Pakistan aids insurgency in Afghanistan

Americans fighting the war in Afghanistan have long harboured strong suspicions that Pakistan’s military spy service has guided the Afghan insurgency with a hidden hand, even as Pakistan receives more than $1 billion a year from Washington for its help combating the militants, according to a trove of secret military field reports made public on Sunday.

The documents, made available by an organization called WikiLeaks, suggest that Pakistan, an ostensible ally of the United States, allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organize networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders.

Taken together, the reports indicate that American soldiers on the ground are inundated with accounts of a network of Pakistani assets and collaborators that runs from the Pakistani tribal belt along the Afghan border, through southern Afghanistan, and all the way to the capital, Kabul.

Much of the information — raw intelligence and threat assessments gathered from the field in Afghanistan— cannot be verified and likely comes from sources aligned with Afghan intelligence, which considers Pakistan an enemy, and paid informants. Some describe plots for attacks that do not appear to have taken place.

But many of the reports rely on sources that the military rated as reliable.

While current and former American officials interviewed could not corroborate individual reports, they said that the portrait of the spy agency’s collaboration with the Afghan insurgency was broadly consistent with other classified intelligence.

Some of the reports describe Pakistani intelligence working alongside al-Qaida to plan attacks. Experts cautioned that although Pakistan’s militant groups and al-Qaida work together, directly linking the Pakistani spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, with al-Qaida is difficult.

The records also contain firsthand accounts of American anger at Pakistan’s unwillingness to confront insurgents who launched attacks near Pakistani border posts, moved openly by the truckload across the frontier, and retreated to Pakistani territory for safety.

The behind-the-scenes frustrations of soldiers on the ground and glimpses of what appear to be Pakistani skullduggery contrast sharply with the frequently rosy public pronouncements of Pakistan as an ally by American officials, looking to sustain a drone campaign over parts of Pakistani territory to strike at Qaida havens. Administration officials also want to keep nuclear-armed Pakistan on their side to safeguard NATO supplies flowing on routes that cross Pakistan to Afghanistan.

This month, secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton, in one of the frequent visits by American officials to Islamabad, announced $500 million in assistance and called the United States and Pakistan "partners joined in common cause."

The reports suggest, however, that the Pakistani military has acted as both ally and enemy, as its spy agency runs what American officials have long suspected is a double game — appeasing certain American demands for cooperation while angling to exert influence in Afghanistan through many of the same insurgent networks that the Americans are fighting to eliminate.

Behind the scenes, both Bush and Obama administration officials as well as top American commanders have confronted top Pakistani military officers with accusations of ISI complicity in attacks in Afghanistan, and even presented top Pakistani officials with lists of ISI and military operatives believed to be working with militants.

Benjamin Rhodes, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, said that Pakistan had been an important ally in the battle against militant groups, and that Pakistani soldiers and intelligence officials had worked alongside the United States to capture or kill Qaida and Taliban leaders.

Still, he said that the "status quo is not acceptable," and that the havens for militants in Pakistan "pose an intolerable threat" that Pakistan must do more to address.

"The Pakistani government — and Pakistan’s military and intelligence services — must continue their strategic shift against violent extremist groups within their borders," he said. American military support to Pakistan would continue, he said.

Several Congressional officials said that despite repeated requests over the years for information about Pakistani support for militant groups, they usually receive vague and inconclusive briefings from the Pentagon and CIA

Nonetheless, senior lawmakers say they have no doubt that Pakistan is aiding insurgent groups. "The burden of proof is on the government of Pakistan and the ISI to show they don’t have ongoing contacts," said Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat on the Armed Services Committee who visited Pakistan this month and said he and Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the committee chairman, confronted Pakistan’s prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, yet again over the allegations.

Such accusations are usually met with angry denials, particularly by the Pakistani military, which insists that the ISI severed its remaining ties to the groups years ago. An ISI spokesman in Islamabad said Sunday that the agency would have no comment until it saw the documents. Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, said, "The documents circulated by WikiLeaks do not reflect the current on-ground realities."

The man the United States has depended on for cooperation in fighting the militants and who holds most power in Pakistan, the head of the army, Gen Parvez Ashfaq Kayani, ran the ISI from 2004 to 2007, a period from which many of the reports are drawn. American officials have frequently praised General Kayani for what they say are his efforts to purge the military of officers with ties to militants.

American officials have described Pakistan’s spy service as a rigidly hierarchical organization that has little tolerance for "rogue" activity. But Pakistani military officials give the spy service’s "S Wing" — which runs external operations against the Afghan government and India — broad autonomy, a buffer that allows top military officials deniability.

American officials have rarely uncovered definitive evidence of direct ISI involvement in a major attack. But in July 2008, the CIA’s deputy director, Stephen R Kappes, confronted Pakistani officials with evidence that the ISI helped plan the deadly suicide bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul.

From the current trove, one report shows that Polish intelligence warned of a complex attack against the Indian Embassy a week before that bombing, though the attackers and their methods differed. The ISI was not named in the report warning of the attack.

