[R-G] China Moves Forces into Afghanistan

[Macdonald Stainsby]

I don't know what to make of the source, but here it is...
Macdonald
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China Moves Forces into Afghanistan
Source: DEBKAfile <http://www.debka.com/>

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
DEBKAfile¹s intelligence experts.


They were sent in to fight alongside the ruling Taliban and Osama Bin
Laden¹s 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 Laden¹s
and the Taliban¹s 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.


DEBKAfile¹s 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 China¹s
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
Army¹s 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 ¹s 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.

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Macdonald Stainsby
Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion.
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