Part 1. East-West Gateway on the Silk Road Part 2. the Arc of Crisis Part 3
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A special report from the Australian Alert Service If the reader has heard of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China, it is likely through lurid news media head- lines about the alleged abuse and enslavement of its Uyghur ethnic inhabitants. The November 2020 – March 2021 Aus- tralian Alert Service series of eight articles assembled here, with an appendix of related material from the AAS, demys- tifies what is going on in and around Xinjiang, and why. We expose the Anglo-American fostering of terrorism in Xinjiang and sponsorship of “East Turkistan” separatism. Part 1. East-West gateway on the Silk Road The ancient Silk Road crossed the mountains and deserts of the The Great Game and area of central Eurasia that is today’s Xinjiang Region in China. Mackinder’s ‘Heartland’ In the 19th century, the doctrine of geopolitics arose from the From Silk Road to Land-Bridge British Empire’s “Great Game” struggle to dominate this region and keep Russia from approaching India. Sun Yat-sen, the The new Great Game father of modern China, envisioned a better future through The Xinjiang fulcrum railway development, an outlook incoporated into President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative today. Part 2. The Arc of Crisis Bernard Lewis and Zbigniew American National Security Advisors Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski revived geopolitics as policy in Brzezinski the 1970s, while the mastermind of an Arc of Crisis in Geopolitics for the Cold War Eurasia was the Anglo-American orientologist Bernard Operation Cyclone – Afghan Lewis, also known as godfather of the neocons. Brze- Mujaheddin zinski wanted to destabilise the Soviet Union even at the risk of nuclear war, by backing Islamist guerrillas to strike at its “soft under- ‘He who sows the wind…’ belly” in Central Asia. Thus began Operation Cyclone, CIA funding and weapons for the mujaheddin in Afghanistan. Part 3. Xinjiang becomes a target Foreign fighters came to combat Soviet forces in Afghanistan, 1979-88. They Mujaheddin fan out then continued as a presence there and in Pakistan, giving rise to al-Qaeda and CIA’s ‘marvellous’ practices turning up in combat from Bosnia to post-Soviet Central Asia turned vs China to Syria. The CIA considered the mujaheddin operation against the USSR a success, which could be replicated against China. Establishment strategists began to probe ethnic tensions in Xin- jiang as a vulnerability, as in the 2003 pamphlet The Xinjiang Problem by Graham E. Fuller and S. Frederick Starr. Part 4. Pan-Turkism Pan-Turkist ideology, which seeks a Turkic-ethnic belt from the The Young Turks Mediterranean to Xinjiang, including a Uyghur entity, stems Central Asia between the Wars from a long history of Venetian and British Intelligence med- The ‘Gladio’ template dling in Turkey and Central Asia. Between the World Wars Pan- Turkism was a factor in struggles among British, Chinese, Ger- Alparslan Turkes and the Grey man and Soviet interests in Central Asia. After World War II the Wolves CIA used extreme Turkish nationalists, with radical Pan-Turkist views, as Post-Soviet Pan-Turk revival assets in the Cold War. From them came “Grey Wolves” terrorism. Pan-Turkist activity rose sharply after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Continued next page Part 5. The Anglo-American-Saudi promotion of violent jihad USA-UK-Saudi Arabia-Pakistan support for the muja- Wahhabite education, jihadist heddin fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan included training Saudi-funded religious schools in Pakistan, meant as The Central Asia blueprint recruitment centres. They preached Wahhabism, the official Saudi form of Islam, which can include a Pakistani madrassas recruited fanatical interpretation of an obligation to kill non-believers; they trained vio- Xinjiang Uyghurs lent jihadists—terrorists. With Chinese cross-border travel restrictions relaxed in 1978, young men from Xinjiang studied at the schools in Pakistan. Part 6. ‘Afghan’ jihadist terrorism comes to Xinjiang Uyghur Islamist radicals in Xinjiang, some of them veterans of Afghanistan, The impact of Afghanistan on launched disturbances and terrorism around 1990. Leaders of the East Turkistan separatism in Xinjiang Islamic Movement (ETIM) visited al-Qaeda chiefs in Pakistan, then set up their ETIM in Pakistan and headquarters in Afghanistan, fleeing after 2001 when the USA invaded. ETIM Afghanistan leader Hasan Mahsum was killed in Pakistan in 2003. Uyghur separatist ter- rorism sharply escalated in China in 1996- Terror attacks in China 97 and again in 2014. Al-Qaeda leaders have International jihadis call for made solidarity videos for their “brothers in attacks on Xinjiang East Turkistan”, while ISIS wanted Xinjiang within its new Caliphate. Thousands of Uy- ‘Foreign fighters’ from Xinjiang ghur fighters joined with ISIS against the Syrian government after 2011. Part 7. The ‘East Turkistan’ narrative Anglo-American strategists seized on China’s counterterror China moves to stop terrorism measures, which included mandatory deradicalisation