Uzbekistan: Implications for China, Xinjiang
By Stephen Sullivan
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The recent "terrorist" bombings in Uzbekistan have raised questions about the ramifications for China, particularly the Beijing government's likely response as it has major concerns over the Uighur people of Xinjiang - where fears of Islamist dissent and unrest persist.
China's response to the bombings so far has been muted, limited to brief condemnations of violence and terrorism. In December, China issued its own wanted list of alleged Xinjiang "terrorists". Troop reinforcements and further crackdowns on Uighur activists were not immediately detected.
The Uighur ethnic group of northwestern China's Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region are a Turkic Muslim people numbering some 8 million to 9 million (the total population of the huge, resource-rich region is 19.25 million, including another 8 million to 9 million Han Chinese.) Of all of China's 56 ethnic groups, the Uighurs are the most dissimilar to the majority Han Chinese and, along with the Tibetans, have caused the Han the most "heartache" since the communist takeover of China in 1949.
A Caucasian people, the Uighurs speak a Turkic language that is most similar to that spoken by the Uzbeks. Both being Muslim, they share commonality along religious and cultural lines. Uzbekistan too is home to many Uighurs who moved there in several waves since the 19th century.
Xinjiang, however, does not border Uzbekistan; it borders Afghanistan (a tiny frontier), Kazakhstan and Krygyzstan. It is adjacent to Tibet.
The Uighur people, though they have maintained contacts with the Chinese for more than 2,000 years, consider the Han Chinese presence in Xinjiang, or Eastern Turkistan as they prefer to call it, an occupation of their ancestral homeland.
East Turkistan established briefly in 1944
During the 200-odd years that the Chinese have held sovereignty over Xinjiang, the Uighurs have on several occasions attempted to gain autonomy, the latest achieving limited success in 1944, when the short-lived Republic of East Turkistan was established.
Since the advent of the communists and the consequent massive influx of Han Chinese into Xinjiang to take advantage of its economic potential, the Uighurs have grown increasingly marginalized and, for a period in the 1990s, they became quite restive under Han rule.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the independence from Moscow of the Central Asian republics gave rise to a degree of hope among the Uighurs that the dominos of self-rule would fall their way as well. Fearing just that possibility and potential major unrest in Xinjiang, the Chinese government began in the 1990s a policy of heavy repression of Uighur rights, specifically the rights of religious freedom and freedom of association.
A minor demonstration by Uighurs in the Xinjiang town of Yining (Gulja) in 1997 turned ugly and resulted in nine deaths at the scene and subsequently some 240 executions, along with thousands of detentions and custodial sentences. It was at this time that the central government vowed to crack down on what it termed the "three evils": religious extremism, separatism and terrorism.
Since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, the Chinese government has attempted to link what it terms Uighur "terrorist" organizations with the group now known as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), the militant Islamic group thought by many to be responsible for the recent string of bombings in Uzbekistan.
China alleges Taliban, al-Qaeda links
China's permanent mission to the United Nations released a statement in November 2001 linking a little-known Uighur "organization", the "East Turkistan Islamic Movement" (ETIM), with the Taliban in Afghanistan, the IMU, and Osama bin Laden.
The statement claimed that members of ETIM had trained with the Taliban, al-Qaeda and the IMU at bases in Afghanistan and were personally directed by bin Laden to carry out terrorist operations in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Xinjiang.
To this end, the Chinese claim, the Uighur ETIM assisted the IMU in the armed "insurgence" and "invasion" of southern regions of Uzbekistan and Krygyzstan in November 1999 and August 2000.
These allegations, however, have never been fully proved and some international commentators believe they were put out to divert world sympathy from the Uighurs. Yegevney Kozhokin, then director of the Russian Institute of Strategic Studies, echoed this view in a 2001 assessment of Islamic extremism in Central Asia, as did the US State Department when it supported China's efforts to list the ETIM as an international terrorist organization with the United Nations in 2002. Both, however, could only cite information supplied by China as the basis for their beliefs with no independent substantiation.
Despite this alleged linkage and - were it true - the violence in Uzbekistan should not have any direct effect on China, though that is not to say that Beijing might not attempt to make some capital out of it, strengthening its hand with regard to autonomy activists in Xinjiang.
Most Uighurs don't want a separate state
The Uighurs for all intents and purposes no longer have the ability or desire to strive, as a people, for separation from China. There is no evidence of any organized resistance in Xinjiang today, if there ever truly was any. They certainly have not and would not as a people be involved in any activity orchestrated by "Islamic extremist" organizations. The Uighurs are from the Hanafi school of Islam, a branch both moderate and liberal in outlook compared with their Arab "brothers", or the more Arab-orientated Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.
They also are a very westward-looking people, unlike some Muslims, and they see the West as being most supportive of their plight in Xinjiang, unlike their Turkic Islamic "brothers" in Central Asia, who virtually have set the Xinjiang Uighurs adrift as they strive for economic concessions from China.
If the Chinese were to attempt to capitalize on the Uzbek bombings, we could expect to see condemnations of the Uighurs in the official Xinhua news agency, the People's Daily and official media, possibly followed by a round of detentions and further crackdowns on Uighur religious activities and freedom of association and movement.
If the Chinese were to see the events in Uzbekistan as being a real threat, then there would be evidence of some sort of "military exercises" in Xinjiang to warn both the Uighurs and any militant Islamic group that Beijing cannot be intimidated. Such military activity has been used to that effect before, both in Xinjiang and against Taiwan (in military exercises in the Taiwan Strait).
No immediate security response to Uzbek bombings
As of early April, there is certainly no evidence that the Chinese are taking the Uzbekistan events as any potential threat to the state or their people. Apart from the expected diplomatic responses of regret and so on, there has been no sign of activity or concern coming out of China.
It would be highly unlikely that given everything that has been said on the human-rights issue this year, and the current session of the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva, that China would take major overt action to exploit the Uzbekistan bombings to tighten its grip on Xinjiang.
Stephen Sullivan, an Australian business consultant, runs two websites and a discussion forum on the Uighurs and Turkic peoples of Central Asia. He is the author of the Internet article "China's bin Laden: The terrorist they forgot". His main website is www.uygurworld.com, about Uighur history, culture and politics. He can be reached at stevesullivan@uygurworld.com.
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