PLA Forces to Afghanistan???

bladerunner said:

During the recent outbreaks of violence in Xinjiang, prior to the OLympics, I read in various publications eg 'atimes'.(reprinting comments made on El Jazerra) a call on the UIghurs for cessation of violence against the Chinese by Al-Qaeda. They felt that there wasn't any substantial grievance and that the Chinese were in the main, considerate towards their brother muslims..
If these reports are correct and for the fact that Al Qaeda has a presence in Afghanistan, a Chinese military involvement would certainly invoke a change of stance, by Al-Qaeda.I think the Chinese should be very wary about putting troops on the ground.

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Did they actually say that? That goes against Al Qaeda main policy. Their main policy is the liberation of all Islamic lands under the control of infidels. Xinjiang, or Eastern Turkestan or Uighyurstan whatever they want to call it, is considered Islam land.

As for being "considerate", the Chinese is also a lot more heavy handed and with a greater degree of being less religiously sensitive to their minority ethnic populations even though they do a lot of nation building and life standard improvement in their minority ethnic areas. Fundamentalist Islam is more than a religion, its a total ideology that also seeks to micromanage details in politics, science, and economics, all of a society through a theocracy. That really goes against the grain of the official government secularism. Chinese government schools teaching Mao's Red Book instead of the Koran to Moslem kids don't seem to mesh with that. In any case the PRC don't treat ethnic Muslims to Tibetans and other groups differently, either in terms of minority benefits and perks or in terms of perceived repression.

:roll:
If all the advance weaponry that NATO members refuse to sell to China is not winning the war, what makes them think China will be of any help?

Afghanistan is NATO's mess, so NATO should clean up after themselves. China's time, energy and resource will be much better spend on its own military R&D and procurement instead.

China won't help directly but what they would do is deploy special forces to help protect Chinese contractors working for the Afghan government. They already do so with Chinese contractors working for Iraqi government. And the reason why you have Chinese construction firms in both places? Money of course. China has a big stake in the overseas construction industry.

bladerunner said:

Some posters suggest that China should become involved because of the Taliban threat to China. To that I suggest they look at the Pakistan situation.THey had an understanding with the Taliban and other radical tribesman and the area was relatively peaceful until the Americans came along and stuffed things up.

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You're bang on target right there. Parts of a country becoming like the North-West frontier is enough to shake the pants of any govt.

The war in Afghanistan (and Iraq, and War on Terror in general) is widely seen as "America's war". In the Muslim world, it's seen as "war against Islam". So if China does send troops over, and some of them end up dying, the public perception would be "our soldiers died fighting America's war" and there could be some nasty backlash....something the CCP would be extremely sensitive to.

And besides, how would sending troops over help China?? The situation in Xinjiang now is not ideal, but it's not that bad either. Being seen as fighting against Muslims and Islam would only make the situation worst.

flyzies said:

You're bang on target right there. Parts of a country becoming like the North-West frontier is enough to shake the pants of any govt.

The war in Afghanistan (and Iraq, and War on Terror in general) is widely seen as "America's war". In the Muslim world, it's seen as "war against Islam". So if China does send troops over, and some of them end up dying, the public perception would be "our soldiers died fighting America's war" and there could be some nasty backlash....something the CCP would be extremely sensitive to.

And besides, how would sending troops over help China?? The situation in Xinjiang now is not ideal, but it's not that bad either. Being seen as fighting against Muslims and Islam would only make the situation worst.

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spot on you said it all

Engineer said:

:roll:
If all the advance weaponry that NATO members refuse to sell to China is not winning the war, what makes them think China will be of any help?

Afghanistan is NATO's mess, so NATO should clean up after themselves. China's time, energy and resource will be much better spend on its own military R&D and procurement instead.

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you must give nations who vote yes to arms embargo on china credit. in the end it actually helped china's military industry. if their was no arms embargo china would be heavily foreign military hardware reliant, and have little domestic military technology projects. like australia, japan, tawain and singapore all are heavey foreign military reliant, though they themselves have the technology and funding to develop it themselves, but just dont allocate priority to their own industry.

even if the arms embargo was dropped i dont see china going on a buying frenzie, they've already got anything available on the market. mostly avionics, computer systems, guidance chips, signature reduction materials.

engines was a major weakness in the chinese military industry but this year it seems that they already have or are solving this already. large thrust turbofans for large transport aircraft are missing and have little report or citing of any projects runnning.

So many contradictions for a Western country to suggest this in all that it entails. Sounds like a bad idea. Sure it would be great if this would be a turning point with relations with the West. But who really believes this would happen? Look at what started this mess in the first place. The US dumped their long time Cold War ally, Pakistan, for their enemy, India. Pakistan plunged into turmoil which led to the rise of the extremists who are friends with Al Qaeda and the Taliban. If the Chinese involved themselves and all of the sudden Bid Laden was captured or killed resulting in the end of Al Qaeda as we know it, do you really believe the West wouldn't go back to looking at China as the adversary? It already happened at the end of the Cold War. This is too familar treatment China has experienced before. And the Cold War trumps the War on Terror.

And what do they want China to do in Afghanistan? Bust some heads in a way they can't do themselves without criticism? How many non-governmental organizations would then vilify China? How many sleezy politicians would used this to further their own agendas?

