Extraordinary Fidelity

Life in Communist China's gulags....

"We Felt We Had Been Buried Alive" by Yu Shan:

The living hell that I would know as home for 18 years was set up in 1950. Camp No. 8, part of the Xingkai Lake Prison Farm in the vast swampy wasteland along the Ke'ercha River in Heilongjiang province, was initially stocked with 80,000 Nationalist prisoners of war plus countless Chinese who had collaborated with Japan's occupation of Manchuria. A few years later, 300,000 "rightists" and "counterrevolutionaries" were sent to refill slots at the camp vacated by the dead.

In August 1962 cavalry troops escorted 8,000 of us to the camp. To get there, we had to march through 400 km of wilderness. The camp's 12-sq-m prison cells were squalid dens, set 6 m into the ground. The ceilings, just 2 m above the floor, were made from a mixture of wood, grass and mud. From a distance, the compound looked like a cemetery. On each "grave mound" stood a pole bearing just a number. We felt as if we had been buried alive.

My relatives, landholders in Sichuan province, were accustomed to suffering. Soon after the communists prevailed in 1949, 27 of my family were persecuted in the Land Reform Movement. Fifteen were sent to labor camps, while eight died of starvation in the "natural disaster" caused by Mao's misguided economic policies. In 1949 my mother was forced to perform supervised labor. She died in 1984, one year after she was freed from that task.

I was arrested in 1955. While serving as an officer in China's army, I was accused of being a counterrevolutionary and correctly unmasked as an intelligence officer for the kmt [Kuomintang, the Nationalist Chinese who fled to Taiwan following the victory of the communists on the mainland in 1949 -- YD]. I was interrogated at a detention house outside Beijing's Desheng Gate and thrown in jail. On June 23, 1958, I was taken to an execution ground with others condemned to death.

Please read the rest of "We Felt We Had Been Buried Alive".

For a story that will make you proud to be an American, read Two CIA Prisoners in China, 1952–73, a story about two CIA officers on a mission that led them into a trap in China during the Korean War.

The New Frontier, Part 7

At the end of Part 6, we promised we would begin to explore how Chinese are being targeted by terrorists in China's near-abroad, South Asia. Also, in Genesis, Part 33, we saw how it had been predicted that evaporating Pakistani support for an anti-Indian terrorist organization was expected to cause problems for Islamabad at home.



We now review The New Face of Jihad by Massoud Ansari, dated August of 2007:

Chinese nationals are targeted in Pakistan as China attempts to rein in its own jihadis.

Analysts in Pakistan are now beginning to link the spate of attacks against Chinese nationals in the country to Islamabad's policy of playing ball with Beijing in its attempt to quell the Islamist movement in the Chinese province of Xinjiang.

"We are now quite certain that foreign militants living in Pakistan and their Pakistani hosts, infuriated with Islamabad's cooperation with Beijing, are carrying out these attacks," says a senior intelligence official, requesting not to be named.

Let me be clear that by connecting this post to Genesis, Part 33, I do not mean to suggest that Pakistan has been sponsoring terrorists in China like Pakistan has sponsored them in India.

Of course, if you independently draw that conclusion, that is your business.

Clear evidence supporting this argument was obtained by the authorities in early July when three Chinese nationals working in a three-wheel auto-rickshaw factory at Khazana, a town some eight kilometres from Peshawar, were killed and another seriously wounded in a daredevil attack.

Eyewitness accounts reveal that the militants were in three separate cars. They started firing at the Chinese nationals from two of the cars, while fellow militants in the third car filmed the action. The militants shouted religious slogans as they opened fire.

Fanning the flames of Islamic militancy, and thus extremism, was important in agitating for an independent Muslim state in the 1940's, as British colonial rule was coming to an end.

Now we understand what is being reaped from the seeds then sewn.

The film was sent to Chinese authorities earlier this week, apparently by anti-Beijing Uighur extremists, warning them that such attacks would continue against its nationals on Pakistani soil if it did not refrain from pursuing the policy of persecuting Muslims in China.

Earlier, in mid-July, when a suicide bomber rammed into a convoy of police vehicles escorting Chinese technicians through a busy street in Hub, Pakistani officials initially suspected that Baloch insurgents were behind the attacks. The Chinese were unhurt but the massive explosion killed 29 Pakistanis, including seven police officers riding in the van that was attacked.

"We were puzzled because we knew that insurgents who are involved in much of the violence in Balochistan have neither the resources nor the capacity to carry out such a suicide attack. Now we know for sure that it was the handiwork of Islamists linked to Uighur militants, who are trying to settle scores with the Chinese government," says an official.

But, how did the Uighur militants gain such a capacity?

Apparently, the Uighur militants are getting support that the Baloch independence movement isn't getting.

Pakistani officials now believe that the latest attacks against Chinese nationals on Pakistani soil were triggered off when an activist belonging to the Eastern Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) was executed in China last month, after being deported from Pakistan.

The ETIM strives for a separate homeland in the Muslim populated Xinjiang province of China. According to some reports, the Chinese government has confiscated the passports of thousands of Muslims in the oil-rich Xinjiang province to prevent them from slipping away to join militants in Pakistan and Afghanistan. There are some indications that the government may bar Chinese Muslims from performing Hajj this year. These reports follow intelligence indicating that the Hui Muslim minority community in central China is financed by extremists in the Middle East.

Aha! A Middle East connection. Dare we suggest Saudi Arabia?

Finding themselves in hot water in China, some militants have fled the country to seek shelter elsewhere.

Exact figures are not available, but some Pakistani officials suggest that nearly 1,000 Uighur militants from China's Xinjiang region have made their way to South and North Waziristan.

The Uighur militants are believed to have been closely linked with Osama Bin Laden's terror brigade, so much so that it was suspected that he might have been sheltered by these militants in Xinjiang province after he was forced out of Afghanistan in 2001. The militants fought alongside the Taliban inside Afghanistan when it came under attack in the wake of 9/11.

A powerful argument for a Saudi connection....

Pakistani officials are now trying to investigate if the kidnapping of the eight Chinese, who owned a massage parlour in an upscale neighbourhood of Islamabad, by the self-appointed moral police of Lal Masjid, was also instigated by the militants and their supporters among the local Taliban.

According to one estimate, nearly 5,000 Chinese nationals, including 3,500 engineers and technicians work on various state-run projects in Pakistan. In the wake of the latest violence, many of them, especially the engineers working on various projects in Pakistan, have started leaving the country. Those who have chosen to stay on have restricted their movements. Some have taken to wearing shalwar kameez in an attempt to deflect attention. While westerners had faced deadly attacks in the country in the past, there was a perception that the Chinese were relatively safe. Recent events have drastically altered this perception.

Pakistani officials say that though militants belonging to the Xinjiang province have sought shelter in the lawless tribal zones for decades, never before had they used Pakistani soil to fight their "ideological" battles.

The trouble began when Pakistani officials reportedly rounded up several dozen Chinese Muslims from madrassahs in Pakistan and handed them over to China in 2004. "We heard from Uighur militants in the tribal lands of Pakistan that most of their fellow Muslims were shot dead immediately after they arrived in China," says Lateef Afridi, a local tribal elder.

Pakistan's elite have supported jihadism, but here is something that seems to trump ideology: business. China is helping develop Pakistan's infrastructure -- roadways and port facilities. The terrorists may have to put their holy war on hold, or else bite the hand that seems to have helped feed them.