Another, dated August 2008, identifies a colonel in the ISI plotting with a Taliban official to assassinate President Hamid Karzai. The report says there was no information about how or when this would be carried out. The account could not be verified.

General linked to militants

Lt Gen Hamid Gul ran the ISI from 1987 to 1989, a time when Pakistani spies and the CIA joined forces to run guns and money to Afghan militias who were battling Soviet troops in Afghanistan. After the fighting stopped, he maintained his contacts with the former Mujahedeen, who would eventually transform themselves into the Taliban.

And more than two decades later, it appears that General Gul is still at work. The documents indicate that he has worked tirelessly to reactivate his old networks, employing familiar allies like Jaluluddin Haqqani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, whose networks of thousands of fighters are responsible for waves of violence in Afghanistan.

General Gul is mentioned so many times in the reports, if they are to be believed, that it seems unlikely that Pakistan’s current military and intelligence officials could not know of at least some of his wide-ranging activities.

For example, one intelligence report describes him meeting with a group of militants in Wana, the capital of South Waziristan, in January 2009. There, he met with three senior Afghan insurgent commanders and three "older" Arab men, presumably representatives of al-Qaida, who the report suggests were important "because they had a large security contingent with them."

The gathering was designed to hatch a plan to avenge the death of "Zamarai," the nom de guerre of Osama al-Kini, who had been killed days earlier by a CIA drone attack. Mr Kini had directed Qaida operations in Pakistan and had spearheaded some of the group’s most devastating attacks.

The plot hatched in Wana that day, according to the report, involved driving a dark blue Mazda truck rigged with explosives from South Waziristan to Afghanistan’s Paktika Province, a route well known to be used by the insurgents to move weapons, suicide bombers and fighters from Pakistan.

In a show of strength, the Taliban leaders approved a plan to send 50 Arab and 50 Waziri fighters to Ghazni Province in Afghanistan, the report said.

General Gul urged the Taliban commanders to focus their operations inside Afghanistan in exchange for Pakistan turning "a blind eye" to their presence in Pakistan’s tribal areas. It was unclear whether the attack was ever executed.

The United States has pushed the United Nations to put General Gul on a list of international terrorists, and top American officials said they believed he was an important link between active-duty Pakistani officers and militant groups.

General Gul, who says he is retired and lives on his pension, dismissed the allegations as "absolute nonsense," speaking by telephone from his home in Rawalpindi, where the Pakistani Army keeps its headquarters. "I have had no hand in it." He added, "American intelligence is pulling cotton wool over your eyes."

Senior Pakistani officials consistently deny that General Gul still works at the ISI’s behest, though several years ago, after mounting American complaints, Pakistan’s president at the time, Pervez Musharraf, was forced publicly to acknowledge the possibility that former ISI officials were assisting the Afghan insurgency. Despite his denials, General Gul keeps close ties to his former employers. When a reporter visited General Gul this spring for an interview at his home, the former spy master canceled the appointment. According to his son, he had to attend meetings at army headquarters.

Suicide bomber network

The reports also chronicle efforts by ISI officers to run the networks of suicide bombers that emerged as a sudden, terrible force in Afghanistan in 2006.

The detailed reports indicate that American officials had a relatively clear understanding of how the suicide networks presumably functioned, even if some of the threats did not materialize. It is impossible to know why the attacks never came off — either they were thwarted, the attackers shifted targets, or the reports were deliberately planted as Taliban disinformation.

One report, from Dec 18, 2006, describes a cyclical process to develop the suicide bombers. First, the suicide attacker is recruited and trained in Pakistan. Then, reconnaissance and operational planning gets underway, including scouting to find a place for "hosting" the suicide bomber near the target before carrying out the attack. The network, it says, receives help from the Afghan police and the Ministry of Interior.

In many cases, the reports are complete with names and ages of bombers, as well as license plate numbers, but the Americans gathering the intelligence struggle to accurately portray many other details, introducing sometimes comical renderings of places and Taliban commanders.

In one case, a report rated by the American military as credible states that a gray Toyota Corolla had been loaded with explosives between the Afghan border and Landik Hotel, in Pakistan, apparently a mangled reference to Landi Kotal, in Pakistan’s tribal areas. The target of the plot, however, is a real hotel in downtown Kabul, the Ariana.

"It is likely that ISI may be involved as supporter of this attack," reads a comment in the report.

Several of the reports describe current and former ISI operatives, including General Gul, visiting madrasas near the city of Peshawar, a gateway to the tribal areas, to recruit new fodder for suicide bombings.

One report, labeled a "real threat warning" because of its detail and the reliability of its source, described how commanders of Mr Hekmatyar’s insurgent group, Hezb-i-Islami, ordered the delivery of a suicide bomber from the Hashimiye madrasa, run by Afghans.

