Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2014 Part 30 – Uyghur-2By Capt (Ret) C de Waart, feel free to share: in Confidence

While we are looking somewhere else.

China At War Against 'Holy War'; "To you, the state of atheism and obstinacy: You are coming to an end and you will face the same fate of the Russian bear of disintegration and division," he said. "You will encounter the same defeat when your nation will fight in its own backyard the humble minority of Muslims who are stronger in faith." Al-Libi called on

Muslims worldwide to support the Uyghurs. And he vowed that China will suffer the same fate that the former Soviet Union did when it invaded Afghanistan in the 1980s -- only to be thwarted by Islamist fighters.

Al Qaeda Wants Xinjiang In The Islamic Caliphate -- But Uighur Leaders Say No. October 22 2014 An al Qaeda propaganda magazine has described the far western

Chinese province of Xinjiang, home to the native Uighur Muslim population, as a region that needs to be “recovered [into] the shade of the Islamic Caliphate.” Jihadist organizations like al Qaeda and the Islamic State have been making a push to recruit members from the Muslim minority in China. However, Uighur exile activists in the U.S. reject the idea that Xinjiang needs to be "reclaimed" into any caliphate, and appeals by radicals to Uighur Muslims. “The Uighur people will simply ignore such claims,” Alim Seytoff, president of the Uyghur American Association and director of the Uyghur Human Rights Project, said in an interview. (The groups use a variant spelling.) “These claims are mostly likely attempts by these groups to lure and recruit disillusioned young Uighurs to their cause. That is not going to happen because Uighurs do not share their ideology.” The first issue of Resurgence, an English-language magazine produced by a media wing of al Qaeda, As-Sahab, includes an article about the Islamic community in East Turkistan, as they call the territory the Chinese call Xinjiang, titled “Did You Know? 10 Facts About East Turkistan1.” Seytoff said the recruitment efforts of the Islamic State and other jihadist groups have unfairly painted Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang as prone to terrorist behavior. “China has been opportunistically taking advantage of the rise of ISIS and attempting to artificially create links between ISIS and the Uighurs in the world in order to mute international criticism of its systematic and egregious human rights violations of the Uighur people in East Turkistan,” he said. Jihadist propaganda has “little impact,” in Xinjiang, he asserted. Still, “this has not prevented the Chinese government from demonizing the Uighurs as supporters and sympathizers of these groups in order to justify its heavy-handed repression of the Uighur people since 9/11.”Alarm over

1 “In the last 1,000 years of its Islamic history,” the article says, Xinjiang “has remained independent for 763 years, while 237 years have been spent under Chinese occupation at various intervals.” Although “10 Facts About East Turkistan” stops shorting of calling for jihad against China, the point is more directly articulated elsewhere in the first issue of Resurgence. For example, one article says that the “the victory of the Ummah” will be a “deathblow” and a “bitter defeat… for America, Iran, Russia, China and all those who have fought this war by proxy against Muslims.” In a particularly troubling article for China and other state actors, al-Qaeda calls on its followers to try to disrupt shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and Strait of Malacca, noting the waterways’ centrality for China and other Asian economies in particular. Al-Qaeda central’s sudden focus on China follows closely on the heels of the Islamic State also condemning Beijing for its handling of its Uyghur Muslim population. Back in July, IS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi gave a speech in which he argued “Muslim rights are forcibly seized in China, India, Palestine” and many other countries around the world. Later, IS released a map that outlined the borders of its envisioned Caliphate. Notably, Xinjiang province was included in the Caliphate.

possible involvement of Chinese Muslims in global jihad mounted after photos surfaced online of what appeared to be a Chinese citizen fighting for the Islamic State group.

The largest of China's administrative regions, Xinjiang borders eight countries - Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India - and until recently its population was mostly Uighur.Most Uighurs are Muslim and Islam is an important part of their life and identity. Their language is related to Turkish, and they regard themselves as culturally and ethnically close to Central Asian nations. The region's economy has largely revolved around agriculture and trade, with towns such as Kashgar thriving as hubs along the famous Silk Road. But development has brought new residents. In the 2000 census, Han Chinese made up 40% of the population, as well as large numbers of troops stationed in the region and unknown numbers of unregistered migrants. The region has had intermittent autonomy and occasional independence, but what is now known as Xinjiang came under Chinese rule in the 18th Century. An East Turkestan state was briefly declared in 1949, but independence was short-lived - later that year Xinjiang officially became part of Communist China. In the 1990s, open support for separatist groups increased after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of independent Muslim states in Central Asia. Rights group Amnesty International, in a report published in 2013, said authorities criminalised "what they labelled 'illegal religious' and 'separatist' activities" and clamped down on "peaceful expressions of cultural identity". In July 2014, some Xinjiang government departments banned Muslim civil servants from fasting during the holy month of Ramadan. China has been accused of intensifying its crackdown on the Uighurs after street protests in the 1990s and again in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics in 2008. But things really escalated in 2009, with large-scale ethnic rioting in the regional capital, Urumqi. Some 200 people were killed in the unrest, most of them Han Chinese, according to officials. China has often blamed ETIM - the East Turkestan Islamic Movement - or people inspired by ETIM for violent incidents both in Xinjiang and beyond the region's borders. ETIM is said to want to establish an independent East Turkestan in China. The US State Department in 2006 said ETIM is "the most militant of the ethnic Uighur separatist groups".The scope of ETIM's activities remains unclear with some questioning the group's capacity to organise serious acts of extremism.

