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Senator James Risch weighed in on Secretary of State Antony Blinken's testimony on Afghanistan on Special Report, and reacted to President Biden's sound being cut off when asked questions from the media.

SENATOR JAMES RISCH:Well, you know, theyvebeen all over the board on thisthingbut theyre really delusional on it.Theyre out of step with theAmerican people.The vast majority of theAmerican people watched thisunfold.What you just saw was astatement from the Democratchairman of that committeecalling this a colossal failure. It clearly was.It's a debacle.It was an embarrassment.It was all those things and we wanted answers as to whowas making the who was makingthe decisions and who was makingthe calls on it.We didnt get very much in thatregard, but the takeaway is thatthere as was said here, theyre patting themselves on theback on what great job is done.Look, I was privy to thediscussions about this in thelast administration. Certainly, not in thisadministrationand theres some basics theydidnt follow.Look, you evacuate the countryfirst. Then you give up thecountry.You dont give up the countryand then try to evacuate it orwhat you saw is what you get.

Well, I think all of us have seen this administration and compared it to prior administrations. Whether you like it or not, you wind up comparing it. And for whatever reason, from time to time, his is his sound is cut off, whether he's in the White House or in other places. Sometimes he's hustled off of the stage where we can't or the media can't get answers. Somebody needs to be in charge now.

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Sen. Risch: Biden administration is 'delusional' on Afghanistan and 'out of step with the American people' - Fox News

View of a gold mine in Nor Aaba, Takhar province, Afghanistan.

Omar Sobhani | Reuters

One of the first things many Western pundits predicted as the chaotic American withdrawal from Afghanistan unraveled was the replacement in that power vacuum by China, long a critic of and strategic adversary to the United States.

Afghanistan has trillions of dollars worth of untapped mineral resources, and is in dire need of infrastructure investment, making it in theory a prime ground for China's expansive Belt and Road Initiative. What's more, China is one of the few countries and the only economic superpower to have so far established friendly relations with the Taliban, who shocked the world in early August by overtaking Afghanistan in a matter of days.

In what many see as a symbolic taunt to the West, Chinese state officials have chastised Washington and its 20-year war, and cautiously welcomed the Taliban's announcement of its new government of hardliners and FBI-wanted terrorists this week.

Taliban take control of Hamid Karzai International Airport after the completion of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, in Kabul, Afghanistan on August 31, 2021.

Wali Sabawoon | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

"This has ended the more than three weeks of anarchy in Afghanistan and is a necessary step for Afghanistan's restoration of domestic order and postwar reconstruction," Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry, told reporters at a briefing on Wednesday, according to a transcript published by the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

But beyond the statements, many regional experts are not convinced of China's enthusiasm for barreling into the war-torn Central Asian state on its western border.

China has long been wary of Islamic extremism in its far west. It's also determined not to fall into the same quagmires that the Soviet Union and the U.S. were sucked into with Afghanistan, analysts say.

"China is interested in economic engagement in Afghanistan and extension of its Belt and Road, including reconstruction and investing in untapped mineral resources of the landlocked country," Ekta Raghuwanshi, Stratfor's South Asia analyst for RANE, told CNBC.

"However," she cautioned, "it wouldn't invest substantially anytime soon given security concerns in Afghanistan and proximity to China's restive Xinjiang province," she said, referring to Uyghur militants and the resurgence of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement.

And while China has made clear its approval of the Taliban, that doesn't mean it's ready to commit to doing business with them.

"We don't have evidence China will see the Taliban as a more secure partner," Maximilian Hess,a Central Asia fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute's Eurasia Program, told CNBC.

"It is very aware of the security risks, and attacks on Chinese infrastructure in Pakistan by Islamist groups have increased in recent years" including one as recently as August, Hess said. China risks angering local Afghans with its presence, and Beijing "recognizes Afghanistan's tribal reality and that the Taliban has many sub-factions that it lets operate with quasi-autonomy in many areas," he added.

So even if the Taliban who have embraced China's diplomatic overtures and celebrate the prospect of its investment give Chinese investors a guarantee of security, the group does not necessarily have control over other militants and tribes across the country of nearly 40 million people.

What Beijing doesn't voice publicly, analysts say, is its concern about the impact of the U.S. withdrawal, much like Russia.

