Author: B Raman
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: August 6, 2008
Beijing's apprehensions of terrorist strikes
during the Olympic Games appear to be coming true. Monday's slaughter of 16
Chinese border guards by two terrorists could be a precursor to further attacks.
The killers are presumed to be Uighur Islamists
Sixteen border police guards of China's Ministry
of Public Security were killed and 16 others injured when two unidentified
terrorists, who came in a truck, jumped out of it outside their barracks compound
near Kashgar (Chinese name Kashi) in the Xinjiang province at 8 am on Monday,
and hurled grenades at police guards doing their morning physical exercise.
Next, they attacked some of the injured policemen with knives before they
were over-powered and captured. According to one report, the terrorists tried
to slit the throats of the injured police guards. It was not an attack of
suicide terrorism. The terrorists did not try to kill themselves before they
were overpowered and arrested.
The Kashgar area has been in a state of ferment
since July 9, 2008, when the Chinese authorities announced the public execution
of two Uighurs. Their names (Chinese version, not their original ethnic names)
were given out as Muheteer Setiwalidi and Abdulwaili Yiming after they had
been convicted by a Kashgar court on November 9, 2007, on charges of separatist
activities, attending a terrorist training camp and manufacturing explosives.
According to the announcement, the court had
awarded three other Uighurs suspended death sentences and sentenced 12 other
Uighurs to various terms of imprisonment. All of them were accused of being
members of the Islamic Movement of East Turkestan (IMET). They were reported
to have joined IMET in August 2005 and were arrested by the police in January
2007.
The public announcement of the sentences awarded
to the 17 Uighurs came a day after the police of Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang,
forcibly entered a flat to arrest 15 Uighurs, who were also projected as members
of IMET. Five of them were killed by the police when they allegedly resisted
the arrest. The Chinese also ordered the closure of 40 mosques in Xinjiang
on the ground that they had been started illegally.
The Chinese authorities have not yet revealed
the identities of the two terrorists who carried out the attack on August
4. They are presumed to be Uighurs, but normally the Uighurs does not follow
the modus operandi of slitting the throats of their victims. This is the typical
of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the Islamic Jihad Union, another Uzbek
organisation, and Pakistani terrorist organisations as well as of Al Qaeda
and the Taliban.
The attacked border post was near the border
with Tajikistan. The two terrorists are suspected to have infiltrated into
the area from Tajikistan. The IMET, which is the main organisation of the
anti-Beijing Uighurs, the IMU, the IJU and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami of
Pakistan have operated in the bordering areas of Tajikistan in the past. Before
9/11, the HUJI used to have a training camp in Tajikistan for training recruits
from Xinjiang and the Central Asian Republics.
In January 2008, the Ministry of Public Security
had claimed to have neutralised an Uighur sleeper cell in Urumqi. This was
followed, on March 7, 2008, by an aborted attempt by three Uighurs -- one
of them a woman -- to blow up a civil aviation plane flying from Urumqi to
Beijing with the help of gasoline concealed inside a soft drink can, which
had been smuggled into the plane. The attempt was thwarted by alert security
guards on board the plane. The fact that the airport security at Urumchi allowed
the can to be carried -- when all over the world there is a ban on such cans
and bottles being carried -- spoke poorly of the physical security at some
Chinese airports.
The News of Pakistan reported on March 21,
2008, that two of the suspects arrested -- a woman and a man -- were travelling
with Pakistani passports. The woman was described as an Uighur living in Pakistan
and trained in a Pakistani jihadi camp and the man as a Central Asian (Uzbek?).
The third person, who escaped but was subsequently arrested, was described
as a Pakistani who had masterminded the plot. The meagre facts given out by
the Chinese authorities about the thwarted plot indicated deficiencies in
the physical security set-up in China.
There was a demonstration against the Chinese
authorities at Khotan in the Xinjiang province on March 23, 2008. About 1,000
Uighurs, including many women, participated in the demonstration. The protest
was triggered by two events. First, the alleged death in the custody of Mutallip
Hajim, a wealthy jade trader and popular philanthropist, who had been arrested
on the charge of belonging to the sleeper cell discovered in January 2008.
Second, the anger of local women over the ban on head scarves. Many of the
Uighur women, who participated in the demonstration, defiantly covered their
heads with scarves.
According to a statement from the Khotan Government
in the Xinjiang region, "extremist forces" tried to incite an uprising
in a local market place on March 23. "A small number of elements... tried
to incite splittism, create disturbances in the market place and even trick
the masses into an uprising," an official statement issued by the authorities
said. It added: "Our police immediately intervened to prevent this and
are dealing with it in accordance with the law." The local authorities
undertook house-to-house searches in the area looking for extremist suspects.
Over 100 Uighur Muslims were detained for interrogation.
The fact that the two terrorists could mount
the attack on August 4 despite the round-up of over a hundred suspected Uighur
militants by the Chinese Police since the beginning of this year underlines
the continuing weaknesses of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security, which
is responsible for internal intelligence. The Ministry was taken by surprise
in Tibet in March when there was a revolt by Tibetan monks and youth. Now,
it has been taken by surprise by the Uighur terrorist strike. This should
be a matter of concern to the organisers of the Olympic Games.
The writer, a counter-terrorism specialist, was a senior official of R&AW.