The boy was to be used in an attack on American or NATO vehicles in Kabul during the Muslim Festival of Sacrifices that opened Dec. 31, 2006. According to the report, the boy was taken to the Afghan city of Jalalabad to buy a car for the bombing, and was later brought to Kabul. It was unclear whether the attack took place.

The documents indicate that these types of activities continued throughout last year. From July to October 2009, nine threat reports detailed movements by suicide bombers from Pakistan into populated areas of Afghanistan, including Kandahar, Kunduz and Kabul.

Some of the bombers were sent to disrupt Afghanistan’s presidential elections, held last August. In other instances, American intelligence learned that the Haqqani network sent bombers at the ISI’s behest to strike Indian officials, development workers and engineers in Afghanistan. Other plots were aimed at the Afghan government.

Sometimes the intelligence documents twin seemingly credible detail with plots that seem fantastical or utterly implausible assertions. For instance, one report describes an ISI plan to use a remote-controlled bomb disguised as a golden Koran to assassinate Afghan government officials. Another report documents an alleged plot by the ISI and Taliban to ship poisoned alcoholic beverages to Afghanistan to kill American troops.

But the reports also charge that the ISI directly helped organize Taliban offensives at key junctures of the war. On June 19, 2006, ISI operatives allegedly met with the Taliban leaders in Quetta, the city in southern Pakistan where American and other Western officials have long believed top Taliban leaders have been given refuge by the Pakistani authorities. At the meeting, according to the report, they pressed the Taliban to mount attacks on Maruf, a district of Kandahar that lies along the Pakistani border.

The planned offensive would be carried out primarily by Arabs and Pakistanis, the report said, and a Taliban commander, "Akhtar Mansoor," warned that the men should be prepared for heavy losses. "The foreigners agreed to this operation and have assembled 20 4x4 trucks to carry the fighters into areas in question," it said.

While the specifics about the foreign fighters and the ISI are difficult to verify, the Taliban did indeed mount an offensive to seize control in Maruf in 2006.

Afghan government officials and Taliban fighters have widely acknowledged that the offensive was led by the Taliban commander Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, who was then the Taliban shadow governor of Kandahar.

Mullah Mansour tried to claw out a base for himself inside Afghanistan, but just as the report quotes him predicting, the Taliban suffered heavy losses and eventually pulled back.

Another report goes on to describe detailed plans for a large-scale assault, timed for September 2007, aimed at the American forward operating base in Managi, in Kunar Province.

"It will be a five-pronged attack consisting of 83-millimeter artillery, rockets, foot soldiers, and multiple suicide bombers," it says.

It is not clear that the attack ever came off, but its planning foreshadowed another, seminal attack that came months later, in July 2008. At that time, about 200 Taliban insurgents nearly overran an American base in Wanat, in Nuristan, killing nine American soldiers. For the Americans, it was one of the highest single-day tolls of the war.

Tensions with Pakistan

The flood of reports of Pakistani complicity in the insurgency has at times led to barely disguised tensions between American and Pakistani officers on the ground.

Meetings at border outposts set up to develop common strategies to seal the frontier and disrupt Taliban movements reveal deep distrust among the Americans of their Pakistani counterparts.

On Feb. 7, 2007, American officers met with Pakistani troops on a dry riverbed to discuss the borderlands surrounding Afghanistan’s Khost Province.

According to notes from the meeting, the Pakistanis portrayed their soldiers as conducting around-the-clock patrols. Asked if he expected a violent spring, a man identified in the report as Lt. Col. Bilal, the Pakistani officer in charge, said no. His troops were in firm control.

The Americans were incredulous. Their record noted that there had been a 300 percent increase in militant activity in Khost before the meeting.

"This comment alone shows how disconnected this particular group of leadership is from what is going on in reality," the notes said.

The Pakistanis told the Americans to contact them if they spotted insurgent activity along the border. "I doubt this would do any good," the American author of the report wrote, "because PAKMIL/ISI is likely involved with the border crossings." "PAKMIL" refers to the Pakistani military.

A year earlier, the Americans became so frustrated at the increase in roadside bombs in Afghanistan that they hand-delivered folders with names, locations, aerial photographs and map coordinates to help the Pakistani military hunt down the militants the Americans believed were responsible.

Nothing happened, wrote Col Barry Shapiro, an American military liaison officer with experience in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, after an Oct. 13, 2006, meeting. "Despite the number of reports and information detailing the concerns," Colonel Shapiro wrote, "we continue to see no change in the cross-border activity and continue to see little to no initiative along the PAK border" by Pakistan troops. The Pakistani Army "will only react when asked to do so by US forces," he concluded.

Behind the Lines: southern Afghanistan

. Ahmed Wali Karzai, Afghan president Hamid Karzai's half-brother, is a well-known and controversial power broker in southern Afghanistan. Aside from him, who are the other major players in the area? What are their relationships with the Afghan central government and the coalition, the insurgency, and each other?

