The China-Pakistan Axis: Asia's New Geopolitics (27 page)

In the 1990s, when Pakistan featured in US-China exchanges it was largely for one reason—nuclear proliferation. From the M-11 missiles to the 5,000 ring magnets destined for the nuclear weapons facilities at Kahuta, Chinese assistance to Pakistan’s nuclear and missile programmes was a constant source of US criticism and sanction.
²⁵
For a Chinese military that was starting to see the United States taking the place of the Soviet Union as its primary threat, arms sales and security cooperation with Pakistan now required protection from US pressure and scrutiny, rather than being part of the continuum of the three sides’ cooperation.
This was a relationship that was moving even more firmly under the control of the Chinese military, the defence companies linked to it, and China’s security services. Their mentality was highly defensive. The notorious line about Pakistan being “China’s Israel”—part explanation, part sarcastic jibe—was delivered by its military intelligence chief after one too many meetings with US counterparts on the subject.
²⁶
There was also a sense in Washington that Chinese missile sales to Pakistan were carefully timed to take the form of retaliation for moves on the US side, such as the F-16 sales to Taiwan in 1992.
²⁷

For Beijing and Washington, the 1998 nuclear tests and the Kargil crisis of 1999 did bring about a certain shift in South Asia’s status: the threat of war in the region was treated as a joint US-Chinese security concern for the first time since the 1970s, and China’s special relationship with Pakistan was seen to provide a helpful source of leverage rather than just a proliferation problem. But 9/11 had a far more significant impact. While China was uneasy about the scale of the US military and intelligence footprint in Pakistan, it also meant that Washington was resuming the role that Beijing wanted to see it play: providing the arms and aid to Pakistan that would bolster its capabilities against India, and bringing the country out of the near-pariah status that it had flirted with at points in the 1990s. Despite its initial reservations, for much of the George W. Bush administration the arrangement suited China quite well. The United States shifted strategic focus from Afghanistan to Iraq relatively quickly, moderating Chinese fears about its presence in the region, but was still delivering huge packages of military assistance to Pakistan. Despite the United States’ best efforts, China almost certainly got a look at some of the US kit too.
²⁸
And with Pakistan now being granted the status of “major non-NATO ally” by the US government, the China-Pakistan relationship, which had been perceived in a largely nefarious light for the previous decade, was now treated in more neutral terms. Beijing still faced continued US pressure over its dealings with the likes of Iran—but no longer with Pakistan, whose rogue state days were over, at least for a while.

Sino-American consultations did take place during times of crisis. Beijing was asked by Washington to play a role in reducing tensions during the so-called “Twin Peaks” crisis of 2001/2, when India and Pakistan were on the verge of war, and in the aftermath of the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
²⁹
When Pakistan faced a financial crisis that same year,
the United States also encouraged China to steer Pakistan towards an IMF programme rather than bailing it out, and Beijing was more than happy to oblige.
³⁰
A regular South Asia dialogue was established at assistant secretary level as part of the array of US-China bilateral talks that were put in place covering different regions of the world under the auspices of the “strategic dialogue”.
³¹
For most of the officials who had been involved in the exchanges with the Chinese, though, the view was pretty uniform: outside the context of acute peril for Pakistan, China wouldn’t talk about the country and its problems seriously, particularly when it came to the question of its support to militant groups. At best it was willing to play a “water carrier” role, passing on messages about US concern but not reinforcing them with matching expressions of its own.
³²

