Turkistan Islamic Party | |
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تۈركىستان ئىسلام پارتىيىسى | |
Leaders |
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Governing body | Shura Council |
Dates of operation | 1997–present |
Group(s) | Turkistan Islamic Party in Syria [4] |
Motives | An Islamic state in Xinjiang and the entire Central Asia, eventually Caliphate [5] |
Headquarters | Idlib Governorate, Syria (largest operation base) |
Active regions |
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Ideology | Decolonization Sunni Islamism Islamic fundamentalism Pan-Islamism Separatism |
Size | 1,000 in Afghanistan (2022 UN report) [10] 4,000 in Syria |
Allies |
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Opponents | State Opponents Non-state Opponents Islamic State - Khorasan Province [15] Contents |
Battles and wars | |
Designated as a terrorist group by |
Turkistan Islamic Party | |||||||
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Chinese name | |||||||
Simplified Chinese | 突厥斯坦伊斯兰党 | ||||||
Traditional Chinese | 突厥斯坦伊斯蘭黨 | ||||||
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Uyghur name | |||||||
Uyghur | تۈركىستان ئىسلام پارتىيىسى | ||||||
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History of Xinjiang |
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The Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) [note 1] is a Uyghur Islamic extremist organization founded in Pakistan by Hasan Mahsum. Its stated goals are to establish an Islamic state in Xinjiang and Central Asia. [5]
The Chinese government asserts that the TIP is synonymous with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM). ETIM has been described by scholars as demanding total independence and supporting or being indifferent to more radical methods driven by religious and ethnic motives. [17] [18]
Influenced by the success of the Afghan mujahideen against the Soviets in the Soviet–Afghan War, the ETIP (later become known as TIP in 2001) was established in September 1997 by Hasan Mahsum in Pakistan. After 11 September 2001, the Chinese regime strove to include its repression of Uyghur opposition within the international dynamic of the struggle against Islamic terrorist networks. [19] Their slogans contained anti-Communist rhetoric and calls for uniting Turks, indicating a movement akin to Islamic pan-Turkism historically congruent with southern Xinjiang rather than pure, radical Salafi jihadism or religious extremism. The revolt lasted several days and was put down by the Chinese government, which deployed significant forces to suppress the insurrection. The Chinese government viewed them as a jihadist movement akin to the mujahideen in Afghanistan across the border which gave birth to more radical movements such as the Party of Allah and the Islamic Movement of East Turkistan. [19]
The Syrian branch of the TIP is active in the Syrian civil war and are largely grouped in Idlib. [20] [14]
Abdul Hameed, Abdul Azeez Makhdoom and Abdul Hakeem Makhdoom launched the Hizbul Islam Li-Turkestan (Islamic Party of Turkistan or Turkistan Islamic Movement) in 1940. They were killed, imprisoned or driven underground by the China by the late 1950s. [21] After being set free from prison in 1979, Abdul Hakeem Makhdoom instructed Muhammad Amin Jan and other Uyghurs in his version of Islam. [22]
The East Turkistan Islamic Party (ETIP) was organised in Pakistan by Hasan Mahsum and Abudukadir Yapuquan in September 1997. [23] [24] [25] In 1998, Mahsum moved the ETIP (which China claims is the ETIM)'s headquarters to Kabul, taking shelter under Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. [26] The leader, Hasan Mahsum, was killed by a Pakistani raid on a suspected Al-Qaeda camp in South Waziristan in 2003, leading to the group's collapse. [27] [25]
However, ETIP resurged after the Iraq War inflamed mujaheddin sentiment. [28] The group was mentioned again in 2007, when China announced it raided its militants in Akto County. [29] ETIM received material support from the Taliban and had links to the Pakistani Taliban (Tehreek i Taliban Pakistan), [26] prompting China to urge Pakistan to take action against the militants in 2009. [30]
The new organization called itself the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) to reflect its new domain and abandoned usage of the name ETIP,[ when? ] although China still calls it by the name ETIM. [29] [31] The Turkistan Islamic Party was originally subordinated to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) but then[ when? ] split off and declared its name as TIP and started making itself known by promoting itself with its Islamic Turkistan magazine and Voice of Islam media in Chinese, Arabic, Russian, and Turkish in order to reach out to global jihadists. [32] Control over the Uyghur and Uzbek militants was transferred to the Pakistani Taliban from the Afghan Taliban after 2001, so violence against the militant's countries of origins can no longer restrained by the Afghan Taliban since the Pakistani Taliban does not have a stake in doing so. [33] [34]
