Xinjiang jihad

[khad]

I read this in a book today. I am not one to condone fundamentalist violence, but it is rather fitting that social imperialist China will suffer at the hands of the animal it unleashed into the world.


By 1980, Washington had begun to supply China with a variety of weapons, and an agreement was reached on the establishment of two joint tracking and listening stations in Xinjiang. Xinjiang had become a base for Chinese operations against the Soviets in Afghanistan as soon as they arrived. PLA personnel provided training, arms, organization, financial support, and military advisers to the Mujahidin resistance throughout the entire Soviet military presence in Afghanistan--with the active assistance and cooperation of the CIA. Until the mid-1980s, most of China's training centers for the Afghan rebels were located in Peshawar and along the Pakistani border. Since then, China trained several thousand Mujahidin in camps near Kashgar and Khotan inside Xinjiang and provided them with machine guns, rocket launchers, and surface-to-air missles valued at an estimated $200 million to $400 million.

Reportedly, Uyghur militants had been trained by, and fought with, the Afghan Mujahidin since 1986, and Chinese officials say that the arms and explosives used against the Chinese in Xinjiang originated in Afghanistan. Funds for the Muslim resistance to Chinese Rule in Xinjiang came from smuggled Afghan heroin. Although Taliban officials assured China that they did not harbor Uyghur fugitives, there is solid evidence about Uyghurs who were recruited by the Taliban while studying at the Darl ul-Ulum Sharia in Kabul and at Kabul University and who joined the fighting in the north. Contrary to the Taliban claims that it lacked outside support, 100 (some say 600) Uyghurs were reportedly helping Taliban Islamic guerrillas in Afghanistan. Tahir Yuldashev, the leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, who had fled in early 1999 to Afghanistan, is said to have been training several hundred Muslim militants from Central Asia, including an unknown number of Uyghurs from Xinjiang.http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/10/08/china.uyghur.threat/index.html


Al Qaeda tells China's Uyghurs to prepare for holy war

* Story Highlights
* Uyghurs are Muslims in western China's Xinjiang province
* Abu Yahia Al-Libi's comments a reaction to recent violence in Xinjiang's capital
* Tension between Uyghurs and majority Han Chinese erupted into riots in July
* Al-Libi considered one of al Qaeda's top strategists and most vocal leaders

October 9, 2009 -- Updated 0617 GMT (1417 HKT)

From Saad Abedine

(CNN) -- A high-ranking al Qaeda leader has called on China's minority Uyghurs to prepare for a holy war against the Chinese government.

There is no way for salvation and to lift this oppression and tyranny unless you ... seriously prepare for jihad in the name of God and carry your weapons against the ruthless brutal invader thugs," Abu Yahia Al-Libi said Wednesday in a video on an Islamist Web site. He delivered his message in Arabic.

The Uyghurs are Muslims in western China's Xinjiang province. Some Islamists refer to the region as East Turkistan.

Al-Libi's proclamation was in reaction to the violence that has recently shaken Urumqi, Xinjiang's capital. There, long-simmering resentment between minority Uyghurs and majority Han Chinese erupted into riots and left more than 200 people dead in July.

The following month, a series of stabbings -- with syringes used as weapons -- added to the unrest.

"What we saw and heard in the recent events in Turkistan was not accidental and didn't happen overnight. This is an intifada (an uprising) and a usual response to the decades of oppression, the organized cleansing and the systematic repression until the people had enough," Al-Libi said.

"This was not the first uprising that the oppressed Muslim people carried out, because they keep grieving and struggling to preserve their identity against the aggressors."

Chinese officials could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday.
Al-Libi regularly produces video messages and has, in the past, called on Pakistanis and Somalis to resist their "apostate" governments. He is considered one of al Qaeda's top strategists and one of its most vocal leaders in its propaganda campaign

In his latest message, 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.

"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."

In July, a leader of an al Qaeda-linked group also denounced Chinese treatment of Uyghurs and threatened revenge.

The leader of the Turkistan Islamic Party, in a video on Islamic Web sites, blamed the Chinese for "genocide."
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The speaker urged Uyghurs to "kill the Chinese communists where you find them, take them and besiege them and ambush them wherever you can."

The U.S. State Department said the group has taken credit for violence in the past.

[Kukulofori]

I love how anti-colonial uprisings are called "jihads" when muslims do them. Real classy.

They have my full support.

[Crux]

Well, the War On Terror, which China is obviously a part of, has an uncanny ability to foster islamist opposition. Accuse some people of being islamist long enough and, if there's no alternative, eventually they will look in that direction.
All too convenient for china really, as if whipping up han-chinese nationalism wasn't easy enough already.

[khad]

I have a feeling that no one is even bothering to read what I posted. I'll sum it up briefly.

