Blood Offering: The Death of Mullah Mansoor, China, and the South China Sea

It's a long way from landlocked Afghanistan to the South China Sea, but...

The May 21, 2016 U.S. assassination by drone of Mullah Mansoor, the supreme leader of the Afghan Taliban, would have seemed to be a bad thing for the People’s Republic of China.

Mansoor, after all, was the chosen instrument of the Pakistan intelligence services for its preferred solution in Afghanistan: a regime dominated by the pro-Pakistan Taliban.

The PRC has a vested interest, not limited to its $46 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor, in a Pakistan that is reasonably secure and in control of its western flank, and sees a friendly Afghanistan, i.e. a joint Pashtun Taliban/Pakistan ISI project able to keep an effective lid on the activities of anti-PRC Muslim militants in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, as a near-existential strategic priority.

Killing Mansoor was a U.S. gambit to upset the Afghan chessboard and make it less favorable to Pakistan.  The operation was foreshadowed by expressions of disgust and indignation at Pakistan’s coddling of Afghan Taliban leadership, and providing them with havens inside Pakistan. 

President Obama announced that the death of Mansour was “a milestone”.  The killing overjoyed President Ghani of Afghanistan, who had washed his hands of the Quadrilateral Talks (talking shop of Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, and the US meant to lure the Taliban into political engagement).  He is apparently counting on the US to transform its Pakistan policy from “tough love” to “frank hate” and force the Pakistan army and security service to limit if not end their covert support for Taliban intransigence.

I am not inclined toward the opinion that Pakistan colluded with the US in eliminating Mansoor as an excessively unruly and disobedient asset.  The ISI, I would imagine, has ways of dealing with such issues that don't involve the U.S. declaring open season on Taliban senior leaders via drone attacks in Balochistan.

All in all, a brisk kick in the behind for Pakistan, and just the latest in a series of signals—including a Congressional resolution that the U.S. would not provide financing for Pakistan’s planned purchase of F-16 fighters-- that the U.S. is accelerating its tilt away from Pakistan and toward India as its preferred South Asian partner. 

The “everyone but Pakistan and China” narrative was reinforced by a visit by Prime Minister Modi to Iran on May 23 to confirm India’s participation in the Chabahar port project, regarded as a necessary alternative to Gwadar and Pakistan for linking Central Asia with the Indian Ocean.

President Ghani of Afghanistan also joined the summit to signal Afghanistan’s preference for the Chabahar corridor, which would finally offer Afghanistan an alternative to Pakistan obstruction and delay in the transport of goods and military materiel via Karachi or Gwadar.

Events are definitely presenting the picture of the United States ditching Pakistan as punishment for its pro-PRC tilt, as exemplified by Pakistan's commitment to the CPEC Gwadar-Kashgar economic corridor as a geostrategic lifeline.  Instead, Ash Carter has gone over the top wooing India as a military ally, apparently going all-in on a narrative of Pakistan-encirclement, Taliban neutralization, and China-containment by the US-India-Afghan axis.

However, the response of the PRC was remarkably muted as its only ally, Pakistan, and its preferred geostrategic solution, Afghanistan under the thumb of the Taliban and Pakistan, were kicked to the curb with the Mansoor assassination.  

The PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson stated “We have noted relevant report. China hopes that the Afghan peace and reconciliation process can continue to be pushed forward and relevant parties remain committed to peace and stability in Afghanistan and the region.”

That’s it, as far as I can tell.  No bluster, no ministerial statements, no anxious/belligerent op-eds in Global Times.

It’s possible that the PRC was simply shrugging off a desperate and futile US gambit. 

Certainly, the assassination had a few problems.  Afghanistan itself, to be frank, is a problem.

For advocates of a non-Pakistan solution, the biggest problem is that 1) the Afghan Taliban are Pakistan-friendly and 2) an important reason they are Pakistan-friendly is that they are largely Pashtun and the majority of Pashtun reside in western Pakistan and 3) Pashtuns form the plurality in Afghanistan.

Here's an instructive map that shows what the Durand Line--a piece of British imperial mapmaking that now serves as the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan--did to the Pashtun community.   13 million to the left of the line in Afghanistan; 30 million--yes, 30 million--to the right of the line in Pakistan.  Total: 43 million Pashtuns.  Population of Afghanistan: 30 million.

