China weighs how best to bolt the back door to terrorists from Afghanistan

Beijing fears instability in Afghanistan could pose a threat via other neighbouring countries such as Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan
The danger of a spillover after the Taliban’s takeover raises the importance of cooperation between countries in the region

Afghanistan

Kinling LoandSarah Zheng

Published: 10:00pm, 21 Aug 2021

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China has stepped up defences on its border with Afghanistan to guard against potential terrorist threats, given the turmoil after Kabul’s sudden fall to the Taliban. But the narrow Afghan-Chinese frontier is not the only entry point, with less reinforced borders between Afghanistan and its other neighbours, such as Tajikistan, representing a challenge for the region’s security alliances.

There are growing concerns for the Chinese government that instability in landlocked Afghanistan following the militant group’s takeover could spill across vulnerable Afghan borders into Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan to the north, as well as threatening other regional players such as Pakistan, Iran, Russia, India and Turkey.

Already, China has carried out an anti-terrorism exercise with Tajikistan that began on Wednesday.

Observers say that China may seek to further deepen cooperation with Tajikistan and other central Asian neighbours, after chaotic scenes of Afghans seeking desperately to flee after the Taliban takeover. Beijing has repeatedly called for the Taliban and others to ensure stability in the country to prevent it from relapsing into a hotbed of terrorism, particularly given that China’s highly sensitive western Xinjiang region shares a narrow 70km (43-mile) border with Afghanistan.

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Lu Xiang, a senior researcher on China-US relations at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that China had military deployments within 100km of the border with Afghanistan that could help prevent infiltration by terrorist forces, but there could be a risk of being breached via Afghanistan’s northern neighbours.

“These three neighbouring countries north of Afghanistan may be points of weakness, and Russia can exert its influence on them,” he said.

“China can also coordinate between Pakistan and Iran – although they have strategic competition over Afghanistan – and can work with Russia to share intelligence and coordinate through the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation security grouping, led by Russia and China.

“While single cases could still appear, it is unlikely that there will be a large-scale spillover effect into these neighbouring countries. Overall, all the countries bordering Afghanistan have the same interests, since no country wants to see Afghanistan become a breeding ground for terrorism.”

Beijing has stressed its concerns that the turmoil in Afghanistan could present an opportunity for extremist groups, in particular the East Turkestan Islamic Movement that it blames for unrest and violence in Xinjiang. The feared threat from the group is partly behind China’s hardline policies to prevent separatism and terrorism in Xinjiang, including the alleged detention of up to a million Uygurs and members of other mostly Muslim ethnic minorities in the region.

What is going on in Xinjiang and who are the Uygur people?

Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Thursday that Beijing had taken note of the Taliban saying it would not allow anyone to use Afghan territory to threaten other countries, and that the militant group had so far appeared “more clear-headed and rational” than it did 20 years ago. In response to scepticism over whether the Taliban had changed, she said that “nothing in the world is set in stone”.

Li Wei, a counterterrorism analyst at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations in Beijing, said that although China was not in a military alliance with any Central Asian countries, he believed the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation – a military alliance with Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan – could be effective against security challenges.

“China is concerned about the border security of these other Afghan neighbours, and Tajikistan has a longer shared border with Afghanistan, so could face bigger challenges than the others,” Li said. “But it is also in these countries’ own interest to avoid insurgencies within their borders. I believe that, together with Russian military bases there, make the security problems not that concerning.”

Russia has a military base in Dushanbe, Tajikistan’s capital, and has pledged military assistance to its allies bordering Afghanistan if they face incursions of militants after the Taliban takeover. Moscow also staged military drills with Uzbekistan and Tajikistan on the Afghan border this summer.

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Li said that the Taliban’s advances in Afghanistan since US troops started withdrawing in May had begun in border towns, meaning those regions could be less volatile than others during the power transition.

“However, at times like this it is very reasonable for bordering countries to step up security and protection of their own country,” he said, adding that he expected to see more military drills and exchange of intelligence between neighbouring countries.

China already has a security buffer at the Wakhan Corridor, the narrow strip of Afghan land that separates Tajikistan and Pakistan and extends to the Chinese border, said Raffaello Pantucci, a senior fellow at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.

“China has strengthened its own border with Afghanistan, as well as provided support for security forces on the Pakistan and Tajikistan side of the border,” he said. “This is in essence a direct security buffer between China and the problems of Afghanistan.”

Pantucci said that to gain assurances about its concerns regarding Afghanistan, China may seek to increase its engagement with Tajikistan, including at the upcoming Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Dushanbe.

“The limitations of such cooperation are mostly around the fact that China does not have a huge amount of experience in actually doing counterterrorism operations or fighting wars in mountains, especially when we compare them with the Russians, who also provide security assurances and support along that border,” he said. “So it is not clear what protection it would actually offer.”

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Beijing wary of terrorist spillover from Kabul’s fall