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The Hindu : Opinion / Op-Ed : Beijing's increasing jihadist challenge
Thirteen months before a missile fired from a Predator drone ended his life, the head of the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) videotaped his final testament at his base in Pakistan's troubled North Waziristan.
"My Muslim brothers in East Turkestan," said Memtimin Memet in a January 2009 address released on jihadist websites linked to al-Qaeda. "We failed to follow the tenets of our faith, and instead supported our enemies — who enforced communism upon us, raped our women, violated the sanctity of our homes, invaded our land, and stole our wealth." "Preparing to fight these atheist communists," a narrator continued, "is an obligation upon every Muslim."
For China, the killings are troubling news. Ever since 9/11, the TIP, like its sister-organisations targeting central Asia, has struggled to survive in the face of relentless assault by the United States and its allies, But, as the U.S. prepares to pull out of Afghanistan, Pakistan has ever-diminishing incentives to continue with its fitful — and destabilising — war against jihadist bases in North Waziristan. Fears are rising in China, as in much of central Asia, that the weekend violence in Xinjiang is but the first skirmish in a larger war ahead.
So here it is Xinjiang is also an occupied territory by hans.For centuries a protectorate of distant emperors in Beijing, Xinjiang became part of modern China in 1949 after decades of violent rebellions and wars.
Xingjian's Uighur community is estimated to make up eight to 10 million of the region's 21 million population — a population that includes a welter of ethnic groups, including other Chinese Muslims like the Hui, as well as clusters of Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Uzbeks and Tajiks.
So China has supported the mujahidin who fought against Soviets, now ETIM was formed in 1993, almost same as Taliban, hmm it's pay backBut the birth of the modern Islamism in Xinjiang, as opposed to the traditionalist-leaning secessionists, was forged in another crucible: the great anti-Soviet Union jihad that tore Afghanistan apart from 1979. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Uighurs are reputed to have participated in the jihad, returning home empowered with the belief that a superpower could be successfully defeated through insurgent warfare. In 1993, Hasan Mahsum and Abdukadir Yapuquam, both residents of the town of Hotan, founded the ETIM to spearhead this cause. Both men are known to have met Osama bin Laden; their cadre fought alongside the Taliban.
In February 1997, Xinjiang's jihadists took centre stage. Nine Uighurs were killed when police fired on violent mobs protesting the execution of several secessionist activists — a clash now known as the Ghulja incident. The TIP carried out its first major terrorist operation, bombing three buses in Xinjiang's capital, Urumqi — killing nine people, including three children, and injuring dozens.
From January 2007, evidence began to emerge of the lethality of the Pakistan-based jihadists' ambitions. That month, a raid on a training camp inside Xinjiang claimed the life of 18 insurgents. Investigators found an hour-long videotape, which included a call by the Syrian al-Qaeda ideologue Mustafa Setmariam Nasar mentioning China as a target for the global jihadist movement. The video also contained footage of Uighur jihadists training with assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, and shoulder-fired missiles.
Then, in 2008, startling evidence emerged during the trial of Malika el-Aroud — the wife of the assassin of the anti-Taliban Afghan warlord Ahmad Shah Massoud — and her new husband, Moez Garsallaoui. In 2008, in proceedings in a Belgian court, a witness — identified, for legal reasons, only by the initials 'WO'— stated that the largest group of jihadists in Pakistan's north-west was from China.
Evidence of the TIP's intentions became increasingly clear in the build-up to the Beijing Olympics. In March 2008, crew on a Beijing-bound China Southern flight foiled an attempted mid-air suicide bombing by 19-year-old Guzalinur Turdi — trained, it emerged, in Pakistan. There were successes for the jihadists, too: in August 2008, terrorists killed 16 police officers in a raid in Kashgar, following that up by crashing a truck laden with explosives into a police station in Kuqa.
Last summer, authorities in Dubai convicted Pakistan-trained Xinjiang resident Mayma Ytiming Shalmo for planning to bomb a shopping mall selling Chinese products.
In a recent paper, scholar Mohan Guruswamy noted that Chinese strategists were increasingly worried "about the security of Pakistan's nuclear assets and fear the takeover of Pakistan by fundamentalist elements."