The Taliban controls as much Afghan real estate as it ever did post-2002, possibly more, and is waiting out the United States, which has telegraphed its disinterest in pouring more money and effort into the bottomless pit of Afghanistan.  

Interested readers will notice a considerable overlap between the range of Pashtun ethnicity and the strongholds of the insurgency.  Consider the Taliban insurgency the western wing of a drive by the Pashtuns--the region's dominant ethnicity, supported by a major South Asian military power, Pakistan-- for self-determination in the political space of Central Asia.

The U.S. strategy for dealing with this unfavorable disposition of forces was exemplified by the warning uberspook Richard Armitage delivered to Pakistan after 9/11: turn on the Taliban regime in Afghanistan or prepare to be bombed "back to the stone age".

The U.S. persisted in the delusion that armtwisting Pakistan into confronting the Afghan Taliban, demanding Pakistan security sweeps against Taliban harboring in Pakistan frontier areas, and droning Taliban units inside Pakistan was a winning strategy.

In August 2008, I looked at the latest, "surge-y" iteration of this strategy (which the US military sold to President-elect Obama) and wrote:

American planners originally hoped that Musharraf’s armies would be the anvil upon which Western forces crushed the Taliban in eastern Afghanistan.

Pakistan is more like a rotten melon that will fly apart under the hammer blows of a U.S. counter-insurgency campaign in west Pakistan.

Well, guess what.  I was right.

The Taliban insurgency failed to evaporate despite the carrots dangled and sticks brandished before Pakistan, Pakistan's milsec establishment continued to provide clandestine support, and the Afghan war ground on, with alarming blowback effects inside Pakistan as Pashtun militants pushed back against wavering Pakistan government resolve in the U.S.-led fight.

The US originally announced it was leaving Afghanistan at the end of 2016; when this started to induce the Vietnam effect, i.e. emboldening the enemy and accelerating the collapse of our client regime, President Obama fudged and said we weren’t leaving…but we do plan to draw down.

Once more into the breach, therefore, for American COINistas determined not to admit the Afghan problem has them licked.

The not-so-good situation in Afghanistan occasioned a chest-thumping op-ed by General Petraeus, agitating for a massive Iraq/Syria style bombing campaign to turn the tide against the Taliban: Take the Gloves Off Against the Taliban.

“Taking the gloves off” involved killing some folks—nothing new here—but killing them for some rather sketchy reasons.

I am, for instance, unaware of any previous occasion upon which the United States killed somebody because “he was an obstacle to peace and reconciliation”, the justification that U.S. Orwell-speak-person Peter Cook gave for the assassination of Mansoor.  

The strategic deep thinking was ostensibly that the killing would sow disarray in the Taliban, perhaps fuel a catastrophic power grab by the Haqqani faction, and either cripple the organization or elevate a more cooperative figure than Masoor to the leadership and lead to a fatal outbreak of sincerity in the Taliban concerning participation in the Quadrilateral Peace Talks (which Mansoor had boycotted, occasioning his execution).

Rosa Brooks expressed her doubts about how killing this guy was going to solve our Afghanistan problem in a piece titled The Magical Thinking of the Killing of Mullah Mansour.

As it transpired, the Taliban elected a new leader in a couple days, Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, a guy that nobody ever heard of, and one who has as yet expressed no desire to participate in the peace negotiations.  Victory!

Or not.  

PRC diplomacy in Central and South Asia in the period surrounding the assassination offers an interesting counterpoint to “rest of world closes ranks against Pakistan and China.”

On May 15-18, the PRC hosted the Afghan Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah for a visit that resulted in several agreements, and a statement by the PRC that Afghanistan supported the PRC on the South China Sea.  The PRC endorsed an “Afghan-owned Afghan-led” peace process and “call[ed] on all Afghan armed opposition groups to participate in the reconciliation process.”

On May 26, India’s President Mukherjee concluded a state visit to China with a meeting with Xi Jinping (for the official photo, Xi broke into a full smile instead of his usual tight-lipped simper; hmm) and said nice things about the importance of the relationship.

