In many ways, this book reads like a historical narrative, albeit one reflecting on relatively recent history. After summarizing the first 250 years of the colonial relationship between modern China and Uyghurs in the first chapter, the book wades through the last nineteen years of history in an effort to understand the subsequent impact of China’s persistent assertions since 2001 that it has long faced an existential ‘terrorist threat’ from Uyghurs. This historical perspective is also meant to contextualize the current human tragedy of cultural genocide taking place in the Uyghur homeland and to examine how the present extreme nature of Chinese state policies towards the Uyghurs evolved. If the book’s content is largely historical, as an anthropologist, my analysis inevitably benefits from an ethnographic lens that draws from my experiences doing fieldwork among Uyghurs over the last 25 years. In particular, this perspective allows me to tell a story that is not just about state policies, but also about Uyghur responses to these policies and the fundamental disconnect between the two.
However, fieldwork among Uyghurs inherently presents methodological challenges. Conducting ethnographic research inside the Uyghur region has always been politically sensitive. Foreign researchers have long been monitored, especially when traveling outside the region’s capital city of Urumqi, and interviewing informants about anything sensitive could place them in harm’s way, especially if there exists recorded evidence of conversations. Furthermore, it has been virtually impossible for foreign researchers to live with a Uyghur family for an extended period of time in rural areas with dense Uyghur populations, precluding long-term participant observation outside urban contexts.
When doing research for my dissertation during the mid and late 1990s, I dealt with these challenges by basing myself in Kazakhstan where I lived with a Uyghur family in a densely populated Uyghur community. There, I could more freely conduct participant observation in local Uyghur communities and record unfettered interviews with Uyghurs from China who came to Kazakhstan to visit relatives or trade at the local bazaars. During that time, I would also frequently take month-long trips to the Uyghur region to conduct research there, but I would refrain from engaging in any recorded interviews, which could put those with whom I spoke in harm’s way. This provided me with plenty of data for my dissertation on cross-border relations between the Uyghurs of Kazakhstan and China, but my personal fieldwork challenges were to become significantly more daunting after finishing my dissertation.
While finishing my dissertation, I wrote a chapter for an edited volume on the Uyghurs and their homeland, entitled Xinjiang: China’s Muslim Borderland, which was to become extremely controversial inside China.1 The manuscript presented an overview of issues relating to the region, including the history and present situation of the long tense relationship between Uyghurs and modern Chinese states. While the book was an academic text with chapters written by many of the top scholars on Uyghurs and their homeland in the US, Chinese authorities reacted to its publication by suggesting that the volume was a US government project intended to promote Uyghur ‘separatism.’2 Subsequently, the contributors to this volume have consistently been denied visas to travel and conduct research in China, earning them the ominous title of the ‘Xinjiang thirteen.’ As a result, my last fieldwork in the Uyghur homeland was conducted in the summer of 2000, just prior to my return to the US to write up my dissertation. This lack of access to the region, while largely beyond my control, represents the most significant limitation on my research
Admittedly, I never applied for another Chinese visa. As I watched my colleagues go to great lengths to gain access to China with only nominal success, I opted to focus my research on the Central Asian region more broadly, relegating my study of Uyghur communities to those who had left their homeland for other countries at different times historically. While living in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan between 2001 and 2006, I was able to continue my research with the local Uyghur communities in these countries, including Uyghurs from China who were visiting the region. More recently, I have spent numerous summer months in Turkey over the last twelve years, conducting research within the Uyghur refugee community that has grown in that country throughout the 2000s, and especially after 2009. Additionally, I have engaged with Uyghur refugees in the US and Europe on a regular basis.
Through these experiences, I have been able to gather a substantial number of interviews with Uyghurs, many of whom lived in the Uyghur homeland as recently as 2016. Furthermore, since these interviews were conducted outside China, the interviewees have been particularly candid about their experiences. Nonetheless, given the present sensitive predicament of Uyghurs globally, but especially in their homeland, I refrain from identifying in the book the names or any personal details of those whom I interviewed throughout this research. The only exceptions are Uyghur public figures who are well known and politically active.
While I have not physically been in the Uyghur region of China since 2000, I have compensated for this absence by seeking out subsequent waves of Uyghur refugees who have left their homeland and were able to recount important aspects of their lives there during different periods. Additionally, the book’s analysis benefits extensively from the works of, and my personal communications with, scholars who continued to enjoy access to the Uyghur region. This includes scholars, such as Joanne Smith-Finley and Rachel Harris, whose long-term ethnographic research had taken place during roughly the same time that I had access to the region, but who were able to subsequently return there on a regular basis over the last two decades. Additionally, it includes an important group of younger scholars whose long-term fieldwork in the region took place at different times throughout the 2000s, including Rian Thum, David Tobin, David Brophy, Sandrine Catris, Elise Marie Anderson, Sarah Tynen, Darren Byler, and Timothy Grose.
If interviews with exiles and engagement with the work of other scholars helped me piece together the experiences of Uyghurs inside their homeland during the last two decades despite my lack of access to the region, my research on Uyghur militant groups outside China, who have been identified as ‘terrorists,’ presented particularly vexing challenges. First, the secondary literature on these groups tends to be speculative and written by those who are neither experts on Uyghur culture and history nor speak or read the Uyghur language. As a result, this literature often includes factual errors and asserts questionable conclusions based on comparative studies of ‘terrorist’ groups without any local contextualization. Second, doing ethnographic research among Uyghur militants where they have been based in Afghanistan, Waziristan, or Syria is almost impossible or at least extremely dangerous.
Fortunately, I have been able to interview several Uyghurs who have been associated with militant groups in these regions and have heard their own accounts of the reasons they ended up with these groups, the conditions in which these groups operate, and the activities they carry out. In addition, I have supplemented these interviews by watching hundreds of videos produced in the Uyghur language by the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP), the primary Uyghur militant group active since 2008 and the main justification used by the PRC for its claims that it faces a ‘terrorist threat’ from within its Uyghur population. While ‘terrorism experts,’ almost all of whom lack the Uyghur language skills to sufficiently analyze such sources, often look at such videos for indications of leadership changes, alliances with larger jihadist organizations, or claims of responsibility for specific attacks, I watched them more as a means of trying to understand the group’s daily life, aspirations, and history as well as the nature of its community. Of particular usefulness in this regard are the videos honoring martyrs, which provide detailed biographies of those who have joined TIP, including stories of the repression they experienced inside China, their birthplace, and education. Given the sheer volume of videos made by TIP since 2008, watching them chronologically provides something of a visual ethnography of the group’s history. As a result of this research, I would suggest that the book’s account of Uyghur militant religious nationalist groups since 1998 represents the manuscript’s most original research and provides a new perspective on the myths and realities of the PRC’s claims that it faces a ‘terrorist threat’ from Uyghurs.