India and the US wanted Jaish-e-Mohammed deputy chief Abdul Rauf Azhar to be designated as a ‘global terrorist’
A month after Beijing shielded Pakistan-based deputy leader of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) Abdul Rehman Makki, an international terrorist, it has done an encore. It has vetoed a similar joint proposal at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), again by India and the US, to designate Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) deputy chief Abdul Rauf Azhar as a “global terrorist.” He is the younger brother of JeM founder Maulana Masood Azhar, another murderous jihadist. India was understandably incensed at China, castigating it for its “double speak” and “double standards” in the war on terror. China’s perfidy is actually long-standing: as The Pioneer reported, in the last one decade, it has protected violent jihadists half a dozen times; Masood Azhar alone got help four times. On its part, China has deployed typical sophistry to justify its action. A spokesperson for China’s mission to the UN told a news agency that it needs “more time to study the case.” Hiding behind diplomatese and using technical points to shield terrorists—which is same as helping Pakistan, as it supports terrorists—serve the immediate purpose; but it is increasingly exposing China as the biggest rogue state that regularly comes to the rescue of smaller rogue states as Pakistan and North Korea. In fact, China has already emerged as, in the words of the American historian and policy analyst Michael A Ledeen, a mature fascist state. This is arguably the most appropriate description of China.
The American scholar argued that Marxism in China has metamorphosed into fascism. Mao, Ledeen wrote, was unlike traditional communist dictators who disliked traditional culture, replacing it with a sterile Marxism-Leninism. Xi Jinping, the most Maoist of the successors of the Great Helmsman, has embraced the glories of China’s long history most enthusiastically. China’s fascism was never under wraps, but in the last few years the entire world is realising what catastrophes a fascist state can occasion. Especially when its arsenal includes nuclear weapons and hypersonic missiles. It is a well-known fact that China today is the most powerful country in the world, save the US and, to some extent, Russia. Equally well-known is the fact that it is a perpetual, compulsive trouble maker. From brazenly and deliberately spreading the novel coronavirus all over the world to launching a bloody attack on Indian soldiers at Galwan in Ladakh in June 2020 to terrorising Taiwan to intimidating other nations in the vicinity to ensnaring poor nations across continents into a debt trap by means of its notorious Belt & Road Initiative to carrying out genocide of religious and ethnic minorities to defending jihadist terrorists—there is no crime or sin that the Chinese Communist Party is not capable of. India and other democracies should disabuse themselves—if they haven’t already—of any fond notions or hopes about China behaving responsibly. They should chalk out their policies and strategies in recognition of China’s incorrigibility.