It should be noted that Mukherjee and Abdullah, though both distinguished public servants, are nevertheless second bananas in their respective countries.  While Mukherjee was in China, Modi was in Iran signing the Chabahar agreement.  While Abdullah was in China, Ghani was presumably burning up the wires with the Department of Defense finalizing the assassination of Mansoor.

Glass half empty for PRC: Afghanistan and India are putting more of their strategic eggs in the U.S. basket.  Glass half full: PRC still commands their attention thanks to its military and economic heft, and its leverage over Pakistan.

To shift to a poker analogy, not a strong hand but playable. 

Clearly the PRC decided to put some distance between itself and Pakistan on the Mansoor matter, acknowledging the assassination but not making a big issue of the violation of Pakistan sovereignty, or pointing out that the killing might not bring any major improvements to the Afghan scene, or for that matter griping that the it cut off the Quad Talks process at the knees.

The likely scenario is that the United States notified the PRC at some late date, maybe after the attack to preserve operational security, that Mansoor was done.  And the PRC, figuring that the assassination wouldn’t do much more than provide a new point of failure for the US strategy in Afghanistan, said OK. 

That assumes that the DoD is in command of South Asian policy and Ash Carter just wants to stick it to the PRC and Pakistan.  In that case, I would say Buckle Your Seatbelts, because I honestly doubt that the United States, the Kabul government, India, and Iran have the muscle to stabilize Afghanistan if the Taliban, Pakistan, and PRC are not part of the plan.

It’s possible there’s a different dynamic at work, one that exploits the PRC’s desire to enhance its South Asian leverage and options, at Pakistan’s expense if necessary.  

The PRC is rather desperate for opportunities for strategic engagement with the United States, to serve as bargaining chips as it tries to counter the de facto US China containment regime.  There’s not that much left on the table.  With the Iran agreement pocketed, the PRC no longer plays a valuable role.  In North Korea, the crisis is mainly an opportunity for the US to berate the PRC for not doing enough.  

And then there’s Afghanistan, where the US took a big step toward gutting the Quad Talks, the PRC’s forum for engaging with the US, by killing Mansoor.

But maybe the Obama administration offered the PRC a new opportunity to show it was a team player, that it wasn’t just backing Pakistan’s hand as the Taliban hoisted Ghani on a cleft stick: endorse Mansoor’s assassination.  

So the PRC thought about it and decided, OK.  That’s something that will restore some initiative to the US in Afghanistan, give President Obama a PR lift, strengthen his hand against the China hawks at the Pentagon, and show that the PRC is a useful partner in Afghanistan.  

Kill Mansoor.  We won’t complain.  And we’ll help smooth things over with Pakistan.

Maybe the PRC even proposed the hit in the first place.  

Hardnosed realpolitik, but it wouldn’t be the first time.  The PRC threw Iran under the bus in spectacular fashion in 2010, turning its back on the Brazil-Turkey proposal to fuel the Tehran research reactor and pushing through a deal with the US to pass UN Security Council sanctions that were crucial to President Obama's Iran negotiations strategy.

Looking at the rather muted official griping in Pakistan concerning the sovereignty-affronting and red-line-crossing assassination of Mansoor in Balochistan, and the blatant interest of the U.S. in sidelining it in the Afghanistan equation, perhaps PRC suasion is at work.

But possibly at the same time Pakistan has signaled its unhappiness in its time-honored fashion, through the statements of Islamist proxies.

On May 28, 2016,  Hafiz Mohammad Sayeed, a leader of the hardline Pakistan Islamist group Jamaat-ud Dawa (allegedly linked to the LeT and the notorious Mumbai attack, well, pretty much the deniable political arm of the LeT), criticized the PRC's policies toward Islam, particularly with respect to a purported statement by Xi Jinping that Uyghurs should shun Islam in favor of "Marxist-Atheism".

Sayeed said that this statement by the Chinese leadership was a "challenge to the Islamic way of life" and, he called upon the Pakistan Government to "show some courage and direct China to stay away from hurting Islamic sentiments ".

The hardline leader told his followers that he plans to meet the Chinese Ambassador in Islamabad to lodge his protest.

A rather remarkable development, given the backing the PRC has given to the Pakistan at the UN Security Council in stalling sanctions on LeT-affiliated individuals, as recently as two months ago in the case of Masood Azhar.

