MCLC: 3 Chinese workers dead in Kabul

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: 3 Chinese workers dead in Kabul
***********************************************************

Source: NYT 
(8/9/13):http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/10/world/asia/three-chinese-workers
-found-dead-in-kabul-apartment.html

Bodies of 3 Chinese Workers Found in a Kabul Apartment
By SHARIFULLAH SAHAK and AZAM AHMED

KABUL, Afghanistan — Three Chinese workers were found dead under
mysterious circumstances in an apartment in central Kabul on Friday,
officials said, prompting the Chinese Embassy to urge the Afghan
government to investigate to determine whether its citizens were
specifically targeted.

The police, who could offer only scant details of the killings late
Friday, said an argument between the Chinese workers and several Afghans
had led to the killings of two Chinese women, one Chinese man and an
Afghan security guard.


The head of criminal investigations for the Kabul police, Gen. Mohammad
Zahir, said that the bodies were discovered Friday morning, but that it
was unclear when they had been killed. He added that he believed that the
women were prostitutes and that the deaths did not appear to be
politically motivated. Two other Chinese living in the apartment are
missing, he said.

The Chinese authorities said in a statement on Friday that they were
trying to determine the nature of the attacks, according to the China News
Service, a state-run news agency.

“The incident is still under investigation, and it remains unclear whether
Chinese people were specifically targeted,” said the report, citing a
statement from the embassy.

The Chinese Embassy in Kabul did not answer repeated phone calls Friday
night. It was difficult to learn more about the deaths, because much of
Kabul is shut down for the Islamic holiday of Id al-Fitr, which celebrates
the end of the holy month of fasting for Muslims.

While Afghanistan is an ultraconservative Islamic country, prostitutes in
the larger cities are not unheard-of. Brothels operate in hotels and
within an informal network of residences, where prostitutes and clients
are connected by cellphone. Often, women are put in touch with customers
who meet them in residences and guesthouses, a method that has been far
more difficult for the police to track.

The ethnic origins of prostitutes here vary. Some are Afghan, others are
Chinese, and many arrive from the former Soviet countries to the north,
like Uzbekistan.

Still, there was no evidence that the Chinese workers killed in the attack
were involved in the sex trade. The owner of the apartment where they
lived, Sher Ali, said he was unsure what the renters did. Mr. Ali said he
had signed the rental agreement for $450 a month with a Chinese Muslim, a
man the landlord thought to be pious. The landlord said that man had since
been picked up for questioning by agents he believed to be with the Afghan
intelligence service.

“All I know is that the man I rented the apartment to was a good Muslim,”
Mr. Ali said Friday night at the scene, in the neighborhood of Kolola
Pushta, an informal business district.

For China, the deaths are a sad reminder of the instability on its
doorstep if security in Afghanistan deteriorates. Since last year, the
Chinese government has signaled that it ispaying greater attention to
Afghanistan ahead of the withdrawal of NATO forces in 2014. While the
country shares only a sliver of a border with Afghanistan, officials in
Beijing worry about risks to broader regional stability that could ripple
into Xinjiang, a western region of China where the largely Muslim Uighur
population has chafed at Communist Party controls.

Chinese businessmen, restaurant owners and investors are no strangers to
turbulent parts of the world, and Afghanistan is no exception. In recent
years, flights from China to Afghanistan have been crowded with fortune
seekers looking to sell goods and services that remain scarce in
Afghanistan. The neighborhood surrounding the apartment building where the
Chinese workers were killed is filled with Chinese-run stores selling a
wide range of building materials.

But China’s larger promised investments in Afghanistan have been troubled.
In 2008, two Chinese state-owned companies won the rights to the
potentially huge Aynak copper mine in Afghanistan, but the start of
production has been put off repeatedly because of threats from insurgents
and the discovery of an ancient Buddhist archaeological site sitting atop
the copper deposits.

Chris Buckley contributed reporting from Hong Kong.