Terrorism in Pakistan takes aim at China too

It would be tragic if so-called strategic competition with India blinds China to the dangers from Pakistani terrorism. China would be courting disaster by permitting such Sino- Indian strategic competition to intrude into the bigger war against Pakistani terrorism.

China and India encounter terrorism from nearly the same quarters in Pakistan, although the combination of groups and interests that carry out the attacks may vary. China is going down the same slippery slope of the United States in appeasing the Pakistani military in the hope to contain Pakistani terrorism. This is an insatiable beast that bites the feeding hand.

Terrorism against India and China are now epicentred in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan, where the US is campaigning against Al-Qaeda and Afghan and Pakistani Taliban terrorists with reluctant assistance from the Pakistani army.

The 26-28 November Bombay terror attacks were designed to provoke an Indo-Pak faceoff
and halt the US campaign. Either the Pakistan army and ISI or the Al-Qaeda and the
two Talibans (but chiefly the Pakistani Taliban) or them together designed the Bombay
attack using the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) organisation.

The growing Uighur terrorism that China faces in Xinjiang province is also radiating out from FATA, more specifically, Mir Ali, in North Waziristan (according to counterterrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna), headquarters of the smallish but deadly East Turkmenistan Islamic Movement (ETIM). ETIM is one of the oldest Uighur terrorist
groups to survive tough and, what critics call, often "repressive" Chinese counterterrorism measures in Xinjiang since at least the Nineties. Trouble for China arises from the fact that ETIM has passed under protection of the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU), which is wholly influenced by the Al-Qaeda, and IJU receives the overall umbrella cover of the Tareek-e-Taliban (TTP), a cooperative platform for Pakistani Taliban leaders lead by Beitullah Mahsud, one of the most wanted men in FATA today. In other words, China faces peak terrorist threats from ETIM, Al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban, and the last two employ ETIM to enable establishing a regional Central Asian caliphate that includes Xinjiang and with a second aim to undermine the rest of China.

The link in all this somewhere is the Pakistan military/ intelligence establishments, which have evolved jihad so considerably since the Eighties' "mujahideen" war against the (former) Soviet Union as to threaten and squeeze the more traditional pro-Chinese and pro-US sections in them. While the US could cut away from Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal (though it couldn't escape 9/ 11), China has faced the blowback of the socalled mujahideen campaign with Uighur veterans returning to Xinjiang and opposing Chinese rule with terrorism. So bad was it in 1992 (with a failed Uighur uprising in Kashgar) that China for months closed the Karakoram highway with Pakistan because it brought in Pakistani-trained terrorists, extremist Deobandi (not to be confused with the original Indian Deobandi) ideology, smuggled opium, hashish and later heroin and AIDS.

The terrorism in Xinjiang (besides the other, non-traditional threats) has only gotten worse despite massive police bundobast, military border deployments and exercises, total monitoring of mosques and madrasahs funded by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan in the libertine Eighties, and almost complete absence of media coverage of the violence and casualties in the belief that publicity gives oxygen to terrorists.

China is more than aware that Pakistan is a failed state and that large swathes of its territory are under terrorist control. Nor, presumably, does it entirely trust Pakistan's military any longer. Despite Pakistan president Asif Zardari's pleas on a state visit in October last and attempts to play the India card, China evaded committing to a Sino-Pak civilian nuclear deal like the Indo-US one. Within days of Zardari's visit, China put out a list of ETIM terrorists "that…were involved with similar groups and base camps" in a "South Asian country" (meaning Pakistan). One out of the list is Memetiming Memeti, ETIM head since 2003 when his predecessor, Hasan Mahsum, was killed in FATA. Bar the Mahsum incident, China has not very successfully pressured Pakistan to turn over hundreds of Al-Qaeda- and Taliban-trained ETIM and East Turkmenistan Liberation Organization (ETLO) terrorists who fought US allies during Operation Enduring Freedom.

What appears to be the case is that a hierarchy of terrorism victimhood has been established, with less and less recognition of victimisation as you go down the rung. While under Chinese pressure, the US and then the UN banned ETIM. However, America still does not readily and willingly differentiate Uighur terrorism from genuine Tibetan protests, condemning China for countering both (Seventeen ETIM terrorists in Guantanamo Bay won't likely be repatriated to China, though China has demanded them, if the facility is closed). Equally, China is loath to readily and willingly accept Indian victimisation from Pakistani terrorism, despite irrefutable evidence gathered from the Bombay attacks and from earlier ones. Having blocked it before, China unwillingly agreed to the UN Security Council ban of Jamiat-ul-Dawa, LeT's parent organisation. And its official media initially regurgitated the Pakistani lie that the Bombay attackers were Hindus masquerading as Muslims. Only days ago, the Chinese foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, called his Indian counterpart, Pranab Mukherjee, suggesting that China is going beyond proforma condemnation of terrorism against India, which is a change. But a more pro-active coming together is unavoidable.