According to, Epoch Times | October 26, 2014Al-Qaeda Calls for Caliphate in China’s Xinjiang, An two-page infographic in the new al-Qaeda magazine, “Resurgence,” calls attention to the Chinese regime’s suppression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. The magazine calls for Xinjiang to be brought into an Islamic Caliphate. (Screenshot/al-Sahab media organization) It continues, noting that after the Chinese Communist Party took over the region in 1949, more than 4.5 million Muslims were killed by the Chinese regime. It claims the regime has burned close to 30,700 Muslim religious texts, turned 28,000 mosques into bars, turned 18,000 mudrassas into warehouses, and executed more than 120,000 Muslim scholars and imams. The magazine stops short of calling for attacks on China, but does claim in a different section that Islamic uprisings will bring “bitter defeat for America, Iran, Russia, China and all those who have fought this war by proxy against Muslims.” It also states that if the Sykes-Picot Agreement is abolished, people in Pakistan, Xinjiang, and other Muslim countries will be able to live under the Islamic Caliphate. Cees: The internal network of militant cells is likely already in place and possibly expanding, which will provide more opportunities for the Uighur-led Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) and its closely allied Islamic

Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) to expand their jihad across the border from Afghanistan and Pakistan into China. The TIP’s main “value added” in Xinjiang is mostly providing training to Uighurs who travel abroad or, likely more importantly, the clandestine distribution of jihadist ideological and training materials in Xinjiang by way of various Uighur, Pakistani or Central Asian traders. Al-Burmi urges his followers to turn their attention to the “new superpower” and “next number one enemy,” China, now that the Taliban “knocked the wind out” of the United States. This suggests that al-Burmi may see a role for the IMU attacking China or coordinating training of the TIP to attack China after the withdrawal of most U.S. troops from Afghanistan in 2014. A new English-language magazine released by al-Qaeda describes China’s restive Xinjiang region as an “occupied Muslim land” to be “recovered [into] the shade of the Islamic Caliphate”. Produced by the jihadist organisation’s As-Sahab media wing, the 117-page debut issue of Resurgence includes a feature titled “Did You Know? 10 Facts About East Turkistan,” referring to the name for Xinjiang used by those who advocate independence from China. While much of the article is inaccurate – it claims, for example, that teaching the Quran is illegal in China (Islam is one of the country’s five recognised official religions) – it shows how China’s actions in the region, such as encouraging the migration of Han Chinese into Xinjiang and restricting religious dress, are being used by jihadist organisations to confirm their belief that Muslims are under threat.

“Did You Know? 10 Facts About East Turkistan", in al-Qaeda's Resurgence magazine, claims that China carries out ethnic cleansing against Muslims. Al-Qaeda is not the only jihadist organisation which has expressed an interest in the situation of Muslims in Xinjiang. In July, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-styled caliph of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, spoke of Muslim rights being “forcibly seized” in China in a call for Muslims around the world to pledge allegiance to him. “Your brothers all over the world are waiting for your rescue, and are anticipating your brigades,” Baghdadi told his followers. “In recent years [jihadist organisations] have expressed an interest in the alleged oppression of Xinjiang Uygurs by the Han Chinese,” Ahmed Hashim, a terrorism expert and associate international studies professor at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, told the South China Morning Post. “China is being seen as an oppressive power as it grows in strength.” “The contact between Uygur separatists and jihadists has been rather limited but is increasingly facilitated by Uzbek jihadists in recent years in remote regions of Pakistan,” he said. China has long maintained that separatist groups in Xinjiang have links to foreign jihadist organisations. After the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, Beijing lobbied for the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) to be placed on the United States’ terrorist watch list.

Paramilitary policemen with shields and batons patrol near the People's Square in Urumqi, Xinjiang region. Photo: APETIM – which experts say is more of an umbrella term used by the Chinese government for a number of different groups, including the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP), than an actual cohesive organisation – has been accused by Beijing of involvement in a number of terrorist incidents in recent years, including the Kunming Railway Station massacre in March which left 31 people dead and injured 141. While leaders of TIP, believed to be based in Pakistan’s lawless tribal region, have voiced support and even claimed credit for some attacks in China, some have questioned the group’s ability to carry out terrorist plots thousands of kilometres away.The influence of foreign jihadist organisations on events in Xinjiang has also been questioned. While al-Qaeda and Islamic State have begun using the situation there in their propaganda, experts argue that the roots of the unrest ultimately lie in China’s policies in the region.

“Identifying external ‘provocations’ remains important to the narrative about Uygurs perpetuated by the Chinese state,” Sean Roberts, director of international development studies at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, told Vice News last month. Beijing, Roberts argues, believes its policies are “gracious and generous to the Uygurs and immune to criticism. Thus, if Uygurs are resisting the Chinese state, it must be due to external forces seeking to destabilise what is harmonious and prosperous.” “When the approach taken by the Chinese government is a total clampdown then people will go in more extreme directions, that’s a natural response and we’ve seen it in a number of other situations,” Raffaello Pantucci, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute focusing on counter-terrorism and radicalisation, told the Post. “Historically though, extremist Uygur groups have never been able to get the global [jihadi] movement to do much more than talk about their problems,” he said. “There’s a lot of rhetoric but it doesn’t translate into action.” “The Chinese government has a tendency to say that any incident that takes place in China is affiliated to a foreign group, but it rarely goes into the particulars of who is behind and directing these plots," Pantucci added. 

Policemen from the SWAT team practice during a drill in Urumqi, Xinjiang region. Photo: Reuters“China’s ongoing security crackdown in Xinjiang has forced the most militant Uygur separatists into volatile neighbouring countries, such as Pakistan, where they are forging strategic alliances with, and even leading, jihadist factions affiliated with al-Qaeda and the Taliban,” wrote Philip Potter, an assistant professor of public policy and political science at the University of Michigan, in a paper published earlier this year. The allure of jihadist organisations – particularly the Islamic State, which has proven itself adept at waging online propaganda and recruitment campaigns – is strong for disillusioned young people in countries all over the world. The International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King’s College London estimates that around 74 nationalities are fighting under the black flag of the “Caliphate”, including more than 500 British militants. In July, China’s former special envoy to the Middle East, Wu Sike, said that around 100 Chinese citizens are fighting with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. In an article last month, the state-run Global Times quoted an unnamed “anti-terrorist worker” as saying that Xinjiang militants who joined the Islamic State “not only want to get training in terrorist techniques, but also to expand their connections in international terrorist organisations through actual combat to gain support for escalation of terrorist activities in China.” Uygur exile groups complain that Beijing already exaggerates the threat posed by terrorism to justify harsh crackdowns in Xinjiang.

