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Explosive situation in
Xinjiang
By B Raman
The
China Daily reported on January 22 that 13 persons
were killed and 18 others injured in two separate
explosions in China's Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous
Region, coinciding with the Eid-al-Adha religious
festival.
In the first incident, nine
passengers were killed instantaneously and two
others later died after an explosion on January 20
in a minibus carrying 18 people at the Dushanzi
overpass in Kuitun, in the Yili Kazakh Autonomous
Prefecture. The place where the explosion took
place is about 200 kilometers from the Kazakhstan
border. Most of the victims were reportedly ethnic
minorities (Uighurs?) and not Han Chinese.
Liu Yaohua, head of the Public Security
Department of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region, was
quoted as saying that 19 people were on the bus. A
man and a woman got off during the trip, while a
man in his 40s, carrying a black canvas bag, got
on when the bus approached the overpass. The blast
took place at the right rear of the bus.
The official Xinhua news agency reported
that "explosive material" was responsible for the
blast. It quoted Liu Yaohua as saying it was
difficult to determine what explosive material was
used, and how it was detonated. He added, however,
that it was a "man-made" explosion, without saying
whether it was caused by an improvised explosive
device assembled with a criminal intent.
While blasts caused by the careless
handling of industrial explosives and other
hazardous materials are not unusual in China,
because of poor enforcement of laws relating to
the purchase, possession, storage and transport of
industrial explosives, the French news agency
Agence France-Presse (AFP) quoted unnamed Chinese
officials as saying they could not rule out the
possibility that the blast is linked to the
separatist movement of the Muslim Uighurs, the
non-Han natives of the province, some of whom have
been fighting for an independent state for the
Uighurs of Xinjiang and the adjoining Central
Asian Republics, to be called East Turkestan.
While Chinese officials generally do not
cover up news of such explosions, they rarely
release to the media the results of their own
inquiries into the incidents. As a result, it is
often difficult for the outside world to know
definitively what and who caused such explosions.
Another explosion was reported the same
evening from the downtown area in Urumqi, the
capital of Xinjiang, killing two and injuring 11.
Huang Gongyi, an official with the Urumqi
government, claimed that this incident was caused
by natural-gas leakage. The explosion reportedly
took place at a pressure-adjusting station of a
local gas-pipeline firm. The local authorities are
projecting this incident as purely accidental.
Sixty persons were killed and 200 others
injured and more than 20 motor vehicles
were severely damaged on September 8, 2000, after
an explosion in a military vehicle traveling on
the Xishan Road in the western suburbs of Urumqi.
The Chinese authorities did not attribute the
explosion to any criminal intent and said it was
purely an accidental blast due to the careless
transport of old military explosives, which were
being taken away to be destroyed.
Though
there was no evidence to throw doubt on the
Chinese claim that it was purely an accidental
explosion, certain unusual circumstances
surrounding it led to considerable speculation.
The explosion occurred when the vehicle was caught
in a traffic jam. It was not involved in any
collision with another vehicle. On the day of the
explosion, Chinese premier Zhu Rongji was touring
the region. While it was not clear whether he was
in Urumqi at the time of the explosion, he visited
the injured in an Urumqi hospital the next day.
Robert Rubin, former US treasury secretary and a
senior official of Citigroup, was on a visit to
Urumqi at the time of the explosion. He called on
Zhu the next day and some American journalists
reported that during the meeting Zhu made no
reference to the blast.
Erkin Ekrem, the
leader of a pro-separatist group, was quoted by
AFP as saying, "This accident is very strange." He
wondered what such a large quantity of explosives
was doing in Urumqi. The local authorities
immediately set up a special task force to
investigate the cause of the explosion. The
central government sent a team of investigators
led by the vice minister of public security, Tian
Qiyu, to Xinjiang. No separatist group claimed
responsibility for the explosion. After an
explosion in a bus in Beijing in 1997 that
resulted in some casualties, a Uighur separatist
group had claimed responsibility for it, but the
Chinese authorities dismissed the claim and
projected it as an accident.
