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Xinjiang, China, Afghanistan and Pakistan

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Xinjiang, China, Afghanistan and Pakistan Image Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons Xinjiang, China, Afghanistan and Pakistan Subramanyam Sridharan P a g e 1 | 11 Introduction Ever since Op. Bear Trap[1] which led to the induction, the eventual humiliating withdrawal of Soviet military from Afghanistan, that graveyard of all Superpowers, and the ultimate dismantling of the Soviet Union itself within a couple of years in the closing quarter of the previous century, jihadi terrorism, extremism and fundamentalism have engulfed this region of Af-Pak and beyond, spilling over into India, the Central Asian Republics (CAR), South East Asia, China, parts of Asia and Europe, Russia, the Levant et al. Three of the major players, apart from Wahhabi West Asian monarchies and Egypt, involved in the Afghan Jihad were the US, Pakistan, and China, each for their very own reasons. As the adage relentlessly proves, the hands that fed the snake were eventually bitten by it. The US was attacked on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, within its own supposedly impenetrable precincts and that country has not been the same again ever since. Pakistan, the ‘epicenter of worldwide terrorism’ has even been termed as the ‘Terrorist State’ [2] and is thoroughly emaciated today economically, barely managing to exist and that too due almost entirely to China, and is on the verge of being blacklisted by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), three decades after the Jihad ended. China has been now and then wracked by terrorism by the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) separatists and has been unable to eliminate them altogether even while going to extraordinary and inhuman lengths to retain Xinjiang within itself. This has earned it worldwide condemnation. ETIM was founded in c. 1997 with the three objectives of driving out the Han Chinese from East Turkestan, gaining Independence and establishing an Islamic State there. There is a profound thread that entwines China with Pakistan as far as the Uyghur situation goes in Xinjiang and the endeavor of this paper is to attempt to study that deeply along with its impact in Af-Pak. What also lends urgency to the understanding is the current developments in Afghanistan after the chaotic withdrawal of the US forces, the collapse of the Ashraf Ghani regime and the storming back of the Taliban, supported by China, Russia, Iran, and Pakistan. China’s main goals in Afghanistan now are seven-fold, in decreasing order of priority: prevent Islamist terrorism from spilling over into Xinjiang, provide a form of stability in Afghanistan and Pakistan (that is, Af-Pak) that suits its needs especially with regards to CPEC, access the mineral resources in Afghanistan while denying the same to others, fill in the voids created by the vacation of the US in Asia especially around its periphery, deny India any political space in Afghanistan, collude with Pakistan in further encircling India, and tighten its grip in Russia’s backyard. The current developments also give China an opportunity to further denounce existing notions of democracy in general and American ideology in particular. The History of East Turkestan Islamic Movement On November 6, 2020, the US said that it no longer recognized ETIM as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) [3], an action that China has deeply resented. After the August 26, 2021, Kabul airport attack, the Chinese spokesman again alluded to this, “But it is regretted that the US has taken ETIM off its terror group list. China opposes the US applying a double standard in the fight against terrorism.” By a quirk of fate, the term ‘ETIM’ was itself coined by the then US Assistant Secretary of State, Richard Armitage, in c. 2002 while placing it on the UNSC 1267 List of terror organizations associated with Al Qaeda and the Taliban, when not only were the relations between the USA and China on an even keel but also the US needed Chinese assistance and approval in the prosecution of Al Qaeda which had carried out the 9/11 attacks. P a g e 2 | 11 China had then taken the stance that neither the US nor the NATO could unilaterally attack Afghanistan. It had refused to lower its flag to half-mast at the UN Headquarters in New York as a mark of respect for the dead in the 9/11 attacks. It wanted proof that it was indeed Al Qaeda in Afghanistan that had masterminded the 9/11 attacks. As a quid pro quo to gain Chinese assent, the US offered to place the ETIM under the 1267 list and a deal was made. The US also placed ETIM on the US list of terrorist organizations in c. 2002 and even deported two Uyghurs to China. The Jiang Zemin’s period of Presidency in the 90s (President, PRC 1993-2003) had been particularly repressive for the Uyghurs who resorted to retaliation and violence especially as they