Uighur academic Ilham Tohti sits during his trial on separatism charges in Urumqi, Xinjiang region. Photo: CCTVThe concern for many observers is that as more and more moderate groups and intellectuals are silenced – such as Ilham Tohti, an economics professor and advocate for Uygur rights who was jailed for life by a Xinjiang court in September – foreign jihadist organisations, acting outside of China and more difficult to control and suppress, become the only option for those frustrated by Beijing’s policies. In a recently released annual report by the US Congressional-Executive Commission on China – tasked to monitor human rights and legal developments in the country – the authors found that “overly broad security measures and crackdowns, restrictions on peaceful religious activists, and constraints on expressions of Uygur cultural identity have heightened tensions in [Xinjiang]”.Sep 2013, Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has issued his first specific guidelines for jihad (holy war), in an apparent nod to those who say al-Qaeda's focus on the US weakens its battle against governments at home; he endorsed the right of militants to fight Russians in the

Caucasus, Indians in Kashmir and Chinese in Xinjiang. He has previously endorsed the "liberation" of Xinjiang, referring last year to "China's takeover of East Turkestan" on a list of Muslim lands he said had been unjustly occupied.

30 July 2014, A clash in China's far western region of Xinjiang, home to the country's mostly Muslim Uighur minority, left nearly 100 people dead and wounded, an exile group said Wednesday. Chinese state media reported late Tuesday that dozens of civilians and assailants were killed and injured in what it described as a "terrorist attack" in the region, saying a gang armed with knives and axes had attacked a police station and government offices, before moving on to a township. Beijing has also suggested that extremists in Xinjiang are influenced by radical groups outside China, though many foreign analysts are sceptical, pointing instead to Uighur dissatisfaction.

Feb 2007, Al-Qaeda has a China problem, and no one is watching. Despite al-Qaeda's significant efforts to support Muslim insurgents in China, Beijing has succeeded in limiting popular support for anti-government violence. China's successful efforts to keep the global jihad from spreading into its territory present a real challenge for al-Qaeda. The organization reportedly trained more than 1,000 Uighurs, a Turkic ethnic group that is predominantly Muslim, in camps in Afghanistan prior to September 11, 2001. In December 2006, al-Qaeda's No 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, called for action against "occupation" governments ruling over Muslims, including reference to the plight of Uighurs in western China.

On Oct. 7 2009, a top-ranking al-Qaeda leader issued a call to the Islamic world to battle a great nation of infidels. Through a video posted on the internet, Abu Yahya al-Libi condemned this superpower for perpetrating "injustice and oppression" against Muslims and "looting their wealth" — a script similar to others read out from secret hideouts over the

course of post-9/11 American-led campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. But the country in the crosshairs of al-Qaeda's latest diatribe was not the U.S. or any of its allies in the West. It was China.

Terror Line from China to Syria; Published 29-05-2014; Experienced journalist Fikret Akfırat, analyzes the CIA backed jihadist terrorist organization's involvement in drug trafficking and the connections of China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region based terrorist groups in Turkey-Syria line. Fikret Akfırat; Guo Shengkun, the Minister of Public Security of the People's Republic of China, said in his statement in a meeting regarding the heads of national security councils of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Tajikistan's capital Dushanbe on April 17 that the member countries are under threat of  "colour revolutions," which are being funded by drug money. The second issue brought by Shengkun - who emphasized that the SCO member countries need to conduct joint works - regarding the NGOs that were used as a tool of foreign intervention, was the Islamic extremist terror organizations and their drug trafficking activities.  The Minister of Public Security Guo Shengkun stated that the Hizbut-Tahrir organization’s dominance over the drug routes increasingly grows along with the al Qaeda-linked Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and the East Turkestan Islamic Movement. Jihadists Fund Themselves with Drug Trafficking; Shengkun's statements are remarkable in many respects. The threat of "colour revolutions" should be the subject of a separate article. I will analyze the remarkable increase of the involvement of the terror organizations linked to al-Qaeda in drug trafficking and its connection with the war in Syria. According to the United Nations (UN) Office on Drugs and Crime, opium production in Afghanistan has increased 20-fold after the US and the NATO invaded in the country in 2001. It's widely known that the CIA uses the drug income to organize and control terror organizations. Examples of such countries are Nicaragua, Colombia, Afghanistan and Kosovo. Alfred W. McCoy describes how the CIA plays roles in the drug trafficking in his book “The Politics of Heroin, CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade” which was published in 1991 with concrete evidences in detail. The CIA turned Afghanistan into a hot bed of the jihadist Mujahideens fighting for the interests of the US after the Soviet invasion in 1979. Muslims from many parts of the world were brought to Afghanistan and trained in the CIA camps to fight against the Soviet Union. After the invasion of the Soviet Union, these jihadists who came from Arab, Caucasus and the Balkan countries started to operate in their own countries upon return. But they were not alone. Jihad fighters from different countries, at the disposal of the CIA, were on the stage in the Bosnian civil war, Chechnya, Central Asia and Turkey with their bloody actions. The new training area is Syria; Thousands of jihadists from many different regions of the world are brought to Syria by means of the CIA, and fight against the Syrian Army. Then, those who gain war experience and stay alive, are brought to the forefront in their own country.  The increasing acts of terrorism in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China after the beginning of the imperialist operation in Syria is remarkable. The al Qaeda-linked East Turkestan Islamic Movement operating in the region started to organize terrorist attacks in also the different parts of China. 12 people were killed in the town of Xinhe County near to Kashgar in Xinjiang on January 24. Finally, it was announced by the Chinese media that 29 people lost their lives and 130 people were wounded in a terror attack towards a train station in the Kunming city of China on March 1. The Chinese Government announced that these are planned terrorist actions organized by the separatists from Xinjiang. Chinese television broadcasted the images of terrorists wearing t-shirts with the black star and crescent logos, as well as printed Arabic inscriptions. The Eastern Turkestan Islamic Movement was

