All the the reports agree that 7 were killed and 14 were injured in the attack. The incident took place outside on the streets, with the BBC, quoting, Hou, saying it occurred at an intersection while the New York Times states that the attack actually occurred on a bridge. Hou has emphasized that the victims were all local residents and belonged to several ethnicities, and, quote, innocent civilians. The Guardian, talking to an unnamed local police official, said that victims included a group of Uyghur residents who were working with local security forces in patrolling the streets and “reporting crimes.”

More valuable information can be gleaned from this Mandarin coverage from ifeng (h/t @henrykszad at Twitter). Interestingly, this article states that one person who was aiding police (Mandarin: 1名协警员) was about to lead fifteen border patrol officers (Mandarin: 带15名联防队员) in a patrol at the T-intersection of Kalatale and Wuka roads. While they were lined up on the side of the road the attacker drove his tricycle by the group and threw (抛出) an explosive at them, instantly killing 5, with 2 dying later at the hospital, 14 injured, and several vehicles at the scene, some police vehicles, some civilian vehicles damaged or destroyed. This information supplements, clarifies, and even challenges some of the information that has been divulged in the Western reports. With the information from the ifeng report when can almost pinpoint exactly where the incident occurred: not precisely in Aksu city proper, but in a suburb, Yiganqi, at the intersection mentioned above which is 50 meters West of the river dividing Aksu from Yiganqi (this explains why the earlier NYT report mentioned a bridge – if not exactly on the bridge, then the incident occurred very close to it). This is about as accurate as we can get for now:

A few things of note, the intersection that I’ve marked is on Wuka Road, but the smaller road off it is not labeled, but I’m fairly confident it is Kalatale Road as it’s a T intersection and it’s almost exactly 50 meters west of the bridge over the river. It’s very clear from the satellite imagery that this intersection leads into a Uyghur area of Aksu (the short, squat buildings and unorganized layout almost certainly makes it a Uyghur neighborhood as opposed to a Chinese neighborhood with apartment buildings arranged in roads – see Kashgar satellite imagery for another contrast), and so it does seem that the attack occurred as a patrol was about to enter or inspect a Uyghur area.

All the reports agree that the perpetrator was caught at the scene of the attack.

What will happen in the wake of this attack

If previous attacks of this nature are anything to go by, I predict that there will be a trial very soon, perhaps within the next one or two months. At the trial, the suspect will most likely “admit” connections to organized “East Turkestan” terrorist networks and may perhaps even be linked to the two alleged ETIM terrorist masterminds that were caught and implicated two months ago. Again, if the government goes by its usual playbook, after the guilty verdict and the death penalty go up and are approved by the Supreme Court the suspect will be quietly executed without much media fanfare about a year after the verdict. This Aksu incident – which will probably be immortalized in Chinese records as the “8-19 incident” （八·十九事件 or maybe 八·十九爆炸事件 or something like that) – will triumphantly be added to the litany of “terrorist attacks” that local authorities have and will refer to to make a case to both domestic and global audiences that China is a victim of international terrorism.

What should we make of it

Well. Was it terrorism?

Before we answer that, it’s important to observe the uncanny similarities between this attack and the attack that occurred in Kashgar in August of 2008. Both were attacks carried out against border patrol units that were out on the streets, patrolling. Both involved young, local males (yes, this hasn’t been established from the Aksu case, but I’m almost certain that’s what it will be) using improvised explosive devices which were tossed, used, or thrown as the attackers approached the patrol in some sort of vehicle. In spite of these explosives, both were emphatically not suicide bombings. And in both cases, the perpetrators were caught alive after killing and injuring several of their intended victims.

The methods of these two attacks, their apparent spontaneity, and their choice of target to me indicate that rather than being carefully supplied, supported, and planned strikes against targets of imminent political value, both of these attacks were on-the-spot decisions carried out by disgruntled individuals against context-specific targets using the most readily available and obvious devices. Without intending to downplay the tragic loss of life in this attack, the explosives employed by the perpetrator clearly did not require the level of pre-planning required for the Oklahoma City bombing or the level of coordination and organization required for the 9/11 hijackings. Given the importance of the farming and mining industries in the area around Aksu and Uyghurs’ participation in those industries, procuring chemically volatile materials that could harm a group of people on the street is just as feasible for a disgruntled malcontent as it is for a terrorist with transnational financial support.

But more revealing in this case are the targets of this attack, where, according to the Chinese report, one individual was leading a group of public security officers into an inspection of an obviously Uyghur neighborhood. Anything ranging from a hatred of someone perceived as a race traitor (if the informant, put mildly in Chinese as “an individual assisting the police,” was Uyghur, which seems to be the case) to something specific – perhaps the informant was specifically about to turn in or inform on the attacker for any sort of crime – could have been motivation for the attacker to grab the nearest volatile devices and attack the patrol before it could arrive. In which case, we see incidents all over the world, very frequently in the United States, where “snitches” are murdered for their collaboration with the authorities, or armed holdouts with “You’ll never catch me coppers” attitudes engage in gunfights or hostage-taking situations with the authorities. Is this terrorism? No. And so I contend that, lacking accurate and trustworthy information, which is almost always the case with incidents in Xinjiang, we cannot unilaterally consider this incident a terrorist attack. However, I anticipate that this is exactly how this incident will be portrayed given the usefulness of such an incident to the government’s ongoing efforts to depict the area as a terrorism-plagued region. That being said, we will look closely at what information gets revealed – and what information doesn’t – in the coming weeks and months.

Uyghur Scholar Kahar Barat

Wang Lixiong

The Chinese government uses frequently-lampooned language when it comes to official rhetoric on Xinjiang’s historical relationship with the rest of China proper. As with Tibet, the CCP asserts that Xinjiang has been a part of a Chinese polity or “nation” constantly and for a very long period time, almost invariably traced in official histories back to the embassy of Zhang Qian through Xinjiang to the Yuezhi in the 2nd century BC. Interestingly, by choosing Zhang Qian as a marker for the beginning of Xinjiang’s “Chineseness,” the party is obliquely saying that Xinjiang’s essential belonging-ness to China is predicated on Han presence in the region.

Is it really that simple, however? In this second installment of a conversation on Xinjiang history between Uyghur historian Kahar Barat and Chinese dissident and intellectual Wang Lixiong, Barat takes a historically informed but uncompromising view on the myth of unbroken Han presence in Xinjiang. Xinjiang history, Barat argues, demonstrably is a checkerboard of political, cultural, and religious influences both emerging locally and coming in – from all directions. Han participation in that exchange of wars, ideas, cultures, religions, and writing systems was only one facet, and even the most clear instances of Chinese involvement of the region could be accused of being only temporary, limited, or not even Han at all – the Tang imperial family itself belonging to a migration of pastoral nomads of the north filling in the vacuum left by the bloody Three Kingdoms period.

Delightfully, Barat ends this phase of the discussion with some fiery counter-rhetoric, implying that “Chineseness” is an artificial outgrowth of a monopoly that Chinese writing had on “culture” in the area up until the introduction of newer writing systems from the West – a delineation that marks today’s Uyghurs as belonging to a different cultural sphere than the Chinese. This, of course, isn’t the only controversial assertion Barat makes in this section, or the previous one, so I invite all readers to share any thoughts in the comments section!

Wang Lixiong: About how many significant expansions or colonizing activities have been carried out by Han Chinese in Xinjiang throughout history?

