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Will Daesh threat cause China to revise terror response?
 [VOA] Daesh released a video earlier this month explicitly threatening China with attacks on its soil. Analysts say that as China seeks to expand influence its nationals are being exposed to a greater terror threat — and Beijing is having to adapt. The video purports to show Chinese ethnic Uighurs fighting for Daesh in Iraq who threaten to return home and shed "rivers of blood."The video invokes the persecution by Beijing of majority-Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang. China tightly controls access to the region and verifying reports of attacks there is difficult. Analyst Raffaello Pantucci of Britain's Royal United Services Institute said, "This year at least two potential attacks so far and a number of other odd incidents taking place. And we've seen the governor in Xinjiang province actually having a very heavy clampdown and a very visible escalation of the security presence in the region, all of which suggests that China is increasingly concerned about the problems related to terrorism and extremism, and clearly IS is part of that picture." Daesh may be a common enemy, but there has been little coordination between China and the global coalition fighting the group, says Mathieu Duchatel of the European Council on Foreign Relations. He said, "China wants support from Western states on its policies in Xinjiang. China considers that the anti-terror efforts that it is leading in Xinjiang are not being endorsed by countries in the West and the response in Europe at least is that there is a lack of transparency." "China has a category which it calls the three evils. Terrorism, extremism and separatism are put together in the same basket," Duchatel said. China adopted a law in 2015 allowing military deployment overseas on anti-terror missions. But Duchatel says working alongside Western or Russian forces against Daesh remains unlikely. He said, "The long-standing approach to terrorist risks for China has been to avoid attracting too much attention and becoming a target." Posted by: ryuge 2017-03-19 |
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