After receiving reports that an Al-Qaeda-affiliated militant group had planned to kidnap senior diplomats of a "communist country," Chinese diplomats in Islamabad requested the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to beef up security around its missions two years ago. Heightened security measures may have helped to prevent attacks on these missions, but in October 2004, two Chinese engineers working on the Gomal Zam dam project were kidnapped from Tank, near the South Waziristan Agency by tribal militants. The kidnapping ended on a tragic note two days later. One of the Chinese hostages was killed; the other was rescued unharmed in a blitzkrieg commando action.

Some Pakistani officials assumed that the kidnapping was meant to embarrass Islamabad, as Beijing was its close ally and major supporter in defence and other projects. Others now suggest the militants kidnapped the engineers because they suspected them to be undercover spies, keeping tabs on Chinese Muslims in the area.

Only last month, China handed over a list of 20 militants belonging to the ETIM, wanted for disruptive activities in Xinjiang province, alleging that they were hiding in Pakistan's tribal areas. Chinese officials requested the visiting Pakistani delegation, led by Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, to furnish them with detailed information about these terrorists.

The ETIM has been declared a terrorist outfit by Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, China and the United States. The US government accuses it of committing over 200 acts of terrorism between 1990 and 2001, resulting in at least 162 deaths and over 440 injuries.

The militants believe that the Chinese government has deployed dozens of spies across Pakistan, under the garb of technicians and engineers, to keep track of the activities of several hundred Uighur extremists hiding in the tribal belt.

Senior counter-terrorism officials say there is a strong likelihood that the local Taliban may have been asked by Al-Qaeda to carry out attacks against the Chinese on Pakistani soil to protect the interests of their fellow Chinese militants who had remained associated with the network.

Pakistani government authorities faced a serious confrontion with tribal militants when they demanded that they expel or hand over militants belonging to Uighur province, including Uzbeks and Chechens, in the wake of the deal signed with them. Recently, the tribal militants renounced the peace deal struck last September.

An Uzbek and a Chechen connection, too?

Pakistan now faces great pressure from its western allies to do more to curb the militancy in the tribal areas. Washington has already questioned President Musharraf's ability to control the remote tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan, in which, according to US officials, Osama Bin Laden is probably hiding. There is great concern that Al-Qaeda is being allowed to rebuild its organisation in this "safe haven."

Islamabad's problems just seem to get worse. Already fighting a virtual war within the country to combat one of the worst threats to its security, it faces opposition not just from local militants but from the international jihadists including Arabs and Uzbeks. Now, to the list of its deadly "enemies," it must add the reclusive militants belonging to China's Uighur province.

Of course, this article is from last year; all of that is no longer Mushy's problem, is it?

Stay tuned!

The New Frontier, Part 6

In Part 4 we were reviewing China's tough Xinjiang policy backfires by Antoaneta Bezlova, dated August 15, 2008. In Part 5 we took a detour and finished reviewing another article, so we now continue with China's tough Xinjiang policy backfires:

Resentment against Chinese rule in Xinjiang has flared for years. Many among China's eight million Uyghurs - Turkic people that make up the biggest Muslim group in the region - dream of recreating a fabled "Kashgaria". The short-lived kingdom sprang up after a prolonged Muslim rebellion against the Qing Dynasty in the mid-19th century. China's Manchu rulers eventually reconquered the region and in 1884 created Xinjiang (new frontier) province.

Except during the brief existence of the two East Turkestan republics - in mid-1930s and after the end of World War II - the Uyghurs have continuously struggled in their quest for national identity, for most part away from the world's gaze.

But after the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, China claimed that the al-Qaeda had trained more than 1,000 members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement. Beijing succeeded in placing the group on the terrorist lists of the US and United Nations and resorted to a hard-line policy aimed at stifling unrest.

Through propaganda and extended security crackdowns the authorities have managed to put a lid on simmering ethnic resentment, but recent attacks have sparked fears that tough measures and omnipresent control may have driven more disaffected Uyghurs into joining the ranks of the global jihad movement.

"China's success in fighting those terrorists at home has made it impossible for them to survive underground and many are now training abroad," says Chu.

"Prohibition doesn't work -- legalize it and regulate it!"

ROFL.

"In 2001, it may have been premature to say that the East Turkestan Islamic Movement was part of the global jihad but by now many of its elements have spent so much time in the tribal border areas of Pakistan that we can't really say for sure what cause they stand for," says John Harrison of the Singapore-based International Center for Political Violence and Terrorism Research.

However, the coordinated targeting of symbols of the Chinese government in recent attacks shows a shift to tactics used by more traditional insurgent groups. "I would say there is less radicalization than before," Harrison suggests. "They are trying to show that their actions are aimed at whom they view as their main opponent - the Chinese government."

Which brings me to my point -- they are not like traditional jihadists, whose attitude is to kill them all (and themselves) and let Allah sort it out.

The continuous violence underscores China's undying problem with its restive ethnic minorities in far-flung regions like Xinijang and Tibet.

Chinese leaders like to take credit for developing the border regions, but Beijing's increasingly tight control on all aspects of the lives of minorities, including religious belief and cultural identity, have bred resentment.

China's most recent drive to assert control over the resource-rich Xinjiang region, through the "Go West" campaign, has spurred new investment and a wave of Han Chinese immigration, which has alienated the Uyghurs. In 1949 when the communist party came to power, the Uyghurs were 90% of the population of Xinjiang. Today they account for less than half.

This week, the government defended its record in the province. Mu Tielifuhasimu, commissioner of the region's administration, said the majority of Uyghurs are happy in Xinjiang and enjoy the freedom to practice their religion. "The overall situation is extremely good," he told a press conference.

Meanwhile, in Beijing state councilor Meng Jianzhu was meeting with Rehman Malik, adviser to the Pakistani prime minister on interior affairs and asking for more support from Islamabad in fighting terrorism. President Pervez Musharraf had admitted earlier that there were a number of Uyghur rebels from Xinjiang undergoing terrorist training in Pakistan's tribal areas.

And Chinese nationals are now being targeted in Pakistan, as well.

In fact, in the eastern half of "Turkestan", it appears China may replace the United States as the designated imperialist-power-to-be-hated.

The People's Republic of China: an up-and-coming "Great Satan"?

Stay tuned as we begin to explore how Chinese are being targeted by terrorists in China's near-abroad, South Asia.

The New Frontier, Part 5

We continue from Part 4 reviewing Xinjiang and China's strategy in Central Asia by Stephen Blank, April 3, 2004:

Massive 'go west' program to develop Xinjiang

To eliminate this perceived threat, China has undertaken a massive "go west" program for the better part of a decade, believing that the main spur to ethnic-nationalist and religious unrest is a lack of economic development and opportunity. Thus it has launched massive development projects in energy and transportation infrastructure to more fully tie Xinjiang to China's coastal development and to Central Asian economies.

But behind the objective of overcoming poverty - which, to be fair, is being realized - lies Beijing's unremitting drive to control Xinjiang. This development is also tied to the parallel and ongoing policy of officially sponsored large-scale migration into Xinjiang by Han Chinese that fosters immense local resentment and tension. All these policies aim to prevent anyone from demanding more democracy or genuine autonomy.

The Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) -- China's "Wild West"?

Given what some observers consider the intrinsic fragility of the Chinese state, any sign of movement towards real democracy or federalism in Xinjiang, as in the case of Taiwan or Tibet, are excluded a priori. In fact, any call for democracy or even for a devolution of powers is considered by Beijing to be a threat to China's integrity, sovereignty and security. This rejection of democratic reforms is tied to China's deeply held historical view of sovereignty because any derogation of the latter in the name of the former is considered to be an invitation to disorder, chaos, and weakness.

Clearly, this is a classically imperial view of the state but also one that reflects a sense of being perpetually assailed by potential or actual threats. In other words, Xinjiang, like Tibet and Taiwan, is a neuralgic issue that when raised, brings out what some scholars see as Beijing's siege mentality.