programs Intelligence agencies manipulate and increased surveillance alongside huge investment in the diasporas economic betterment of Xinjiang, to drive a narrative of indis- criminate oppression of the Uyghur population. The Uyghur di- The CIA’s Captive Nations aspora was targeted to play a role, on the model of the so-called Captive Nations Project Democracy during the Cold War, when the CIA adopted and de- ployed East European extreme nationalists, some of them ex-allies of the Nazis. Today’s National Endow- ment for Democracy (NED) plays the part of the Cold War CIA, and promotes “East Turkistan” separatism. Part 8. The ‘East Turkistan’ narrative (conclusion) Pan-Turkist inroads in Central Asia after After the USSR 1991 melded with Afghanistan-spawned Is- Pan-Turk inroads in Central Asia lamist terrorism, threatening China as its Special-purpose NGOs economic power grew. American “Project Democracy” institutions sponsor numerous The World Uyghur Congress Uyghur diaspora organisations. The World The ‘East Turkistan Government Uyghur Congress and the separatist East in Exile’ Turkistan Government(s) in Exile (there are several) claim to be peaceable, but many of their leaders, as individuals and for their groups, have solidarised with ‘Peaceable’ groups whitewash terrorists. They uniformly oppose the Belt and Road Initiative, which is raising terrorism standards of living in China and abroad. It should be clear, upon honest reflec- A Belt and Road to the future tion, that one does not help the Uyghur people by attacking China. Appendix Richard Bardon, “Uighur ‘mass detention’ reports fabricated by US, British propagandists”, AAS, 26 Sept. 2018. Richard Bardon, “ASPI doubles down on Xinjiang ‘detention centre’ fakery”, AAS, 30 Sept. 2020. Melissa Harrison, “ASPI: forced labour hypocrites and academic fraudsters”, AAS, 14 Oct. 2020. Website: https://citizensparty.org.au STOP WORLD WAR III Xinjiang: China’s western frontier in the heart of Eurasia Part 1. East-West gateway on the Silk Road By Melissa Harrison and Rachel Douglas grassland) and others large deserts. If the reader has heard of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autono- These mountains and plateaus have been called High mous Region in China, it is likely through lurid news media Asia, or the Roof of the World. Located there are small Hima- headlines about the alleged abuse and enslavement of the ar- layan countries like Bhutan and Nepal, Afghanistan, three of ea’s Uyghur ethnic inhabitants. In this issue of the Australian the four nations of Central Asia proper (former Soviet repub- Alert Service, we begin a new series of articles, aimed at de- lics Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and part of Uzbekistan), parts of mystifying what is going on in and around Xinjiang, and why. India, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Russia and Mongolia, and two This first article in the series briefly sketches the history provinces of China—Tibet, and the Xinjiang Uyghur Auton- of the region of which Xinjiang is part, and its position as the omous Region. Xinjiang is bisected east-west by the Tian westernmost frontier area of modern China. Its place within Shan mountains, with the steppe area to their north called China and astride the New Silk Road makes Xinjiang a tar- Dzungaria or “Northern Xinjiang”, while to the south are the get for Anglo-American strategists eager to destabilise China Tarim River Basin and the 337,000 km2 Taklamakan Desert. and wreck Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative. Subsequent ar- Though sparsely populated, this region has played an im- ticles will explore the history of “geopolitical” manoeuvring portant role in the economic and cultural history of the plan- around Xinjiang, from the British Imperial “Great Game” in et, as well as being fiercely contested by major powers—Eur- the 19th century, through the Anglo-American “Arc of Cri- asian ones, and outsiders like Britain and the USA—over the sis” policy against the Soviet Union during the late Cold War, most recent several centuries. The ancient Silk Road trade and up to the present. We will show that human rights con- routes between China and Europe skirted the Taklamakan cerns have been weaponised against China by outside intel- Desert along both its northern and southern edges. ligence agencies who care little for the population living in Xinjiang, like adjacent Central Asia, has been populated Xinjiang, but are using the age-old imperial techniques of fo- by various peoples over the ages. Two thousand years ago menting ethnic and religious conflicts, separatism and terror- an ancient Indo-European people called the Tocharians, their ism to disrupt the society of a presumed adversary nation. language akin to many Indian subcontinent and European tongues, developed agriculture around oases in the Taklam- On the southern side of the Eurasian landmass, about half- akan Desert. For a thousand years, various nomadic tribes, way across it from West to East, the Indian tectonic plate of larger powers based in Mongolia, and Chinese dynasties suc- Earth’s crust is gradually moving northward, subducting un- cessively controlled parts of the area.