TWoU - Ch2 - How the Uyghurs became a terrorist threat

Last updated Nov 20, 2022

• Source book chapter

Previous: TWoU - Ch1 - Colonialism 1759–2001

• The ’terrorist’ enemies of the GWOT are deliberately ambiguous
• In many ways, the GWOT is not a war but a narrative that can serve a political tool to advance a variety of agendas.
  • For example, the US would quickly pivot to make its version of GWOT more about fighting ‘rogue states’ than the vaguely defined ’terrorists’ Bush described.
  • The US set a precedent for outher states. The difference being they would use the War on Terror to fight domestic instead of international enemies.

• Within the global anti-terrorism architecture, one of the most important tools is the system of international ’terrorism lists'.
• There are numerous lists, but the United Nations Security Council’s Consolidated List.
• Because terrorism lists justify state-initiated-violence, the PRC aimed to get Uyghur groups recognized on them immediately after GWOT’s declaration.

The ‘ Shanghai Five’ and the origins of China’s narrative of the Uyghur ‘terrorist threat’

• The PRC’s concern about Uyghur nationalists would become increasingly important in the Shanghai Five’s meetings.
  • [e_m] It worried Uyghur communities in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan would fuel calls for independence among China’s Uyghurs.
  • [e_c] Ghulja incident and Urumqi bus bombings (1997) were a catalyst.
  • [r_e] 6
• In 1998, they added The Three Evils to the discussion menu: “combating separatism, religious extremism and international terrorism.”
  • The addition of separatism was
• At the 2001 meeting in Shangha, announced new regional security cooperation organization, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and Uzbekistan was added.
  • One of their first orders was to pass the ‘Shanghai Convention on Combating Terrorism, Separatism and Extremism’ adopted in June 2001.
• The Three Evils blurred the lines between 3 perceived threats.
  • For the PRC, the inclusion of separatism was critical to allow combating Uyghur calls for self-determination.
  • The inclusion of terrorism and extremism was more likely the initiative of former Soviet states, which had experience with using ’terrorism’ and ’extremism’ to discredit domestic opponents.
• Engaging with Russian and Central Asian discourses on ’terrorism’ and ’extremism’ allowed the PRC to begin interchangeably using the terrorist and separatist lable.

• On 19 Oct 2001, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry went on a tirade about the East Turkistan National Congress being a terrorist organization.
• Before the UN General Assembly on 11 Nov 2001, he PRC Minister of Foreign Affairs, Tang Jiaxuan, pledged China’s support for the fight against the international ‘terrorist threat’ and signaled the PRC’s emergent framing of Uyghur dissent as a part of that threat. He noted,

  • ‘China is also threatened by terrorism; the “Eastern Turkistan” terrorist forces are trained, equipped and financed by international terrorist organizations; the fight against the “Eastern Turkistan” group is an important aspect of the international fight against terrorism.’

  • Vague suggestions that Uyghur activists were receiving assistance from international terorists were made earlier in 2001, but now for the first time so assertively.
• Due to questions about the vagueness of the claims, a brief explainer was released, entitled ‘ Terrorist Activities Perpetrated by “Eastern Turkistan” Organizations and Their Links with Osama bin Laden and the Taliban’
  • [ q ] The document claimed this terrorist threat came from a vague group called “Eastern Turkistan” forces, including 40 organizations around the world.
  • [ q ] It also highlighted 8 of these orgs explicitly advocating violence.
  • [ q ] It also mentions other organizations that had allegedly carried out acts of violence inside and outside of China during the 1990s.
• The majority of these organizations were never heard of before.
  • Sean Roberts did know some of the groups
    • United Committee of Uyghurs’ Organizations (Ittipaq): Few resources, rife with divisions, and no capacity to carry out violence, especially not in China.
    • Easter Turkistan Liberation Organization (ETLO): Small in number and almost destroyed by Kazakhstan in 1999-2000.
    • Eastern Turkistan Youth League based in Switzerland: Absurd, they were secular and focused on providing information about the Uyghur plight to the international community.
• Only one organization was plausible, the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM).
  • [ s ] It was plausible a militant Uyghur group established itself in Afghanistan.
    • [ s ] Proximity to China.
    • [ s ] Openness to offering safe haven to Muslim rebel gropus.
    • [ s ] Widespread negative attitudes of Uyghurs to Chinese rule.
    • [r_i] If it existed, then it’s plausible it might have become associated with Al-Qaeda.
  • [ s ] The document presented more detailed information about ETIM than any other Uyghur Group.
• It didn’t seem these alleged Uyghur militants were serious enough concern in the GWOT, as none of the information about ETIM could be easily corroborated.
  • [ s ] Little evidence about their existence aside from the PRC’s claims.
  • [ s ] The US military found very few Uyghurs among the militants in Afghanistan.
• The PRC persisted in lobbying for the international community to recognize ETIM’s relevance to GWOT.^[ An impressive list of meetings and statements it made about international terrorism: http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/topics_665678/3712_665976/]
• In January 2002, they released a more detailed report titled ‘ “East Turkistan” Terrorist Forces Cannot Get Away with Impunity.’ - This list offers a snapshot of resentment that was building among Uyghurs, but provides no evidence of a ’terrorist threat.’ - It did not mention many nationalist groups but focused on ETIM. - There was reason for the US to believe China. - [ s ] The US had detained several Uyghurs who fled Afghanistan for Pakistan in late 2001. - There remained suspicions that China was opportunistically exploiting GWOT to repress §Uyghurs.
  • This report would become the foundational document in the flawed narrative abuot the role of Uyghurs in the international ’terrorist threat.'

