China Moves Forces into Afghanistan?

China Moves Forces into Afghanistan
6 October: Before
even the launching
of the major US
military offensive
in Afghanistan,
long Chinese
convoys were
carrying armed
Chinese Muslim servicemen through northwest
China into Afghanistan, according to DEBKAfile’s
intelligence experts.
They were sent in to fight alongside the ruling
Taliban and Osama Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda. Their
number is estimated roughly between 5000 and
15,000. Our sources report another three convoys
are behind the first 3000, who crossed the frontier
Friday, October 5.
They are entering Afghanistan along the ancient
Krakoram Road to the Afghan-Pakistani border,
through the Kulik Pass of Little Pamir, which is
situated in one of the highest and most remote
regions of the world.
Beijing is deploying this force in two places:
A. Whakyir, the Kirgyz tribal encampment near the
Little Pamir-Tadjik frontier, opposite the swelling
concentration of US and Russian Special Forces and
air strength
The Chinese have brought with them Kirgyz
fundamentalist militants from the Ferghana Valley of
Central Asia, as interpreters.
From Whakyir, the Chinese generals believe, with
Bin Laden’s and the Taliban’s tacticians, they will
be able to block off the movement of the US-led
force from its rallying point in Dzhartygumbez,
Tadjikistan, no more than 35 miles from Little Pamir,
into the mountains of Hindu Kush.
B. Jalalabad in north Afghanistan, at the foot of the
Hindu Kush range.
DEBKAfile’s Chinese sources reveal that,
immediately after the terrorist strikes in the United
States on September 11, the Chinese intelligence
service, MSS, handed in to the defense ministry in
Beijing their estimation that the United States would
go to war to overthrow the Taliban regime, for the
sake of which it would sign a pact with Russia. The
Chinese leadership viewed this eventuality as the
most significant shift in the global balance since the
1962 Chinese-Russian feud, with dangerous
implications for China’s world standing and its
interests in Central and Southwest Asia. They
decided it must be counteracted.
The only satisfactory outcome of the Bin Laden
crisis in Chinese eyes is the redeployment of
Japanese-based US troops to the Persian Gulf, when
the Kitty Hawk carrier moved the 3rd Marines
Division out of Okinawa last week.
Chinese intelligence did not miss the absence of
fighters and reconnaissance craft on her decks. The
planes stayed behind, but the very fact that the
Kitty Hawk is no longer within operational range of
the Straits of Taiwan leaves the disputed island with
diminished protection.
Beijing also took note of additional US military
movements, including the Army’s 10th Mountain
Division based at Fort Drum, New York and that of
another formerly Pacific-based unit, the 25th Infantry
Division, out of Hawaii to the Persian Gulf.
According to DEBKAfile ’s Far East experts, the
removal of substantial US military strength from the
Pacific Rim opened the way for Chinese intervention
in Afghanistan and its effort to slow down the
US-Russian advance.