Ahmed Wali gets most of the attention, and rightfully so, but there are in fact a host of other important figures in the southern Afghanistan scene. In the early years after 2001, the south was dominated by three formidable governors: Sher Ahmed Akhundzada of Helmand, Jan Muhammad Khan of Uruzgan and Gul Agha Sherzai of Kandahar. They were former mujahedeen commanders who were ousted when the Taliban came to power in the mid-nineties and subsequently reinstated following the U.S. invasion. All three had poor governance records and were repeatedly accused of human rights violations, exploiting tribal tensions, drug trafficking, running private militias, and more. In fact, many Afghans maintain that these men, and their associates, were partly responsible for fueling popular resentment towards the government and creating space for the Taliban's resurgence.

While the three were eventually removed from their positions by 2007, they continue to attempt to project their influence in southern affairs today. A number of Jan Muhammad Khan loyalists staff government positions in Uruzgan, and his relative Matiullah Khan runs a powerful militia that commands the highway between Kandahar city and Uruzgan's capital Tirin Kot, a key supply route for foreign forces in the area. Ahmed Wali Karzai has long eclipsed Gul Agha Sherzai as the most important power broker in Kandahar, but Sherzai still maintains an influential network in the province through his brothers, who have been heavily involved in securing U.S. and NATO logistics and security contracts. He also wields influence through loyal commanders, who maintain militias in areas such as Dand district near Kandahar city. Some of these militias are nominally part of the Afghan National Police, although their true loyalty lies with Sherzai. Only Sher Ahmed Akhundzada, the former Helmand governor, seems to have had his influence nearly eliminated in recent years, although his loyalists have been trying (thus far without success) to win leverage in the new government in Marjah.

In addition to these there are a number of smaller players who are important on a sub-provincial level. One example is Abdul Razzik, the commander of the border police in Spin Boldak, Kandahar, who exerts considerable authority in the area and is believed to profit significantly from cross-border trade and smuggling. Another is a commander named Rohullah, whose militia protects military convoys in the eastern part of Kandahar.

All of these warlords and commanders enjoy a close relationship with the international troops -- in fact, it is largely through contracts and political support from the coalition forces that they became who they are today. Yet they have also been responsible for alienating many Afghans from the government, quite the opposite of the internationals' stated goals. Their relationship with the central Afghan government tends to be more fraught, on the other hand. For instance, Kabul has repeatedly tried to bring Matiullah Khan and his highway militia fully under the control of the Ministry of Interior, but to no avail.

2. Kandahar shares a long border with Pakistan's Baluchistan province. What is the relationship between Pakistani and Afghan militants in southern Afghanistan, and how does the Chaman border checkpoint function on daily basis?

The majority of the Taliban-affiliated militants in Baluchistan are Afghan, along with some locals from tribes that straddle the border. While the area may be used by the Pakistani Taliban and other Pakistani Islamist groups as a transit corridor into southern Afghanistan, the province's role is primarily as a rear staging ground and safe haven for the Afghan Taliban. Although the Afghan Taliban's leadership rarely meets in one place and is scattered throughout Pakistan, a number of important figures from the group live in Quetta or in the refugee camps and small towns around it. Moreover, many field commanders from southern Afghanistan and other Taliban "bureaucrats" -- functionaries and mid-level figures who are involved in finances and other organizational work --maintain homes and offices in the area.

The Afghan Taliban have received assistance from Islamist Pakistani political parties, such as Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (Fazal-ur-Rahman) and similar groups, which have provided shelter, logistics and even recruits at times. But beyond this there appear to be few connections between Pakistani insurgent groups and the Afghans in Baluchistan. In fact, neither the Pakistani Taliban nor any major Punjabi militant group appears to have a major presence in the province. Occasionally the Pakistani Taliban will distribute night letters or propaganda in Quetta, but for the most part they are confined to other parts of Pakistan. As the Pakistani militants come under military pressure in the tribal areas, however, it is possible that more of them could look to take refuge in Baluchistan.

Large numbers of people and goods cross Chaman on a daily basis, much of it unregulated. The Afghan Taliban are active on both sides of the main border crossing there. They, like everyone else in the area, are involved in cross-border smuggling and drug trafficking. Moreover, there are some important Taliban commanders based in Chaman, who are there probably both for military and business purposes.

3. Special Operations forces carry out an average of five raids per day, mostly in southern Afghanistan, one result of which is that the average age of Taliban fighters has dropped from mid-40s to mid-20s, according to the New York Times. What impact does this demographic change have on the insurgency, and what other effects does the increase in operations have?

This is quite a significant development for a number of reasons. First, the Taliban have taken a major hit from these raids and in some villages it has even thrown the group into temporary disarray. Local groups in some areas have been forced to completely alter their daily rhythms and in these places some locals say that the commanders no longer even sleep in the villages. Second, in some cases they have recently lost some able and experienced field commanders, fighters who have been with the movement since the nineties or earlier. The replacements are much younger than their predecessors and often from an entirely different generation. They tend to be more radical and less connected to or affected by the traditional levers of control in Afghan society, such authority of elders or kinship ties. This means that they are often more heavy-handed with the population than their predecessors. Third, the new generation is much harder for the Taliban's leadership to control. The older generation had more direct experience with the leadership, especially if they were active during the nineties' Taliban government. Some of the older members in Kandahar have even fought alongside some figures in the Quetta leadership, but the new generation has no such experience and often no interest in following orders that they don't agree with.

