look news india
These days, there has been a huge upheaval in the geopolitical equations of South Asia and Central Asia, which has given sleepless nights to Pakistan. China, which once called itself Pakistan’s staunchest and evergreen friend, has now started distancing itself from Islamabad. After the much-discussed and billion-dollar ambitious China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project failing miserably and being stuck in a continuous security crisis, the anger of the dragon has reached the seventh heaven. Fed up with Pakistan’s continuous blackmailing, administrative inefficiency and failure to provide security to Chinese citizens, Beijing has now taken a historic and surprising step. Ignoring Pakistan, China has directly joined hands with Taliban ruled Afghanistan, due to which the ground has slipped from under the feet of Pakistan’s rulers.
Failure of CPEC project and China’s disillusionment with Pakistan
A few years ago, when China started the CPEC project passing through areas like Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa of Pakistan, it was described as an example of friendship between the two countries. But over time the project proved to be a financial and strategic quagmire for China. Work on this mega project came to a halt due to continuous targeting of Chinese engineers and workers by Baloch insurgents and local terrorists. Despite spending billions of dollars, the Pakistan government and its army proved to be a complete failure in providing adequate security to Chinese citizens. Apart from this, due to the severe political turmoil, corruption and economic poverty within Pakistan, China’s patience has now completely ended. Beijing has understood very well that it is no longer possible to trust Pakistan and invest its billions of dollars.
Beijing’s new and big bet to reach Central Asia through Afghanistan
Fed up with Pakistan’s blackmailing and failure, China has made radical changes in its regional strategy and has now made Afghanistan its new strategic center. Several recent secret and high-level agreements between China and the Taliban government have proved that Beijing now wants to advance its ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ (BRI) through Kabul. Afghanistan has immense reserves of natural minerals, especially rare earth metals and lithium, which are under the evil eye of the dragon. China is now working on a big plan to exploit these mineral resources in exchange for supporting Afghanistan’s struggling economy and increasing its strategic influence. Along with this, China also wants to ensure that Afghanistan’s land is not used against Uyghur rebels in its own Xinjiang province.
Pakistan’s strategic blackmailing and its heavy cost
Pakistan has always understood that it will always continue to blackmail countries like China and America by taking advantage of its geographical position between them. But this time his cunningness has proved costly for him. In the last few years, Pakistan misused the bailout packages and loans received from China and completely failed to improve its internal security system. Whenever China strongly questioned Pakistan over the killings of its citizens and security lapses, Islamabad always adopted a policy of avoidance. This irresponsible action of Pakistan has forced China to think that it can no longer be blindly dependent on Pakistan for regional connectivity. This is the reason why China has given a huge blow to Islamabad by directly joining hands with Afghanistan, ignoring Pakistan.
Major changes in geopolitics of South Asia and increasing loneliness of Pakistan
The increasing proximity of China and Afghanistan and the marginalization of Pakistan indicates a major change in the geopolitics of South Asia. On one hand, India is continuously progressing on global platforms on the strength of its strong and independent foreign policy, while on the other hand, Pakistan is becoming completely isolated after getting trapped in its own woven terrorism and economic web. China, which Pakistan considered its everything, has today betrayed it and joined hands with Taliban. This is the time for Pakistani policy-makers to introspect, because their blackmailing politics has now been completely exposed at the international level. In the coming times, it will be very interesting to see in which direction this new axis of China and Afghanistan takes the equations of South Asia.