International Connections
The TIPÂ’s Spokesman Role
The TIP has approximately 300–500 militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but also a network in Turkey and possibly Central Asia (Author’s field research in northwest Pakistan, 2012). With such numbers, it is limited in its capacity to launch an insurgency in China, which has a population of well over one billion people. The only attacks in China for which the TIP showed evidence of its responsibility were the Ramadan-eve car rammings in Kashgar in July 2011, which killed 12 pedestrians. The TIP has also claimed several cart-bombings near Xinjiang’s border with Pakistan in 2012, which were likely carried out by its cells in Xinjiang (See Terrorism Monitor, Volume 10, Issue 8).
The TIP’s main “value added” in Xinjiang is mostly providing training to Uighurs who travel abroad or, likely more importantly, the clandestine distribution of jihadist ideological and training materials in Xinjiang by way of various Uighur, Pakistani or Central Asian traders.
Al-Qaeda leaders, such as Ayman al-Zawahiri, now usually mention “East Turkistan” among other jihadist battlegrounds, while jihadists in Syria have proudly featured Uighurs and Han converts to Islam among their fighters.
IMU: ‘Go After Pakistan’s Mother’
While the TIP is still a relative newcomer to the jihadist scene—having only announced its formation around 2008, despite the presence of Uighur militants in Afghanistan since before 2001—it has benefited from the support of other well-known jihadist leaders. In particular, the emergence of IMU mufti Abu Zar al-Burmi as a prominent anti-Chinese jihadist leader in Pakistan has led to Xinjiang gaining more attention among jihadists. Al-Burmi started gaining prominence around 2011, several years after Xinjiang—which Uighurs who seek independence from China call “East Turkistan”—gained attention in jihadist media after the July 2009 riots in Urumqi. At that time, al-Qaeda affiliates and leaders such as Abu Yahya al-Libi demanded retribution against China and called for attacks on Chinese citizens abroad (China Daily, July 15, 2009). Other al-Qaeda leaders gave occasional talks on Xinjiang (Khalid al-Husaynan, “‘Purpose’ of Jihad,” Sawt al-Islam, May 4, 2013; Abu-Yahya al-Libi, “The Forgotten Wound,” as-Sahab, 2009).
Yet al-Burmi, unlike other al-Qaeda leaders, regularly issues anti-Chinese sermons in Pakistan and, perhaps because of his Burmese background (he is an ethnic Rohingya) seems to hold a personal vendetta against China. He said in a sermon called “A Lost Nation” that “mujahidin should know that the coming enemy of the Ummah is China, which is developing its weapons day after day to fight the Muslims” and blamed “Burma, China and Germany and the interests of the United Nations for supporting these massacres and mass killings [of Rohingyas] in Arakan (“A Lost Nation,” a speech for Abu Zar-Azzam, Mufti of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, 2013).”
In a sermon in Ladha, South Waziristan, in September 2013, al-Burmi, declared it obligatory for Muslims to kidnap and kill Chinese people and attack Chinese companies, which Abu Zar says have “conquered” Pakistan like the British East India company did in India (including Abu Zar’s native Burma) in the 1800s (Bab-ul-Islam, in Urdu, April 25). He blames Pakistanis for their “mantra of Pak-China Friendship,” including purchasing “infidel” food and goods from China as if “drinking milk from the Chinese government” and selling the Gwadar Port in Karachi to China (Ibid).
Al-Burmi urges his followers to turn their attention to the “new superpower” and “next number one enemy,” China, now that the Taliban “knocked the wind out” of the United States. This suggests that al-Burmi may see a role for the IMU attacking China or coordinating training of the TIP to attack China after the withdrawal of most U.S. troops from Afghanistan in 2014. In his Ladha sermon, al-Burmi continues with U.S.-China comparisons: “We should be aware of the fact that while the United States is the father of the Pakistani system and government, China is the mother of the Pakistani government. The Pakistani government drinks its milk from the Chinese government.”
He further claims that “The Pakistani president visits China every four months and goes and bows, kneels and prostrates before those atheists, who do not believe in God, and in return he comes back with aid…. We should all be aware of the fact that there is no border between Pakistan and China…the border that is along the Gilgit-Baltistan region is actually a border with East Turkestan.”