systematically deployed in North Waziristan on the Pakistani-Afghan border under the protection of the al-Qaeda. Istanbul is the center for the groups who organize terror actions for establishing another state by the name of East Turkistan in China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. It is known that the related groups which are in close contact with the Turkish governmental intelligence organization, MİT, are also closely connected to the Gülen organization lead by Fethullah Gülen, a shady Turkish sermon who has been living for years under the protection of armed CIA guards in a farm in the USA, and was admitted to establishing a network within the Turkish state. The Uyghur origin jihadist insurgents are being transferred to Syria by the assistance of the MİT and the Istanbul based East Turkestan Education Association, which is under the control of Gülenists and is being used as a tool in these operations. The young Uyghurs who are organized by the East Turkestan Education Association are being transferred to Syria by the mediation of the Turkish National Intelligence Organization, MİT, under the cover of the Red Crescent officials.

China murdered thousands peaceful Muslims in occupied Eastern Turkestan10 August 2014, China massacred thousands Muslims in Eastern Turkestan on July 28 at the end of the Muslim festival of Ramadan as a reprisal for Jihad against bloody commies. The communist thugs bombed three villages and sent SWAT teams to kill the survivors. There is evidence in hand that at least 2,000 Uyghurs in the neighborhood of Elishku Township have been killed by bloody Chinese invaders on the first day of the incident and they ‘cleaned up’ the dead bodies on the second and third day during a curfew that was imposed. Evidence includes recorded voice messages from the people in the neighborhood and written testimonies on exactly what had taken place in Elishku township of Yarkand County during this massacre. Red China used extrajudicial force in the attacking and killings, the rogue country also downplayed the numbers. Internet, text messages, and cellphone usage has been effectively shut down in the area. Red China is a cleaning house where nothing comes out from what they did. The Communist thugs have instituted stiff bus and airlines travel restrictions in occupied Eastern Turkestan, banning bus passengers from carrying cigarette lighters, and yogurt containers, with even tighter restrictions in force in Urumqi. The stinky cowardly commies apparently fear the yogurt containers may be used for homemade bombs. Department of Monitoring Kavkaz Center

Beijing, Kunming, Urumqi and Guangzhou: The Changing Landscape of Anti-Chinese JihadistsPublication: China Brief Volume: 14 Issue: 10 May 23, 2014 Abdullah Mansour in a video from the Turkistan Islamic Party. During the roughly six months since China suffered its first-ever car bombing in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on October 31, 2013, China has witnessed a series of other terrorist attacks on its territory. Such attacks included a mass stabbing at a train station in Kunming that killed 29 people, a double suicide bombing at a train station in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region’s capital of Urumqi and a mass stabbing at a train station in Guangzhou that injured six people. The car bombings in Urumqi on May 22 made it all the more clear that the recent attacks in China are part of coordinated militant campaign against China, which is likely organized from outside China and that employs the tactics of jihadists in neighboring Afghanistan and Pakistan. One connection between these recent incidents is that they were carried out by Uighurs, members of a Muslim ethnic group from Xinjiang. Xi Jinping and his counter-

terrorism strategists are faced with the task of identifying the foreign and domestic forces behind these attacks—and around 15 other mass-stabbings and car-rammings in Xinjiang since 2011—and developing a program to counter such violence. The internal network of such militant cells is likely already in place and possibly expanding, which will provide more opportunities for the Uighur-led Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) and its closely allied Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) to expand their jihad across the border from Afghanistan and Pakistan into China. This article analyzes the political nature of the recent attacks in China, with an emphasis on operational connections between the attackers and international jihadist groups like the TIP and IMU. International Connections The TIP’s Spokesman Role The TIP has approximately 300–500 militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but also a network in Turkey and possibly Central Asia (Author’s field research in northwest Pakistan, 2012). With such numbers, it is limited in its capacity to launch an insurgency in China, which has a population of well over one billion people. The only attacks in China for which the TIP showed evidence of its responsibility were the Ramadan-eve car rammings in Kashgar in July 2011, which killed 12 pedestrians. The TIP has also claimed several cart-bombings near Xinjiang’s border with Pakistan in 2012, which were likely carried out by its cells in Xinjiang (See Terrorism Monitor, Volume 10, Issue 8). The TIP’s main “value added” in Xinjiang is mostly providing training to Uighurs who travel abroad or, likely more importantly, the clandestine distribution of jihadist ideological and training materials in Xinjiang by way of various Uighur, Pakistani or Central Asian traders. On the international front, the TIP has become an influential promoter and “spokesperson” for Uighur militants in China and issues praise of virtually every violent incident between Uighurs and Chinese police or Han civilians. TIP leader Abdullah Mansour is a relative novice among more experienced international jihadists, but has raised the TIP’s profile among al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups. Mansour was the editor from 2008 to 2013 of the TIP’s roughly quarterly publication Islamic Turkistan, which laid out Uighur grievances against China and compared Xinjiang to other areas of the world where jihadists are fighting, such as Palestine, Kashmir and, more recently, Syria (On Mansour, see Terrorism Monitor, Volume 9, Issue 11 and Militant Leadership Monitor, February 2014). Mansour’s ascendancy to the TIP’s leadership last year was likely related to his media and marketing skills, which is reflected in the TIP’s continued sophisticated activity on jihadist forums. Al-Qaeda leaders, such as Ayman al-Zawahiri, now usually mention “East Turkistan” among other jihadist battlegrounds, while jihadists in Syria have proudly featured Uighurs and Han converts to Islam among their fighters. Meanwhile, the TIP has praised the “jihadists” in Syria, and responded directly to Chinese accusations that the TIP is sending fighters to Syria with the help of Turkey-based Uighur human rights organizations. In the 12th edition of Islamic Turkistan, for example, the TIP wrote, “If China has the right to support Bashar al-Assad in Syria, we have the full right to support our proud Muslim Syrian people” (Islamic Turkistan, Volume 13, March 2013; Chinese Uighur fighting with FSA,” YouTube, March 29, 2013; “Chinese Man Joins FSA,” YouTube, March 18, 2013; Global Times, October 29, 2012).

