3

MYTHS AND REALITIES OF THE ALLEGED ‘TERRORIST THREAT’ ASSOCIATED WITH UYGHURS

3 Prominent members of TIP since 2008. Pictured from the left top corner clockwise: Emir Abdul Häq; Deputy Emir Abdushakur (d. 2012); Commander Säyfullah (d. 2012); religious figure Abduläziz (d. 2012). The last three were killed by drone strikes in Pakistan during 2012, presumably ordered by the US.

On a snowy February day in 2019, I found myself in a courtroom in Oslo, Norway arguing about acronyms and the alleged Uyghur-led ‘terrorist organizations’ to which they supposedly referred. I was an expert witness for a Uyghur refugee who had gone to Syria to fight for a paramilitary group called the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) believing he was being trained for a war of liberation, in his homeland. He was now facing charges of ‘terrorism’ in Norway as a result. Given the ways that Norwegian laws about ‘terrorism’ are being implemented, it was unimportant what this man had done in Syria, against whom he had fought, or whether he had ever killed an innocent civilian. All that really mattered was whether he had been associated with an organization that was on a recognized ‘terrorism list.’ The EU ‘terrorist list’ includes no Uyghur groups. The UN’s ‘Consolidated List’ includes ETIM along with several aliases for the group, including The Eastern Turkistan Islamic Party, The Eastern Turkistan Islamic Party of Allah, Islamic Party of Turkestan, and Djamaat Turkistan.¹ While the US List of Foreign Terrorist Organizations does not include any Uyghur groups, the US Terrorist Exclusion List includes ETIM along with the alias Eastern Turkistan Islamic Party (ETIP).² However, none of these lists explicitly mention TIP. Thus, in many ways, the defendant’s fate depended upon whether TIP could be identified as the same organization as those on the various lists mentioned above.

The prosecution and its expert witness argued that ETIM and TIP were the same organization, which had become a part of the standard narrative about the alleged ‘terrorist threat’ associated with Uyghurs that had developed since 2002, especially among ‘terrorism’ analysts without specialized regional knowledge. In fact, the prosecution’s expert witness, who knew little about Uyghurs and had no Uyghur language abilities, had written a report that meticulously served as a review of the standard ‘terrorism’ analyst narrative about the history of ETIM, its activities, and its evolution. As an expert witness for the defense, I maintained that ETIM and TIP were actually not the same organization, even if somebody associated with the former had allegedly founded the latter. This argument, while central to the court case, was only part of a larger critique I levied against the standard narrative about both ETIM and TIP. I disputed much of this standard narrative’s history of these organizations’ evolution, their participation in specific attacks, and the nature of their relationships with Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

An underlying theme in this courtroom debate was the question of what type of knowledge best informs one to make judgements about a group’s or an individual’s classification as ‘terrorists.’ The prosecution’s expert witness argued that such judgements were best made from the perspective of somebody focused on comparative security studies with intimate knowledge about how international jihadist organizations operate. I countered that such decisions were much better informed by local knowledge about people’s grievances, how they feel about different ideologies, and what it means for them to ‘belong’ to an organization. Unfortunately, neither of us could argue on the merits of the legal definition of what characterizes a ‘terrorist’ because no such definition exists.

In the end, I believed that my argument won the day, and the prosecution’s expert witness backed down on many of the points in his report that I had criticized, admitting that the details about these organizations were unclear and more needed to be researched to conclusively determine their origins and nature. While the logic of presumed innocence would suggest that my arguments and the acquiescence of the prosecution’s expert witness would have been enough to have proven a reasonable doubt about the defendant’s status as a ‘terrorist,’ the court found him guilty and sentenced him to seven years in prison. This was because, by the logic of GWOT, purported Muslim ‘terrorists’ are usually presumed to be guilty until proven innocent.

This chapter critically analyzes the alleged ‘terrorist threat’ associated with Uyghurs during the first decade of GWOT, relying on primary sources and direct evidence over and above the accumulated body of analysis and secondary discussion within the field of ‘terrorism studies.’ Like my testimony at the court in Oslo, these findings challenge the conventional literature on these groups, as well as the rationale behind the placement of ETIM on US and UN ‘terrorism lists’. I suggest that what has been defined as ETIM and recognized as a Uyghur-led ‘terrorist organization’ has, in reality, been a fragmented religiously inspired Uyghur militant movement that was limited in its activities by outside actors and presented no real threat to China or the world during the first decade of GWOT. Furthermore, I find no conclusive evidence that either ETIM or TIP has ever carried out political violence deliberately targeting civilians, an act which would qualify these groups as ‘terrorists’ per this book’s working definition. Finally, while the movement’s overall motivation has always been the dire situation in the Uyghur homeland, and its overall goal to establish an independent Uyghur state there, it has had very little if any impact inside the Uyghur homeland. This critical point brings into question the PRC assertions that it faces a serious ‘terrorist threat’ from ETIM within its Uyghur population, a claim that has justified almost two decades of repressive PRC policies towards this population.

While my discussion of this movement’s evolution, goals, factions, and allegiances draws extensively from the conventional literature written about them, as well as from the sources on which those writings are based, it is also informed by interviews with people who have participated in this history in different ways, a more in-depth analysis of Uyghur language TIP documents and videos, and a knowledge of Uyghur history, culture, and language. While this account of the history of ETIM and TIP through 2012 still suffers from a paucity of reliable information and a reliance on speculation, I believe its grounding in local histories and culture, as well as its use of Uyghur language sources, makes it a more reliable narrative about these groups than that which has dominated existing literature.

ETIM: THE PHANTOM ‘TERRORIST’ GROUP

As far as I can tell, no group has ever called itself the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement or ETIM. However, the group of Uyghurs that is usually associated with the ETIM label did exist and did establish a community in Afghanistan between 1998 and 2001 with the intent of initiating an insurgency inside China, a goal it never came close to attaining. Rather than calling this community of Uyghurs ETIM, its leader allegedly named it the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Party (ETIP) in honor of those who had battled with PRC security forces in Baren in 1990 and had called their loosely organized group by the same name. The use of this name, both in Baren by Zäydin Yüsüp and in Afghanistan by Häsän Mäkhsum, has led many in the ‘terrorism’ analysis world to assume that Mäkhsum’s group was the same group that fought with security forces in Baren. Furthermore, since both Yüsüp and Mäkhsum were protégées of the same teacher in Karghilik, Abdulhäkim-Haji Mäkhsum, many sources suggest that this teacher was the actual founder of ETIP (aka ETIM) and that the organization goes back to the 1940s or 1950s.

Häsän Mäkhsum himself contributed to this confusion by publicly linking his group of would-be militants in Afghanistan with a long history of Uyghur religious nationalism that draws its modern origins from the first Eastern Turkistan Republic in the 1930s and sometimes even from far earlier periods in Uyghur history. As Mäkhsum stated in a 2002 Radio Free Asia (RFA) interview when asked about the origins of his group, ‘the Eastern Turkistan Party has a long history; from the time that Islam was established in Eastern Turkistan to today, Islamic movements in Eastern Turkistan have never ceased; sometimes they have fought for the right to practice Islam, other times they have fought for freedom and independence, sometimes working together, other times in separate groups.’³ It is noteworthy that shortly afterwards in the same interview he would clarify this point, suggesting that the spirit of his particular group was born in 1990 in Baren, but the group had been established in 1998 in Afghanistan.

By making these statements, Häsän Mäkhsum was being neither contradictory nor misleading. Rather, he was referring to a sentiment that is shared by most Uyghur nationalists, whether religiously inspired or secular: a belief that their struggle with modern China is timeless and continuous. Uyghur nationalist historiography tends to blur the lines between the many self-determination movements that have existed throughout the history of modern China’s colonial rule over their homeland, usually not distinguishing between different ideologies that have existed in these movements over time. In this sense, when Mäkhsum spoke about the long history of ETIP, he was referring to the long history of religiously inspired Uyghur self-determination movements, suggesting that these movements have had continuity in their struggle to liberate the Uyghur homeland.

