasingly becoming a crossroads of geopolitical interests.

Only three months earlier the Chinese Foreign Affair Minister Wang Yi visited Kabul during his Middle-East tour. Both times the stability of the country was the hot topic of the meetings, with the Chinese government, although underlining that the country’s stability must be kept by the Afghan people with their own means, nonetheless proclaiming to be willing to “play a constructive role” to favor the political reconciliation in Afghanistan. Translated from the cautious diplomacy language: PRC will not become the region’s new enforcer, taking Washington’s place, but it’s more more likely to aim for a cautious collaboration.

According to the experts, while the Pacific is still a reason for friction between China and United States, the “Heart of Asia” is becoming the arena for an alignment of the Chinese and American positions in the region. “The Chinese are very much aware that we are now on the same page in Afghanistan,” explained to “The Guardian” an American diplomat on the sidelines of a meeting between Chinese officials and Af-Pak experts, held in Beijing last March

Up until five years ago, Afghanistan was regarded as an El Dorado for its raw materials and hydrocarbons: crude oil, gas, copper, steel, gold and lithium, main nutrients for the energy-consuming economy of PRC. Even though still incomparable to energy giants like Turkmenistan (for gas), Iran and Uzbekistan (for crude oil), it is estimated that Afghanistan produces 22 barrels of black gold per capita, in line with neighboring Pakistan, and is rich in precious minerals, known as rare earth elements, much needed for the high-tech industry.

In 2011, the China National Petroleum Corporation signed a deal for 700 million dollars, with the target of operating in the three oil-rich basins of the Amu Darya, while three years earlier the Chinese Metallurgical Group and the Jiangxi Copper Co. earned a contract for the exclusive mining right in the site of Mes Aynak, in the Logar province, worth 3 billion dollars.

At that time, the range of the deal seemed to justify the costs, it is thought that the one in Mes Anyak is the world’s biggest copper deposit. However, following the Chinese economic growth’s slow down, the decreased stability in the country and the drop in copper’s value, last spring Beijing announced the desire to adjust the terms of the agreement, endangering the plans that Kabul has to use its resources to relaunch the country’s development — confirming how Afghanistan is slowly becoming more a security issue than an economic opportunity for the Asian giant. After three Chinese residents were killed in Kabul and two more kidnapped, in August 2013, for many entrepreneurs the wisest choice was to pack and retreat behind the Great Wall.

The turning point came in 2012, when Zhou Yongkang, back then tsar of the Chinese security — currently investigated for “serious disciplinary violation” — headed to Kabul, the highest level figure to visit the country since 1966. That occasion signed the beginning of a cooperation with Karzai’s regime aiming at training 300 Afghan police officers, followed by a Sino-American agreement for the professional training of diplomats, health workers and agrarian specialists. For the first time Beijing proved its goodwill in engaging in a collaboration with a third country on foreign land, commented to “The Guardian” William Darymple, historian and author of books about traveling in Central Asia. Three are the meetings held every year by ambassador James Dobbins, special representative of Obama in Afghanistan, and the Chinese counterpart to discuss the future of the region; demonstrating a progressive alignment of the interests of the two world super powers, at least concerning the Central Asian area.

More than once the Chinese mining activities in Logar have fallen victim to the Talibans’ attacks, whose origin is traced back to Pakistan. For a long time Kabul and Islamabad have accused each other of protecting insurrectionist groups. And according to the American intelligence, al-Qaeda’s leadership after the US’ military intervention in 2001 moved its headquarters to Pakistan, is already preparing its coming back to Afghanistan. According to sources from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, about 1,000 Chinese Jihadists are already being trained, waiting to contribute to the civil war that has been shedding blood in Syria for the past two years.

Beijing is starting to suspect that Islamabad is not entirely committed to the war on terrorism, a phenomenon that China perceives as a real threat since when violence strikes — officially attributed to the Muslim Uyghur minority — it has the possibility to cross the border in the remote Western region of Xinjiang (sharing borders with both Pakistan and Afghanistan), climaxing into an attack to the political heart of the PRC: Tian’anmen Square. It’s well known how soldiers coming from Xinjiang have joined the battlefield in the area near the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan: in December 2001, Uyghur Jihadists were among the first to die under the American bombings following 9/11 over the mountains of Tora Bora.

According to the experts today, Uyghurs are training a little more in the East, in the North Waziristan, Northern Pakistan, although international organizations are more cautious in quantifying the Uyghur presence in Central Asia, the Chinese government linked them to the ETIM (East Turkestan Islamic Movement), an organization that the United States removed from their blacklist a few years ago.

The inefficiency of the measures adopted by Kabul against the militants has an heavy influence on the relations with China, but analysts don’t rule out that the proximity of China to both Pakistan and Afghanistan might facilitate a reconciliation between the two parts. Still, for this to happen “ It will need to be accompanied by demonstrable and substantial changes in practice: these could be institutional mechanisms and/or economic integration” said Richard Ghiasy, research fellow at the Afghan Institute for Strategic Studies (AISS) in Kabul.