Thus the textbook for party and government officials entitled Zhongguo Taiwan Wenti (China's Taiwan issue) rules out either of these alternatives (democracy or federalism) for Taiwan because confederations occur between independent and sovereign states - an admission China will not make. Furthermore, the textbook attacks federalism as unsuitable because "it does not fit the national tradition and is not suitable for the basic national conditions ... The current state structure form [the unitary system] is advantageous for national unification, consolidation among ethnic groups, political stability, and balanced regional development."

Any federalism is out of the question, because it is against Chinese Communist Party dogma.

Federalism is unacceptable, then, on domestic grounds ie, its threat to the unity of state power, not for any other reason. Were the regime forced to move in a federal direction for Taiwan or any other province, it could not then deny that structure to all the other provinces. Thus it would have to generalize a more decentralized and democratic form of rule across China.

Minority peoples live on insecure borders

And since the minority peoples live on China's insecure and troubled borders, in the context of Chinese history and prudent considerations of current political leaders, such devolution of power means both the end of their power and in their view the integrity of the Chinese state. This would particularly be true if ethnic discontent combined with the widespread internal labor unrest, permitting a dual-sided domestic opposition, for then internal and external oppositions would link up, representing precisely what Beijing regards as the gravest possible threat to the regime's security.

And Beijing is probably right on this count -- so there the communists stand, their fingers in holes in the dike.

But as the Xinjiang issue has moved onto the international agenda because of the US-led "war on terrorism", China also has been forced to respond to charges of its repression in the region, by publishing a White Paper on Xinjiang in 2003. This white paper is a comprehensive effort to justify Beijing's governance there and answer its critics. But in fact it only confirms the validity or legitimacy of an internationalization of the problem and - with unconscious irony - overtly spells out the continuing imperial tradition in Chinese statecraft towards Xinjiang. Thus it states:

"China has a centuries-old tradition of developing and protecting its border areas by stationing troops to cultivate and guard the frontier areas. According to historical records, all the dynasties in Chinese history adopted the practice of stationing troops to cultivate and guard the frontier areas as an important state policy for developing border areas and consolidating frontier defense. The beginning of this practice by the central authorities on a massive scale in Xinjiang can be traced back to the Western Han Dynasty, to be subsequently carried on from generation to generation. This policy had played an important part in uniting the nation, consolidating frontier defense, and promoting social and economic development in Xinjiang."

It goes beyond "That's the way we've always done it" -- they see the historical dynamic as working against them if they don't colonize and garrison the periphery.

However, the agency responsible for such consolidation, the Bingtuan, or the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), is a major factor, if not the major factor, in what is considered the regional gulag in Xinjiang. Thus the white paper states:

"As an important force for stability in Xinjiang and for consolidating frontier defense, the XPCC and the ordinary people attach equal importance to production and militia duties. It has set up in frontier areas a 'four-in-one' system of joint defense that links the PLA, the Armed Police, the XPCC, and the ordinary people, playing an irreplaceable special role in the past five decades in smashing and resisting internal and external separatists' attempts at sabotage and infiltration and in maintaining the stability and safety of the borders of the motherland."

Special corps is quasi-military-business grouping

Another assessment of the XPCC describes it as a quasi-military/business conglomerate. It consists of 2.4 million people, including workers and their families, virtually all of them Han Chinese. It has its own schools, media, hospitals, courts, and prisons. It owns about one-third of the land, and its industrial production equals approximately 25 percent of Xinjiang's total output, yet its primary function is to ensure social stability and conduct extensive political work.

A government "mafia" in a way?

Thus despite all the undoubted achievements of economic development, Xinjiang province remains troubled. Indeed, the Australian Sinologist Greg Austin has even written that China, according to its own official sources in Beijing, has lost control of the borders of Xinjiang with Central Asia, specifically Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and cannot prevent infiltration across those borders. American observers like S Frederick Starr and Graham Fuller, writing for the Central Asia Caucasus Institute of Johns Hopkins University, also maintain that China cannot evade the classic dilemma of minority people's uprisings against colonialist powers within the latter's home territory, the so-called metropole.

In other words, no matter whatever policies China adopts, it is likely to face continuing and long-term unrest, including violent, even possible "terrorist" operations, in Xinjiang and even in Beijing itself. While this problem has not reached the level in other conflicts, such as Kashmir or Palestine, it is real enough and growing. Worse, Chinese experts appear to concede that there is no way out.

But of course, there is a way out.

Thus besides the challenge of sustaining economic development, meeting the calls for domestic reform, and dealing with Taiwan, Tibet and North Korea, one can add Xinjiang to the list of major challenges confronting the Chinese government.

China needs to rethink its dogma, and allow a degree of federalism.



The alternative is that, the more the communists tighten their grip...



... the more will slip through Beijing's fingers.

Stay tuned for Part 6

The New Frontier, Part 4

We continue from Part 3 reviewing Xinjiang and China's strategy in Central Asia by Stephen Blank, April 3, 2004:

These assertions offer significant clues to understanding Chinese policies in Central Asia, including Xinjiang, because they make clear that Chinese policies are intrinsically strategic in concept and goal, if not in implementation. Analysts like Wu Xinbo confirm the linkage between domestic and foreign policy when they argue that "China is still a country whose real interests lie mainly within its boundaries, and to a lesser extent, the Asia-Pacific region, where developments may have a direct impact on the country's national interests".

Foreign analysts, too, discern key strategic significance in China's domestic policies in Xinjiang and its western borderlands more generally vis-a-vis major Asian actors, especially India and the US. Since September 11, China sees Washington's military presence in Central Asia - the US air base at Manas in Kyrgyzstan is only 200 miles from China - as presaging a potentially permanent threat to Xinjiang and China.

Because Xinjiang, like Taiwan, is a border region that has historically been the scene of numerous struggles and wars over territory, the question of Xinjiang's future goes to the most basic issues of what constitutes the Chinese state both territorially and politically, ie what will be its territorial boundaries and how will political power in that state be constituted.

China has many areas of concern. The Communists have never been able to conquer Taiwan; the Nationalists and the Communists disagree over who rules and who should rule greater China, but so far Taiwan and the Mainland seem to agree that there is one China.

Then there is the matter of Tibet.

Now we have renewed unrest in Xinjiang.

Should any one of these places couple a declaration of independence from Beijing with significant territorial control over an area that Beijing now claims, might the other dominoes fall?

And, if so, what would happen to the People's Republic of China?

Might it collapse as the Soviet Union did?

As we pointed out in Part 3, the insurgency in Xinjiang seems, within the past year, to be very professional -- quite un-characteristic of militant Islamist extremists.

Might one of the very last campaigns of the Cold War be ongoing in Xinjiang to bring about the collapse of the last great Communist power?

We transition to where we left off in another article, China's tough Xinjiang policy backfires by Antoaneta Bezlova, dated August 15, 2008:

While difficult to be independently verified, the incidents showed a high level of coordination, creating a thread of unrest in southern Xinjiang through a series of bombings and armed assaults. In one incident two attackers rammed a truck into a group of police in the city of Kashgar and then attacked them with knives and homemade grenades, killing 16. Another attack followed several days later, with bombers hitting 17 targets, including a police station and a government building in the city of Kuqa.

No group has claimed responsibility. Li Wei, China authority on terrorism issues, has blamed the attacks on the East Turkestan movement, a group that China alleges is engaged in separatist activities seeking to establish an independent state. But the online appearance of two videotaped threats against the Beijing Olympics has been linked to the Turkestan Islamic Party - a group experts say is an offshoot of the secessionist movement with ties to al-Qaeda.