• The same day “East Turkistan” Terrorist Forces Cannot Get Away with Impunity was released, PRC representatives pledged $4.6 million in support of US-led rebuilding of Afghanistan.
  • [e_p] To use its support for GWOT as leverage for the US to recognize the ’terrorist threat’ from the Uyghurs.
    • [ s ] In public statements made by US officials, it was obvious they were feeling pressured by China to do so.
• The US was still disagreeing over the labeling of Uyghur dissent as ’terrorist threat.'
  • [ s ] At APEC 2001, Bush said the PRC should not use the GWOT as an ’excuse to persecute minorities.'
  • [ s ] Ambassador Francis Taylor suggested at a Beijing press conference (October 2001) that the US does not consider ’the East Turkestan organization as a terrorist organization.'
  • [ s ] Lorne Craner reiterated this point in March 2002, noting that the PRC had ‘chosen to label all of those who advocate greater freedom in [Xinjiang], near as I can tell, as terrorists; and we don’t think that’s correct.’
• In August 2002, this attitude changed when the US recognized ETIM as a terrorist group.
  • In August 2002, Richard Armitage drafted a document recognizing ETIM as an international terrorist organization.
  • Two days later, a spokesperson for the US Embassy in Beijing claimed that ETIM had been planning attacks on US interests in collaboration with Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, including a planned attack on the US Embassy in Kyrgyzstan. ^8dqcy9
    • They further attributed all the attacks listed in the January report to the ETIM, while the report attributed them to numerous Uyghur groups. Important difference!
      • [r_e] As a result, this entered the narrative about ETIM which would be consistently portrayed as the singular organization responsible for all alleged Uyghur-perpetrated violence in China during the 1990s.
    • There is little evidence behind this.
      • [ s ] The US Embassy in Bishkek never made a statement on the planned attack.
      • [ s ] Kyrgyzstan authorities only cited the Uyghurs’ possession of maps for all foreign embassies as evidence.
      • [ s ] News about this alleged attack disappeared quickly from the news, at a time when an Al-Qaeda plot against the US would be perceieved as an act of war.
  • It is unclear why the attitude changed between March and August 2002.
    • In December 2002, James Kelly^[Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs] would state that the decision was not due to the PRC, but based on independent evidence.
    • Seen years later, Randall Schriver^[the US Deputy Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs in 2002] claimed there was credible evidence, but that evidence is classified to this day.
    • It’s unlikely the evidence came from intelligence gathered from the 22 Uyghurs interned at Guantanamo Bay in 2002.
      • [ s ] The transcripts of their tribunals offer no evidence of the group’s ties to either Al-Qaeda or the Taliban, leading the US to release all Uyghur detainess eventually.^[‘The Guantanamo Docket – A History of the Detainee Population,’ The New York Times (last data changed 2 May 2018).]
    • The most likely reason is that the US decision to recognize ETIM as a ’terrorist threat’ was driven by a need for China’s support in GWOT.