IMU: ‘Go After Pakistan’s Mother’ While the TIP is still a relative newcomer to the jihadist scene—having only announced its formation around 2008, despite the presence of Uighur militants in Afghanistan since before 2001—it has benefited from the support of other well-known jihadist leaders. In particular, the emergence of IMU mufti Abu Zar al-Burmi as a prominent anti-Chinese jihadist leader in Pakistan has led to Xinjiang gaining more attention among jihadists. Al-Burmi started gaining prominence around 2011, several years after Xinjiang—which Uighurs who seek independence from China call “East Turkistan”—gained attention in jihadist media after the July 2009 riots in Urumqi. At that time, al-Qaeda affiliates

and leaders such as Abu Yahya al-Libi demanded retribution against China and called for attacks on Chinese citizens abroad (China Daily, July 15, 2009). Other al-Qaeda leaders gave occasional talks on Xinjiang (Khalid al-Husaynan, “‘Purpose’ of Jihad,” Sawt al-Islam, May 4, 2013; Abu-Yahya al-Libi, “The Forgotten Wound,” as-Sahab, 2009). Yet al-Burmi, unlike other al-Qaeda leaders, regularly issues anti-Chinese sermons in Pakistan and, perhaps because of his Burmese background (he is an ethnic Rohingya) seems to hold a personal vendetta against China. He said in a sermon called “A Lost Nation” that “mujahidin should know that the coming enemy of the Ummah is China, which is developing its weapons day after day to fight the Muslims” and blamed “Burma, China and Germany and the interests of the United Nations for supporting these massacres and mass killings [of Rohingyas] in Arakan (“A Lost Nation,” a speech for Abu Zar-Azzam, Mufti of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, 2013).” In a sermon in Ladha, South Waziristan, in September 2013, al-Burmi, declared it obligatory for Muslims to kidnap and kill Chinese people and attack Chinese companies, which Abu Zar says have “conquered” Pakistan like the British East India company did in India (including Abu Zar’s native Burma) in the 1800s (Bab-ul-Islam, in Urdu, April 25). He blames Pakistanis for their “mantra of Pak-China Friendship,” including purchasing “infidel” food and goods from China as if “drinking milk from the Chinese government” and selling the Gwadar Port in Karachi to China (Ibid). Al-Burmi urges his followers to turn their attention to the “new superpower” and “next number one enemy,” China, now that the Taliban “knocked the wind out” of the United States. This suggests that al-Burmi may see a role for the IMU attacking China or coordinating training of the TIP to attack China after the withdrawal of most U.S. troops from Afghanistan in 2014. In his Ladha sermon, al-Burmi continues with U.S.-China comparisons: “We should be aware of the fact that while the United States is the father of the Pakistani system and government, China is the mother of the Pakistani government. The Pakistani government drinks its milk from the Chinese government.” He further claims that “The Pakistani president visits China every four months and goes and bows, kneels and prostrates before those atheists, who do not believe in God, and in return he comes back with aid…. We should all be aware of the fact that there is no border between Pakistan and China…the border that is along the Gilgit-Baltistan region is actually a border with East Turkestan.”

The Homefront: Politicization of Attacks; While the TIP and IMU may be active in promoting jihad from abroad, the key measure of their influence—or that of other jihadists groups—in China is the political nature and style of attacks occurring in China. The section below reviews the most recent major attacks up to the May 22 car-bombing (many details of which are still unclear at the time of publication). Urumqi. The double-suicide bombing at the railway station in Urumqi occurred on the final day of President Xi’s three-day visit to Xinjiang, where his focus was on counter-terrorism (Xinhua, April 28). The attack, however, also coincided with the eve of the opening of the intercity railway lines linking Urumqi with Kuytun, Shihezi and Karamay, which will be a key route for distributing Xinjiang’s oil throughout China (Times of India, May 1). The attackers did not “succeed,” in that they killed only one person other than themselves, but the media attention given to these suicide bombings received overshadowed Xi’s visit and sent a message that Uighur militants can attack anywhere and anytime. Moreover, these suicide bombings, which were the first such terrorist attacks in China, were an innovation in Uighur militancy. While no connection to the TIP has been proven, China alleges that the ringleaders trained in Pakistan, which is likely an indication of a suspected tie to the TIP (Al-Jazeera, May 21). The attack would also be similar to the suicide bombings that the TIP and IMU carry out against U.S., NATO and Pakistani forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan (SITE