As journalist Sreemoy Talukdar wrote in Indian news outlet Firstpost this week, China "may have been gloating at U.S. discomfiture during the bungling exit but had so far been quite content with America's role as the security guarantor next door in a region that is a veritable witches' brew of terrorism and ethnic insurgency."

The Chinese foreign ministry did not reply to a CNBC request for comment.

The Taliban remains sanctioned by the U.S., EU and United Nations. That presents an obvious legal and financial risk for anyone hoping to do business with the group.

"Any deals signed with the Taliban face obvious political and sanctions risks," said Jonathan Wood, deputy global research director at Control Risks.

China has proven adept at navigating U.S. sanctions in the past, importing embargoed Iranian oil thanks to the use of things like "ghost ships." But some Chinese companies have been hit by U.S. penalties, and in the case of Afghanistan, the security risks make pushing that boundary even less appealing.

"Western sanctions mean that even if the Taliban is recognized (by China), very few banks or financial institutions will deal with the Taliban government while those sanctions remain," Hess said.

Afghanistan's mineral wealth is staggering. The country sits above some 60 tons of copper reserves, more than 2.2 billion tons of iron ore, 1.4 million tons of rare earth minerals coveted for their use in electronic products such as lithium which is in high demand for electric vehicle batteries 1.6 billion barrels of crude oil, 16 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and another 500 million barrels of natural gas liquids, according to U.S. geological surveys.

But so far, it's proven nearly impossible to reach.

In 2008, a consortium of Chinese companies took on a 30-year lease for the largest copper project in Afghanistan, called Mes Aynak. To date 13 years later no work has been started on the mining project.

This is due to a combination of security issues, state corruption and infrastructure constraints, even though the 11.08 million tons of copper it's estimated to hold would be worth over $100 billion at current London Metal Exchange prices.

"Afghanistan's limited infrastructure power, roads, rails difficult terrain, and landlocked geography will continue to hinder natural resource development," Stratfor's Wood said.

Despite all the limitations, these have not necessarily stopped China in the past, as its investments in Sudan and the Congo show, noted Samuel Ramani, a tutor of International Relations at the University of Oxford.

Given the stagnation of its previous Afghan ventures, "I think Chinese involvement in Afghanistan could look a lot like their purported reconstruction plans in Syria," Ramani said. "A lot of speculation, but little substance."

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China's rumored ambitions to dive into Afghanistan are overstated and unrealistic, experts say - CNBC

The United States is really not prepared for large reconstruction programs like this in a conflict zone, he said. Every time we do it, we do it poorly.

Leaders resolve again and again not to do it, but the U.S. has engaged in three major reconstruction efforts in the last 50 years in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, he noted. The United States would be better off accepting that it will likely find itself engaged in something similar in another challenging part of the world and prepare itself for that mission than simply vowing to never do it again, he said.

Sopko said that he was initially surprised by the speed of the collapse of the Afghan Security Forces, but when he and his staff reflected on it, it seemed inevitable.

Corruption was rampant in the Afghan military, he said. One American commander once told Sopko that 50 percent of the fuel provided by the United States was stolen, he said.

We spent too much money, too fast, in too small a country, with no oversight, he said. Every Afghan you talk to says it was the corruption in the military that led to the militarys downfall.

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Congress' Afghanistan watchdog will continue oversight - Roll Call

Is Charlie Wilsons War due a sequel? The movie, like the book that inspired it, recounted the flamboyant congressmans role in escalating Americas war in Afghanistan during the 1980s. Through one of the CIAs largest covert action programs, the United States supplied huge amounts of arms and money to the mujahedeen, who bravely fought the Soviet army and ultimately drove it out of Afghanistan.

With that country now under the control of another brutal authoritarian regime, some in Washington argue its time to dust off the 1980s covert action playbook. Even though most of Afghanistan fell to the Taliban in August, a desperate resistance effort continues in the Panjshir Valley.

