China has criticized the war in Afghanistan. Now he’s worried about the withdrawal.

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The Chinese government rarely misses an opportunity to accuse the United States of military adventurism and hegemony. In the case of Afghanistan, however, he changed his tone, warning that Washington now bears responsibility for the hasty end of its two-decade war there.

The United States, which created the Afghan issue in the first place, should act responsibly to ensure a smooth transition in Afghanistan, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said at a forum this month in Beijing. He shouldn’t just shift the burden onto others and withdraw from the country with the mess left unattended.

Although China has not called on President Biden to reverse the military withdrawal he ordered, statements from senior officials have made it clear that they will blame the United States for any insecurity that is spreading in the region.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, neither of the President’s close friends, expressed concerns about the pullout in a phone call on June 29. , citing the increasingly complicated and serious security situation, according to state information. Xinhua agency.

An explosion and vehicle crash that killed nine Chinese workers in Pakistan on Wednesday punctuated China’s fears of regional instability following the final U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan and the chaos now spreading to across the country.

China was quick to describe the explosion as an act of terrorism. Pakistan later described it as an accident, but details remain obscure, and China has already found itself the target of threats from those who opposed its growing economic and diplomatic influence in the region.

Pakistani Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry said Thursday investigators had found traces of explosives, presumably on the bus carrying Chinese workers. Terrorism cannot be ruled out, he wrote on Twitter.

They certainly feel nervous, said Barnett R. Rubin, former State Department official and United Nations adviser on Afghanistan, senior researcher at the Center for International Cooperation at New York Universities.

With only a residual military contingent to protect the US embassy in Kabul, the Taliban have continued to expand their political control as Afghan government forces collapse or retreat. This month, Taliban forces captured Badakhshan, the province that reaches the mountainous Chinese border through the Wakhan Corridor.

While the narrow territory poses little direct security threat, China fears the collapse of order in Afghanistan could spill out of the country into other neighbors, including Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Pakistan.

Mr. Wang is traveling through Central Asia this week with the Afghan situation high on the agenda.

We don’t want to see a turbulent country around us that becomes such a breeding ground for terrorist activity, said Li Wei, an analyst at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, a research body in Beijing affiliated with the Ministry of State Security. .

The Taliban, when they ruled Afghanistan before the September 11, 2001 attacks, gave refuge to some Uyghur fighters resisting Chinese rule in Xinjiang, the predominantly Muslim province in western China that fighters call Turkestan. Oriental.

Twenty-two of these fighters ended up in US custody in Guantnamo Bay prison in Cuba, before being slowly released in several other countries, including Albania, Slovakia, Bermuda and Palau. Uyghur militants have also fought in the civil war in Syria, and some are reported to have returned to Afghanistan.

If there is more disorder in Afghanistan, the Uyghurs could regain a foothold, or a bigger one, Mr Rubin said.

After the September 11 attacks, the United States designated the Islamic Movement of East Turkestan as a terrorist organization, in part to cultivate China’s support for American efforts in the war on terror. The Trump administration revoked the designation last year, saying there was no evidence the group continued to carry out attacks. China has cited the threat of Uyghur extremism as the reason for its mass detention camps in Xinjiang.

According to the United Nations, the Uyghur group once maintained links with al-Qaeda and organized attacks on targets inside and outside China, including those in Xinjiang that killed 140 people in 1998.

Liu Yunfeng, director of the Counterterrorism Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security, told a press conference this week that although there have been no major terrorist attacks in China in the past four years, the Islamic Movement of East Turkestan has continued to promote terrorism from abroad and train fighters to sneak into our territory.

We must always maintain a high degree of vigilance, he said, according to a transcript released by the ministry.

With the US withdrawal on the horizon, China has sought to keep channels open to Taliban and Afghan forces, calling for a peaceful resolution of the decades of conflict that preceded the US intervention. It is a delicate diplomatic balance.

China has praised the current Afghan government, including what it says are efforts to combat militants in East Turkestan. It also hosted a delegation of Taliban leaders in 2019. While China has said little about the nature of its discussions with the group, it has silenced its critics as the US-led military presence dwindles.

In recent statements, Taliban officials have also sought to allay China’s concerns over its past support for enemies of Chinese rule, saying a restored Taliban government would pose no threat to the country. In fact, he would welcome Chinese investment.

As the Taliban gradually gained ground, China left its diplomatic options open. The Global Times, a Communist Party newspaper that generally reflects the hawkish side of the government, suggested this week that fears over the collapse of the current Afghan government were overblown.

As the situation in Afghanistan evolves, the Taliban are quietly transforming to improve their international image, allay concerns and befriend neighboring countries, the newspaper wrote on Tuesday.

Such views also reflect China’s close relationship with Pakistan, which has provided support for the Taliban leadership during America’s long involvement in Afghanistan.

After Chinese authorities first denounced Wednesday’s death in Pakistan as a terrorist attack, they tempered when the Pakistani Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying the explosion that knocked a truck down into a ravine was caused by mechanical malfunction.

However, what exactly happened is not clear. At least two Pakistani paramilitary soldiers and two other civilians died, while more than 40 people were injured. It was not clear whether the soldiers were guarding the workers on their way to a Chinese-built hydroelectric project in Dasu, a town in the country’s rural northwest, about 160 kilometers from the capital, Islamabad.

China has already faced terrorist threats in Pakistan. In 2018, three suicide bombers stormed the Chinese consulate in Karachi, killing two police officers and two civilians before being killed themselves. The group that claimed responsibility for the attack, the Balochistan Liberation Army, attacked a luxury hotel in Gwadar a year later, claiming it was targeting Chinese customers.

In April, another group attacked a hotel in Quetta, the provincial capital of Balochistan, just moments before the expected arrival of the Chinese ambassador. While it is not clear whether the attackers were aware of the arrival of the ambassadors, the group that claimed responsibility, the Pakistani Taliban or Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, said its intended targets were locals and foreigners staying at the hotel.

After speaking with Pakistan’s Foreign Minister about the blast on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Wang called for tougher security measures for Chinese construction projects in Pakistan, many of them are built under the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative.

Chinese authorities have offered to expand these projects to Afghanistan, but have made little progress. Previous Chinese projects have fallen short of expectations, including a copper mining concession that Chinese companies acquired in 2007.

If it is a terrorist attack, Mr. Wang said of Wednesday’s episode, the perpetrators should be arrested immediately and the perpetrators should be severely punished.

Salman Masood contributed reporting from Islamabad. Claire Fu contributed to the research.

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