      • “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.” ^[https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3147220/9/11-20-years-later-how-china-used-attacks-its-strategic]

  • Importantly, the US also actively participated to have the UN designate ETIM a terrorist organization.
    • So the US Department of Treasury was happy when UN included ETIM on its Consolidated List.
• Thus, the PRC succesfully implicated one small group of Uyghurs with the support of the US and the UN.
  • [r_e] It allowed China to arbitrarily label any Uyghur group or individual as a member or associate of ETIM, ultimately placing all Uyghurs under suspicion of potentially being members or sympathizers.
    • [ s ] It would become the justification for two decades of violently repressing Uyghur dissent and eventually Uyghur culture in the name of counterterrorism.
      • [ q ] By providing the PRC with a plausible narrative that a persistent and dangerous terrorist threat existed within the Uyghur community of China.
    • [ s ] When the PRC announced its first terrorism list, it included two Uyghur advocacy groups in Germany, suggesting they were aligned with ETIM.
    • [ s ] The 22 Uyghurs in Guantanamo Bay were held for years as the US military sought to connect them to ETIM, but they were eventually released.

• After 9/11, the number of ’terrorism experts’ grew exponentially, coming from academia, intelligence, poilcy and military communities.
• ‘Terrorism experts’ would be critical to maintaining the narrative about ETIM as a ’terrorist organization,’ but they have constructed a narrative riddled with inaccurate and speculative information.
  • [e_c] Lack of knowledge of Uyghur history, culture and especially language.
  • [e_c] Necessity to present information about organizations where they only have propaganda to work with.
  • [e_m] Having a place in the counterterrorism industrial complex, with a vested interest in the continued existence of ’terrorist organizations’ and the threats they pose.^[Robert Malley and Jon Finer, ‘The Long Shadow of 9/11: How Counter-terrorism Warps US Foreign Policy,’ Foreign Affairs, 97 (2018), p. 58.]

• After September 2002 listing of ETIM by the US and UN, academics scrambled to evaluate the threat and explaining its nature, which was challenging.
  • [e_c] Reliable information about the group was scarce.
    • [ q ] Prior to 2001, there were no public references in either English or Chinese + no international experts on Uyghurs had heard of the group prior to the release of the November 2001 report.
    • [r_e] Only information on ETIM initally were statements by the PRC, a few sensationalist reports from the 90s about Uyghur militancy, and speculation about how Uyghurs could come into contact with Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.
• Initially think-thanks assumed ETIM to have long been active in China, but were skeptic at ETIM’s capacity and designation as a ’terrorist group.’
• In a book by controversial terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna about Al-Qaeda, 3 pages are dedicated to ETIM and Uyghurs. It draws heavily from Chinese government discourse. and only cites two obscure and undetailed sources.
  • [r_e] Since the book was best-selling, many of his assertions would keep showing up in later works about ETIM.
    • [ q ] For exapmle in an academic article published in the Criminology journal in 2003, which prominently cites Gunaratna and takes Chinese government’s documents at face-value.
• A counter-discourse was established among experts too.
  • [ s ] The East-West Center for example, critically analyzed Uyghur violence in the 90s and criticized the validity of a ’terrorist threat.'
  • [ q ] This counter-dicourse moderated US foreign policy towards Uyghurs, but many in law enforcement and military continued to assume Uyghurs posed a ’terrorist threat.'
• The narrative about ETIM was further complicated by information emerging frmo the battlefied.
  • In 2004, information was emerging that many in the US military had doubts about at least 12 of the 22 Uyghurs in Guantanamo Bay being accused of being enemy combatants.
  • In December 2003, it was reported that Pakistani military had killed Häsän Mäkhsum in October.
    • [r_e] It became unclear what remained of the organization
  • There was no evidence it had any active military operations in either China or Afghanistan since being designated a terrorist organization.
• All that considered, the initial narrative about an alleged terrorist threat posed by Uyghurs was gradually disappearing from both policy and academic discourse in the US and Europe by 2005.
  • [ s ] This trend was further reinforced in 2006 when the US released five Uyghurs from Guantanamo Bay to Albania.