In a report
carried on November 30, 2000, the South China
Morning Post alleged that Yang Xiaofeng, the head
of the Lanzhou Daily news center, was demoted, and
two journalists of the Lanzhou Evening News were
dismissed by the authorities for violating "news
discipline" by reporting independently on the
explosion instead of carrying the version put out
by Xinhua as they were expected to. Though their
reports too did not mention any possible criminal
intent, the sensitivity of the Chinese authorities
to any independent investigative reporting of the
explosion raised eyebrows.
Government
investigators were subsequently quoted as saying
that the military vehicle had violated regulations
by carrying what were described as mixed
explosives and that the bumpy road caused the
explosion. This was at variance with witness
accounts that the explosion occurred when the
vehicle was stationary because of a traffic jam.
Two senior military officers were reportedly
dismissed and about 10 others punished for alleged
negligence.
According to the South China
Morning Post, the Lanzhou Daily and the Lanzhou
Evening News had sent reporters to the site and
covered the explosion with photos and first-hand
reports even before Xinhua had released the
officially authorized account. Their reports were
picked up by many online news sites and sections
of the international media.
After the
September 11, 2001, terrorist strikes in the
United States, the authorities of Xinjiang mounted
a publicity campaign to project the Uighur
terrorist groups as forming part of the
international jihadi terrorist movement inspired
by Osama bin Laden and as having links with
al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. For the
first time, they admitted a number of terrorist
incidents, which had taken place in the region
during the 1990s and many that they had not
publicly admitted before.
A press
statement titled "Terrorist Activities Perpetrated
by Eastern Turkestan Organizations and Their Links
with Osama bin Laden and the Taliban" issued by
the regional authorities on November 29, 2001,
gave the following details of their activities:
I. Terrorist activities by "Eastern
Turkestan" elements in and outside the Chinese
territory: The "Eastern Turkestan" force has a
total of over 40 organizations. They have
engaged themselves in terrorist violence to
varying degrees, both overtly and covertly.
Among these organizations, eight openly advocate
violence in their political platforms. They are:
"Eastern Turkestan Islamic Resistance Movement"
in Turkey; "Eastern Turkestan Liberation
Organization", "Eastern Turkestan International
Committee", "United Committee of Uighurs'
Organizations" in Central Asia, and "Central
Asian Uygur Hezbollah" in Kazakhstan; "Turkestan
Party" in Pakistan; "Eastern Turkestan Islamic
Movement" in Afghanistan; and "Eastern Turkestan
Youth League" in Switzerland.
II.
Incidents of terrorist violence perpetrated by
"Eastern Turkestan" elements over the past 10
years in the Chinese territory mainly include:
On April 5, 1990, they killed and injured
more than 100 civilians and soldiers in Brain
Township of Kizilsu Kirgiz Autonomous
Prefecture.
On February 5, 1991, the "Islamic Reformist
Party" masterminded a bus explosion in Urumqi,
killing and injuring over 20 people.
Between June and September 1993, the
"Eastern Turkestan Democratic Islamic Party"
carried out a series of bombings in southern
Xinjiang, which led to more deaths and injuries.
On July 15, 1996, the "Eastern Turkestan
Islamic Justice Party" engineered a prison
rebellion in Xayar County, killing 15 people and
a riot in Yining on February 5, 1997, which
resulted in over 300 casualties.
On February 25, 1997, the "Eastern Turkestan
National Solidarity Union" staged a horrendous
bomb explosion incident in Urumqi which involved
nearly 100 casualties, and in early 1998 the
same group was responsible for 25 poisoning
cases in southern Xinjiang, where over 40 people
fell victim and four died.
In January 2001, Akbelbek Timur, an "Eastern
Turkestan" terrorist who is now in custody,
bought explosives in Kazakhstan and smuggled
them into Xinjiang for attempted terrorist
activities.
III. Incidents of terrorist
violence committed by "Eastern Turkestan"
elements in recent years outside China mainly
include:
In February 1997, "Eastern Turkestan"
terrorists opened fire on the Chinese Embassy in
Ankara, attacked the Chinese Consulate General
in Istanbul and burned Chinese national flags.
On March 5, 1998, terrorists of the "Eastern
Turkestan National Center" carried out bomb
attacks on the Chinese Consulate General in
Istanbul.
In November 1999 and August 2000, the
"Eastern Turkestan" elements were involved in an
armed insurgency and invasion led by the "Uzbek
Islamic Movement" into the southern regions of
Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.