But, that smells fishy, doesn't it? Or, as I wrote in Uighuristan, Part 1, I smell a rat!

Since when has Al Qaeda discriminated among its targets, with a focus on military and government targets, rather than just haphazard killing of infidels, government or civilian??





Stay tuned for more!

The New Frontier, Part 3

We begin The New Frontier, Part 3 by reviewing Xinjiang and China's strategy in Central Asia by Stephen Blank, April 3, 2004, and hit paydirt in the very first paragraph:

Xinjiang, like Taiwan and neighboring Tibet, is a neuralgic issue for China, which desperately needs internal stability in that predominantly Muslim, resource-rich and strategically important region. Beijing's strategic and energy objectives are based on stability in Xinjiang and its Central Asian policies grow out of its preoccupation with stability there.

Right there in a nutshell:

"Beijing's strategic and energy objectives are based on stability in Xinjiang and its Central Asian policies grow out of its preoccupation with stability there."

At the beginning of Part 1, as in previous posts, we wondered who might benefit from instability in Xinjiang, and this gives us a clue to the answer: China's enemies. Communist China's weakest link may be its dependence on Xinjiang as an oil-producing region, and as a region through which natural gas and trade flow.



As we continue, keep in mind the article we are reviewing is from 2004:

The recent bombings in Uzbekistan, a Central Asia neighbor which does not border Xinjiang, though, has concerned Beijing, which was quick to label them as the work of "terrorists", though the exact motive for the violence is not known. Beijing also has been quick to blame dissent among the Muslim Uighurs on "terrorists", and in December it issued a list of what it called terrorist organizations and individuals.

According to China's own official sources, it has imperfect control - some say no control - of the borders of Xinjiang with Central Asia, specifically Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and it cannot prevent border infiltration into Xinjiang, where many Uighurs are dissatisfied with China's governance and seek genuine autonomy. Whatever policies China adopts, however, it is likely to face continuing and long-term unrest, including possible violence in Xinjiang and related violence elsewhere, according to Western military and strategic analysts.

China's control of Xinjiang's borders with Central Asia is "imperfect" to say the least.

In this context, it is worth considering another, very recent, article from Asia Times Online, entitled China's tough Xinjiang policy backfires by Antoaneta Bezlova, dated August 15, 2008:

BEIJING - China's success in eliminating clusters of Muslim insurgencies in the western province of Xinjiang may have pushed an alleged separatist movement across the border into Pakistan and Afghanistan, exposing it to greater influences by jihadi groups in those countries.

The first connection to note: the separatists or terrorists or whatever we call them are definitely no longer indigenous, but are connected to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Afghanistan has been a state with terrorist training camps in it for a couple of decades now. The mujahideen got their start in the jihad against the Soviet Union, but later, after the Soviets had been driven out, the entire nation ultimately was taken over by hardline jihadists who were far less discriminating in their choice of enemies.

Pakistan, in particular, was set on a course of jihadism by an elite that saw Islam as a rallying point in its independence movement, and which later saw jihadism as a means to wage a proxy war against rival India, and as a means to attain strategic depth in the event of a massive Indian attack.

Continuing with China's tough Xinjiang policy backfires:

With the Beijing Summer Olympic Games well underway, the Muslim majority province of Xinjiang has seen a spate of deadly attacks on government establishments and security personnel. Three violent incidents over the past 10 days have been interspersed with the release of two videos threatening the Olympics. In the latest assault, which took place on Tuesday near the border city of Kashgar, three security staff manning a road checkpoint were stabbed to death.

"Since the beginning of this year we have seen the deployment of some new tactics by insurgents," says Professor Chu Shulong, head of the Institute for International Strategic Studies at Qinghua University. "They are no longer targeting civilians by planting bombs on buses as they did in the 1990s but attacking government personnel, army and the police. This is aimed at winning the general population on their side."

Interesting the changes in insurgent tactics since the beginning of the year: "They are no longer targeting civilians by planting bombs on buses as they did in the 1990s but attacking government personnel, army and the police. This is aimed at winning the general population on their side."

The world's militant Islamists target infidels indiscriminately, and care not whether a few innocent Muslims die in the process: it's for the long-term betterment of Muslims, and Allah understands.

Instead, the insurgency in Xinjiang now seems very professional, very careful -- distinguishing between legitimate targets and innocents, making an effort to appeal to ordinary Uighurs while not alienating others.

Why?

We return to the 2004 article, Xinjiang and China's strategy in Central Asia:

Since the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, China's severe crackdown on unrest in Xinjiang has, if anything, become even more Draconian. It remains to be seen whether China uses the Uzbekistan violence to further strengthen its hand against dissatisfied elements in Xinjiang.

Since September 11, Beijing has been quick to label all forms of unrest there as expressions of Islamic terrorism and fundamentalism, even though this unrest goes back at least 20 years and is as much nationalistic as anything else. Thus the various forms of unrest displayed by the local Uighurs, a Muslim people, against Beijing's government represent a classic pattern of resistance to the colonial expropriation of land and to the officially sponsored migration of Han Chinese farmers, soldiers - often the same people - and officials into Xinjiang.

This policy of moving Hans into Xinjiang has also realized a classic colonialist system of economic and social stratification that is visible in many other cases of internal colonialism. In those cases, too, the representatives of the dominant nationality enjoy disproportionate economic and political advantages in education, job placement, and access to public goods.

And we have already seen documentation of all of this in the Uighuristan series.

China applies 'terrorist' labels to dissent

Chinese foreign policy has also been enlisted in the task of labeling virtually any and all manifestations of opposition as being terrorist conspiracies. Beijing successfully prevailed upon the administration of US President George W Bush to label the East Turkistan Independence Movement (ETIM) as a terrorist group, thereby rewarding the China for supporting the US-led "war against terrorism".

Similarly, China has used its superior power vis-a-vis neighboring Central Asian regimes, particularly Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, to get them to suppress Uighur nationalists in those countries and to maintain official silence about the sometimes troubling situation in Xinjiang if they wish to have friendly relations - and significant economic ties - with China.

And those ties are significant, as China opens up a new economic frontier in Central Asia.

While China's interests in Central Asia transcend the suppression of any form of neighborly support for the Uighurs, its extensive and significant strategic and energy interests in the region are clearly tied to Xinjiang's internal developments. Indeed, one can say that China's policies in Central Asia represent an outward projection of its own fears for its internal security.

The linkages between Central Asia and Xinjiang are evident to the Chinese establishment. As a Chinese analyst told journalist Willem Van Kemenade, if Central Asia disintegrates, the chaos will reach Xinjiang. On the other hand, the analyst said, if those countries stabilize and succeed, that will invariably stimulate deeper drives for self-rule in Xinjiang - a no-win situation for China.

In other words no matter what Beijing does or what happens in Central Asia, unrest in Xinjiang will continue. At the same time Chinese scholars explicitly articulate the connection between Xinjiang and Central Asia, arguing that, China's policy to expand economic cooperation with Central Asia is undertaken, among other reasons, because to a large extent the stability and prosperity of northwest China is closely tied to Central Asia's stability and prosperity.

An interesting dilemma that China may have.

Next local war could be in Central Asia

Likewise, several Chinese military and political analysts have asserted, even before September 11, that the next likely theater of a major local war that will threaten, if not involve, China will take place in Central Asia. Certainly China feels itself threatened by terrorists operating out of Central Asia and by elements in Xinjiang. Even if many of these statements are self-serving, this perception is quite real and should not be taken lightly. Similarly, another Chinese observer, Gao Shixian, states that "China deems the area to be of the utmost strategic interest and a source to fill China's energy needs".