In reality, Mäkhsum established his group in Afghanistan only in early 1998, and he never succeeded in making it a cohesive organization. Rather, it remained, throughout its history, a mostly informal community that sought to train an army which could one day fight the Chinese state inside the Uyghur homeland, and, even in this goal, it was thwarted by forces beyond its control. While Mäkhsum would frequently call this group ETIP in public statements, he would refer to it more often as merely the ‘community’ in the video footage that survived him. In essence, this community was a project initiated and implemented by Häsän Mäkhsum. As a result, the best way to understand its underlying ideology and goals is to begin with Mäkhsum’s own vision of Uyghur political Islam that served to inspire this community, or at least its leadership.

The origins of Häsän Mäkhsum’s Uyghur Islamic nationalism and of his community in Afghanistan

Häsän Mäkhsum’s ideas about political Islam were formed during the 1980s and early 1990s. Much of the international literature on ETIM assumes that Mäkhsum and his organization were influenced by foreign radical Islamic ideologies imported from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, but this makes little sense in the context of Mäkhsum’s biography. There were many Uyghurs who studied in Pakistani madrassas in the 1980s and 1990s, but Mäkhsum was not among them. Similarly, while Pakistani traders likewise frequented the Uyghur homeland during this time, these travelers did not seem to have had any particular influence on Mäkhsum’s religious thoughts. Finally, while some high-profile international sources on ETIM suggest that its ideology was influenced by Uyghurs who had been trained by the PRC to fight alongside the mujahidin against the Soviets during the 1980s, there is no evidence that the PRC ever trained Uyghurs for this purpose.⁴ Even if there were a limited number of Uyghurs somehow trained by the PRC to fight in Afghanistan in the 1980s, I have never met a Uyghur with knowledge of this operation, and nobody with this profile is documented as having anything to do with Häsän Mäkhsum.

Instead of being influenced by Islamic teachings that had come to China from outside, Häsän Mäkhsum’s vision for his community in Afghanistan appears to be the product of indigenous ideas about political Islam. Born in the Yengisar region of Kashgar, Mäkhsum was sent by his family at the age of 13 to study Islam under the tutelage of a Sheikh named Abdul Qadir, with whom he lived and studied informally for seven years. In 1984, Abdul Qadir brought Häsän to Karghilik to study under Sheikh Abdulhäkim-Haji Mäkhsum, the same religious teacher who would teach Zäydin Yüsüp, the Uyghur leader in the 1990 clashes with government security forces in Baren.⁵ Although Abdulhäkim-Haji Mäkhsum apparently made the Haj to Saudi Arabia in 1984, his education took place in the Uyghur homeland during the 1930s and 1940s when his ideas about political Islam were more likely influenced by the Uyghur religious nationalism of the First ETR than by Salafist traditions emanating from Saudi Arabia.

Unfortunately, all that remains of Abdulhäkim-Haji Mäkhsum’s teachings from the 1980s are the memories of his students, but one of these students whom I have interviewed reaffirms that his perspective on the nexus of politics and religion was solidly grounded in indigenous issues related to resisting modern China’s colonial control of the Uyghurs’ homeland. My interviewee, who was part of informal study groups organized by Abdulhäkim-Haji while they were both in prison in the late 1970s and continued to study under him in Karghilik throughout the 1980s, suggests that the Sheikh promoted a broad educational program for his students, which involved the study of the Qur’an and other religious texts, but also local literary classics and the history of both Eastern Turkistan and the world. Through this broad educational program, he allegedly advocated taking inspiration from Islam to wage a struggle for Uyghur independence from China. In this sense, Abdulhäkim-Haji Mäkhsum was likely more inspired by early twentieth-century anti-colonial Jadid traditions in the Uyghurs’ homeland than by Saudi Arabia’s Salafist traditions.⁶ Rather than relying exclusively on Arabic religious texts, he apparently placed a high value on indigenous texts in the local vernacular as well as on the ‘modern’ educational traditions of history and literature. In doing so, he, like the Jadids, promoted the ideals of anti-colonial national awakening among the Uyghurs that was also grounded in their identity as ‘modernizing’ Muslims.⁷

Abdulhäkim-Haji’s underground school in Karghilik became well known throughout the southern regions of the Uyghur homeland, and one source suggests that he taught as many as 7,000 young Uyghur men from the time of his release from prison in 1979 until the closing of his school in 1990.⁸ Many of his most devoted students would stay in Karghilik for many years, teaching younger students while remaining under his mentorship. Häsän Mäkhsum would study in Karghilik from 1984 until 1990 when authorities closed the school in connection with the Baren incident.⁹ Throughout the rest of his life, Häsän Mäkhsum would refer to Abdulhäkim-Haji and his teachings as the inspiration for his own form of Uyghur Muslim nationalism, which would form the basis for his community in Afghanistan.

While Häsän Mäkhsum himself did not participate in the ‘Baren incident,’ being in Karghilik at the time, he was certainly both inspired and affected by these events involving his fellow student. Mäkhsum would establish his nascent movement in Afghanistan in 1998 as a continuation of the spirit of the group led by Yüsüp in Baren in 1990, consequently adopting the name Yüsüp had given this group.¹⁰ Additionally, Mäkhsum would be arrested in 1990 during the crackdowns following the Baren incident under suspicion of being involved, leading to a six month prison term. Upon his release from prison, he was subsequently restricted to his home region and placed under surveillance by local authorities.¹¹ During this time, Mäkhsum apparently also served as an informal teacher of Islam, promoting the lessons he had learned from his teacher Abdulhäkim-Haji. In 1993, he was again arrested for these activities and sentenced to three years of hard labor.¹² While the terms of his release in 1996 supposedly required him to remain in the Kashgar area, he decided to leave the country in early 1997, taking a surreptitious route through Urumqi and Beijing to Malaysia and on to Saudi Arabia.¹³ He would never return to the Uyghur homeland.

Apparently, Mäkhsum would spend much of 1997 in Saudi Arabia and Turkey trying to convince Uyghur exiles of the utility of beginning a guerilla war against China based on the ideals he had learned from his teacher Abdulhäkim-Haji. According to his biography on the 2004 version of TIP’s website, Mäkhsum had little success in this endeavor and found few if any supporters within these Uyghur exile communities.¹⁴ The same source suggests that he then ‘travelled to a land of Jihad in Central Asia’ in early 1998 and stayed there for the remainder of his life. In this ‘land of Jihad,’ Mäkhsum would establish training facilities aimed at fielding an army of Uyghur men to wage jihad against the Chinese state and to liberate the Uyghur homeland. This initiative was not planned by an imagined cohesive militant organization inside China that had also been responsible for the Baren events or any militant efforts predating the 1990s as suggested by many sources. Rather it was Mäkhsum’s initiative alone. That said, Mäkhsum likely saw his activities in the context of the timeless struggle of the Uyghur cause, especially as that cause has been framed in terms of Islam historically, including the legacy of Baren as well as that of the First ETR.