Until the very final period of Musharraf ’s tenure, this didn’t seem to matter much: South and South-West Asia were a long way down the list of issues featuring on the US-China bilateral agenda, and Beijing’s unwillingness to be helpful was a matter of at most, minor regret. But by the time the Obama administration came to office, Pakistan and Afghanistan were gripped by a near-constant sense of crisis. The insurgency in Afghanistan was drawing the United States back into full war-fighting mode. The insurgency in Pakistan itself was spreading from the tribal areas, and convulsing its major cities with terrorist violence.
³³
And the political and economic situation was unravelling. Musharraf ’s last, chaotic year in office saw popular mass protest movements, the imposition of martial law, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, and the beginnings of a full-blown financial meltdown.
³⁴
By 2009, any pretence that the US problem in the region was just a few foreign fighters hiding out in the tribal areas had also evaporated. Instead, it was now the entire ecosystem of militancy, from the Southern Punjab to the ISI’s extremist-sponsoring S Wing, and the political environment that sustained them that were in the US crosshairs.
³⁵
The very nature of Pakistani society, education, politics, and the military seemed to be treated as a legitimate matter of concern by US policymakers as they contemplated the world’s only fragile nuclear-armed state. And however quiet they were about it, Pakistan’s stability was becoming a subject of anxiety for policymakers in China too.

At the start of 2009, Chinese officials were preparing for Afghanistan and Pakistan to take a serious place in the US-China conversation again.
The 2008 presidential election, with its talk of the “right war”
³⁶
and the “war of necessity”, seemed to have staked Afghanistan out as a subject of heightened focus for the incoming president.
³⁷
Chinese officials knew that they had assets in both countries, not least their position of special influence in Pakistan, and were anticipating—and somewhat fearing—that they would be asked to deploy them.
³⁸
Officials from the new Obama administration were not expecting a dramatic change in China’s approach, but it was hoped that the scale of the crisis in Pakistan, the reframing of US Afghanistan policy to place it in a more regional context,
³⁹
and the simple fact that “Af-Pak” was being accorded an elevated status in US foreign policy might make Beijing more willing to be cooperative.
⁴⁰
Chinese officials were somewhat surprised by the first request they received, to open up Chinese territory for non-lethal supplies to support the coalition effort in Afghanistan.
⁴¹
For some US officials, this would be a symbolic measure—to demonstrate the fact that the two sides could now be military partners, and overcome the deep, residual Chinese suspicion that the American presence in the region had some ulterior, China-directed motive in mind.
⁴²
But many on the Chinese side remained suspicious.
⁴³
It didn’t seem that China could be particularly useful, given the absence of a direct transport route to Afghanistan—supplies would still have to make their way through Central Asia—and the risks of being visibly associated with the NATO war effort were substantial. Yet for logisticians on the US side, the China route had practical advantages, and for the strategists it reduced the risk of relying on Russia for the Northern Distribution Network. Discussions went all the way down to the question of whether Ford Ranger pickup trucks, made in Thailand and destined for the Afghan police, were a “non-lethal” supply
⁴⁴
but eventually petered out, especially after the July 2009 riots in Xinjiang elevated Chinese fears about the reaction across the Muslim world, and even from its own population.
⁴⁵
The US arms sales package to Taiwan in January 2010 definitively ended the discussion.

But the more pressing matter during the first year of the new administration was Pakistan. By April 2009, the Pakistani Taliban had taken control of Swat Valley, and moved within 100km of Islamabad.
⁴⁶
The new US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, stated that the Taliban advance posed “an existential threat”, and urged Pakistanis to “speak out forcefully against a policy that is ceding more and more territory to the insurgents”.
⁴⁷
It was hoped that China, if it truly appreciated the scale
of the crisis, could lean on its old friends and make them see sense: that it was high time the Pakistani military struck back, diverting the necessary troops from its eastern frontier. Chinese officials listened—but were dismissive. They were happy to talk about Pakistan but suggested that the threat was hyped.
⁴⁸
What the Chinese heard from the Pakistani military was more reassuring, and while they were happy to provide any additional equipment or supplies if the Pakistanis asked for them, and continue their bilateral assistance, they saw no reason to interfere. When the State Department gave a proposal to its counterparts in the Chinese foreign ministry for cooperation on stabilizing Afghanistan and Pakistan, US officials were told that the Pakistan part of it would not even be considered.
⁴⁹
If anything, Washington’s worries were themselves a source of Chinese concern. While the Taliban advance might be a problem, the possibility of the United States deciding that Pakistan could no longer be trusted with its nuclear weapons was in some ways a greater one. Every statement coming out of Washington fretting about the security of Pakistani nuclear facilities or a “failing” Pakistani state rang alarm bells in Beijing, in a way that even the possible diversion of nuclear materials did not.
⁵⁰
As one Chinese official put it: “If terrorists did get hold of nuclear weapons, we’re certainly not going to be their first target.”
⁵¹
Nonetheless, despite their outwardly sanguine stance in bilateral meetings with the Americans, the Chinese had been thinking about the subject ever more seriously.