Thus economic growth, energy and strategic interests are inextricably tied together. But the precondition for realizing China's strategic and energy objectives is founded on the premise of internal stability in Xinjiang. Thus China's Central Asian policies as a whole are fundamentally strategically conceived and grow out of a preoccupation with internal stability in Xinjiang.

Again, not news to those who have read Uighuristan, but interesting.

Could this be the reason for Chinese colonialism in Xinjiang and beyond, in Central Asia?

Sinification of Xinjiang and an increased presence of ethnic Chinese beyond Xinjiang, coupled with Central Asian economic ties to China that make peaceful relations with China more necessary for the Central Asian republics, could guarantee the stability of China's "New Frontier" -- and of China's oil and natural gas supplies.



Stay tuned as The New Frontier continues!

The New Frontier, Part 2

We pick up where we left off at the end of Part 1, reviewing Chinese Government Concerned about Hizb ut-Tahrir in Xinjiang, July 31, 2008:

RUNNING ON XINJIANG TIME

Though a part of China, many areas in Xinjiang feel a world away from the booming and cosmopolitan cities on the Chinese coast, far to the east.

In Kashgar, a city close to the Pakistan and Afghan borders, some women not only cover their heads, but also veil their faces. In some cases, dark brown cloths envelope the whole head.

Clocks in many mosques, restaurants, cafes and shops are set to Xinjiang time. This is two hours behind Beijing time, the official standard for the entire country, which means China's sun does not set until after 10 p.m. in Kashgar in the summer.

Exiled groups and human rights campaigners have long chastised China for its religious restrictions. The government hits back and says it guarantees freedom of religion in its constitution, as long as believers respect the law.

Many are not convinced Hizb ut-Tahrir is the threat the Chinese government says it is in Xinjiang.

"This does not exist. They have come up with this group's name themselves," said Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the exiled World Uyghur Congress. "They are trying to mislead the world and deflect from concern for the Uighur people."

For its part, Hizb ut-Tahrir denies it advocates violence

"Hizb ut-Tahrir and Muslim voices that do not toe the government line have been severely oppressed by the Chinese government," Taji Mustafa, media representative for Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain, told Reuters in an emailed statement.

"It is well known across the world that since its founding in 1953, Hizb ut-Tahrir has exclusively engaged in non-violent political and intellectual work," Mustafa added. He did not comment on whether the group was active in Xinjiang.

SPLITTISM

China maintains the threat is real. Hizb ut-Tahrir is likewise banned in countries such as Uzbekistan, where it has also been blamed for violence.

In November, China's Xinhua news agency announced sentences ranging from death to life in jail for six Uighurs accused of "splittism and organizing and leading terrorist groups," and implicated Hizb ut-Tahrir.

One of the men was found guilty of "proactively carrying out extremist religious activities and promoting 'jihad', establishing a terrorist training base and preparing to set up an 'Islamic caliphate,"' Xinhua reported.

In April, the Xinjiang government blamed Hizb ut-Tahrir for inciting protests in Khotan, in which the World Uyghur Congress said about 1,000 people took to the streets.

"By linking the unrest to Hizb ut-Tahrir there's legal cause for suggesting that these individuals were involved in a transnational conspiracy to set up an Islamic state and destabilize China," Gladney said.

"It's not clear that the civil unrest had any of those goals in mind," he added. "They were pretty disorganized."

Still, authorities launched a propaganda drive last year targeting what China says are the true intentions of Hizb ut-Tahrir.

"Be very clear about the 'Islamic Liberation Party's' reactionary nature," the Kashgar government said in a notice on its website. "Be very clear about their pervasive and actual threat to Xinjiang and Kashgar."

Yet while some Uighurs say they have heard of Hizb ut-Tahrir, they dismiss it as being irrelevant to their situation.

"What we want is simple -- freedom," said a Uighur resident of Xinjiang's regional capital, Urumqi, who asked not be identified, fearing repercussions with the authorities. "But there are too many Han and too few of us."

Islamic extremists trying to establish a global caliphate?

Or, peaceful people seeking their human rights?

We know how oppressive the Communist Chinese government is, and we know how violent the Islamist militants are.

Terrorist activity provokes an already oppressive government, whose reaction helps recruit more terrorists. The Uighur people are caught in the middle; if the Chinese don't eliminate their culture altogether, Wahhabi-style extremists will destroy it by forcing it to become like the Taliban or like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile, there's the growing flow of heroin through the region....

Stay tuned!

The New Frontier, Part 1

From China-Central Asia Railroad Faces Economic, Political Risks August 11, 2008; the original was a translation, and is just a little rough:

Building a railroad that would connect China with Europe and Middle East through Central Asia, although theoretically perspective, looks unrealizable in the nearest future due to economical and political challenges. Only for Kyrgyzstan building its part on a very difficult mountainous terrain will cost at least 2 billion US dollars by some estimates. With poor investment climate and 2 billon dollars of external debt, the country is unlikely to fulfill its part of the project, experts say.

The plan of the railroad from China via Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan to Europe has been discussed for the past thirteen years. Recently all sides have finalized railroad's route, which will start in Kashgar in Xinjiang autonomous region of China and will go via Torugart, Uzgen, Kara-Suu to Andijan in Uzbekistan.

From Chinese Government Concerned about Hizb ut-Tahrir in Xinjiang July 31, 2008:

In a backstreet of the old Silk Road city of Kashgar, Chinese authorities have been spray-painting signs on dusty mud brick walls to warn against what it says is a new enemy - the Islamic Liberation Party.

Better known as Hizb ut-Tahrir, the group says its goal is to establish a pan-national Muslim state, or Caliphate.

China says Hizb ut-Tahrir are terrorists operating in the far western region of Xinjiang, home to some 8 million Muslim, Turkic-speaking Uighurs, many of whom chafe under Chinese rule.

But the group and some observers say it does not espouse violence and accuse China of playing up the threat as an excuse to further crack down in restive Xinjiang, especially ahead of the Beijing Olympics.

"Strike hard against the Islamic Liberation Party" and "The Islamic Liberation Party is a violent terrorist organization" read the signs in Kashgar, written in red in both Chinese and Uighur's Arabic-based script.

At the beginning of Uighuristan, Part 8, I had recapped:

We ended Part 7 pointing out that, should the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) suddenly become a nation independent of China, the PRC would be cut off from much of its domestic and foreign supplies of fossil fuels, as well as developing overland trade routes. Specifically, I commented "All it would take is a little fanning of the flames of discontent, and China could suddenly become a paper tiger...."

At the end of Uighuristan, Part 10, I finished with this:

Okay, so the government in Beijing is a bunch of oppressive communists -- we knew that.

And, Uighur leaders in exile in the United States publicly condemn the violence, whether terrorist attack or Communist Chinese response.

Who, then, are responsible for the terrorist acts, and what is their agenda?

Xinjiang means "New Frontier" in English, and, indeed, there is much about Xinjiang that makes it a new frontier today. As we saw in the Uighuristan series, it is a new frontier in China's energy sector, both as a major producer of oil and natural gas, and as the gateway through which still more fossil fuels arrive in China from Central Asia. Along with the imported natural gas, China is expanding its presence, both political and economic, into Central Asia, and that carries with it certain military imperatives for Beijing.

The increased presence of ethnic Han Chinese in the XUAR and beyond, into the Central Asian republics, also makes this region a new frontier socially, as Beijing, in a program that recalls the development of North America from two centuries ago, encourages its people to "go west" -- into Xinjiang.