• Just as it seemed as if the labeling of Uyghurs as a ‘terrorist threat’ was losing its relevance in the western world, a seemingly new Uyghur militant group made itself known internationally through the internet in 2004, calling itself the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP).
  • Hasan Makhsum’s ETIM had no website nor videos, but this new group suddenly had the resources to do so.
  • Its first video released around May 2004 was an Arabic biographical film of Hasan Makhsum and advertised their new website.
    • The video did not get much international attention.
  • According to the website and the film, TIP was the new name adopted by ETIM, and they have made that decision since 2000.
• In 2006, another Uyghur-made Arabic-language video appeared.
  • Produced by adherents of Abu Musab Al-Suri calling for jihad in East Turkestan.
  • Did not use TIP name, but only had a logo with the name “Turkistan” in the top right corner.
  • Classic propaganda video: black shahada flag, AK-47s, turbans, camouflage and covered faces.
• This renewed a cautious interest among terrorism experts about Uyghurs, but they remained divided over the threat’s extent.
  • In a 2006 The China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly issue, two articles were dismissive of the threat, while two, written by a Chinese scholar and by Rohan Gunaratna & Kenneth Pereire made the case that ETIM is closely tied with Al-Qaeda and poses a grave security threat to China.

• Only in the run-up to the 2008 Olympics would the interest in Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) become widespread.
  • On 1 March 2008, they released a video message from its Emir, Abdul Haq, warning his group will attack the games.
  • A week later, PRC claimed it foiled an attack on a plane where an Uyghur woman has brought gasoline canisters on board.
  • In due course, Chinese authorities claim to have broken up numerous terrorist plots during the same time.
• These events caught the attention of terorism analysts in the west.
  • In April, Jamestown Foundation’s Terrorism Monitor writes how ETIM is a real threat to the games etc. etc.
  • In May, Stratfor published a 3-part analysis, suggesting the situation was manipulated by Beijing and events likely had little to do with ETIM.
• Interest was further fueled by more incidents before the Olympic games.
  • A video was released claiming responsibility for Shanghai and Kunming bus bombings, which the Chinese overnment later denied were carried out by Uyghurs.
  • Another promised further attacks a week before the opening ceremonies.
  • There were two violent attacks on military and police in Xinjiang, but there was no evidence to connect them to Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP).
• This made Western states acknowledge that China has some legitimate concerns about a terrorist threat from Uyghurs.
• Uyghurs were becoming a politicized issue in domestic US politics, given the Guantanamo Uyghurs.
  • Thomas Joscelyn, ‘counterterrorism expert,’ argued that the Guantanamo Uyghurs had contact with Abdul Haq, who had traind them in Afghanistan, which is proof they were enemy combatants.
• At this time, the PRC added eight people to its terrorism list, including Abdul Haq.

• In the years after the Olympics, the tracking of Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) continued to increase.
• The attention of the larger counterterrorism industrial complex was also caught.
  • In April 2009, the US Treasury placed Abdul Haq on a sanctions list. They killed him in a drone strike in February 2010.
• From 2008-2012, western analytical literature about TIP would expand exponentially.
  • [e_c] The events surrounding the Olympics
  • [e_c] The production of new and better produced videos by TIP and an Arabic-language magazine from 2008.
• The new media from TIP are made as propaganda. It has numerous to convey to different populations.
  • To Chinese government, it wanted to promote an image of strength and capacity to challenge the PRC.
  • To its sponsors in the Arab world, it wanted to demonstrate its religiosity, its knowlege of Salafism, and its association with other jihadist groups.
  • To Uyghurs inside China, it sought to portray a long and cohesive history linking TIP to Uyghurs’ historical struggle against Chinese rule + encourage them to join them in jihad.
• But they were taken at face-vaule by analysts.
  • [e_c] They had to rely on a few videos produced in Arabic and visual cues from the ones in Uyghur
    • [e_c] They lacked Uyghur language skills.
• The 2009 Urumqi Riots were not instigated by TIP, but still attracted the interest of terrorism analysts.
  • Rohan Gunaratna would fuel claims again of a terrorist connection to the riots in an interview for Xinhua.
  • China reported it was arresting more Uyghur terrorists in the post-riot crackdown.
  • These factors were intensified by claims in 2010 of two terrorist plots planned by Uyghurs in Norway and Dubai.
    • [r_e] This appeared to provide evidence that TIP has gone international.
• 2010 saw the publication of two of the most sensationalist books on the Uyghur terrorist threat.
• The literature between 2009-2012 established a more cohesive narrative, but accuracy is still dubious because it’s based on thin evidence.
  • Regional experts generally questioned the validity of TIP’s threat.
  • Terrorism analysts tended to hype it.
    • Relied mostly on TIP sources in Arabic or Turkish.
• So a decade after ETIM’s terrorist designation by the US and UN, questions remain about the group’s origins, actual nature, and extent of threat.

Next: TWoU - Ch3 - Myths and realities of the alleged terrorist threat associated with Uyghurs