Chinese 'operatives' face Pakistani
wrath By B Raman
The
kidnapping of two Chinese engineers working on an
irrigation project in South Waziristan in the
Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of
Pakistan by a group of pro-Osama bin Laden jihadis last week
and the death of one of them on Wednesday, during a rescue
operation mounted by the US-trained Special Services
Group, the parent army unit of President General Pervez
Musharraf, draws attention once again to the growing
threat to Chinese lives and interests in Pakistan from
jihadi terrorists belonging to the International Islamic
Front (IIF) of bin Laden.
In an article
written after an explosion in Gwadar in Balochistan on May
3 that killed three Chinese engineers, I stated as
follows: "The Chinese suspicion seems to be directed at
anti-Beijing Uighur extremist elements who have taken
shelter in the tribal areas of Pakistan bordering
Afghanistan. In view of the Chinese interest in the
Gwadar port as a gateway for the external trade of the
Xinjiang province and as a regional base for the Chinese
navy, the Uighur extremists, in Beijing's perception,
would have a strong motive to disrupt its construction."
In another article on some explosions in
Tashkent in Uzbekistan, I stated as follows: "There are
no reliable reports of the number of Uzbeks, Chechens
and Uighurs in South Waziristan. Some Pakistani
journalists who had visited the South Waziristan area
in March-April had estimated the total number of
foreigners who had been given shelter there by the
local tribal as about 600, about 200 of them Uzbeks and
the remaining Chechens, Uighurs, Arabs and others. Other
reports place the number of Uighurs [at] about 100. The
presence of Uzbeks, Chechens and Uighurs in the Taliban
and in Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hebz-i-Islami now operating
in Afghanistan has also been reported. Their number is
not known. The Uighurs trained by the IMU (Islamic
Movement of Uzbekistan) were suspected of involvement in
the explosion in Gwadar in Balochistan earlier this year
in which some Chinese engineers were killed and in the
explosions on July 31, at the same town in which no
casualties have been reported. An increase in attacks on
Chinese lives and interests in Pakistan and the Xinjiang
province of China is a possibility."
No official
figures on the total number of Chinese engineers and
other experts based in Pakistan are available. However,
Dawn newspaper of Karachi (October 17) puts their number
at a couple of thousand. In a report on the terrorist
attack on the two Chinese engineers in the South
Waziristan area, it said: "According to one official
estimate, more than a couple of thousand Chinese
engineers and technicians are working on several major
projects in Pakistan. Most of them being in the [North
West] Frontier and Balochistan provinces. Saindak,
Gwadar and Chashma II are among the major projects."
Reliable and independent sources divide these
engineers and other experts into the following three
groups:
Those assisting Pakistan in the development of its
nuclear and missile capability. They are helping
Pakistan in the already commissioned Chashma I nuclear
power station, in the designing and construction of the
second nuclear power station called Chashma II, and in
the running of the production facilities for the
extraction of plutonium from spent nuclear fuel and for
the assembly and fabrication of the Pakistani versions
of the Chinese-designed M-9 and M-11 missiles. Those in
this group constitute the largest number.
Those assisting Pakistan in the construction of
a new port at Gwadar in Balochistan, which is expected
to reduce Pakistan's dependence on Karachi,
at present the country's only major international port and
major naval base, and in the exploitation of the
rich mineral resources of the tribal areas
bordering Afghanistan, such as the Saindak copper-ore project in
Balochistan. They constitute the second-largest number.
Those assisting Pakistan in the
economic development of the FATA, in which South
Waziristan is located, and other tribal areas and of the
Northern Areas (Gilgit and Baltistan) bordering
Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous
Region
of China.
They constitute the third-largest group. While those based in
the Northern Areas mainly help Pakistan in the
maintenance and improvement of the Karakoram Highway,
those in the FATA and other tribal areas assist Pakistan
in the exploitation of the mineral resources and
irrigation and power facilities in these areas.
In addition to the three groups mentioned
above, small numbers of Chinese experts are also attached
to the Pakistani railways for improving their performance and
to the Pakistani armed forces for assisting in the
maintenance of Chinese military equipment.
The
presence
of the Chinese engineers and other experts in the
nuclear and missile establishments and in the armed forces
has generally been welcomed by all sections of the
population, including by the Islamic fundamentalist parties
and the Pakistani jihadi organizations, which are
members of the bin Laden-inspired IIF, which came into
being in February 1998 and has been in the
forefront of the worldwide jihad in many countries.
All of them, including bin Laden's al-Qaeda, had
in the past expressed the gratitude of the Islamic
ummah to Beijing for its help
in the production of Pakistan's atomic bomb, which is
viewed by them as the ummah's Islamic bomb and hence the common
strategic asset of the ummah as a whole. There
is, therefore, no controversy about their presence in
Pakistani territory and no jihadi anger against them.
There is, however, growing anger against the
Chinese working in Balochistan and in the FATA. The
Balochs are strongly opposed to the Gwadar project,
which they view as in essence meant to serve the
economic and military interests of the Punjabis.
