Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

China has sent an elite anti-terrorism unit to the restive far-western region of Xinjiang in the wake of recent violence there and ahead of an international trade convention, a state newspaper reported yesterday.

The Snow Leopard Commando Unit will be based in Aksu City, about halfway between Kashgar, where two violent attacks took place last month, and Urumqi, the China Daily quoted a spokesman for the Xinjiang People’s Armed Police as saying.

At least 20 people died late last month in the two attacks in Kashgar, in the western part of Xinjiang — turmoil the government blames on Muslim extremists.

In the face of spreading civil unrest among China’s Uighur population, the Chinese government’s love-fest with its all-weather ally, Pakistan, may be starting to sour. Indeed, the authorities in China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region are charging that a prominent Uighur separatist that they captured had received terrorist training in Pakistan. No less embarrassing for Pakistan, the charge came while its intelligence chief, Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, was holding talks in Beijing on securing greater Chinese support to blunt the growing US pressure on Islamabad.

No country has done more than China to prop up the Pakistani state — support that has included transfers of missiles and nuclear weapons technology. By playing the Kashmir card against India in various ways — even deploying People’s Liberation Army units in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir near the line of control with India — China has clearly signaled in recent years its desire to use its alliance with Pakistan to squeeze India. Given the level of China’s strategic investments in Pakistan, the bilateral relationship is unlikely to change.