Mäkhsum’s community in Afghanistan to 2001

According to Abudullah Qarahaji, who was allegedly the deputy to Häsän Mäkhsum in this community, Mäkhsum and a small group of his followers first went in late 1997 to Pakistan from Turkey with the intention of then moving to Afghanistan, but they were initially denied entry.¹⁵ It was only with the approval and assistance of Jalaluddin Haqqani, a Taliban commander with close ties to Pakistan’s security services, that Mäkhsum and his group were able to enter Afghanistan and establish a camp in Jalalabad at some point in early 1998.¹⁶ After some time in Jalalabad, Mäkhsum’s group was apparently given space in Khost to establish operations there.¹⁷ While they entered Afghanistan with Haqqani’s approval, Mäkhsum has denied that they ever had any ‘organizational relations with the Taliban,’ and there is little reason not to believe his claim.¹⁸

By most eyewitness accounts, the Uyghur community led by Mäkhsum in Afghanistan was largely isolated from other militant groups in the country. Abudullah Qarahaji claimed that the group was able to establish three camps prior to 2001 where they sheltered as many as 500 Uyghur families, who had managed to flee China, and trained the men from these families in the use of weapons.¹⁹ While it is possible that this is accurate, it is unclear whether these camps were coterminous or had been formed successively, what weapons training they provided, and whether the trainees ultimately answered to Mäkhsum’s orders or even viewed themselves as members of a specific organization. According to Qarahaji, he knew of no incidences where those trained in these camps ever carried out any attacks against the government or civilians inside China.²⁰ In fact, this did not seem to be the intent of the training. As Mäkhsum himself would frequently state in the video footage that would survive him, the trainings’ purpose was to prepare Uyghurs for a coming widespread jihad against the Chinese state that apparently had no particular timeline.²¹

Mäkhsum’s community evidently did not have the resources to access the internet and post communications and videos during this time, but its members did frequently take video footage of themselves, and this footage turns up in many of the post-2008 videos produced by TIP. Since much of this footage is used in the TIP videos to demonstrate these would-be militants’ capacities and dedication, they often feature Uyghurs training and shooting weapons, but such videos also bely the organization’s general inactivity and lack of resources. It is noteworthy that the footage from this period never depicts Uyghurs in actual combat, and that the shots of training groups never include more than about a dozen men, almost always armed only with AK-47 rifles.²² As these videos were likely taken only of significant events in the groups’ activities, it can be assumed that they represent the full extent of the group’s actual capacity for training, its access to weapons, and its associated membership base at its apex. It is likely that the daily access of community members to weapons and training was far rarer than these videos suggest.

While ‘terrorism’ experts have generally assumed that Mäkhsum’s group was underwritten by Al-Qaeda and had close ties to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) when the US invasion of Afghanistan began in late 2001, the available evidence does not support these assumptions. In fact, I would argue that the available information about Mäkhsum’s group suggests that it was not an organization at all, but a failed attempt to create a militant movement. My research identifies a group of only about five men who were dedicated to the establishment of this community in Afghanistan. This includes Mäkhsum and his deputy Abdullah Qarahaji as well as an Islamic scholar by the name of Sheikh Bilal (aka Yüsüp Qadirkhan), and possibly Abdul Häq who apparently was in charge of training newcomers. Additionally, detainees in Guantanamo Bay, who were in a camp allegedly run by Abdul Häq in 2001, mention a person in Pakistan who appears to have arranged recruitment of newcomers and support for their travel to Afghanistan. Qarahaji suggested that the group had a leadership council consisting of eight people, which corresponds to the organizational structure posted on TIP’s short-lived website in 2004, but this is still suggestive of a rather small core group of organizers.²³ Most of the others associated with this community probably did not view themselves as followers of Mäkhsum or as members of the ETIP at all. While Mäkhsum likely hoped to create a militant movement that could challenge Chinese rule of his homeland, at most he was only able to start an initiative to train individual Uyghurs in small weapons. It is particularly notable that there is no evidence whatsoever that this group ever ordered its trainees to undertake any specific militant operations or violent acts of resistance inside or outside of China.

One of the primary reasons for the failure of Mäkhsum’s effort to mount a militant insurgency against the PRC from Afghanistan was his lack of external support and perhaps even his external restraints. According to Mäkhsum’s deputy, Qarahaji, the group had fairly strained relations with both the Taliban and the ‘Arabs,’ which refers to Al-Qaeda and other Arab foreign fighters in the country at the time. In his 2004 interview with The Wall Street Journal, Qarahaji noted that he had accompanied Mäkhsum to a large meeting of militant Muslim groups in Kandahar in 1999 at which Osama bin Laden was in attendance.²⁴ At the meeting, bin Laden spoke about the importance of waging jihad in the historical lands of the Arab Muslims, Palestine in particular, suggesting that this was the first priority of global jihad. Apparently, one of the Uyghurs with Mäkhsum and Qarahaji responded by suggesting that the global jihad should focus on the most oppressed Muslims in the world where the practice of religion was under attack, especially in Eastern Turkistan, but he found little to no support for this argument.²⁵ According to the interview’s translator, Omer Kanat, Qarahaji also remarked that the Arab groups in Afghanistan at the time looked down on Uyghurs as less orthodox Muslims, since they were not adherents to the Saudi-dominated Salafi interpretation of Islam. In this context, it is extremely unlikely that Häsän Mäkhsum received $300,000 from Osama bin Laden for the group’s operations as had been suggested by the Chinese government in its original documents about ETIM, and it is more likely that, while having met him, he had no working relationship with bin Laden and Al-Qaeda at all.²⁶ Furthermore, while it would seem logical that Mäkhsum’s group would have a working relationship with the Al-Qaeda-supported IMU given the linguistic and cultural similarities between Uzbeks and Uyghurs, my research found no evidence of such connections in Afghanistan at this time.

As for Mäkhsum’s relationship with the Taliban, that appears to have been more complicated, as one might expect given the Taliban’s role as the government of Afghanistan at the time. On the one hand, he allegedly had received endorsement from Haqqani for his initial entry into Afghanistan, and he likely received permission from local Taliban officials to use different lands for his training endeavors. On the other hand, there is credible evidence that the Taliban, and probably Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), sought to use Mäkhsum and his group as a bargaining chip in their diplomatic negotiations with China at the time, much as Kazakhstan had used local Uyghur nationalists for similar purposes with the PRC during the same period. In Kazakhstan, security forces appeared to deliberately provide a modicum of political space to Uyghur nationalist groups, perhaps even supporting them nominally, throughout the mid-1990s so that it could subsequently crack down on these groups in the later part of the decade as a component of negotiations with China on a variety of issues from border disputes to trade issues.²⁷

While most of the states in the world sought to shun the Taliban government in Afghanistan during the later 1990s, it is well known that the PRC was seeking engagement with the Afghan state. In 1999, at the encouragement of Pakistan, the PRC sent a delegation to Afghanistan to discuss cooperation and economic relations, and the Chinese officials present had allegedly made several agreements with the Emirate of Afghanistan in the process, establishing trade relations and even opening up a flight route between Kabul and Urumqi.²⁸ Apparently, the PRC also agreed to assist the Taliban with needed infrastructure investment, and India claimed that the Chinese company Huawei even provided the internationally sanctioned Afghan government and its military with critical telecommunications at this time.²⁹ In 2000, the Chinese ambassador to Pakistan became the first senior official from a non-Muslim country to meet Mullah Omar, the Taliban’s leader, and they apparently solidified a series of agreements at this meeting.³⁰

While the details of these agreements remain unknown, it is likely that they included stipulations for containing any Uyghur nationalist groups which might use the country as a base.³¹ This was suggested by the Taliban’s subsequent promises to Chinese representatives that, while it would not expel Uyghurs from Afghanistan to China, its security forces would guarantee that no Uyghur groups in Afghanistan would be a threat to China.³² Thus, just as in Kazakhstan, it appears that the Taliban, likely with guidance from Pakistan, used the presence of Uyghur nationalists and militants on their territory to their advantage with Beijing. While the Taliban allowed Mäkhsum’s group to remain, they kept close watch on its operations and ensured that it posed no threat to China.

