Afghanistan: Muslim-Chini bhai-bhai no longer?

Barely a couple of months after Chinese workers employed for the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) were attacked, Islamic terrorists have killed at least three people by targeting a hotel popular with Chinese businessmen in Kabul, Afghanistan, today. Witnesses reported multiple explosions and several bursts of gunfire.

Notably, no Islamic country officially protests China’s violation of Uyghur Muslims’ human rights in Xinjiang, but Muslim terrorists are apparently not on the same page on the issue as Islamic republics and kingdoms.

The Taliban claim to have improved security since storming back to power in August 2021, but there have been scores of bomb blasts and attacks, many claimed by the local chapter of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis). Smoke is still seen billowing from the multi-storey Kabul Longan Hotel as Taliban security forces rushed to the site and sealed off the neighbourhood.

Italian non-governmental organisation Emergency NGO, which operates a hospital barely 1 km from the blast site, said it had received 21 casualties, including three people dead on arrival. It did not say if those dead were civilians or involved in the attack.

Kabul Police claimed to have killed three attackers and arrested a suspect. It blamed the assault on “mischievous elements”. “All the guests of the hotel have been rescued and no foreigner was killed. Only two foreign guests were injured when they threw themselves from an upper storey,” chief Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said on Twitter.

Videos circulating on social media show people screaming for help from windows on the lower floors of the building. The hotel sign — in English and Chinese — is clearly visible in the videos. One of the videos shows tall flames rising out of another section, with thick plumes of smoke.

A helicopter carried out several sorties over the area.

The hotel is popular with Chinese business visitors, who have flocked to Afghanistan since the Taliban’s return in pursuit of high-risk but potentially lucrative business deals. China, which shares a rugged 76 km long border with Afghanistan, has not officially recognised the Taliban government but is one of the few countries to maintain a full diplomatic presence there.

Chinese interests in Afghanistan

As Beijing is apprehensive of Afghanistan becoming a staging point for Uyghur separatists in China’s sensitive border region of Xinjiang, its business ventures in Kabul are aimed at furthering Chinese business interests as monopolies in the absence of global competition and also (reportedly) espionage and establishing goodwill with Muslims. China also wants to secure its borders and strategic infrastructure investments in neighbouring Pakistan, home to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

In turn, the Taliban have promised that Afghanistan would not be used as a base for terrorists while China has offered economic support and investment for Afghanistan’s reconstruction, even as India maintains a modicum of presence in Afghan infrastructure since the American and Nato troops left.

Back in Afghanistan, the Taliban are at pains to portray Afghanistan as safe for diplomats and business people, but Isis’s terrorists killed two Russian embassy staff members in a suicide bombing outside the mission in September. Isis claimed responsibility also for an attack on Pakistan’s embassy in Kabul this month that Islamabad decried as an “assassination attempt” against the ambassador. A security guard was wounded in that attack.

Meanwhile, China, while owning the rights to major projects in Afghanistan, notably the Mes Aynak copper mine, has not pushed any of these projects forward. The Taliban are reliant on China to turn one of the world’s largest copper deposits into a working mine that would help the cash-strapped and sanctions-hit nation recover.

Muslim terrorists hate China in Pakistan too

Even in Pakistan, a Chinese national was shot dead and two injured on 29 September when a gunman opened fire inside a dental clinic in the Islamic republic’s southern port city of Karachi, in what was believed to be the latest targeted attack against Chinese citizens. The suspected terrorist was reported by the left-liberal media as a “highly educated female suicide bomber”.

In April 2019, terrorists targeted a convoy of 22 vehicles comprising Chinese engineers employed in the CPEC in Balochistan, resulting in a number of casualties. That was the third attack on Chinese assets in the previous six months by the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) which has been protesting China’s growing presence in Baluchistan. BLA, which is opposed to CPEC, keeps targeting the Chinese consulate in Karachi.

In November 2018, terrorists killed at least four people in an attack on the Chinese consulate in the Pakistani port city of Karachi.