The region has long been a place of local discontent with interference and even oppression from Beijing, but with the increase in terrorism, it appears Xinjiang is also becoming a new frontier in the global battle against Islamist terrorism, as militant and extremist Muslims appear to be spreading a jihad to establish a global caliphate to a region known as "East Turkestan" (as opposed to "West Turkestan", the Central Asian republics).

Xinjiang is also a new frontier in China's battle against heroin trafficking, heroin addiction, and HIV and AIDS that spread with heroin's needles; indeed, Xinjiang seems to be superseding China's frontier with the Golden Triangle in the struggle against narcotics.

In this series, we shall consider how all these issues interact, and we shall look at who might be responsible for the rejuvenated and intensifying insurgency that Beijing faces in the XUAR, an insurgency which, if successful, could result in Xinjiang becoming an independent nation -- "Uighuristan" or "East Turkestan" -- thus beginning the dismemberment and likely collapse of the People's Republic of China, and possibly taking Communist China from being a developing superpower and replacing it with a weakened regional power.

As we proceed, we first finish our review of China-Central Asia Railroad Faces Economic, Political Risks August 11, 2008:

Kanatbek Abdykerimov, head of Department for railroad management and designing at the national railway company Kyrgyz Temir Jolu said to the Reporter Bishkek newspaper that the biggest achievement has been agreement to speed intergovernmental negotiations that would allow launching road construction.

He said that the railroad project was sent to China and is expected to be signed in September. After that the countries will be able announce international tender and select construction companies.

Abdykerimov noted that country's two billion-dollar external debt should not hinder the project. "The government will find funds, the project is essential to our country," he said.

First President of Kyrgyzstan Askar Akaev said in 2004 that the railroad could improve economic condition of one million Kyrgyz citizens and provide for 60 percent annual GDP growth. Kyrgyzstan might also find new markets for the coal produced in Kara-Keche mine in Naryn region.

Orozbek Moldaliev, Director of the Center for international relations studies in Kyrgyzstan says that slow economic growth, poor investment climate and political instability scares investors away. Besides that, Kyrgyzstan has very few products to export which might pose difficulties for the project’s payback.

"Our economic climate scares away investors. Even in politically unstable Afghanistan investments are pouring into the country by billions," Moldaliev says.

"We do not have war like Afghanistan does, but we have flourishing red tape, which is a bureaucratic war," Moldaliev continues.

He points out investors are not lining up for the project, which means that theoretical benefits of the railroad might not be very convincing to investors.

Some of the experts also suggest that connecting China's unstable Xinjiang province with volatile Central Asian states might be too politically risky for Beijing. Moreover, building the route to Middle East via Iran might end up being too costly.

Of course, there currently is the Karakoram Highway that leads from Pakistan into China.



A railroad, however, connecting China to Central Asia would be far more useful for commerce.

And, indeed, as the article points out, there are some political risks to this -- first and foremost on the minds of many of my readers might be the increased economic and thus cultural intercourse with a region where the world's Islamist extremists have so much influence, and from where they are trying to spread their jihad for a global caliphate.

But, then, what other risks are in store for China as interaction with Central and South Asian countries increases?



We now return to the other article we began, Chinese Government Concerned about Hizb ut-Tahrir in Xinjiang, July 31, 2008:

Residents passing by appear to pay little heed to the notices, accustomed to barrages of government propaganda denouncing "splittism," "illegal religious activities" and calling for ethnic unity and harmony.

"I don't know what that group is," said one Uighur, who declined to give his name, shaking his head and scurrying away.

As in another strife-hit Chinese region, Tibet, many Uighurs resent the growing economic and cultural impact of Han Chinese who have in some cases been encouraged by the government to move to far-flung and under-populated parts of the country.

Beijing accuses militant Uighurs of working with al Qaeda to use terror to bring about an independent state called East Turkestan.

The government says it has foiled several Xinjiang-based plots this year to launch attacks during or in the run-up to the Games, including one which apparently would see athletes targeted by suicide bombers or be kidnapped.

But the emergence of Hizb ut-Tahrir is a recent phenomenon in Xinjiang.

"The organization is extremely resilient and its influence, although limited to southern Xinjiang, seems to be growing," said Nicholas Bequelin of Human Rights Watch.

"The prison authorities are also worried about the influence of Hizbut followers on other inmates," he added.

But it seems unlikely they represent the threat to Xinjiang that China likes to portray, said Dru Gladney, a Uighur expert and president of the Pacific Basin Institute at Pomona College, California.

"For most Uighurs who are activists, though some of them are very religious in their Islam, their main goal is sovereignty for Xinjiang. Hizb ut-Tahrir doesn't support that. They support a worldwide Caliphate, not any one independent region," he said.

Another difference is that many Uighur activists condemn all violence, whether terrorist style attacks on forces loyal to Beijing, or Beijing's forceful response to them.

On the other hand, the violence fits well within the ideology of the world's Islamist jihad movement.

But, who else benefits from increased instability in Xinjiang?



Stay tuned to Stop Islamic Conquest as The New Frontier continues!

Uighuristan, Part 10

Literature becomes sabotage

Chinese authorities have not produced extensive evidence of specific activities carried out by what it has termed "terrorist forces" in Xinjiang over the past few years. Instead, Chinese authorities now argue that "separatist thought" is the new approach followed by dissident organizations that previously used violent tactics. This argument allows the authorities to accuse a dissenting writer or a non-violent group advocating minority rights of terrorist intentions and crimes.

The alleged link between terrorist organizations and the ideological content of publications surfaced immediately after September 11:

"Xinjiang independence elements have changed their combat tactics since the September 11 incident," stated a high-ranking Xinjiang official. "They have focused on attacking China on the ideological front instead of using their former frequent practice of engaging in violent terrorist operations."¹⁹

The official charged that those using "literary means" and "arts and literature" to "distort historical facts" were the same people responsible for "violent terrorist operations" in the past. He accused them of "taking advantage of art and literature to tout the products of opposition to the people and to the masses and of advocating ethnic splittist thinking."

From Uighur leader condemns killing, cautions against crackdown, dated August 5, 2008:

The exiled leader of China's Uighur Muslims condemned Monday the reported killing of 16 policemen in a suspected terrorist attack in the country's Xinjiang region, but urged Beijing not to wage a crackdown on "peaceful Uighurs."

"We condemn all acts of violence," Rebiya Kadeer said in Washington, where she has been living in exile since 2005 after spending six years in a Beijing prison. "The Uighur people do not support acts that engender bloodshed."

In one of the deadliest reported assaults in China in years, at least 16 policemen were killed Monday in Kashgar, a city in Xinjiang region, the Xinhua news agency said, raising security fears four days before the Beijing Olympics.

Two attackers, aged 28 and 33, were arrested immediately, according to the news agency, which identified the men as members of the Muslim ethnic Uighur group.

Police in Kashgar, about 4,000 kilometres (2,500 miles) from Beijing, have imposed a security clampdown in the surrounding areas.

Kadeer's Uighur American Association said it was seeking independent accounts of the incident and urged the international community "to view Chinese government accounts regarding Uighur terrorist acts with caution, as government authorities consistently fail to provide evidence to back up their claims."

She urged the Chinese government "to refrain from using this incident to crack down further upon peaceful Uighurs."

The incident "will only serve to increase suppression of the Uighur people and exacerbate tensions between Uighurs and Han Chinese," she said.

Most of the population in Xinjiang, which borders Afghanistan and central Asia, are Muslim Turkic-speaking Uighurs, many of whom bridle at what they say has been 60 years of repressive communist Chinese rule.

Kadeer was jailed in 1999 for leaking "state secrets" to a US congressional delegation visiting Xinjiang. She was released in March 2005 and went into exile in the United States.

