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China’s default position on Pak terror is block India

Blocking India's proposal at UNSC to designate Pak-based terrorists as global terrorist is a low-cost option for China to appease its client state rather than allow it to renegotiate the power projects with Chinese companies as part of mandatory condition for a much-needed IMF loan by Islamabad.

Published on: Sep 18, 2022, 10:19:03 IST
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The blocking of the US-India joint proposal before the UNSC 1267 committee to designate 26/11 killer Sajid Mir as a global terrorist by China indicates that when it comes to Pakistan-based terrorists targeting India, obstruction is the default position of Beijing without going into the merits or demerits of the submission. Mir was part of the Pakistani ISI-conceived Karachi Project, whose demon child Indian Mujahideen terror group killed nearly 1,000 innocent Indians from 2005 to 2011 through IED blasts.

Three Pak killers Abdul Rehman Makki. Rauf Azhar and Sajid Mir.
Three Pak killers Abdul Rehman Makki. Rauf Azhar and Sajid Mir.

On the instructions of Beijing, the Chinese representative in the UN put the Mir proposal on hold after the designation of two more Pakistani terrorists—Lashkar-e-Toiba’s financier Abdul Rehman Makki and Jaish-e-Mohammed operational commander Mufti Rauf Azhar—were put on technical hold at the UNSC by Xi Jinping regime.

This means that the pending proposal of France-India joint proposal to designate Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed killers Mohiuddin Alamgir and Ali Kashif Jan as global terrorists by the 1267 committee will also be blocked by China soon. By doing this, the Xi Jinping regime is sending a message to India that terrorism is your problem and hence you sort it out. It is also a low-cost option for China to appease its client state Pakistan rather than allow it to renegotiate the power projects with Chinese companies as part of mandatory condition for a much-needed IMF loan by Islamabad. Pakistan is deep under debt due to gold plated power projects set up with the help of Chinese companies on high interest loans and high cost of electricity.

Although China may feel that it is a low-cost option, the Narendra Modi government takes terrorism very seriously and such actions from Beijing will further add bitterness to already a sour bilateral relationship. The hold on Makki, Azhar and Mir will also complicate China’s relationship with US and France as Mir was training French jihadists in early 2000 and was responsible for killing US nationals in the 26/11 attack.

It is understood that China’s “no limits” friend Russia is no longer a safe bet for India to become a co-sponsor for designation by the 1267 committee. Britain, which still thinks is the last word on the Af-Pak region, has also been dilly-dallying on these proposals given its close relationship with Rawalpindi.

  • Shishir Gupta
    ABOUT THE AUTHOR
    Shishir Gupta

    Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More