China will not replace US in Afghanistan
Print Edition
CHINA is not seeking to fill a void left in Afghanistan by the withdrawal of American troops but will play a “huge” commercial role in helping rebuild the country, a newly appointed special envoy said yesterday.
China, which is connected to Afghanistan by an almost impassable mountain corridor, has been quietly preparing for more responsibility there after the bulk of United States-led troops pull out by the end of the year.
Some Western officials have said China is likely to emerge as a strategic player in Afghanistan but Sun Yuxi, who was appointed special representative to the country last Friday, said China’s involvement will remain largely commercial.
“This idea about filling a void after the withdrawal of troops, I think it doesn’t exist,” Sun told reporters in Beijing.
Sun is scheduled to head to Afghanistan today for talks.
China’s commitment to the reconstruction in Afghanistan since the ouster of a hardline Islamist regime in 2001 has been a relatively paltry US$250 million and its security support to the country has been mostly limited to counter-narcotics training.
But a consortium of Chinese investors is involved in a landmark US$3 billion deal to produce copper in Afghanistan although work on the deposit, among the world’s largest, has been largely halted by insurgent attacks.
China is looking forward to much more economic involvement, which is essential for stability in Afghanistan, Sun said.
“In the long-term, an even greater portion of our cooperation and participation in economic rebuilding will be carried out in a commercial way. This amount will be huge,” he told reporters.
Help to rebuild
“Preserving Afghanistan’s stability is not a matter of adding troops, but of helping Afghanistan to quickly rebuild. We hope to see a rapid decrease in weaponry and a rapid increase in wealth,” Sun said.
The veteran diplomat with experience of Afghanistan since the late 1970s said US-China cooperation on Afghanistan has been one of the “very bright highlights” in ties between the two countries, whose relations are often testy.
He welcomed the withdrawal of the bulk of US-led troops and welcomed the expected maintenance of a small, residual US force.
“The new Afghan government should mainly be responsible for security. The United States is preparing to withdraw, and we welcome that,” he said.
“We also welcome the United States retaining some military bases to observe for a time and cooperate to help the Afghan people and government fight terrorism.”
A major worry for China is that separatist militants from its western Xinjiang region will take advantage if Afghanistan again descends into chaos.
The separatists are believed to be based in militant strongholds in ungoverned stretches of the Afghan-Pakistani border.
Sun said he did not know how many were there but there were hundreds before the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
“At the peak, there was about 1,000 people there,” he said, adding that some were killed or captured in fighting but most had fled.
China said Islamist militants are to blame for a spate of recent terrorist attacks in which about 200 people have been killed.
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