Ahmad Massoud, leader of the resistance and son of the famed guerrilla leader Ahmed Shah Massoud, has very publicly requested U.S. support. In a Washington Post opinion article on Aug. 18 and a series of media interviews, he exhorted America to take up its role as the arsenal of democracy and provide his newly formed National Resistance Front with weapons and assistance. Plenty in Washington listened sympathetically, determined not to abandon the rebels to the Taliban. Predictably, the calls for action gathered steam, spearheaded by Republican Rep. Mike Waltz, who appears eager to play the role of a modern-day Charlie Wilson. Joined by influential Sen. Lindsey Graham and others, together they called on President Joe Biden to stand with our friends in the Panjshir Valley and to recognize them as the legitimate government representatives of Afghanistan.

As far as can be ascertained from fragmentary news reports, the resistance hangs on by a thread. The Taliban has declared victory in Panjshir after occupying the provincial capital of Bazarak and the international media, largely dependent on journalists embedded with the Taliban, have been quick to accept this line. But it is worth recalling that Soviet forces also occupied parts of the Panjshir multiple times during the 1980s yet could not maintain their presence. Bazarak is only a short way into the long valley and, while symbolic, hardly represents a militarily decisive objective. The resistance claims it continues to occupy strategic positions and has vowed to fight on: If it can hold out until the winter snows arrive this could give it time to regroup and resupply. Meanwhile, Massoud called for a national uprising, just as widespread protests rocked Kabul. Although the prospects for the resistance look grim, it might be premature to declare game, set, match.

Even if the National Resistance Front loses territorial control over much of Panjshir, active opposition to Afghanistans new regime will continue, especially if the Taliban maintain the hardline approach suggested by recent appointments. Calls for U.S. support will also continue. The Taliban are not a united group and have swept to power on the basis of a patchwork of deals with local leaders. The speed of their success has taken them by surprise, and early indicators suggest they will struggle to provide stable or effective governance. The Taliban have already made missteps, could overreach in their relations with China, and there are signs of tension with Pakistan and Iran. American covert action could in theory exploit all of these dynamics to divide and discredit the regime.

The Biden administration is not about to ride into the breach to rescue the resistance. But covert action in Afghanistan, especially aimed at something less than regime change, remains a distinct possibility. However, it comes with plenty of hazards and the Biden administration should proceed carefully.

The Lure of Covert Action

Biden has repeatedly stated his commitment to extricate America from so-called forever wars and, as the nature of the Afghan exit underscores, he tends to hold his ground once he has made a decision. Having achieved his central aim of withdrawal from Afghanistan, it would be nonsensical to immediately wade back in especially given the lack of appetite for doing so among the American public and with midterm elections to be held next year.

Despite this, some form of covert action in Afghanistan is a real possibility for at least three reasons. First, there is clearly pressure from some American politicians to do something about the Talibans victory, even if there is little domestic enthusiasm for military intervention. In such circumstances, presidents typically turn toward the hidden hand to bypass domestic constraints. Covert action becomes a silver bullet to solve intractable problems, or an appealing halfway house between doing something and doing nothing.

Second, the record indicates that when considering covert operations the United States often acts because it can, rather than because it should. Whatever the policy reticence or bleak prospects for a successful insurgency, there is a tendency within intelligence and military circles to believe that positive action is possible. Americas spies have a habit of fighting the last war again. The United States has extensive experience in conducting covert actions and unconventional warfare, bolstered in recent years by the formulation of quasi-doctrine related to light-footprint and by, with and through indirect approaches. America has an array of dedicated units boasting 20 years of experience overseeing paramilitary operations in theaters such as Somalia, Syria, Iraq and, not least, Afghanistan capable of rapid deployment for just such missions. Apart from paramilitary action, the United States has even more experience in conducting political and influence operations, designed to divide and discredit targets, dating back to the CIAs founding.

Third, reinforcing this can-do spirit will be the inexorable march of events. The United States will likely still have some contacts in place in Panjshir and perhaps beyond, and initial tentative interactions might generate a momentum of their own. There may even be discrete American activity already taking place on the ground, at least in terms of intelligence collection and liaison. When it comes to covert action, tactics have a habit of driving strategy. And the United States could always encourage private initiatives or facilitate the covert actions of other states, such as France which has close ties to Massoud and a president who has expressed support for those who cherish freedom or India, which has most to lose from the alliance between the Taliban and Pakistan. The CIA director has already held talks with the Indian national security adviser to discuss developments in Afghanistan.

