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27/07/2008 | China - ETIM and the Olympic Games

Stratfor Staff

As a large-scale secessionist movement in the making, the Uighur threat is overplayed by the Chinese, who view the various Uighur groups as more unified than they really are. Still, as China works with Central and South Asian governments to clamp down on Uighur militants outside of Xinjiang, a more significant threat might be emerging from the international jihadist movement, which could soon be targeting China.

 

In looking at the history of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), a few themes emerge. First, the overall Uighur movement is highly fractured. There are multiple competing interests seeking to take on a leadership role, pitting secularist/nationalists against Islamists, militants against political campaigners, the domestic Uighurs against the overseas Uighur communities and those advocating independence against those seeking genuine autonomy. Further weakening the overall movement is a broad apathy among the Uighurs in Xinjiang and a mixed view of the struggle abroad. Is it one pitting ethnic Uighurs against Beijing or one involving a broader Turkistan population, encompassing much of Central Asia as well as western China? And is it an ethno-national movement or a religious one?

Second, even within the Uighur militant Islamist movements there are rifts, and the small number of participants makes the movements susceptible to massive dislocation and fragmentation when a major Chinese raid occurs, a leader is killed or a sanctuary is lost. There is, in short, little redundancy in the Islamist militant segment of the Uighur independence movements. New recruits are becoming harder to attract as China’s security deals with Central and South Asian states and the dislocation caused by the war in Afghanistan diminish the flow of Uighurs heading to Central and South Asia for religious training.

What this means is that, while there is an Islamist militant component of the Uighur movement, the movement itself is small, fractured, poorly supported by the domestic and overseas Uighur community and increasingly encompassed by the broader international jihadist movement. This dilutes its forces and focus even further, so long as China remains on the sidelines of internationalist jihadist agenda (something that may be changing). Most Uighur-linked attacks, assassinations and operations in recent years have actually taken place outside China, primarily in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.

This is a mixed blessing for Beijing. On the one hand, there is little chance of a large-scale organized Uighur secessionist movement gaining traction anytime soon. And the larger and more international of the Uighur movements are unlikely to support an attack against the Olympics, which would further undermine attempts to gain sympathy for their cause abroad. Foreign governments are reluctant to support an ethnic movement that has Islamic undertones and are unlikely to push China too hard, given the economic linkages. The greater Islamic community rarely mentions Xinjiang or the Uighurs, focusing instead on Iraq or Palestine. And the broader jihadist movement has had other priorities — namely Afghanistan and Iraq — though there are signs that the movement is once again exporting militants back to their home countries to expand the struggle.

However, this does not eliminate the chance of attacks in China. The merging of the Uighur movement into the South and Central Asia-based jihadist movement may bring a blending of tactics and target sets. Certain segments of the international jihadist movement are calling for attacks against the Olympics, and Beijing has warned that Uighur militants might be plotting to follow through on such attacks. Transportation infrastructure has long been a preferred target for both al Qaeda and Uighur militants. If the latter has the desire and capability to stage an attack at the Olympics, it will likely be against the transportation system rather than athletic dorms or heavily-monitored hotels. To avoid the heightened security in Beijing, militants might attack in Shanghai or other coastal cities.

The May 5 fire on a bus in Shanghai and the April 28 train crash between Beijing and Qingdao, the two main Olympic cities, raised instant suspicions of foul play, perhaps linked to Uighur militants. The cause of the train derailment shows no sign of being anything other than neglect, and information on the bus fire remains sketchy; however, the concern remains.

Beijing has already ramped up its transportation security, increasing patrols, tightening restrictions and baggage checks and limiting visa availabilities. But in a country with 1.3 billion people, many of whom rely on public transportation — and Olympic Games that will see hundreds of thousands of tourists relying on the same public transportation infrastructure — even the most vigilant security will be unable to both facilitate transportation and maintain complete security. While the threat may be small and some of Beijing’s warnings politically motivated, suspected foreign jihadist elements have already been monitored in Beijing and Shanghai at the same time that Beijing was trying to crush suspected terrorist camps in Xinjiang.

This linking of the Uighur militancy with the international jihadist movement in Pakistan and Afghanistan may mark a turning point for China. For decades, Beijing has been seen internationally as something far different from the “imperialist” powers of the United States and Europe, and China’s avoidance of “moralizing” in its foreign relations has left the government largely unmolested by militants and jihadists abroad. But China’s rising international stature is starting to cause many of the same problems other big powers have. Particularly in South and Central Asia and in parts of Africa, there is growing resentment of China’s economic dominance and support of indigenous governments, some of which jihadists have already targeted (such as Pakistan’s). China is being painted as yet another facilitator of these regimes and thus little different from the United States in terms of being a desirable target.

China’s warning of Uighur terrorist plots to attack the Olympics might have been based more on politics than accurate intelligence, but a more genuine threat could be evolving — and not necessarily from Uighur Islamist militant groups such as ETIM or the East Turkistan Liberation Organization. While China has been crying wolf, there might be a lion crouching in the grass waiting to pounce

Stratfor (Estados Unidos)

 


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