Beijing Gives Terrorism in Pakistan a Pass

For a country that claims to abhor Islamist terrorism and seek friendly ties with its neighbors, China’s actions at the United Nations are befuddling. Late last month, Beijing blocked an Indian attempt to have Masood Azhar, the founder of U.N.-designated terrorist group Jaish-e-Mohammed, added to a global list of terrorists. Instead, the Chinese placed the Indian request on a “technical hold.”

According to Indian press reports, the U.S., U.K. and France, among others, strongly supported India’s case against Mr. Azhar.

China’s intransigence in the face of a virtual global consensus points to a fundamental problem it faces as it seeks a larger role in South Asia. As long as Beijing continues to shield terrorists backed by its “all-weather friend” Pakistan, it cannot be a responsible power in the region.

Over the past decade, China has sought to convert its increased economic heft into greater influence in South Asia. From building infrastructure in Sri Lanka to wooing landlocked Nepal, China’s charm offensive is evident across the region. But nowhere are the stakes higher than in China’s growing involvement in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Concerned about the rise of Islamist violence in the Muslim-dominated province of Xinjiang, China has joined diplomatic efforts to broker a deal between the Afghan government and the Pakistan-backed Afghan Taliban. At the same time, in a bid to gain faster access to the Middle East and Europe, Beijing has pledged to invest more than $45 billion in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, an ambitious 1,850-mile network of roads, railways and power plants that will stretch from Xinjiang to Gwadar port in Baluchistan.

In return, China expects Pakistan’s powerful army to safeguard its investments, and to crack down on Uighur separatists from the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, which has supposedly found sanctuary with sympathetic Pakistani jihadists. Over the past five years, alleged Uighur terrorist attacks have killed at least 75 people in China. Dozens more have reportedly died in clashes between local Muslims and Han Chinese settlers in Xinjiang.

It’s easy to see why China would prefer a stable Pakistan to one that acts as a magnet for disaffected Muslims from nearby Xinjiang. Indeed, both India and the U.S. would welcome this potential outcome of greater Chinese involvement in Pakistan’s stuttering economy. But for this to happen, China needs to help Pakistan kick its jihad habit, not use its clout to help the Pakistani army remain hooked on terrorists who attack India while at the same time demand that Pakistan do more against those who threaten China.

There’s no better example of this double standard than China’s tender concern for 47-year-old Mr. Azhar, a hardened terrorist with more than two decades of violence behind him.

In the 1990s Mr. Azhar joined the terrorist group Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, which would go on to become part of Osama bin Laden’s International Islamic Front for Jihad Against the Jews and Crusaders. Arrested in Indian Kashmir in 1994, Mr. Azhar was released five years later in exchange for 155 hostages from an Indian Airlines plane hijacked to Taliban-controlled Kandahar. An associate released along with him, Omar Saeed Sheikh, went on to organize the 2002 beheading of Daniel Pearl, a reporter with this newspaper.

After his release from Indian custody, Mr. Azhar founded Jaish-e-Mohammed in Pakistan. Along with Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Afghanistan-focused Haqqani Network, it has emerged as one of South Asia’s deadliest terrorist groups.

In 2001 a JeM attack on the legislative assembly in India’s Jammu and Kashmir state killed 38 people. An attack on India’s Parliament two months later nearly triggered an India-Pakistan war. In January this year, JeM militants attacked an Indian Air Force base in Punjab killing eight people.

India, the U.S., the U.K., Canada and Australia, among others, have designated JeM as a terrorist group. Shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the U.N. Security Council listed JeM as a terrorist organization “associated with Al-Qaeda.”

China’s willingness to go to bat for Mr. Azhar is part of a pattern of defending terrorist groups linked to Pakistan’s army and its spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence. Until the horrific 2008 Mumbai attacks forced its hand, China blocked Indian requests for the U.N. to designate the LeT as a terrorist group three times.

If China’s leaders were less narrowly focused on the Uighur problem, and on keeping their friends in the Pakistani army in good humor, they could take a more enlightened approach to terrorism in South Asia. Indeed, despite the U.S. being a far more generous donor to Pakistan over the years, it is China that has carried more clout.

When the Taliban’s Mullah Omar ruled Afghanistan as a Pakistani proxy in the 1990s, he reportedly broke his rule of only meeting with Muslims for just one person: the Chinese ambassador to Pakistan. The Pakistani army’s bloody 2007 crackdown on Islamabad’s militant-ridden Red Mosque only took place because some of its acolytes had the temerity to kidnap Chinese masseuses from a local parlor.

In short, if China chooses, it can be a force for good in South Asia. But this requires encouraging Pakistan to crack down on all terrorists—not just a selective few—and to stop defending thugs like Mr. Azhar.