Comments on: So China has Islamic Terrorists Now?

By: Torry Shealy

Torry Shealy — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 22:20:58 +0000

Yes there is no definitive evidence that the ETIM has carried out attacks in other provinces in China outside of Xinjiang. This could be due to either good security measures by the Chinese government or they have done a good job of covering it up. There have been many bombings in China that get little press in the West.
That being said, the ETIM has targeted ethnic Chinese people in Xinjiang, especially government officials. Also, the ETIM has operated internationally.
They were blamed for the murder of a Chinese diplomat in Kyrgyzstan in 2002 and two Uyghurs were deported to China from Kyrgyzstan after being accused of planning to bomb the US embassy.
What is really interesting is this new threat in the form of the TIP. The two biggest questions I have are: Is the TIP actually the ETIM? and Does the TIP have a relationship with the IMU which is also calling itself the TIP now? Answering those questions would go a long way in seeing if this video is just a well timed play for publicity or if a major threat could come from this group.

By: oneeyedpanda

oneeyedpanda — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 11:59:45 +0000

Thanks for the comment Torry. I’d heard about the ETIM before but my understanding is that the group has only carried out attacks in Xinjiang not in other provinces.

By: Torry Shealy

Torry Shealy — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 17:12:23 +0000

J.
Actually, China has had an Islamic jihadi movement for some time in the form of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM). They have been carrying out attacks since the 1990s. China does a good job at keeping these things quite unless it benefits them (as in when they got the US to put the ETIM on the Terrorist Group Exclusion List). Here are some good links:
http://www.cdi.org/terrorism/etim.cfm
http://www.cfr.org/publication/9179/
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2008/03/mil-080312-cfr01.htm
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?ID=16272
At this time I am not sure if the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) is actually the ETIM with a new name. I have seen where the TIP name has been used by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). It would make sense though that TIP in this instance is the ETIM because there has been a very close relationship between the ETIM and the IMU. Many Uyghurs have been found in the ranks of the IMU. Also, the stated goals of the IMU and the ETIM are to unite Central Asia (including Uyghurstan or Xinjiang) into an Islamic state called Turkestan. It may very well be that the IMU and the ETIM have merged into the TIP but are still compartmentalized into local groups that can work easier in their own localities. Given the IMU’s close relationship with al-Qaeda, they most likely have learned this compartmentalized strategy from the bin Laden group and are structuring themselves in a similar way.

By: oneeyedpanda

oneeyedpanda — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 14:06:00 +0000

Thanks for reading the post and the comment. I’ve corrected the error. I’ll definitely be reading you guys as part of my search for updates on this story.

By: Porfiriy

Porfiriy — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 13:33:57 +0000

Hi there, thanks for linking us! I just want to point out that we took a look at the videos as well, and the language being spoken is not Arabic, but Uyghur. I still believe that the claims are false, but with the intended audience being Uyghurs (both in Xinjiang and the diaspora) I interpret the goal of the video to be agitation and intimidation.