The Chinese Army trained Uyghurs and other militants in Xinjiang and Pakistan for the Afghan mujahideen, and the resources that this plan provided enabled the further training and equipping of Uyghur militants by the Taliban to this day.

[Crux]

I have a feeling that no one is even bothering to read what I posted. I'll sum it up briefly.

The Chinese Army trained Uyghurs and other militants in Xinjiang and Pakistan for the Afghan mujahideen, and the resources that this plan provided enabled the further training and equipping of Uyghur militants by the Taliban to this day.
Yes, like for the US, Israel or Pakistan, chinas training of islamists comes back to bite them in the ass. What else is new?

[Revy]

I love how anti-colonial uprisings are called "jihads" when muslims do them. Real classy.

They have my full support.

What I read about were people being attacked and murdered on the streets for being Han.

[khad]

Yes, like for the US, Israel or Pakistan, chinas training of islamists comes back to bite them in the ass. What else is new?
Well, according to some people, China is not a neoliberal imperialist power. I guess this, among other things, blows that contention out of the water.

[BobKKKindle$]

What I read about were people being attacked and murdered on the streets for being Han.

Another ethnic group that was targeted during the riots were the Hui Chinese, who, ironically, are Muslims, and live in Xinjiang, Tibet, and in all of China's other provinces, including her coastal cities - so in this context it doesn't make much sense to say that the uprising was about Muslims fighting against the Chinese state, and it's certainly wrong to characterize the riots as being an "anti-colonial uprising" that deserves the support of socialists, given that most of the people who died were ordinary workers, with no connection to the Chinese state. What happened in Xinjiang was very similar to what happened in Tibet several years ago in that both regions have been the destination for large numbers of migrants from China's eastern provinces in recent years and in both cases the riots represented a misguided response to a combination of national and class oppression, as there were reports from a number of sources showing that people were, as Stancel points out, targeted solely on the basis of their ethnicity, to the extent that shops and houses that were known to be owned by Han families were set on fire, sometimes with the inhabitants still inside. China needs a revolutionary party that can unite workers of all ethnic groups on the basis of a common opposition to the Chinese bourgeoisie but I don't think that supporting race riots and pogroms is the best way to go about doing this.


I love how anti-colonial uprisings are called "jihads" when muslims do them

A quick use of the search function shows that the only use of "jihad" in this thread apart from the title is a quote from a leader of Al-Qaeda.

[RedStarOverChina]

There are certainly groups of Islamic jihadis among Uyghur separatists, but their roles should not be overplayed. Most of the separatists are semi-secular nationalists.

But yeah, China did shoot itself in the foot by supporting anti-Soviet insurgency in Afghanistan, and the backlash was almost immediate. Terrorist attacks started springing up in the 90s, and contributed to the racial tension there is today. But to this day Islamic Jihadism remains unpopular.

[RedStarOverChina]

Here's a interesting development though, two days ago the Taliban send an open letter asking Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)----dominated by China and Russia----to liberate Afghanistan from Nato occupation.

They seem pretty confused and much less coherent than the Al Qaeda right now. What the heck are they thinking? Are they all about realpolitik now or what?

[Crux]

Here's a interesting development though, two days ago the Taliban send an open letter asking Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)----dominated by China and Russia----to liberate Afghanistan from Nato occupation.

They seem pretty confused and much less coherent than the Al Qaeda right now. What the heck are they thinking? Are they all about realpolitik now or what?
When were they not? It is not as if they wanted a war with the US either.

[khad]

Here's a interesting development though, two days ago the Taliban send an open letter asking Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)----dominated by China and Russia----to liberate Afghanistan from Nato occupation.

They seem pretty confused and much less coherent than the Al Qaeda right now. What the heck are they thinking? Are they all about realpolitik now or what?
They must not have gotten the memo. This spring, at the behest of American concerns that central Asian states will attempt to kick out American troops, China declared 2 things:

1) The SCO meeting will only discuss trade, not politics
2) Afghanistan lacks "nearly all the prerequisites of modernity" and needs occupation

China to central Asia: Go fuck yourself; we're with Amerikkka.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/KB25Ad03.html

[RedStarOverChina]

They must not have gotten the memo. This spring, at the behest of American concerns that central Asian states will attempt to kick out American troops, China declared 2 things:

1) The SCO meeting will only discuss trade, not politics
2) Afghanistan lacks "nearly all the prerequisites of modernity" and needs occupation

China to central Asia: Go fuck yourself; we're with Amerikkka.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/KB25Ad03.html
China's foreign policy has more or less always been realist, especially after Deng came to power.

China and the US formed an "alliance" as early as late 1970s during China's invasion of Vietnam. Deng realized he needed cooperation from the US in order to develop Chinese capitalism---And he was right, sadly.