According to Omer Kanat, who covered the US war in Afghanistan during 2001 as a foreign correspondent for RFA, the Taliban fulfilled their promises to the PRC by bringing the members of Mäkhsum’s community to Kabul where they could be contained. Apparently, this transfer of Mäkhsum and his supporters to Kabul started in 1999 and would remain in place until the US invasion in 2001, as confirmed by Kanat’s interview with the Taliban’s then Deputy Minister of the Interior, Mullah Abdul Samad Khaksar.³³ In Kabul, Mäkhsum and his supporters were closely watched and warned not to attempt any attacks inside China. The leadership, including Mäkhsum, were apparently given housing in the city where they could be monitored, and the other community members were put on the territory of two military bases outside the city, with the men possibly being enlisted into the Taliban’s army.³⁴ In effect, any fighting force that Häsän Mäkhsum may have gathered and trained in 1998–1999 had been completely neutralized, yet he and his community remained in Afghanistan under the watch of the Taliban in the event that they could serve as a bargaining chip with China again in the future.

If this account of events is accurate, it means that Mäkhsum not only had little to no support from the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, but the Taliban was even actively involved in limiting his activities. Generally, this account makes sense in the context of China’s attempts to contain Uyghur nationalism outside its borders during this time, and it is also consistent with the few eyewitness accounts we have about Mäkhsum’s community, all of which suggest that it was anything but a cohesive organization with clear plans for the future in 2000–2001. The closest thing we have to raw eyewitness accounts of Mäkhsum’s community at this time are those that come from the statements of the 22 Uyghurs who found themselves in the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center after being taken prisoner in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Although all of these people had engaged with Mäkhsum’s ‘community,’ they did not understand these interactions as representing membership in any particular group. Furthermore, their descriptions of Mäkhsum’s community do not inspire confidence in this group as a capable militant organization that could pose a threat to China, let alone to the world.

Eighteen of the Uyghur Guantanamo detainees had been at a makeshift training camp near Jalalabad during their stay in Afghanistan. Two others worked for Mäkhsum’s community as a food deliverer and a typist, one wound up among Mäkhsum’s people while searching for his brother, and one may have been a friend of Häsän Mäkhsum from Kashgar in the 1990s, but had only recently arrived in Afghanistan. In reviewing their testimonies from Guantanamo, it is striking that none of them talk about Mäkhsum’s community as an organization at all. Rather, they consistently portray it as a group of Uyghurs brought together by circumstances and a mutual distaste for the Chinese rule of their homeland. Finding themselves in a place where weapons were readily available, they welcomed the opportunity to learn how to use them in the event they ever had the chance to do so against the Chinese state, but they did not seem to have in mind any planned actions against the PRC in the near future, and most viewed their stay in Afghanistan as a temporary stop in their ongoing search for a safe place to live outside China.

Both the typist and the food deliverer characterized their relationship with the community as employees rather than as members, and neither knew anything about external support for the organization.³⁵ Those in the camp had mostly ended up there in the quest for a safe place to live outside of China, having been pushed out of Kyrgyzstan and Pakistan where they had previously lived in fear of being targeted for extradition to China. While some came to the camp hoping to take part in an insurgency against the Chinese state, none had sought to partake in a global jihad. In fact, none of the detainees had ever heard of Al-Qaeda until they were sent to Guantanamo. In being asked if they had helped the Taliban and Al-Qaeda forces resisting the US invasion, all the detainees said they had no reason to fight Americans. As one detainee noted in making this point, ‘a billion Chinese enemies, that is enough for me; why would I get more enemies?’³⁶

The existence of the camp near Jalalabad is a bit of a mystery given that Mäkhsum’s community was said to be contained inside Kabul and surrounding military camps at this time. From the testimonies of former Guantanamo detainees, it appears as if the camp had only recently been established by Mäkhsum’s group. It is unclear whether this was done with the approval of his Taliban hosts, perhaps to add to the ranks of the Taliban army, or whether it was something the community was doing on its own unbeknownst to the Afghan government. Regardless, the poor conditions inside the camp as described by its inhabitants suggests that it had little if any external support. All of the former detainees noted that they had never seen non-Uyghurs on its territory with the exception of one local Afghan who worked there as a cook. Those who had been in the camp longer mentioned Häsän Mäkhsum coming to its territory twice to give talks to the trainees, and almost all of them note that the camp’s primary organizer was a Uyghur named Abdul Häq.³⁷ All of the trainees had arrived in Afghanistan and at the camp over the course of the year prior to the US invasion of the country, and they generally agreed that this training center housed approximately 30 Uyghurs at its apex.

Perhaps most importantly, the detainees’ testimony about the ‘training camp’ where they spent time does not fit the profile of a professional, organized, and resource-rich organization with close ties to Al-Qaeda. They describe small, old, and decrepit buildings in need of dire repair, and they note that their primary activities while at the location were to repair them and bring them back to livable conditions.³⁸ When asked about the training received at this camp, the detainees discuss running in the mornings and the occasional opportunity to fire a few bullets with the only Kalashnikov rifle that was available at the camp. In short, their description of this ‘training camp’ suggests that it provided them with very little training and that it had virtually no resources to support any kind of militant operation. In fact, most of the detainees did not recognize this location as a ‘training camp’ at all. As one detainee answered interrogators asking about the ‘camp,’ ‘it was a little Uigher [sic] community where Uighers [sic] went; I do not know what you mean about the place called camp.’³⁹

Most of those who lived in this desolate settlement before finding themselves in Guantanamo Bay appear to have viewed the place first and foremost as a refuge from the long arm of the Chinese state. Indeed, my 2010 interviews with Uyghur former detainees who had been released from Guantanamo to Albania in 2006 seemed to confirm as much. As I began to interview these men, who had mostly become apprentice pizza cooks in Albania’s capital city of Tirana, their stories sounded very familiar. Their lives prior to being taken captive were reminiscent of the accounts of the many Uyghur traders from China I had interviewed in Kazakhstan during the mid-1990s.⁴⁰ Most of them were born in rural areas and had become involved in trading because few other career opportunities existed. Once engaged in trading, they realized that to make a living beyond subsistence, they needed to become part of the transnational trade that joins the Uyghurs’ homeland to its western neighbors. As a result, they traveled westward, trying to sell Chinese manufactured goods in bordering states, particularly in Central Asia and Pakistan. Once living abroad, they no longer wanted to go back to the repressive atmosphere in their homeland, many of them fearing that a return would also result in their incarceration on political charges after having interacted with Uyghur nationalists abroad. While in the early 1990s Central Asia and Pakistan still offered a fairly safe refuge for Uyghurs leaving China, this was no longer the case by 1999.

Having experienced difficulties in Central Asia and Pakistan as those countries increasingly monitored Uyghurs on their territory for the Chinese security forces, the former detainees in Albania were forced to leave these states but did not want to return to China. Aside from one of the four interviewees who said he went to Afghanistan explicitly to seek militant training that he could bring back to China, the others reportedly went there temporarily in hope of eventually getting to Turkey. They claimed that people in Pakistan had told them that a small community of Uyghurs near Jalalabad could assist them in finding safe passageway to Turkey via Afghanistan and Iran. Although my interviewees arrived in Afghanistan at different times, they all found themselves in the same settlement near Jalalabad when the American bombing of the region began shortly after 9/11. The youngest in the group, who was 18 when taken captive, said he had arrived in the country on 12 September 2001 without any knowledge of the previous day’s events. During the US invasion of Afghanistan, the camp was bombed, and there were extensive casualties. Eighteen of those who survived, including all those whom I interviewed, went to the mountains to seek safety, living in a monkey cave. After seeing a group of Arabs walking nearby, they followed them across the border into Pakistan where local people first gave them refuge and then sold them to bounty-hunters for $5,000 each.

These profiles of ‘accidental jihadists’ who ended up in Guantanamo likely applied to the majority of Mäkhsum’s community in Afghanistan during its brief existence. Over the course of almost four years, many other Uyghurs with similar stories probably had come and left, utilizing the community as a refuge. A 2010 TIP video commemorating the life of the religious scholar Yüsüp Qadirkhan (aka Sheikh Bilal), who had allegedly joined the group in 1999 and was killed in the US bombing campaign in 2001, for example, shows him teaching around 20 Uyghur children, perhaps lending credence to Qarahaji’s claim that the community once included numerous Uyghur families.⁴¹ However, by the time of the US invasion in 2001, it appears that the Taliban’s transfer of the community to Kabul and alleged forced separation of the group between the city and two different neighboring military bases had prevented Mäkhsum from creating anything like a cohesive fighting force or even a unified community.

