Last month, Chinese President Xi Jinping made a highly public trip to Islamabad to cement Pakistan’s place in his Silk Road Economic Belt. He also used the opportunity to highlight the importance of counterterrorism to the success of these plans. In doing so, Xi is acknowledging that China’s biggest obstacle in constructing the Silk Road might not be mountains or rivers. Instead, it is ethnic and religious tensions across Central Asia that threaten to scuttle the project – and China doesn’t seem to know what to do about it. Read more
