ISLAMABAD - Growing attacks on Chinese citizens working in Pakistan has led security analysts to believe that it is probably the handiwork of the United States and its key partners including Israel to contain Beijing's increasing influence in the region, sources said on Monday.
Well-placed sources told The Nation this particularly trend has been prominent with the nearing of the US timeline to pull out its troops along with NATO and other foreign troops from Afghanistan by 2014.
"This is typical style of the US and its partners to leave every thing in chaos prior to leaving a country or the region where it had deployed its combat forces apparently to keep that place destabilizing," the sources said. They were of the view that increasing attacks on Chinese citizens in Pakistan over the past years had been a spectacular phenomenon, which, they believed was sponsored not by any other superpower than the US and its key partners ostensibly to counter the Chinese influence.
Although senior government officials during the background discussions and interviews do not agree to these notions and instead dub them mere speculations, some of the leading analysts having thorough knowledge of the history of the US policies think such machinations could only be done by the US and its key partners.
They believed that the United States has been covertly supporting insurgents in Xinjiang and has been cultivating Turkmen and Uzbeks, the decedents of Mongols in central Asia to contain China and for that matter they were also supporting attacks on Pakistani security forces to weaken them to a degree that they were unable to protect Chinese interest in the region.
The sources feel flabbergasted on the new trend in terrorism with growing involvement of elements belonging to Central Asia, adding that terrorist attack on foreign tourist base camp in Nanga Parbat last week might have been carried out primarily with the motive to target the Chinese.
The recent evolution of Uzbek and Turkmen militants with tattoos on their bodies suggest it was altogether a new phenomenon in the US-led international war against terror.
Apart from targeting and attacking Pakistani security forces, these militants are believed to have been actively chasing the Chinese citizens working various projects in Pakistan as well.
The sources also believed that such incidents were bound to increase with growing investment of China particularly its involvement in Gwadar port. "Gwadar port could be the sole motive of the US and its partners; otherwise their long war in Afghanistan would remain meaningless," a leading Pakistani analyst told The Nation while speaking on condition of anonymity. He was of the firmed view that the US had invaded Afghanistan in the name of eliminating terrorism and extremism but actually wanted to secure Gwadar port exploit the massive natural resources of the central Asia through the landlocked Afghanistan.
He went of to say that the US and its key partners would keep on destabilising the region directly or indirectly to contain China and for that purpose they would continue destabilising Pakistani and the Iran as well.