A report I saw on twitter said the JuD leadership had subsequently walked back Sayeed's statement, which makes it look like a shot across the bow at the PRC.

I'm wondering it Jamaat-ud-Dawa's dissatisfaction with the PRC had less to do with Xi's purported statement and more to do with the PRC's passive attitude (or worse) to Mansoor's assassination.  JuD's Mansoor sympathies are quite unequivocal; on May 30 it organized prayer remembrances for Mansoor across Pakistan.   

As far as I can tell, by the way, the "Xi: Shun Islam" report, looks suspiciously like psyops or even disinfo propagated through the Indian press to make trouble between the PRC and Pakistan; getting into the weeds here, maybe Indian intelligence saw this piece of mischief as appropriate retaliation for the PRC hold on the Azhar designation.  The possibility that Sayeed latched onto a piece of RAW psyops when casting around for a pretext to bash China is rather interesting.

The PRC could also note with some quiet anxiety that the Turkestan Islamic Party (Uyghur-led fighters dedicated to fighting Han rule in Xinjiang) also issued a statement of condolence for Mansoor, demonstrating their ties of sympathy etc. to the Afghan Taliban.

As for the quid pro quo? 

Landlocked, US-allied Afghanistan's willingness, at least as asserted by the PRC, to back the PRC position on the South China Sea, gave me pause.  Was this a reward/incentive for the PRC to distance itself from Pakistan?   

The PRC is determinedly if not frantically working every global angle to avoid getting boxed in diplomatically if/when it loses the UNCLOS arbitration and refuses to accept the judgment.  The US and its allies will inevitably excoriate the PRC, but the key test will be how aggressively the US pushes a confrontation with the PRC over enforcement of the judgment.  China hawks are going public with their concern that the Obama administration will be "weak".

Maybe the PRC hopes the sacrifice of Mullah Mansoor—and the promise it offers to the US of the PRC playing a positive, supportive role vis a vis Pakistan and Taliban—provides another good, if not decisive reason for President Obama to exercise restraint when the next South China Sea crisis rolls around.

 

With IS, US Getting Ready for Its “Suez Crisis” Post-Imperial Close-Up

Though an anti-war type I am not on the same page with many anti-war types when it comes to poo-pooing President Obama’s call for military action against the IS caliphate.  

The caliphate is a big deal, in my opinion, a big bad transnational deal with significant consequences throughout Asia, and something should be done.  “Something”, unfortunately, would be a big, disruptive military campaign coordinated through the UN Security Council and Arab League, spearheaded by Saudi Arabia and Turkey, and involving lots of Saudi and Turkish casualties, both military and civilian, and a prolonged, agonizing, and expensive effort to reassert the control of the Iraqi and Syrian governments over the territory they had lost.

Understandably, nobody, including the United States, is willing or able to make sure that something actually gets done and it looks like what we are getting is a collection of ineffectual half-measures justified by hyped-up “threat to the homeland” agitation whose main purpose is to exploit the crISis in order to enhance US clout in the region.

IS took root in Iraq and Syria, in large part because of the Obama administration’s willingness to enable a jihadi solution to its dump-Assad problem and the very, very bad decision of Turkey and Saudi Arabia to support the operation.  I don’t think President Obama and his foreign policy team should be judged generously for their casual “let ‘er drift” casual approach to the dangerous and unpredictable mechanics of regime collapse through jihadi insurgency, with the details handled by two rather incompetent local allies who claim to be regional powers but are actually risk averse opportunists who look to the United States to do all the heavy lifting.

The depressing part of the US strategy is that, as far as I can tell, it views the anti-IS campaign as a Trojan Horse, a chance to favor, strengthen, and advance anti-Assad forces.  So instead of cooperating with literally the only Middle Eastern state willing to field an army against IS—Syria—the US is refusing to work with Syria and instead will train and equip an anti-Assad and anti-IS force, reportedly in Saudi Arabia, that is less of a US-backed militia of venal “insurgents” and more of a controlled and disciplined military strike force created, controlled, and deployed by the CIA and, unlike our most famous previous experiment in this vein, the Bay of Pigs invasion, this force will have lots and lots of airpower. 