Covert Options: Perils and Pitfalls

Although a large-scale paramilitary covert action to overthrow the Taliban is unlikely, the U.S. government has other covert options available. These include more limited programs designed to keep alive a spirit of resistance in Afghanistan, communicate determination to allies, or simply impose costs on the Taliban regime. American policymakers may see advantages in signaling resolve to the Taliban or disrupting their activities, and a small toehold within the country might allow the United States to launch counter-terrorism operations against the Islamic State in Afghanistan or al-Qaeda elements there. The composition of the Talibans interim regime offers little confidence that they can be relied upon to take counter-terrorism seriously themselves. The caretaker minister of the interior, for example, is none other than Sirajuddin Haqqani, who was featured in an FBI wanted poster with a $10 million bounty on his head.

Other potential options include covert action to identify and exploit divisions or contradictions within the Taliban and its new government, including those between moderates and hardliners, between the formerly exiled political leadership and its military wing, and between the different terrorist factions making up the regime. The U.S. government might also consider efforts designed to exploit frictions between the Taliban and states such as Pakistan, Iran, Russia, or China. Political warfare or influence operations are a much more common form of covert action than grandiose attempts at regime change. All regional powers are concerned about Afghanistan once again serving as a base for cross-border terrorist attacks upon their territory. Iran is watching closely to see how the Taliban behave toward the large Shiite Hazara population, including those who have taken refuge in the Panjshir. China will likely be wary of expanding its geopolitical footprint and influence in the country if there is continuing armed opposition and instability.

Even covert options with limited goals, however, are fraught with hazards. If an operation involves the provision of weapons, they could get into the wrong hands, just as they reportedly did during the recent covert action supporting rebels in Syria. Any relationship between the United States and whatever is left of the resistance movement within Afghanistan would be complicated. Proxies are not puppets and they often manipulate their sponsors: Anyone the U.S. government supports on the ground would pursue their own interests, which may not align with Americas. Working through intermediaries, who will also have their own aims, would exacerbate these problems.

Massoud, or others like him, will probably hype their access to valuable intelligence on al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Afghanistan and request covert support in the form of money, communications equipment, or training from the CIA in return for providing information. Any such arrangement, even if starting small as a counter-terrorism operation, could easily drift toward an open-ended U.S. commitment.

Political warfare and influence operations also come with risks. First, they can start small but incrementally grow into paramilitary action, developing a life of their own. The multi-billion-dollar covert action in 1980s Afghanistan began with propaganda. Second, in an interconnected world, political and influence operations are hard to contain and risk reaching unintended audiences, including back home. Even rumors of operations can undermine the legitimacy of those supported or can corrode trust more widely. Third, political and influence operations are very difficult to evaluate. All the while, secrecy creates a ceiling on all types of covert activities, as does the lack of substantial U.S. presence in Afghanistan.

The United States Should Proceed Cautiously

If the U.S. government seriously considers potential covert actions in Afghanistan, it should set clear and realistic goals, including benchmarks for success. Experts stress the importance of keeping open the option of walking away if the mission is no longer serving national interests: Thats an imperative that grows more problematic the more involved the United States becomes, as reputational concerns and vested interests expand. There is always the temptation to escalate and to pursue increasingly grand aims.

In any covert action, policymakers and officials should determine the appropriate allocation of resources and levels of secrecy based on the stated goal. The former is an obvious point (although often forgotten in practice if historical cases of tools driving strategy are anything to go by). The latter is less so, and too often gets overlooked. Determining appropriate levels of secrecy is more nuanced than commonly thought, and exposure to certain audiences does not necessarily mean failure. Those crafting a covert action program should ask: From whom is an operation intended to be secret, and to whom is it intended to communicate something? Perhaps the United States might want to signal resolve to the Taliban in order to gain leverage over their policies. Perhaps a covert action might be aimed at Chinese or Pakistani audiences, or even to give succor to policymakers in neighbors of Afghanistan, like Tajikistan, who are fearful of the Talibans takeover. Goals, resources, and secrecy are interrelated.

