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Monks in Tibet are defying China. They have picked the best time in history, the Olympic year, for their struggle.
Similarly, Uighurs in China's west have raised the temperature and wish to be independent of Beijing. Recently they tried but failed to blow up a Chinese plane in their home province of Xinjiang.
Pakistan, at the insistence of the United States, decided to take on the Pashtun tribesmen on its frontier with Afghanistan and has miserably failed. The mighty Pakistani military has been humbled by a band of ragtag fighters. Such fighters have a history of humbling mighty powers, including the British in the 19th century, the Russians in the 1980s, the Americans and NATO for the last six years, and now the Pakistanis.
How do these developments in China and Pakistan benefit India?
All the above developments as a matter of fact should please India. China's hold over Tibetan gas has been permanently weakened by the monks' rebellion. It will require twice as many Chinese troops as they had six months ago to maintain the uneasy peace. Today the independence movement is largely peaceful, using Gandhian tactics of non-cooperation, barring a few incidents of violence. However, there is a possibility it could become violent in the near future.
China's carefully built image as a mighty commercial power has suffered a major reverse. As more oppression is unleashed in Tibet, more stories of human rights violations will be reported. China will soon be termed a big bully. In the near future, its preeminent export industry will suffer as people in the West boycott Chinese products.
The Chinese may be able to control the situation today, but the young men and women in Tibet and the Tibetan Diaspora abroad will not give up. They have a spiritual leader in the Dalai Lama to inspire them. They will continue to call for China to loosen its hold on Tibet. Sooner or later they will succeed.
Hardly had the news of the Tibetan revolt settled down when reports of a Uighur challenge to Chinese domination began to circulate.
Seeds of Uighur unhappiness have been around for decades. Since 1979 young Uighur men went to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets alongside the Pashtuns, Uzbeks and other Arab fanatics. The Uighurs, being Muslim Turks, did not wish to be dominated by the godless Chinese Communists.
This ethnic clash was accentuated by the free distribution of the Koran by Saudi Arabian interests in the 1980s, which brought the flames of religious fanaticism to the Kyrgyz, Tajik, Uzbek and Uighur peoples. All of these are central Asian Turks, and all except the Uighurs are free today. Hence the Uighurs are longing for independence, and it would appear they would achieve it by hook or by crook. Leaders like Osama bin Laden and the Pakistani intelligence services are there to help them.
Some of the Uighur nationalists who fought the Soviets from 1979 to 1989 stayed back in Afghanistan and honed their skills at guerilla warfare. They also continued staging anti-Chinese attacks in Pakistan, the last one at Gwadar port on Chinese engineers. Other attacks have occurred in northern Afghanistan and Xinjiang province, but have not been reported by the Chinese.
The most recent Uighur plan to blow up a China Airlines plane at Urumqi airport, the capital of Xinjiang province, was unsuccessful. The plot was discovered in time and it was thwarted. The Chinese would not have told the world about this sinister plot against them except that they were looking for sympathy. They got none, only scorn. For this they have to thank the Tibetans for already muddying the waters of international goodwill.
The Uighur nationalists who planned the Urumqi attack are graduates of Pakistani-run madrassas in the Afghan-Pakistan border. They have the Islamic Front to fall back upon for material and moral support. Very soon stalwarts of the Islamic freedom movement like Osama bin Laden will jump into the fray, resulting in more and better-planned strikes not only in Xinjiang but in China proper also.
Like the Tibetans, the Uighurs have coordinated their actions for the Olympics in Beijing. Their struggle has models in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and Chechnya.
Now the Chinese have only one alternative, to rush more troops to Xinjiang. That will deplete Chinese reserves in the rear. With depleted reserves they will not be able to threaten Russia, India or the rest of Southeast Asia.
The Pakistanis for the last 60 years have been busy confronting India, until suddenly the Pashtun tribesmen appeared at their rear and decided to challenge the Pakistani army. Never mind the merits of the Pakistan-Pashtun fight; the latter have been fighting various enemies for generations. This time it happens to be the Pakistani army.
The Pakistanis had been enjoying India's discomfort in Kashmir as well as making occasional strikes in India. For the last little while they have found themselves at the receiving end of these strikes. More civilians and leaders have died in Pakistan in the last three months than even in Iraq. This has caught the Pakistanis unaware. Their main focus had been India; now they are forced to look inwards. Military forces are being rushed to troubled areas along the Afghan-Pakistan border. But tribesmen are in control of most of the rural areas, and they have support for their cause from their compatriots in Afghanistan.
Since this new trouble began, Pakistan has slowly deescalated its covert help in Kashmir. Most of the Pashtun veterans of the Afghanistan-Soviet war have gone back to their homeland to deal with their own firefight. This time they are turning their guns against their former benefactor Pakistan.
The Pakistanis did not expect this situation. Even the United States, Pakistan's main benefactor, is a bit uneasy about it. As a matter of fact Pakistan is in this predicament because of the United States.
The situation has gone from bad to worse. The lull in suicide bombings during the elections in Pakistan has been broken with a few more incidents. The newly elected prime minister has promised talks with the rebels, but this will yield no results. The tribesmen are asking for a complete U.S. withdrawal from Pakistan. If the Pakistanis follow through with this demand they stand to lose billions of dollars of civilian and military aid from the United States.
The alternative for Pakistan is to learn anti-guerilla warfare rather than confronting India with tanks, jet fighters and submarines. This they may be forced to do. If that happens, Pakistan will be less a threat to India than it has been in the last six decades.
From the Indian point of view, the time is here to press China and Pakistan to settle with India. China's threat will be greatly reduced with Tibet in turmoil and the Uighurs in a fighting mood. The Pakistanis, with their ill-advised U.S. cooperation, have got almost all the Pashtuns mad at them. Both China's and Pakistan's problems are unlikely to go away in the near future. These fights will continue for a long time. This is the advantage India has been waiting for.
What a change a year has brought! India's two belligerent neighbors have found themselves at war at home. Both face severe problems with no easy solution. Armed or peaceful standoffs will continue for a while. That is where India's advantage lies.
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(Hari Sud is a retired vice president of C-I-L Inc., a former investment strategies analyst and international relations manager. A graduate of Punjab University and the University of Missouri, he has lived in Canada for the past 34 years. ©Copyright Hari Sud.)
What about the Punjab wedge with Khalistanies getting help from their brethern in India(akalies) and ofcourse ever helpful Canadian government. Everyone with little brain knows how the royal mounted constabulary helped the Sikh terrorists in bombing the Air India plane by just keeping quiet about the information it had on the plot. Now they have openly come out.