Taliban Sacrificing Muslim Afghan Uyghurs to Please Beijing
"We care about the oppression of Muslims, be it in Palestine, in Myanmar, or in China, and we care about the oppression of non-Muslims anywhere in the world.""But what we are not going to do is interfere in China's internal affairs."Senior Taliban official"I think within the organization [Taliban] there's some groups who are more supportive of protecting these guys [Uyghurs] because they have been fighting with them for twenty years."Raffaello Pantucci, Royal United Services Institute
 |
The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan as the Taliban enjoy labelling themselves, is anxious to foster good relations with its neighbours, as a kind of 'international' recognition of the legitimacy of their governance of the country. Achieved not through internationally recognized means, but through a long-lived insurrection of Islamist sharia-revolutionaries disposing of West-approved functionaries more loyal to their vision of an Afghanistan patterned after Western values than those of the Koran and sharia.
Relations with Beijing in particular was sought as a priority where the Taliban could declare good diplomatic relations marking China as their "closest ally". If you're going to have friends, all the better if they're powerful and not averse to throwing their political weight around. The prospect of Beijing being amenable to investing in Afghanistan's rebuilding and makeover, yet another powerful incentive. But nothing is ever as simple as it seems.
During the chaotic putsch that saw the legally constructed government of Afghanistan and its military crumble under the advance of the Taliban, Uyghur militants who were imprisoned escaped custody. Needless to say, their 'escape' likely resulted from the Taliban releasing prisoners held by the former administration, with a view to securing the release of members of the Taliban held for committing criminal acts, which they excel at.
China's focus on Afghanistan is for the priority of uprooting Uyghurs of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM). "We had 35 ETIM militants in jails all over Afghanistan. All of them escaped after the Taliban takeover" explained a former senior security official.
ETIM is held responsible by Beijing for unrest in their Xinjiang province, principally occupied by Chinese Uyghurs where the introduction by state security forces of mass surveillance and imprisonment of close to a million Uyghurs since 2017 in confinement camps ostensibly to "re-educate" the Uyghurs has aroused world opinion in a condemnation of Chinese cultural/social genocide.
Just as the Taliban reassured the departing U.S. presence in Afghanistan that it would never permit terrorist groups to launch attacks once again against the West, Beijing too was assured that the Taliban had no intention of permitting Uyghur militants to stage attacks from Afghanistan. To that purpose they have rounded up members from areas on the border with China acceding to Beijing's request.
The remarkable part of this arrangement is that the Taliban who never blink an eye at murdering their own, purportedly extracted a promise from Beijing that once the Taliban surrendered Uyghurs to China they would not be tortured or executed. And then, last month a Uyghur in a suicide attack on a Kunduz mosque killed over 50 people.
"We don't know much about Uyghurs in Afghanistan" responded a senior Taliban intelligence official. The UN estimated earlier in the year that 500 ETIM members were hiding out in northeastern Afghanistan. And according to the United Kingdom, ETIM is linked to al-Qaeda, planning to create a caliphate in Xinjiang.
 |
Labels: Afghanistan, Beijing, China, Taliban, Uyghurs
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, October 17, 2021
<< Home