As a result, in the chaos of the US bombing campaign in late 2001, little likely remained of the community. As Mäkhsum admits in his 2002 interview with RFA, some may have ended up fighting alongside the Taliban against invading forces, perhaps having been brought into the Taliban army while living on military bases around Kabul. Others, like the newcomers in the camp near Jalalabad, were either killed or ended up in Guantanamo Bay. Mäkhsum himself apparently would gather as much of the community as he could during the bombing and likewise lead them out of Afghanistan to Pakistan. This probably would have included Mäkhsum’s small core group, some of whom might have been killed by US air strikes like Qadirkhan, and those Uyghurs who had been able to escape the military bases around Kabul.

A video released by TIP in 2017 shows Mäkhsum leading a prayer session in a snowy mountainous landscape that, by the content of the leader’s sermon, appears to be during their march towards Pakistan in 2001–2002. From this video, it looks as if at most 20 followers are present.⁴² While the details are unknown, this group may have at some point joined up with other non-Uyghur militants who would help them find refuge in Pakistan. It was during this time that Mäkhsum called RFA unsolicited to give an interview. In that interview, he condemned the 11 September attacks on the US and denied that his group had any organizational ties or had received any financial support from either the Taliban or Al-Qaeda.⁴³ As Omer Kanat, who conducted that interview with Mäkhsum, suggests, he took a significant risk in doing so because he was presumably traveling with Arab and/or Afghan militants. Kanat would request another interview with Mäkhsum some months later, but the leader replied that he could no longer communicate with him and that he had already suffered as a result of his previous interview.⁴⁴

Not much is known about the events that subsequently transpired to the remnants of Mäkhsum’s community once they had reached Pakistan. Qarahaji, Mäkhsum’s deputy, later told Omer Kanat and a Wall Street Journal reporter that Mäkhsum had sought an option of moving the community to Qom in Iran, but the group ultimately decided to stay in Waziristan, Pakistan, where it had presumably settled with Al-Qaeda groups and the Pakistan Taliban, which controlled the area.⁴⁵ On 2 October 2003, Pakistani forces would kill Häsän Mäkhsum in South Waziristan near the border with Afghanistan under unknown circumstances, and the vision for his community and its future insurgency inside China mostly died with him.⁴⁶ Some Uyghurs have suggested to me that Mäkhsum was killed because he had refused to merge his community with allied groups of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, which were assumed to have at least the tacit support of Pakistan’s ISI for their base of operations in Waziristan, and at least one person I spoke with believes he was killed because he wanted to turn himself in to American troops and explain his objectives to them at this time. However, the truth behind his death is unlikely ever to be known.

While the story of Häsän Mäkhsum, his community, and its goals of initiating a jihad against the PRC warrants further research to form a full picture of the group’s activities and allegiances, it is clear from the account above that this community was at best a nascent militant organization that had never realized its true objectives. Finding itself in a milieu of Muslim militants who sought to wage a global jihad, Mäkhsum and his followers necessarily interacted with these militants while in Afghanistan, including with the Taliban and to a certain extent with Al-Qaeda, but there is no evidence that he was linked to these groups organizationally, received funding from them, or was attracted to their ideology of global jihad. Rather, the group remained dedicated to taking inspiration from Islam to wage a war of liberation for the Uyghurs’ homeland inside China, and it spent its time preparing for such a war in the hope that an opportunity would arise to put their preparations into practice. In essence, this group, which never called itself ETIM, was hardly an organization at all. It involved a small, mostly inconsequential, and loosely organized group of Uyghurs who believed they were fulfilling their debt to the Uyghur cause, but they were also captive of geopolitical machinations that kept them contained and unable to ever accomplish much towards this cause.

Given this account of Mäkhsum’s community, the classification of ETIM as a ‘terrorist organization’ is all the more absurd. First, no organization by this name actually existed. Second, this group appears never to have had close connections to or funding from Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, who more likely sought to prevent it from realizing its objectives. Thirdly, there is no evidence that Mäkhsum’s community, which was only established in 1998, had anything to do with the over 200 violent acts, 162 deaths, and over 440 injuries allegedly perpetrated by Uyghurs between 1990 and 2002 that the US State Department attributed to it. In fact, no evidence exists that it ever carried out any attacks on the PRC, or perhaps on anyone. About two years after the recognition of ETIM as a ‘terrorist organization’ by the US and UN, its assumed leader was now dead, and his community, which was considered to be ETIM in the eyes of the ‘counterterrorism-industrial complex,’ had been decimated. Yet, ETIM still remained on both of these lists and does as this book goes to print, and Uyghurs are still experiencing the consequences.

THE TURKISTAN ISLAMIC PARTY, 2004–2012: A VIDEO PRODUCTION COMPANY WITH A MILITANT WING

Little is known about the activities of the remnants of Mäkhsum’s community in the years immediately after his death. It is known that his deputy Qarahaji subsequently fled Pakistan for a new safe haven, and others may have followed him. If Mäkhsum arrived in Pakistan with some 20 followers in 2002, it is possible that by 2003 only a handful remained. In fact, nothing substantial would be heard about Uyghur militants in Afghanistan or Pakistan until 2008. However, in the interim, there were a few signs that whoever did remain planned to utilize the legacy of Mäkhsum’s group for the development of a new project.

The first of these signs was the appearance in 2004 of the website for a group that called itself the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) (www.tipislamawazi.com). On its website, which did not appear to be updated throughout its existence but notably had material in the English language as well as in Uyghur, TIP claimed that it was the same organization as the one associated with Mäkhsum and that the name change had taken place in 2000 before Mäkhsum’s death.⁴⁷ However, it is noteworthy that I was unable to locate any recordings or writings reflecting this change prior to the appearance of this website in 2004. Mäkhsum, for example, uses the name ETIP in his interview with RFA in 2002, explicitly mentioning that this name was adopted in memory of his fellow student who had organized Uyghurs in Baren in 1990.⁴⁸ Around the same time as this website’s appearance, TIP also issued an hour-long film in Arabic about Häsän Mäkhsum’s life, which seemed intended to draw the attention of the Arab world, and jihadists in particular, to the problems of the Uyghurs.⁴⁹ Also, as noted in the previous chapter, a video was released by alleged militant Uyghurs in 2006 calling for jihad in Eastern Turkistan, but this video neither mentions TIP nor uses its logo, which appears in their media releases from 2004.⁵⁰

In retrospect, these media efforts may have represented different factions within the already meager remnants of Mäkhsum’s group struggling to represent their deceased leader’s legacy. If this was the case, it seems that only one new group would emerge from the ashes of Mäkhsum’s community by 2008. This group would brand itself more deliberately than Mäkhsum’s community, calling itself TIP, and promoting this brand through its famous media wing, Islam Awazi (or the ‘Voice of Islam’). Unfortunately, there is little information about how TIP was established, and one can only speculate about the circumstances. While one questionable TIP document suggests that Abdul Häq immediately took over the leadership of the community after Mäkhsum’s death, there was no information announced about this until five years later when Häq issued a video regarding the Beijing Olympics in March 2008.⁵¹ Thus, it is more likely that this group was established gradually as Häq asserted his leadership and began cultivating a new community from whichever Uyghurs had ended up in Waziristan after 2001. Regardless of what had happened after Mäkhsum’s death, it was clear that the TIP which existed in 2008 was primarily a project of Abdul Häq, who had adopted the title of Emir, and its allegiances and approach were quite different from those of Mäkhsum’s community.