Meanwhile, even the limited seemingly low-risk option of disrupting or discrediting the Taliban could still end up inciting another full-blown civil war in Afghanistan. In that event, what comes next? Would U.S. policy then be to covertly intervene on behalf of an emboldened opposition? Or what about the laudable aim of covertly supporting the brave women out on the streets protesting the Taliban? Would such encouragement lead to material support if the Taliban continue to brutally crack down on opposition, or will anti-Taliban protestors get left high and dry? External political intervention, especially if exposed, risks changing the dynamics of genuine protests and undermining both the protestors and Americas goals.

Any covert action should be properly integrated into wider interagency decision-making to ensure proper scrutiny, and so that it does not compete with or undercut other U.S. government activity (such as humanitarian efforts or diplomatic initiatives). A covert move to disrupt the Taliban could adversely impact opportunities for U.S. engagement with, or influence on, the new regime. Such engagement might, for instance, be required to push Afghanistans new rulers to allow a more inclusive political settlement, to ensure the country is not used as a base by international terrorist groups, or to advocate for the protection of rights (to the limited degree possible). It would be damaging, perhaps dangerous, to engage in covert action against the Taliban without coordinating such efforts with other parts of the U.S. government, leaving them unprepared when the Taliban complains or retaliates.

Covert action is simply one part of a broader strategy. Those officials and policymakers weighing up options should ask: What would the United States want to get out of secret activities? How would the various possible goals of such operations play into the wider U.S. political strategy and into regional geopolitics?

In the unlikely event of a major U.S. covert action program that overthrew the Taliban, a host of new problems would emerge problems that the United States has already demonstrated, through 20 years of failed efforts, to be beyond its means to adequately address. Even if the United States considers more limited forms of covert action to disrupt the Taliban, it should proceed extremely cautiously. There would be a need for clear goals, alignment with wider policy aims, bipartisan support, bureaucratic control, and exit options. Any action should be based on a comprehensive analysis ofassociated risks. This is a high bar even for seemingly low-risk operations like dividing and discrediting the Taliban. Such action could dramatically escalate levels of violence in Afghanistan or unwittingly draw the United States back into a country Biden is determined to leave.

Thomas Waldman (@tom_waldman) is a senior lecturer in international security studies at Macquarie University, Sydney. He is author ofVicariousWarfare: American Strategy andtheIllusion ofWaronthe Cheap(Bristol University Press, 2021) andWar, Clausewitz andtheTrinity(Ashgate Publishing, 2013).

Rory Cormac (@rorycormac) is a professor of international relations attheUniversity of Nottingham in the United Kingdom. He has written widely onintelligence and covert action, most recentlyDisrupt and Deny: Spies, Special Forces, andtheSecret Pursuit of British Foreign Policy (Oxford University Press, 2018). His next book,Covert Actions: Subversion,Sabotage, and Secret Statecraft,is forthcoming with Atlantic (2022).

Image: Xinhua

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Forward to the Past? Weigh Covert Options in Afghanistan Carefully - War on the Rocks

On November 22, 1953, a tiny Reuters dispatch from Leh appeared in The New York Times with the headline Indians get out of Red Sinkiang. After a journey of 500 miles through the western Himalayas, nineteen Indians have arrived here from southern Sinkiang in Communist China, the wire service reported. These were believed to be the last Indians who left the western Chinese province (now spelt in English as Xinjiang), ending a presence that is believed to have lasted at least several hundred years. The group was led by a vice counsel in Kashgar, who looked after Indian interests for three years after the Indian consulate in the fabled city was closed.

The exodus of Indians fearing Communist rule in Xinjiang, which took place in the late 1940s and early 1950s, closed a long chapter of history where people, goods, ideas, religion and culture moved in both directions across the Himalayas.

Chinese Buddhist monk and scholar Xuanzang, who visited India on a pilgrimage in the 7th century CE, travelled through the Khyber Pass and Hindu Kush to Kashgar and Khotan before heading back to eastern China, carrying with him sacred manuscripts. Indian Buddhist culture once thrived in the Khotan Oasis and spread from there all the way to the eastern coast of China.

Like Xuanzang, a community of traders from different parts of the Indian subcontinent travelled to Xinjiang either via Badakshan, Afghanistan, or Kashmir and Gilgit or the onerous and treacherous path from Ladakh through the Karakoram Pass, Karakoram Mountains and the Taklamakan Desert.