“Beijing is certainly a logical interlocutor to help defuse tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan”, explains Michael Kugelman, senior program associate for South and Southeast Asia at the Woodrow Wilson Center, “It wields considerable leverage over Pakistan, and unlike the US—which just like China provides Pakistan with a lot of aid—the Chinese are well-liked and trusted by the Pakistanis. China is also respected by Kabul because of the various investments it has made in Afghanistan. China is very concerned by growing instability in Afghanistan and Pakistan, because it believes that Uighur militants use that unstable environment to create a sanctuary and staging grounds for attacks on China. And China understands that reducing instability in Afghanistan and Pakistan will require in part reducing the tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Though, Afghanistan-Pakistan tensions run very deep and go back very far in time, and there’s no way that an outside mediator—whether China or any other country—will able to solve them. Both countries will need to address domestic challenges at home before they can truly reconcile. For Pakistan, this means ending its state sponsorship of militants, and for Afghanistan, this means finding a way to deal with its Taliban problem—whether by defeating it on the battlefield or, more realistically, by trying to reconcile with it politically.It is true that Beijing is trying to improve its relations with New Delhi. However, Islamabad is sufficiently dependent on Beijing’s largesse that it should be willing to accede to China’s requests even if China is seen as getting closer to Pakistan’s traditional enemy in New Delhi”.

Despite the skirmish around the border, Beijing and Delhi are heading towards an improved cooperation, not only from the economic point-of-view (in February the Asian Giant became India’s first commercial partner). Delhi is also involved in the Central Asian country, mainly because of the 10 billion dollars invested in Hajigak, an iron minerals deposit 100km west of Kabul. Last January, Beijing hosted a three-sided meeting with Moscow and the Indian government to discuss Afghanistan’s future, after the departure of the American troops from the region. A topic that dominates the scene at the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization), NATO’s antagonist Russian-Chinese-led block, to which Pakistan and India participate as observers. The conflict between the Indian and Pakistani government over Kashmir — controled for two thirds by Delhi and claimed in its integrity by Islamabad — has so far hindered their official entrance in the organization.

On November 10, 2013, the Indian capital city hosted a similar meeting sealed by the general wish for an economic reconstruction lead by Kabul in which the participation of the international community, must only be of support and not drawing power. It’s interesting to notice that this “support”, according to what is reported in the final communiqué, is to be carried on by regional and multilateral institutions, starting by SCO itself, by the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, the post-Soviet Collective Security Treaty Organization, end — only at last — NATO.

But driving the destiny of the Afghan growth, which is mostly export-oriented, will be above all the ability (or lack of ability) to strengthen the logistic sector. The Central Asian country is basically isolated because of the fragility of its transportation infrastructures. As Vaughan Winterbottom writes in “The Interpreter”, the American project for the Northern Distribution Network, series of logistic agreements that connect harbors on the Baltic and Caspian seas to Afghanistan, passing through Russia, Central Asian and Caucasus, was compromised by regional resentments. In February Eurasianet.org reported about bickering among the “-stan” countries, relating to the realization of the long awaited railway line TAT (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Tajikistan); project announced in 2011 by the former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, related to the “New Silk Road Strategy”, whose destiny is still uncertain today. The Central Asia Regional Electricity Trade Project, elaborated to transmit the energy surplus from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to Pakistan by Afghanistan wasn’t much luckier, and is still years off despite the interest from the Asia Development Bank. And although Beijing has been working for years together with Islamabad at the strengthening of the  Gwadar-Karakoram-Xinjiang Corridor, bridge connecting Pakistan and the Chinese region of Xinjiang, the project looks mostly interested in providing a commercial and military access to the Baltic Sea for China; surely not bestowing dynamism to the neighboring Afghanistan.

On the other hand, there are good reasons to hope that the increasing activities carried on by the Chinese side in Central Asia, openly announced with the plan for an economic belt throughout Eurasia (another “New Silk Road”, this time with Xi Jinping’s signature on it), might bring some benefit also to Afghanistan. But “while economic connectivity by means of physical infrastructure undoubtedly works conducive to regional cooperation, Afghanistan’s enduring state of insecurity and possible political instability are concerns that need to be addressed properly parallel to the Silk Road Economic Belt’s unfolding. Kabul will also need to fine tune its soft infrastructure, i.e. digital infrastructure and customs protocol”, annotates Ghiasy.

“The New Silk Road initiative, if successful, could help boost economic growth in Afghanistan at a time when the Afghan economy is very weak”, said Kugelman, “it could increase trade, improve regional transport, and create strong energy markets throughout Central or South Asia, including Afghanistan. This would all improve regional integration, and therefore enhance development and the economy in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, it will be a major challenge to build a successful new silk road. There are two reasons why. One, the political relations of Central and South Asia are very poor. There are tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan, Pakistan and India, and Russia and its surrounding states. Two, the security situation—particularly in Afghanistan—may not have a proper environment to allow for deep investments, the construction of energy pipelines, and other projects that require ample labor and stable conditions”.