- China’s dialogue rewards Taliban violence, increases Taliban influence and sidelines the elected government of Afghanistan.
- China and its allies should follow the global norm: no negotiation with terrorists.
By Anders Corr
China started secret negotiations with Taliban terrorists at least as early as late 2014, and last week diplomatically supported the Taliban, along with allies Pakistan, Iran and Russia.
China started secret negotiations with Taliban terrorists at least as early as late 2014, and last week diplomatically supported the Taliban, along with allies Pakistan, Iran and Russia.
Failing that, the U.S. and Europe should sanction Chinese companies involved in Afghanistan.
Afghan mourners carry the coffin of one of the 36 victims killed in twin Taliban blasts, in Kabul on January 11, 2017. Bombings across three Afghan cities including Kabul killed around 50 people and wounded 100 others on January 10, in a day of carnage as Taliban insurgents escalated a deadly winter campaign of violence.
Afghan mourners carry the coffin of one of the 36 victims killed in twin Taliban blasts, in Kabul on January 11, 2017. Bombings across three Afghan cities including Kabul killed around 50 people and wounded 100 others on January 10, in a day of carnage as Taliban insurgents escalated a deadly winter campaign of violence.
China is Afghanistan’s biggest investor, and Afghanistan has from $1 trillion to $3 trillion in mineral wealth, mostly from copper and iron ore deposits.
The most important of these deposits, at Mes Aynak, sits below an ancient Buddhist walled city that is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
In November the Taliban, which in 2001 destroyed the famous Buddhas of Bamiyan, appeared to reward China by giving the green light to mine the site.
China’s history with Islamic extremists in Afghanistan stretches back to the 1980s, when it provided weapons to anti-Soviet mujahideen.
China’s history with Islamic extremists in Afghanistan stretches back to the 1980s, when it provided weapons to anti-Soviet mujahideen.
During Taliban rule of Afghanistan in the late 1990s, China promised to support the Taliban diplomatically at the U.N. in exchange for assistance against Afghan extremists targeting Chinese interests.
China has also sought to weaken links between Uighur terrorists in China’s Xinjiang “autonomous” province, and terrorists in Afghanistan, including the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and Islamic State.
An Afghan archaeologist looks at the remains of Buddha statues discovered inside an ancient monastery in Mes Aynak, in the eastern province of Logar on November 23, 2010. The archaeological dig is located at the world's second-biggest unexploited copper mine. The Chinese government-backed mining company, China Metallurgical Group Corp., pressured archaeologists at the time by giving them three years to finish the excavations. Archaeologists fear that the 5,000-year-old Buddhist monastery will be largely destroyed once work at the mine begins.
An Afghan archaeologist looks at the remains of Buddha statues discovered inside an ancient monastery in Mes Aynak, in the eastern province of Logar on November 23, 2010. The archaeological dig is located at the world's second-biggest unexploited copper mine. The Chinese government-backed mining company, China Metallurgical Group Corp., pressured archaeologists at the time by giving them three years to finish the excavations. Archaeologists fear that the 5,000-year-old Buddhist monastery will be largely destroyed once work at the mine begins.
In addition to China’s direct negotiations with the Taliban, China can influence it through China’s close alliance with Pakistan, including China’s $46 billion Pakistan transaction in 2015.
The deal was probably originally planned (but postponed for security reasons) in September 2014. The funding will link Pakistan’s Gwadar Port to China’s One Belt One Road (OBOR) project.
The Taliban appeared to reward China’s overtures in December by calling on its fighters to protect China’s Mes Aynak copper mine in Afghanistan, the largest undeveloped copper deposit in the world. This is an important change in the mine’s security, as security concerns had stalled the mine for years. The site has been rocketed, and is on a Taliban transit route.
Gunmen executed eight workers clearing Soviet-era landmines in 2014.
Chinese workers have repeatedly evacuated Mes Aynak.
The Mes Aynak project is subject to corruption and bribery allegations, and six villages in the area were forcefully relocated to make way for the mine.
Al Jazeera interviewed a relocated village elder in 2015:
"We are all helpless. We don’t have a way to fight for our human rights...
The government is responsible for creating [the security problems] by grabbing people’s lands, beating them up, and humiliating and disrespecting their values….
It’s when people fight back, the government calls them ‘Al-Qaeda.’...
If the people are happy with the Chinese [mining company], then why are missiles being fired into Mes Aynak?
People are angry".
Chinese representatives of the Metallurgical Corporation of China (MCC) mining company sought help from locals to mitigate risk from attacks by the Taliban.
“The Chinese told me that there were four or five attacks in the past and that police had been killed," according to a village elder quoted in a March 2014 South China Morning Post article.
"They said we want your help so the Taliban does not attack with bombs and rockets, and does not attack the police."
A new OBOR rail link between China and the North of Afghanistan would bring those minerals to China, bypassing Pakistan.
Rather than One Belt One Road, it appears China is seeking an Asia in which all-roads-lead-to-Rome, or in this case, Beijing.
The rail line runs through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, and at least two Chinese trains returned empty to China in October because of a refusal by Uzbekistan to let Afghan exports pass.
