From China to Afghanistan: the Wakhan corridor

Last year, I posted on this blog an article  about Afghanistan and China.
It was about a French General Vincent Desportes who was to retire a few days later (he was then serving as Director of the Interservice Defence College in France). He had dared to speak out what many civilians and defence officials believe in France. 
The General gave an interview to the daily newspaper Le Monde in which he stated that the conflict in Afghanistan was ‘an American War’. He also said that the sacking of General McChrystal, the Commandant of the NATO forces in Afghanistan should “open a debate on the tactic decided [by President Obama and the NATO]”. 
Now, it is the just-retired Indian Chief of Army Staff, General VK Singh who is warning us of the increasing presence of the Chinese in Afghanistan and the opening of a new gate to China through the Wakhan corridor.
For Desportes, the situation on the battle field was extremely bad (already last year). For him, President Obama had chosen “a Middle Path which does not work” and said that it was time to review the NATO strategy.
The Chief of Defence Staff and his Minister, Hervé Morin were not amused. Though General Desportes was due to retire a few months later, he was punished for telling the truth.
Since then, President Francois Hollande has decided to recall the bulk of the French troops by December 2012. It was his electoral promise and last week, he travelled to Afghanistan to announce it personally to the officers and troops.
The question is why is it 'retiring' generals who inform us about the real situation in Afghanistan?
Last year, I had mentioned the Chinese angle:

But there is now a new angle to the Afghan imbroglio.
Washington disclosed that its surveyors have discovered more than one $1 trillion worth of in mineral deposits in Afghanistan. The New York Times noted: “it is far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself.”
Gen. David H. Petraeus, commanding the United States Forces declared: “There is stunning potential here …There are a lot of ifs, of course, but I think potentially it is hugely significant.”
Not surprisingly, one of the first countries to react was China. Xinhua commented on the Pentagon announcement: “it may function as a double-edged sword for the Central Asian country, and it will likely justify continuous US engagement in Afghanistan's rebuilding process.”
The Chinese themselves are interested to get a share of the cake. In April, Christian Le Mière, the Editor of Jane's Intelligence Review  put it thus in Foreign Affairs: “The possibility of cheap resources on its border is of significant interest to Beijing. China has already made the largest single foreign direct investment in Afghanistan: $3.5 billion in the Aynak copper field in Logar province.”
In January 2010, Russell Hsiao and Glen E. Howard in The China Brief of the Jamestown Institute mentioned some Chinese moves in the strategic Wakan Corridor: “A recent Chinese report has shed light on three major Chinese developments along the Wakhan Corridor that reportedly began in 2009, which highlight preparations in regional infrastructure along that border.”
The report speaks of a 75 kilometers-long road, extending up to 10 kilometers from the China-Afghanistan border. The road, built by the Chinese Ministry of Defense is badly needed for the transportation of military supplies to Chinese frontier guards. Further, the Chinese have constructed a supply depot to improve the “food quality standard for the police forces”.
The third development is a mobile communications center which would permit the operation of mobile devices along the border. Earlier border troops had to depend on satellite communications. Russell Hsiao agrees that China is not ready to play a ‘strategic’ or military role in Afghanistan.
With the ‘discovery’ that Afghanistan is a rich country (not only for its poppies), cynicism is bound to increase. Many believe that we are witnessing the beginning of a new Great Game, as during the 19th century.

Let us hope that General VK Singh will quickly bring new evidences about the 'outflanking move' of the Chinese, though the question remains, what will India do about it.
Probably, nothing!

VK scents a Chinese tunnel
‘Outflanking move’ near Afghan border with interests for India: Ex-chief
The Telegraph
 SUJAN DUTTA
New Delhi, June 4: China is opening its narrow border with Afghanistan with roads and probably a tunnel under the Pamir ranges skirting Jammu and Kashmir with strategic implications for India, former army chief Gen. V.K. Singh has told The Telegraph.
“It is an outflanking move,” the general who retired last Thursday said. “India risks losing the influence it has in Afghanistan because of a China-Pakistan link that is getting stronger and is seen in evidence here,” he said.
Since retirement four days ago, the general has said he was giving top priority to writing his PhD thesis on “Fundamentalism in Afghanistan and the Geo Strategic Significance of the Wakhan Corridor”.
Singh registered as a PhD candidate as army chief in 2010 with the department of defence and military sciences of Bhopal’s Barkatullah University.
The Chinese connection to Afghanistan, he says, is through the Wakhan Corridor that skirts the northern areas of Jammu and Kashmir, territory that India claims but is under Pakistani occupation. But for PoK, India would have had direct access to Afghanistan through the Wakhan Corridor.
India does not have transit rights to Afghanistan through Pakistan. Most of its shipping to Afghanistan is done through the Iranian port of Chabahar.
“China’s objective is to increase connectivity with Afghanistan where it already has considerable presence along with India in development and other projects,” the general said.
“This connectivity would be physical. And it is interested in this comparatively quieter area (the Wakhan Corridor) through which it would facilitate the exploitation of natural resources in Afghanistan,” he said.
As chief, the general red-flagged the presence of Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers, mostly engineers, in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The building of the Karakoram highway abutting the Siachen glacier to its northeast through Shaksgam valley in Aksai Chin — India-claimed territory that Pakistan has ceded to China — is also a strategic concern of the Indian Army.
A “panhandle” of territory in Afghanistan’s extreme northeast, the Wakhan Corridor or Wakhan Tract is at most 220km long and 64km at its widest. It separates Tajikistan (to its north) with PoK (to its south). At its eastern extremity, it has only a 76km-long border (half the distance between Calcutta and Kharagpur) over high mountains at the top of which is the 16,100-feet Wakhjir pass that has no road through it.
Despite being adjoining countries, Afghanistan and China do not have a border crossing since the Wakhjir pass was shut after Mao Tse Tung’s communist forces took over China in 1949.
The Wakhan with the headwaters of the Amu Darya (Oxus river) borders Xinjiang province’s Tashkurgan Tajik Autonomous County that has a Muslim majority. This is the area popularly known as the “Pamir Knot”.
Through the wars that have ravaged Afghanistan since the Soviet invasion (1979), the sparsely populated Wakhan has been largely peaceful.
To its west, the Wakhan emanates from the northern parts of Afghanistan where India has counted on a largely Afghan Tajik population whose leader was Ahmed Shah Masood before he was assassinated in 2001, two days before 9/11.
Singh said that in the course of his research, he has found evidence of military engineering activity on the Chinese side of the border. On the Afghan side, the nearest roadhead is close to 100km from the Wakhjir pass.
The former army chief was still researching his topic and did not want to go into the evidence behind his findings. It would be safe to assume, however, that he would utilise considerable technical, human and academic resources.
The Wakhan Corridor was a creation of “The Great Game” when Britain and Russia competed for strategic space. It roughly defined the border between British India and the Russian Empire in the late 19th century.
The Wakhjir pass itself remains closed for nearly half the year. A tunnel under the mountains would be an engineering feat — rivalling the kind that China has demonstrated with its railway line through Tibet — that would ensure all-weather access.
In December 2009, the US was reported in the Chinese media to have requested Beijing to allow access from its territory to the Wakhan Corridor (and Afghanistan). The US wanted to use the route as an alternative supply line for Nato forces because of an increase in attacks on the convoys in Pakistan. So far such access, if any, has not been visible.
Singh’s suspicion that such a tunnel was being built by the Chinese boosts the “garland of pearls” strategy — that China is surrounding India with bases and logistics centres — stretching from naval outposts in littoral countries like Sri Lanka and the Maldives, to ports like Gwadar in Pakistan and Hangyyi in Myanmar to the high Himalayas north of Kashmir.

