- China has reportedly begun building a military base in Afghanistan, where it could send hundreds of Chinese troops.
- China will move weapons, equipment, and troops to the facility for cooperative training with Afghan security forces on counterterrorism.
- This development marks the first time in modern history China has established a military presence in Afghanistan.
China has started building a training camp for Afghan troops in a narrow corridor that connects the two countries – a project Beijing is fully funding to help its neighbor improve counterterrorism efforts, sources close to the military said.
Once the camp is completed, the People’s Liberation Army is likely to send hundreds of military personnel, or at least one battalion, to Afghanistan’s isolated Wakhan Corridor, one of the sources who is familiar with the matter told the South China Morning Post.
The corridor is a narrow strip of inhospitable and barely accessible land extending about 350km (220 miles) from the northern Afghan province of Badakhshan to China’s Muslim region of Xinjiang, where Chinese authorities have carried out sweeping crackdowns on the Uygur ethnic minority group in recent months.
It will be the first time in modern history for China to have a military presence in Afghanistan, which is known as the “graveyard of empires” for being notoriously difficult to conquer and govern.
But the war-torn Central Asian country has become increasingly important for China’s own security as well as President Xi Jinping’s new Silk Road trade and infrastructure plan.
China set up its first overseas military base last year in Djibouti, a facility Beijing describes as a military logistics outpost for resupplying Chinese vessels on peacekeeping and humanitarian missions in the Indian Ocean.
The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the PLA had sent more than one battalion to Djibouti, many of them engineers and builders who are working on a multipurpose wharf, with very few combat troops to conduct live-fire drills. A battalion usually has more than 500 troops.
They also said the Afghanistan base would have a different role than the one in Djibouti because the training camp is located close to Xinjiang, which Beijing sees as the main source of the “three forces” – separatism, terrorism and extremism – behind a series of violent attacks in the region in recent years.
“Construction of the base has started, and China will send at least one battalion of troops, along with weapons and equipment, to be stationed there and provide training to their Afghan counterparts,” one of the sources said.
He said that it was unclear when the PLA planned to open the base and that it was considered a “costly but worthwhile project”.
Russian news agency Ferghana News reported in January that Beijing would finance a new military base in Badakhshan after defence ministers from the two countries agreed last year to work together to fight terrorism, citing General Davlat Vaziri from Afghanistan’s defence ministry.
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At the time, China’s defence ministry denied it had a plan to build a “military base” in Afghanistan, but said Beijing had provided aid and support to its neighbor as part of security cooperation efforts, including counterterrorism operations.
Beijing-based military expert Li Jie said that China had ramped up its anti-terrorism measures but that it also needed to work with other countries in Central Asia and the Middle East.
“If they’re going to eliminate the so-called three forces, they need to go to their power bases and take them down,” Li said. “But since the PLA is not familiar with the terrain, and with life in Afghanistan, bilateral cooperation is the best way to get win-win results.”
China has extended more than US$70 million in military aid to Afghanistan in the last three years, researcher Ahmad Bilal Khalil, from the Centre for Strategic and Regional Studies in Kabul, said in February. He added that Beijing feared that instability in the neighbouring country could threaten its growing economic interests across the region.
Song Zhongping, a military analyst in Hong Kong, said the camp would benefit both the Chinese military and its Afghan counterparts.
“A key function of the training base will be to strengthen anti-terrorism cooperation and military exchanges between Beijing and Kabul, which is also part of their efforts to stop separatists from infiltrating Xinjiang,” said Song, a military commentator for Phoenix Television.
“Afghanistan is very weak on counterterrorism, and the authorities there are worried about a Taliban resurgence, but they can’t do anything about it without help from the US, China and other countries.”
Song added that China and Afghanistan had agreed to work together to fight terrorism because of concerns about the East Turkestan Islamic Movement joining forces with the Taliban.
Beijing has blamed the ETIM – a separatist group founded by militant Uygurs – for violent attacks in Xinjiang.
Li Wei, a counterterrorism specialist at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, said that in addition to providing military support, Beijing had also increased economic cooperation with Afghanistan, which is rich in natural resources, with more than 1,400 mineral deposits.
“Defence and [economic] development have always been the basis for mutual benefit,” Li Wei said. “That’s because if both sides just focus on security cooperation, it won’t be a sustainable relationship.”
Afghanistan has been an observer member of the China-led regional security bloc the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) since 2012.
