The China-Pakistan Axis: Asia's New Geopolitics (33 page)

For the period after the 1970s, aside from a couple of essay collections—
China-Pakistan Strategic Cooperation: Indian Perspectives
⁶
and the very recent Chinese volume,
A Model of State-to-State Relations: Retrospects and Prospects of the China-Pakistan Ties since 1951
⁷
—the material becomes more scattered, and the China-Pakistan relationship is largely addressed in the sidelines of other subjects, such as the China-India relationship or Pakistan’s nuclear history. Some of these treatments, such as John Garver’s seminal studies, are excellent, and provide essential reference points for any examination of the subject.
⁸
There are also individual chapters and articles of considerable value, whether on the overall relationship, such as Riaz Mohammad Khan’s “Pakistan-China Relations: An Overview”
⁹
and Ye Hailin’s “China-Pakistan Relationship: All Weathers, But Maybe Not All-Dimensional”,
¹⁰
or on important individual themes, such as Ziad Haider’s “Sino-Pakistan Relations and Xinjiang’s Uighurs”
¹¹
or Fazal-ur Rehman’s “China-Pakistan Economic Relations”.
¹²
More recently, the challenge has been balancing the analysis of what had previously been a relationship defined by its South Asian framework with the growing influence that terrorism, the take-off of militancy in the region, and developments in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s border regions have started to exert. Some experts, such as Yitzak Shichor, have worked on this angle for a long time, and other researchers such as Raffaello Pantucci have gathered very interesting new material that not only looks at the Xinjiang-Central Asia-Afghanistan-Pakistan nexus but extends it to look at the role of Uighurs in transnational networks as far afield as Syria.
¹³

The Chinese material is of mixed quality. Some studies are disappointing collections of platitudes. There are any number of highly misleading descriptions of the history of Sino-Pakistani nuclear cooperation that are contradicted even by semi-official Pakistani accounts. But there is also increasingly good source material emerging here too, whether on key historical moments, such as Cheng Xiaohe’s archive-based account of China’s role in the 1965 war, “China’s Aid toward Pakistan in the India-Pakistan War II”;
¹⁴
frank assessments of current priorities in the region, such as Hu Shisheng’s “Afghan Reconstruction: Regional Challenges”;
¹⁵
or the broader strategic context, such as Wang Jisi’s now
widely-cited “Westward: China’s Rebalancing Geopolitical Strategy”.
¹⁶
The detailed translations of the Chinese-language sources were provided by Zhao Yuxi.

The book has also drawn on the significant existing literature on some of the better trodden topics. The subject of China-Pakistan nuclear cooperation is well covered by the cluster of excellent books around the A.Q. Khan network, such as Gordon Corera’s
Shopping For Bombs
,
¹⁷
by studies from the likes of Mark Hibbs on the civil nuclear side, and Evan Medeiros on China’s proliferation practices, and by the context provided in works such as George Perkovich’s
India’s Nuclear Bomb: the Impact on Global Proliferation
.
¹⁸
The counter-terrorism section pulls together much of the existing research on Xinjiang, such as S. Fredrick Starr’s
Xinjiang: China’s Muslim Borderland
,
¹⁹
and on Central Asia and Afghanistan, such as Ahmed Rashid’s
Jihad: The Rise of Military Islam in Central Asia
;
²⁰
and sources on individual operations, such as the accounts provided in the
Long War Journal
. It goes without saying that I have also benefited from the defining works on Pakistan by Stephen Cohen and on Afghanistan by Barnett Rubin. Some important new books also came out while this one was being written, including Feroz Khan’s
Eating Grass: the Making of the Pakistani Bomb
,
²¹
Gary Bass’s
The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide
,
²²
and Daniel Markey and Hussain Haqqani’s studies of US-Pakistan relations. Much of the rest of the work has been a filleting process, extracting the China-related snippets from an assortment of other archives, memoirs, monographs and media reports. I sometimes benefited as much from an afternoon sifting through former diplomats’ memoirs in Saeed Book Bank in Islamabad or Shah M books in Kabul as I did from my official interviews.

Versions of much of the material in this text have been tested out through various seminars, unpublished conference papers, and critiques of earlier publications. These have included articles for GMF, such as “Afghanistan-Pakistan: Bringing China (back) in”;
²³
for the
Washington Quarterly
, “China’s Caution on Afghanistan/Pakistan”;
²⁴
and for
Foreign Policy
, “Why is China Talking to the Taliban?”
²⁵
and “China’s Afghan Moment”.
²⁶
Papers on Chinese contingency planning prepared for presentations at the Brookings Institution and the Council on Foreign Relations, on China’s counterterrorism policy for Sciences Po, and on “China and Instability in South Asia” for CSIS all benefited considerably from the associated workshops, and informed the relevant sections of the text.