Greed in Kaliyug

We are really living during Kaliyug (the Dark Age). 
Greed seems to prevail everywhere. 
Why did President Karzai 'offer' mining concessions in this particular area?
More than 2500 years ago, Buddha said: "Inflamed by greed, incensed by hate, confused by delusion, overcome by them, obsessed by mind, a man chooses for his own affliction, for others' affliction, for the affliction of both and experiences pain and grief". 
Ironically this place which, 1400 years ago, was visited by the Chinese pilgrim Hieun Tsang has now been 'bought' by a Chinese mining company.
Even in this Bamyan Valley, which has been so greatly influenced by the Great Monk, men have become greedy.
Ten years ago, I wrote a piece on Bamyan entitled From Mao to Bin Laden for Rediff.com. Today, I could write, From Bin Laden to the Chinese miners.
More than 40 years back, I remember visiting Bamyan. I have never seen such grandiose, simple and peaceful place.
Now the ants are digging. Perhaps they are digging their Karmic tomb.

Bamiyan II? Buddhist site in Afghanistan faces threat from China miners
Julius Cavendish,
NYT News Service
Apr 16, 2011,
Few thought they would do it until they did, firing fusillade after fusillade into two giant statues of the Buddha that had weathered 1,500 turbulent years of conquest and chaos, but could not withstand the Taliban's tanks. As shells and anti-aircraft rounds thudded into the sandstone giants, Afghans who eked out their lives in the shadow of the statues were aghast.
Now, almost 10 years to the month after Taliban fundamentalists blew the Bamiyan Buddhas apart, Afghanistan's archaeological treasures face a new threat: capitalism. Just south of Kabul, French and Afghan archaeologists have unearthed a 5th-century Buddhist monastery at a 4,000 hectare site called Mes Aynak — and are racing against time to excavate more ruins before Chinese miners obliterate them in their quest for natural resources.
In 2007, China Metallurgical Group, a Beijing-based mining group, signed a $3bn deal with the Afghan government —the biggest foreign investment in the country to date — to exploit vast copper deposits less than 1,000m from the then yet-to-be-discovered monastery. In its day, the building would have stood 15m (50ft) high, and measured 80m by 40m .Now it sits half-concealed by the mound it rises from beside the main road to Kabul; a warren of newly excavated halls and passages with giant feet, hands and faces emerging from earth.
Following a recent visit to Mes Aynak (it means "little copper well"), archaeologist Joanie Meharry described the treasures emerging from the dig. "Among the ruins were found a stupa more than 9m tall, frescoes with details in black and red paint, plaster statues adorned with jewelled ornaments, some laced in a fine layer of gold, and shards of pottery," she wrote.
The team of 16 French and Afghan archaeologists conducting the dig at Mes Aynak has 38 months before the Chinese miners move in, although the hope is that Afghanistan's mining and culture ministries will step in to protect some of the settlement's remains.
NYT news service

Market Economy Talibans

The day this article appeared  on Phayul.com, I came across another article on 'culture'. 
Interviewed by Xinhua, the Chinese Minister for Culture Cai Wu blasted 'vulgar' media foreign cultural influences for having a growing profile in Chinese society.
The Minister lashed out at the country's broadcasters and publishers, saying much of what they produce is vulgar and kitsch.
Cai Wu said many Chinese publications were full of gossip and sensational stories advocating money-worship. He accused regional governments of spending money on 'vanity projects' instead of basic cultural facilities.
Cai squarely put the blame on China's market economy for this state of affairs.
Well, Mr Cai Wu, look at what your government is doing in Afghanistan. This is wild and vulgar market economy.Don't you think that when China is abroad, it should respect local 'basic cultural facilities'.
Last week, I had already written about the Chinese presence in Afghanistan in The New Indian Express.


