Evan Osnos reports in the Chicago Tribune, from Kashgar, Xinjiang:
This windswept city lies on the western edge of the Chinese empire; it’s a shorter trek to Kabul, Afghanistan, from here, than to Beijing.
Kashgar has been a strategic spot ever since the days of Marco Polo — first, as a Silk Road crossroads connecting the mountains of India and Persia with the Chinese heartland. Later, it was a listening post for spies in the 19th Century Great Game, when the British Empire and czarist Russia jockeyed for control of Central Asia.
Walk the city today and you’ll glimpse evidence of another reason to pay attention to Kashgar: two very different messages written on the walls capture why China’s regime is watching this distant outpost with particular interest in the final days before the Beijing Olympics, scheduled to start Aug. 8.
One message is emblazoned, in Chinese, on crisp new banners: “One World, One Dream.” That’s the official motto of the Beijing Olympics. Out here, it feels not only like a call for global celebration but also like an appeal to China’s most distant — and volatile reaches — to pull together for an event that is intended to underscore the nation’s unity.
The other message is also from the government, but this one is spray-painted in red lettering along the narrow sun-dried brick alleys that form the capillaries of the city: “Severely strike the Islamic Party of Liberation.”
