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Terrorism in Xinjiang

The recent revival of terrorist activity in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwest China has coincided with the opening phase of the 2008 Summer Olympics and it is reasonable to conclude that there is a linkage. With the security services focussing intensely on the protection of athletes and spectators who have gathered in Beijing, militant groups in remote parts of the country evidently felt they could operate more freely. They might have also calculated that a special opportunity to generate publicity for their cause has come their way. What is clear after the attacks of August 4 and 10 in the minority region is that Islamist terrorism menaces China as well. Since the beginning of the millennium, several human rights organisations and scholars have asserted that Xinjiang was free from the threat of religious extremism. Some even alleged that Beijing was creating a bogey to divert international attention from its own policies. According to this theory, Uyghurs were restive about Han Chinese migrating to the province in large numbers. These stock critiques failed to take into account the fact that the economic condition of the people of Xinjiang, both indigenous and immigrant, has improved significantly after the People’s Republic began its programme to develop the natural resources of the region. That the Chinese central government financed the rebuilding of mosques and other religious institutions was also overlooked. The Uyghur extremists have demonstrated, in much the same manner as their fellow jihadists in other parts of the world, that their agenda is not shaped by a desire to redress socio-economic grievances!

China, which repulsed the first wave of Uyghur extremism in the 1990s, should be able to contain the recent attempt at a revival by the East Turkestan Islamic Movement. However, it could certainly do with more assistance than it has received so far from the leading actors in the campaign against global terrorism. Uyghur militants who fought alongside the Taliban were among those captured by United States forces during the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. But when about half-a-dozen of them were released from the detention centre in Guantanamo Bay, they were deported to Albania, not China. This action was indefensible considering that both the U.S. and the United Nations have labelled ETIM a terrorist organisation. The Central Asian Republics that border Xinjiang to the west have been more cooperative. They know that the Salafist ideology promoted by ETIM and others of its ilk threatens the security of their peoples and undermines the centuries-old Sufi traditions of the region.

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