Intelligence Group, May 26, 2013). The beheading of two Han Chinese policemen and stabbing into 31 pieces of a third policeman in Yecheng (Karghlik), which is the closest city in Xinjiang to Pakistan, suggests there may have been a broader attempt by militants to launch attacks during Xi’s visit (Times of India, March 8, 2012; AFP, March 15). One of the most notable portions of the Damla video includes a scene of militants in a mountainous region resembling the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, where the militants provide a lesson on making a briefcase-bomb (Reuters [Islamabad], March 14). The TIP has issued a series of 13 videos in Uighur, with Chinese and Uighur subtitles, that teach viewers how to make homemade explosives (http://jihadology.net/2013/12/31/%E1%B9%A3awt-al-islam-presents-a-new-video-message-from-%E1%B8%A5izb-al-islami-al-turkistani-turkistan-islamic-party-the-express-mail-of-the-turkistan-mujahidin-12/). If the TIP can encourage and teach homegrown lone wolves or independent cells in Xinjiang to carry out attacks by distributing these types of videos in Xinjiang, it would allow the TIP to encourage attacks while avoiding the risk associated with sending its militants into Xinjiang. Tiananmen The car-bombing in Tiananmen Square in October 2013 involved a husband, who rammed a car with his wife and mother in the passenger seats into China’s most symbolic location near Mao Zedong’s portrait in Tiananmen Square. The husband’s motive was likely to avenge the Chinese government’s demolition of an extra section of a mosque that he paid to build in Kizilsu Kyrgyz Autonomous Prefecture in Xinjiang without official permission (Radio Free Asia, November 7, 2013). Like the attack in Urumqi, the Tiananmen attack played well into TIP propaganda. Islom Awazi released a video on jihadist websites of TIP leader Abdullah Mansour praising the “jihadi operation in the Forbidden City” and claiming it was the result of an “awakening after 60 years of oppression” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lk130qpnhno). Kunming and Guangzhou; The Kunming and Guangzhou train station attacks in March and May 2014 were distinct from the Urumqi train station and Tiananmen Square attacks, because neither the timing of the attacks nor locations were particularly symbolic. Both, however, were certain to cause deaths because they were in busy public locations. The involvement of two women in the Kunming attack, as well as the choice of a train station, was possibly influenced by militants from the Caucasus Emirate, whose late leader Doku Umarov was eulogized in a TIP video on May 1 (SITE Intelligence Group, May 1, 2014). Vilayat Dagestan, which claimed attacks on a train station in Volgograd and trolley in Pyatigorsk, near Sochi, in the run-up to the Olympics in Russia in February 2014 said those attacks were “because of Umarov’s orders” (The Guardian, January 19). Conclusion; The recent attacks in Beijing, Kunming, Urumqi and Guangzhou are all victories for the TIP and its allies in the IMU. The attacks help the TIP and IMU promote China as the next frontier for jihadists as the U.S. withdraws in Afghanistan. Meanwhile from Syria and Turkey to the Gulf, there are increasing opportunities for the TIP and its supporters to network with Uighurs in Xinjiang, who hold grievances against the Chinese government. It is possible, for example, that the IMU and TIP could connect with and recruit from underground Islamist organizations in Xinjiang similar to Tablighi Jamaat, such as one called “Hijrah Jihad,” which are inspired by similar Salafist currents. Moreover, it is likely that Uighur militancy will come to resemble al-Qaeda’s militant operations elsewhere in the world as knowledge-transfer takes place with in-person training in Afghanistan and Pakistan or Syria on simply online or in jihadist videos. The TIP may also follow the Caucasus Emirate’s strategy towards ethnic Russians, attacking Han Chinese in Xinjiang with such frequency that it causes them to leave the region and generates so much Han-Uighur animosity that Han Chinese become less willing to live, work and feel safe in Xinjiang.

Chinese Salafism and the Saudi Connection; In China, the Hui Salafi sect, and its links with Saudi Arabia, have a long and complex history. By Mohammed Al-Sudairi October 23, 2014; Salafism, or Salafiyya, is a doctrinal-intellectual current within Islam that espouses a return to the ways of the Salaf As-Salih (the Pious Ancestors), the first three generations of Muslims who lived during and after the death of the Prophet Mohammed. Often described as being rooted in the works of the medieval scholars Ibn Hanbal and Ibn Taymiyyah, Salafism seeks to establish a more “authentic” religious experience predicated on a presumably correct reading of the Quran and the sunnah (the sayings and practices of the Prophet) and away from the supposed bid’ah (innovations) and heretical practices that have “polluted” it. This current moreover embraces to a certain extent a rejection of the madhhab (legal school) Sunni traditions that had emerged in Islam’s early centuries. As a relatively modern phenomenon building on the Sunni orthodox revivals of the 18th century, the failures of traditional Muslim authorities to contend with mounting internal and external challenges, as well as the spread of new modernistic discourses, Salafism found a popular following across many Muslim societies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its growth was facilitated by Saudi Arabia – which embraced its own idiosyncratic brand of Salafism rooted in the mid-18th century religious revivalism that swept central Arabia (usually denoted by its detractors as Wahhabism after its “founder” Mohammed bin Abdul Wahhab) – especially after its annexation of Mecca and Medina in 1924-25, and the subsequent influx of oil wealth, which endowed the country with the religious authority and means (universities, charities, organizations, preachers, and communicative mediums) to promote this current globally.Among China’s Hui ethnic group, Saudi-influenced Salafism has been present for nearly a century. Aside from the intellectual residue influencing other sects and currents, its most obvious manifestation is to be found in the Salafi sect, which constitutes a small minority within the community of the faithful in China. Concentrated in small clusters across the Northwest and Yunnan, and identified by their “Saudi” clothes, Salafis have elicited fear and opposition from their ideological opponents within the wider Chinese Muslim community, leading at times to outright sectarian conflict. Since the 1990s, and particularly following 9/11, the Chinese state has placed the Salafi community under close surveillance, fearing that its close connections with Saudi Arabia as well as presumed Uighur Salafi networks, not to mention the sect’s considerable growth over the past few years (attracting not only other Hui, but increasingly Han as well), might herald political and religious violence in the future. These security concerns have only abounded with the rising specter of the Islamic State and the appearance of a few Chinese fighters in the ranks of the contending Islamist groups in Syria and Iraq.Historical Roots of Chinese Salafism; Although relatively isolated since the 14th century with the disintegration of the Yuan dynasty, the Hui Muslim communities, and especially those in the Northwest of China, remained open to the religious and intellectual influences emanating from other parts of the Muslim world. The spread of the various Sufi tariqas (orders), such as the Naqshibandis, Kubrawis, and Qadiris, during the late Ming and early Qing in China in the 17th century, as well as the consolidation of Sufi tariqas with their own distinct lineages, tombs and practices (such as the Khuffiyya and Jahriyya), is indicative of this permeability, which endured primarily through the Hajj and overland trade networks via Central Asia and Yunnan. Unsurprisingly, the transmission of Salafism – or initially Wahhabi ideas – amongst the Hui follows this template in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Wahhabism gained converts in China throughout the Republican era, primarily as a byproduct of the growing traffic of Muslim pilgrims going to the Hejaz, facilitated by the proliferation of new means of transportation such as the steamship. Between 1923 and 1934, hundreds of Hui Muslims made the Hajj. In 1937 – prior to the full-fledged Japanese invasion of the country – well over 170 Hui reportedly boarded a steamer in Shanghai bound for Mecca. The effects of