The overall effect could be that it becomes harder to negotiate with the Taliban or convince insurgents in the field to join the government's side. As time goes on and the demographic of the local-level leadership continues to change in this direction, we could be in a situation some years from now where the Taliban leadership's ability to enforce any agreement on its members is greatly diminished. On the flip side, if this trend continues it also likely means that the insurgency will grow less popular and legitimate in the population's eyes, creating much-needed space for the internationals and the Afghan government to try and win them over. In such a scenario the key will be whether the foreigners and the Kabul can provide security and governance, which as we've seen over the last eight years is easier said than done.

Chinese Takeout

Cold economic realities dictate that China is going to be the big player in the new Afghan gold rush -- and Washington had better wake up to that fact, soon.

-BY AZIZ HUQ

The prospect of cobalt in Kandahar has sparked lively debate about whether new mineral wealth -- if it pans out -- will aid or hinder U.S. policies in Afghanistan, as well as whether the country will fall prey to the so-called resource curse, as political scientist Michael Ross and others fear. But a short-term focus on Afghan-U.S. relations might be a mistake: The real winner from new natural-resource wealth beyond the Khyber Pass will be China. If the United States really cares about stabilizing Afghanistan's central government and eliminating terrorist havens, it needs to start working now to persuade Beijing that these are shared goals.

First, some background: Chinese foreign investment and aid has accelerated dramatically over the past decade, especially in Africa. In November 2009 alone, for example, China's largesse amounted to $10 billion in low-interest loans and $1 billion in commercial loans to the continent. With Beijing as cheerleader, trade has soared from $1 billion in 1992 to $106.8 billion in 2008.

In part this is due to China's willingness to do business with undemocratic, corrupt, and brutal regimes -- for example, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Sudan, and Zimbabwe. The DRC provides the best cautionary parallel to Afghanistan: The discovery in the late 1990s of copper, coltan, and other minerals in eastern Congo gave new life to a civil war that has now claimed upwards of 4 million lives. Flagging combatants were funded by mineral extraction, and much of those resources eventually flowed to China. The fact that violence is still simmering in eastern Congo -- and despite the costs that extraction imposes on the Congolese people -- has not been enough to deter Beijing from wooing Congo's government for access to the country's abundant resources.

So, if there's any thought that war in Afghanistan might dissuade Chinese investment there, it's best to dispense with that notion immediately.

China, which has a narrow land border with Afghanistan, already invests heavily in the war-torn Central Asian state. The state-owned China Metallurgical Group has a $3.5 billion copper mining venture in Logar province. Chinese companies ZTE and Huawei are building digital telephone switches, providing roughly 200,000 subscriber lines in Afghanistan. Even back in the war's early days in 2002 and 2003, when I worked in Afghanistan, the Chinese presence was acutely visible in Kabul, with Chinese laborers on many building sites and Chinese-run restaurants and guesthouses popping up all over the city. As Robert Kaplan has pointed out, these investments come with a gratuitous hidden subsidy from the United States -- which has defrayed the enormous costs of providing security amid war and looting.

With its massive wealth, appetite for risk, and willingness to underbid others on labor costs and human rights conditionality, China is the odds-on favorite for development of any new Afghan mineral resources. Chinese firms will control the flow of new funds, and the way those funds are distributed between the central and local governments. It's all well and good that Barack Obama's administration has recommitted to building civil projects in rural Afghanistan, but consider the relative scale of building a school to establishing a multimillion-dollar mine (not to mention the transport networks and infrastructure required to get the extracted minerals out) and it's easy to see what kind of influence the Chinese will bring to the table.

It is critical for Washington to start making the case to Chinese leaders that pure self-interest mandates they leverage this power wisely -- to promote stability, not catalyze new conflict, in Afghanistan. So far, China's investment in Logar has been in keeping with its "noninterventionist" foreign policy and was accompanied by development aid, but no overt political strings. Washington must require more from Beijing, however, to avoid upending all its hard-won gains.

The Obama administration has already asked China to contribute troops to the Afghan effort. This is a good first step, but a few hundred token soldiers will not make China a strategic partner in its Afghan campaign. It needs to persuade Beijing that the campaign is indeed China's campaign, too -- if not by touting democracy promotion and human rights, then surely economic benefit -- and that U.S. and Chinese strategies on Afghanistan converge.

This is not as hard as it sounds: As China-Africa expert Deborah Brautigam's careful work shows, China has on some occasions acted as a surprisingly responsible lender, for example using resource-backed infrastructure loans that force some gains to be reinvested in development. Although many have warned of a new Sino-colonialism, Brautigam's work suggests that perhaps China's awareness of its gargantuan and growing need for foreign export markets will make it a better "colonial" power than any European country ever was.

