dogu-turkistan-sempozyumu

The Role of the International Community in East Turkestan / Prof Dru C. Gladneyof Muslim citizens had been confiscated by the authorities. All travel now had to beapproved by a Chinese government paranoid that its oppressed minorities would joinmilitant groups in Chechnya and Pakistan and return to the Motherland, planningto wreak havoc. Only a Madrid-style incident in either Shanghai or Beijing would besufficient, Celil said, to accelerate the cause of an independent Eastern Turkestan.Ablimit’s theory chimed with Miles, who had concluded that small-scale mainlandattacks, most of which went unreported in the West, were of no strategic value to theUnited Sates. He had learned this lesson from TYPHOON’s earlier incarnation. Theultimate goal of the group of individuals in Washington with tactical control of Miles’soperation was an American-sponsored catastrophe at the Beijing Olympics... Ablimitfound himself a job in the kitchens of a hotel belonging to the same chef for which he hadworked in Urumqi.There was one complication. The cell had briefly had a fifth member. Enver Semedhad fought alongside the Taliban at Tora-Bora, and had been captured by Americansoldiers in December 2001. He was taken to Guantanamo Bay where he was heldalongside twenty-two other Uighur fighters with alleged links to al-Qaeda. In early2004 Semed had his detention analyzed by the Combatant Status Review Tribunal,which determined that he was no longer an “enemy” of the United States. There wasa simple reason for this: the CIA had recruited Semed as a double agent. Repatriatedto China on false documentation, he reported to Josh Pinnegar, who passed controlfor Semed to Kenneth Lenan... Two months later Semed was arrested on charges ofbelonging to ETIM and executed at a gulag in Qinghai.The above lengthy passage is excerpted from the popular 2008 novel byCharles Cummings, entitled TYPHOON. 1 This entertaining fictional accounteloquently captures a widespread belief, mostly in China, that Uighur separatism issupported by an international conspiracy of Uighur nationalists, funded ultimatelyby those in the U.S. government who fear the “China threat” and would like tokeep China weak and divided through fueling Uighur, and especially, Tibetanaspirations for independence. Yet, there is very little evidence to support the claimthat the people in question, either the remaining detainees in Guantanamo Bay,or the Uighur people in general, are terrorists. Nor could many of them could notbe accurately described as “freedom fighters”. The vast majority of the nearly 10million people known as the Uighur, living primarily in the province of Western451