As per unconfirmed information received by outgoing Trump administration in the United States in December last year, China had offered to pay non-state actors in Afghanistan to attack American troops in Afghanistan. According to CNN, the intelligence input was received by the President’s office during his daily brief on December 17. According to Axios, the information is been declassified by the Trump administration. The President’s national security adviser Robert O’Brien reportedly discussed the information with him. The information is uncorroborated as yet. Several agencies are reportedly working on corroborating these inputs.
Chins has denied the allegations as fake news
Spokesperson of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Wang Wenbin has dismissed the allegations as slanderous and had termed it ‘completely fake news’. He said that China had always pursued an independent foreign policy of peace and had never initiated a war to others and therefore funding non-state actors to attack other countries was not in question. “China supported the process of peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan, and does not get involved in the internal conflicts in Afghanistan”, he said.
A Defense official quoted by CNN said , “Our teams will seek to learn as much as we can about these allegations from the outgoing administration, and this is another illustration of why we need full cooperation, including from Department of Defense”. The Defense official said this in context of the ongoing transfer power between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. The relations between Washington DC and Beijing have not been well of late with respect to trade, intellectual property and other issues. The US had also accused China of committing human rights abuses against Uyghur Muslims.
Earlier there were reports of Russia funding Taliban to kill US troops
Last year, there were similar reports of Russia funding Taliban terrorists in Afghanistan that has resulted in deaths of several US troops. The number of US troops targeted under the programme and the date of the alleged casualties was not specified.
