China takes the lead in strategic Central
Asia By Adam Wolfe
From the
collapse of the Soviet Union until September 11, 2001,
China was able to use its security concerns within the
Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region to build alliances
with the newly formed states of Central Asia. Russia's
domestic concerns and the United States' focus on
fostering democratic principles in the new states
allowed China to form multilateral organizations
favorable to its concerns and establish economic ties
with its western neighboring states. These conditions
were of great importance to Beijing's strategies for
containing separatist movements within Xinjiang, but
after the September 11 attacks, the US re-engaged
Central Asia and overpowered the multilateral agreements
that China had established.
China's attempts to
adapt to the new environment were initially met with
mixed results. Beijing tried to link the Xinjiang
separatists to the US "war on terrorism", but even after
a Uighur militant group was placed on the official US
list of terrorist organizations, Washington was
generally cool to China's claims. Recently, China has
been moving to re-establish the economic and cooperative
security ties that it previously established with
Russia, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and
Uzbekistan in order to contain the Uighur militants,
reinforce Beijing's claim over the Xinjiang region and
prevent a strategic "encircling" by the United States.
Russia's situation in Chechnya has prevented
Moscow from countering Beijing's efforts, and in the
current environment it is likely that Moscow will
welcome China's attempt to regain regional power from
the US. Should China be successful in this strategy, it
would have profound effects not only on the status of
the Xinjiang region, but also on the geopolitical
environment of Central Asia.
History of
the Xinjiang region Between the 1700s and
mid-1800s, China conquered most of the homeland of the
Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking people who converted to Islam
in the 1300s. China maintained weak control over the
region now known as Xinjiang until the Chinese Civil
War, during which the Republic of East Turkestan was
briefly established. In 1949, Chinese communist troops
established control over the region, and Han Chinese
were resettled throughout Xinjiang to dilute the Uighur
population and secure the region's cooperation with
Beijing. Since 1949, the Han population in Xinjiang has
increased from 7% to more than 40%.
Uighur
groups who were opposed to China's control were
fragmented and lacked a charismatic leader to increase
the appeal for their cause in Western countries, while
the Han Chinese largely settled in the northeastern area
of Xinjiang, away from the heartland of the Uighur
population. The situation was largely unchanged, if not
stable, until the 1990s.
In late 1990, 22 people
were killed in a small uprising in Baren, a town near
Kashgar, led by Abdul Kasim, a leader of the Free
Turkestan Movement. Beijing claimed that the weapons
were supplied by Afghan mujahideen, and its reaction was
swift and harsh.
After the Soviet Union
collapsed in 1991, the Central Asian republics formed
independent states; the Uighur separatists within
Xinjiang drew inspiration from their neighbors'
independence. Militant Uighur groups exploited the weak,
central governments of the newly formed states and
Xinjiang's porous border with Kazakhstan, Tajikistan,
Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan to establish training camps
outside of China's reach.
China's move toward
regional dominance By 1996, Russia was
prosecuting its second war with Chechnya, Tajikistan was
still suffering from its civil war and the Uzbek
government of Islam Karimov was dealing with Islamic
fundamentalists seeking to establish an Islamic
government in Uzbekistan. China feared that this
instability would spread to Xinjiang, and Beijing
launched a series of new crackdowns and a controversial
"strike hard" campaign to reestablish order; 1,700
suspected "terrorists" were arrested.
In April
1996, China sought to engage its western neighbors by
creating the "Shanghai Five" - comprising China, Russia,
Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan - to serve as a
bulwark against Islamic fundamentalist subversion. Soon
the signatory states began cooperating in an effort to
end the "three evil forces" - terrorism, separatism and
extremism.
China's new aggression was answered
with a backlash from the Uighur separatists: in May
1996, a high-ranking official to the Xinjiang People's
Political Consultative Conference was assassinated and a
number of bombings on China's railroad lines were linked
to Uighur groups. When Afghanistan fell to the Taliban
in September 1996, some Uighur groups fought on the side
of the Taliban. China charged the Taliban and al-Qaeda
with funding, arming and training Uighurs within
Afghanistan. This was followed by more attacks within
Xinjiang against Chinese interests. By late 1998, China
feared that violence in Xinjiang was spiraling out of
control, and Beijing moved to increase its regional
influence in Central Asia.
China's move toward
greater regional authority was met with little
resistance from the US at the time and with tacit
cooperation from Russia. In the summer of 2000, US
secretary of state Madeleine Albright visited Central
Asia, and offered a mere US$16 million in assistance to
the Central Asian states to promote the establishment of
democracy and pluralistic societies. Tajikistan,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan viewed this as a
sign of US disinterest because their priorities were
focused on funding for security issues. China's anxiety
over the Xinjiang region was more in line with the
interests of the Central Asian states, and Beijing was
able to use this convergence of concerns to increase its
regional profile.
In June 2001, Uzbekistan was
admitted to the "Shanghai Five", which then evolved into
a permanent group called the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization (SCO). The coalition worked to prevent
Kazakh and Uighur separatists from using Asian states as
a safety zone to plot separatist activities, and it
established an anti-terrorist center in Bishkek,
Kyrgyzstan, where the member states could better
coordinate their efforts. During this time, China's
relationship with Washington was becoming strained as
the two states drifted toward becoming "strategic
competitors".