For China as much as the United States, the goal of a stable, central Afghan government that provides no haven for terrorists is a desirable goal. China has worried in the past about whether Afghanistan might provide a refuge for Uighur separatists. Leaving aside the ethics and wisdom of Chinese policies in the Uighur community's home region of Xinjiang, it's safe to say that Washington and Beijing share a common goal in preventing terrorism. Both countries would benefit from a stabilized government in Kabul that is able to command the loyalty and respect of provincial governments and populations. That, however, requires that Hamid Karzai's government deal with its endemic corruption problem. And though no one expects Afghanistan to turn into Norway, perhaps it can be nudged away from the DRC path and toward the model of a Saudi Arabia or a Kazakhstan.

When it comes to corruption, however, state-run Chinese firms have not seemed troubled by greasing the wheels of power brokers in Sudan, Zimbabwe, or elsewhere. Getting Beijing to understand the rot this breeds seems a hard sell for the Obama administration. If that fails, however, Chinese ears might perk up somewhat at the mention of how integral a stable central government in Kabul is to the security of Pakistan, a close ally of Beijing.

Stability in Pakistan should be an important goal for China. It is by now clear that the Taliban's campaign west of the Durand Line is inextricable from the destabilizing efforts of Islamist militants in Pakistan. If China does not want another nuclear basket case on its border, then it should care deeply about instability in Afghanistan. Currently, however, Beijing is still freeloading, relying on Washington to provide security for its limited interests. Perhaps the tantalizing prospect of $1 trillion in minerals might be enough to change the strategic equation.

Working together, China and the United States have a better chance of guiding Afghanistan to a happy outcome for all than will Washington on its own. To be sure, this is no easy task: There's plenty of evidence that aid conditionality by Western governments has not done as much good as hoped. But cold economic realities dictate that Chinese firms are likely going to be the big players in this new gold rush, and Washington had better wake up to the fact that it has a short window in which to convince Beijing to collaborate in making Kabul a better place.

--- Aziz Huq is an assistant professor of law at the University of Chicago. In 2002 and 2003, he worked in Afghanistan as an analyst for the International Crisis Group (ICG) and has since worked in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Nepal for ICG.

India-China Relations and the Future of Af-Pak

As instability from Afghanistan increasingly escalates into Pakistan, can improved India-China relations be a primer for security in the region? Acts of terrorism and destabilisation are now daily occurrences in Pakistan, against the country‟s population, army, police and intelligence services. Given Pakistan‟s political-military basis this appears to be a growing existential threat not only to the Pakistani state but also to the surrounding region - notably India and China. As the situation in Pakistan escalates, and combines with Afghanistan into an Af-Pak conflagration, this threat then becomes a point of shared concern for India and China. In turn, if UK, US and NATO missions in Afghanistan are unsuccessful and ultimately result in withdrawal (and a cursory reading of their historical behaviour in the region suggests as much), then a regionally-led solution may be most apt. Critically, the proximity of Pakistan and Afghanistan make them permanent features on India‟s and China‟s strategic horizons, underscoring the need for a long term solution. Orchestrating a joint India-China approach to what is shared problem could stabilise their regional security and economic ties, garner international respect and facilitate their mutual rise in the international system.

India-China Relations: From Good to Bad to Better

India-China relations were warm in the late 1940s and early 1950s as both countries emerged as modern states. Keen to dissuade the influence of external powers in the region and to assert Asia‟s independence and resurgence in world affairs, the two countries became increasingly close in their relations. Such sentiments were apparent with the signing of the 1954 Panchsheel Agreement that embodied five core principles - respect for each other‟s territorial integrity and sovereignty; non-aggression; non-interference in each other‟s internal affairs; equality and mutual benefit; and peaceful co-existence. Accompanying Panchsheel, India conceded suzerainty over Tibet, and recognised it as an autonomous region of China (China had annexed Tibet in 1950). This concession, along with some fruitful 1950s border negotiation, marked the high point of India-China relations, celebrated by the slogan Hindi-Chini-bhai-bhai (“India and China are brothers”).
However as the Cold War developed, China began to see India as threatening its perceived leadership of the Third World. Relations between the two countries became more fraught, especially given Chinese aid to the Mizo and Naga insurrections in India‟s northeast and the flight of the Dalai Lama to India in 1959. This became personified by ongoing border disputes between the two sides, beginning in 1959 with Chinese incursions into Ladakh and the North East Frontier Agency (NEFA). Eventually, these tensions led to war in October 1962, resulting in a heavy Indian defeat as she lost thousands of troops and large stretches of territory. Overall, Chinese incursions into India amounted to 90,000 square kilometres (primarily in Arunachal Pradesh in India‟s northeast) - claims which are still unresolved between the two sides. Soon after the 1962 conflict, Pakistan and China also exchanged land to bolster their positions in the region, much of which resulted in China gaining land from Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.

