Chinese interrogators held burning cigarettes to Ali’s face, tied him against a tree and beat him as they tried to get the Uighur farmer to say he took part in an ethnic riot that killed dozens in western China.
That winter night in 2009 in the Chinese city of Kashgar set Ali on a path that ended in northern Syria, where he picked up a Kalashnikov rifle under the black flag of jihad and dreamed of launching attacks against the Chinese rulers of his homeland.
Thousands of Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority from western China, have since 2013 traveled to Syria to train with the Uighur militant group Turkistan Islamic Party and fight alongside al-Qaeda, playing key roles in several battles.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s troops are now clashing with Uighur fighters as the six-year conflict nears its endgame.
However, the end of Syria’s war might be the beginning of China’s worst fears.
“We didn’t care how the fighting went or who Assad was,” said Ali, who would only give his first name out of a fear of reprisals against his family back home. “We just wanted to learn how to use the weapons and then go back to China.”
Uighur militants have killed hundreds in attacks in China as part of a decades-long insurgency that targeted symbols of Chinese authority and, in recent years, civilians.
China is also a victim of terror, its officials say, and Uighur men are influenced by global jihadi ideology. Muslims in the Uighur homeland of Xinjiang, as one Chinese official said in August, “are the happiest in the world.”
However, rare and extensive Associated Press interviews with nine Uighurs who had left China to train and fight in Syria showed that Uighurs do not neatly fit the profile of fighters answering the call of jihad.
There was a police trainer who journeyed thousands of kilometers with his wife and children to Syria, a war zone. A farmer who balked at fundamentalist Islam even though he charged into battle alongside al-Qaeda. A shopkeeper who prayed five times a day and then at night huddled with others in a ruined Syrian neighborhood to study Zionist history.
And there was Ali, a short, soft-spoken 30-year-old with a primary school education who knew little of the world beyond his 14 hectare farm when he left China.
For Uighurs like Ali, China had become unlivable since the government launched an expansive security crackdown in Xinjiang after the 2009 ethnic riots in Urumqi, the regional capital, that killed nearly 200 people.
As the repression mounted, more than 10,000 Uighurs fled China, Uighur exiles say.
Ali paid human smugglers to get him to Turkey, then followed his brother to Syria, where he said they could learn weapons training and return to China.
“We’ll avenge our relatives being tortured in Chinese jail,” his brother said.
They spent two-and-a-half years in Syria.
Uighur advocates and Syrian and Chinese officials estimate that at least 5,000 Uighurs have gone to Syria to fight — although many have since left. Among those, several hundred joined the Islamic State group, according to former fighters and Syrian officials.
When the Uighurs arrived in Jisr al-Shughour, a strategic Syrian town on the edge of al-Assad’s stronghold of Latakia region, the men undertook three-month training sessions in the use of Soviet AKM rifles, shoulder-mounted rocket-propelled grenade launchers, physical conditioning and mapping.
Trainers showed off their prized cache of captured US M-16s and German G3 rifles, but each fighter received only a battered AKM and cheap Chinese ammunition.
Boys as young as 12 and 13 — mostly orphans — attended religious classes and did physical training. An older Uighur would convene young fighters in the evenings to discuss history and politics.
One fighter, Rozi Mehmet, had left the ancient oasis town of Hotan three years ago and hiked into Syria to join a class of 52 Turkistan Islamic Party trainees.
Within six months, he would be on the front lines with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher strapped to his skinny back, sprinting toward government positions near Jisr al-Shughour.
“I didn’t feel fear,” he said. “If I felt fear, how could I be able to build my country?”
Several Uighur fighters said that, in their minds, there was a distinct line between themselves and the Muslim militants they fought beside. Some Uighurs complained about being stuck in Syria instead of attacking China, as they had been promised.
“We fight for them and help them control the country and then Uighurs are left with nothing,” Mehmet said.
Many Uighur militants have grown tired of the war and are looking to leave, said Seyit Tumturk, a Uighur activist in Turkey who often speaks to fighters in Syria.
He said Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) ambitious project to develop railway lines, ports and other infrastructure linking various regions to China makes Beijing vulnerable to militant attacks abroad.
The Islamic State group in June took credit for kidnapping and killing two Chinese teachers in Pakistan’s Baluchistan Province, which is a cornerstone of Beijing’s Belt and Road infrastructure project.
In Kyrgyzstan, state security said a suicide bombing of the Chinese embassy in Bishkek was ordered by Uighur terrorist groups in Syria financed by al-Qaeda’s al-Nusra Front.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the Turkistan Islamic Party a security threat for the Middle East and urged Syria and Turkey to cut off their ability to cross borders.
The ministry said that Beijing has invested heavily in Xinjiang’s development and protected the rights of minorities, but would not hesitate to curb terrorism and separatism.
For many Uighurs in exile, returning to their homeland was out of the question.
“Who wants to live in a war zone?” said Rozi Tohti, a middle-aged fighter from Hotan. “We once had paradise in our country, but it was being erased by the Chinese, so instead we looked for paradise in Syria.”
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was