In 2013, the group announced it was moving fighters to Syria, its profile in China and even Afghanistan and Pakistan has decisively waned since then, while in Syria it has risen. [35]
The TIP has links to al-Qaeda and affiliated groups such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, [36] and the Pakistani Taliban. [37] The US has designated it as having received "training and financial assistance" from al-Qaeda. [38]
University of Virginia associate professor Philip B. K. Potter wrote in 2013 that, even though "throughout the 1990s, Chinese authorities went to great lengths to publicly link organizations active in Xinjiang—particularly the ETIM—to al-Qaeda [...] the best information indicates that before 2001, the relationship included some training and funding but relatively little operational cooperation." [39] [38] Meanwhile, specific incidents were downplayed by Chinese authorities as isolated criminal acts. [40] [41] However, in 1998 the group's headquarters were moved to Kabul, in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, while "China’s ongoing security crackdown in Xinjiang has forced the most militant Uyghur separatists into volatile neighboring countries, such as Pakistan," Potter writes, "where they are forging strategic alliances with, and even leading, jihadist factions affiliated with al-Qaeda and the Taliban." [40]
However, according to the US Treasury, TIP member Abdul Haq al-Turkistani joined al-Qaeda's Majlis-ash-Shura (executive leadership council) in 2005 [42] and TIP member Abdul Shakoor Turkistani was appointed military commander of its forces in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. [43] Abdul Haq was considered sufficiently influential by the al-Qaeda leadership that he served as a mediator between rival Taliban factions and played a role in military planning. [44]
In the mid-2010s, TIP's relationship to al-Qaeda was still contested but they became more closely aligned and TIP leader head Abdul Haq confirmed loyalty to al-Qaeda in May 2016. [45] In 2014, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, the al-Qaeda aligned al-Fajr Media Center began to distribute TIP promotional material, placing it in the "jihadist mainstream". [46] The East Turkestan independence movement was endorsed in the serial Islamic Spring's 9th release by Ayman Al-Zawahiri in 2016. Zawahiri confirmed that the Afghanistan war after 9/11 included the participation of Uighurs and that the jihadists like Zarwaqi, Bin Ladin and the Uighur Hasan Mahsum were provided with refuge together in Afghanistan under Taliban rule. [47] [ vague ] [48] This was before the Bishkek Chinese Embassy Bombing. [49] The Turkistan Islamic Party slammed and attacked Assad, Russia, NATO, the United States and other western countries in its propaganda outlets such as the Islamic Turkestan magazine and its Telegram channel. [50]
In February 2018, airstrikes were conducted by American forces in Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province against training camps belonging to the Taliban and the Turkistan Islamic Party. [51] [52] [53] [54] [55] Speaking with Pentagon reporters, US Air Force Maj. Gen. James B. Hecker, commander of NATO Air Command Afghanistan was quoted "The destruction of these training facilities prevents terrorists from planning any acts near the border with China and Tajikistan. The strikes also destroyed stolen Afghan National Army vehicles in the process of being converted to vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices. ETIM enjoys support from the Taliban in the mountains of Badakhshan, so hitting these Taliban training facilities and squeezing the Taliban's support networks degrades ETIM capabilities." [54]
After the 2021 Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, TIP was removed from Badakhshan, as the new Afghan government seeks aid from China. [56]
TIP (ETIM) sent the "Turkistan Brigade" (Katibat Turkistani), also known as the Turkistan Islamic Party in Syria to take part in the Syrian Civil War as part of a network of al-Qaeda linked groups alongside al-Nusra, most notably in the 2015 Jisr al-Shughur offensive where they were part of the Army of Conquest coalition. [57] [58] [59] They have been described as well organized, experienced and as having an important role in offensives against President Bashar al-Assad's forces in Syria's northern regions. [14]
The NEFA Foundation, an American terrorist analyst foundation, translated and released a jihad article from ETIM, whose membership it said consisted primarily of "Uyghur Muslims from Western China." The TIP's primary goal is the independence of East Turkestan. [60] ETIM continues this theme of contrasting "Muslims" and "Chinese", in a six-minute video in 2008, where "Commander Seyfullah" warns Muslims not to bring their children to the 2008 Summer Olympics, and also saying "do not stay on the same bus, on the same train, on the same plane, in the same buildings, or any place the Chinese are". [61]