Why not ask all the allies that we hear brag of how more militarily capable they are than China? Already some have left the coalition. Some brag how they are better partners and share the same values with the West than China yet have not contributed. Ironic that "democracy" restricts and prevents these countries from getting the job done. Don't want to violate rights after claiming human rights to be the ultimate goal. Unpopular wars and the democratic process doesn't mix well for some countries in contributing. Which is the irony of why it's said China is "most suited" to contribute.

crobato said:

Did they actually say that? That goes against Al Qaeda main policy. Their main policy is the liberation of all Islamic lands under the control of infidels. Xinjiang, or Eastern Turkestan or Uighyurstan whatever they want to call it, is considered Islam land.

As for being "considerate", the Chinese is also a lot more heavy handed and with a greater degree of being less religiously sensitive to their minority ethnic populations even though they do a lot of nation building and life standard improvement in their minority ethnic areas. Fundamentalist Islam is more than a religion, its a total ideology that also seeks to micromanage details in politics, science, and economics, all of a society through a theocracy. That really goes against the grain of the official government secularism. Chinese government schools teaching Mao's Red Book instead of the Koran to Moslem kids don't seem to mesh with that. In any case the PRC don't treat ethnic Muslims to Tibetans and other groups differently, either in terms of minority benefits and perks or in terms of perceived repression.

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AS for the bit about Al-Qaeda telling the Uighurs to back off in Xinjiang. Yes I did read it on atimes. Sometimes, some supposedly knowledgeable person writes a piece on some aspect of China.. THats where I read that the Uighurs claim to Xinjiang is tenuous at best. The Uighurs were descended from a nomadic tribe that wandered into the xinjiang region, round about the same time elements connected to the Han people were also inhabiting the area.Sorta like the same scenario you had when American settlers went west and meet up with the Spanish. BUt I dont recall any asian version of American Spanish wars.. Anyway I guess it was generally bigger power, China was considered to be the defacto power in the region, and everyone went about their business.
It is generally believed that the Uighurs while unhappy with the Chinese, no more like the radical Muslim elements.. IT is thought that the central asian muslims are of the more moderate kind in their beliefs, reinforced by the fact that China has only let a very few attend the pilgrimage to Mecca, thus contact with foreign radicals is limited. Things could change as the local UIghurs become more affluent and thus want to make the pilgrimage.

bladerunner said:

Can anyone realistically see members the SCO being drawn into the Afghanistan situation, to replace the Nato forces who started the situation anyway.Not the Russians for sure as they have already been humiliated there."Once bitten twice shy" as the going says.Despite their concern for the Taliban. the SCO main purpose is to counter balance the American presence.

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You may be surprised to learn then that there have been a number of initiatives from the SCO for a greater involvement in Afghnaistan over the last couple of years and all so far have been rejected by the US, even though the Afghan Govt itself expressed interest in both the involvement and moving towards SCO membership for itself.

Reading many of the comments, it is clear that there is a miscomprehension about how the SCO would operate and how such a mission would be structured. The first thing to be clear about is that this would not be a war fighting mission like that of NATO and few if any Russian or Chinese forces would actually be on the ground.

The mission would be about building confidence and ensuring all parties were represented. This would mean central liason between the SCO and the Afghan Central Government, with simultaneous engagement on a local level between neighbouring states and the matching ethnic communities in Afghanistan, under the same SCO umbrella and using this to bring all parties together, strengthening central govt by ensuring all groups have a stake in it.

China and Russia could undoubtedly provide troops if required to help stabilise specific problems, but this would be a last resort and their main contribution would be to act as ultimate guarantors of the mission and to provide the financial and technical capabilities to actually re-start nation building.

The SCO does have a key strategic interest in Afghanistan as a transit route for both major communications and; most importantly, Oil Pipelines, specifically from Candidate member Iran.

Central Asia has been an unfolding story for the last few years and the global power shift we are now witnessing is bound to be reflected by more rapid progress in this direction over the next twelve months.

For quite a while now, there were numerous indication the Countries involved in Afghanistan are trying to dug out of there. Short of boots on the ground are already obvious.

If China were to be involved, she will be sucked in deeper in mud, while the Western countries wound down their operation slowly, be back to their own country thousand of miles away. Meanwhile, china just can't leave, because Afghanistan is just next door. Attack on the Chinese forces will increase, even if they are doing engineering work. It's operation will widen.

Suddenly, the same Propaganda Western News Agencies, that promoted the "Iraq Freedom - Nuke" and, proven to be able to switch ON/OFF, with a single flick from a finger, as shown during the Georgian Event (Russian Invaded).. Will start a worldwide reporting that "It's China's War Now", every few hours a day for months... then starts to report negative news about Chinese soldiers conduct in this war, and associate it with Bosnia, Kosovo, even Hitler's Nazi (As can be seen during the Olympic). Slowly the world citizens will start to forget that it's NATO who started the war, and C!A will start covert operation to secretly arm the Taliban again. This might sound like fantasy, but don't rule this scenario out. This is Geopolitics.. especially when dealing with USA.

China should stay the hell away from Afghanistan. Nothing good will come out of it... beside further pissing off it's own muslim population.