Ancient Buddhist site faces threat from mining
Phayul
August 06, 2010
By Tenzin Tsering
Dharamsala, August 6 - A two millennia Buddhist site covering 4500 square metre monastery in Afghanistan’s Mes Aynak hill, faces impending demolition for mining, reported Andrew Lawyer to Sciencemagazine.com
A mining project worth $3 billion is awarded to China Metallurgical Group Corp by the Afghan government which plans to dynamite the ancient monastery located near the capital, Kabul.
It is estimated that China will extract 200,000 tons of copper and provide Afghan government with up to $400 million in annual revenues.
A group of Afghan French archaeologists who recently uncovered more than 100 statues, stupas, and a 5 metre long reclining Buddha among other relics have raised concern saying though the plan to blow up the monastery in last April was stalled, the proposition remains.
Chinese have started building a railroad, housing, and a power plant nearby, in preparation for mining.
Archaeologists are hoping to draw international support to save the historical site which will provide new information about how Buddhism flourished in the region and coexisted with Islam during one era.
“The monastery flourished from as early as the 2nd century BC until at least the 6th century AD although it may have continued as a settlement until as late as the 9th century AD” said Phillipe Marquis, head of the French Archaeologists’ team in Afghanistan.
He proposed a view saying “copper mining and the monastery can coexist by creating a protected archaeological area that eventually could generate tourism income” for the war torn country who are in desperate need of foreign revenues.
Marquis further added that “ Karzai ( President of Afghnaistan) is the one who can say no” and abort the annihilation of the ancient monastery.
“The site is huge and we have amazing remains. Time is running short.This place is going to be destroyed in a few months, and we need to find another solution—or the site is doomed” said Nader Rassouli, director of Afghanistan’s National Institute of Archeology.
AFP reported that the hill has already been heavily looted and quoted Marquis as saying, “the problem of plundering of historic sites in Afghanistan is not only an Afghan problem,it is also an international one.”
This latest threat on the Buddhist monument is reminiscent of the destruction of two monumental Buddha statues carved into a mountain at Banyam, Afghanistan by the Taliban a decade ago.
The two statues standing at 121 and 180 feet high were destroyed by the Taliban in early March 2001 calling them “idolatrous and un-Islamic”.

Private Intelligence

WikiLeaks has done it again! The online organization has now posted more than 90,000 classified military field reports originating from the Afghan front. According to Julian Assange, WikiLeaks’ founder, the documents “reveal broader and more pervasive levels of violence in Afghanistan than the military or the news media had previously reported.” According to him, the objective of his organization is to document ‘unethical behavior’ by governments and corporations.
Since 2006, WikiLeaks has exposed the dumping of toxic material off the African coast, the membership lists of a racist British party, the operating manual of the US prison in Guantánamo, a helicopter attack in Bagdad called ‘Collateral Murder’ and a cable entitled ‘Reykjavik13’ about the banking crisis in Iceland.
WikiLeaks’ website justifies the ‘leak’ by saying: “We believe that transparency in government activities leads to reduced corruption, better government and stronger democracies.”
While the revelations got a lot of ink in the world media, a series of articles by The Washington Post has remained out of the sight of commentators, though the consequences of the reporters’ findings could have tremendous consequences on the war in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
The Post reporters wanted to understand more about the “top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.” Dana Priest and William Arkin, who worked for two years on the subject, soon discovered that it has “become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work”.
The US intelligence budget was for the first time announced last year: 75 billion dollars, 2 ½ times the size it was before 9/11 (and it does not include military activities or domestic counter-terrorism programs).
The journalists speak of the “Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight.”
The main findings of The Washington Post are:
•    Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.
•    An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times the population of Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.
•    In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent space of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings — about 17 million square feet.
•    Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks.
•    Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year - a volume so large that many are routinely ignored.
The conclusions of the reporters is “lack of focus, not lack of resources, was at the heart of the Fort Hood shooting that left 13 dead, as well as the Christmas Day bomb attempt thwarted not by the thousands of analysts employed to find lone terrorists but by an alert airline passenger who saw smoke coming from his seatmate.”
Even Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta admitted in interviews to The Post that there was a problem.
Though Defense Secretary Gates said that he does not believe the system has become too big to manage, he acknowledged that getting precise data is sometimes difficult: “Nine years after 9/11, it makes a lot of sense to sort of take a look at this and say, ‘Okay, we’ve built tremendous capability, but do we have more than we need?’,” he told The Post.
CIA Director Leon Panetta announced that he had “begun mapping out a five-year plan for his agency because the levels of spending since 9/11 are not sustainable”.
In other words, the different agencies are over-doing their job, but without the corresponding results.
The Post reports a telling anecdote: there are a handful of senior officials in the Pentagon who are called the Super Users; these officers can get information about ALL the Department’s activities. One of them told The Post that during his initial briefing, “he was escorted into a tiny, dark room, seated at a small table and told he couldn’t take notes. Program after program began flashing on a screen, he said, until he yelled ‘Stop!’ in frustration.” He explained that it was such an information over-load that “I wasn’t remembering any of it.”
This is the story of the US Intelligence system. One understands better why they never found out about Pokhran II (though it was 3 years before the 9/11 tragedy) and that today there are unable to find Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, although they seem to have information that he is moving around with his associate Mullah Omar (it was confirmed by Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton).
One sometimes thinks that the good old spies à la James Bond or Mata Hari were more efficient than the top analysts seating in their bunkers (known as SCIF or ‘sensitive compartmented information facility’) in Washington DC who have hardly any idea where Kandahar or Ghazi are located.