Kahar: Zhang Qian was an envoy of the Western Han, on his first journey he brought 100 men, on his second, 300 men. The frontier commandery he established lasted 70 years. Ban Chao was an envoy of the Eastern Han, on his first trip he brought 36 men; later, he brought reinforcements numbering 1800 men. Ban Chao was skilled at making local alliances and managed a standoff against the Xiongnu for 30 years. The Tang Dynasty dispatched large armies to Xinjiang. The Four Western Region Protectorates they established lasted 150 years.

Wang Lixiong: How long did the Qu Clan of the Gaochang last?

Kahar: About two centuries. The Tang Emperor Taizong would later take the entire Qu Clan nobility and send them to Henan under escort. They constituted an obstacle to Emperor Taizong’s ongoing conquest of the Western Regions. Emperor Taizong himself came from a clan similar to the Qu clan. It’s a very complicated situation, with layers upon layers.

Wang Lixiong: Was Emperor Taizong from this specific clan?

Kahar: No, he wasn’t from this exact tribe, but he did belong to another group of Sinicized Xianbei. Their surname, “Li” was actually created for themselves after the fact. After the Li clan established the Tang dynasty they still maintained their Altaic traditions and culture to a considerable degree. For example, first, from the Xiongnu up to the Gaochang Huihu Uyghurs and the Karakhanid Kingdom there was this custom of establishing two capitals, the Tang Dynasty of the Li clan did the same using Chang’an and Luoyang as their capitals. Second, traditionally our Khans had honorific titles, with some reaching up to 20 characters long. Chinese dynasties always strictly observed a naming format of regnal title, temple name, and posthumous name, but starting from the the Tang dynasty new honorifics were added. Third, our affinal relationships were always between royal and noble tribes, not just any woman from some random tribe could be married in and become Empress. When you investigate you see that a great deal of Tang dynasty Empresses came from other Xianbei clans. On these three points there are differences with traditional Chinese dynastic systems, proving that the Tang dynasty was an Altaic dynasty.

Wang Lixiong: Can Zhang Qian, who served only as an envoy and brought 180 men, really be considered an example of Han expansion into Xinjiang?

Kahar: His fame comes from the fact that he was an envoy, his mission was to reconnoiter the situation of the Xiongnu. Back in those times the Emperors were foolish in the same way good old Mao was with this backyard furnaces. On hearing that the Ferghana valley was home to a breed of “blood-sweating horses,” the Han emperor ordered Li Guangli to lead tens of thousands of troops into the deserts and snow-capped mountains to seek out this horse. Very few returned alive, leading along just a few dozen horses. Sitting in Chang’an and giving orders is easy. Think about it, in those days passing through Gansu alone would heap up fatalities. Going from Dunhuang to Hami, from Hami to Turpan, from Turpan to Kashgar, all of it is endless desert, and then on top of that, one must pass through the snow-capped Pamir mountains to reach the Ferghana Valley, which is today in Uzbekistan, that’s enough to make several tens of thousands of soldiers tire to death on the route.

Wang Lixiong: During the Han dynasty, other than these military actions, did any colonizing occur? Was it just coming back after snatching up a few horses, or did anyone get left behind to start cultivating land?

Kahar: It wasn’t that simple, there still was the problem of the Xiongnu. They (the Han dynasty) were unable to fully vanquish the Xiongnu, it was quite an annoyance, right when their troops were prepared to pursue, the Xiongnu would fall back. After investigating this this they discovered that after dispatching their troops to the battlefield logistics was not a cause for concern among the Xiongnu, because they (the Xiongnu) were able to order the local city-states to prepare provisions that the troops were able to use anywhere at leisure, and consequently without cutting off the supplies between the Xiongnu and those city states, Xiongnu reinforcements were essentially limitless, and the Han would be incapable of destroying the enemy at their roots. Therefore the Han dynasty dispatched troops specifically to occupy these city-states located in Xinjiang, and the Han troops themselves set up tuntian ¹, causing the Xiongnu to lose their source of provisions and ultimately bringing about the defeat of the Xiongnu.

Wang Lixiong: And so what, then, is the connection between Uyghurs and the Xiongnu?

Kahar: Both belong to the Altaic language system. Göktürks were a large sub-component within the Xiongnu, the Xiongnu weren’t limited just to Göktürks, within the Xiongnu there were several other races. Of the ten largest tribal communities within the Xiongnu, the Göktürks were a relatively large group. Now, whether or not the Göktürks comprised, say, 50% or 60% of the Xiongnu, that we can’t clearly determine. Today Mongolians are saying they are the descendants of the Xiongnu, that is incorrect. They originated with the Donghu, who were the enemies of the Xiongnu.

Wang Lixiong: Can the city-states and small nations of those times be considered Uyghur? Or had the Uyghur race yet to form?

Kahar: At that time Uyghurs weren’t an independent tribe, they were a tribe within the Göktürks.

Wang Lixiong: Other than the Turks, such as the Uyghurs, that succeeded the the Xiongnu, where did the other peoples comprising the Xiongnu end up?

Kahar: The Xiongnu dispersed, their troops forming their own respective banners. This happened after the Han dynasty and so there’s no written record. Tribes migrated, becoming their own kingdoms, this is an issue that remains very hazy. These would later become a part of the history of the Göktürks, the Rouran, the Xianbei, et cetera. In the fourth and fifth centuries one branch under the leadership of Attila came close to conquering all of Europe.

Wang Lixiong: During that period of time how long did the Han presence in Xinjiang last?

Kahar: Probably not even a full century, after the Xiongnu were defeated the Han dynasty itself also disappeared, there really was no Western Region to speak of during the Three Kingdoms period.

Wang Lixiong: Right, during the Three Kingdoms civil war there really was no ability to manage the frontier. But during the Tang dynasty was Han expansion into Xinjiang considerable?

Kahar: During the Tang Dynasty the primary concern was war with the Western Göktürks and the Qu clan of Gaochang. Of the tens of thousands of troops dispatched by the Tang a good number of them surrendered to the contemporaneous Turkic tribes and the city states located in the western regions. We don’t know how many of these were Han. In China, the Three Kingdoms period was a bloodbath, some estimates say that over half the population was exterminated. The common people were scattered in all directions, and many fled into the forests and valleys of the south. The central plains of China were left in ruins, infested with bandits, leaving no way to plant crops or build buildings. As a result, the pastoral-nomads of the north migrated down in batches, and eventually settled. The central plains became the geographical foundation of the “Sixteen Kingdoms of the Five Barbaric Tribes.” The settled nomads studied Chinese writing. For a culture without a writing system, the discovering of writing is revolutionary, an exciting thing. As a result there was a revolution in the culture of the central plains, everyone studied Chinese, and not just the writing, but even more importantly the language of Buddhism. Buddhism was extremely instrumental in spreading the Chinese language. In the south, they encountered both Han culture and Buddhism. If you want to be able to read Buddhist texts, you had to study Chinese, you know?

During that time, the language that Kumarajiva² spoke was Tocharian. Tocharian is unique in that it’s a type of European language, roughly similar to today’s Lithuanian language. The royal courts of that area would spend manpower and money to translate Buddhist texts; Kumarajiva would stand and speak, and then several dozen people would record his translations. Buddhism was unable to persuade Han followers of Confucius and Lao Tze, but thoroughly penetrated the barbarian believers of Shamanistic religions. During the Northern Wei period Buddhism entered a Golden Age.

Wang Lixiong: At that time were many peoples already using Han writing? Perhaps established practices in teaching and translating Han writing lead to Chinese becoming the primary language of transmission for Buddhism.

