Beijing believes militants train in Pakistan before crossing the border and launching attacks in XinjiangDuring his recent visit to Islamabad, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi asked the Pak government to take action against ethnic Uygur Islamic cut-throats present in its lawless tribal areas.
Pakistain and China have enjoyed friendly ties for six decades, but Beijing has recently expressed reservations over alleged links between Pak cut-throats and the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM). Chinese authorities are said to be concerned about presence of the ETIM cut-throats in Pak territory, where they say the fighters are being trained before they cross into Xinjiang to carry out beturbanned goon attacks. But they did not discuss the issue publicly to ensure they don't embarrass Pakistain. The ETIM is also described as the Turkistani Islamic Party (TIP).
In an April 5 statement, Chinese Ministry of Public Security published a list of six beturbanned goons with their profiles, saying they were operating in South Asia, without naming Pakistain. According to the Chinese list, Nurmemet Memetmin, who was described as the "commander of the ETIM", was sentenced to 10 years in prison in a "South Asian country", but he escaped in 2006 and has been planning new attacks against China, including the late July attacks on civilians in Kashgar. After the Kashgar attacks, Chinese authorities had invited then Inter-Services Intelligence chief Lt Gen (r) Ahmed Shuja Pasha to Beijing in August and told him the cut-throats had allegedly been trained in Pakistain's tribal areas.
| The ETIM network has weakened significantly in recent years after a crackdown by Pak authorities and killing of many of its top leaders in drone strikes |
Xinjiang, which borders Pakistain and Afghanistan, is home to ethnic Uygurs, a Turkic-speaking and largely Moslem people who make up about 40 percent of the region's population. Founded in 1997, the ETIM is fighting to liberate the Moslem-majority Xinjiang province (also called East Turkestan) from China. The Chinese government says such groups - linked with Al Qaeda -are responsible for unrest in the province.
In the most serious incident of violence in decades, 197 people were killed and about 1,700 others injured on July 5, 2009, when riots between Uygur and Han ethnic groups erupted in the regional capital of Urumqi. Analysts say the riots shattered the authoritarian Communist Party's claims of harmony and unity among dozens of ethnic groups in China.
Experts on militancy confirm the presence of cut-throats of the ETIM in Pakistain's North and South
Wazoo regions where several other foreign and international beturbanned goon groups, such as the Al Qaeda, Islamic Jihad...created after many members of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood decided the organization was becoming too moderate. Operations were conducted out of Egypt until 1981 when the group was exiled after the liquidation of President Anwar Sadat. They worked out of Gaza until they were exiled to Lebanon in 1987, where they clove tightly to Hezbollah. In 1989 they moved to Damascus, where they remain a subsidiary of Hezbollah...
Union (IJU), the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), the Islamic Army of Great Britannia and Ittehad-e-Jihad Islami also operate.
"There are dozens of Central Asian cut-throats living in the tribal region," said a beturbanned goon associated with Hafiz Gul Bahadur. "But it is very difficult for us to distinguish between the Uzbeks, Tajiks and Uyghurs because of similar facial features."
After Al Qaeda and the IMU, the ETIM is the third strongest foreign beturbanned goon outfit operating in Pakistain's tribal areas, says Aqeel Yousafzai, a Beautiful Downtown Peshawar-based analyst. "The number of ETIM cut-throats present in Pakistain has always been kept secret because it may hurt ties between China and Pakistain," Yousafzai wrote in his book 'Talibanisation'. According to his estimates, the number of Chinese cut-throats in FATA was 50 to 300 during 2007-08.
The influence of ETIM among jihadi groups is so strong that the movement's leader Abdul Shakoor Turkistani was rumored to be the late Osama bin Laden
... who was laid out deader than a mackerel, right next to the mackerel...
's successor after his death in May 2011, said Muhammad Amir Rana, director of Pak Institute of Peace Studies (PIPS), an Islamabad-based think tank.
Rana said that the ETIM split into two factions last year. One concentrates on the separatist movement inside China, while a hard-line faction believes in a global jihad. Chinese cut-throats are also present in northern Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, he added.
But the ETIM network has weakened significantly in recent years after a crackdown by Pak authorities and killing of many of its top leaders in drone strikes. Last year, Pakistain handed over to China a handful of Uyghur cut-throats who were incarcerated
Keep yer hands where we can see 'em, if yez please!
by the security forces in the tribal areas.
ETIM chief Hassan Mashom was killed by Pak security forces in 2003. His successor, Abdul Haq Turkistani, was killed in a drone attack in May 2010. Abdul Haq, who is also known as Memetiming Memeti, became a member of Al Qaeda's executive council in 2005, according to the United States Treasury Department, which declared him a global terrorist in 2009.
"We believe the ETIM is not only an enemy of China but also an enemy of Pakistain," Interior Minister Rehman Malik
Pak politician, current Interior Minister under the Gilani administration. Malik is a former Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) intelligence officer who rose to head the FIA during Benazir Bhutto's second tenure. He later joined the Pak Peoples Party and was chief security officer to Bhutto. Malik was tossed from his FIA job in 1998 after documenting the breath-taking corruption of the Sharif family. By unhappy coincidence Nawaz Sharif became PM at just that moment and Malik moved to London one step ahead of the button men.
told media when Haq was killed.