But more interesting (and frightening in one way). The Post, in another installment of its investigation speaks of “a system in which contractors are playing an ever more important role. The Post estimates that out of 854,000 people with top-secret clearances, 265,000 are contractors. There is no better example of the government's dependency on them than at the CIA, the one place in government that exists to do things overseas that no other U.S. agency is allowed to do.”
In other words, the US intelligence is being slowly privatized. Can you believe it?
The journalists explain: “Private contractors working for the CIA have recruited spies in Iraq, paid bribes for information in Afghanistan and protected CIA directors visiting world capitals. Contractors have helped snatch a suspected extremist off the streets of Italy, interrogated detainees once held at secret prisons abroad and watched over defectors holed up in the Washington suburbs. At Langley headquarters, they analyze terrorist networks. At the agency's training facility in Virginia, they are helping mould a new generation of American spies.”
This does not sound good for Obama’s Administration (and the US citizens) because it means that these super-analysts, these super-spies are not working for their country (or in Afghanistan for the NATO Alliance), but only for money. In fact the so-called contractors are multinationals like any multinational in the world (except for the strict security clearance needed for their employees, but even here the clearance is sub-contracted to ‘specialized private’ companies). When money is the motivation, the results are bound to be tainted.
This ‘privatization’ of the intelligence business is indeed a very dangerous game and it partially explains some of the finding of WikiLeaks: one hand of the Obama (and before Bush) Administration does not know what the other is doing. It has become apparent in Washington’s Af-Pak policy.
The New York Times, who was one the three first publications to have access to the leaked documents said: “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.”
Why could not the 854,000 people, 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies working on ‘terrorism’ (or ‘counterterrorism’) have realized this?
Everyone knew it in India, but it seems to be a discovery in the SCIFs of Washington. Let us hope that it will now percolate further to the White House: the hub of international terrorism is Pakistan and its boss has just been given a 3-year extension.
One can only hope that in the future more leaks will reveal further the role of the Pakistan Army and the ISI not only in the Afghan mess, but also in Kashmir (I would include the role of Chinese in the region). An excellent paper (China’s Caution on Afghanistan—Pakistan) by Andrew Small for the Center for Strategic and International Studies of the Washington Quarterly speaks of “this entire strand of China’s thinking, which requires a state of managed tension in the region, cuts directly against the US efforts to dissuade Pakistan from its India-centric military strategy”.
It would great to have leaks on this.

China has its eyes set on Afghanistan

My article China has its eyes set on Afghanistan has been published in today's New Indian Express. Click here to read.

Afghanistan and China

In early July, at the end of a prestigious career in the French Army, General Vincent Desportes was summoned by his boss, Admiral Edouard Guillaud, the French Chief of Defence Staff. Why?
General Desportes, who is presently Director of the Interservice Defence College in France, had dared to speak out what many civilians and defence officials believe. Desportes gave an interview to the daily newspaper Le Monde in which he stated that the conflict in Afghanistan was ‘an American War’. He also said that the sacking of General McChrystal, the Commandant of the NATO forces in Afghanistan should “open a debate on the tactic decided [by President Obama and the NATO]”. For Desportes, the situation on the battle field has never been worse. After explaining that Obama had chosen “a Middle Path which does not work”, he said that it was time to review the NATO strategy.
The Chief of Defence Staff and his Minister, Hervé Morin were not amused. Though General Desportes is due to retire at the end of July, he will probably be punished for telling the truth.
This incident is symptomatic of the feelings not just in France, but in most NATO nations (including in the United States as witnessed in l’Affaire McChrystal). The main French survey organization IFOP has recently found that 70% of the population is “opposed to the French military intervention in Afghanistan”.
Let us not fool ourselves. In the past, great empires have rarely been built for philanthropic reasons. The British did not ‘civilize’ the Indian subcontinent for the good of the natives, ditto for the French in Africa. The ‘colonized’ countries happened to be rich in raw materials direly required to feed the economic engine of the paramount powers.
The recent happenings in Afghanistan seem to follow the same pattern.
For the past nine years, we have heard of the war against terror forcing more than a lakh of American (and NATO) jawans to risk their lives in the far-away Central Asian land to fight for the good of humanity and destroy asuric Talibans roaming around the country.
Remember. A month after the tragedy of 9/11, the United States, supported by several other countries from the NATO alliance, began bombing the Talibans (more nebulously known as Al Qaeda). The military operations’ objective was to grab the power out of fundamentalist hands and prevent the use of Afghanistan’s territory as a terrorist base. At the same time, nobody in Washington thought that ‘terrorism’ could also have some roots in Afghanistan’s neighbouring country, Pakistan was THE ally par excellence.
Eventually, the Taliban regime of Mollah Omar fell and the NATO forces started to ‘control’ the country. Till then, things were still simple to understand. Unfortunately nine years later, ‘control’ is still missing.
But there is now a new angle to the Afghan imbroglio.
Washington disclosed that its surveyors have discovered more than one $1 trillion worth of in mineral deposits in Afghanistan. The New York Times noted: “it is far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself.”
Gen. David H. Petraeus, commanding the United States Forces declared: “There is stunning potential here …There are a lot of ifs, of course, but I think potentially it is hugely significant.”
Not surprisingly, one of the first countries to react was China. Xinhua commented on the Pentagon announcement: “it may function as a double-edged sword for the Central Asian country, and it will likely justify continuous US engagement in Afghanistan's rebuilding process.”
Xinhua quotes Wu Dahui, a scholar with the Institute of Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, who believes that “Washington has insisted that the stability of Afghanistan relies on its economic rebuilding. The announcement was timed to prove that the US can gain strategically from its involvement in rebuilding the war-torn country. The resources in Afghanistan would feed the US' demand to boost its economy.”
The Chinese themselves are interested to get a share of the cake. In April, Christian Le Mière, the Editor of Jane's Intelligence Review in Foreign Affairs put it thus: “The possibility of cheap resources on its border is of significant interest to Beijing. China has already made the largest single foreign direct investment in Afghanistan: $3.5 billion in the Aynak copper field in Logar province.”
Beijing knows that the Americans and their NATO partners will start withdrawing one day or another. Though China does not want to interfere in the ‘security aspect’, the leadership in Beijing is aware that there is a place to take in the future economy of the country.
The security angle is however not completely negligible, as the leadership in Beijing would not like to see its Western provinces, particularly the restive Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR), destabilized.
It was one good reason for President Hamid Karzai to visit China in March 2010. It was his fourth trip to China as President and according to analysts a sign that Kabul has wanted to diversify its patrons and not bank entirely on the US. At the same Time, Beijing is interested by the raw materials in Afghanistan.
In January 2010, Russell Hsiao and Glen E. Howard in The China Brief of the Jamestown Institute mentioned some Chinese moves in the strategic Wakan Corridor: “A recent Chinese report has shed light on three major Chinese developments along the Wakhan Corridor that reportedly began in 2009, which highlight preparations in regional infrastructure along that border.”
The report speaks of a 75 kilometers-long road, extending up to 10 kilometers from the China-Afghanistan border. The road, built by the Chinese Ministry of Defense is badly needed for the transportation of military supplies to Chinese frontier guards. Further, the Chinese have constructed a supply depot to improve the “food quality standard for the police forces”.
The third development is a mobile communications center which would permit the operation of mobile devices along the border. Earlier border troops had to depend on satellite communications. Russell Hsiao agrees that China is not ready to play a ‘strategic’ or military role in Afghanistan.
With the ‘discovery’ that Afghanistan is a rich country (not only for its poppies), cynicism is bound to increase. Many believe that we are witnessing the beginning of a new Great Game, as during the 19th century.
One could ask: where does India fit in this new political and economic order?
Unfortunately, Delhi has a big problem. Were India to get a stake in the minerals, how to bring the raw materials back home? While China may use the Wakhan corridor in the years to come, India has no land route to exploit the mineral-rich Afghanistan. Technically, Indian companies like Arcelor-Mittal or Vedanta could have a chance, for example when the bid for Hajigak iron ore mines opens up, but Pakistan will certainly not allow raw materials to transit through its territory.
The other road through Iran is also doubtful in view of the new UN sanctions against the Islamic Republic. Manmohan Singh would certainly not like to antagonize his American friends.
For the near future, the Chinese are bound to win the raw materials market in Afghanistan. While the NATO forces are fighting an unwinnable war, Beijing has quietly started tapping the wealth of the country. India may be highly considered by the people of Afghanistan, but in the end China is better prepared and one point is sure, Beijing will put pressure on its all-weather friend, Pakistan not to allow India around.
The recent international conference in Kabul did not alter these basic facts.

