With The Taliban Now In Control Of Afghanistan, Will It Become A Safe Haven For Jihadists Against China?

Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, left, and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi meet in Tianjin, China, on July 28. © Li Ran/AP  

Washington Post: China faces threat in volatile borderlands after Afghanistan falls to the Taliban 

A year into the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, a Chinese security scholar warned her country’s paramilitary officers about the Taliban’s reach close to home. 

More than 400 “separatists” in China’s northwest Xinjiang region had been trained in light and heavy weapons and explosive devices in Taliban training camps, according to a paper by Wang Yaning, a lecturer at the Chinese Armed Police Force Academy, published in the school’s journal in 2002. 

“The Taliban provides arms support for Xinjiang separatist forces,” she wrote. 

These long-standing concerns are now at the forefront for China, as it adapts to the reality of Taliban rule in Afghanistan. The militants’ stunning rout of the Western-backed government in Kabul is likely to reignite debate in Beijing over its security policy in Xinjiang, a hot-button issue that has drawn sanctions from the United States and Europe. 

Muslim ethnic minorities make up a large part of the population of Xinjiang, and Chinese authorities have long been suspicious of their loyalties. Some hard-liners in the vast region abutting Central Asia have expressed the wish for an independent homeland, a stance strictly forbidden by Beijing, and the region has experienced sporadic terrorist attacks.  

Read more ....  

WNU Editor: China, Russia, Central Asia. The entire region knows that with the Taliban now in control of Afghanistan, and with a huge arsenal of American weapons at its disposal, there is a very real possibility that they will be facing Islamic insurgent groups in the near future.