The one from Ladakh, which was much frequented by the traders, was a gruelling test of endurance and determination, with at least four mountain passes averaging heights of over 17,600 feet having to be crossed, Madhavi Thampi, who taught Chinese history at Delhi University for 35 years, wrote in her book Indians in China, 1800-1949. The journey to Yarkand in Xinjiang took on an average 38 days.

Indian traders are not known to have documented the rigours of the journey, but in 1925, Russian artist, writer and philosopher Nicholas Roerich wrote about his trip from Kashmir and Ladakh across the Karakoram Pass in great detail: It is impossible to describe the beauty of this multi-day snow kingdom. Such diversity, such expressiveness of outlines, such fantastic cities, such multi-coloured streams and streams and such memorable purple and moonlit rocksAt the same time, the striking sonorous silence of the desert. And people stop quarrelling with each other, and all differences are erased, and everyone, without exception, absorbs the beauty of the mountain desolation.

Leaving aside the romantic writing of Roerich, this was a journey that came at a heavy cost of human and animal life. The trail across the Karakoram Pass was littered with the bones of dead humans and animals. It was rare for caravans to make the trip without loss of life or goods.

Located in the heart of Central Asia and sandwiched between an expanding Russian Empire and British India, Xinjiang was one of the main theatres of the Great Game, the diplomatic and political confrontation between London and Moscow in the 19th and 20th century.

Indian traders began crossing the Karakoram Mountains long before the British colonised the country, and the presence of an Indian community in the western fringes of China was seen as an asset for London. Attempts to set up a diplomatic mission in Xinjiang were in full swing in 1890 when Francis Younghusband went on an expedition to the area. His interpreter George Macartney would stay on in Kashgar. It however took 18 years before the Chinese agreed to recognise him as the consul general, giving him the official right to intervene in legal matters when it involved Indians.

CS Cumberland, a British major who visited Xinjiang in the 1890s and wrote Sport on the Pamirs and Turkistan Steppes, was of the belief that Indians helped enhance British soft power in the region. He wrote, I consider that the friendly feeling and respect shown to Englishmen in Chinese Turkestan is entirely due to the reports of our traders.

Caravans of horses, mules and camels took Indian spices, tea, cotton, sugar, opium and dyestuffs to Xinjiang. From the other direction came carpets, charas, green tea, silk, precious stones, gold and silver.

Until the 1940s the cities of Yarkand, Kashgar and Khotan had active and clearly visible Indian communities, comprising of traders from Punjab, Ladakh, Kashmir and Sindhs Shikarpur. Most of them would stay in their own serais.

The actual trade between India and Sinkiang via the high Karakoram Pass was controlled by Punjabi Hindu merchants from the town of Hoshiarpur, French historian Claude Markovits wrote in his book titled The Global World of Indian Merchants, 1750-1947.

These Punjabis mainly belonged to the Khatri caste and worked both on their own and as agents of other traders. They were in general treated well by the Chinese authorities, although they had to bear some discriminatory measures such as not being allowed to wear turbans or ride horses within the town, Thampi wrote.

Many of these traders would split their time between Xinjiang and Punjab, with some managing to accumulate vast fortunes. The British authorities managed to recruit some of them to work as informers and interpreters, and also to keep an eye on Russian activity in the region.

The British were happy to reward such traders for their services and loyalty. A declassified letter dated October 26, 1893 shows the approval of a monthly pension of Rs 50 to one Jowala Bhaggat, a trader who moved back permanently to Punjab. Jowala Bhaggat, now between 70 and 80 years of age, is the well-known Yarkand trader who rendered on many occasions, as the correspondence submitted shows, conspicuous services to the British Government and its officers from whom he holds very high testimonials, HC Fanshawe, Officiating Secretary Punjab, wrote in the letter to the Foreign Department.

The southern areas of Xinjiang also had a presence of Kashmiri Muslim traders. Khotan, Yarkand and Kashgar all had streets that were inhabited by Kashmiris.

While some were seasonal traders, a number of them stayed on in Xinjiang for so long that they lost their ties with their homes in India and considered themselves as locals for all practical purposes, according to Thampi. Some Kashmiris married Uyghur women and bought land and were so integrated into to the local culture that they spoke the Uyghur language better than Kashmiri, which they slowly forgot.