Kahar: That’s correct, when the Xianbei arrived a translation of Buddhist texts into Chinese had long ago been completed in the central plains. In fact, Chinese characters were really what brought about the Han ethnicity, without these characters there would be no Han ethnicity. The Han ethnicity really is just over a hundred peoples assimilated into one body. This process is still continuing. China had 56 ethnicities, after the past 50 years there’s probably only 6 left. In fact, over half probably exist entirely in name only.

Wang Lixiong: Did Uyghur writing already exist at that time? Why didn’t Uyghur adopt Chinese characters? Is it because there were too few Uyghurs?

Kahar: It’s like this, Chinese writing managed to go beyond so many high mountains and wild forests, going as far as Vietnam, even jumping over the ocean to Japan, however, it never managed to climb over that wall right next to it – over Great Wall, to where we Turks live. By the time Turkic peoples needed writing, they had already studied phonetic scripts coming from the West. Those scripts were much simpler, 40 characters, much more convenient thatn Chinese. Having tasted a sample of a phonetic script, who would then go and study Chinese?

Wang Lixiong: In that case, why didn’t the sixteen kingdoms of the five barbaric tribes go and study Turkic writing?

Kahar: Turkic script appeared in the 8th century, the Xianbei existed in the 5th century. With the sudden rise of the Turkic Huihu Uyghurs, all Turkic Huihu Uyghur inscriptions refer to the Tang as Tabghac, the “Tuoba people” and the “Tuoba language.” The Tuoba clan aws a branch of the Altaic Xianbei peoples, speakers of a Turkic language. The Chuvash people living in Russia today may well be the direct descendants of the Tuoba. Histories written in Chinese simply have no way of capturing the linguistic and cultural background of the times. It’s similar as to what happened with the Manchu peoples, later. After just three generations they had completely forgotten their original script. It had to do with the fact that materials in their language were so scarce.

The Tuoba peoples went south early, the rise of the Turkic races came later. The Tuoba settled in the Yellow River basin, abandoned their nomadic lifestyle, and gradually became a settled people, became Han.

Wang Lixiong: There have always been people who say that assimilative abilities of Chinese culture are quite significant, taking other cultures and absorbing them, do you think this is because Chinese characters appeared early and were adopted as a tool by other ethnicities, that assimilation occurred mainly through Chinese writing?

Kahar: Chinese writing is just one aspect, it’s also because Buddhist scriptures were first translated into Chinese. Writing in and of itself is advantageous, its better than not having writing, that goes without saying. Chinese characters have recorded many valuable things. If I were a tribesman of that day, I’d definitely want to study a writing system, but during that time there simply was no choice, just Chinese characters. Naturally, Han characters are quite backwards compared to phonetic writing systems. Chinese writing is what made China, just as the Chinese people created by Chinese characters don’t mesh with the rest of the world, wherever they go, they make Chinatowns.

[2]:^ Kumarajiva was a Buddhist monk from Kucha whose mastery of several languages, including Sanskrit, enabled him to make many vital translations of religious texts. See his article at Wikipedia for more information.

Just a few days ago, investigative journalist Guo Yukuan published an article titled Be Wary of “Becoming Xinjiang Independence’d” (an awkward translation, but the best I can do to capture the semi-satirical use of 被 in 小心“被疆独”.), which turned out to be a thoughtful commentary produced in response to the controversial sentencing of Uyghur journalist Gheyret Niyaz to 15 years in prison for speaking to a Hong Kong magazine about the Urumqi riots. Guo begins his discussion from a unique angle, namely, the birth of “Taiwan independence” sentiment in spite of or, as Guo argues, even because of the Taiwan Nationalist government creating the label as a blacklist term to encompass all Taiwanese who were simply calling for greater political freedom or local rights.

Xinjiang issues are frequently seen through the lens of “Tibet issues” but it’s definitely valuable and worthwhile to consider Xinjiang discontent through the trials and travails of Taiwan, which has undergone a remarkable transformation from the authoritarian vice-grip and politically-motivated massacres under Chiang Kai-shek to the opening culminating in the election of Lee Teng-hui, and back again to the politics-as-usual shenanigans and election-season brawling of the recent decade.

I’ve read through the article and there is much to praise and much to criticize, and so I’ll publish them with some commentary in sections, going along with the four sections Guo himself has divided his article into. At any rate, it’s refreshing to see some unique thoughts coming from the Han Chinese world and it shows that when such an egregious violation of freedom of speech occurs like with Gheyret Niyaz, even Han social commentators may be moved to think up new angles and solutions to the problems posed by Xinjiang.

In Part 1, Guo recounts a visit to Taiwan where he asks Taiwan independence leader Lin Zhuoshui why he, despite being a Mandarin speaker and of Fujian heritage, considers himself Taiwanese and not Chinese. In the later parts, which are forthcoming, Guo ties his observations to the persecution of Uyghur intellectuals and his experience talking with Uyghurs and trying to understand their discontent.

Be Wary of “Becoming Turkestan Independence-ed”

1.

Sharing ideas with people who hold different worldviews is a unbridled mental habit of mine, doing this can be very rewarding. If I manage to talk for a period of time and the other person replies, “Oh, that makes sense,” I tend to feel a sort of unfulfillment that is hard to describe, and even online I’m always trying to find someone to criticize what I say, the sharper the criticism, the better.

Wherever I go, I always seek out interesting locals to speak with, and, in my eyes, the most interesting people are those who have views different from mine.

I detest the “Cultural Revolution” and the “Mao Zedong Line,” and so in India I especially sought out the “Maoists” who were carrying out guerrila attacks in the jungles.

Even today I have a significant degree of culturally meaningful “China sentiment,” and this idea of “China” can even go beyond territorial boundaries. And so when I was in Taiwan I especially sought out “Taiwan Independence” activists. Originally I couldn’t understand how Taiwanese who spoke the same language and had no cultural conflicts with the mainland would painstakingly articulate how they were not “Chinese.” Local friends told me that Lin Zhuoshui was the spiritual leader and most articulate defender of the Taiwan independence movement, and so I went out to find him.

I asked Mr. Lin, “Your familial homeland is also in Fujian, we don’t have any cultural divisions between us, where did your thinking on Taiwan independence come from?” Lin Zhuoshui told me that he and his Taiwan independence associates were also taught from childhood that they were Chinese and and truly believed that they were indeed Chinese.

But they were helpless, because those years even as Taiwan residents they nonetheless lacked channels to participate politically, as the members of parliament all belonged to that “Perpetual Congress” consisting of individuals who had come from the mainland in 1949. Moreover, at that time President Chiang was all about “Counterattacking the mainland, liberating our compatriots on the mainland,” and so anyone in Taiwan who called out for democracy, and everybody who brought in issues of local interest or protecting local autonomy, all of these were accused of being “Taiwan independence elements.”

“Alright then, we might as well be for ‘Taiwan independence.’”

All different types of separate localities were making complaints, and in the beginning they were given the label “Taiwan independence.” Later, they joined together as one, and figured that they might as well adopt Taiwan independence as their banner, and over time formed into a true Taiwan independence movement.

One could call this process “To be Taiwan Independence-ed.”

