China's Xinjiang 'Terrorism' Claim Questioned

While Chinese authorities continue to blame Pakistan-trained terrorists for lethal attacks in Xinjiang last weekend, a number of experts have questioned both claims of international involvement and China’s sincerity in making them.

Global Times states the authorities’ case:

Despite the government’s apparent good intentions at social engineering and its belief that education and improved living standard will fill a void, the region is a roiling cauldron filled with historic grievances and imported rage from the extremist Muslim world.

“Terrorist groups such as the WUG and ETIM, as well as separatist groups within China, have never stopped sabotaging attempts to improve things,” said Li Wei, director of the Anti-Terrorism Institute at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.

The 18 Uyghur men who attacked the police station in Hotan were reported to have spoken with an accent unfamiliar in Xinjiang. They also were reported to have raised a “jihadist flag” on the roof of the station. The attacks in Kashi were said to be linked to terrorist groups in Pakistan.

Such explanations are not only embraced by Chinese authorities and state media; an op-ed in The Hindu has also emphasised cross-border links and ETIM involvement in “Beijing’s increasing jihadist challenge”:

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 ….

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.

According to Al Jazeera English, however, many experts are sceptical of ETIM’s part in the attacks, and even its continued existence:

Analysts and Uighur activists confirm that Chinese Muslim activists have been to Taliban-controlled regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan, but say there is no evidence that they are being trained to carry out attacks in China.

“I don’t think there is any reason to assume that any organization is orchestrating. Barring any evidence, it’s ridiculous to make such a claim,” Dru Gladney, an expert on Xinjiang politics at the US-based Pacific Basin Institute, said.

In fact, some experts even question whether the ETIM is still active.

“I have seen no irrefutable evidence that ETIM still exists … or that it is responsible for the recent round of violence,” Gardner Bovingdon, a professor of Central Asian studies at Indiana University, said.

Similarly, from Reuters:

“All conversations I have had with people from China and Pakistan suggest a high degree of skepticism about the real viability of ETIM,” said Andrew Small, a researcher at the German Marshall Fund think tank in Brussels who studies China’s ties with Pakistan and often visits both countries.

“I don’t believe that China really sees (ETIM) as a credible threat. Of course, they would always want to blame these things on foreign elements to deflect from domestic problems,” he said ….

Rahimullah Yusufzai, a Pakistani expert, said Chinese officials told him there were only between 30 and 80 Uighur militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas ….

“The ETIM seems to have faded out with a whimper, rather than a bang,” Andrew McGregor, a Toronto-based security analyst wrote in a Jamestown Foundation report last year ….

“The ETIM has a very narrow support and sympathizer base, and most of its operatives have been killed or captured by the Chinese,” said Rohan Gunaratna, an expert on terrorism at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

See also: Fear Stalks Chinese Residents in Kashgar After Attacks and Pakistan and China “Like One Nation and Two Countries”, via CDT.