Crescent International
China is gearing up to fill the vacuum.
Washington DC,
January 27, 2013, 15:35 EST
As US forces are poised (to mostly) withdraw in 2014, China is gearing up to fill the vacuum and become the big power player in the Eurasian wars that have transformed Afghanistan into perpetual battleground.
Beijing signed a strategic partnership last summer with the war-torn country. This was followed in September with a trip to Kabul by its top security official, the first by a leading Chinese government figure in 46 years, and the announcement that China would train 300 Afghan police officers. China is also showing signs of willingness to help negotiate a peace agreement as Nato prepares to pull out in two years.
This view is being increasingly voiced (with panic) in the US media and think tank outlets. ”If you are able to see a more or less stable situation in Afghanistan, if it becomes another relatively normal Central Asian state, China will be the natural beneficiary,” says Andrew Small, a China expert The German Marshall Fund of the United States, a think tank. “If you look across Central Asia that is what has already happened. … China is the only actor who can foot the level of investment needed in Afghanistan to make it succeed and stick it out,” he adds.
A high ranking Chinese official, domestic security chief Zhou Yongkang, has recently visited Kabul and signed high level economic and security agreements with the Karzai government. According to the BBC, Zhou’s visit to Afghanistan was kept secret until after he left the country.
Under the new agreements signed by Karzai and Zhou, around 300 Afghan police officers will be sent to China for training over the next four years. The security collaboration cements the economic relationship that China has been assiduously cultivating with Afghanistan over the past number of years. For instance, China has been investing in Afghanistan's mineral sector for several years. A Chinese state-owned mining company has invested in a copper mine in the eastern province of Logar, although work to excavate a 7th-Century Buddhist site has slowed work on the mine. Last year, China also won approval for oil exploration and extraction in the Amu Darya river basin.
The news has thrown the US in a panic, which had been relying on the NATO trained Afghan national police and security forces to continue the US occupation of the country by proxy.
END
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