That condemnation of violence by Rebiya Kadeer (seated center in the photo below) is itself an act of terrorism, according to rules in place in China, as explained by Human Rights Watch.



The following quote, and the one that began this post, are from Devastating Blows: Religious Repression of Uighurs in Xinjiang, an April, 2005, Human Rights Watch report (pages 30-31 and page 19, respectively):

Policies Hidden from the Public

While white papers, the constitution, national legislation, and certain national and provincial policy statements are available to the public and reported in newspapers, there is a large and growing category of Chinese regulations and policies that the government and Party deliberately keep hidden.

Two specific regulations—revealed here for the first time—establish a draconian ban against unauthorized disclosure of information regarding almost any national minority or religious matter or policy, even if unrelated to national security. One regulation was jointly promulgated in 1995 by the State Secrets Protection Bureau (Guojia mimi baoshou ju 国家保密局) and the State Council Ethnic Affairs Commission. ⁶¹ The other regulation was promulgated at the same time by the State Secrets Protection Bureau and the State Administration of Religious Affairs (formerly the Religious Affairs Bureau).⁶² Salient information classified as state secrets includes:

1. government analyses of "situations and trends that seriously undermine ethnic relations as well as state unity and social instability caused by ethnic issues" must be classified as "top-secret," as must public security measures "drafted to counter the use of religion in political infiltration and serious illegal activities" or measures taken to manage public security incidents relating to ethnic affairs and religion;

2. draft works classified as "highly confidential" including policies and analyses prepared "in response to religious situations and trends," "important strategies, policies, and measures related to ethnic affairs work," and "proposals and measures drafted to handle ethnic conflicts";

3. foreign affairs matters such as "policies and measures drafted to counter major foreign affairs problems related to religious" and "measures in external propaganda work" that "need to be controlled internally."

The regulations also list matters that must be treated as "internal" (neibu 内部), that is not to be publicized or announced without authorization. These include most documents relating to religious and ethnic policies which would routinely be public information in other countries. Among them are drafts of religious laws and regulations; reports, opinions and suggestions by religious representatives regarding religious affairs; "analyses of developments with overseas religious organizations and their personnel"; "information and statistics unsuitable for the public regarding religious organizations, institutions and activities"; and the "content of state organ meetings unsuitable for the public."

While there is no criminal liability for disclosure of "internal" material, in practice many people in China have been sentenced for doing so because state secret laws allow authorities to classify material retrospectively. Some of the regulations and policies referred to in this report are treated as "internal" or are simply unavailable to the public.

In fact, it was under such a regulation that Rebiya Kadeer was imprisoned in China for several years, as narrated in the article above, until she was released and sent into exile.

Okay, so the government in Beijing is a bunch of oppressive communists -- we knew that.

And, Uighur leaders in exile in the United States publicly condemn the violence, whether terrorist attack or Communist Chinese response.

Who, then, are responsible for the terrorist acts, and what is their agenda?

Or, put another way...

Where's the rat?

Stay tuned to Stop Islamic Conquest as we explore this question in a series entitled The New Frontier!

Uighuristan, Part 9

Following up on what we looked at in Part 8, we review another article to catch a further glimpse of the situation in the XUAR, China pipeline raises ethnic strife: Oil, gas boom curbs Uighurs' autonomy bid by Jehangir S. Pocha, November 5, 2006:

LUNNAN, China -- The flame from a looming oil tower illuminates the endless desert like a beacon of hope.

Oil and natural gas -- lots of it -- have been discovered beneath the sands near this industrial town in the center of China's isolated western Xinjiang Province. As in Iran and Saudi Arabia at the turn of the last century, the energy boom in the region's Tarim River basin and Taklamakan desert is focusing global attention on an area rich in history but forgotten by the modern world.

To satisfy the energy demands of its fast-growing coastal cities, China is building a 2,600-mile pipeline from here that will traverse the craggy steppes and sparsely populated villages of the old Silk Road, and run directly to Shanghai and possibly to Beijing. But the manner and terms under which the government is extracting resources from Xinjiang angers many of the province's 7.5 million ethnic Uighur Muslims.

Keep in mind the pipeline projects linking far-away Turkmenistan and all the countries in between to Xinjiang. When these projects are complete, gas will be able to be brought from as far away as the Caspian Sea for China's big cities on the coast!

Many Uighurs want independence from China, and they accuse Beijing of using the energy resources to tighten its grip on the province. They also say Xinjiang receives little benefit from its own energy reserves because the province's energy production is controlled by China's state-owned companies, consumed by China's coastal cities, and taxed so that the central government gets most of the revenues.

"The Chinese government is just robbing these resources from us without giving anything to the Uighur people," Alim Seytoff, general secretary of the Washington-based Uighur American Association, said by telephone from Washington. The group, made up of Uighur exiles, is spearheading the quest for independence.

The Chinese government insists that it is committed to Xinjiang's development and that the energy resources will transform life in the remote and poor province, where incomes are one-10th of those in Beijing, according to official census reports.

Wang Le Quan, the secretary of the Xinjiang Communist Party and the province's de facto leader, acknowledged that about 75 percent of the taxes collected from Xinjiang's oil fields went directly to Beijing. "But a lot of it comes back as transfers," or federal funding allocated to Xinjiang, he said to visiting Western reporters.

But, the middleman -- in this case, the government in Beijing -- takes a cut. Even if Beijing seeks to send it all back, there are administrative costs of having the taxes collected by Beijing and then allocated by Beijing. And then, those guys in Beijing get greedy, thinking about what they can do with Xinjiang's (or anybody else's) money, so there is no attempt to send all the revenues back to Xinjiang.

And Washington, D.C., works the same way.

Wang spoke passionately about how oil and the development model that modernized other parts of China are now transforming Xinjiang. For example, he said, the state-owned firm that controls most of Xinjiang's energy fields is connecting ancient towns separated by wide expanses of desert by building a network of highways.

Free natural gas is supplied to people who live near the Tarim basin, and Wang said this is preventing people from cutting down protected poplar trees in the area for fuel.

But many Uighurs say the government is handing out crumbs while stealing the cake. Resentment against China and its oil exploration is palpable in the antique mosques and teeming bazaars that crowd the narrow streets of Uighur towns.

"The Han [Chinese] have broken every promise they made to us," said Abdel, a student in Kashgar in southern Xinjiang, who like others here refused to identify himself fully because of fear of reprisal.

Kashgar is a famed town on the Silk Road, the 4,000-mile trade route that ran from the Mediterranean through Persia and Central Asia to China and India. From the time it began around 125 BC to when Marco Polo used it to reach China in the late 1200s to when it ended in the 1600s, the Silk Road created great wealth, which in turn kept states vying for control of strategic areas.

And that same dynamic is at work today, even more so, as China looks eastward to Xinjiang and beyond to Central Asia for energy.

The Xinjiang oil and gas finds already are proving a boon to China's energy picture at a crucial moment. The country's rapidly growing economy has sent the national energy bill soaring. China spent $65 billion on energy imports last year, mostly from Iran, Angola, Sudan, and Saudi Arabia, according to the National Development and Reform Commission in Beijing. The production from Xinjiang will enhance China's oil security by cutting energy imports from those countries and give Beijing greater control over its energy supplies, officials say.

"Xinjiang used to be remote and backward ... now the Tarim basin has already become China's largest energy-producing region," said Sun Longde, president of the state-owned PetroChina Tarim Oilfield Co.

He said the company's sales from both oil and gas will double to $2.5 billion this year and expects that by 2010 it will be producing about 100 million tons of oil a year -- worth about $50 billion at today's prices.

