Concern that East Turkistan elements are in the Middle East
BEIJING // Muslim extremists from China’s far-western region of Xinjiang have gone to the Middle East for training and some may have crossed into Iraq to take part in the surge of violence there.
China has repeatedly expressed concern about the increasing violence in Iraq and the march of the Islamic State, which has seized much of the north of the country as Baghdad’s forces there collapsed.
The Islamic State has proclaimed the establishment of a caliphate on land it has captured in Syria and Iraq.
China’s special envoy for the Middle East, Wu Sike, who has recently returned from the region, said that Beijing was extremely worried about the role of extremist groups in the fighting in Syria and Iraq.
“Several hot-spot issues in the Middle East have provided living space for terrorist groups, in particular the crisis in Syria has turned this country into a training ground for extremists from many countries,” he said.
“These extremists come from Islamic countries, Europe, North America and China. After being immersed in extremist ideas, when they return home they will pose a severe challenge and security risk to those countries,” said Mr Wu, who has 40 years of diplomatic experience in the Middle East.
Xinjiang, home to the Muslim Uighur people, has been beset by unrest for years. Beijing blames Islamist extremists who want to establish an independent state called East Turkestan for the violence.
While many experts outside of China doubt that these groups have the abilities of which Beijing accuses them, some Uighurs have made their way to Afghanistan and Pakistan in recent years.
Mr Wu would not put a number on how many Chinese citizens might be in the Middle East either fighting or being trained, but he said he understood from media reports the figure was about 100.
“Mostly they are East Turkestan elements,” he said, adding that this was one of the topics he talked about on his trip, especially when he was in Turkey, which was home to a large population of exiled Uighurs.
“They won’t necessarily all return [to China]. Some will remain to participate in the conflict, perhaps crossing into Iraq,” he said.
US intelligence agencies estimated that about 7,000 of the 23,000 extremists in Syria were foreign fighters, mostly from Europe.
China would do all it could to help Middle East countries fight terror as this was also in China’s best interests, Mr Wu said.
“China is a victim of extremist, terrorist activities, and our support for fighting terrorism in this region is beneficial to us too. As a result China and those countries are in a closely knit community of shared interests.”
China is Iraq’s largest oil client, and its state energy firms, which include PetroChina, Sinopec and Cnooc, together hold more than a fifth of Iraq’s oil projects after securing some of its fields through auctions in 2009.
Mr Wu said that despite the violence he was confident about the country’s future and China’s involvement in its energy sector.
* Reuters
