By Steve Hynd
What a way to celebrate your 60th birthday - telling the world's "sole superpower" how to extricate itself from its biggest current foreign problem.
On Monday a senior Chinese policy thinker took to a government-owned daily newspaper to offer an exit route out of Afghanistan for America. The deputy general of the China Council for National Security Policy Studies, Li Qinggong set out his plan in the English-language China Daily in an article that, according to former Indian ambassador M. K. Bhadrakumar, should "receive careful attention." I agree. The op-ed should be seen as setting out China's first move, and is most useful for divining both Chinese motives and possible future areas of agreement.
Li Quinggong's plan calls for the immediate and total withdrawal of U.S. military force from Afghanistan.
The war has neither brought the Islamic nation peace and security as the Bush administration originally promised, nor brought any tangible benefits to the US itself. On the contrary, the legitimacy of the US military action has been under increasing doubt.
And advocates a strong program of reconciliation, backed by the UNSC, to prevent factional differences breaking down into a new civil war.
promote reconciliation among the Afghan government, the Taliban and the country's major warlords, all being key actors that can play an influential role in deciding the country's prospect. In addition to the US factor, the chaos in Afghanistan is also closely related to the long-standing domestic strife between factions.
...The UN Security Council should carry the baton from the three European nations to convene a conference on the Afghanistan issue and try to reach a consensus among its five permanent Security Council members and draft a roadmap and timetable for resolution of the thorny issue. In the process, a ticklish issue is whether parties concerned can accept the Taliban as a key player in Afghanistan and how to dispose of the Al Qaeda armed forces, an issue that has a key bearing on the outcome of any international conference on the Afghanistan issue.
Surely, an international peacekeeping mission is needed in the absence of US troops. With the aid of international peacekeepers, the Afghanistan government and its security forces can be expected to exercise effective control over domestic unrest and maintain peace and security.
It would appear that China would like to internationalize nation-building in Afghanistan, under UN auspices and with a peacekeeping force in place which China would be willing to commit forces to.
It also appears to be signalling a quid-pro-quo on behalf of its close ally, Pakistan. Al Qaeda's destruction in return for Pakistan's Taliban proxies remaining as a major player in Afghanistan's future. Not once in the op-ed is Pakistan mentioned, which is doubtless meant to conceal from the unwary that the Chinese solution would be of great benefit to the Pakistani military's quest for strategic depth in, and to lock India out of, Afghanistan. That aim also suits China very well, as it locks out China's fastest-rising regional rival from potential trade routes to Europe, the Middle East and the rest of Asia.
Still, it's the first word from China rather than the last, and there are certainly areas worthy of exploration.
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