Distrusting the Balochs, the regime of Musharraf has
resettled a large number of Punjabis, many of them
ex-servicemen, in Balochistan, particularly on the
Mekran coast, for working in the Gwadar project as well
as in another Chinese-aided infrastructure project for
the construction of a coastal road connecting Gwadar and
Karachi.
The Baloch nationalists have been
agitating against these projects, which, they apprehend,
would reduce them to a minority in their homeland. They
have also been critical of the Chinese for assisting the
military-dominated regime in its designs against the
Balochs.
The anger against the Chinese
working in the FATA, particularly in the South Waziristan
area, is due to other reasons. The terrorist infrastructure
of the Chechen, Uzbek and Uighur organizations, which
are associated with bin laden's IIF, is located in
this area. The Chinese have been greatly concerned over
the activities of these elements, which they view as
posing a threat to their security in Xinjiang.
The foreign-based Uighur organizations agitating
against the Chinese fall into two groups - those
agitating for azadi (freedom) for the Uighurs
living in Xinjiang and in the bordering Central Asian
republics (CARs), who do not have any pan-Islamic
objective, and those agitating for the formation of an
Islamic caliphate consisting of Xinjiang and the CARs.
The azadi elements largely operate through
propaganda and other means of psychological warfare
(psywar) from safe sanctuaries in the West, including
the United States, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and even some of
the CARs. The jihadi pro-caliphate elements, which are
aligned with bin Laden's IIF, operate mainly from safe
sanctuaries in the FATA and other tribal areas of
Pakistan. They enjoy the support of the tribal elements
and the Pakistani fundamentalist and jihadi
organizations.
Talking to a group of senior
Pakistani newspaper editors after a visit to China last
year, Musharraf was reported to have stated that he was
shocked by the strong language used by the Chinese
leaders while talking of the activities of the Uighur
jihadi terrorists from Pakistani territory.
Since then, the Pakistani army and its
Inter-Services Intelligence have mounted special
operations to smoke out the Chechens, the Uzbeks and the
Uighurs operating from the FATA in cooperation with one
another. Apart from killing or capturing a few Uzbek and
Chechen terrorists and killing a Uighur terrorist,
these operations have not produced any significant
results. In the meanwhile, the Hizbut Tehrir, which has
a strong presence in Pakistan and the CARs, has started
wooing the Uighurs in an attempt to set up sleeper cells
in Xinjiang.
Among the major successes claimed
by the Pakistani authorities since March are the killing
of Hassan Mahsun of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement
and of Nek Mohammed, a local Pakistani tribal leader,
who was allegedly assisting the al-Qaeda and the Taliban
remnants and causing serious injuries to Tohir Yuldeshev
of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, who, however,
managed to escape.
After the Gwadar
explosion of May, a large number of Chinese intelligence
officers from its ministries of state (external) and
public (internal) security have been deployed in
Balochistan and South Waziristan to assist the Pakistani
authorities in their investigation and in their hunt for
Uighur jihadi terrorists.
According
to well-informed sources in the Pakistan police, next
to the US intelligence agencies, the Chinese agencies
have the largest number of operatives in Pakistani
territory. While the Americans have been helping the
Pakistani military-intelligence establishment in its
hunt for the dregs of al-Qaeda, the Chinese operatives
have been active in the hunt against Uighurs.
The jihadi organizations suspect that
many of the Chinese operatives inducted into Balochistan
and the FATA after the May explosion work under the
cover of members of the staff of Chinese construction
companies, which have been helping Pakistan in its
various projects in these areas.
It is said
that the kidnapping of the two Chinese engineers was
an operation jointly mounted by Pakistani members of
the Jundullah (Army of Allah), a new jihadi
organization that came to notice for the first time at Karachi on
June 10 when it unsuccessfully tried to kill the then
Corps Commander of the Pakistan army at Karachi, the
dregs of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, and some
Chechens and Uighurs whose organizational affiliation is
not clear.
The Pakistani military
authorities have projected Abdullah Mehsud, a former
Taliban commander who was released by US authorities from
detention in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in
March, as the mastermind of the kidnap and have admitted
that apart from some local tribal followers of Abdullah,
three Uzbeks were also involved. They have claimed that
the apparent objective of the kidnappers was to secure
the release of some foreign terrorists arrested in the
area recently. They have played down the possibility of
any specific anti-Chinese motive.
On the other
hand, Pakistani police sources say that the jihadis
suspected that the two kidnapped Chinese were actually
intelligence operatives working under the cover of
irrigation engineers belonging to a Chinese company
specializing in the construction of irrigation projects.
According to them, more attacks on Chinese engineers
working in Balochistan and the FATA and a possible
terrorist strike against the Chinese Embassy in
Islamabad are likely. There is no indication so far of
the likelihood of any terrorist strike against the
Chinese working in the nuclear and missile
establishments and in the armed forces.
B
Raman is additional secretary (retired), Cabinet
Secretariat, government of India, and currently
director, Institute for Topical Studies, Chennai, and
Distinguished Fellow and Convenor, Observer Research
Foundation (ORF), Chennai Chapter. E-mail:corde@vsnl.com.