Apart from general suspicion concerning Chinese (and Pakistani-Chinese) intentions towards India‟s physical existence, India-China relations continued to be marked by border disputes, and led to several skirmishes - such as at Nathula on the Sikkim-Tibet border in September 1967 and at Somdurong Chu in 1987. Despite these events, a succession of Indian politicians endeavoured for better relations with China over the next decades. These included initial statements of friendship in May 1970, the resumption of diplomatic relations in July 1976, and Rajiv Gandhi‟s state visit in 1988 that helped to end the stasis between the two sides. As a sign of improving relations, India did not condemn China‟s actions at Tiananmen Square in 1989. During a September 1993 visit by Indian Prime Minister Narasimha Rao, a landmark agreement was signed on maintaining Peace and Tranquillity on the Line of Actual Control (LoAC). This agreement significantly improved relations and included force reductions. After high-ranking Politburo members visited India in the early 1990s, in 1996 Jiang Zemin became the first Chinese head of state to visit India since the 1962 war.
Despite a brief downswing in relations due to India‟s 1998 nuclear tests (the rationale for which initially centred on China), the two sides continued to experience warmer relations, especially concerning growing economic links as well as increasingly cooperation in international affairs. Thus, June 2003 saw the Declaration on Principles for Relations and Comprehensive Cooperation which forged a consensus on a wide range of bilateral, regional, and global issues. This consensus included shared visions of a multi-polar non-US dominated world, and was bolstered by rapidly expanding trade (from $1 billion in 1995 to $13.6 billion in 2004 and $51.8 billion by 2008)i and even military exercises. Part of these exchanges involved India giving China its counter-terrorism experience (gained from combating various insurgencies from the 1950s onwards), which the latter applied to its own problems in Xinjiang. In the Indian Ocean, both sides also began to cooperate to protect their mutual trade and energy routes.
With an India-China emergent “rapprochement” that focused upon economics, maintaining parity in South Asia and de-emphasising their border issues, Indian officials noted „the consensus that bilateral relations transcend bilateral issues and have acquired a global and strategic perspective‟ii. Against this background, analysts have begun to talk of “Chindia”. These discourses are bolstered by joint India-China cooperation in multinational fora, and collaboration on energy security and climate change. With this growing inter-dependence, India‟s leaders have declared there to be a „harmony of civilisations‟iii between India and China. In turn, China‟s Hu Jintao recently noted how „”China-India bilateral ties are now on a fast track”‟iv. By the first decade of the 21st century China had become much more neutral concerning India-Pakistan affairs (especially concerning the status of Kashmir), as suspicion appeared to give way to greater co-dependencies. While some issues remained between India and China (most notably concerning their shared border) we are now witnessing an unparalleled compatibility of interests.
Af-Pak: Shared Interests and Common Problems
It is in consideration of these shared interests that the increased regional instability from Af-Pak becomes pertinent for both India and China. This instability threatens the two countries not only directly through exported insurgency and terrorism but also via increased regional volatility that threatens their continued economic growth.

