Sketchy Friends (and How Uighurs in Xinjiang Could Affect Afghan Peace)
When individuals do or say something shocking (insert favorite Trump quote here), we react strongly and critically. We work to pull down the malefactor and make sure it never happens again.
With countries, we have something magnitudes larger. More people affected, more places affected, greater scales of horror. It matters more.
The outrage is often smaller.
There are a few headlines, sometimes minor protesting, followed by the loudest silence. Academics debate the merits of responsibility to protect. Politicians discuss economic aspects and make high-sounding arguments. The public wriggles out of a sense of duty by saying it’s none of our business, like neighbors during a loud bout of domestic violence. The UN might make a declaration, often without teeth. Rwanda and Bosnia come to mind.
Then we matter-of-factly go on with life, and our leaders chat on the phone and engage in witty repartee over a glass of whatever. (Does Biden think Xi Jinping looks like Winnie the Pooh? Maybe. But he doesn’t say it.) We cooperate where we need to cooperate and condemn where it seems we must, especially if there are other interests at stake. And generally, this is a side of politics I despise.
But what if the choices you see are these people vs. those people? What if you can’t find an Option C in which both are rescued?
Enter China and its Uighur minority. And whether you describe it as “vocational education” or genocide, there was still a roughly 84% drop in the Uighur birth rate in certain districts. There is still the systematic rape, forced birth control and sterilization, forced labor, forced abortion, cultural decimation, torture, and reeducation of over a million people held in internment camps to account for.
Now add to this scenario a 47-mile, ragged bit of border Afghanistan and the Uighurs’ mountainous Xinjiang region share that could impact a currently dysfunctional peace process.
Why does that matter — to them or to us?
The United States and Taliban signed the Doha agreement a year ago. According to it, the deadline to bring home remaining U.S. troops from Afghanistan is May 2021. But Taliban violence has increased in key strategic locations. Our coalition allies are also still on the ground without a strong sense of our future plans or the logistical supports they’re dependent on.
Leaving without regard for Taliban compliance or the ground situation virtually guarantees Afghan state collapse, the continued targeting of educated Afghans and professionals who could help rebuild Afghanistan, and the reversal of social progress feared by popular movements like #MyRedLine.. These are the building blocks necessary for creating a strong, stable Afghanistan.
It also means we’ll likely have to deal with an out-of-control hotbed of terrorism all over again, only from a weaker position, with allies more cautious to jump onboard with us. And 20 years’ worth of sacrifice of blood and money is all for nothing. More than 3,500 coalition deaths? The 100,000+ Afghan security forces and civilian lives lost? All for nothing.
China, for its part, opposed U.S. entry into Afghanistan back in 2001 and would be happy to see us go. Yet it also opposes a poorly executed U.S. exit and the wreckage likely to be left in the wake.
That ragged bit of shared border serves as a corridor for Uighur militants the Taliban has supplied and partnered with in the past. It’s a pocket of uncertainty marked by a line 3.5 hours different in time and much further away in terms ofgovernment aspirations.
Yet for all its limited interaction with Afghanistan, China has worked to be on good terms with both Kabul and the Taliban. China is ready for a U.S. departure, but it might prefer limited U.S. or international involvement to the bloodier alternative — a failed-state Afghanistan serving as a potential safe haven for Uighur militants. Given the vigor of China’s ongoing “reeducation” efforts, it seems likely those militants won’t slow down.
For these reasons, China’s limited interests in Afghanistan are fairly aligned with those of the United States. It might serve as reason enough for China to advocate for an extension of the Doha agreement’s U.S. timeline for departure, if that becomes necessary.
China could also exert pressure on the Taliban to reduce the very violence that makes our timely departure questionable. It is one of a few (ironically) rival states that have the influence and relationship to make that potential even slightly realistic.
Getting to that “yes” could take a little work. Competition with rising China and the State Department’s genocide label for its ongoing Uighur vocational efforts create speed bumps. It might also involve an implicit moral trade-off, if Uighur welfare ends up pitted against our own, our allies’, and that of the Afghan people.
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