In 1949, when the descendants of such people wanted to move back to India, it was more difficult for them to establish their Kashmiri identity with the Indian authorities.

An Indian community that earned notoriety and the ire of the Uyghurs and Chinese was the Shikarpuris. The diaries of the Kashgar agency, which would become the British consulate in the city had detailed information about the Shikarpuris in Xinjiang, according to Markovits. It gives a fairly detailed, although extremely hostile account of the activities of Shikarpuri moneylenders in southern Sinkiang or Kashgaria (there is no evidence of a Shikarpuri presence in the rest of this huge territory), from the 1890s to the 1940s, which saw the last Shikarpuris leave the region, the French historian wrote.

By 1907, there were 500 Shikarpuri moneylenders in the region. They had a so-called shah-gumastha system where the shah advanced capital to junior partners, the gumasthas, who had no capital of their own but were engaged to travel and collect debts. Some of these gumasthas were described as bad characters, men against whom there were cases in Shikarpur for housebreaking, according to Markovits. Their exactions against the local population in the course of collecting debts, in particular their seizing of women and children as sureties, led to a string of protests from the Uyghur peasantry, which were relayed by the Chinese authorities to the British consular authorities.

The British consular officers used to regularly receive complaints about the moneylenders, who were accused of charging exorbitant interest (12% per month), not returning bonds despite loans being fully paid up and forcibly keeping people in confinement until loans were paid back.

Allen Robert Shuttleworth, who was a British consular officer in Kashgar, wrote that the Chinese and the British were ready to help the Shikarpuris collect their debts but there was no satisfying the moneylenders who he called vultures and an unlovable lot.

By 1909, half of the Shikarpuris were sent back to India. Others managed to stay on in Xinjiang until 1933, when an Uyghur uprising against the Chinese led to violence against the moneylenders. The violence claimed several Indian lives and led to a flight of most Shikarpuris, although some stayed back until the early 1940s.

While the risks that Indians took to trade and live in Xinjiang were rewarded, they were often caught up in business disputes with Chinese and Uyghurs, and amongst themselves. When the British consular authorities would visit cities such as Yarkand, they would be flooded with petitions and requests to settle business disputes.

When the disputes involved Chinese subjects, Macartney would intervene with the authorities. Xinjiang had a system in place through which arbitrators would be appointed to settle these disputes. The corruption in the bureaucracy in the region, well documented in Nicholas Roerichs Altai-Himalaya, was also a major hindrance to resolving disputes.

Thampis book documents a communal riot between local Muslims and Hindus in Yarkand when a Muslim woman was found in the room of a Hindu cook. The situation threatened to spiral out of control, but the Chinese authorities took swift action, including fining the cook, administering mild beatings on those who used insulting languages against Muslims and a gift of carpets. Muslim rioters were also punished with similarly mild beatings and banned from slaughtering cows or selling beef in front of Hindu serais.

Indians would sometimes get in the crossfire between warlords who would seize power in the large territory. With each change in the power structure came a new set of rules and regulation from increased property taxes to a clampdown on the sale of charas.

The most lucrative period for Indian traders in Xinjiang was right after the Bolshevik Revolution, when chaos in Russia led to minimal trade with the country. By the 1930s, the Soviet Union had become a major industrial force and built good road and railway infrastructure up to the borders of Xinjiang. It became financially unviable for many Indian traders to live and work in the region. The death knell to the Indian presence in Xinjiang was the victory of the Communists in the Chinese Civil War and Beijings subsequent exertion of stronger authority over western China. The final exodus to India began in 1949, with some Uyghurs also crossing over the Karakoram Pass to Ladakh and Kashmir.

In 2021 the diplomatic relationship between India and China is far from ideal, but there is no dispute over the boundary at the Karakoram Pass. If trade over the pass were reopened, places like Ladakh, which once hosted Central Asian serais and was a major trade hub, would benefit enormously from the new opportunities. Indians would also be able to gain from the opportunities on the other side of the Karakoram Mountains given how much China is investing in its Belt and Road initiatives.

Ajay Kamalakaran is a writer and independent journalist, based in Mumbai. He is a Kalpalata Fellow for History & Heritage Writings for 2021.

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An Indian business community had thrived in Xinjiang before the Communists took over in China - Scroll.in