The New Great Game

In the past, Great empires have rarely been built for philanthropic reasons. The British did not ‘civilize’ the Indian subcontinent for the good of the natives, ditto for the French in Africa. Most of the time, the ‘colonized’ countries happened to be rich in raw materials badly required to feed the economic engine of the paramount powers.
The recent happenings in Afghanistan seem to follow the same pattern?
For the past nine years, we have heard of the war against terror forcing more than a lakh of American (and NATO) jawans to risk their lives in the far-away Central Asian land to fight for the good of humanity and destroy asuric Talibans roaming around the country.
Remember. A month after the tragedy of 9/11, the United States supported by the United Kingdom and several other countries from the NATO alliance began bombing Taliban (more nebulously known as Al Qaeda) forces. The military operations’ objective was to grab the power out of fundamentalist hands and prevent the use of Afghanistan’s territory as a terrorist base. Nobody in Washington thought at that time, that ‘terrorism’ could also have some roots in Afghanistan’s neighbouring country; Pakistan was THE ally per excellence.
Early October 2001, the CIA's elite Special Activities Division landed in Kabul; it was the beginning of the ‘cleansing’ operation to flush out the agents of terror. Eventually, the Taliban regime of Mollah Omar fell and the NATO forces started to ‘control’ the country. Till then, things were rather simple to understand. Unfortunately for the Pentagon strategists, the ‘control’ is still missing nine years later.
But there is now a new angle to the Afghan imbroglio.
Washington disclosed recently that its surveyors have discovered more than one $1 trillion in mineral deposits in Afghanistan. The New York Times noted: “it is far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself.”
It appears that an internal Pentagon memo even mentions that Afghanistan could become the ‘Saudi Arabia of lithium’, a very useful mineral to manufacture batteries for electronic gadgets.
Gen. David H. Petraeus, commanding the United States Forces declared: “There is stunning potential here …There are a lot of ifs, of course, but I think potentially it is hugely significant.”
Jalil Jumriany, an adviser to the Afghan Minister of Mines told The New York Times: “This will become the backbone of the Afghan economy.”
But everybody is not convinced by the ‘new’ discovery.
Stephen Walt in an article entitled Is Afghanistan really the next El Dorado?, published in Foreign Policy wrote: “So today -- surprise, surprise -- comes news that Afghanistan isn't a poor country whose primary strategic asset is its ability to grow opium poppies. Nope, turns out Afghanistan is just brimming with iron ore, lithium, cobalt, copper, and other strategic minerals. This report -- which comes from ‘a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists’ may well be completely correct, but isn't the timing of the release a mite suspicious? This looks to me like an attempt to provide a convincing strategic rationale for an effort that isn't going well.”
Not surprisingly, one of the first countries to react was China. Xinhua commented the Pentagon announcement: “it may function as a double-edged sword for the Central Asian country, and it will likely justify continuous US engagement in Afghanistan's rebuilding process.”
Xinhua quotes Wu Dahui, a scholar with the Institute of Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, who believes that “the well-timed report will help justify the US' presence in the country” He added: “Washington has insisted that the stability of Afghanistan relies on its economic rebuilding. The announcement was timed to prove that the US can gain strategically from its involvement in rebuilding the war-torn country. The resources in Afghanistan would feed the US' demand to boost its economy.”
The Chinese probably have a point. They themselves are interested to get a share of the cake. In April, Christian Le Mière, the Editor of Jane's Intelligence Review in Foreign Affairs put it thus: “The possibility of cheap resources on its border is of significant interest to Beijing. China has already made the largest single foreign direct investment in Afghanistan: $3.5 billion in the Aynak copper field in Logar province.”
Kabul knows that the Americans and their NATO partners are to withdraw in July 2011. Though Beijing is not interested in Afghanistan for security reasons, there is a place to take in the future economy of Afghanistan.
A few months back President Hu declared that the development of the western region is a priority of China's twelfth Five-Year Plan (2011 to 2015).
In the words of Le Mière: “Trade and development assistance form an even larger part of the burgeoning Afghan-Chinese relationship.”
The security aspect is however not negligible, as the leadership in Beijing would not like to see its Western provinces, particularly the restive Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) destabilized.
It was another reason for President Hamid Karzai to visit China in March 2010. It was his fourth trip to China as President and according to analysts a sign that Kabul has wanted to diversify its patrons and not bank entirely on the US.
