ETIM was designated a terrorist organization as a quid-pro-quo
ETIM was designated a terrorist organization to gain China’s support for invading Iraq, as a Quid pro quo. Part of the deal was probably also to give China access to interrogate the Uyghurs held at Guantanamo Bay.
Remark about:
- See
- See
City on the Hill or Prison on the Bay, page 50:
- Originally, the US did not consider that ETIM was a terrorist group.
- In the run-up to the war in Iraq, it was a U.S. priority to develop consensus among major world powers, and China was crucial.
- After a meeting on August 26 2002, Richard Armitage^[Undersecretary of State] advised that the groundwork had been laid for an October 2002 summit between President Bush and President Jiang Zemin. He acknowledged that talks had focused on Iraq.
- Several weeks later, the ETIM was added to the official State Department list of “terrorist organizations.”
- Only weeks later, in September 2002, there was the Interrogation of Uyghurs at Guantanamo Bay by Chinese.
- SILVER BULLET:
9/11, 20 years later: did the tragedy give US-China relations a respite?
For Beijing, the listing of ETIM as a terrorist group was evidence that Washington was finally taking its concerns seriously, while Washington saw it more as the cost of gaining China’s support elsewhere, analysts said.
“China had been asking us to do that for years and we’d say, ‘Who are these guys? We don’t really see it, we don’t see an organisation, don’t see the activity,’” said Richard Boucher, a Brown University Watson Institute fellow and former assistant secretary of state for central Asia. “It was done to help gain China’s support for invading Iraq.”
- See Erick Eckholm, “U.S. Labeling of Group in China as Terrorist Is Criticized,” New York Times, September 13, 2002.^[mentioned in A Place Outside the Law, chapter 3]