TIP is led by Abdul Haq al-Turkistani, who's the group's Emir and leader of the Shura Council. [62] The Council also includes a Deputy Emir, and the heads of at least three groups: Religious Education Division, Military Affairs Division and Information Center. [62] There have also been reports of a Intelligence Division and a Logistics Division. [62]
In 2008, TIP's Ṣawt al-Islām (Voice of Islam) media arm was created and began releasing video messages. [35] The full name of their media center is "Turkistan Islamic Party Voice of Islam Media Center" (Uyghur: تۈركىستان ئىسلام پارتىيىسى ئىسلام ئاۋازى تەشۋىقات مەركىزى; Türkistan Islam Partiyisi Islam Awazi Teshwiqat Merkizi). [63] [64] [65]
In October 2008, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security released a list of eight terrorists linked to ETIM, including some of the leadership, with detailed charges. [66] They are:
Name | Aliases | Charges | Whereabouts |
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Memetimin Memet (Memetiming Memeti) | Abdul Haq | Leading the organization, inciting ethnic tensions in 2006 and 2007, buying explosives, organizing terrorist attacks against the 2008 Summer Olympics | Thought to have been killed in North Waziristan drone attack [67] [68] Resurfaced in 2014 [1] |
Emeti Yakuf (Ehmet Yakup) | Abu Abdurehman, Sayfullah, Abdul Jabar | Threatening to use biological and chemical weapons against servicepeople and Western politicians for the 2008 Olympics, disseminating manuals on explosives and poisons | Killed in North Waziristan drone attack [69] |
Memetituersun Yiming (Memet Tursun Imin) | Abdul Ali | Raised funds for ETIM, tested bombs in the run-up to the Olympics | Since 2008, Western Asia |
Memetituersun Abuduhalike (Memet Tursun Abduxaliq) | Metursun Abduxaliq, Ansarul, Najmuddin | Attacked government organizations, money laundering for ETIM operations, buying vehicles and renting houses for attacks | Unknown |
Xiamisidingaihemaiti Abudumijiti (Shamseden ehmet Abdumijit) | Sayyid | Recruiting for ETIM in the Middle East, blew up a Chinese supermarket | Unknown |
Aikemilai Wumaierjiang (Akrem Omerjan) | Assisted Xiamisidingaihemaiti Abudumijiti in the supermarket attack | Unknown | |
Yakuf Memeti (Yakup Memet) | Abdujalil Ahmet, Abdullah, Punjab | Sneaked into China illegally to gather information on Chinese neighborhoods, a failed suicide attack against oil refinery | Killed in North Waziristan drone attack [70] |
Tuersun Toheti (Tursun Tohti) | Mubather, Nurullah | Organizing a terror team for the 2008 Olympics, buying raw materials for them and requesting chemical formulas for explosives | Killed in North Waziristan drone attack [70] |
The United States captured 22 Uyghur militants from combat zones in Afghanistan in 2006 on information that they were linked to Al-Qaeda. [71] They were imprisoned without trial for five to seven years, where they testified that they were trained by ETIM leader Abdul Haq, at an ETIM training camp. After being found No Longer Enemy Combatant, [72] i.e. never having been enemy combatants, a panel of judges ordered them released into the United States. Despite the alarm of politicians that the release of embittered former Guantanamo detainees into the United States was unsafe and illegal, the United States did not want to release them back to China as they were wanted on charges that included arson and illegal manufacture of explosives, [73] though ABC News wrote that "It is believed that if the United States returned the men to China, they could be tortured." [74]
Since the September 11 attacks, the group has been designated as a terrorist organization by the following countries and international organizations:
Former:
In 2009, Dru C. Gladney, an authority on research on ethnic and cultural nationalism in Asia, said that there was "a credibility gap" about the group since the majority of information on ETIM "was traced back to Chinese sources", and that some believe ETIM to be part of a US-China quid pro quo, where China supported the US-led War on Terror, and "support of the US for the condemnation of ETIM was connected to that support." [133] The Uyghur American Association has publicly doubted the ETIM's existence. [134]
Andrew McGregor, writing for the Jamestown Foundation in 2010, noted that "though there is no question a small group of Uyghur militants fought alongside their Taliban hosts against the Northern Alliance [...] the scores of terrorists Beijing claimed that Bin Laden was sending to China in 2002 never materialized" and that "the TIP’s "strategy" of making loud and alarming threats (attacks on the Olympics, use of biological and chemical weapons, etc.) without any operational follow-up has been enormously effective in promoting China's efforts to characterize Uyghur separatists as terrorists." [135]
On 16 June 2009, US Representative Bill Delahunt convened hearings to examine how organizations were added to the US blacklist in general, and how the ETIM was added in particular. [136] Uyghur expert Sean Roberts testified that the ETIM was new to him, that it wasn't until it was blacklisted that he heard of the group, and claimed that "it is perfectly reasonable to assume that the organization no longer exists at all." [136] [ dead link ] The Congressional Research Service reported that the first published mention of the group was in the year 2000, but that China attributed attacks to it that had occurred up to a decade earlier. [136] [ dead link ]