this were palpable, ranging from a noticeable increase in the availability of Wahhabi literature across China in the 1930s, as observed by the scholar Ma Tong, to high-profile conversions of detractors of the movement, including Sufi Sheiks. It is from within this context that the first pronounced Salafiyya sect emerged within China and mostly, interestingly enough, in reaction to the perceived “departure” of the Yihewani movement from its puritan and proto-Wahhabi ethos. The founding propagator of an explicit Salafism is usually identified as Ma Debao (1867-1977), originally a Yihewani adherent who officiated in various mosques across the Northwest. His earliest encounters with Salafism came through a visiting – presumably Arab – scholar who settled in Xining, Qinghai in 1934 to teach the Wahhabi doctrine. This exposure led him to reassess some of his views, although his major intellectual transformation would only come when he departed for the Hajj in 1936, a period during which he spent considerable time at the Salafi Dar Al-Hadith school. On returning to China in 1937, Ma Debao became an enthusiastic promoter of the teachings, quickly gathering a following of his own centered in the Xinwang mosque in Linxia, Gansu and breaking away in turn from the Yihewani movement, whom he perceived to have compromised their beliefs. His Salafi group encountered strong opposition from the established Yihewani clergy and their warlord backers, forcing the movement to assume a more cautious and quietest attitude towards politics for the sake of its survival.After the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, the Salafis – now unfettered by the Muslim warlords – experienced a brief period of religious growth, with its leadership actively participating in a number of state organs as well as the newly created Islamic Association of China (IAC). This soon came to an end as the 1958 “Religious Reform Campaign,” followed by the Great Leap Forward (1958-1961) and the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), forced the movement underground as many of its leaders and adherents were killed off or sent to concentration camps. It survived as remnants from the leadership settled in Xinjiang and Tibet during these difficult years.Channels of Saudi Influence; The start of the “Reform and Opening Up” in 1978 signaled the end of a dark period of sustained persecution against China’s Muslim communities, including the Salafis. The dismantlement of restrictions on religious worship, the restoration of mosques, and the reformation of the IAC served to reconsolidate state control over these communities but more significantly, served to showcase (in a resurrection of Chinese foreign policy patterns in the 1950s) Beijing’s tolerance of Islam, a policy principally aimed at courting the support of various Muslim states. The direct outcome of this new “opening” allowed the re-introduction, and even amplification of, Saudi Salafi influences across the country, with implications for both the Salafi and wider Muslim community as a whole. This occurred through various channels, the most important of which was the restoration of the Hajj missions in 1979 (after nearly a decade-long suspension dating from 1964) followed by new regulations allowing private individuals to make the pilgrimage in 1984, that allowed considerable numbers of Hui Muslims – jumping from nearly 2000 in 1985 to nearly 10,000 annually in 1990 – to travel to the Kingdom. There, some of these pilgrims opted to stay for further study or came in touch with relatives from the well-established Chinese Saudi diaspora (which had settled in the Hedjaz following the end of the Chinese civil war and received citizenship there). These interactions exposed Chinese Muslims to new discourses and religious experiences that challenged their own traditional understandings of Islam. They returned to China carrying Wahhabi books, leaflets, fatwas (religious rulings), and sermon tapes that broadly disseminated Salafi ideas.Other significant channels included the arrival of Saudi organizations and preachers in China during the 1980s. Initially, religious activities were limited to influential groups like the Organization for Islamic Cooperation, the Muslim World League, and the Islamic Development Bank, which operated under the auspices of the IAC and in turn re-directed their