In January 2010, Russell Hsiao and Glen E. Howard in The China Brief of the Jamestown Institute mentioned some Chinese moves in the strategic Wakan Corridor: “A recent Chinese report has shed light on three major Chinese developments along the Wakhan Corridor that reportedly began in 2009, which highlight preparations in regional infrastructure along that border.”
The report speaks of a 75 kilometers-long road, extending up to 10 kilometers from the China-Afghanistan border. The road, built by Chinese Ministry of Defense is badly needed for the transportation of military supplies to Chinese frontier guards. Then, the Chinese have constructed a supply depot to improve the “food quality standard for the police forces”.
The third development is a mobile communications center which would permit the operation of mobile devices along the border. Earlier border troops had to depend on satellite communications.
However for Russell Hsiao, China is not ready to play a ‘strategic’ or military role in Afghanistan. He quotes the Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Qin Gang: “Except for the U.N. peace-keeping missions approved by the U.N. Security Council, China never sends a single troop abroad”, adding: “At the same time, there are also those [in the Chinese government] who view NATO operations in Afghanistan more cynically and see them as part of a U.S. strategy to gain control over Central Asia.”
With the ‘discovery’ that Afghanistan is a rich country (not only for its poppies) cynicism is bound to increase. Many believe that we are witnessing the beginning of a new Great Game like during the 19th century.
One could ask: where does India fit in this new political and economic order?
Delhi has a big problem. Were India to get a stake in the minerals, how to bring them home?
Indrani Bagchi rightly explains in The Times of India: “Pakistan's India blockade and an international sanctions regime in Iran may put a spanner in Indian companies' drive to exploit the mineral bonanza in Afghanistan.”
Technically, Indian companies like Arcelor-Mittal or Vedanta could have a chance, for example when the bid for Hajigak iron ore mines opens up, but will Pakistan let the raw materials transit through its territory. Certainly not.
The other road through Iran is also doubtful in view of the new UN sanctions against the Islamic Republic. Manmohan would certainly not like to antagonize his American friends.
In a near future, the Chinese are bound to win the raw materials market in Afghanistan. While the NATO forces are fighting an unwinnable war, Beijing has quietly started tapping the wealth of the country. India, may be highly considered by the people of Afghanistan, but in the end, business  is business and China is better prepared, with the infrastructure in particular. One question remains, is this newly discovered wealth a bane or a blessing for the people of Afghanistan?
I still remember when as a young student I visited Afghanistan with a backpack; it was at the end of 1960’s. I was in love with this country; it was so peaceful (one would say ‘cool’ now). I remember the beauty of Herat, the fabulous Buddhas of Bamyan (today no more, courtesy some fanatical Talibans) or the extraordinary blue lakes of Band-i-Amir. More than anything else, the hospitality of the different tribes, whether Pashtus, Tajiks or Uzbeks. People seemed so relaxed and content. What has happened?
The US ‘discovery’ will certainly not help to bring the old peace and harmony back.

The Soviet Experience

The Nobel Peace Prize Laureate has decided to send 30,000 extra troops to Afghanistan. He also asked France to provide some 1,500 more soldiers.  President Sarkozy is not convinced.

Have Obama's advisers read about the Soviet experience in Afghanistan? One can doubt. 
The recently declassified documents published by the National Security Archives in the US are extremely educative. Perhaps the most interesting part is not that foreign troops have no chance to win a war in Afghanistan (a known fact), but that the 'Afghan adventure' precipitated the fall of the Soviet Empire. 
Will a similar fate await today's lone superpower? Obama could well be a new Gorbachev. 
His recent attitude in China tends to prove that he may not be able to keep the United States at the top of the world.



THE SOVIET EXPERIENCE IN AFGHANISTAN: RUSSIAN DOCUMENTS AND MEMOIRS
Edited by Svetlana Savranskaya
October 9, 2001
Recently declassified documents from archives in the former Soviet Union and memoirs of senior Soviet military and political leaders present the complex and tragic story of the ten years of the Soviet military involvement in Afghanistan.  Most observers agree that the last war of the Soviet Union created or aggravated the internal dynamics that eventually culminated in the dissolution of the country itself.  The documents presented here shed light on the most important moments in the history of the Soviet war in Afghanistan—the Afghan government’s requests for assistance, the Soviet Union’s initial refusal of troops, the reversal of this policy by a small group of the Politburo and the Soviet decision to invade; the expansion of the initial mission to include combat operations against the Afghan resistance; early criticism of the Soviet policy and of the People’s Democratic party of Afghanistan (PDPA) regime; and the decision to withdraw the troops.  Taken together, these materials suggest some lessons that mright be drawn from the Soviet experience of fighting a war in Afghanistan.

Is France protecting Chinese interests?

