Bitter Winter, 30 August 2021

Below is an article published by Bitter Winter. Photo Chinese MFA.

Beijing’s crusade against its largely Muslim minorities, that has seen up to three million innocent people corralled into internment and forced labor over the past four years, co-opted a surprising ally: the Taliban.

The alliance was prepared during face-to-face pre-coup discussions in Beijing to discuss the way forward, assuming the inevitability of a Taliban overthrow.

Taliban pre-takeover promises that they would not breed terrorists who harm China, and would cooperate with repatriation demands of “troublesome” Uyghurs, have given the CCP another weapon in its arsenal in its so-called “War on Terror” that relies on the cooperation of its closest neighbors and the silence of Muslim nations.

The pact has alarmed expatriate Uyghurs who fear more draconian clampdowns and illegal, unjustified rendition of their country folk living overseas.

“Commentary that China may face a concerted security threat from ‘Uyghur militants’ in Afghanistan is not supported by evidence,” said Uyghur Human Rights Project Executive Director Omer Kanat, adding “China has a pattern of leveraging global events as pretexts for the repression of Uyghurs,” citing the terror attacks of 9/11 which were used by China to magnify a so-called Uyghur terror threat. “Twenty years later, the amplification of this claim has become the justification for genocidal policies,” he said. “I would ask  commentators to also focus on how the Chinese state poses an existential human security threat to the Uyghur people.” 

But the Taliban pact is just the tip of an iceberg of collusion whose depths are rarely plumbed, and whose impact has been to demonize Uyghurs not only in China but in the rest of the world over several decades. Beijing’s mission to discredit Uyghurs it seems will stop at nothing, claims “Nets Cast From Earth To Sky”, a recent report (that has set out to separate fact from fiction and uncover the truth behind the rumors and half-truths of the so-called Uyghur jihadist movements.

Designation by the US of the Uyghur-lead East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) based in Afghanistan as a terrorist organization, opened the way for a witch hunt of all Uyghurs worldwide under the banner of the War on Terror. The designation was rescinded in 2020 according to a US state department spokesman “because, for more than a decade, there has been no credible evidence that ETIM continues to exist.”

Researchers and Uyghur organizations had been saying for years that ETIM, assuming it really existed, was not a fair reflection of Uyghurs in general and that Uyghurs should not be tarred by actions carried out in its name. Researcher Sean Roberts whose book “War on the Uyghurs” exploded the myth of the ETIM, writing in the Guardian in 2020 said, “If ETIM ever represented a cohesive organization, it certainly did not after the 2003 killing of its leader by Pakistan’s military. In turn, the myth of the Uyghur-led Islamist terrorist threat to China was transferred to a new group of Uyghurs in Waziristan in 2008. This group, often conflated with ETIM, called itself the Turkistan Islamic party (TIP) and consisted of a handful of Uyghurs who had fled the US war in Afghanistan to join jihadist groups in Pakistan.”

Lies, subterfuge and disinformation are a few of the tools employed by the CCP to ensure that Uyghurs are tarred with the terrorism brush, according to the collaborative report between The Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) and the Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs (Oxus), whose findings document the complicity of the Pakistani and Afghan states in China’s transnational repression of Uyghurs. 

According to the UHRP and Oxus’ analysis, states the report, transnational repression of Uyghurs in Pakistan which has been rumbling on for the past 40 years, has risen consistently since 1997. Most recently, China’s 2014 People’s War on Terror, marks a shift in China’s transnational repression in Pakistan and Afghanistan, with proof of some 16 Uyghurs deported or detained from 2015 until now, and evidence for up to 90 others. Beijing has significantly stepped up its activities, including hacking, malware, coercion-by-proxy, and the growing use of the Ex Chinese Association to monitor Uyghurs living in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. And which nation could refuse a US $470-million counter terrorism aid package from the superpower on its doorstep?

60 unopposed renditions have been made since 1990 as Pakistani security forces in league with the CCP riding on the back of the U.S. Global War on Terror, and isolated violent incidents in China, intensified its crackdown on Uyghurs in Pakistan, demanding extradition of Pakistani citizens, and relentlessly pursuing thousands of Uyghur refugees fleeing persecution through Pakistan, Afghanistan, and other countries on their way to the West. Shockingly, Tajikistan’s 3,000-strong Uyghur community has dwindled to a mere 100 over the past 10-15 years and Beijing is suspected of complicity in this exodus.

He has found that would-be Uyghur militants active in Afghanistan at this time, were few in number, inconsequential to the “war on terror”, and posed little or no threat to the US or even to China. Uyghur Guantanamo detainees were all deemed safe to be eventually released to third countries.

While the TIP would eventually become a larger group in Syria after 2013, drawing from the many Uyghurs who fled repression in China around that time, its rhetoric never matched action on the ground, and there is no evidence of this group ever orchestrating violence inside China.

“These negligible threats were exaggerated to justify militaristic police brutality throughout the Xinjiang region of China, especially in its majority Uyghur southern villages and cities. With time, this was also met by Uyghur-led retaliation against the police and security forces. In 2009, the tension in the region exploded into ethnic riots in  its capital city of Urumqi, resulting in the most intense crackdown on suspected Uighur disloyalty yet,” said Rogers.

Uyghurs have become the sacrificial lambs on the altar of Beijing’s inexorable economic and political march westwards. The CCP has in effect bought the loyalty, silence and complicity of nations now submerged with promises of aid, prosperity and protection. Pakistan’s unwavering Chinese ally Imran Khan denies all knowledge of the Uyghur plight on its doorstep and the new Taliban Emirate is prepared to swallow its radical pride in favor of mountains of cash for construction and mining rights. Beijing has even flagged up past US fears over ETIM and Afghanistan’s potential to become a hotbed of terrorism, hoping it will reinstate the group on its terror list.

The more ground gained by the CCP internationally and the more muzzling of international institutions due to its power of veto, the more vulnerable the Uyghur diaspora will become in the coming years. Pakistan and Afghanistan are the thin end of the wedge where Central Asian complicity is concerned. The silence of vast tracts of Africa and Southeast Asia has been bought together with other vulnerable countries such as Turkey that teeters on and off the fence.

The report makes a number of policy recommendations to the government of Pakistan, the UN, and members of the international community, which center around standing up to China through sanctions of complicit officials and robust resistance. Visas for Uyghur refugees in safe countries should be expedited, and Pakistan’s laws that deny legal process to those sheltering within its borders, reformed. Given that Uyghur refugees are being denied asylum services by the UNHCR office in Islamabad, the report asked the UN to investigate.

The UHRP’s Mr. Kanat fears that given the historical cooperation between Pakistan, Afghanistan and indeed many other countries of the world against Uyghurs, the recent Taliban takeover might again fuel paranoia and a misplaced fear of his people, fears that have been stoked by China in its own interests. Welcoming the report and its findings, he said “Uyghurs have become worried at the prospect that a so-called security threat to China may lead to renewed cooperation between Beijing and Washington on counterterrorism. We trust the United States government will continue to view China as an unreliable partner in confronting extremism.”