With its 1300 kilometers stretching over some of the highest passes in the world, the Karakorum Highway (KKH) concretizes an enduring Sino-Pakistani alliance. It also installs China as a major player in South Asia, and provides Pakistan an 'insurance policy' against India. Yet, for all its strategic importance, the highway is not an unmixed blessing. It may facilitate trade and traffic but it also brings with it new dangers like Islamic radicalism, drugs and AIDS.Despite the 'all weather' character of the Sino-Pak relations there exist tensions regarding the highway. In 1992, China blocked traffic on the highway after an Islamist uprising around Kashgar. Beijing fears that the KKH might fuel Uighur independence, while becoming a corridor for radical Islam.

Alienated by the dominant Han culture, Xinjiang's Uighurs have been opposing Chinese rule for decades. The KKH had opened at a time when the Communist grip was looser, granting greater freedom to Uighurs and other minorities while subsequently diverting secessionist claims. The 1980s thus proved auspicious for the Uighurs as they greatly benefited from trade; they were allowed to use the KKH to perform the Hajj to Saudi Arabia and to enroll in Pakistani madrasas. Yet, the situation in Xinjiang reverted to authoritarian rule in the 1990s, once again fuelling nationalist resurgence.

Although it only concerned a minority of the Uighur population, the vast majority of which protested peacefully, the fear of Islamic terrorism was used by China as a tool to increase its repression of Uighur Independence movements - the 'Strike Hard Campaign' was the cause for 200 incidents, 160 deaths, and 440 injuries during the 1990s.

The pressure on the Pakistani side was high. It is through the Highway that foreign countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, invested in mosques and madrasas throughout Xinjiang during the 1980s. Students from Uighur traveled to Pakistan and other countries to study in madrasas before joining, probably under the influence of their Salafi tutors, the fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Subsequently, most of them returned to Xinjiang. On the Pakistani side, the Northern Areas witnessed increasing sectarian violence.

Thus, the KKH and its influence on the situation in Xinjiang endangered the Sino-Pakistani relationship. China made it clear it was ready to freeze the development of the highway unless Islamabad guaranteed that the highway would not be used as a corridor for terrorism. In 1999, China complained to Pakistan after sixteen Uighurs arrested in Xinjiang claimed to have been trained in guerrilla warfare in Pakistan. However, the strategic alliance proving stronger than cultural affinities and Pakistan renounced its welcoming attitude towards Uighurs. Uighur settlements and markets were closed, madrasa students were deported to China and, in a gesture of good will, Pakistan declared in December 2003 that the chief of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), Hasan Mahsum, had been killed in Waziristan.

Sino-Pakistani relations were thus ultimately strengthened as a result of this temporary crisis. This is verified by the 2003 Joint Declaration, the cooperation in various areas including secessionism and terrorism, and the 2006 Free Trade Agreement.

Yet, another threat looms large over the highway. The Southeast Asian Golden Triangle now has its equivalent in the Golden Crescent, which stretches over Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is now challenging it as the main origin of drug trafficking in China. Along with small arms, heroin and opium also cross the Afghan-Pakistani border, near Peshawar, before being smuggled via the KKH to China. This trade constitutes a significant source of funds for Islamic militant groups.

Not only does drug-smuggling threaten Sino-Pakistani relations, where China reports that dozens of Pakistani drug-smugglers are in its jails, but it also endangers the very social equilibrium of the regions bordering the Karakorum Highway. Fuelled by heroin-addiction and the shared use of contaminated needles, HIV rates in Xinjiang have exponentially risen and are now far higher than in other Chinese regions. Drug users account for 96 per cent of reported infections. More importantly, the pandemic increases alienation fears among the Uighur and other minorities with 85 per cent of HIV-infected people in Xinjiang being Uighurs, and in some border communities 70 per cent of the population is contaminated, increasing the income and education gap between these populations and the Hans because of the marginalization process induced by AIDS. Corruption, violence and the desegregation of social ties are other consequences.There is high risk of a vicious cycle of economic and political instability that is worsened by the fact that, in these alienated communities, raising awareness about the pandemic could be seen as yet another governmental conspiracy to eradicate the local population.

The Karakorum Highway has proven to be a strategic and commercial asset both for China and Pakistan. However, it has also produced several non-traditional threats. Islamic terrorism can be contained and offset by the fact that the great majority of Uighur are protesting peacefully, asking for concrete autonomy rather than full-fledged independence. Drugs and AIDS could prove an explosive cocktail, which could not only endanger China and Pakistan's control over their border regions but also stifle economic growth.

SOURCES
Ziad Haider, "Sino-Pakistan Relations and Xinjiang's Uighurs: Politics, Trade and Islam along the Karakoram Highway", Asian Survey, vol. XLV no.4, July/August 2005.
Joan Kaufman and Jun Jing, "Chinaa and AIDS - The Time to Act Is Now", Science Magazine 296 (2002), pp.2339-40.
China UN Theme Group on HIV/AIDS for the UN Country Team in China, "HIV/AIDS: China's titanic peril", 2001 Update of the AIDS Situation and Needs Assessment Report (Beijing: UNAIDS, 2001).