The Chinese military’s planning for major crises in neighbouring states is a subject as sensitive as it is secretive.
⁵²
North Korean and Pakistani generals have operated for years under the supposition that US defence planners are poised to seize the right opportunity to swoop in and grab their nuclear assets. American officials make little attempt to conceal their concerns about the implications of state fragility or failure in either country. But China is a great deal less comfortable spooking its friends and allies with that kind of speculation, and Washington’s efforts to draw Beijing into discreet discussions about contingency planning have been routinely rebuffed.
⁵³
However, for crisis planners in the Chinese military, their friends are one of the main sources of concern.

The risks in China’s north-east and south-west are longstanding, whether it be large flows of North Korean refugees
⁵⁴
or the spillover from the Burmese government’s conflicts with the ethnic groups that
straddle the Chinese border.
⁵⁵
In recent years, though, concerns about the state that lies across the mountain passes to China’s north-west have assumed growing importance. Official Chinese expressions of anxiety have appeared in coded form, studiously avoiding the name of the country in question. In 2009, a set of instructions was issued by the Chinese government for methods to deal with nuclear emergencies, allusively mentioning the “rising numbers of nuclear facilities in neighbouring countries and threats of attacks” and the fact that “the threat of global terrorism is a reality”.
⁵⁶
In private exchanges, representatives of Chinese military intelligence were less veiled. Pakistan had started to appear high on a list of countries of concern in its neighbourhood, perhaps second only to North Korea, and China was preparing for a number of scenarios, from the familiar—war with India—to the novel—the further weakening of the Pakistani state and the diversion of nuclear materials into the hands of terrorists.
⁵⁷
The events that had prompted the scenario-planning just kept accumulating. The Mumbai attacks in December 2008 saw the sub-continent again pushed to the brink of war, this time by Lashkar-e-Taiba, an ISI-backed militant group which China’s own diplomats had protected from sanctions at the UN Security Council on Pakistan’s behalf.
⁵⁸
There was speculation that terrorists might be seeking to get the Pakistanis to deploy their nuclear weapons—by putting the country on a war-footing with India—precisely so that they could seize them.
⁵⁹
The aftermath of the Mumbai attack saw less military brinkmanship than during the last crisis on the subcontinent in 2001, but Chinese officials wondered whether India would show the same restraint if Mumbai were to happen again.
⁶⁰
The nature of the attacks in Pakistan itself was also becoming more worrisome. In 2009, uniformed militants infiltrated the army’s General Headquarters in Rawalpindi,
⁶¹
and in 2011 militants managed to stage a major attack at the Mehran naval base in Karachi, the assailants clearly benefiting from insider assistance both times.
⁶²
On the latter occasion Beijing had a close view: China’s own engineers and technicians were nearly killed in Karachi, the vehicle in which they escaped being fired at by militants from point blank range.
⁶³
Pakistani security forces took fifteen hours to regain full control of the base. In August 2012, Chinese engineers again needed to be shifted to a “high profile secure location” as Kamra air force base, where China and Pakistan were jointly assembling the JF-17 fighter jet, came under attack in a five-hour gun battle.
⁶⁴
Although
Pakistani officials denied it, there were rumours that nuclear weapons were stored at or very close to the base.
⁶⁵