In May 2000, terrorists of the "Uygur
Liberation Organization" set fire to the Chinese
Commodities Market in Bishkek and murdered one
person from China's Xinjiang, who was sent to
Kyrgyzstan to investigate the case.
On September 28, 2000, terrorists under the
command of the "Uygur Liberation Organization"
killed two Kazkh policemen in Alma-Ata.
In May 2001, terrorists of the "Uighur Youth
Association of Kazakhstan" robbed in Alma-Ata a
bank vehicle that carried banknotes.
IV.
The relationship between the "Eastern Turkestan"
terrorists and the Taliban and Osama bin Laden
has provided the "Eastern Turkestan" terrorist
organizations with equipment and funds and
trained their personnel. The basic facts are as
follows:
The "Eastern Turkestan Islamic Movement"
(ETIM) is a major component of the terrorist
network headed by bin Laden. Hasan Mahsum, the
ETIM ringleader, used to hide in Kabul and had
an Afghan passport issued by the Taliban. Bin
Laden asked the ETIM to stir up trouble in
Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and then
stage an organized infiltration into Xinjiang.
The "Turkestan Army" under the ETIM fought along
with the Taliban in Afghanistan. This "army" has
a special "China Battalion" with about 320
terrorists from Xinjiang. The battalion is under
the direct command of Hasan Mahsum's deputy
Kabar.
The armed elements of the ETIM received
training in terrorist training camps in Kabul,
Mazar-i-Sharif, Kunduz, Vardak, Kandahar, Herat,
Shibarghan and other places. Some of these camps
were directly under the control of bin Laden and
the Taliban and some were military bases of the
"Uzbek Islamic Movement". The "Central Asian
Uighur Hezbollah" is said to have a 1,000-strong
armed force and had training bases in
Afghanistan. The "Uighur National Army" received
battle training in July and August 1999 in the
Taliban bases in Afghanistan. They practiced
firing with conventional weapons with live
ammunition and learned the Taliban
guerrilla-warfare tactics and terrorist skills
such as assassination, explosion and poisoning.
After their training, the "Eastern Turkestan"
elements fought in Afghanistan, Chechnya and
Uzbekistan, or returned to Xinjiang for
terrorist and violent activities.
In early 1999, bin Laden met with Hasan
Mahsum and offered him financial assistance. In
2000, bin Laden and the Taliban provided the
ETIM with US$300,000 and undertook to cover all
the expenses of the ETIM in 2001. The activities
of the "Central Asian Uighur Hezbollah" are also
partially financed by bin
Laden. The People's Daily of
December 11, 2001, gave the following details of
the activities of the terrorists in Xinjiang:
Explosions. On February 5,
1992, the terrorists set off a chain of
explosions in public buses, video-show halls and
some residential buildings, killing three
persons and injuring 20 others. In 1993, the
terrorists staged 10 explosions [and] committed
four assassinations or attempted assassinations
in Kashi, Kotan and Aksu, killing two persons
and injuring 36 others. February 25, 1997, saw
five explosions on buses in Urumqi, killing nine
persons and injuring 68 others. Between February
22 and March 30, 1998, the terrorists organized
six explosions at Yecheng County. Three persons
were injured and a natural-gas pipeline was
damaged.
Assassinations. The
terrorists killed a religious cleric in the
Xinhe County on March 22, 1996, and on May 12,
1996, they killed the chief mullah of the Idgah
Mosque, who was concurrently vice chairman of
the Political Consultative Conference of
Xinjiang. On April 9 the same year, five
relatives of the former deputy Communist Party
secretary of the Alahake Township were killed.
This was followed by the assassination of
another deputy secretary of the political and
judicial commission, a member of the Party
Committee of the Bosikehe Township of Zepu
County and his son. On January 25, 2000, the
terrorists killed seven members of two Han
families in the Wushi County. The next day, they
killed an elderly Han Chinese couple in Xinhe
County.
Arson. A terrorist plan
to set fire to 15 commercial establishments on
May, 23, 1998, was thwarted.
Poisoning. Between January 30 and
February 18, 1998, terrorists were involved in
23 cases of poisoning or attempted poisoning in
Kashi in Xinjiang.