Uyghur Scholar Kahar Barat

Wang Lixiong

Two extremely compelling and intriguing voices on Xinjiang issues today are those of Wang Lixiong and Kahar Barat. Married to Woeser, an outspoken Tibetan blogger and rights advocate, Wang Lixiong himself is extremely well versed in Tibet issues and one of the most (if not the most) sympathetic Han Chinese voices speaking out on ethnic issues, both pertaining to Tibet and Xinjiang, where his views were particularly enriched and deepened by conversations he had with a Uyghur cellmate during a stint in prison for photocopying “secret” Bingtuan documents – an experience documented in his 2007 book, My East Land, Your West Country . Kahar Barat is a Uyghur scholar and intellectual widely known throughout the Uyghur diaspora for his prolific writings on Uyghur history, culture, linguistics, as well as on modern Xinjiang issues. A favorite of mine, written in Uyghur and titled “Maymaq Uyghurlar,” or “Warped Uyghurs,” is a piercing commentary on how Uyghur artists themselves willingly package Uyghur culture for consumption by the more developed Han by uncritically embracing the image of the oblivious singing-and-dancing stereotype. “Maymaq Uyghurlar” will be translated into English here soon, but for now, here is a translation from Mandarin into English of part one of an interesting and illuminating interview of Kahar Barat by Wang Lixiong, conducted in Virginia not long after the riots last year.

In part one, Barat covers the considerable period of time from the Xiongnu up to the conversion of the region to Islam. Though a serious and clearly well-informed scholar, Barat doesn’t hesitate to make clear his opinions on the relative contributions Buddhism and its successor, Islam, made to the peoples and cultural legacies of the region. Barat further discusses at length the frequently controversial issue of “continuity” between the Uyghurs of the Uyghur Khanate in the 8th and 9th century and the people who have adopted the name “Uyghur” today, placing both within the framework of the gradual and inexorable Turkicization of the sprawl of grasslands stretching from Europe to Mongolia. Barat also shares some fascinating insights on the linguistic evolution of the term “Uyghur” and the complicated and obfuscating relationship the word had with the changing Chinese characters and dialects that recorded the word in the written record. There’s something fascinating to learn from this interview for historians, geographers, linguists, and anybody who can appreciate some good old fashioned Silk Road history. Translations of Parts 2 and 3 of the interview will follow shortly.

This is part of an interview that took place at the home of Kahar Barat of Virginia University in August of 2009, not long after the 7/5 Urumqi riots. This version of the the interview text has been proofread by Dr. Kahar Barat himself.

Kahar Barat is a historian, linguist, and expert on Central Asian history and culture. He is Uyghur, was born in Yili in 1950, earned a Master’s in Turkology from Central Minzu University, and received his doctorate in 1993 at Harvard after doing dissertation research on Central Asia and Altai. Having already taught and conducted academic research at Xinjiang University, at Harvard, Yale, and Indiana University in the US, and at Foguang University in Taiwan, Barat has now become involved in studying Middle and Early Chinese linguistics, Buddhism, phonetics, and other academic areas.

Religious Conversions

Wang Lixiong: Your doctoral dissertation at Harvard was titled “The [Huihu] Uygur¹ Xuanzang Biography Volume 9,” and we know that Xinjiang, which is primarily Muslim today, had for a period in history been predominantly Buddhist. Could you please tell us how long the Buddhist age of Xinjiang lasted?

Kahar: Over fifteen hundred years. The earliest Buddhist clerics and translators in China were all from Xinjiang, and the most ancient Thousand-Buddha Grottoes are also in Xinjiang, not in Dunhuang. The ones at Dunhuang are younger than ours by several centuries. The most ancient Thousand-Buddha Grottoes of ours were made in the 4th century. Buddhism’s entrance into China was through Central Asia. Now, Chinese scholars are saying Buddhism came in the 1st century AD. Where did it come from? Not through Xinjiang? We don’t have a solid basis for claims that Buddhism came in the first century, however, there is a record in the form of Buddhist relics and writings from the 3rd and 4th century.

Wang Lixiong: Buddhism existed in Xinjiang until what point?

Kahar: The 18th century. In the past I’ve investigated Badashi Valley in Hami Prefecture, and there Buddhism endured among the Uyghurs until the 18th century. According to folklore the King of Hami at that time was very angry, and said that the whole world had submitted to Allah, how are there still people worshiping Buddha? He dispatched mullahs to go over the mountains to build mosques and make them convert to Islam.

Wang Lixiong: Which King of Hami was that?

Kahar: I’m not sure which one. There were Kings in Hami from 1697 up to 1930. When I say 18th century that’s a conservative estimate, it’s even possible that Buddhism in Xinjiang continued up to the 19th century. A copy of the “Golden Light Sutra” from the Kangxi Era written in Huihu Uyghur script was excavated in Gansu, this isn’t strange at all. According to my research, the Buddhism among the mountain villages was not the Huihu Uyghur Buddhism that came from Turpan, but rather was the Lama Buddhism practiced by Mongols and Tibetans. Local people told me that during the daytime they would worship at the mosque but after going home would secretly worship their own little Buddhist images. Later the mullahs (dispatched by the King of Hami) were gradually shooed away by the local people. Villagers even brought me to see the ruins of a mosque on a hill near the entrance of the village. Typical historical texts maintain that Xinjiang Buddhism ended in the 15th century, and that’s correct regarding the larger cities, but in the villages tucked away among the mountain valleys, it continued on as before for several centuries.

Historically speaking the stable eras in Xinjiang were quite long lasting. During the Buddhist period there were no wars, and according to Xuanzang’s written accounts, everyone was doing quite well. The King gave alms to the poor year after year, and several thousand people would be able to eat food donated to Buddhist monks as alms. Buddhism is a very benign religion, and as a result the crime rate among society was very low.”

Wang Lixiong: How did the conversion from Buddhism to Islam occur?

Kahar: Buddhism is a benign religion. Explorers have excavated monastic Buddhist clothing with bloodstains in Turpan coming from that period in history. Also, poems eulogizing Islamic holy war proudly write, “We destroyed the infidel temples of the Huihu Uyghurs, we shat and pissed on their shrines.”

Wang Lixiong: So you’re saying that the religious conversion relied on violence to be achieved?

Kahar: Yes. Islam first came through Kashgar via peaceful methods, through arriving missionaries, later, when expanding from Kasghar to Khotan, Turpan, and other places it was spread through holy war, brought with the sword.

Wang Lixiong: Which came first, the entrance of Islam into Xinjiang or the Mongol conquest of Xinjiang?

Kahar: The Islamic conquest came first. Islam arrived at Kashgar in the 10th century AD, but at this time it never went beyond the area from Kashgar to Khotan, and primarily existed in southern Xinjiang. After Islam had established a stable foundation in Kashgar, Kashgar dispatched troops to make war with Khotan, and they fought for 40 years. There weren’t any Mongols during that period. After being vanquished by Kashgar, Khotan’s millennia-old Buddhist dynasty was annihilated. However, Turpan remained a Buddhist state. Then the Khitan arrived, ruling over Xinjiang for 80 years, and after that, the Mongols. All those regions became part of Mongolian domains, however, the Mongols were also gradually assimilated by the local Turkic peoples.

Wang Lixiong: Did Islam continue to spread under Mongolian rule?

Kahar: After a century or two of Mongol rule, the upper strata of urban Mongol society gradually became Turkicized. They were the ones who brought soldiers to kill the Buddhist monks of Turpan and spread Islam to Turpan.

Wang Lixiong: In your view, was this religious conversion benificial or harmful?

Kahar: Islam arrived just as the Silk Road began disintegrated and as civilization was entering a dark age. Nevertheless, Islamicization strengthened the ethnic and cultural unity of the Uyghurs and made Uyghurs become a member of a powerful religious community.