Stratfor has noted repeated unexplained attacks on Chinese buses in 2008 have followed a history of ETIM targeting Chinese infrastructure, and noted the group's splintering and subsequent reorganization following the death of Mahsum. [137]
In 2010, intelligence analysts J. Todd Reed and Diana Raschke acknowledge that reporting in China presents obstacles not found in countries where information is not so tightly controlled. However, they found that ETIM's existence and activities could be confirmed independently of Chinese government sources, using information gleaned from ETIM's now-defunct website, reports from human rights groups and academics, and testimony from the Uyghur detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Reed & Raschke also question the information put out by Uyghur expatriates that deny ETIM's existence or impact, as the Uyghurs who leave Xinjiang are those who object most to government policy, are unable to provide first-hand analysis, and have an incentive to exaggerate repression and downplay militancy. They say that ETIM was "obscure but not unknown" before the September 11 attacks, citing "Western, Russian, and Chinese media sources" that have "documented the ETIM's existence for nearly 20 years". [138]
In 2010, Raffaello Pantucci of Jamestown Foundation wrote about the convictions of two men linked to a ETIM cell in Dubai with a plot to attack a shopping mall. [139]
Nick Holdstock, in a 2015 New York Times interview, said that no organization is taking responsibility for attacks in Xinjiang, and that there is not enough proof to blame any organization for the attacks, that most "terrorism" there is "unsubstantiated", and that posting internet videos online is the only thing done by the "vague and shadowy" ETIM. [140]
In 2016, David Volodzko wrote that the Al-Qaeda allied Uyghur Turkistan Islamic Party members were fighting in Syria, and refuted and disproved the claims that Uyghurs were not in Syria made by "The Sydney Morning Herald", the Daily Mail, and Bernstein's article in the New York Review of Books. [141]
Muhanad Hage Ali wrote on Uyghur Turkistan Islamic Party jihadists in Syria for Al Arabiya. [142]
In 2019, Uran Botobekov from ModernDiplomat has written about the Turkistan Islamic Party along with other Central-Asian jihadist groups in a report titled Think like Jihadist: Anatomy of Central Asian Salafi groups. [143] [144]
East Turkestan or East Turkistan, also called Uyghuristan, is a loosely-defined geographical region in the northwestern part of the People's Republic of China, which varies in meaning by context and usage. The term was coined in the 19th century by Russian Turkologists, including Nikita Bichurin, who intended the name to replace the common Western term for the region, "Chinese Turkestan", which referred to the Tarim Basin in Southern Xinjiang or Xinjiang as a whole during the Qing dynasty. Beginning in the 17th century, Altishahr, which means "Six Cities" in Uyghur, became the Uyghur name for the Tarim Basin. Uyghurs also called the Tarim Basin "Yettishar," which means "Seven Cities," and even "Sekkizshahr", which means "Eight Cities" in Uyghur. Chinese dynasties from the Han dynasty to the Tang dynasty had called an overlapping area the "Western Regions".
The East Turkestan independence movement is a political movement that seeks the independence of East Turkestan, a large and sparsely-populated region in northwest China, as a nation state for the Uyghur people. The region is currently administered by the People's Republic of China (PRC) in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR). Within the movement, there is widespread support for the region to be renamed, since "Xinjiang" is seen by independence activists as a colonial name. "East Turkestan" is the best-known proposed name as it is the historical geographic name of the region and the name of the two independent states that briefly existed in the region in the first half of the 20th century.
The East Turkestan Liberation Organization (ETLO) was a secessionist Uyghur organization that advocated for an independent Uyghur state named East Turkestan in the Western Chinese province known as Xinjiang. The organization was established in Turkey in late 1997 to fight against the Chinese government in Xinjiang, a territory of ethnic Uyghur majority.
Ahmed Adil is a citizen of China who was held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps in Cuba.
Ahmad Tourson or Ahmad Abdulahad, is a Uyghur refugee unlawfully detained for more than seven years in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps. The detention occurred despite becoming clear early on that he was innocent. The Department of Defense reports that Tourson was born on January 26, 1971, in Xinjiang Province, China, and assigned him the Internment Serial Number 201. Tourson is one of approximately two dozen detainees from the Uighur ethnic group.