The Chinese copper mine at Mes Aynak will require $3 billion of investment to unearth over $100 billion worth of copper.
In 2014, around the same time it was seeking help from local village elders to mitigate the Taliban threat, China started bargaining with the Afghanistan government to renege on a 2007 agreement by lowering government royalty rates of 19.5% to just 10%, and cancelling $675 million in bonuses.
The Afghan government refused, providing China with a possible impetus for its secret Taliban talks in late 2014.
Those talks seemed to have yielded fruit in November when China’s Mes Aynak copper mine was specifically noted by the Taliban as under protection.
This raises a series of questions.
Is China using the threat of increased diplomatic or financial support to the Taliban to seek concessions from the elected government of Afghanistan on royalty rates, bonuses, or other matters? Is China promising financial compensation to the Taliban for approving operations at the mine?
The Taliban were in a financial crisis prior to the November announcement, and are known to obtain significant revenues from taxes and protection payments levied against legal and illegal mining.
So it is unlikely the Taliban would publicly instruct fighters to stop the attacks without some form of compensation.
As the Mes Aynak copper deposits are under a 5,000-year-old Buddhist archaeological site with a monastery complex housing 400 Buddhist treasures and rare domed stupa temples, it also raises the question as to whether China might prefer Taliban control of the mine, over that of the elected government of Afghanistan.
The Taliban are known for destroying two massive ancient Buddhist statues at Bamiyan in 2001, so they might be more amenable to allowing China to destroy the Mes Aynak UNESCO World Heritage Site to facilitate rapid mining of the copper beneath.
Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif (L) and Army Chief Raheel Sharif (2R) look on during the opening of a pilot trade project in Gwadar port, some 700 kms west of Karachi on November 13, 2016. Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on November 13 opened a trade route linking the southwestern port of Gwadar to the Chinese city of Kashgar as part of a joint multi-billion-dollar project to jumpstart economic growth in the South Asian country.
China has demonstrated more influence with the Taliban than most other countries.
While attempts to broker peace talks between the Taliban and elected government of Afghanistan have generally failed, China was able to make progress on this front.
“Previous dialogue tracks through institutes like Pugwash, in Chantilly, France or through the Taliban Doha office had not appeared [to] move very far forwards with little evidence that the Taliban were taking the negotiations seriously,” according to a post by Raffaello Pantucci, who has done research in Afghanistan.
“In contrast, the [negotiations] track opened with Beijing’s support appeared to draw its influence directly from the heart of the Taliban in Pakistan.”
China’s negotiation with Taliban terrorists will likely freeze some Taliban-Uighur links, and protect China’s copper and other investments in Afghanistan.
Whichever country is able to satisfy the diverse and militant players in Afghanistan’s corrupt and insecure frontier investing environment will have a good chance at winning additional contracts and using their contacts and methods to exclude international competitors.
Up to $3 trillion in mineral deposits is at stake, and China is currently Afghanistan’s single largest foreign investor.
Chinese police ask a group of people who were denied entry to the Urumqi Intermediate People's court, to leave as the trial of Ilham Tohti, a former economics professor at a university in Beijing, begins in Urumqi, west China's Xinjiang region on September 17, 2014. Chinese authorities imposed tight security in Urumqi Wednesday for the separatism trial of a prominent scholar from the mostly-Muslim Uighur minority, as critics warned the prosecution will worsen tensions in violence-wracked Xinjiang.
Laws against corruption in the U.S. and Europe, for example the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) of 1977, will likely make Western investments in Afghanistan difficult for some time.
China takes advantage of those laws by failing to enforce its own anti-corruption laws.
Rather, Chinese firms are well known for buying off stakeholders to allow resource extraction, including through suitcases full of cash.
China therefore has an advantage in Afghanistan and other frontier investing environments.
The U.S. and Europe are as a result losing valuable economic opportunities to China, which does not play by Western rules.
Governments where China uses corruption obtain sub-par agreements, for example in Southeast Asia and Africa.
As these regions’ economic growth accelerates, China’s ill-gotten gains will contribute to its own economic growth and increasing global political influence.
In China’s Faustian bargaining with the Taliban, China increases the Taliban’s diplomatic profile and influence in Kabul, and appears to have strengthened and re-focused Taliban violence ever more tightly on the elected government of Afghanistan and international forces.
China’s continued diplomatic support to the Taliban confirms its realist approach to international politics, in which might makes right and each country seeks, above all, its own advantage.
China’s renewed dialogue with the Taliban confirms China’s aversion to the liberal values of international law, democracy and human rights.
If the U.S. and Europe truly care about these values, we should sanction Chinese companies operating in Afghanistan until China ends its dialogue with the Taliban and fully supports the elected government of Afghanistan.
A relative weeps over the coffin of one of the 36 victims killed in twin Taliban blasts, in Kabul on January 11, 2017. Bombings across three Afghan cities including Kabul killed around 50 people and wounded 100 others on January 10, in a day of carnage as Taliban insurgents escalated a deadly winter campaign of violence.
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