Ancient Xinjiang Dynasties

Wang Lixiong: For many Han Chinese today the history of Xinjiang is entirely a blank space, they know it only as a region, and at most know a little about Zhang Qian and Ban Chao… from a territorial standpoint, did ancient Xinjiang exist as a single, intact unit, or was it rather divided into different countries? What approximately was the scope of its territory?

Kahar: Xinjiang existed in a divided state for two thousand years. High mountains, deserts, and poor transportation allowed several city-state polities to endure for several centuries, even a millennium. In 552, when the Western capital of the Göktürks² was established in Yanqi, the ultimate Turkicized fate of the Xinjiang area was sealed. By the 10th century, all of Xinjiang had already completely Turkicized, or Uyghur-ized if you will. Later, even the Mongol invasion was unable to transform the Uyghur and Muslim aspects of Xinjiang society.

The Huihu Uyghurs were a branch of the Göktürks. After the Göktürks, in 744 the Huihu Uyghurs carried on the great grassland empire for another century. After the Uyghur Huihu Khanate was destroyed in 846, the Turkic people would never again unite into a single great Khanate. However, practically speaking the grasslands from Mongolia to Eastern Europe had all fallen into the hands of Turkic peoples.

Wang Lixiong: After the Huihu Uyghur Khanate, would Xinjiang itself ever again be fully united under a single kingdom?

Kahar: Two major powers emerged in Xinjiang after the Huihu Uyghur Khanate. The first was the Gaochang Huihu Khanate based in Turpan. As several historical documents attest, its territory reached north to Balasagun, which is in Kyrgyzstan, and south to Shazhou, which is Dunhuang. Also, there was the Qarakhanid dynasty of Kashgar, which stretched to Turkmenistan. With a century or two of the Mongol invasion, the upper class of the local Mongols had completely Islamicized and Uyghur-icized. They established the Yarkand Khanate. Turpan was the older brother, Yarkand was the younger brother, they belonged to one family. There were both Islamic powers. There is a phenomenon particular to Central Asia significant to world history that has been neglected by the historian community: in the two millenia from the Xiongnu to the Manchu, pastoral-nomadic powers of the grasslands and settled city-state powers existed in parallel. Two types of culture, two types of societies prospered and existed together. For the most part, the horseback peoples were the colonizers and the settled city-states were permitted self-rule. This is the dual nature of Central Asian history. This is very infrequently seen in throughout the world.”

Wang Lixiong: Where was the heart of the Huihu Uyghur Khanate located?

Kahar: The center of the Huihu Uyghur Khanate was Kharabalghasun, located at Karakorum in outer Mongolia. The Huihu Uyghur Khanate founded five cities, adopted Manichaeism as the state religion, and also began opening up land for cultivation, setting it apart from the Turkic Khanates that came before and after it and illustrating a move towards a settled lifestyle. Recently twenty, thirty fortresses established by Huihu Uyghurs were discovered in Tuvan regions of southern Siberia. It’s possible that Tuvans are descended from the men under General Julumohe who fled north in 840 seeking asylum among the Kyrgyz. At that time the center of the Huihu Uyghurs was the Yenisaitula river area. “Tuva” is a inflexion of “tula.” Mongols today still call it the Tuva River.

Wang Lixiong: How are today’s Uyghurs and the Huihu Uyghurs related?

Kahar: The words Huihu and Huihe are Old Chinese, Uyghur is the modern word. Huihu represents the Buddhist era, Uyghur represents the Muslim era, these are differences in the wording of the Chinese characters. These really are one people, one thing. There are two reasons its written this way, first, during the Yuan Dynasty a new northern Mandarin appeared and began to replace medieval pronunciations from the Tang dynasty, and many things had to be transliterated once again. The two characters “Huihu,” used during the Tang Dynasty, were written in the Yuan dynasty using the three characters “Weiwuer,” and consequently it was the Chinese language and pronunciation itself that changed.

Wang Lixiong: In that case, did the name Uyghurs used to refer to themselves also undergo changes?

Kahar: There were some changes. It appears that in medieval times “Uyghur” had a glottal consonant and a labiodental: “Hudghur.” We don’t know when exactly the glottal consonant turned into a vowel, but judging from the change in Chinese characters from “Hui” to “Wei” it occurred at least sometime before the Yuan dynasty. The change in the labiodental “d” to the semivowel “y” happened after the 10th century. For example, the change from “adaq” to “ayaq” for the word “foot,” and the change from “adiq” to “ayiq” for the word “bear”, et cetera. The “Yugur”³ ethnicity is simply a Han Chinese mispelling. The “Yugurs” are Uyghur, and local Han Chinese represented their ethonym through the two Chinese characters “Yugu.”

Wang Lixiong: Were the ancient cities of Gaochang and Jiaohe Uyghur, or did they belong to outsiders?

Kahar: At their earliest stages Gaochang and Jiaohe weren’t Uyghur, they were founded by local aboriginals, they’re very ancient city states, two millenia old. Apparently their most ancient names involved the sounds *KU and *CHI, which probably is related to the later terms Guizi and Cheshi. “Gaochang” also is a transliteration of this. Later the Rouran and Gaoche would fight over this area. The Rouran most likely were an Altaic people. Many scholars assert a link between the Gaoche and the Huihu Uyghurs. After the Rouran defeated the Gaochang, they set up the Qu clan, half-Sinicized barbarians, as the Kings of Gaochang. They used Chinese characters but had their own spoken language. The Book of Zhou says this. Consequently Chinese texts and documents excavated in Turpan have soom extremely strange characters and sentences, and we suppose that they used Chinese to write, but the local language to read. Later it would all gradually Turkicize.

Wang Lixiong: Ah, that then explains how Jiaohe and Gaochang weren’t founded by Han Chinese, the Chinese texts excavated there actually were created and used by local barbarians…

Kahar: Correct. When the Qu clan migrated from Lanzhou they used Chinese characters but maintained a number of their own cultural characteristics. That being said, how much can they really have said to have “Sinicized”? We don’t know, because during the North and South dynasties, the Sinicization of the north was a process that continued over the course of several centuries.

After the Three Kingdoms, very few Han remained in northern China, and the Xianbei began to shift southwards towards the central plains of China, leading to the Sixteen States period, converting to Buddhism and the use of Chinese characters. Buddhism furthered their Sinicization and caused many tribes to abandon their own language. We don’t know what language they originally spoke, most likely it was similar to the Tuoba language. Tuoba belongs to the Altaic Turkic languages.

[1]:^ A note on how I’ve translated 回鹘: this may be a cause for confusion, particularly for our readers who are less familiar with Xinjiang history. These Chinese characters can simply be transliterated as Huihu, or they can be rendered as Uyghur, and both would be correct since these are the both words used to refer to the Uyghur Khanate, a political entity that existed in the 8th and 9th centuries. Nevertheless, I believe that in this interview to render it purely as “Huihu” would be to neglect the important ties with modern day Uyghurs being discussed, and to render it simply as “Uyghur” would cause a confusing overlap between references to the historical entity and references to Uyghurs of today. Therefore, the awkward convention I’ve decided to go with is the Huihu Uyghur (Khanate).

[2]:^ Another potential source of confusion: in Mandarin, both the broader concept of “Turkic” [peoples] and a specific Central Asian polity that existed from the 6th to 8th century, the Göktürks, are referred to with the characters 突厥, Tujue. These terms are very much related, and the Turkic peoples of history and today can be considered to have derived their ethonym from the Göktürks and their predecessors in a sense similar to how today’s “Han” collectively derive their ethonym from the Han Dynasty. Nevertheless, in Mandarin discussions it can get confusing separating references to “Turkic-ness” in general and the Göktürk Khanate. Here, I’ve translated direct references to the historical entity as “Göktürk.” There’s a bit of editorial liberty being taken here by doing so.