Rioting and other
incidents. On July 7, 1995, the terrorists
attempted to break into the Prefectural Party
Committee, the government offices and Public
Security Bureau at Kotan and damage the
property. On February 5-6, 1997, seven persons
were killed and over 200 injured in rioting
incited by the terrorists in Yining. More than
20 vehicles were set on fire. On April 5, 1990,
the terrorists incited a riot in Baren Township,
Aktao County, in which eight members of the
local armed police were killed. On May
27, 2002, the Xinjiang regional authorities held a
special press conference to brief the media
inter alia on the activities of Uighur
terrorists from Pakistani territory. They
announced that the Pakistani authorities had
arrested Ismail Kadir, an Uighur terrorist who was
operating from Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK) in
March 2002 and handed him over to the Xinjiang
authorities. They described him as the
third-highest leader of the East Turkestan Islamic
Movement.
The Chinese officials also told
the press conference that they were asking the US
to hand over to them 300 Uighurs who, according to
the Chinese, were caught by the Americans during
their operations against al-Qaeda and the Taliban
in Afghanistan and kept in US detention centers in
Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
Wang Lequan, Xinjiang's Communist Party
secretary, told the press conference that Kadir
was caught by the Pakistani authorities while
meeting underground Muslim groups in POK. He said
he did not know other details about the case and
added: "China finds it hard to understand and a
pity that some people do not believe that our
efforts to fight terrorism are part of the
international campaign."
Aziz Ait, the
deputy director general of the paramilitary
People's Armed Police in Xinjiang, claimed that
the number of terrorist incidents had declined,
but did not give details. He said he could not
give an estimate of how many terrorists were still
active in the region. He added: "It is not safe to
say Xinjiang is completely free of terrorist
attacks, so we have to remain on guard."
The Xinjiang officials claimed that they
had broken up six groups since the beginning of
2002 while they were plotting attacks. They said:
"They were terrorists making guns or weapons and
were caught. They didn't have time to commit
terrorist attacks before they were caught."
Wang said China believed that more than
1,000 Uighurs were trained by al-Qaeda in
Afghanistan. About 110 of them came back to China
and were captured; about 300 were captured by US
forces, about 20 were killed, and about 600 were
thought to have escaped to northern Pakistan. He
said his information came from "intelligence
reports".
Zhang Qiyue, a Foreign Ministry
spokeswoman, said China had received no response
from Washington to its request that the captured
Uighurs be handed over to it for investigation and
trial.
The Daily Times, a prestigious
daily newspaper of Lahore, reported on January 17,
2004, that in a significant move, the Chinese
government had sent to Islamabad a list and
profile of terrorists and terrorist organizations
of concern to the government of China and had
wanted them investigated by Pakistan.
It
quoted Pakistani officials as saying: "A list of
the first batch of identified Eastern Turkestan
terrorist organizations and profiles of terrorists
compiled by the Ministry of Public Security,
China, on December 15, 2003, have been sent
through diplomatic channels to Pakistan, with a
request to forward the list to the departments
concerned for investigation."
The Chinese
concerns were focused largely on two terrorist
outfits, the Eastern Turkestan Islamic Movement
(ETIM) and the Eastern Turkestan Liberation
Organization (ETLO), as well as terrorists
belonging to these organizations. It was reported
that China had also alleged that these
organizations and terrorists were well connected
to al-Qaeda and received training as well as
funding from it.
It was also reported by
the Pakistani media that, according to the Chinese
authorities, ETLO is also known as the Eastern
Turkestan National Party. It is said to be working
for the founding of an Eastern Turkestan state in
Xinjiang through violence and terror. Its
headquarters are in Istanbul. The founder of the
organization is Muhametemin Hazret and its main
leaders include Kanat, Dolqun Isa and Ubul
Kasimund.
According to the Pakistani
media, the foreign as well as the interior
ministers of the two countries had met in 2002 and
discussed counter-terrorism issues. In 2003, when
Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf
visited China, an extradition treaty was signed
between the two countries and China took up the
issue of the activities of the Uighur terrorist
groups from Pakistani territory. Musharraf was
subsequently reported to have told a group of
senior Pakistani editors that he was surprised by
the strong language used by the Chinese while
referring to the activities of Uighur terrorist
elements from Pakistani territory.
