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The Comrades and the Mullahs : China, Afghanistan and the New Asian Geopolitics
By Stanly Johny| Ananth Krishnan
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About the book
The withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan has left a lasting impact on both Afghanistan’s future and on Asian geopolitics. It has also brought China into focus. This book traces the emergence of China as a key player in Afghanistan and the evolution of China’s Afghan policy especially with respect to its relations with the Taliban. Beijing’s dominant role in Afghanistan’s future is a potentially game-changing development in Asian geopolitics, even if questions remain about the former’s appetite to step in to fill the void and the limits of its ambitions.
In The Comrades and the Mullahs, Ananth Krishnan and Stanly Johny examine what Beijing’s interests are and the drivers of its foreign policy, and, more specifically, how its new Silk Road project-the Belt and Road Initiative-is shaping China-Afghan relations. They look at how Afghanistan has emerged as a key point on the corridor heading west from Xinjiang, and discuss the Xinjiang factor, drawing on their travels to China’s western frontiers, as well as the internal dynamics that are pushing Beijing’s westward march.
Another factor is the East Turkestan Islamic Movement and the terror groups that are leading to an increasingly securitized approach to China’s western regions and beyond, including possible Chinese plans to deploy special forces along the China-Afghan border areas in the Wakhan corridor and Badakhshan region.
China’s Afghan engagement has also deepened its ‘all-weather’ alliance with Pakistan-with Beijing increasingly leaning on Islamabad, particularly in its outreach to the Taliban and other elements in Afghanistan that have long been supported by the Pakistani state-and is a perennial source of tension between Islamabad and Kabul. The authors show how this increasing closeness is alarming for India, and might have far-reaching consequences, especially in Kashmir.
Pages: 304
Available in: Hardback
Language: English
Stanly Johny
Stanly Johny is the international affairs editor with The Hindu. A PhDin international studies from Centre for West Asian Studies, JNU, he hasreported from Washington DC, Montgomery, Moscow, Brussels, Amman, Tel Aviv,Ramallah and Seoul. He has contributed to think-tanks such as the Middle EastInstitute in Washington DC and the Manohar Parrikar Institute for DefenceStudies and Analyses in New Delhi. He is the author of The ISIS Caliphate: From Syria to the Doorsteps of India (2018).
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Ananth Krishnan
Ananth Krishnan is the Beijing correspondent for The Hindu. In 2019, he was a visiting fellow at Brookings India. He was the Beijing-based associate editor at the India Today Group until August 2018. His reporting in China has taken him to all but three of China’s thirty-three provinces and regions. His interests include India–China relations as well as Tibet, Xinjiang and ethnic minorities in China. He is the author of India’s China Challenge (2020). “