The idea, presumably, is that as IS is pummeled by drones and air strikes (and its fleet of tanker trucks ferrying crude oil to Turkey is destroyed) and retreats, the US-backed force will advance and occupy the vacated territories before Assad can.  And hopefully, the force will attract the fairweather allies of IS who prefer a US paycheck and immunity from air strikes to getting plastered.  And then the US can orchestrate demands from a finally viable Syrian opposition for Assad to step down in the name of national unity, full US support, and an all-out war against IS.  Victory!

My admittedly imperfect knowledge of US government decision making implies to me that somebody had to bring President Obama a proposal like this for an American win in Syria—or at least a borderline plausible case for a chance for an American win in Syria--before he made the politically unpalatable decision to re-enter the Middle East quagmire.   

Assad, Russia, and IS are, of course, not going to stand idly by as this clever plan is implemented.  My prediction is that the US will experience its usual success in the counterinsurgency nuts and bolts of “clearing” territory, and its usual difficulty in the complicated political task of “holding” territory.  So my expectation is for several more years of inconclusive and expensive bloodshed as the people of Syria and Iraq suffer through (and the US security/military/think tank complex profit from) another overoptimistic US geostrategic experiment.

I think the spectacle of the US dilemma in the Middle East will also spur the PRC to adopt a massively-preemptive hard line against Islamist militancy in Xinjiang.  China, after all, considers itself an empire on the rise and with the will and resources to go toe to toe with its political enemies, not waiting, US-style, for disaster to pound at the door before thinking about doing something.

If things heat up in west China with blame being attached to jihadi havens in Pakistan, Afghanistan, or wherever, don't be too surprised if the PRC embarks on its own regional military adventure, probably through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization of Asian states (the PRC recently hosted a big anti-terrorist military drill for SCO forces) but unilaterally if need be.  And if the PRC chooses the military option, don't expect half-measures.  If a region in Xinjiang shows promise of becoming a stronghold of anti-PRC sentiment, the regime will pave it over before it allows a IS-style force to establish itself.

And now, since I am somewhat pressed for time, I will outsource the rest of my points to my cut-and-pasted Twitter feed with edits for clarity and one extended observation:

Westerners mock pretensions of IS Caliphate but it seems to strike chord among quite a few Muslims: effort to reestablish theocratic rule in heartland of Umayyad/Abbasid caliphates, turn page on disastrous century of colonial/postcolonial rule, replace fragmented/corrupt states w/ united Islamic power. The West’s passivity validates the caliphate & its transnational strategy. May be it will be PRC/Russia that try to draw the line.

Ending IS & restoring control of its territories to functioning Syrian/Iraqi governments would require a military/political upheaval beyond will/capability of US/"allies". IMO this is the real "British @ Suez crisis" limits-of-empire event. Expect US experts already talking about how to degrade/coerce/manage/moderate/engage IS regime we can’t destroy. Good ol' Saudi Arabia waiting to offer its good offices I'm sure.  In PRC, Chinese government will adopt extremely harsh & intensive methods in Xinjiang to pre-empt similar crisis of control IMO

If as I believe PRC determined not to repeat us mistake in letting IS take root, its first order of business may be alliance w/ Mullah Omar in Afghanistan.  

[The Afghan Taliban, as opposed to the Pakistan Taliban, has maintained a modus vivendi with the PRC and not seriously threatened PRC interests in Pakistan and Xinjiang.  Proclamation of the IS Caliphate is a direct challenge to Mullah Omar’s emirship in Afghanistan and various Islamist militant organizations in South Asia are fracturing as a result.  In this case, I think Mullah Omar and the PRC will look at each other as “friends in need” when it comes to countering the IS push into Pakistan (ongoing) and Afghanistan (only a matter of time)].

Should look at Sri Lanka anti-Tamil campaign for example of what happens when PRC gets serious abt counterinsurgency.  Everybody wanted Tamils crushed but quailed at humanitarian cost. So PRC helped Sri Lankan gvt do the dirty work & let West handle post-hoc human rights handwringing. An ugly affair, & one of the few successful CI ops post-WWII.

See my article at Asia Times Online on the Sri Lanka campaign.