Abdul Häq’s history is mostly shrouded in mystery. His given name is Mämtimin Mämät, and, unlike Mäkhsum’s deputy Qarahaji, he was not among the eleven Uyghurs named by the PRC’s Ministry of Public Security as wanted terrorists in 2003.⁵² However, Abdul Häq is identified by most of the Uyghurs who were detained at Guantanamo as being the person in charge of their training camp, suggesting that he was either a core member of Mäkhsum’s community by 2001 or a Uyghur associated with the Taliban who was exploiting those Uyghurs who had come to join Mäkhsum’s community after it had already been quarantined. The first issues of TIP’s Arabic-language magazine, Islamic Turkistan, offer some details of his early life in the Uyghur homeland and his eventual appearance in Afghanistan, at least in the terms that Häq himself wanted to be portrayed. Like Mäkhsum, Abdul Häq had apparently been sent by his family to study with informal religious teachers when he was still young, but he also states that he attended a state school from 1975 until 1980, at which time he claims to have left school to study under Abdulhäkim-Haji Mäkhsum in Kaghilik.⁵³ However, unlike Häsän Mäkhsum, Häq does not identify Abdulhäkim-Haji as his primary mentor. He characterizes his final and ultimate mentor as Muhämmäd Zakir Akhnad Khalifä, whom Häq claims was an adherent to Salafism, suggesting that Häq may have been more influenced by Salafi traditions than was Mäkhsum.⁵⁴ After having spent time in jail and eventually finding a surreptitious route to flee the country, which involved numerous bribes, he claims that he came to Pakistan where he met Mäkhsum’s representative through a local madrassa. Subsequently, he allegedly came to Khost in Afghanistan during April 1998 and joined the community during its first year of existence.⁵⁵

It is clear that Häq eventually did align himself and his group more closely with Al-Qaeda and the Taliban than had Häsän Mäkhsum and his community, but it is unclear when this transformation happened. This may have been a necessity of circumstances as Häq emerged as the leader for the handful of Uyghurs who, after Mäkhsum’s death, remained in Waziristan, a region that was controlled almost completely by Al-Qaeda and the Pakistan Taliban at the time. However, Häq’s alliance with Al-Qaeda may have also involved political calculations to garner more external support for a jihad against the PRC than Mäkhsum had succeeded in doing. When the US treasury sanctioned Häq in 2009 after the Beijing Olympics, it claimed that he had already joined an Al-Qaeda Shura council in Waziristan in 2005, but no sources had made such assertions prior to this.⁵⁶

Regardless of when Häq formally established ties with Al-Qaeda, it was obvious by 2008 that he and his group were fully aligned with Al-Qaeda in northern Waziristan. This alliance also appeared to bring with it substantial resources. In 2008, TIP would launch its well-produced Arabic-language magazine published by a press usually associated with Al-Qaeda and make several ominous videos threatening the Beijing Olympics. TIP’s success in garnering international attention to their video threats against the Olympics likely impressed Al-Qaeda leadership enough to provide the group with continued resources in the coming years, at least for their video productions. Additionally, it was allegedly reported by an Al-Qaeda spokesperson after the Olympics that Osama bin Laden himself had appointed Häq as both the Emir of TIP and the leader of a phantom group called ‘Al-Qaeda in China,’ which was never heard of again after this announcement.⁵⁷

As already mentioned, TIP’s video production, under the trademark of Islam Awazi, would grow exponentially both in quantity and quality between 2008 and 2012. In addition to being more plentiful, these videos became increasingly sophisticated, were better shot, and used more and more complicated animation. However, it is unclear that this increased and more sophisticated media presence corresponded to a significant number of Uyghur fighters in Waziristan. It is notable, for example, that the videos, at least until 2011, show few present-day images of Uyghur fighters. It would seem that Islam Awazi had inherited the archival footage from Mäkhsum’s community in Afghanistan, and it used this footage extensively in its productions, but until 2011, there were only five Uyghurs in Waziristan who appeared in these videos – the self-proclaimed Emir Abdul Häq, his deputy Abdushukur, a Commander Säyfullah, the producer of Islam Awazi Abdullah Mansur, and a religious scholar named Abduläziz. While there may have been other Uyghurs associated with TIP at this time, it is also possible that beyond these five people there were few if any additional members until 2011.

The biographies of these five people also provide some insight to TIP’s allegiances and its differences from Mäkhsum’s community. Abdushukur, Häq’s deputy, had been a Taliban fighter in Afghanistan during the presence of Mäkhsum’s group in the country, and it is not clear whether he was ever actually a part of Mäkhsum’s community. He was captured by the Northern Alliance in 2000 and spent seven years in a prison until finding his way to join TIP in Waziristan in 2007.⁵⁸ Abdullah Mansur appeared to have a similar biography, as he described coming to Afghanistan together with Abdushukur a few years prior to Mäkhsum’s arrival in the country.⁵⁹ Commander Säyfullah likewise appears to have come to Afghanistan in 1997 and fought with the Taliban against the Northern Alliance prior to ever meeting Mäkhsum.⁶⁰ While Säyfullah allegedly became a member of Mäkhsum’s Shura council, it appears that he was more involved at that time with the Taliban than Mäkhsum ever was. During the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, he was stuck in the north, only meeting up with Mäkhsum as he was crossing over to Pakistan in 2002. The younger Abduläziz appeared to be a relative newcomer and an aspiring religious teacher. There is no evidence that he had ever been in Afghanistan prior to 2001, and it is probable that he had initially come to Pakistan to study at a madrassa and then joined the others in Waziristan. Thus, Abdul Häq was the only core member of TIP who appeared to have been substantively involved with Mäkhsum’s group, although this is itself disputable, and most of the TIP leadership had instead been more engaged as individuals with the Taliban prior to arriving in Waziristan. This likely also contributed to the group’s close alliance with Al-Qaeda and the Pakistan Taliban in Waziristan.

‘Terrorism’ analyst Jacob Zenn, who has frequently written on this group, noted of this early period in its development that, given the prolific video production of Islam Awazi, TIP ‘appeared to be more of a propaganda group with a militant wing than a militant group with a propaganda wing.’⁶¹ I would suggest that it is even likely that TIP had no militant wing at all at this time. Rather, the handful of Uyghurs in Waziristan at the time probably fought in multi-national brigades associated with one of the Al-Qaeda or Pakistan Taliban factions in the north, where Abdul Häq appeared to be given a role as a military leader. However, the real heart of TIP during this period was not these fighters, but its growing media presence through Islam Awazi.

In terms of its propaganda agenda, Islam Awazi fought an information war with China on two different fronts from 2008 through 2010 – trying to get Muslims in the Uyghur homeland to wage their own jihad against the PRC and trying to get international jihadist networks to turn their attention towards China as an enemy and potential target. Numerous videos early in 2009 were obvious attempts to inspire the Uyghurs inside China to wage jihad against the state. These include a video explaining the importance of jihad as both a means of liberating the Uyghur homeland and as a fulfillment of a Muslim’s obligation to God as well as an instructional video discussing the methods of waging jihad.⁶² After the July 2009 riots in Urumqi, videos also explicitly used these events as inspiration to call on Uyghurs to rise up inside China.⁶³ These videos were bolstered by others in the Uyghur language demonstrating the strength of TIP and promising to assist in any locally initiated jihad once it began.⁶⁴ If these videos were deliberately targeting a Uyghur audience inside China, the group’s Arabic-language magazine and several Arabic and Turkish language videos were more directed to potential funders and supporters from outside. One such video in Arabic that probably did have some impact on other jihadists and their supporters explained the events surrounding the 2009 Urumqi riots.⁶⁵ It was after the release of this video, that the leader of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb made the first threats ever against China from an Arab jihadist group.⁶⁶

While TIP videos would continue to have a similar focus on promoting jihad in the Uyghur homeland during 2010–2012, non-Uyghur themes also found their way into Islam Awazi’s expanding video catalog at this time. This shift, interestingly, corresponds with the alleged death of Abdul Häq and the resultant leadership change in the organization. In Häq’s place, Abdushukur became Emir, and Abdullah Mansur became his deputy. In Mansur’s place as head of Islam Awazi, the relative newcomer, Abduläziz, took over media production. This would suggest that by 2010, TIP had very little personal connection left to Mäkhsum, but it would continue to use footage of Mäkhsum to evoke his alleged role in the group’s history. However, the group was now led by two Uyghurs with a long history of service to the Taliban and one young Uyghur religious teacher who appeared to have fully adopted Salafi interpretations of Islam.

