International Link (Hong Kong)
October 2014
“Terrorism
in China is starting to look more like what is seen elsewhere in
Southeast Asia and the Middle East,” said Andrew Small, a
Transatlantic Fellow at the
German
Marshall Fund of the United States.
Such
a statement would have been unheard of a decade ago, even a year ago,
especially outside of Chinese officialdom. But over the past year
the frequency of terrorist attacks, albeit low level, has increased
in the country, particularly in Xinjiang province in the far West.
Police stations have been attacked, officials stabbed, and there was
a double-suicide bombing at the Urumqi railway station on the final
day of President Xi Jingping's visit to Xinjiang – where he was
focusing, ironically, on counter-terrorism – in April, 2014. There
have also been attacks in cities around the country, with one of the
most high profile in Tiananmen Square in October, 2013.
Such
attacks have a commonality – they have been carried out by Uighers,
the ethnic, predominantly Sunni Muslim minority from Xinjiang. As a
result, Beijing has stepped up its counter-terrorism, or
counter-insurgency (COIN), policies in Xinjiang, with President Xi
calling for “nets spread from the earth to the sky” as part of a
year-long crackdown to curb terrorism.
“(The
situation) has turned from a local threat to a more State stability
threat over the last year, which is what has been so significant. It
is raising a lot of fundamental questions on Chinese foreign policy
and counter terrorism strategies. There is a lot that was taken for
granted about how they did these things, and these are up for grabs
now,” said Small, who is also a contributor to the European Union
Institute for Security Studies. “China wants to import
counter-terrorism experts from elsewhere to re-think approaches, as
they see they are dealing with a different problem (from the past),
and have not figured out yet if it is a regular low-level insurgency
campaign, or a subset of Uighers connected to a wider (Sunni) Jihadi
network and a qualitatively different threat to the last few
decades.”
Until
this past year, external observers and Western states downplayed
attacks by Uighers, being almost dismissive of China facing terrorism
threats, evidenced by the stance of the US, which has not blacklisted
organizations deemed terrorist groups by China, and provided minimal
cooperation despite the overarching international support for
Washington's “global war on terrorism.”
As
the attacks have increased, it has become apparent that China is
facing an issue not confined to Xinjiang alone, perhaps reflecting
what is happening
globally. As Raffaelo Pantucci, a senior researcher on
counter-terrorism and Chinese diplomacy at Britain's Royal United
Services Institute (RUSI), has observed, China faces “a dual track
problem.” There is disenfranchisement within Xinjiang towards
Beijing that erupts in occasional violence on one hand, notes
Pantucci, and on the other external Uigher communities that are
pursuing a radical Sunni Jihadist agenda. The fear is that such
elements have already carried out terrorist activities within China,
and that external support will push the Uigher issue, or elements of
the Uigher community, into becoming a Jihadist one.
“I
think Uigher grievances are the regular ones: the loss of identity,
homeland, and to elevate Uigher Islam identity over Chinese communist
identity. However, militant operations have been less about these
grievances but people from outside providing the ideology and the
means to attack,” said Jacob Zenn, an
analyst of Eurasian affairs at the Jamestown Foundation and an expert
on Islamic terrorism.
It
is the uncertainty as to whether external factors were directly
involved in attacks that the West has not labeled them as terrorism,
Islamic terrorism in specific, implying solely domestic Chinese
issues.
China
itself shoulders some of the blame for this. “If
the Chinese do a better job to distinguish between legitimate
political activities and terrorist activities, there would be greater
scope of cooperation with the United States, the United Kingdom and
the EU on these issues. Because China blurs the lines so much, it
creates a problem for countries that might be more helpful on the
issue,” said Small.
That
said, while Western states have reportedly had a high degree of
success at preventing terrorism domestically, further afield COIN
efforts have not been as successful, notably in Afghanistan and
particularly in Iraq, as seen with the rise of the Islamic State in
Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in the wake of the US withdrawal in 2011,
and in Syria, where Western states and Gulf allies backed “moderate”
rebels against Damascus that morphed into the militant Jihadist
variety. The same can be said of Libya following Western intervention
to overthrow the regime of Muammar Gaddafi.
