China Moves Forces into Afghanistan

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China Moves Forces into Afghanistan

 

(I HAVEN'T SEEN THIS IN THE NEWS.HAS ANYONE ELSE?Vrin)

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.