 

 If you read these two articles together, it seems that France (like the US)  is protecting the corrupt Karzai government ....and the Chinese interests.
It is just sad for the young French jawans who die in Afghanistan. 



France 'fully backs' new Karzai administration: Sarkozy
Zeenews.com
Paris, November 03, 2009
President Nicolas Sarkozy Tuesday assured Hamid Karzai of France's "full backing" as he congratulated the Afghan leader on his re-election.
"You have managed since the first round to get the most support from the Afghan people," Sarkozy said in a letter released by his office.
"You must move forward..." he said, adding: "France will remain at the side of the Afghan people as long as necessary... I assure you of the full backing of France to the efforts that your government and you are undertaking."

China taps huge copper reserves in Afghanistan
WASHINGTON, AP, 31/10/2009 
At a former al-Qaida stronghold southeast of the Afghan capital, a state-owned Chinese company is at work on a $3 billion mine project to tap one of the world's largest unexploited copper reserves, a potential financial boon for an impoverished country mired in war.
The promise of a bright future at Aynak, however, cannot conceal the troubling reality of how business is often done in Afghanistan, according to critics of the Kabul government's decision to reject bids from competitors in the U.S., Canada and other countries.
The bidding process unfairly favored China, they allege, and epitomized the back-room deals and abuse of power that has turned Afghans against their government and undercut the U.S. military effort there.
Corruption and graft long have been ingrained in Afghanistan's public institutions. Yet the extent of this corrosion has taken on new significance as the White House considers expanding the U.S. commitment to a war unsupported by a growing number of Americans.
Widespread fraud in Afghanistan's presidential election in August has raised doubts about how quickly a stable and credible government can be installed. A U.N.-backed commission threw out nearly one-third of President Hamid Karzai's votes, setting the stage for a Nov. 7 runoff.
In his recent assessment of the situation in Afghanistan, the top U.S. commander warned that unchecked corruption has led alienated Afghans to support the Taliban-led insurgency.
Afghan officials insist the Aynak bidding was handled openly and honestly, and will create thousands of jobs. But several U.S. geologists and Western businessmen who watched the process closely disagree.
James Yeager, an American geologist who advised Afghanistan's minister of mines, says a few Afghan officials dominated a secretive selection process that gave the winner, China Metallurgical Group Corp., improbably high marks over its foreign competitors.
Said Tayeb Jawad, Afghanistan's ambassador to the United States, said the bidding process was above board. He said he pushed for the U.S. bidder, Phelps Dodge, to be awarded the Aynak rights, but that China offered to start work right away while Phelps wanted to wait until the country was safer.
"We can't afford to give the mining rights to a company that will sit on them for the next 10 or 15 years," Jawad said.
China Metallurgical, better known as MCC, has a poor track record with mining projects in other countries, according to Yeager and other critics. In neighboring Pakistan, for example, where MCC operates a copper mine, there's been little benefit to the local economy. But that information was ignored during the deliberations, they say.
MCC did not immediately respond to questions submitted by e-mail, as the company requested, about whether MCC received special treatment from the Afghan government on the Aynak bidding process; whether it was allowed to see copies of other bids, as at least one competitor alleges; or whether the Pakistan mine has failed to help the local economy.
The Aynak deal was awarded to the Chinese late 2007, but the project is only now getting under way. Before copper can be hauled from the ground, China must make a substantial investment to build a power-generating station, roads and a railway to move the metal.
Yeager and Larry Snee, a former U.S. Geological Survey official who also has worked in Afghanistan, contend that MCC probably will steer most of the jobs to Chinese workers.
"Of course, the Afghans are going to benefit," Snee said. "But will they get all they deserve?"
China needs huge quantities of raw materials to feed its rapid economic growth and energy demands. It is well positioned to become the dominant force in Afghanistan's potentially lucrative minerals sector, said Don Ritter, president of the Afghan-American Chamber of Commerce in McLean, Va.
"In what direction do (Afghanistan's) mines and minerals develop?" Ritter said. "Do they go the Eastern model, where everything is done behind a closed door? Or, is there an open, transparent competition, where the money is laid on the table without undue influence?"
Yeager has distributed a 78-page report on the Aynak contract in which he contends that M. Ibrahim Adel, Afghanistan's minister of mines, and his associates shut out legal, financial and technical experts who could have helped them on the decision.
Yeager doesn't accuse Adel or anyone else from benefiting personally by awarding the work to MCC. But the final decision, Yeager says, was dictated by bureaucrats concerned with dollar amounts and personal preferences.
One of the losing competitors for the contract was Hunter Dickinson, a global mining company based in Vancouver, Canada. Robert Schafer, Hunter Dickinson's chief of business development, said an Afghan official told him that its bid had been shown to the Chinese while the proposals were being evaluated.
Schafer said he "wasn't surprised at all" to learn that MCC won.
Wang Baodong, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, did not address the allegations. He said China is committed to pursuing economic, trade and investment projects in Afghanistan that benefit both countries.
China has contributed little to improving security in Afghanistan, yet with the Aynak deal, stands to gain from the sacrifices made by the U.S. and NATO in troops and money.
"The world isn't fair," said Robert Kaplan, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington. "A worse outcome to staying and helping the Chinese would be withdrawing and losing a great battle in the war against radical Islam."

Towards Chaosistan

My article on Afghanistan Toward Chaoistan published in The Pioneer today. To read, just click.