No longer can terrorism raying out from Pakistan be combated singly by states (India,
China or the US) or by blocs (NATO, Shanghai Cooperation Organisation), and their
competition in other strategic spheres will have to be temporarily deferred or modified to overcome international jihad. Nor will the old crutches and dependencies serve any longer. For example, at the first hint of Indo-Pak trouble on Pakistan's eastern flank, the Pakistani Taliban has committed to fully back the Pakistan military and vowed hundreds of suicide attacks on Indian forces. This same Pakistani Taliban allied to the Pakistan army is behind ETIM, and China still (misguidedly) trusts the Pak army to deliver on ETIM terrorists. And this should also make it unreservedly clear to the US that the Pakistan army is growing to represent the Pakistani Taliban in uniform, and, beyond a point, they won't fight one another in FATA despite all the American threats and blandishments. The writing is on the wall for anyone to see. Pakistan is creepily becoming a jihadi state with nuclear weapons.

Global Terror's Central Front: Pakistan and Afghanistan

Afghanistan and Pakistan are inextricably linked by a spreading Islamic insurgency. Ambushes, daring militant offensives, and targeted assassinations have risen sharply in Afghanistan, while suicide attacks and "Talibanization" are sweeping through Pakistan's settled areas at an alarming rate. Can the U.S. win a decisive victory in the Afghanistan-
Pakistan theater? Is there a viable exit strategy? Please join Cato scholars Malou Innocent, who recently spent several weeks in Pakistan assessing the region's deteriorating condition, and Ted Galen Carpenter to discuss Afghanistan's meltdown, Pakistan's worsening situation, and the future of U.S. policy in this turbulent and critical region

Terrorist Sponsors: Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, China

The United States has assembled a superficially impressive international coalition against the threat of terrorism. Many countries in that coalition, however, contribute little of significance to the fight. Even worse, the willingness
of some members of the coalition to actually combat terrorism is doubtful.
Indeed, given their record, some of those countries appear to be part of the
problem, not part of the solution. That concern is especially acute with respect to
Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and China.

Saudi Arabia enlisted in the fight against terrorism only in response to intense
pressure from the United States following the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon. Even then, its cooperation has been minimal and
grudging. For example, Riyadh has resisted Washington's requests to use its
bases in Saudi Arabia for military operations against Osama bin Laden's terrorist
facilities in Afghanistan.

Even that belated, tepid participation is an improvement on Saudi Arabia's
previous conduct. The U.S. government has warned that it will treat regimes that
harbor or assist terrorist organizations the same way that it treats the
organizations themselves. Yet if Washington is serious about that policy, it ought
to regard Saudi Arabia as a prime sponsor of international terrorism. Indeed, that
country should have been included for years on the U.S. State Department's
annual list of governments guilty of sponsoring terrorism.

The Saudi government has been the principal financial backer of Afghanistan' s
odious Taliban movement since at least 1996. It has also channeled funds to
Hamas and other groups that have committed terrorist acts in Israel and other
portions of the Middle East.

Worst of all, the Saudi monarchy has funded dubious schools and "charities"
throughout the Islamic world. Those organizations have been hotbeds of anti-
Western, and especially, anti-American, indoctrination. The schools, for example,
not only indoctrinate students in a virulent and extreme form of Islam, but also
teach them to hate secular Western values.

They are also taught that the United States is the center of infidel power in the
world and is the enemy of Islam. Graduates of those schools are frequently
recruits for Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda terror network as well as other extremist
groups.

Pakistan's guilt is nearly as great as Saudi Arabia's. Without the active support of
the government in Islamabad, it is doubtful whether the Taliban could ever have
come to power in Afghanistan. Pakistani authorities helped fund the militia and
equip it with military hardware during the mid-1990s when the Taliban was
merely one of several competing factions in Afghanistan's civil war. Only when
the United States exerted enormous diplomatic pressure after the Sept. 11 attacks
did Islamabad begin to sever its political and financial ties with the Taliban. Even
now it is not certain that key members of Pakistan's intelligence service have
repudiated their Taliban clients.

Afghanistan is not the only place where Pakistani leaders have flirted with
terrorist clients. Pakistan has also assisted rebel forces in Kashmir even though
those groups have committed terrorist acts against civilians. And it should be
noted that a disproportionate number of the extremist madrasas schools funded
by the Saudis operate in Pakistan.

China's offenses have been milder and more indirect than those of Saudi Arabia
and Pakistan. Nevertheless, Beijing's actions raise serious questions about
whether its professed commitment to the campaign against international
terrorism is genuine. For years, China has exported sensitive military technology
to countries that have been sponsors of terrorism. Recipients of such sales
include Iran, Iraq and Syria.

Even though Chinese leaders now say that they support the U.S.-led effort against
terrorism, there is no evidence that Beijing is prepared to end its inappropriate
exports. At the recent APEC summit, China's President Jiang Zemin was notably
noncommittal when President Bush sought such a commitment. Whenever the
United States has brought up the exports issue, Chinese officials have sought to
link a cutoff to a similar cutoff of U.S. military sales to Taiwan -- something that
is unacceptable to Washington.

It is time for China, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia to prove by their deeds, not just
their words, that they are serious about contributing to the campaign against
international terrorism. In China's case, that means ending all militarily relevant
exports to regimes that have sponsored terrorism. In the cases of Pakistan and
Saudi Arabia, it means defunding terrorist organizations and the extremist
"schools" that provide them with recruits. It also means severing ties with such
terrorist movements as the Taliban and the Kashmiri insurgents. The world is
watching the actions of all three countries.