began to dream of similar visions of freedom as the CAR nations after the breakup of USSR in c. 1992. Though ETIM had existed in various avtar before, it was only the c. 1999 meeting between them and Osama bin Laden which is considered significant and a turning point because they were supposedly offered support by Al Qaeda then [4]. After the reciprocal ‘understanding’ between the USA and the Chinese following 9/11, the Chinese began further tightening the restrictions on the Uyghurs using the ‘Global War on Terror’ (GWoT) as a pretext. This led to even more violence, particularly the 2009 rioting in Urumqi, following a Uyghur-Han incident in faraway Guangdong. The “People’s War on Terror” that Xi Jinping launched in Xinjiang in 2014 following a series of incidents there has completely undermined the lives of the Uyghurs. Restrictions on the practice of Islam, extreme surveillance, disappearance of Uyghurs, illegal detention, brainwashing through incarceration, mass-scale social- engineering, bonded labour, and controls on movements have been extensively employed by the State. While these were happening in Xinjiang, a part of ETIM took part in the Syrian operations along with Al Qaeda’s Jabhat Fateh Al Sham (Front for Conquest of Levant also known Jabhat al-Nusra) under a separate banner Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP). While ETIM concentrates only on gaining independence for East Turkestan from China, the TIP is affiliated with the ideology of Al Qaeda as a Salafist organization. As an epicenter for universal terrorism, Pakistan was also the crucible for TIP which was created there by c. 2008. In the Levant war, the Syrian government forces (known as SAA, Syrian Arab Army) were supported by China for the very purpose of eliminating the TIP. The TIP may be the other face of ETIM which the former cleverly shields in order to escape the various UNSC sanctions such as 1267 (1999) 1989 (2011) and 2253 (2015) which pertain only to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or Da’esh), Al-Qaida and associated individuals, groups, undertakings, and entities. But here we will make a distinction between TIP and ETIM. So, why are the Uyghurs fighting? The Turkic-speaking East Turkestan region was annexed by the Qing Emperor in the mid-18th Century. As is true of any Empire, much more the Chinese Empire, the edges, which are far away from the Han centre, which is the fertile east and the north-east, have never been under complete control of the emperor. It was the same case in East Turkestan too which the Chinese re-named as Xinjiang meaning ‘New Frontier’, in the last century. There were two periods of Independence for East Turkestan, between 1931 and 1934 first and later 1941-1949 when it existed as Turk Islamic Republic of East Turkestan (TIRET) and the Republic of East Turkestan (RET or ETR, East Turkestan Republic) respectively during those times. ETR was supported by the bordering Soviet Union. The idea of China has not been a fixed geographical entity over times. Though Xinjiang was given autonomy in 1955 and called as the ‘Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region’ (XUAR), Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) destroyed their native culture and religion. The culture revived only during the more tolerant Deng Xiaoping’s time. The ‘re-education’ program of the Cultural Revolution has been again picked up by Mao’s ardent protégé Xi Jinping, using tools such as facial recognition, mobile Apps, Artificial Intelligence (AI) etc., that were not available to Mao, and more than a million Uyghurs are currently under a ‘re-education’ detention program. P a g e 3 | 11 Upon establishing the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) faced some dilemma over the issue of the ethnic minorities (minzu). Roughly 10% of minorities constitute the population of China and they live mostly in an arc from the North-East through North-West and South-West to the South all along the peripheries of core Han-China, that is from Manchuria through Inner Mongolia, East Turkestan (Xinjiang), Tibet, Yunnan, Guanxi to Guangdong. They thus offer a natural buffer against enemies and potential competitors such as Japan, Russia and India. During the Long March, in order to gain their support, Mao Zedong had announced the ‘autonomy’ scheme for the minorities once CCP was in power [5]. Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) came as a result of this promise in c. 1955 though Mao had skirted Eastern Turkestan during his Long March. The Great Leap Forward and the succeeding Cultural Revolution resulted in thousands of Uyghurs escaping to nearby ‘Stan’ regions of the USSR and even as far away as Turkey. As the mighty USSR collapsed by c. 1991 and as the ‘Stan’ regions gained Independence as Central Asian Republics, the Chinese got alarmed and tightened their control over Xinjiang to stop movements of terrorists and influx of arms and ammunition.
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