CPEC links China's western Xinjiang province with the port of Gwadar in the southwest. Photo: AAMIR QURESHI/AFP
The Pakistani Taliban are threatening to attack China's Belt and Road development projects unless the government pays them a 5 percent construction tax.
In a video message, a Taliban commander in Gandapur warned that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a nearly 2,000-mile infrastructure project including roads and railways running from China to the Arabian Sea, would be destroyed.
» Five percent is our tax everywhere,” the commander said in a statement. message to construction workers in the Pakistani city of Dera Ismail Khan.
“Equipment and personnel will be targeted” by Taliban militants if taxes are not paid, he said.
The Taliban commander's threats are part of an extortion campaign aimed at those involved in Xi Jinping's Pakistan Leg. Jinping's flagship global infrastructure project. The Belt and Road Initiative, launched in 2013, is an ambitious plan to develop new trade routes connecting China with the rest of the world.
Abdul Syed, a security analyst in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, said: «Extortion has become a common practice in the TPP, which relies heavily on such revenue streams to cover its expenses.»
Chinese trucks carrying goods at Gwadar port, 2016. Photo: AAMIR QURESHI/AFP
“Recent reports indicate that militants are demanding taxes from ministers, government officials, contractors and other businesses in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Tribal Areas » he said.
CPEC links the western Chinese province of Xinjiang with China. The port of Gwadar is in the southwest, and thousands of security personnel have been deployed to counter threats to Beijing's interests.
Chinese engineers and workers have been attacked in Pakistan. In 2021, 12 people, including nine Chinese workers, were killed in an explosion on a bus transporting personnel to the Dasu Dam.
On September 12, US Ambassador to Pakistan Donald Blom visited a Chinese-funded deep-sea port project in Gwadar. This visit is aimed at building trust with the local population amid declining interest from Pakistan and China in CPEC.
< p>“China's concerns about security threats to its investments in Pakistan are the main reason why CPEC has lost momentum in recent years. These security risks are growing because increasingly, not only Baloch separatists but also TTP terrorists are threatening and even attacking Chinese interests in Pakistan,” said Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center think tank.
< p>“This new threat posed by a local TTP commander will increase China's concerns. TTP has recently been revived, attacks in Pakistan have increased overall, and Islamabad has no formal strategy to counter them,” Mr. Kugelman said.
“For Beijing, which remains committed to continuing to invest, «Despite Pakistan's security risks and economic woes, the reality of the dual threat posed by ethnic separatists and Islamist militants is a bitter pill that he nonetheless appears willing to swallow,» he said. .
The Pakistani Taliban (TTP) has seen a resurgence after the Taliban returned to power in neighboring Afghanistan. Since then, Pakistan has been gripped by a wave of terrorism, mainly in areas along its northern border.
Earlier this month, Pakistan's caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar said that since the Afghan Taliban returned take over power in August 2021, the number of terrorist attacks in the country has increased by 60 percent, and the number of suicide bombings has increased by 500 percent.
Pakistani Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar accused the Taliban regime of supporting the TTP. Photo: BRIAN R. SMITH/AFP < p>On November 3, Tehreek-e-Jihad Pakistan (TJP), an offshoot of the TTP, struck a Pakistani air base in the central city of Mianwali.
It is reported that about 14 aircraft were damaged during the fighting. attack that killed 35 military personnel.
However, the Pakistani military tried to downplay the incident, saying only the three disabled aircraft suffered minor damage.
The surge in terrorism has worsened relations between Islamabad and Kabul, with Mr Kakar accusing the Taliban regime of supporting the TTP by allowing it carry out attacks on Pakistan from Afghan soil.
“We have shared all the details with the interim government of Afghanistan, but they have not taken any action against the TTP terrorists living in Afghanistan and using this land against us,” he told the state Pakistani television.
The TTP was formed in 2007 by militants who broke away from the Afghan Taliban and once controlled parts of northwestern Pakistan before being ousted by the Pakistani army in 2014.
Now the group is on the march again, seizing territory in the northern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. He also created a shadow government in the restive city of Peshawar and other border areas of Pakistan.
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