From his many appearances in videos, it would appear that Abduläziz fashioned himself as a great Islamic scholar of jihad in the Salafi tradition who saw his role as going beyond the Uyghur cause to be a spokesperson for oppressed Muslims everywhere.⁶⁷ Starting in 2011, Abduläziz is an almost constant feature in TIP videos, with many films being dedicated exclusively to his religious lectures, mostly focused on the obligation of jihad.⁶⁸ Additionally, Abduläziz made many videos at this time highlighting other ethnic groups with whom Uyghurs were likely fighting in Waziristan, especially Turks, Tatars, and Muslims from the Caucasus mountains in Russia.⁶⁹

These videos are instructive of the ties that this small group of Uyghurs had forged in the region since 2003 as they probably found themselves fighting in non-Arab multi-national forces. For example, several videos were made about a Turkish jihadist who fought with Uyghurs and had martyred himself in a suicide bombing at what looks in the video to be a Pakistani military outpost.⁷⁰ Another series of videos, both in Russian and Uyghur, made by Abduläziz in collaboration with a Russian-speaking fighter, likely from the Caucasus, highlights their collective ‘home’ as Khorasan, a historical reference to the homeland of the non-Arab Muslims of Central and south-west Asia.⁷¹ The use of this term may suggest the emergence of a multi-national consciousness among TIP’s Uyghurs, or at least for Abduläziz, in solidarity with other marginalized non-Arab groups as well as with the Afghan Taliban in Waziristan at this time. As such, it seemed that, by 2011, the small group of TIP fighters had become an evident part of a transnational jihad movement, albeit a minute and mostly inconsequential one representing perhaps less than a dozen Uyghurs.

Despite this increased attraction to transnational jihadism, TIP remained largely inspired by the Uyghur cause. TIP’s most impassioned videos were still about the struggle for the liberation of the Uyghur homeland in Eastern Turkistan, often accompanied by haunting songs presumably written by those in the group. These videos are particularly emotional as they generally juxtapose scenes of the PRC’s humiliation of Uyghurs inside the homeland with heroic and proud presumed Uyghur fighters in Pakistan and Afghanistan.⁷² Additionally, it is noteworthy that the group continued to fly two flags during this time, as had been the case in Mäkhsum’s community – the black flag often associated with jihadist groups and a light blue Uyghur national flag that only differed from that embraced by secular Uyghur nationalists by virtue of its inclusion of the Shahadah in Arabic.

The flying of these two flags was something of a metaphor for the precarious way TIP positioned itself ideologically during this period. On the one hand, it declared itself as loyal to a global jihadist network, at least in its war in Afghanistan. On the other hand, it also continued to present itself as a defender of the Uyghur nation and its struggle against Chinese occupation, a cause that the global jihadist movement was still not prepared to champion. Likely one of the primary reasons that TIP was able to straddle this contentious ideological space was that the organization remained small and almost exclusively focused on the production of propaganda. It never presented an actual militant threat to China that could have created problems for its patrons in the global jihad movement.

Another sign of TIP’s continued grounding in the Uyghur cause was its credible claim to have finally directly influenced an attack inside China in the summer of 2011. Shortly after a truck of Uyghurs allegedly crashed into a crowded street in Kashgar and subsequently attacked police with knives, TIP released a video that showed one of the organizers of the violence allegedly partaking in a Uyghur celebration in Waziristan in 2006.⁷³ While TIP did not take credit for ordering the attack, it was the first time that any Uyghur militant group in Afghanistan or Pakistan could conclusively demonstrate that its path had crossed with Uyghurs who were returning to China to sow violence. In a more recent biography of the ‘martyr’ shown in the video, TIP notes that he had actually returned to China in 2008 with the intent of carrying out jihad, but he had been put in prison during the Olympics, only realizing his goals on his release through the 2011 violence in Kashgar.⁷⁴ If this connection between local violence and the group raised PRC government concerns about TIP, the arrival of more Uyghurs in Waziristan around the same time probably further amplified these concerns.

During 2011, videos suddenly emerged that show a handful of new Uyghur faces, who are portrayed as foot soldiers.⁷⁵ One such video highlights a Uyghur fighter speaking in Chinese and seeking to explain to the Chinese people why Uyghurs do not view Eastern Turkistan as a part of China.⁷⁶ This appearance of new Uyghurs in Waziristan also made sense in the context of what was happening inside China at the time. The situation in the Uyghur homeland had become increasingly oppressive in the aftermath of the 2009 Urumqi riots as the PRC established virtual martial law in the region and rounded up perhaps thousands of Uyghurs for arrests. While the riots had exploded when security forces suppressed a protest led by mostly urban secular Uyghur youth, the state targeted for arrest mostly rural religious Uyghurs. As a result, a mass exodus from China of Uyghurs, especially pious rural residents, had begun as early as 2009 and would continue for the next few years. While it has been well documented that this exodus of Uyghurs from China led to tens of thousands arriving in Turkey from 2009, it is likely that a number also made their way to join militants in Waziristan. In the context of TIP’s evolution into a viable militant group, as opposed to merely a producer of propaganda, these new recruits may have presented a critical turning point for the organization.

Amidst this new influx of Uyghurs in TIP’s ranks, there were also other indications at this time that the group might be evolving into a more mature militant organization, perhaps even planning international ‘terrorist’ attacks. First, there was a case in Dubai where authorities had allegedly foiled a planned ‘terrorist’ attack involving two Uyghurs assumed to be connected with ETIM/TIP. The suspects, who were arrested while trying to buy explosives presumably to carry out an attack on a Chinese mall, allegedly admitted to training with Uyghurs in Waziristan prior to coming to the United Arab Emirates. However, it is unknown under what circumstances this information was extracted from the suspects and, if they had been with TIP in Pakistan, whether the organization had actually ordered the attack.⁷⁷ Furthermore, the judge hearing the case, while finding the suspect guilty, commuted his sentence, suggesting that the arrest had been made before the suspect had truly demonstrated his intentions.

Around the same time, a Uyghur refugee was arrested in Norway for allegedly planning a terrorist attack for Al-Qaeda with two other men, an Uzbek and a Kurd. The information surrounding this alleged planned attack is also unclear in part because, as in the incident in Dubai, the plotters were arrested prematurely.⁷⁸ In February of 2019, I was able to interview the Uyghur suspect in this case, Mikael Davud, who had recently finished a seven-year prison term for this alleged planned attack. While Davud admitted to me that he intended to bomb the Chinese embassy in Oslo, he adamantly denied that he had planned the attack in conjunction with either TIP or Al-Qaeda. Rather, he claimed that he was working independently of any international jihadist group, much like the Chechens who had carried out the attack on the Boston marathon in the US. It is also noteworthy that neither Al-Qaeda nor TIP ever claimed to be involved in either of the planned attacks in Dubai or Oslo.⁷⁹ Furthermore, since 2010, there have been very few similar accusations made against TIP for organizing what appear to be ‘terrorist attacks’, and none that have been conclusively proven. In this context, it is reasonable to assume that these alleged planned attacks were probably not actually TIP-initiated at all.