efforts in a non-sectarian fashion. Their activities, beyond providing alternative channels of communication between Saudi and Chinese officials, encompassed the construction of various Islamic Institutes, the renovation of major mosques, the initiation of a Quranic printing and distribution project (in 1987, more than a million copies were disbursed across China as a “royal gift” from the Saudi King), and the provision of training workshops for clerics and scholarships for students (initially in China and Pakistan,) amongst others. By the mid-1980s, religious policies were relaxed considerably, allowing for a growing number of Saudi private organizations and individuals (mainly preachers and missionaries bringing in religious literature) to increasingly work outside established IAC channels. In this new environment, these entities began to selectively target their funding towards specific groups – particularly those visibly identified as Salafi in places like Gansu, Qinhai, Ningxia, Shanxi, and Yunnan – and popularize certain discourses that might have been rejected by the IAC for fear of inviting state reprimand. The activities of these groups were greatly facilitated by a network of Chinese Salafi activists who had graduated from Saudi or Saudi-affiliated institutions like Imam Saudi University, Umm Al-Qura, and Medina University. While numbers are hard to come by, one study from Medina University shows that between 1961 and 2000/2001, over 652 scholarships were granted to mainland Chinese. Nearly 76 percent of these were offered in the 1980s and 90s alone. While significant numbers of the graduates (who ofter never actually completed their studies) gravitated towards middlemen jobs in Guangzhou or Yiwu where they could utilize their Arabic proficiency, a few joined privately run religious academies in Yunnan or Gansu, and some began officiating in mosques after the longstanding official barriers on the hiring of foreign-trained Imams eased in the 2000s. A smaller but far more influential group fostered close ties with Saudi organizations and preachers – a relationship that was beneficial to both sides.The Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, which came under a U.S.-backed UN ban in 2004 due to its presumed affiliations with Al-Qaeda, is illustrative. Throughout the 1990s, the organization expended considerable funds on the construction of Salafi mosques across China, the maintenance of Salafi-aligned schools (typically “Arabic language” schools that double as Islamic institutions), and the provision of scholarships for interested students – an array of activities that were largely overseen by various (at times competing) circles of Medina University graduates who leveraged their influence within the wider community. In conjunction with these developments, Beijing had assumed a more cautious attitude by the 1990s, typified by the barring of entry of suspected preachers, continued refusal to offer scholarships for students heading to Saudi Arabia, and the introduction of new laws that restricted foreign religious activities, including one in 1994 that banned donations made outside the auspices of the IAC. Unsurprisingly, these restrictions have grown more stringent over the last decade, but they have not severed the Saudi ties altogether.The Saudi Impact; Saudi influences have had a somewhat contradictory impact on Hui Salafis and the wider Muslim community in China. On one level, these influences have contributed – to a degree – to the salafisation (namely, a cultural and religious approximation of an “idealized” Saudi orthodoxy) of Hui Muslim society. This salafisation subsumes the adoption of presumably Salafi doctrines, prayers rituals, attitudes, and even culturally authentic attire (the Saudi headgear worn in a manner usually associated with the religiously conservative in the Kingdom) and mosque architecture under what can be described as an Arabization process, although the appearance of these trends is not always indicative of a Salafi influence. The salafisation of Hui Muslims has affected nearly all sects, albeit in different ways. Amongst Salafis, the re-introduction of orthodox sources after a significant period of isolation, and amplified now by globalizing forces, led to the breakdown of the old Salafi community as a new generation of Salafis (the early graduates and pilgrims) in the 1980s sought to “correct” the errors of their elders. This was reflected in the schism that

emerged over the interpretation of certain Quranic verses, the appearance of a more activist opposition to Sufism leading to the demolishment of some Sufi tombs in the Northwest, and the enunciation of a takfeeri (excommunicatory) stance towards “deviant” Salafis and non-Salafi Muslims that led to bouts of sectarian infighting. Beyond the Salafis, salafisation is also observable amongst Yihewani and Gedimu (“old” traditional) Muslims who, in many cases, while not describing themselves necessarily as Salafis (due to fears of ostracization or out of a fidelity towards the Hanafi madhab), embraced aspects of this intellectual tradition. In the Yihewani case, it is marked by a revived interest in the Wahhabi origins of the movement.On another level, Saudi influences have, counterintuitively, encouraged a fragmentation of the Salafi community within China. This has been driven of two factors: First, the introduction of new sources of funding and ideas brought by Saudi organizations, preachers, and affiliated graduates led to the proliferation of new “mosque communities” or jama’at amongst Salafis, a development that was principally shaped by the leadership struggles that assumed an intergenerational character. Second, Salafis – like other sects – were not exposed to homogenous discourses on Islam or Salafism, mainly because of existing cultural and linguistic barriers, and the multiplicity of doctrines and agendas pursued by various organizations and preachers, which have induced a splintering effect along doctrinal and ritualistic lines within the Salafi community, even if less pronounced than elsewhere in the Islamic World. Indeed, the most significant outcome of these two simultaneous developments is that it has helped give way to the formation of what can be called a “Salafism with Chinese characteristics.” Its proponents – mainly from the 1990s generation, are charting new discourses about Salafism that deviate from that which exists in the Saudi mainstream. Most notably, there is a strong rejection of sectarianism (although there is a troubling growth in anti-Shia sentiment) and an emphasis on ecumenical approaches – a shift that stems principally from what many view as the takfeeri legacy of the 1980s that led to unnecessary confrontations with the wider Muslim community. Indeed, the Salafis today encounter severe challenges in proselytize and even practicing in places like Xining, Qinghai. The post-90s generation is also far more internationalist and, to a large extent, far more cognizant of the realities facing Hui Muslims within the Chinese state (as a minority of a minority contending with the attention of the state security apparatus). While courting Saudi funding and literature, it is selective in what discourses it seeks to reproduce. This explains why some Saudi-oriented Salafis are increasingly discouraging visits by Saudi preachers, who are unable to appreciate the specificities of Chinese Islam there. More importantly, this new generation is more willing to cooperate with the authorities, and is displaying signs of seeking to participate more actively within the political channels that have been traditionally dominated by Sufi and Yihewani groups. In all, the Hui Salafi scene and its connections to Saudi Arabia are complex. The community is fragmenting intellectually and generating new discourses that reflect the tensions that confront new religious authorities and groups seeking to navigate the difficult waters between perceived orthodoxy and the realities of their situation. Hui Salafis want to carve out a space of their own within China. Their concerns are not political per se: Across the spectrum, they appear to have embraced the apolitical quietism one expects to see within the Saudi clerical establishment. Even with regards to the Uighur Salafis – if we speak in terms of an Islamic political project – there is little evidence to suggest a burgeoning solidarity between the two groups. Historical hatreds notwithstanding, the evolution of Uighur Salafism has taken a completely different trajectory than that of the Hui and its political/religious dynamics are therefore different. Rather, for the majority of Hui Salafis, their concerns remain solely those of identity and religious legitimization. Mohammed Al-Sudairi is a graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Qatar

(International Politics). He spent two years in Beijing studying Chinese and undertaking freelance research.

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