With both India and China focused upon fiscal development as a pathway to a greater global role and heightened future international influence, such threats become more important. Both countries also have direct interests in Afghanistan, in particular concerning investments in energy, raw materials and infrastructure. As they begin to challenge US and western hegemony over the coming decades, the legitimacy of both India and China will be bolstered by showing the world that they can manage and sustain a stable neighbourhood. Solving regional issues would also be a mark of great power status, and given the current challenges of reaching such a goal concerning Afghanistan and Pakistan, may be better achieved collectively than individually.
Trade is a predominant concern for both China and India concerning their current ties with Afghanistan. In particular, Chinese-Afghan links are based upon economic links rather than direct security help or contributions in terms of geographic access or a physical troop presence. These links are personified by China‟s recent $3.5 billion investment in Afghanistan‟s copper mines in Aynak near Kabul. Chinese investment has also been evident concerning access to iron-ore, and the construction of electricity plants, railways and telecommunication systems. Reports of rising and untapped gas and oil reserves in Afghanistan‟s north-east have heightened these ties. China‟s Afghan interests are also linked to its investments in Pakistan, (such as the Gwadar port in Karachi), pipelines from Kazakhstan to Xinjiang (in north-western China) and energy contracts with Iran. Often, Pakistan is the key conduit for these projects, especially energy transportation, and makes achieving stability in both countries more important.
Indian interests in Afghanistan follow much the same pattern. A major donor (over $1.2 billion since 2001), India has helped with scores of infrastructure projects. These have included Afghanistan‟s new $25 million parliament building, the 218 kilometre Zaranj-Delaram highway, power transmission lines and a dam in Herat. As with China, residual Af-Pak problems are also a logistical obstacle for India concerning securing the transit of energy supplies from across Central Asia but also from Iran. Greater regional stability is needed to guarantee these supplies, and is a long-term, high maintenance interest concerning the energy security and economic success needs of both sides. As such, plans for a shared Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline have flagged in recent years due to Pakistan‟s internal instabilities (most notably in Baluchistan bordering Iran), and questions over their ability to prevent a pipeline being attacked, sabotaged or simply switched off.
These trade and energy interests are threatened by insecurity in both Afghanistan and Pakistan in the form of insurgency and nascent civil war, which also serve as direct challenges to both the Indian and Chinese homelands through exported terrorism. For India, the Af-Pak conflagration has been the crux of major threats against India for the last twenty five years. During the Kashmir insurgency that began in the late 1980s, anti-India militants were trained (often by Pakistan‟s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) secret service) in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. Historical Pakistani support of the Taliban underpinned such linkages, and continues to do so - such as alleged ISI complicity in the bomb attacks on India‟s embassy in Kabul in 2008. India‟s long history of insurgency (in Punjab and Kashmir to Assam and beyond) emphasises the demonstration effect of these threats. Additionally facing an ongoing (and often uphill) struggle against the Maoist Naxalites, New Delhi would not want another wave of imported terrorism as it experienced in the 1990s.
China too faces its own internal difficulties - most notably concerning the Uighurs in the province of Xinjiang. China has already suspected Al Qaeda of training separatists in Xinjiang and again fears the export of terrorism (and associated techniques) from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Although, Beijing remains an effective all-weather friend of the Pakistani government, their mutual influence over terrorism in Pakistan (and Afghanistan) is limited as the groups perpetrating it are often by their very nature external to mainstream state influence. With Pakistani policy towards their own separatists (in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Baluchistan) frequently beset by tangled internal political differences, China‟s fear of overspill is effectively as high as in India. An additional threat from Afghanistan (and to a lesser degree from Pakistan) comes from the increased smuggling of drugs into China, which - like the export of militancy - threatens to destabilise Chinese society. As is also the case for India, any internal unrest could threaten current political reforms and (more critically) tarnish China‟s peaceful international rise.
Apart from common trade, energy and anti-terrorism interests, India and China also share similar characteristics within the international system. Although at different rates and stages, the two countries are developing into major poles of influence within the international system. With rapidly expanding economies and vast populations, their influence is also growing (and increasingly being flexed) in international fora concerning trade regulations, energy security and climate change. As they mature into great power roles as part of an emergent multi-polar international system (most probably along with the US, Russia and potentially the EU), they will have to take increasing steps to legitimise and validate their positions. The Af-Pak issue is important not only for securing a peaceful neighbourhood (with commensurate trade and internal stability benefits) but also for taking the lead on important contemporary issues such as international terrorism (and especially when it is within a nuclear capable state such as Pakistan). The shared benefits realisable via taken a shared approach on Afghanistan and Pakistan would thus be mutually profitable for both sides, particularly concerning the long-term strategies of both India and China.

India-China Relations – a Primer for Regional Security?

Entering a phase of renewed, close and mutually beneficial ties, India-China relations are increasingly being driven by the same interests and concerns. A shared drive for continued and stable economic growth to facilitate their international rises is underpinned by common economic, energy and internal security needs. These interests (and threats to them) are personified by the growing conflagration of instability in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which has serious potential negative consequences for the two large neighbours. While for major external actors, Af-Pak represents a regional issue with possible global consequences, for China and India it is first and foremost a regional issue which threatens their global futures. Furthermore, India and China stand to gain more unwanted and mounting problems if the regional situation deteriorates further. Proactively looking for a regional-engendered solution to a regional problem concerning what is now a worsening situation is therefore in both their short and long term interests.
While the UK, US and NATO are currently looking for viable exit strategies, India and China could do well to look for their won strategy for regional stability. Although issues still remain between the two countries concerning border issues, the Dalai Lama and Tibet, Chinese criticism over the Indo-US nuclear deal and China‟s continued “string of pearls” strategyv, India and China must take control of their own neighbourhood. Despite both sides explicitly refusing to send in troops to Afghanistan (India for fear of escalation with Pakistan, and China for wishing to maintain a non-threatening global stance concerning intervention), increased aid and infrastructure donations could be one step to help instil further stability. More intrinsically, by showing a shared front, both countries can put their resources together to powerfully collaborate with each other (in the same way they have done with joint oil deals in the Middle East, for example). Joint infrastructure and reconstruction projects could be an initial route to achieving, and building, a successful partnership.
Another viable pathway could be for India and China to initiate a wider regional solution. This could consist of multiple participants (such as Turkey, Iran and Russia) constituting a regional council or “Council of Neighbours”. Many of these participants would share India and China‟s common focus on ensuring energy security and avoiding the export of terrorism and insurgency to their territories. Such arrangements would also present India and China as leaders of a collaborative rather than bilateral effort, which would assuage regional fears of their potential dominance and hegemony. Either on their own or with others, by sharing both the burden and the risks as new partners, China and India can facilitate a common image of being responsible powers - an image which would aid global perceptions of both countries as dependable, mature and nascent. More importantly, as two countries with a perpetual interest in lasting regional stability, India and China taking a greater role in regional affairs concerning Af-Pak appears almost as a prima facie case for legitimate intervention.