In retrospect, 2011–2012 did represent a shift in TIP’s capacities as well as perhaps in its goals, but it remained uncertain in what direction this shift was headed. The group was obviously accumulating new recruits, but it is still unclear how many of the Uyghur refugees leaving China were finding their way to Waziristan. Perhaps to take advantage of this exodus to attract more recruits, TIP’s media wing, Islam Awazi, created numerous videos in 2012 that glorified martyrdom and the life of a jihadist, while also highlighting oppression in China.⁸⁰ Even if it is questionable whether these videos could be readily accessed inside China at this time, they could certainly be viewed by those fleeing the country in Southeast Asia and Turkey. This strategy would seemingly pay off in the coming years as TIP evolved into a viable guerilla warfare force in Syria, but not necessarily an international ‘terrorist organization.’

However, the fact remains that TIP through 2012 was neither a viable guerilla warfare force nor a ‘terrorist organization,’ at least by this book’s working definition for this term. Rather, it was first and foremost a propaganda organization that emphasized the plight of the Uyghurs inside China and the role Islam could play in inspiring Uyghurs to liberate their homeland. TIP’s profile between 2008 and 2012 was quite different from that of Häsän Mäkhsum’s community in Afghanistan during the late 1990s, but the capabilities of the two organizations to carry out attacks in China were not that different. TIP deliberately sought to brand itself as a jihadist group that could threaten China and seemingly entered into an alliance with Al-Qaeda and the Pakistan Taliban willingly in order to do so. It also appeared to have adopted these organizations’ militant Salafist interpretations of Islam and sought to propagate these ideas among Uyghurs. However, it was mostly a shell organization, the primary activity of which was video production. Its few members, especially prior to 2011, likely contributed to Al-Qaeda’s fighting force in Afghanistan as individuals rather than as a group, and their pursuit of the Uyghur cause was mostly, if not exclusively, accomplished through the propaganda efforts of Islam Awazi.

By the end of 2012, TIP was about to become an entirely different organization. Over the course of 2012, three of its primary leaders were killed as a small number of new Uyghurs were arriving to join the group. Abdushukur, who had taken over the group as Emir after Abdul Häq’s alleged death by US drone in 2010, met a similar fate to his predecessor when he was killed by another US drone strike in 2012.⁸¹ Similarly, Commander Säyfullah, who had become famous as a result of his presence in videos threatening the Beijing Olympics, and the young religious scholar Abduläziz, were both killed in 2012 by other drone strikes.⁸² In effect, by the end of 2012, the only person apparently left from TIP’s original core group in 2008 was Abdullah Mansur. Furthermore, the fact that the rest of the group’s leadership had been killed by US drone strikes served to make the group increasingly anti-American as well as anti-Chinese.

At the same time, the group’s capacity as a militant movement was changing. For most of its history, the group had demonstrated that it had a substantial capability in the production of propaganda, but it remained unclear if it had a militant wing at all or was merely made up of a handful of foreign fighters aligned with Al-Qaeda and the Pakistan Taliban in Waziristan. However, by 2011, it was clear that it was establishing a larger community in the region that rivaled the strength of Häsän Mäkhsum’s community at its apex in Afghanistan. Furthermore, it had appeared to provide evidence that one of its ranks had succeeded in carrying out an attack inside China in Kashgar, albeit several years after leaving the group. As its number of fighters would continue to grow in the coming years, it was unclear whether it would develop into a militant group that would seriously challenge Chinese rule in the Uyghur homeland or, alternatively, merely into a tool of Al-Qaeda, which would exploit Uyghurs’ discontent in China to recruit them for a global jihad.

WHAT MAKES A TERRORIST ORGANIZATION?

The branding of groups or individuals as ‘terrorists’ has been notoriously subjective and politicized in the context of GWOT. Thus, the fact that ETIM was recognized as an international ‘terrorist threat’ and that TIP inherited this designation tells us little about these groups’ actual character. Should these groups ever have been recognized as ‘terrorist organizations’ and assumed to be enemies in GWOT? The answer, of course, depends upon one’s definition of ‘terrorism.’ The UN ‘Consolidated List,’ which provides something of an international consensus of who qualifies as a ‘terrorist,’ tells one nothing about a militant group’s actions, goals, or the legitimacy of their cause. Rather, whether a group is on this list is determined exclusively by their association with Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or, more recently, Daesh. Per these criteria, Mäkhsum’s group should never have been listed, since they had no formal organizational affiliation with any of these groups, but TIP would qualify, not because of its actions, intents, or actual threat to others, but because of its association with Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

However, in terms of this book’s working definition, which is based on the actions of militant groups, I would argue that neither Mäkhsum’s community nor TIP qualify as ‘terrorist organizations’ because neither has a clear record of carrying out premeditated political violence that deliberately targets civilians. There is no evidence that Mäkhsum’s group ever succeeded in carrying out any acts of political violence during its existence, let alone any which deliberately targeted civilians. In terms of TIP, these questions are more debatable. TIP claimed to have carried out bus bombings killing Chinese civilians in Shanghai and Kunming in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics, but the PRC denied these claims. Furthermore, while there were credible, but questionable, claims that TIP may have planned a ‘terrorist attack’ in Dubai and a bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Oslo in 2010, the organization did not claim credit for either. In reality, it is questionable whether TIP had the capacity to carry out any of these alleged acts of violence prior to 2012. Rather, evidence suggests that TIP at this time was mostly a producer of propaganda videos, which did seek to incite Uyghurs inside China to violence and strike fear in the Chinese populous. Thus, while open to debate, I would suggest that TIP was also not a ‘terrorist organization’ in 2012 per this book’s working definition. Rather, it was a small and loosely affiliated group of Uyghurs participating in multi-national para-military groups that were fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The activities that united them as a group were not this participation in Afghanistan’s conflict, but their video-making exploits, which sought to impact events inside China.

Aside from not being a ‘terrorist organization,’ it is questionable whether TIP even posed a viable threat to the security of the PRC. Aside from the 2011 attack in Kashgar mentioned above, which involved one person who had been presumably trained by the organization years earlier, there is no clear evidence that TIP had the capacity to carry out violence inside China. Furthermore, even if the group’s videos had a significant audience among Uyghurs inside China (and there is no evidence that they did), it is difficult to argue that this propaganda helped to incite Uyghurs to violence. There were very few acts of premeditated political violence reported to be perpetrated by Uyghurs inside China during GWOT’s first decade and there were plenty of reasons for such violence when it did occur that had nothing to do with TIP. If the TIP videos had any real impact on events inside China through 2012, it was less to incite Uyghur violence and more to fuel the fear of a purported Uyghur ‘terrorist threat’ among government officials and even the Chinese public writ large. In this respect, TIP did contribute to the PRC’s insecurity indirectly by inviting even harsher state repression of their fellow Uyghurs still inside China, and these repressive policies would eventually lead more Uyghurs to violent resistance in the coming years.

In short, TIP’s rather voluminous video catalog as of 2012 had ensured that the topic of ‘counterterrorism’ remained front and center in Chinese policy discussions about Uyghurs, but I would also argue that this did not reflect an actual substantive ‘terrorist threat’ from Uyghurs. The atmosphere in the Uyghur homeland had become more tense during GWOT’s first decade, but these tensions had little to do with ‘terrorism,’ real or perceived. Rather, the tensions had much more to do with development, settler colonialism, and the threat of assimilation. These pressures, not a ‘terrorism threat,’ would be the root causes of the Urumqi riots, and they would continue to fuel violence from both security organs and Uyghur citizens, especially in the south, in the coming years. While TIP would make videos to fan this violence, it would become more a justification for state-led violent responses to this situation than an inspiration for citizen-led violent resistance. Presumably, officials in the upper echelons of the Party knew from their access to intelligence that TIP did not pose a serious threat to the PRC, but they also likely viewed the organization as a convenient justification for more intense securitization and suppression of dissent. However, it is also likely that many lower-level officials implementing policy in the Uyghur region at this time viewed TIP as a serious threat that had infiltrated the population and needed to be mitigated by any means necessary.