Despite the growing interest in the subject and the increasing accessibility of the information, the number of people working on the subject, particularly those undertaking on-the-ground research, has not grown that much larger in the past six years (indeed, one member of that small group, Alexandros Petersen, tragically lost his life in the January 2014 Kabul restaurant attack). This remains a serious challenge in the process of developing a set of robust and detailed studies in what is still a thinly covered field. For many topics covered in this book, while I have been able to take a first cut, there is a huge amount of work still to be done.

PROLOGUE: IN THE SHADOW OF THE RED MOSQUE

    
1
. The title is owed to “In the Shadow of Lal Masjid”,
China Matters
, 7 Nov. 2007,
http://chinamatters.blogspot.com/2007/11/in-shadow-of-lal-masjid.html,
last accessed 27 Jan. 2014.

    
2
. Aijazuddin, F.S.,
From A Head, Through A Head, To A Head: The Secret Channel between the US and China through Pakistan
, Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 20.

    
3
. For an excellent compilation of all the detailed reporting in the Pakistani press, see: Nur Al Haq, “Lal Masjid Crisis”,
IPRI Factfile
, 2007,
http://ipripak.org/factfiles/ff90.pdf,
last accessed 27 Jan. 2014.

    
4
. Syed Mohsin Naqbi, “Hostages freed after raid on ‘brothel’”, CNN, 23 Jun. 2007,
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/06/23/pakistan.raid/index.html?eref=rss_world,
last accessed 27 Jan. 2014.

    
5
. Minxin Pei, “Party and the Patriot”,
Indian Express
, 21 Jul. 2012,
http://www.gmfus.org/archives/party-and-the-patriot/,
last accessed 27 Jan. 2014.

    
6
. Shakeel Anjum, “Lal Masjid cleric free Chinese”,
The News
, 24 Jun. 2007,
http://archive.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=8648&Cat=13&dt=6/16/2007,
last accessed 23 Jan. 2014.

    
7
. “Pakistan GDP Growth Rate 1951–2009”, Data Source: Federal Bureau of Statistics, Government of Pakistan,
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Pakistan_gdp_growth_rate.svg,
last accessed 22 Dec. 2013.

    
8
. Aasif Inam, “Foreign Direct Investment in Pakistan Telecommunication Sector”, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority Federal Bureau of Statistics, Government of Pakistan,
http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/finance/work-cost-tariffs/events/tariff-seminars/Korea-07/presentations/FDI_Aasif_Inam.pdf,
last accessed 23 Jan. 2014.

    
9
. “Record-breaking spree at KSE on better earnings expectations”,
Daily Times
, 27 Dec. 2007,
http://archives.dailytimes.com.pk/business/27-Dec-2007/record-breaking-spree-at-kse-on-better-earnings-expectations,
last accessed 23 Jan. 2014; “KSE Stock Market”,
Wiki Invest
,
http://www.wikinvest.com/wiki/KSE_Stock_Market,
last accessed 23 Jan. 2014.

    
10
. Steve Coll, “The Back Channel”,
New Yorker
, 2 Mar. 2009,
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/02/090302fa_fact_coll,
last accessed 22 Jan. 2014.

    
11
. Ahmed Rashid, “Taliban Temptation”,
Far Eastern Economic Review
, 11 Mar. 1999, p. 29.

    
12
. Anne Kornblut, “Encounters: Jon Stewart and Pervez Musharraf ”,
New York Times
, 26 Sep. 2006,
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/26/us/politics/26pfun.html?_r=0,
last accessed 22 Jan. 2014.

    
13
. Schmidle, Nicholas S.,
To Live or to Perish Forever: Two Tumultuous Years in Pakistan
, USA: Henry Holt and Company, 2009, p. 91.

    
14
. Lieven, Anatol,
Pakistan: A Hard Country
, New York: Public Affairs, 2011, p157.

    
15
. Amelie Blom, “Changing Religious Leadership in Contemporary Pakistan: The Case of the Red Mosque”, in Bolognani, Marta and Stephen M. Lyon (eds.),
Pakistan and Its Diaspora: Multidisciplinary Approaches
, New York: Palgrave, 2011; Syed Shoaib Hasan, “Profile: Islamabad’s Red Mosque”, BBC News, 27 Jul. 2007,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6503477.stm,
last accessed 27 Jan. 2014.

