THE CHINA-PAKISTAN THE CHINA-PAKISTAN AXIS AXIS

A “Huntingtonian” Inter-A “Huntingtonian” Inter-Civilizational Brotherhood ? Civilizational Brotherhood ?

Clingendael

20 October 2008

Willem van Kemenade E-mail: kemenade@xs4all

www.willemvk.org

The US, China and PakistanThe US, China and Pakistan

• The US built a close relationship with Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf on the basis of his hard line against terrorism. Shared recognition of a security threat bound the two states together, much as it did during the early Cold War. But Pakistani voters questioned that priority, and the outcome of February parliamentary elections revealed the fragility of the current US-Pakistan alliance constructed on security interests.

• In contrast, China’s alliance with Pakistan is based on permanent strategic interests and immutable issues of geography, including China’s desire for access to the Indian Ocean. Regardless of a world’s changing security paradigm, the pair’s trade and security interests will continue to coincide. Thus, Pakistan’s alliance with China is more enduring than the one with the US.

Musharraf: Musharraf: Gambling OpportunistGambling Opportunist• Musharraf was swept aside in a landslide

not by the Islamists, but by the modernist secular parties, the late Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party and Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League.

• The winners wanted Musharraf out, and the Bush administration tinkered with the result of this election by pondering ways to keep Musharraf in a modified role.

• Pakistan’s other great power ally, China, has played its cards more prudently. On the basis of its sacrosanct principle of non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs – except when Chinese are killed or kidnapped – Beijing kept an open mind, and its think tanks advocated “no commitment” to Musharraf and pragmatism,

China’s Main Foreign Policy Principle: China’s Main Foreign Policy Principle: Non-Interference, but not this timeNon-Interference, but not this time

• The Chinese became involved in Pakistan’s descent into chaos last year. After the abduction and killing of Chinese technicians and businessmen on several occasions, China demanded, in unusually forceful language, better protection for its citizens against terrorism.

• The most violent event in Pakistan during 2007 was the July storming of the Lal Masjid Mosque in Islamabad, at Musharraf’s orders, to end the occupation by religious militants, most of them seminarians.

• Nine days earlier, in a self-styled anti-vice campaign, these militants had kidnapped the Chinese boss and six Chinese women from a massage parlor.

The Lal Masjid The Lal Masjid MassacreMassacre• As 15,000 army troops were preparing to choke off the

militants’ supply of food, water and electricity, tension further escalated after three Chinese were executed near Peshawar in Pakistan’s Northwest. An enraged Musharraf abandoned his slow strangulation strategy and ordered an all-out assault. The BBC reported 173 deaths, but Pakistani witnesses reported that more than 1.000 people were killed.

• Some Pakistani analysts blamed Musharraf’s excessiveness, at least in part, on Chinese pressure.

• A prominent Chinese academician argued that the “destiny of one person” should not decide the political system in Pakistan, implying that the remedy lies in political institutionalization.

China moved into Pakistan after China moved into Pakistan after American “Betrayal”American “Betrayal”

• The China-Pakistan alliance was conceived in 1962 when Pakistan felt betrayed by the US, after the latter rushed to the aid of India following its defeat in the border war with China. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, foreign minister under President Ayub Khan since 1963, became the architect of the almost exclusive strategic reorientation of Pakistan towards China.

• China became Pakistan’s arms supplier with no strings attached, and Pakistan became China’s backdoor to the Indian Ocean and the Middle East and its comrade-in-arms for the containment of India.

• Pakistan considered American inaction during the 1965 Kashmir War a second betrayal. The US-Pakistan alliance became defunct and was only briefly revived by an American show of naval force to reassure Pakistan during India’s liberation of Bangladesh in 1971.

China helped Pakistan China helped Pakistan to build the “Bomb”to build the “Bomb”• China remained the cornerstone of Pakistan’s foreign

policy because it was the only country that fully identified with its anti-India goals. In 1965 Bhutto requested China for the first time to help Pakistan develop the bomb, but Beijing turned him down. After the amputation of East-Pakistan and India’s nuclear tests in 1974, China changed its position and began assisting Pakistan with the enrichment of weapons-grade uranium and transfer of missile technology, which lasted through the 1990s.

• During the 1980s, training of Uygurs from Xinjiang by the Pakistani military to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan became an irritant in Sino-Pakistani relations. When the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s with the full backing of Pakistan’s military, China became apprehensive about Pakistan turning into a catalyst for an Islamic revival in its troubled Western region.

9/119/11

• After the 9/11 attacks on the US, China became aware that Pakistan was more part of the problem on the two most contentious issues – terrorism and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction – than of the solution. “Strategic partnership” with Pakistan on the old basis – containment of India – had become untenable.

• Pakistan’s I.S.I. had facilitated the “Talibanization” of parts of the country and thus paved the way for Al Qaeda.

• China’s access to the Indian Ocean, alternative energy-supply routes from the China-invested port of Gwadar on the Persian Gulf and economic development of China’s Far West provided a new rationale for a revamped strategic relationship.

Gwadar, PakistanGwadar, Pakistan New focal point for New focal point for strategic rivalry between the US, strategic rivalry between the US, China and IndiaChina and India

• China and the US have gotten into a major contest for the Gwadar port in Pakistan.

• China partly financed Gwadar’s construction in response to the American presence in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and to monitor US activity in the Middle East, Indian naval movements in the Arabian Sea, and future Indo-US maritime cooperation in the Indian Ocean.

• China has so far paid $ 200 m of the $ 1.16 bn cost of Gwadar.

• Gwadar is on Pakistan's Arabian Sea coast, 72 km from Iran. It is near the mouth of the Persian Gulf and 400 km from the Strait of Hormuz, through which 40 % of the world’s oil passes.

• China has put together a “string of pearls” from the Gulf to South-China. Gwadar is the westernmost pearl which should also help transform the economy of its landlocked Xinjiang Region.

Pakistan: China’s Pakistan: China’s Backdoor to the Backdoor to the Indian OceanIndian Ocean• 1969: China started construction

of the Karakoram Highway, the first phase of “The Long March South to the Indian Ocean.”

• During President Musharraf’s visit to China in February 2006, Pakistan requested that China help with its upgrading and Musharraf said, “This road, when upgraded, will provide the shortest route to the sea for products manufactured in China.

• The same road can serve to provide an overland route for trade between China and India, thus linking two of the largest markets in Asia.” In November 2006 the two countries signed a free trade agreement aiming to expand trade to $8 billion in 2008.

China strongly committed to vital China strongly committed to vital longterm Friendship with Pakistanlongterm Friendship with Pakistan

• Despite its disenchantment with the current state of Pakistan and improving relations with India, China is strongly committed to its vital long-term friendship with Pakistan. Apart from economics, the ethnic and religious peace of its far western region depends on close cooperation with its southwestern neighbor. Hu Shisheng, a Chinese specialist in South Asian politics at the China Institute for Contemporary International Relations in Beijing, sums it up: – “We will contribute to its stabilization. A stable Pakistan is essential for

building a stable Xinjiang. A disintegrated or dismantled Pakistan will be a disaster for us. We know that during the American campaigns in Afghanistan and operations in Pakistan, Uygurs were caught. There are huge tribal areas there which have run themselves for centuries. Without close cooperation with Pakistan, how can China ensure stability there?”