The "alliance" is by no means stable, as we all know. The Chinese ruling class has no intention of subjecting itself permanently under the loving embrace of Uncle Sam---China is different from Egypt, Colombia, Canada or other US vassal states in that ideologically, the Chinese ruling class are independent and they "have their own little abacus (calculations)". China's merely "hiding one's strength", "biding one's time" like any smart Chinese emperor would in the position of relative weakness.

It's policy towards Central Asia is perfectly in line with Deng's guidelines, and that of several Han and Tang emperors.

[Revy]

Check this out. (http://www.china.org.cn/english/2005/Mar/122605.htm)


Xinjiang has the largest oil, coal and natural gas reserves in the country , accounting for 30 percent, 40 percent and 35 percent, respectively, of the nation's total.

Makes you think. Maybe the US has an interest in helping to create East Turkestan.

[Jethro Tull]

What I read about were people being attacked and murdered on the streets for being Han.

workers of uyghur ethnicity were participating in a peaceful mass-demonstration demanding improved workplace conditions at a factory. the police, backed up by civilian mobs of han and hui bigot vigilantes, provoked the uyghur workers, the uyghur worers fought back. end of story.

if black factory-workers were demonstrating in the u.s. for improved workplace conditions, and an all-white police force attaced the demonstration with the help of white right-wing patriot militia goons, and some of the patriot militia goons got assaulted, would that make the black factory workers "racist"? i mean, i'm sure you could find one or two of those black workers who were n.o.i. fanatics who believed all white people are devils.

[BobKKKindle$]

workers of uyghur ethnicity were participating in a peaceful mass-demonstrationI'm the last person to defend the Chinese state but this really is a gross distortion of events. First of all, whilst poor working conditions might have been an underlying cause behind the riots, what actually led to the biggest demonstration, which involved people drawn from the whole of the Uighur community as far as I can tell, was the murder of two Uighur workers at a factory in Guangdong Province, which is one of China's southern provinces, by a group of Han workers, because there was a rumour that those workers had been involved in the rape of a Han woman. It's also important that Guangdong has been one of the provinces that's been most badly hit by the global downturn because most of the enterprises and factories that are located in that province are connected with export, particularly of consumer products like electronics, and are liable to suffer whenever demand for goods that are produced in China falls, so you can argue that competition between workers may also have played a role in the original murder. This isn't important in itself but the fact that you attribute the demonstrations to conditions at some factory in Xinjiang when they were actually caused by something different gives me reason to believe that you don't have a good grasp of what happened. Secondly I've yet to see any evidence that there were as you put it "Han and Hui bigot vigilantes" involved in the response to the original protest, and the fact that most of the people who died as a result of what followed (197 in total, according to the Chinese government, as well as 1,600 injuries) were ethnically Han indicates that Han and Hui workers did not go out of their way to respond to the protest in a violent manner with the support of the police, as if they had done this then you would expect the Uighur protesters to have suffered more deaths.

The best way to describe what happened in Xinjiang is a misguided response to a combination of class and national oppression that will give the Chinese government an excuse to station more troops in Xinjiang (it is apparently still impossible to wander around the main cities without seeing police and troops on every street even though it has been several months since the end of the demonstrations) and will encourage Han and Hui workers to look to the Chinese state for protection despite the brutal treatment workers have received throughout China in recent years whenever they have sought to defend their interests. In this sense they are similar to the strikes at Lindsey that took place in Britain earlier this year because in both cases there was a lack of revolutionary leadership capable of channeling the anger of workers away from each other and towards the ruling class. Thirdly, your implication that the history of Xinjiang is comparable to the history of black people in America lacks any historical basis, as, whilst the Uighur people certainly suffer discrimination, especially the stereotype that they cannot speak Mandarin, at no point in the history of Chinese civilization have people from what is now known as Xinjiang been forcibly transported from their homes thousands of miles away and made to work as slaves for many generations as the most oppressed and exploited layer of a racist society, before being granted a limited form of emancipation. To say that the history of black people is comparable to the history of Uighur people suffers from the same flaw as comparing the situation in Tibet to the situation in Palestine, and comparing the experience of the Palestinian people to the Holocaust - in all cases a comparison is being made between two injustices of completely different magnitude with the result being that the greater injustice is made to seem less serious than it is.

[Jethro Tull]

the fact that most of the people who died as a result of what followed (197 in total, according to the Chinese government, as well as 1,600 injuries) were ethnically Han indicates that Han and Hui workers did not go out of their way to respond to the protest in a violent manner with the support of the police, as if they had done this then you would expect the Uighur protesters to have suffered more deaths.

conjecture. i also don't depend on the chinese government to give an accurate report of how many uyghurs were injured.


will give the Chinese government an excuse to station more troops in Xinjiangthe analysis that certain acts of resistance by the masses give the capitalists "an excuse" to engage in oppression is useless.