Tensions were building over the
plans by the new US administration of President George W
Bush for a national missile defense system, US arms
sales to Taiwan, the EP-3 spy-plane collision near
Hainan Island, Chinese missile exports to Pakistan and
frequent complaints about China's record on curtailing
religious freedoms and human rights. Washington and
other Western powers viewed China's claims that Uighur
groups were tied to international terrorist
organizations as propaganda and an excuse to persecute
political dissidents.
The US
unilaterally engages Central Asia After
September 11, 2001, Washington's priorities quickly
changed in Central Asia, as fighting Islamic terrorist
networks tied to al-Qaeda became a top priority. The US
established bilateral agreements with the member states
of the SCO, which greatly undermined the organization's
relevance and China's ties to the countries. The newly
created SCO anti-terrorist center in Bishkek was not
used by the US and the bilateral agreements did not
encourage cooperation among the SCO members. Beijing
began to worry that its "strategic competitor" was
pursuing a long-term strategy to contain or encircle
China's activities on its western border.
In
this new environment, China tried to link its efforts to
suppress the Uighur separatists to Washington's "war on
terrorism" as a way of engaging the Bush administration
with the hopes of maintaining Beijing's prominent role
in Central Asia. On October 12, 2001, a Chinese Foreign
Ministry spokesman said, "We hope that our fight against
the East Turkestan [Xinjiang] forces will become part of
the international effort against terrorism." Washington
dismissed the ties between Uighur separatists and
al-Qaeda in an effort to isolate China's interests from
those of the other SCO members. In October 2001,
President Bush said China should not attempt to use the
"war on terrorism" as an "excuse to persecute
minorities".
However, since the US re-engagement
with Central Asia, Beijing and Washington have
established closer ties, largely for economic reasons,
and the Bush administration gradually allowed its
interests to shift toward those of China in return for
cooperation on intelligence and anti-terror initiatives.
Some analysts believe that Beijing is cooperating in
order to gain US concessions on its claims of
sovereignty over Taiwan, Tibet and the Xinjiang region.
One example that the US was willing to go along with
Beijing's concerns was the August 26, 2002, announcement
that the East Turkestan Islamic Movement would be added
to the US list of terrorist groups.
As
Washington pulls back, will Beijing move in? This
new relationship with China has increased the importance
for Washington to distinguish between violent militant
groups and peaceful independence movements. It is in
Washington's interests to root out those groups that
have a history of cooperation with terrorist
organizations outside of China's borders, but it is also
important that peaceful independence movements are given
tacit backing from Washington. This maintains pressure
on China for concessions on human-rights issues
important to Washington, as well as weakening China's
control of its periphery regions - an important
strategic move should a conflict occur between the US
and China in the long term.
Beijing has received
Washington's cooperation in dismantling groups such as
the United Revolutionary Front of Eastern Turkestan,
which took up arms against China in 1997; the Wolves of
Lop Nor, which has claimed responsibility for train
bombings and assassinations in China and received
training in Kazakhstan; and the Uighur Liberation
Organization - that group's dispersion throughout
Central Asia has allowed it to assassinate Uighurs
viewed to be cooperating with the government of China.
However, other groups, such as the East Turkestan
National Congress and the Regional Uighur Organization,
have received tacit and financial support from
Washington. The Uighur American Association was the
recipient of a grant from the US government-funded
National Endowment for Democracy, a first for a Uighur
exile group.
Conclusion Since 2003,
China has been working to re-establish the importance of
the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and has expanded
economic ties with the Central Asian states, while the
US has shifted resources out of Central Asia and into
Iraq. Last October, China and Pakistan held joint naval
exercises off the coast of Shanghai, China's first naval
exercise with any foreign country. Kazakhstan and China
began negotiating trade agreements to supply natural gas
to China via a pipeline through Xinjiang. China has also
increased its funding for the anti-terrorist center in
Bishkek in an effort to decrease the importance of
bilateral agreements with the United States in shaping
the member states' foreign policies. Last month, China
and Pakistan held joint military exercises code-named
Youyi-2004. The operations focused on counter-terrorism
and were held in the southern section of Xinjiang near
Kashgar, the region with the highest population of
Uighurs in Xinjiang.
While China moves to assert
its power in Central Asia by growing closer to its
neighboring states, the US has largely focused its
relationship with China on issues in the Taiwan Strait
and the Korean Peninsula. Russia's concerns in Chechnya
will drive its approach to the region, but with limited
recourse and domestic concerns taking a priority in
President Vladimir Putin's response, Moscow is likely to
be content with the existing structure of the SCO, and
allow China to consolidate its influence in the region.
This environment provides China with an opportunity that
it will not miss to prevent the US encirclement of its
western border. Washington will be reassessing the
deployment of its diplomatic and military resources in
Central Asia after the elections in Afghanistan; the
size of the withdrawal of resources will signal how
serious Washington is in controlling events in Central
Asia and how concerned it is with the situation in
Xinjiang.
Adam Wolfe is a
communications analyst and international affairs
expert.. His work has been published by organizations
including the Center for Security Studies at the Swiss
Federal Institute of Technology. Published with
permission of thePower and Interest News Report,
an analysis-based publication that seeks to provide
insight into various conflicts, regions and points of
interest around the globe. All comments should be
directed tocontent@pinr.com.