    
16
. Ibid.

    
17
. Ibid. p. 113.

    
18
. Graham Usher, “Red Mosque: Endgame for Musharraf?”,
The Nation
, 30 Jul. 2007,
http://www.thenation.com/article/red-mosque-endgame-musharraf#,last
accessed 25 Jan. 2014.

    
19
. “Obituary: Abdul Rashid Ghazi”, BBC News, 10 Jul. 2007,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6281228.stm,
last accessed 27 Jan. 2014; “Maulana Abdul Rashid Ghazi freed on my intervention: Ejaz”,
Pak Tribune
,
http://www.paktribune.com/news/print.php?id=174827,
last accessed 27 Jan. 2014; Hussain, Zahid,
The Scorpion’s Tail: The Relentless Rise of Islamic Militants in Pakistan—and How it Threatens America
, New York: Free Press, 2010, p. 113.

    
20
. Ibid. p. 114.

    
21
. Syed Saleem Shahzad, “Pakistan: Trouble in the Mosque”,
Asia Times
, 12 Apr. 2007,
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/ID12Df03.html,last
accessed 27 Jan. 2014.

    
22
. Zhang Cheng, “Jiang Yili, from a scholar to a diplomat”, China Radio International, 3 Oct. 2010,
http://english.cri.cn/4406/2010/03/10/2401s555552.htm,
last accessed 23 Jan. 2014.

    
23
. Syed Irfan Raza, “Chinese hostages freed”,
Dawn
, 23 Jun. 2007,
http://www.dawn.com/news/253217/chinese-hostages-freed,
last accessed 23 Jan. 2014.

    
24
. Ibid.;“All 9 Hostages Held in Pakistani Capital Released”, China Radio International, 23 Jun. 2007,
http://english.cri.cn/2947/2007/06/23/[email protected],
last accessed 27 Jan. 2014.

    
25
. Shakeel Anjum, “Lal Masijd cleric free Chinese”,
Dawn
, 24 Jun. 2007,
http://archive.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=8648&Cat=13&dt=6/16/2007,
last accessed 23 Jan. 2014.

    
26
. Syed Irfan Raza, “Chinese hostages freed”,
Dawn
, 23 Jun. 2007,
http://www.dawn.com/news/253217/chinese-hostages-freed,
last accessed 23 Dec. 2013, Ibid.

    
27
. Shakeel Anjum, “Lal Masjid cleric free Chinese”,
The News
, 24 Jun. 2007,
http://archive.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=8648&Cat=13&dt=6/16/2007,
last accessed 23 Jan. 2014

    
28
. Ibid.

    
29
. Syed Irfan Raza, “Chinese hostages freed”,
Dawn
, 24 Jun. 2007,
http://www.dawn.com/news/253217/chinese-hostages-freed,
last accessed 23 Jan. 2014.

    
30
. Ibid.

    
31
. “Editorial: Lal Masjid’s damage to Pak-China Relations”,
Daily Times
, 29 Jun. 2007,
http://archives.dailytimes.com.pk/editorial/29-Jun-2007/editorial-lal-masjid-s-damage-to-pak-china-relations,
last accessed 13 Dec. 2013.

    
32
. “Pakistan told to do more to protect Chinese workers”, AAJ News, 27 Jun., 2007,
http://www.aaj.tv/2007/06/pakistan-told-do-more-to-protect-chinese-workers/,
last accessed 12 Dec. 2013.

    
33
. Mathieu Duchâtel, “The Old Friend and the Three Evils: China’s Policy towards Pakistan”, presentation at the 23
^rd
Conference of the Association of Chinese Political Studies, Endicott College, Boston, 30–31 Jul., 2010.

    
34
. B. Raman, “How China Forced Musharraf To Move”,
Outlook India
, 4 Jul. 2007,
http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?235015,
last accessed 20 Jan. 2014.

    
35
. Author interviews in Lahore, Islamabad, Brussels, Washington DC, December 2008–June 2013.

    
36
. Pervez Musharraf, “Address to the Nation: Declaration of Emergency”, speaking on national TV, 3 Nov. 2007, video (in Urdu) and English translation available at Manan Ahmed, “The General Speaks”,
Informed Comment: Global Affairs
, 4 Nov. 2007. Note that the official printed text of the speech differs from that delivered on television. The source used here is a translation of the video.