Indeed,
it is predominantly countries with significant Muslim populations in
the Middle East, Africa, Central and Southeast Asia that have
cumulatively been the main targets and victims of radical Islamic
terrorism, rather than the West itself. As such, Beijing would do
well to look at the successes and failures of states that are dealing
with terrorism on a more regular basis with similar circumstances,
such as Pakistan, India, Indonesia and Arab states.
External
support?
While
China is ramping up its domestic COIN strategies, it is also focusing
on external influences, such as cracking down on Uigher language
websites to prevent Uighers from
being ideologically radicalized and recruited online.
“What
has shifted in thinking has been more of a focus on propaganda
support and the ideological influence of the Jihadi groups. Chinese
counter-terrorism experts are now placing more weight on the
international dimension, to squash some of the external support that
is actually accessible, such as the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) in
Pakistan,” said Small.
Beijing
pressured ally Islamabad to ban certain Central Asian Jihadist
groups, such as the Islamic
Movement
of Uzbekistan (IMU), the Islamic Jihad Union, the East Turkestan
Islamic Movement and TIP. According
to reports from Reuters, there are an estimated 400 Uigher fighters
in Pakistan and 250 in Afghanistan. In May, the Pakistani military
struck targets connected to the Uigher-led TIP.
Preventing
neighboring Central Asia from providing safe areas for Uigher
militants to operate from is slated to become a top priority for
Beijing. “Pakistan
and Afghanistan are hell holes right now, and these extremists thrive
in such basket cases. China needs to do more outreach to Central Asia
to not let it become a sanctuary for these guys. The other thing, if
it doesn't want to help the US, China needs to do something about
shoring up Afghanistan and Pakistan,” said Ahmed Salah Hashim,
Associate Professor at the military studies program at the Rajaratnam
School of International Studies in Singapore.
The
Pakistani 'badlands' of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas
(FATA) and North Waziristan have been the refuge for TIP and other
Uigher-linked groups. But it is not just Uigher Jihadists that
consider China a target. The TIP is linked to the IMU, which is
pushing for the jihad to go beyond Pakistan and Afghanistan into
China, and its mufti, Abu Zar al-Burmi, has reportedly become a
prominent Jihadi leader in Pakistan with an anti-China message that
is gaining in popularity, according to Zenn.
Last
year, in a speech
called “A Lost Nation”, al-Burmi said the “mujahideen should
know that the coming enemy of the Ummah
(the Islamic community) is China, which is developing its weapons day
after day to fight the Muslims.” In the speech, al-Burmi stated
Muslims should kidnap and kill Chinese people and target Chinese
companies, and blasted the Pakistani-Chinese relationship.
Who
is funding the Uighers in Central Asia is not clear. “External
support is a very sensitive topic, but it is clear that several
hundred militants in Pakistan and Afghanistan are receiving funding
from Saudi Arabia, or whoever funds the Taliban, which is trickling
down to Uighur militants, and they have an increasing sophisticated
internet presence to recruit. There are some seriously anti-Chinese
organizations in Turkey that don't avow militancy, but know about who
the militants are in Pakistan,” said Zenn.
China
and the Islamic State
In
many ways, China is starting to reap what was sown by the West and
its Gulf Arab allies in Central Asia and the Middle East. Islamic
terrorism has become a Trojan horse on China's periphery that is
being steadily assembled like a gigantic Lego statue, brick by small
brick, to be rolled into the mainland.
While
contemporary radical Islam has developed over the past 50 years, and
gained traction over the past 30 years following US-backed support
for the Afghan Mujahideen against the Soviet Union, Syria and Iraq
have become the new centers for radical, militant Islam, and have
attracted Uigher and Chinese Muslim fighters to their ranks.
“Chinese
Muslims and Uighers have shown up in videos in Syria, although it is
unclear where they come from, from China or from the Uigher diaspora,
which lives in Turkey, while Syria is a huge magnet for Muslims
across the ethnic divide,” said Pantucci.
The
rise of ISIL, or the Islamic State, over the past two years, in
particular this year as the group gained international notoriety
through taking huge swathes of Northern Iraq and North-West Syria, is
fueling a global Jihadist resurgence.