Thirdly, your implication that the history of Xinjiang is comparable to the history of black people in America lacks any historical basis, as, whilst the Ughuyr people certainly suffer discrimination, especially the stereotype that they cannot speak Mandarin, at no point in the history of Chinese civilization have people from what is now known as Xinjiang been forcibly transported from their homes thousands of miles away and made to work as slaves for many generations as the most oppressed and exploited layer of a racist society, before being granted a limited form of emancipation.the two situations are not comparable because they're not strictly identical...that's rational.


To say that the history of black people is comparable to the history of Uighur people suffers from the same flaw as comparing the situation in Tibet to the situation in Palestine and comparing the experience of the Palestinian people to the Holocaustall of those cases do have many similarities although obviously the details differ


in all cases a comparison is being made between two injustices of completely differnt magnitude[ with the result being that the greater injustice is made to seem less serious than it is.i don't believe in ranking the "injustice" of instances of mass-slaughter as "greater" or "lesser". there's no better or worse genocide, as ward chuchill says. it's a purely academic game, with no partuclar use other than alienating and creating hurt feelings for those who were actually involved.

also, the p.r.c isn't a racist society?

[BobKKKindle$]

conjecture. i also don't depend on the chinese government to give an accurate report of how many uyghurs were injured.If you have a source to show that many more Uighur people did die and that what actually happened was a pogrom directed against Uighur people, jointly carried out by the police, and armed gangs of Han and Hui workers, then please, provide the evidence, because at the moment I'm just going on the evidence that I've been given, most of which comes from the website China Worker (http://chinaworker.info/en/content/news/841/?ls-art0=15), widely regarded as a good website when it comes to find out about what's really happening inside China at the moment. All of the evidence that I've seen so far shows that there was brutality on both sides and if anything it seems that the main outcome of what happened has been an increase in ethnic tension across the country, as you can see from the number of news stories and blog posts relating to the alleged threat of Uighur terrorists armed with syringes, intent on infecting people with diseases during the national day celebrations, and in busy city centers. You may be interested to know that the viewpoint of China Worker is basically the same as my own in that they see the violence as evidence of the danger of the entire country moving into ethnic turmoil unless socialists are able to show workers that they have an interest in putting aside their ethnic and religious differences (which in the case of Han workers means acknowledging the reality of discrimination against minorities and doing everything they can to combat that oppression) and uniting against the bosses - something that will not come about if socialists pretend that inter-ethnic conflict is some kind of anti-capitalist uprising.


the analysis that certain acts of resistance by the masses give the capitalists "an excuse" to engage in oppression is useless. The problem is that Han workers generally seem happy that the government has moved troops in, in response to the violence. In fact there was a lot of pressure from the Han community calling for the sacking of the Wang Lequan, the Regional Secretary of the CPC of Xinjiang UAR and a leading member of the Politburo, because of the widespread perception that he had not done enough to deal with the violence whilst it was taking place and then also did not do enough to deal with the people that were involved once things had cooled down, in terms of handing out sentences and tracking down the offenders - and so I don't think the protests were progressive as far as alerting the Han community to racism is concerned and it doesn't seem like there's going to be increased unity between workers of different ethnic groups either. It's also significant that a large section of the Uighur community to the countryside or to Uighur-majority towns further south alongside Han workers who fled to other parts of China so even if you could somehow characterize this as an anti-capitalist uprising (despite ethnic conflict between workers) or a legitimate resposne to racism it doesn't seem as if it has given Uighur workers the confidence to respond to oppression in the future.


the two situations are not comparable because they're not strictly identical...that's rational.If you think that any situation of ethnic or religious oppression can be comapred with the experience of black people in America then that surely robs the comparison of any meaning or utility, as comparison is only useful insofar as the things you are comparing are similar on more than a basic level, i.e. beyond the fact that both involve some form of racism.


all of those cases do have many similarities although obviously the details differAgain, if you think that you can draw a paralel between two things just because there's a similarity on a very basic level then I don't see the point of making comparisons at all.


here's no better or worse genocide, as ward chuchill says.Do you think there has ever been a genocide, i.e. a conscious and directed campaign intended to exterminate the entirety of a specific ethnic or religious group, in Xinjiang?


also, the p.r.c isn't a racist society? Of course, as all capitalist societies are?

[khad]

Well, bob, it's Jethro. He's got a merit badge for pointing out discrimination, you know.

He even called me an anti-semite for calling Sasha Baron Cohen a Zionist (which he is) for terrorism slander against that Palestinian activist. :laugh:

Maybe he needs to learn to lay off the sugar and caffeine he gets at school.