Hasan Mahsum, also known as Abu-Muhammad al-Turkestani and Ashan Sumut, was an Uyghur militant who was the leader of the Turkistan Islamic Party, an Islamic extremist group suspected of having ties with Al Qaeda. He was shot dead in a counter-terrorism operation on October 2, 2003 by the Pakistani Army.
The January 2007 Xinjiang raid was carried out on January 5, 2007, by Chinese paramilitary police against a suspected East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) training camp in Akto County in the Pamir plateau.
Terrorism in China refers to the use of terrorism to cause a political or ideological change in the People's Republic of China. The definition of terrorism differs among scholars, between international and national bodies and across time and there is no legally binding definition internationally. In the cultural setting of China, the term is relatively new and ambiguous.
The Islamic Jihad Union is a militant Islamist organization founded in 2002 as a splinter group of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). Headquartered in North Waziristan, a mountainous region of northwest Pakistan, bordering Afghanistan, the group has been affiliated with both Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
Abdul Haq al-Turkistani is a Uyghur Islamic militant who leads the Turkistan Islamic Party. The United States Treasury reported he took over leadership of the organization in 2003, following the death of its previous leader, and took a seat on al-Qaeda's shura in 2005.
The 2011 Kashgar attacks were a series of knife and bomb attacks in Kashgar, Xinjiang, China on July 30 and 31, 2011. On July 30, two Uyghur men hijacked a truck, killed its driver, and drove into a crowd of pedestrians. They got out of the truck and stabbed six people to death and injured 27 others. One of the attackers was killed by the crowd; the other was brought into custody. On July 31, a chain of two explosions started a fire at a downtown restaurant. A group of armed Uyghur men killed two people inside of the restaurant and four people outside, injuring 15 other people. Police shot five suspects dead, detained four, and killed two others who initially escaped arrest.
The Xinjiang conflict, also known as the East Turkistan conflict, Uyghur–Chinese conflict or Sino-East Turkistan conflict, is an ethnic geopolitical conflict in what is now China's far-northwest autonomous region of Xinjiang, also known as East Turkistan. It is centred around the Uyghurs, a Turkic ethnic group who constitute a plurality of the region's population.
On 26 June 2013, rioting broke out in Shanshan County, in the autonomous region of Xinjiang, China. 35 people died in the riots, including 22 civilians, two police officers and eleven attackers.
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On 28 October 2013, a car ran over pedestrians and crashed in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China, in a terrorist suicide attack. Five people died in the incident; three inside the vehicle and two others nearby. Police identified the driver as Usmen Hasan and the two passengers as his wife, Gulkiz Gini, and his mother, Kuwanhan Reyim. Dozens of people were injured.
On the early morning of Wednesday, 30 July 2014, Juma Tahir, the imam of China's largest mosque, the Id Kah Mosque in northwestern Kashgar, was stabbed to death by three young male Uyghur extremists. Religious leaders across denominations condemned the attack.
The Turkistan Islamic Party in Syria is the Syrian branch of the Turkistan Islamic Party, an armed Uyghur Jihadist group with a presence in the Syrian Civil War. While the TIP has been active in Syria, the organization's core leadership is based in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with a presence in its home territory of China.
Abu Omar al-Turkistani was a high-ranking commander for several al-Qaeda-affiliated groups, such as the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU), the Al-Nusra Front and the Turkistan Islamic Party in Syria (TIP). Active as a militant since at least 2001, al-Turkistani fought in both the War in Afghanistan and the Syrian Civil War. By late 2016, he was considered to be "one of top ten leading 'jihadists' in Syria" and one of the "four most prominent leaders" of TIP. Shortly before his death, al-Turkistani helped to facilitate the merger of many Islamist rebel groups into Tahrir al-Sham. He was eventually killed by an American drone strike on 1 January 2017.
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Post 9/11: labeling Uighurs terrorists
...We are fighting China... China is an enemy who has invaded Muslim countries and occupies Muslim East Turkestan. There is no greater obligation, aside from belief in Allah, than expelling the enemies of Muslims from our countries.... We are fighting China to make them testify that 'there is no God but Allah, Mohammed is the Messenger of Allah' and make them convert to Islam....
The leader of a Chinese separatist movement, believed to have links with al-Qaeda, has been killed in a US missile strike, Pakistani and Taliban officials have said.
Among the 18 people reported to have been killed was Emeti Yakuf, a senior leader of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a group from western China whose members are Chinese Uighur Muslim militants.