Not only this; the world, too, has largely started to look towards China to play ‘central’ role in negotiating a political solution to the Afghan war. Amid the on-going debate on the White House declaring the Taliban “insurgents” instead of “terrorists”, Chinese authorities continue to make further inroads into Afghan politics, working on both sides of political frontier: elected government and the Taliban. Despite China’s well-known policy of “non-interference” in the internal affairs of other states, she is now playing an usual political role in Afghanistan’s matters which are strictly political. As far as Chinese policy of “non-interference” is concerned, Afghanistan appears to be the second example, after South Sudan, where China has decided to insert itself into the otherwise strictly political affairs.
Consider this revelation: two-member Taliban delegation led by Qari Din Muhammad, a member of Taliban political office in Doha, Qatar, visited China in November last year. The delegation discussed issues related to Afghanistan and the current situation in the region, sources close to Taliban told the AIP or Afghan Islamic Press. A Taliban official, who wished not to be named, also confirmed the visit of the Taliban officials to China, saying, “The purpose of the trip was to share the Islamic Emirate’s stance with China.” The visit of the Taliban delegation to China came shortly after the newly-elected Afghan President Ashraf Ghani paid a four-day official trip to China. Even if this was not enough, the Chinese ambassador to Kabul is reported to have offered, during a meeting with Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, to use China’s influence on Pakistan to convince the later to play a more ‘positive’ role along with China herself in the Afghan peace process.
Forced by circumstances, the USA, too, seems to have accepted China’s position in Afghanistan as the chief architect, tacitly supported by Pakistan, of the yet to happen peace deal with the Taliban. In December 2014, representatives of the US, China and Afghanistan met for private talks in London. It was the first time the three countries convened to seek ways to forge peace in Afghanistan. The previously undisclosed meeting, which came within days of a visit by the Afghan Taliban to Beijing, was a step on a (political) path long resisted by China.
However, these steps were taken largely due to the fact that China is quite wary of the US military presence in Afghanistan. China’s move toward the role of mediator signals a foreign policy shift in Beijing—for decades she focused on domestic issues—that could recalibrate the geopolitics of Central Asia and test China’s capacity as a regional leader and global peace maker. China’s foreign ministry said that Beijing wanted to play a “constructive role” supporting an Afghan-led peace process, but didn’t respond to specific questions about the Taliban visits or other diplomatic activities. Afghan officials have said they welcomed a role by China. The initiative in Afghanistan reflects Mr. Xi’s drive to enhance regional diplomacy and China’s international standing as well as to challenge the US as the primary or the sole underwriter of regional peace and prosperity. However, Chinese policy objective at the moment is not to solely dominate Afghanistan in the post-US scenario; rather, it is aiming at regionalizing the Afghan problem by bringing it down from an international problem. And, it is doing so by bringing regional powers, especially Russia and Pakistan, into the dialogue process. This is was hinted at by the Taliban themselves. A former senior Taliban commander recently said that another delegation would visit China soon and Russia would join those talks. Russia’s foreign ministry, however, said only that it supported an Afghan-led peace process.
There is no gainsaying the fact that China is all set to fill the void left by the US in Afghanistan, however, it is also a fact that its own internal security matters too. The reason for why China is so willing to court the Taliban is that China wants to contain and kill militant movements in some of the restive areas of the mainland China. Chinese officials are concerned that instability in Afghanistan could lead to more unrest in China’s western Xinjiang region, where the government says militant separatists influenced by extremists along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border have carried out violent attacks. Winning over the Afghan Taliban to its own side is, therefore, a matter of great political significance for China. And, in this behalf, she needs Pakistan too. Hu Shisheng, an Afghanistan expert at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, a think tank linked to the Ministry of State Security, said recently that China was asking Pakistan to encourage the Taliban to join reconciliation efforts and was offering more aid to Islamabad in return.
Things that are becoming clear today actually had started long ago. During Afghanistan’s tumultuous period of political transition during the last year, Chinese security officials began visiting Kabul regularly, and expressed concerns about militant havens, according to a former senior Afghan security official. Franz-Michael Mellbin, the European Union envoy to Afghanistan, said he first noticed increased Chinese interest in Afghanistan in 2013. “They have been looking for an area to expand their foreign policy toolbox,” he said, “but also doing it in a way that would not be seen strategically threatening to the US.”
Although China stands to gain a lot from politically and economically involving itself in Afghanistan, Afghanistan, too, is seeking certain geo-political leverages out of this relatively new trajectory of bi-lateral relationship. Apart from Afghanistan’s need for having an ally to counter-balance the Western ingress, China can help mitigate and reduce India’s and Pakistan’s influence in Afghanistan respectively. There is no denying the fact that Afghanistan has recently become an avenue—a battle ground— of a crucial geo-political tussle between India and Pakistan in which Afghanistan itself does not have much to gain. It is for this very reason that Afghanistan needs China, notwithstanding that a partnership with China can also be very lucrative in terms of economic development. But this geo-political aspect is, too, not less significant. For China itself, Afghanistan has become a platform on which she herself can better manage its own relations with Pakistan and India—the two arch rivals in the sub-continent. These aspects and the steps China has taken in this direction so far confirm beyond any doubt that China is going to be the biggest and most important actor in Afghanistan in the years to come. Not only would this help restore, to an extent, Afghanistan’s economy, but also help negotiate and re-negotiate the terms of peace process and power sharing arrangement between the Taliban and the Afghan government.
Salman Rafi Sheikh, research-analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”
