The United States and China in Power Transition - Strategic Studies ...

The Uyghurs, who are the second largest subdivision
of the so-called East Turkic people (the Kazakhs
are the largest; Kazakhstan is also the largest of all the
new “East Turkic stans”) and arguably the most active
of all, are stuck in Xinjiang, China. They are the
majority ethnic group in Xinjiang. The official title of
this Chinese province bears the name of the Uyghurs
as the “Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.” Nevertheless,
they are the only ones of the East Turkic
people without an independent homeland. 195
The sense of deprivation is understandable. China’s
unsettled relations with the Uyghurs were not
making things any easier for the latter. Against this
backdrop, Uyghur separatist movements naturally
resurfaced. The East Turkistan Islamic Movement
(ETIM) and East Turkistan Liberation Organization
(ETLO) came in the early 1990s. Both organizations
used violent means to pursue their causes. They also
made contact with Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda
network and the Taliban of Afghanistan.
The terrorist attacks on the United States on September
11, 2001, brought the superpower to fight
against al Qaeda and the Taliban right across the border
of Xinjiang. Some of the Uyghur fighters were captured,
exposing the ETIM and ETLO connections to
these terrorist groups. The United States, China, the
Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCC), and the
UN subsequently put these two organizations on their
terrorist organization lists. 196 Although these international
pressures did not put an end to the Uyghur separation
organizations, they did force them to reduce
their activities.
By the mid-2000s, the pro-Uyghur independence
activists gathered in Munich, Germany. They formed
the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) (世界维吾尔代表
170