Three
Chinese engineers working in the Gwadar port
construction project in Balochistan were killed in
an explosion on May 3, 2004. Uighurs, reportedly
operating from the Northern Areas (Gilgit and
Baltistan), were suspected. Subsequently, two
Chinese engineers working in an irrigation project
in the South Waziristan area of the Federally
Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) were kidnapped
and one of them was killed in an exchange of fire
on October 13 when the Pakistani army mounted a
raid to rescue them. The other escaped from the
custody of the kidnappers.
It was reported
that the kidnapping of the two Chinese engineers
was an operation jointly mounted by Pakistani
members of the Jundullah (Army of Allah), a new
jihadi organization that came to notice for the
first time at Karachi last June 10 when it
unsuccessfully tried to kill the then corps
commander of the Pakistani army at Karachi,
members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, and
some Chechens and Uighurs whose organizational
affiliation was not clear. The Pakistani military
authorities projected Abdullah Mahsud, a former
Taliban commander who was released by the US
authorities from detention in their Guantanamo Bay
detention camp last March, as the mastermind of
the kidnap and admitted that apart from some local
tribal followers of Abdullah Mahsud, three Uzbeks
were also involved.
Since October 2003,
the Pakistani army and its Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI) have mounted special operations
to smoke out the Chechens, the Uzbeks and the
Uighurs operating from the FATA in cooperation
with one another. Apart from killing or capturing
a few Uzbek and Chechen terrorists and killing a
Uighur terrorist, these operations have not
produced any significant results. In the
meanwhile, the Hizbut Tehrir, which has a strong
presence in Pakistan and the Central Asian
Republics, has started wooing the Uighurs in an
attempt to set up sleeper cells in Xinjiang. Among
the major successes claimed by the Pakistani
authorities are the killing of Hasan Mahsum of
ETIM and of Nek Muhammad, a local Pakistani tribal
leader, who was allegedly assisting the al-Qaeda
and the Taliban remnants and causing serious
injuries to Tohir Yuldeshev of the Islamic
Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), who, however,
managed to escape.
While the Xinjiang
authorities have estimated the number of Uighur
terrorists based in Pakistan at about 600,
independent reports from Pakistan estimate that
about 100 Uighurs are based in the FATA. There are
also some operating with the Taliban and Gulbuddin
Heckmatyar's Hizbe Islami inside Afghanistan and
some others are based in the POK and the Northern
Areas. An estimate of their number is not
available.
It is also not clear how many
of these Uighurs are from Xinjiang and how many
are from the Uighur diaspora in Turkey and the
Central Asian Republics. Some reports from
Pakistan claim that there are more from the
diaspora than from inside Xinjiang. They project
the acts of jihadi terrorism directed against the
Chinese, whether in Xinjiang or in Pakistan, as in
essence the work of the diaspora elements.
In the past, Pakistani officials and media
reports used to describe the foreign jihadi
terrorists operating from South Waziristan as
consisting in essence of Uzbeks, Chechens and
Uighurs. Of late, there are reports of the
presence of some Kazakhs too in this area and in
the training camps located there. It is not clear
whether these are native Kazakhs or Uighurs from
the diaspora in Kazakhstan.
In the
meantime, mystery surrounds the death of the
deputy chief of the Kazakh Embassy in Islamabad,
Sapargaly Abakirov, who was shot in the head at
his Islamabad residence on January 19. He died in
hospital and his body was flown to his country by
a special plane on Sunday. According to Pakistani
police, a group of three Chinese and one Kazakh
were involved in the murder. Two of the Chinese -
Muhammad Hassan and Muhammad Ibrahim - were from
Urumqi and had been living in Rawalpindi and
Islamabad respectively. The identity of the third
Chinese is not clear. The Kazakh has been
identified as Muhammad Hussain, a Uighur. He was
arrested in the North-West Frontier Province. It
has been reported that the diplomat had known
these persons for some time and had actually
invited them to his house. The motive for the
murder is not clear.
B Raman is
additional secretary (retired), Cabinet
Secretariat, government of India, and currently
director, Institute for Topical Studies, Chennai;
he is a former member of the National Security
Advisory Board of the government of India. E-mail:
corde@vsnl.com.
He was also head of the counter-terrorism division
of the Research & Analysis Wing, India's
external intelligence agency, from 1988 to August
1994.
(Copyright 2005 B Raman.) |
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