The deadly terrorist attack in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir last month has triggered renewed questions about China’s continued protection of the Pakistan-based terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed. Will China continue to block international sanctions against JeM's leader, Maulana Masood Azhar, who has claimed credit for the attack?
NEW DELHI – One can only hope that the latest tensions between India and Pakistan, which erupted after a terrorist attack last month killed over 40 Indian paramilitary policemen and injured several others in the Pulwama district of the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir, will be resolved peacefully. But however the ongoing crisis ends, the conflict between the two countries has cast an interesting light on a third: China.
The latest attack in Jammu and Kashmir, which borders Pakistan, has triggered renewed questions about China’s continued protection of the Pakistan-based terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM). JeM was quick to claim credit for the bombing, carried out by a 21-year-old suicide bomber who detonated some 300 kilograms of RDX in an attack on a 78-vehicle police convoy.
India has a humiliating history with JeM’s founder and chief, Maulana Masood Azhar, who was released from an Indian prison in 1999, along with two other terrorists, in exchange for the passengers aboard an Indian Airlines flight that Pakistani terrorists hijacked to Kandahar in then-Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. (One of those released with Azhar was responsible for the subsequent murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl.) JeM then proceeded to launch several terror attacks on India, including a 2016 assault on an army base in Uri, also in Jammu and Kashmir, that killed 19 soldiers and prompted a much-publicized retaliatory “surgical strike” on a JeM training camp.
NEW DELHI – One can only hope that the latest tensions between India and Pakistan, which erupted after a terrorist attack last month killed over 40 Indian paramilitary policemen and injured several others in the Pulwama district of the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir, will be resolved peacefully. But however the ongoing crisis ends, the conflict between the two countries has cast an interesting light on a third: China.
The latest attack in Jammu and Kashmir, which borders Pakistan, has triggered renewed questions about China’s continued protection of the Pakistan-based terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM). JeM was quick to claim credit for the bombing, carried out by a 21-year-old suicide bomber who detonated some 300 kilograms of RDX in an attack on a 78-vehicle police convoy.
India has a humiliating history with JeM’s founder and chief, Maulana Masood Azhar, who was released from an Indian prison in 1999, along with two other terrorists, in exchange for the passengers aboard an Indian Airlines flight that Pakistani terrorists hijacked to Kandahar in then-Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. (One of those released with Azhar was responsible for the subsequent murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl.) JeM then proceeded to launch several terror attacks on India, including a 2016 assault on an army base in Uri, also in Jammu and Kashmir, that killed 19 soldiers and prompted a much-publicized retaliatory “surgical strike” on a JeM training camp.