I think I should point out that Bill Gertz has been banging the drum about Chinese involvement in Afghanistan since the early 2000s. Observe for example a post I put up in 2007, where in I quoted Bill as saying:
New intelligence reveals China is covertly supplying large quantities of small arms and weapons to insurgents in Iraq and the Taliban militia in Afghanistan, through Iran.
U.S. government appeals to China to check some of the arms shipments in advance were met with stonewalling by Beijing, which insisted it knew nothing about the shipments and asked for additional intelligence on the transfers. The ploy has been used in the past by China to hide its arms-proliferation activities from the United States, according to U.S. officials with access to the intelligence reports.
Some arms were sent by aircraft directly from Chinese factories to Afghanistan and included large-caliber sniper rifles, millions of rounds of ammunition, rocket-propelled grenades and components for roadside bombs, as well as other small arms.
The Washington Times reported June 5 that Chinese-made HN-5 anti-aircraft missiles were being used by the Taliban.
According to the officials, the Iranians, in buying the arms, asked Chinese state-run suppliers to expedite the transfers and to remove serial numbers to prevent tracing their origin. China, for its part, offered to transport the weapons in order to prevent the weapons from being interdicted.
I said at the time:
This is hardly a new situation. Gertz has been beating this drum of Chinese involvement for years, now. There’s much in the way of evidence to back the idea, even absent Gertz’ reporting; China has been the Elephant in the room for a long time now. Consider the source of weaponry, during the Korean and Vietnam conflicts.
Their weapons, such as this copy of an AK 47, have been showing up in Darfur for years. Even in theater, China has a history of supplying arms to the various factions in Afghanistan during the Russian occupation. That we are, if on a secondary level, seeing their involvement here, should be a surprise to nobody. The question becomes, what to do about it?
The usual left wing push towards a diplomatic solution, is clearly out of the question. We are already, supposedly, in full diplomatic relations with China. Obviously getting them to stop doing what they’re doing, is not possible via these means, or we would have done so some time gone. There is also the question of how much involvement China has been guilty of , and how much difference their involvement makes in the overall. I’m not all getting a good feel for the volume of Chinese involvement. Perhaps, that’s by design.
That does not make Chinese involvement in this situation, any less problematic , but it may necessitate a different response, initially.
Wherein lies part of the problems; our initial responses been to do nothing, thus far. Or put another way we have yet to make an initial response. The promises of this and previous administrations to quell terrorism and to reprimand its sources, whoever they are, would seem as a matter of logic to apply here. Yet, they have not. At least, they have not, overtly as of yet. one of the actions that’s been happening, has been specifically economic. China’s new pattern of growth, is explicitly dependent upon sales to the United States. Their economic policies (Example, their undervalued currency) bear this out.
Our destruction, therefore, as a country, would seem in the short term, to be counterproductive to their stated goals. Long term, however, would seem to be another matter. The Chinese have always taken the long view of both their future and that of the world. Perhaps this is a function of totalitarian governments; they tend not to be replaced every four years, or so, as they are here in the west, and therefore have the luxury of slow progress.
This point about China’s long-term involvement in Afghanistan would seem to bring Jerry’s comments from yesterday into new focus.
And has anybody noticed… Perhaps it’s just me…. the number of pictures of Taliban who are wearing Nikes?