[3]:^ Barat is referring to the roughly fifteen thousand “Yugur” people that reside today in Gansu province. These Yugurs, also known in many Western texts as the “Yellow Uyghurs,” are the descendants of the Uyghurs who fled southeast after the fall of the Uyghur Khanate to the Kyrgyz. They’ve retained both their Turkic language, which has diverged from the Uyghur language in Xinjiang over the past millennium, and their Buddhist beliefs.

This would be the second newsworthy case of a Uyghur immigrant from China accused of terrorism on foreign soil. The two suspects in the first case, where they were accused of planning on bombing a statue in front of the Chinese “Dragon Mart” shopping center in Dubai, were just sentenced recently to 10 years in jail followed by deportation.

For years, China has insisted that organized Al-Qaeda-linked Islamic extremism, which at various times has been labeled the “East Turkestan Islamic Movement,” the “East Turkestan Islamic Party,” and the “Turkestan Islamic Party,” is a clear a present danger to both the PRC and nations abroad. Invariably government documents and media reports has attempted to link nearly every incident of violence in Xinjiang, whether premeditated or spontaneous, to the machinations of TIP. Accordingly, given the haphazard and jury-rigged nature of most terror attempts in Xinjiang, alongside the government’s ham-fisted attempts to force mass demonstrations and riots into the “terror” narrative, many scholars and analysts have dismissed or at least questioned China’s claims, particularly in light of the benefits the Party would gain from an Islamic bogeyman and its capacity to manipulate, exaggerate, and fabricate information to serve this end.

These two incidents outside of China may mark a turning point in the discussion. Much is left to be said and discovered: does the presence of one, two, or three disaffected Uyghurs involved in Islamic extremism truly constitute proof for the existence of an organized Uyghur threat? After all, even the United States has its own renegade sons. Will Mikael Davud even be found guilty? Even though, in my opinion, the existence of three alienated Uyghurs with violent plots doesn’t get anywhere near “verifying” an organized “ETIM” threat, the Norway plots in particular are a PR coup for the PRC nonetheless since the intended target country and the identity of the suspect make good press. All it takes is a good news story to instantly put Uyghurs into the Islamic terrorist rubric: see, however, the almost decade-long struggle of the Guantanamo Uyghurs for how much blood, sweat, and tears must go into undoing the terrorist label.

It has been interesting following the chatter on the forums of the Uyghur American Association following the announcement of the arrests. If one thing is plain, it is that diaspora Uyghurs are extremely nervous about the damage a single allegation against a Uyghur terror suspect in a Western country could do to the international reputation of Uyghurs as a whole. For example, on the 10th, a forum visitor excitedly made a post titled, “Good news! It looks like he’s [Mikael Davud] is not a Uyghur!”.

According to the latest information, which I’ve posted below, his name apparently is “Mikael Dawut.” This thug is definitely someone who’s just calling himself a Uyghur, Uyghurs don’t use the name Mikael. Uyghurs in Norway should immediately get in touch with the Norwegian government and make it clear that he’s just someone who’s called himself Uyghur. We must do this to end anxieties among the Uyghurs and clear the name of the Uyghurs!

Of course, having a weird name is pretty poor evidence, and other forum-goers noted this. In a response titled “Don’t be to too quick to claim this is good news,” a replier said:

I’m always happy to hear good news, and if that were the case that would be great, but when you attain Norwegian citizenship it’s possible to adopt a new name, maybe he’s one of those who decided to adopt a foreign name.

Diaspora Uyghurs for the most part live in tight-knit communities, and so it didn’t take long for the channels between and among the American and Norwegian Uyghur communities to take note of Davud’s presence – or in this case, absence – among the local communities and at community events. A most informative post, apparently written by a Norwegian Uyghur, titled “He is Uyghur, his original name was Rashidin Muhemmet,” had this to say:

Today’s issue of VG [Verdens Gangs], one of Norway’s biggest newspapers, revealed everything.

The 39 year old terror suspect is indeed Uyghur, his original name is Rashidin Muhemmet, he’s from Ghulja, and in 1999 he applied for political refugee status at the UN Refugee Commission’s Almaty branch, gained asylum, and with a few other Uyghurs was set up in Bergen city in Norway. In 2003 he disappeared from Bergen and was later discovered that he had moved to Sarpsborg, a city in southeast Norway near the Swedesh border. When he applied for Norwegian citizenship in 2007 he changed his name to “Mikael Davud.”

The author then apparently departs from VG’s exposes and goes on to share some information on Norwegian Uyghurs’ thoughts on Mikael Davud.

A vast majority of Uyghurs living in Norway had no idea that such a Uyghur even existed in Norway. Even people who had originally known of him gradually forgot about him. This was because he would never come to any Uyghur get-togethers – Nowvruz celebrations, demonstrations, wedding celebrations – in any event, he lived ten days’ journey away from any place that had Uyghurs. When he lived in Bergen, other Uyghurs who lived there knew of him, but other than a few other radical Uyghurs living in Bergen he spent most of his time with Arabs. “I won’t study an infidel language,” he would say, and studied Arabic instead of Norwegian. In public, if someone would ask him “What’s your ethnicity, where did you come from?” he’d answer, “I’m a Muslim from Turkestan.”

The terror suspect Rashidin originally was a Uyghur, a descendent of Uyghurs from East Turkestan, however, after he grew up, left his homeland, and “had his eyes opened,” he changed and insisted that calling himself “Uyghur” was wrong, was against Islam, becoming one of those people who says he is of the “Muslim” ethnicity.

And so it’s not wrong if we say that “He’s not a Uyghur” and throw him out from the ranks of Uyghur-ness, however, because he said “I’m a Uyghur” when he was applying for asylum to the UN Refugee Commission and wrote as such on his paperwork, and because a “Muslim ethnicity” wasn’t available as an option, the Norwegian government has outed him as a Uyghur and will continue to treat him as such.

A couple things of note. If we’re to believe this personal account, then Davud explicitly subscribed to a form of Islamic extremism that called for one’s Musilm identity to supersede and replace one’s ethnic identity. This is not an idea that’s foreign to Al-Qaeda rhetoric, or even to Islam in general, where one’s identity as a Muslim is meant to be primary and singular. In other words, it’s not strange to see a terror suspect such as Davud disavow an ethnic identity for the sake of a religious one. Should this be true, it’s important that analysts and scholars to distinguish between a nationalist cause and a religious one among Uyghurs, especially if the two on their own are making efforts to separate themselves, and they are, with Davud saying “I’m a Muslim” when asked about his ethnicity, and, obviously, with forum posters like this trying to make it clear that Davud was separate from the “community” and vocal about the precedence of his religious beliefs.

More fascinating for the realm of identity politics is the idea, implied strongly here, that should one publicly disavow his Uyghur identity, as Davud did, and adopt another one, then he or she is no longer a Uyghur. Perhaps my translation is a little clunky, but the last sentence uses the rarely seen (for me anyway) Uyghurluq which I take to mean “Uyghurhess” or “Uyghurhood,” and the verb in the sentence means to completely, entirely throw or eject Davud out from the hallowed halls of “Uyghurhood.” The writer even emphasizes that such a person has disavowed his Uyghur identity even though he is the descendant of “Uyghurs from East Turkestan.” In other words, he has un-Uyghured himself even in spite of his blood heritage.

