Quighers Set To Challenge China’s Hegemony Over Xinjiang
After Al Qaeda had started its activities in Pakistan and established its firm base there, it started expanding its activities and by 2009 it started operating inside China. It called for attacks on Chinese interests after riots in Urumqi left 200 Han Chinese Uighurs dead. After that, China got alarmed by the shadowy Uighur warriors taking refuge in FATA.
The Pakistani military intelligence, the ISI, has regularly informed the Chinese about Uighurs operating out of Pakistan, which has helped its Chinese counterpart in fending off the attacks. The ISI finally captured and extradited to China 14 Uighurs in 1997, seven in 2002, nine in 2009, and five in 2011, “including a woman and two children”.
China has been most afraid of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) — declared a terrorist organisation in 2002 by the UN. In October 2003, Chinese intelligence got the Pakistan Army to kill ETIM leader Hasan Mahsum, and, in January 2010, his successor, Abdul Haq Turkistanir, both in Pakistan’s tribal area, FATA.
An earlier outfit still operating inside Pakistan is the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, that grew into a pan-Central Asian group and is still ensconced in FATA recruiting Uighurs into terrorism.
Another group which also the Chinese are wary of is the Turkistan Islamic Party which, in September 2011, claimed responsibility for some attacks in Chinese Xinjiang.
In July 2011, the Uighurs attacked a police station in Hotan inside China, killing 20, and the leading newspaper China Daily, revealed that the attackers had taken their training at some ETIM camps in Pakistan.
This prompted ISI chief General Pasha to rush to Beijing, where he reassured the Chinese that Pakistan would counter the ETIM”. China that year also demanded the return of Uighurs settled in Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Nepal and Kazakhstan.
China now faces a very serious threat of Islamic militancy. Chinese Muslims, or Uighurs, from Xingjian have long journeyed to Pakistan to trade and to perform hajj in Saudi Arabia along a route that was part of the ancient Silk Road.
From the 1980s, Uighurs went to study in Pakistani madrasas and then went on to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. Now some are fighting there along with the Taliban.
Not only Uighur nationalism is becoming much stronger in Chinese Xinjiang but the greater fear is that Uighur Islamic extremism has started growing by leaps and bounds. Though it has still not become a major threat, but China cannot take it lightly any more. In fact it blames Islamic groups for unrest in this area of Xinjiang.
In a book The China-Pakistan Axis: Asia’s New Geopolitics (2015), it has been revealed that the Red Mosque of Islamabad was attacked by Pakistani commandos in 2007 after China warned that the mosque, a watering hole of al-Qaeda and its affiliated terrorists right in the heart of the capital city, was sheltering Uighurs from China who had attacked and captured some Chinese working in a massage parlour in Islamabad.
When the assault on the mosque was over, 14 Uighur terrorists were found among the dead. No one in Pakistan got to know that the attack on the mosque was triggered by a Chinese protest.
Pakistan has been for long on the grey list of FATF because many of its non-state actors used in proxy wars belonged to other states like Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and China. The Paris-based 39-member Financial Action Task Force (FATF), against money-laundering and terror-funding, strongly urged Pakistan last month to comply with its demands by February 2020 or face being included in the FATF “black list” — meaning sanctions. It said: “To date, Pakistan has only largely addressed five of the 27 action items, with varying levels of progress made on the rest of the action plan.”
Presently China is heading the FATF these days through Xiangmin Liu of the People’s Bank of China, who now the president of FATF. It’s not only Afghanistan and Uzbekistan that complain about Pakistan keeping their terrorists on its territory; China too is a complainant.
In 2017, China got together with Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa in the BRICS trading bloc to express “joint concern” about Pakistan-based terrorists listed as “Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Haqqani Network, Lashkar-e-Tayba, Jaish-e-Muhammad, Tehreek Taliban Pakistan, and Hizbut Tahrir”.
In spite of the above, China has once again bailed out Pakistan and ensured that it has not been included in the BLACK LIST of FATF. However before the Chinese realize their mistake it may be too late and the plague of terrorism us likely to hit China from many sides.
Pakistan has had to act on FATF’s directions because of China. It can’t afford to offend China and knows it has not been very mindful of the Uighur Muslims from Chinese Xinjiang on its soil engaging cross border terrorism.
Pakistan has, therefore, put the leaders of the major terrorist organisations under house-arrest and taken over their madrasas where hundreds of thousands of young men learn how to become “pious warriors” in the service of Islam.
Much of this takeover is credible but a lot more remains to be done, as FATF observed; although, it remains doubtful if Pakistan can run the madrasas competently when its own schools are in bad shape.