Chaoistan and the Italian Strategy

While the Indian media is busy with the intrusions and other Chinese aggressive postures on northern front and the utter mess in Pakistan in the west, interesting things are happening in Afghanistan.
It was first reported that General Stanley McChrystal, the new NATO top Commander had argued with the Obama’s Administration that without more troops the United States could lose the war against the Talibans. “Resources will not win this war, but under-resourcing could lose it," wrote McChrystal in a report addressed to his boss in the White House and reproduced by the Washington Post.
He explained: “The stakes in Afghanistan are high. …President Obama’s strategy to disrupt, dismantle and eventually defeat al Qaeda and prevent their return to Afghanistan have laid out a clear path of what we must do. Stability in Afghanistan is an imperative; if the Afghan government falls to the Taliban – or has insufficient capacity to counter transnational terrorists – Afghanistan could again become a base for terrorism, with obvious implications for regional stability.”
Unfortunately in the meantime, the tenant in the White House was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize putting him in a terrible dilemma. Considering that he got the coveted Prize on his declarations of intention, President Obama is now in two-minds about sending more US jawans to Afghanistan.
But there is more interesting.
Let us go back a year ago. While France moaned about the too few Gold Medals earned by the nation in the Beijing Olympics, 10 of her soldiers were killed on a reconnaissance mission in Afghanistan after a fierce battle with the Talibans. The French commandos were part of the contingent of 70,000 serving under a 40-nation NATO coalition called the International Security Assistance Forces. They were ambushed in a mountainous region of Surobi about 50 kilometers east of Kabul. It was the deadliest attack on international troops in Afghanistan since in June 2005 when 16 American soldiers were killed in their helicopter which was shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade.
Some the surviving soldiers complained that once they had fallen into the trap, they had to wait for four hours before NATO planes arrived. They then missed their target and hit the French troops. It was neither confirmed nor denied, though General Michel Stollsteiner, the NATO Commander of Kabul Region commented that the French troops had been ‘overconfident’. France went into a deep shock.
The public began to grumble louder: President Sarkozy's decision to increase the French contingent in Afghanistan by 700 troops (to 3,300) was widely criticized “just because the US had asked its NATO allies to share burden in Afghanistan”.
Le Figaro echoed the general feeling: "If the aims are just, are the tactics being used to achieve them correct?"
After seeing the ten coffins covered with the tricolor flag, the public opinion took a stronger view. The common question was: which price are we paying for what?
The French President decided however to send a 700 reinforcement force. In a typical Sarkozy style, he said: “It is here that the peace in the world is at stake and therefore it is here that war [is waged] against terrorism, poverty, and also for Human Rights and for the rights of the women.” Many were not convinced.
Fourteen months later, The Times in London broke a sensational piece of news: “Italians bribed the Taliban all over Afghanistan”. A Taliban commander and two senior Afghan officials would have confirmed to The Times reporter that “Italian forces paid protection money to prevent attacks on their troops”.

It was immediately denied by the Office of the flamboyant Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi: “The Berlusconi Government has never authorised nor has it allowed any form of payment toward members of the Taliban insurgency.” However from May 2006 to May 2008, it was Romano Prodi who was heading the government and the present government refutation is not a denial that the Italians have not done it.
Mohammed Ishmayel, a Taliban commander explained to The Times that “a deal was struck last year so that Italian forces in the Sarobi area, east of Kabul, were not attacked by local insurgents.”
The French forces who took over the area from Italian troops were apparently unaware of the ‘deal’ with the local commanders resulting in the death of the French soldiers.
Ishmayel said that it had been agreed that “neither side should attack one another. That is why we were informed at that time, that we should not attack the NATO troops.” When the French troops attacked the Talibans, the latter presumed that the deal had been broken.
The French newspaper Le Monde affirmed that sources close to the NATO see it differently: “it would simplistic to explain such an attack only by the lack of proper information [about the ‘protection money’?]. It would be more correct to point to the difference of strategy between the Italians and the French”.
Italian Defence Minister Ignazio La Russa acquiesced: “the behaviour of our military, which is very different compared to that of other contingents”; their orders is to support the local population and help for the reconstruction and development of Afghanistan; something France has only begun after the death of its soldiers.
A usually well informed French blog, run by a journalist of the newspaper Liberation said that though the bribing information could not be confirm or deny, “several times we heard from serious military sources, accusations against the behavour of the Italian troops in Surobi district. …The accusations were of two types: one, absence of patrols in certain areas like Uzbine [where the French troops were killed] and a wide tolerance for the culture of opium”. The blogger however admitted that he never heard earlier about downright payments to the Talibans.
In a speech recently delivered in London, General McChrystal would have said that people constantly suggest to him schemes ‘for fixing Afghanistan’s problems’. One of these ‘recommendations’ advocated a plan called 'Chaosistan.' The idea was to let Afghanistan become a “Somalia-like haven of chaos that we simply manage from outside”.
Some U.S. intelligence officials believed that the reference originates in a secretly published CIA analysis titled ‘Chaosistan’.
With or without the CIA covert schemes, it is clear that Afghanistan has become Chaosistan. The last presidential election is yet another proof of it. But western governments continue to put a brave face. During a recent visit to Kabul, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner declared: “the present period is crucial in the history of this nation… these elections will mark a new step in the consolidation of the rule of law, the reconstruction of nation and the foundation of stable institutions”. Serious observers don’t believe that this will happen soon, though Kouchner announced that Karzai and his opponent Abullah Abdullah have agreed to work together. Whoever is aware of the past history of Afghanistan knows the impermanence of this type of alliance.
Though the NATO forces are technologically far superior to the Talibans, they will always be in a state of inferiority in terms of ground knowledge and intelligence gathering.
In these conditions, there is no way to win a ‘war against terrorism’, especially under the aegis of puppet (or divided) government, while the terrorists continue to roam free in the neighbouring country.
In an editorial, Le Monde summed up what many people think: “The Afghan electoral imbroglio send us back to the contradictions of the international coalition and the ambiguity of objectives which mix counter-insurrection and tentative nation building.”
Moliere, the greatest French playwriter of all times once put in the mouth of one of his characters, a phrase that the persona keeps repeating: “What the hell are we doing on this boat?”
Many in France believe that this could apply to Afghanistan.