Much has been written about the “ethnogenesis” of the Uyghur, and much also has been written about the existence of a tangible ethnic identity in the Tarim Basin even before the term Uyghur was revived. Some apologists for the PRC gleefully point to the traceable rise of the term “Uyghur” as indication that there is something inauthentic or fake about their ethnic identity. I think the implications of this one person’s understanding of “Uyghurness” indicate that Uyghurs themselves often realize that “Uyghur” is a flexible ethnic category, and even acknowledging this in no way detracts from the strength or authenticity of the Uyghur ethnic identity. I find such a unique take on what it means to “be Uyghur” a fresh perspective – coming from a Uyghur individual – to the idea of Uyghur identity.

Professor Chen’s paper came onto my radar over the usual course of scouting out interesting links and resources on Xinjiang that forms a routine part of my research week. I was in no way expecting to find that our website, The New Dominion, occupies a seemingly significant node in the graphical depiction of “Uyghur Issue Networks” Professor Chen has produced on page 7 of the paper (that is, if I’m interpreting the image correctly.)

It may be a little hard to read the labels, as the original image was already a tad blurry. The New Dominion is depicted on this network as the highest yellow node near the upper left.

How was this network made? Professor Chen used propriety software called Issue Crawler which takes an initial set of websites then follows outbound links to a certain degree of iterations. For those with a better grasp of the lingo (this excludes me):

IssueCrawler harvests the URLs, capturing the starting points’ outlinks and returning embedded co-linked sites. The net result is the generation of a binary matrix of the site relationships. As differing linkages between sites results in constantly changing configurations, Figure 2 [the graph above - P] is a graphic visualization of the Uyghur online networks on January 3, 2010, with some additional retrieved relationships.

The dataset itself is also available for anyone who wants to take a closer look… and also owns the propriety network analysis software UCINET. Again, that would exclude me, though I may download the 60-day trial version and take Professor Chen’s data for a spin.

What does this mean? Well, the Uyghur American Association, which was one of the “seed sites” from which the analysis was started, links frequently to our analysis and translations. I’ve gotten an only vague sense of this: I believe members of the UAA forums post links to our articles, rather than the site frontpage itself. In turn, we link to a host of websites from which we draw material and cite sources. In no particular order, we’ve apparently made links to these sites: the United Nations, UighurLanguage.com, Eurasianet, Fool’s Mountain, the China Beat, Uyghurblog, Duihua, the Wall Street Journal, Uighurbiz, Danwei, Far West China, and the  China Digital Times. Obviously, over the course of our existence we’ve linked to tons of websites and unfortunately I don’t know what exactly makes IssueCrawler decide to depict a linkage. Nevertheless, we do try to be pretty thorough when it comes to citing sources and bringing in perspectives, and so I’m glad to see that the IssueCrawler robot can see our meticulousness and depict our octopus-like linkages accordingly.

And so, The New Dominion is a central node in the “Uyghur Issues Network.” This does have some implications. I must stress and stress again that my views (or outbound links) in no way represent the views or opinions of TND’s other more scholarly and cool-headed writer Tewpiq. Nevertheless, over the years, with my experiences in Xinjiang and as a writer at this blog, I’ve come to embrace the fact that there has been a more “activist-y” tone to my writings. I’ve tried to explore the shifts in my perspectives and I cannot but conclude that a just use of my (very limited) language abilities and familiarity with regional issues would be to help Uyghurs have another forum where their culture can be discussed, be it in a historical manner, a cultural manner, an travel-guide style way, and yes, prominently, in a political fashion. I can only hope that our site will continue to draw from a variety of sources to produce content useful to readers, activists, and random visitors alike.

A few hours ago, Public Security spokesperson Wu Heping held a news conference to divulge details on an alleged Uyghur terrorist plot that apparently was foiled by Public Security forces recently. The most comprehensive Mandarin-language report is hosted at China Net and contains a transcript of Wu’s speech as well as several photos of confiscated evidence and two of the suspects identified as ringleaders. Intriguingly, the Ministry of Public Security claims that this recent crime bust has connections with the Uyghur refugees who were deported from Cambodia in December of last year and the Kashgar and Kuche attacks that occurred in Xinjiang during the Olympic Games.

On June 24, 2010 (Thursday) at 10 o’clock, at a second-floor multi-purpose reception hall of the Asia Grand Hotel, Vice-Director of the Ministry of Public Security General Office and spokesperson Wu Heping reported information on Chinese Public Security organs thwarting a major terrorist plot. Below is a transcript of the news conference:

Wu Heping:

Friends, ladies, gentlemen, good morning to all of you. I’d like to warmly welcome everyone to the Ministry of Public Security’s news conference, the topic of today’s conference is the circumstances surrounding the recent breaking up of a terrorist plot by Chinese Public Security agencies.

Recently, Chinese Public Security agencies foiled a major terrorist plot, arresting plot leaders Abudurexiti Abulaiti (male, from Shache County, Xinjiang, 42) and Yiming Semaier (Male, from Yuepuhu County, Xinjiang, 33) and over 10 other terrorist conspirators, both key and peripheral members, seizing explosives, detonator equipment, and other various criminal implements, forcefully thwarting a terrorist conspiracy and promptly eliminating a concealed threat to social security.

Clues leading to this major terrorist plot were first discovered in 2009 in relation to an illegal border crossing case. On December, 20th, 2009, 20 individuals of Chinese citizenship illegally crossed the border into another country but were then deported and were, according to the usual practice, taken into custody by Chinese police. Afterwards, Chinese police, in line with humanitarian sentiment, quickly released 1 woman and 2 children among those individuals, even setting up living arrangements for them. The remaining 17 were, according to the law, investigated, and this revealed that three of them were fugitive terrorist suspects wanted by the police，all of whom had connections to the recently arrested  core terrorists Abudurexiti Abulaiti and Yiming Semaier.

The Public Security investigation has ascertained that terrorist ringleader Abudurexiti Abulaiti was dispatched into China by the “East Turkestan Islamic Movement” from outside the country’s borders, and that Yiming Semaier is a core member of “East Turkestan” terrorist forces. This terrorist organization has planned and carried out several terrorist plots since 2008, including the vehicle attack against Public Security Frontier Defense Officers in Kashgar and the terrorist explosives attacks in Kucha carried during the Beijing Olympics; both were perpetrated by members of this terrorist organization.

During  interrogation Abudurexiti Abulaiti, Yiming Semaier, and others have confessed to traveling through Xinjiang, Henan, Guangdong, Yunnan, and other provinces, secretly carrying out extremist religious activities, developing and training members, setting up terrorist organizations, actively collecting funds, seeking in many places materials for creating improvised explosives, carrying out multiple tests explosions in preparation for the implementation of destructive terrorist activities. For the sake of making the greatest impact, from July to October of 2009 they prepared tens of improvised explosive devices, Molotov cocktails, knives, hatchets, and other implements, plotting to carry out successive, large scale attacks in Kashgar, Khotan, Aksu, and other places. When their criminal terrorist schemes were timely discovered and thwarted by Public Security agencies, a small number of key members of this terrorist group fled to Guangdong, Yunnan, and other regions; congregating in batches and exiting the country from the southwest border areas of the nation. During their escape, the collectively swore an oath to join the “East Turkestan Islamic Movement” terrorist organization, to send pictures and other personal information to the email addresses of “East Turkestan Islamic Movement” ringleaders, seek out specific escape routes, and, in doing so, attempt to join the “East Turkestan Islamic Movement” terrorist organization abroad. Public Security agencies have learned that these individuals received support and funds from representatives of “East Turkestan” organizations during the process of their escape across borders.