“ISIL
has really caught the attention of a lot of young, angry, unemployed
types, what I call 'Boutique Jihad',” said Hashim. “Although ISIL
is supplanting Al Qaeda, they haven't said much on the Uigher
situation. Given their ambitions, and the map of the Islamic State
caliphate from Andalusia to beyond the Persian empire, to China, they
may say something about this. And given their successes, if
maintained, this will gain traction with Uighers; that is a potential
scenario. The Uigher situation has become more center stage for
Jihadists.”
While
analysts consider the risks to the Chinese mainland from Uigher
Jihadists minimal, in part due to the difficulties of getting back
into China, it is the ideology of ISIL and other Jihadist groups that
is of concern at both the internal and external level.
“The
most
dangerous thing for China from ISIL is the ideology, which is
breaking down borders and identity by religion and not nationality.
That idea is already catching on in West Africa, with militants going
to Boko Haram to destroy colonial era boundaries and create a new
political system based on Islam as a common denominator. In Central
Asia this idea has not caught on, but could, especially if ISIL is
rich and starts funding militants in Central Asia or proxies in
Pakistan or Afghanistan,” said Zenn.
COIN
approaches
At
the domestic level, Beijing does not want to give impetus to Uigher
grievances by enabling the uprising to turn towards radical Islam,
slight though this risk may currently be. It is worth bearing in mind
that the initially peaceful uprisings in secular Syria in 2011 for
instance became more militant and Islamic - it was co-opted - as did
the militant opposition to the US occupation of formerly secular
Iraq. Significantly, this did not require huge numbers of Jihadists,
with ISIL for example having an estimated 30,000 fighters.
China
would do well to study COIN strategies in countries that have
struggled to contain insurgencies that were supported internally and
externally, such as in India. India is similar in population size to
China and also has diverse minorities.
India's
COIN approach was characterized by Sameer Lalwani in West Point's CTC
Sentinel,
as “a strategy of attrition with the deployment
of 'raw state coercion' and 'enemy-centric' campaigns to suffocate an
insurgency through a 'saturation of forces.'”
In
Indian Kashmir this heavy-handed approach has not worked, and neither
for other ongoing insurgencies, such as the Naxalites, given that
both are decades old conflicts. In part this is due to the lack of a
soft policy approach alongside economic development, with brutal
crackdowns keeping the conflict going. China should not imitate
India's approach.
“China
has a lot of resources to deal with the outbreak of terrorism, but it
has not been particularly subtle in its approach. A problem is that
China does not send crack units to Xinjiang, which cannot provide
order without a brutal approach, so keeps the area quiet for a while
but feeds into the rage. An effective counter-terrorism approach
requires both a soft policy as well as a hard policy approach, and
China has not calibrated that properly. A learning process, and the
issue is if China can learn faster than the Uighers can,” said
Hashim.
Furthermore,
there needs to be a strong understanding of what causes terrorism and
adjust soft policy accordingly. So far, Beijing has focused on
economic development over other issues.
“I
think that while a key focus is on heavy economic investment, in
reality there is a third way, which is people's sense of alienation.
It is not monetary, but cultural, about a sense of belonging, and a
lot of people feel they don't have a stake in modern China. They are
not going to be swayed by houses, cars and jobs. Look at the UK's
four pillar counter-terrorism strategy: Pursue, Prevent, Protect and
Prepare, and they've not figured out the preventative side - the
social disenfranchisement - and that is what China has also not
addressed, the cultural aspect of it, and why people are drawn to
these ideas,” said Pantucci.
Ultimately,
Beijing needs to develop approaches to its dual track problem of
domestic grievances and external Jihadists, and not add fuel to the
fire through the two becoming increasingly connected. It is
essential, therefore, that Beijing works closer with Central Asian
states to contain the problem in these countries, but also pressure
the West and Arab Gulf states on counter terrorism issues, including
counter terrorism financing.
“By
themselves the Uighers cannot cause mayhem; they can cause problems
like they've been doing lately - episodic hit and run incidents which
are a nuisance rather than a security problem. Right now, China's
capacity in Xinjiang is very strong. If (militant) Uighers have a
chance of anything, they will have to rely on external sanctuary and
support,” said Hashim. “But
if
relations with China and the West go down hill there is the
possibility of using the Trojan horse phenomenon to cause trouble.”
