BEIJING: It has a tragic Sisyphean tinge to it. As the United States was withdrawing from a two-decade “war on terror” in Afghanistan, a deadly terror attack rocked Kabul airport, killing over 100 people. ISIS-K, an Afghan affiliate of the Islamic State, claimed responsibility.
While Sisyphus, the king of Ephyra, is condemned to ever-lasting labor of pushing a huge boulder uphill only to have it roll back down, America’s “war on terror,” despite costing a colossal amount of money and lives, only resulted in a loss of U.S. credibility and likely a larger breeding ground for terrorism. Yet, as intractable as terrorism is, China has made remarkable achievements in reining in the scourge. Within its borders, the country has recorded no terror attack since 2017. In the global arena, the country participates actively in both bilateral and multilateral counter-terrorism efforts.
Recognizing terrorism as a transnational threat and “a common enemy of mankind,” China, with President Xi Jinping at the helm, highlights the need to address both its symptoms and root causes, and calls for building “a global united front” with a new vision for security.
“We should have zero tolerance for terrorism, separatism and extremism,” the Chinese president pledged at the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) summit held in May 2014.
By then, the world was experiencing a surge in terrorism. Between 2012 and 2013, according to the Global Terrorism Index produced by the Australia-based Institute for Economics and Peace, the number of deaths from terrorism increased by as much as 61 percent.
“Not only is the intensity of terrorism increasing, its breadth is increasing as well,” the report said.
China was also a victim of this “globalization of terrorism” trend. Around 2014, the country saw a spate of deadly terror attacks, including one in the southwestern city of Kunming two months before Xi’s CICA speech, where 29 people were killed and over 130 injured by knife-wielding separatists from Xinjiang. The Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement, a UN Security Council-listed terrorist group, claimed responsibility for a series of attacks in several Chinese cities. – Agencies