The disagreement over energy resources is the latest conflict between the government and dissident Uighurs, whom China considers a separatist threat. Rights groups accuse the government of carrying out arbitrary arrests, unfair trials, and torture and religious discrimination in the province.

For a brief time in the 1930s, the Uighurs and other Turkic tribes in the region, who until then had been on the fringes of various Chinese empires, formed an independent state called East Turkestan. Communist China annexed East Turkestan in 1949 and turned it into a Chinese province dubbed Xinjiang, or New Territory.

Beijing flooded Xinjiang with ethnic Han Chinese migrants, pushed locals to learn Mandarin, and restricted the practice of Islam.

In the mid-1990s, Uighur separatists who seek to re-create East Turkestan carried our widespread protests, and even bombings, against Chinese rule in Xinjiang. In some instances, they carried out attacks in other provinces, planting a bomb in a Beijing bus that killed two people in 1997.

China has often been accused by human rights groups such as Amnesty International of using the Sept. 11 attacks and the subsequent war on terrorism to clamp down hard on Uighur opponents of Chinese rule.

We will be looking at these accusations starting in Part 10, and we will be hearing what Uighur spokespersons have to say about the whole situation.

Divisions between ordinary Uighurs and the Han, who form the majority of the Chinese population, are reflected even in the oilfields.

Most of the oil workers are Han Chinese migrants from surrounding provinces. At the Lunnan oil station in the Tarim basin where the energy pipeline to east China begins, none of the hundreds of workers is Uighur, said the manager, Sun Tai Rong, who spoke to reporters on a recent tour arranged by government officials. Journalists are generally not allowed into Xinjiang without special permission.

"Their education is a problem; and I can't understand any Uighur, and most of them can't speak any" Mandarin, he said.

Rukiye Turdush, a spokeswoman for East Turkestan Information Center, a pro-independence group based in Ottawa, Canada, said Uighurs also believe that Beijing is using its energy infrastructure in Xinjiang to expand its influence in the neighboring oil-rich and strategically important countries of Central Asia.

We have also looked at that in previous posts, especially Part 6 and Part 7.

In 2000, China formed the Shanghai Cooperation Organization with the central Asian nations of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, as well as Russia. Robert Karniol, Asia editor for Jane's Defense Weekly, said that in addition to seeking easy and cheap access to Central Asia's energy reserves, China is also using its ties to the Turkic Muslim states -- who might feel empathy for the Uighurs because of ethnic ties -- to keep them from supporting the independence cause.

For now, the Chinese strategy seems to be succeeding. The pipeline carrying Xinjiang's gas to Shanghai will soon be extended into Kazakhstan, and the offices of many Uighur activists in the Central Asian republics have been closed, according to their governments.

Seytoff, the Uighur activist in Washington, said he has almost come to hate the black gold that gushes up from Xinjiang's yellow sands. "Our oil has become our curse," he said.

Seytoff is on the right in the photo below.



Coming up in Part 10: Chinese Communist oppression of Uighur Muslims, and Uighur denunciation of violence.

Stay tuned!

Uighuristan, Part 8

We ended Part 7 pointing out that, should the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) suddenly become a nation independent of China, the PRC would be cut off from much of its domestic and foreign supplies of fossil fuels, as well as developing overland trade routes. Specifically, I commented "All it would take is a little fanning of the flames of discontent, and China could suddenly become a paper tiger...."

Perhaps a little overly dramatic regarding the consequences, but nonetheless, in this post we begin to take another look at what might drive such an event. We begin by reviewing China's Uighurs lose out to development by Louisa Lim, dated December 19, 2003:

Liu Guizhen is digging a ditch for irrigation along a barren stretch of road, quite literally developing China's west.

Hundreds of Chinese migrants, mainly poor farmers like him, arrive every day in Xinjiang in the far west of the country.

For the last three years, China has poured billions of dollars into a campaign to redevelop its poorer western provinces.

But who has been benefiting from this programme?

Liu Guizhen said travelling 3,000km to find work was a question of survival.

"Developing the west is about making money to put food in our mouths," he said. "We'll go wherever there's good money to be made."

In the eyes of the authorities, raising living standards in Xinjiang could also serve to dilute any separatist impulses within the local Uighur Muslim population.

And there is no doubt that the new arrivals are transforming the landscape.

Boom cities are springing up in the parched desert with all the trappings of modernity - wide roads, swanky apartment blocks, even traffic jams. A sure sign of growing prosperity, but for whom?

One sign of an economic shift can be seen in Erdaoqiao market in Xinjiang's provincial capital, Urumqi.

It is a modern building packed with stalls selling inlaid knives, camel-hair carpets, embroidered hats - all traditional products in the region.

It used to be an open-air bazaar mainly run by locals. But development led to a new building, the rents went up and many Uighurs were literally priced out of the market.

"It's too expensive," said one Uighur hat seller, who has moved outside onto the pavement.

His new pitch, he said, would soon be turned into a car park and he did not know where he would go then.

For many Uighurs, this tale of economic marginalisation is familiar.

Around 90% of Xinjiang's population were Uighurs in 1949; now it is estimated that Uighurs make up only about 45% of the population.

They are being supplanted as the dominant ethnic group, by Han settlers who see the windswept desert as a land of opportunity.

The Chinese Government is also staking its claim to the province's rich natural reserves, particularly its oil.

At exercise time at the Tazhong oil refinery in the middle of the Taklamakan desert, all the faces are Han Chinese.

According to Wang Lequan, the province's communist party secretary, Uighurs simply do not have the skills for jobs like these.

"One common problem of the western region is that the education and cultural level of the people here is quite low," Mr Wang said. "In Xinjiang, we lack the talent needed for modernisation and advanced industry."

There is a language divide as well. Uighurs speak a Turkic dialect; many of them speak little or no Chinese.

This means they are effectively disqualified from official jobs and it makes it harder for them to find employment within Chinese companies. That is also an argument for bringing in labour from outside the province.

But critics like Nicholas Becquelin from Human Rights in China said the government's developmental approach was accelerating the wealth disparity between the Chinese and minority Uighurs.

"It's a top down approach to development, where the state decides what are the important projects like building railroads, roads, developing the oil exploitation of Xinjiang," he said.

"These are all major infrastructural programmes that directly benefit the urban Chinese segment of the population. And there is nothing done seriously on poverty alleviation, rural development or minority empowerment in this programme," he said.

No prospects

Seventy-year-old Etam Yusuf is an example of those who are being left behind.

He is selling his donkey cart because he cannot even afford to send his four children to school.

The Uighur part of Urumqi where he lives is basically a slum, though it is not far from the glitzy new skyscrapers.

The roads are unpaved and there are heaps of rubbish everywhere; his house is made from earth, with sheep roaming the courtyard and all six family members sleeping in one room.

Nonetheless, he still thinks he is better off than others he knows.

"There are a lot of people without work here, really a lot," he said.

"There are graduates who have just left university but who still have no work."

And beggars are a common sight in Xinjiang, most of them Uighurs. As they struggle to eke out a living, Uighurs are becoming second-class citizens on their own soil.

Many Uighurs fear that the influx of Chinese settlers, with their built-in advantages, is threatening Uighur culture, their means of existence and ultimately their survival.

Such oppressive circumstances have been known to drive people to despair and to drug abuse, and indeed, that's the problem faced now in the XUAR: heroin addiction, and the associated AIDS epidemic.

In Part 10 we will begin looking at official Communist persecution of the Uighur people, with an eye towards Beijing's stifling regulations that essentially prohibit freedom of religion, forcing religious activity to be channeled into state-controlled and -monitored organizations, and at the popular response; but first, in Part 9, we will look at another news article that addresses the situation of the Uighur people in the XUAR -- so stay tuned!