China and Pakistan have forged one of the closest and most-enduring relationships in international diplomacy. The deepening strategic nexus between these nuclear-armed, territorially revisionist powers is based on the axiom that “my enemy’s enemy is my dear friend.”
They share the objective of keeping India off balance. Their alliance not only contains India geopolitically but also presents it with a potential two-front military scenario in the event of war with either of them.
Pakistan’s value for Beijing as a strategic surrogate to help box in India south of the Himalayas has risen even as the Pakistani state has descended into political disarray and jihadist upheaval.
In fact, a dysfunctional, debt-ridden Pakistan has given China greater leeway to strategically penetrate it and convert it as an economic and security client.
Having deployed thousands of Chinese army troops in the Pakistan-held part of divided Kashmir since at least 2010, Beijing is working now to turn Pakistan into its land corridor to the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean through President Xi Jinping’s so-called “One Belt, One Road” project. Xi has declared the $46-billion China-Pakistan “economic corridor” is the centerpiece of his pet project to link up China with western Eurasia.
In return for Pakistan’s strategic subservience to China, Beijing provides the country political protection at the United Nations Security Council, including defense over the Pakistani military’s use of terrorist groups as instruments of state policy against neighboring countries. India, Afghanistan and Bangladesh have charged the Pakistani military, including the rogue Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, with orchestrating recent grisly attacks within foreign borders.
Consequently, Pakistan stands increasingly isolated in South Asia. The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit scheduled for next month in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad collapsed after six countries pulled out over the issue of Pakistan’s state sponsorship of terrorism. Still, China, which earlier joined hands with the U.S. in imposing new sanctions on North Korea, continues to defend Pakistan, its only real ally in Asia.
A reminder that the Sino-Pakistan axis extends to shielding Pakistan at the UN over terrorism is found in China’s blocking of proposed UN sanctions on a Pakistan-based terrorist leader Masood Azhar, head of Jaish-e-Mohammed, a covert front organization for the ISI agency. It was the sixth time since September 2014 that China singlehandedly thwarted sanctions against Azhar, despite support for the move by all other members of the Security Council’s Resolution 1267 committee, which includes the United States, Britain and France. Resolution 1267 mandates UN sanctions on ISIS, al-Qaeda, and associated individuals and entities.
The Security Council proscribed Jaish-e-Mohammed way back in 2001. The group operates openly from its base in Pakistan’s largest province of Punjab. UN sanctions against the group’s chief have become imperative after evidence linking him to two terrorist attacks this year on Indian military bases, during which 26 soldiers were killed. Despite repeatedly vetoing UN action against him, China seems unconcerned that it could be seen as complicit in the killing of the Indian soldiers.
In fact, at the October 14-15 summit in Goa, India, of the five BRICS countries — Brazil, China, India, Russia and South Africa — President Xi came to Pakistan’s rescue by blocking any reference to cross-border terrorism or state sponsorship of terror in the final communiqué. The Goa Declaration named ISIS and al-Nusra but not any of the Pakistan-based groups designated by the UN as terrorist entities.
Previously, China blocked UN action against other Pakistan-based terrorist entities or individuals. For example, it came in the way of the UN proscribing United Jihad Council chief Syed Salahuddin and probing how a UN-designated terrorist, Hafiz Saeed, is still able to raise funds and organize large public rallies in major Pakistani cities. With China’s help, Pakistan escaped UN censure for freeing on bail Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi, the mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai terrorist strikes.
The Resolution 1267 sanctions center on assets freeze, travel ban and arms embargo. But Pakistan illustrates that where UN-designated terrorist groups and individuals enjoy state sanctuaries; the imposition of UN sanctions means little in the absence of enforcement by the state. Even when the UN has acted against certain Pakistan-based terrorist groups and individuals, the sanctions remain unenforced.
The plain fact is that the Pakistani military has forged close ties with some of the world’s most brutal jihadist groups including Jaish-e-Mohammad, Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Haqqani network, and the Afghan Taliban. The United States remains stuck in the Afghanistan War because Pakistan’s proxy, the Taliban, continues to carry out increasingly daring attacks with the aid of sanctuaries inside Pakistan.
Yet the U.S. is still Pakistan’s largest aid provider. State Department spokesman John Kirby said on October 12 that U.S. officials “continue to urge Pakistan to take steps to shut down access to areas inside their borders to terrorists, to terrorist individuals and to terrorist groups.” President Barack Obama’s administration, however, has shied away from conditioning U.S. aid to the Pakistani military ending its sponsorship of terrorism.
With decisive power in Pakistan resting with the military generals, the army and the ISI have made themselves immune to civilian oversight. Indeed, despite an elected government in office, the Chief of Army Staff remains Pakistan’s effective ruler.
The generals boast close relations with the People’s Liberation Army of China that over the years has covertly supplied nuclear-weapon designs and complete missile systems to Pakistan. Levels of such collaboration extending over decades are internationally unparalleled. The collaboration has sought to create a balance of terror against their common foe: India.
In this light, few should be surprised that Beijing shields Pakistan’s unconventional war against its neighbors through terrorist proxies, given China’s own use of unconventional instruments — from dispatching arms to rebel groups in Myanmar and India to carrying out intermittent cyber attacks on government, defense, and commercial targets in some Asian nations. Like Pakistan’s export of terrorism, China employs non-state actors in such missions designed to gain leverage or asymmetrical advantage.
As the American academic C. Christine Fair has said in a recent essay in the journal National Interest, “China’s behavior in the international system shows little regard for international norms of behavior. China’s complicity in protecting Pakistan’s terrorists requires greater political and diplomatic pressure by all members of the Security Council.”
With China boosting its strategic investments in Pakistan, it has stepped up its diplomatic, economic and military support to that country. Indeed, China is seeking to cement Pakistan’s status as its client.
China has already secured exclusive rights to run Pakistan’s Gwadar port for the next 40 years. Gwadar could become a hub both for transporting energy supplies from the Persian Gulf and Africa by pipeline to China and for Chinese naval operations in the Indian Ocean. The Shanghai Stock Exchange, for its part, is poised to take a 40% stake in Pakistan’s bourse.
Some analysts believe that the tide of new Chinese strategic projects, including in disputed Kashmir, is turning Pakistan into China’s “newest colony.” In fact, at Beijing’s request, Pakistan is setting up special security forces, including a new 13,000-troop army division, to protect the Chinese projects.
The regional implications of the growing strategic nexus between China and Pakistan are stark because the two are non-status-quo powers determined to expand their national borders. The two also have a record of flouting international norms of conduct.
China, by touting “iron brotherhood” with Pakistan and shielding it from international censure, has implicitly tied itself to that country’s proxy war by terror against neighboring states in South Asia.