Much of the regional policy matrix adopted by Beijing is based on the recommendations of GHQ Rawalpindi. This includes the installation of the Taliban as the ruler of Afghanistan.
The use of extremist auxiliaries by M.A. Jinnah, the new President of Pakistan, the newest country in the world at the time, had consequences that made the country a “neighbour from hell” for India, Afghanistan and Iran. Aware that conventional warfare was not their strong point, the Pakistan army continued with the use of irregulars to soften the resistance of its foes. In the case of Iran, safe havens were provided to terror groups operating within that consequential Middle Eastern power, a policy that clandestinely continues to this day. Since the 1980s in Afghanistan, religious supremacists were trained, armed and sent across the border in order to destabilize and eventually control the country as a satellite of the GHQ-controlled 1947 breakaway from the Union of India. As for India, the Pakistan military has gained substantial advantages from its policy of being the instrument of those powers out to “teach India a lesson”, the US in the earlier parts of its existence owing to the Nehruvian embrace of the USSR in the name of “non-alignment”. Later. GHQ got close to the PRC, which has regarded India as a foe ever since the XIV Dalai Lama of Tibet, Tenzin Gyatso, took up permanent residence in our country in 1959. The genial Buddhist monk, to the incomprehension of Communist Party cadres in China, retains the respect of the indigenous population of Tibet, although the rapidly increasing Han population there has been taught to regard him as a bogeyman out to separate Tibet from the grip of the PRC, something that the Dalai Lama has always denied attempting. Keeping India’s focus on Pakistan, Japan’s on North Korea and the attention of the US from Communist China to Wahhabi extremism has long been part of the CCP leadership’s playbook. The creation of proxy nuclear states serves to shield the PRC against retaliation from the targets chosen for harassment by GHQ Rawalpindi and its principal facilitator since the 1990s, the Central Military Commission (CMC) in Beijing. It is clear from its actions that the CMC has long adopted with alacrity the irregular warfare playbook that is a staple of the tactics of GHQ Rawalpindi mainly against Afghanistan, Iran and India, but increasingly in operations in other theatres where a “softening up” through harassment by extremists was deemed necessary.
The Pakistan army has found itself under suspicion by numerous countries as a consequence of its rampant use of terror groups as an essential element of GHQ policy. In several countries across both sides of the Atlantic, those who are from Pakistan pass off as being from India, some with false papers, given the toxicity that surrounds Pakistan after much of GHQ’s “extra-conventional” activities have been exposed. These days, the PRC is getting linked to Pakistan as a consequence of the seamless functioning of the GHQ-PLA brotherhood. Ever since the assertiveness (not merely in words but all too often in practice) that has characterised the functioning of the CMC under CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping, public opinion in several parts of the world have become hostile towards China. The wolf warrior calls of what is still named the PRC diplomatic service are not helping to drive away the impression that the PRC has become a threat to global stability and security. This illwill is the result of its relentless effort at securing Zero Sum outcomes for an increasing array of demands that are being put forward now that Xi Jinping Thought is guiding the destiny of the PRC. As was the case of the US in the past, much of the regional policy matrix adopted by Beijing is based on the recommendations of GHQ Rawalpindi. This includes the installation of the Taliban as the eventual ruler of Afghanistan, despite the danger that such a situation would pose to control by the CCP over Xinjiang. Unlike in Tibet, where the calls for peaceful methods repeatedly made by the Dalai Lama have been heeded, in Xinjiang the Uygur population resembles a powder keg, lacking only the weaponry needed to launch a full scope insurgency against the manner in which indigenous communities have been marginalised by the influx of Han settlers facilitated by the central and provincial government authorities. Given the trajectory in Afghanistan-Pakistan, it is only a matter of time before the flow of weapons and fighters moves into Xinjiang. Efforts by the CMC to turn the gaze of extremists from Xinjiang to Kashmir are failing because there is no comparison between what is taking place in Kashmir (despite sustained GHQ propaganda to the contrary) and what has been happening to the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, despite the Wahhabi International (long a close ally of the PRC) ignoring this reality in order to keep going its alliance with China. Even within the Taliban, many Pashtuns are aware of what is taking place to Uyghurs in Xinjiang, and are biding their time before opening a front there.
“Be careful or your wish may come true”. The effort by General Secretary Xi to assist GHQ Rawalpindi in the manner that is occurring has damaged China’s relationship with India almost to breaking point. Seeking to take over the South China Sea has made ASEAN (presently silent) unhappy and looking for guarantors of a free and open Indo-Pacific. Securing the CPEC will prove a trap as deadly as what the USSR faced in the 1980s in Afghanistan. Not to mention choosing the wrong side in Afghanistan (the Taliban rather than the Ghani administration), which will have consequences for the PRC in Xinjiang and in other parts of the PRC that will become apparent even during the time when Xi Jinping is still General Secretary of the CCP. Those in other countries who respect the culture and people of China can only look on in dismay as the post-2012 CCP leadership meanders through one geopolitical blunder after another.