The vanquishing of this major terrorist organization once again proves that the “East Turkestan Islamic Movement” and other terrorist organizations are the main terrorist threats our country faces both presently and in the coming future. Chinese Public Security agencies will firmly uphold and fulfill the resolutions of the United Nations General Assembly and the Security Council and strike a serious blow to every type of terrorist activity, conscientiously protecting social stability.

That’s all for today’s news conference. Thank you.

Mullā Bilāl’s lengthy text, which is mostly verse and partly prose, is a remarkable source for the history of the Ili Valley in the 1860s and 1870s. This was a source for Ho-dong Kim’s excellent book Holy war in China: the Muslim rebellion and state in Chinese Central Asia, 1864-1877, a must-read for anyone interested in Xinjiang.

But I’ll let Pantusov do the talking. (Note that his introduction is inaccurate in places and displays the prejudices of a Russian orientalist of the 19 c. The New Dominion does not necessarily share any of the opinions presented below.)

The Muslim war against the Chinese

A text in the Taranchi dialect

published by N. N. Pantusov

Volume One

Kazan’

1880

Permitted by the censor, St. Petersburg, 22 August 1878

Preface

The title Kitab-i ghazat dar mulk-i chin (“religious war in the Chinese state”) refers to this essay on this history of the Ili region, presently of the area of Kul’dja [FN: The Kul’dja region is subordinated to the Military Governor of Semirechie Province, who lives in city of Verny, where there is under him a special consul for Kul’djanese affairs.], formerly a Chinese province and then of the Kul’dja Sultanate, the end of the existence of which was on account of political behavior and animosity towards us on the part of the Sultanate government in June of 1871.

This book is written in the Taranchi dialect, which differs quite little from that of Kashgar-Sart. The author is a Taranchi from the city of Kul’dja, Mulla Bilal son of Mulla Yusuf, nicknamed Nazym [ناضیم], or “poet.” Mulla Bilal, who indeed took part in the fight with the Chinese and the clash with the Russian army, who had seized the Ili region, is still at present hale and healthy, having lived over 54 years. Today, he holds the responsibilities of an imam at one of the mosques of the city of Kul’dja, while, in his time free from such service, he is a copyist of various writings and – the profession of a mulla – a scribe.

Mulla Bilal begins his defter (book) [FN: This book was found in Kul’dja in October 1876. Located in the first leaves of the book are variants borrowed from unfinished draft copies of this composition, preserved by Bilal.] in the ordinary way, with Muslim writers’ glorification of God, then of Muhammad, and of the other prophets and askhab. The following chapter talks about the author of the book the circumstances of the coming into being thereof.

The history of the Ili border region of the past one hundred or so years and following the war begin the chapter: “The narrative of from which khan to which khan passed the cities of Ili, in the time of which khans they flourished, and during the time of which khans they were destroyed.” In this chapter, the particulars of the history of the border region begins with the time of the Emperor [khakan] Qianlong (or, in the Muslim transliteration…) under whose government was constituted the migration of Kashgarian Sarts – subsequently Taranchis – into the Ili Valley from the different cities of Altishahar nearly 120 years beforehand. [FN: Today Yettishahar, under the power of the Kashgar bedaulet [Yaq’ūb Beg], conquered in December 1877 by the Da Ching [Great Qing] army.]

Mulla Bilal takes the history of the region up to the time of the conquest of the Sultanate by Russian arms.

This narrative was written in 1292 of the Hijra [1875], “in the year of the snow leopard” by the Ili reckoning, in verse and, to a lesser degree, prose, and was completed in 1293 [1876].

This narrative is written in the Turkic Taranchi dialect.

The Taranchi dialect, differentiated from the Kashgar-Sart idiom by its content of a great number of Mongol and Chinese words in its lexical composition, is remarkable in regard to its phonetics in the softness of sounds in the pronunciation of words, constrained by which the author often sins in orthography. Thus, owing to this fact, we encounter in his writing soft [qäsim] instead of hard [qasïm], [yetib] instead of [yatïb].

In the spelling of other words, however, the softness of the tongue does not appear. For example, علی will be said [eli], باسلكان [basylgan] pronounced [besilgan], اتی [aty] said [ety]…

The softness of the tongue in connection with idiosyncratic stress – which contravenes the general grammatical rule of stress on the final syllable – makes the Taranchi dialect so little understood to those who know a Turkic language that it requires a significant period of time to learn the ways and forms of communicating in the language, even though a Taranchi speaks the same Turkish language as the Kashgarian Sarts, inhabitants of the Taranchi cradle.

To the Taranchis, under the Sultanate’s rule, the overthrow of the Chinese served as an epoch for the beginning of a new era. This is called “Islam” (تاریخ اسلام). The conquest by Russian arms took place in the seventh year of Islam; 1877 is the thirteenth year of Islam.

On the model of the Kashgar dialect, there is also found in Taranchi a replacement of the letters ب and پ with ف, although, in pronunciation, the letters پ and ب are heard in the initial position. Instead of تاپيب, تافيب is met; instead of پارە, فارە.

The isolation of the Taranchi people in the Ili Valley, under the odious yoke and oppression of Chinese rule, oppressed and uprooted as a consequence of exorbitant taxes and corvees, allowed the possibility neither of the development of the popular spirit nor of the language. The latter, isolated from mutual lexical exchange and borrowings from other kindred Turkic dialects, could not develop, but rather weakened and spoiled from the admixture of surrounding neighbors from the Mongol and Chinese peoples, as well as the accumulation of some of the features of the Chinese language in certain relations. The former was expressed in the composition of the lexicon of the language, into which entered Chinese, Kalmyk, and Mongol words; the latter in its omission, for example, in conformity with the shortcomings of Chinese pronunciation, the letter ر in several words and grammatical forms. For example, the Taranchis say [baza] for [bazar], [bizlaga] for [bizlarga]… Probably for this reason, in the verbal suffix دور, the final [r] is discarded. For example, instead of ديدور, they say ديدو [deɪdu], for بولادور
بولادو [buladu].

The Taranchi dialect, adjoining to, of the Turkic dialects, the Kyrgyz dialect, the popular Taranchi language assimilated, in part, the special phonetic features of this dialect: substituting the sound [l] with the sound [d], [j] with [zh] (i.e. softer that [dzh]). For example, for ايزلاب, the Taranchis say and writes ازداب, for مونكلاشدى
مونكداشتى, and the words يغيب and يكرمە the Taranchis pronounce [zhigyb] and [zhigarma]…

Xia stated that several details of the violence were kept from the public in order to preserve broader social harmony, while Xinhua journalists reported sensitive information directly to the government. This included the rioters’ organized and deliberate burning of buses full of people, the decapitation of a child and display of his head on a highway overpass, the humiliation of a dead woman, and other acts of brutality. We have no way of verifying this at this time.

More revealing to me is Xia’s casual remark that the rioters seen in the photographs were tattooed and bare-chested, that they “had nothing.” Is this an interpretation of ethnic violence through the eyes of class conflict? Is it an accurate assessment of the Uyghurs who took to the streets? Many young Uyghur men have tattoos that they grow ashamed of later in life, since they represent the excesses of a more reckless youth, though I, for one, have never learned the secrets of any of these marks. The causes and the unfolding of the riots remain a mystery, but perhaps this is a clue.