By Jeremy Page
July 25, 2016 4:37 a.m. ET
9 COMMENTS
BEIJING—Leaked Islamic State records provide the first solid evidence that more than 100 Chinese nationals have joined the jihadist movement in Syria, according to two recent studies, findings that come as Beijing is seeking closer cooperation from Western governments to counter terrorism.
The studies by two U.S. think tanks found that almost all Chinese fighters in the records said they came from China’s northwestern region of Xinjiang, where some members of the Muslim Uighur ethnic group have been resisting Beijing’s rule for decades.
Some Chinese recruits didn’t specify their origin, but gave names, noms de guerre or other details suggesting they were Uighur.
The research from the New America think tank and the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point was based on Islamic State registration forms, leaked by a defector, for recruits entering Syria from Turkey from mid-2013 to mid-2014. It corroborates Chinese officials’ assertions that there are about 300 Uighurs fighting with Islamic State in both Syria and Iraq. It’s unclear if more Chinese fighters joined the group outside the period covered by the leaked documents.
However, the findings cast doubt on China’s frequent assertion that many Uighur militants had trained and worked with al Qaeda and other foreign groups over the past nearly two decades. One of the studies found none with former jihadist experience and the other found four, with two listing experience in Pakistan, one in Afghanistan and one in Xinjiang, which Uighur separatists call East Turkestan.
China’s Foreign Ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The studies indicate that many of the Uighur fighters were married and came to Syria with their children with the intent of settling in 2014—shortly after an uptick in violence in Xinjiang prompted an intense security crackdown there. This suggests many weren’t planning to return to China to foment jihad, which Chinese authorities have suggested was a threat.
The data “suggest that Uighur fighters joining ISIS are considering their move to be permanent or long term,” said Nate Rosenblatt, the author of the more recent study, which was published by New America last week.
Both studies found that
recruits were mostly poorly educated, low-skilled laborers, with a high proportion from religiously conservative areas that have experienced high levels of police and antigovernment violence. “Contextual evidence in China suggests the country’s antiterrorism campaign in Xinjiang could be a push factor,” said the New America study.
Islamic State formed in April 2013, spinning off from al Qaeda’s Syrian branch and taking most of the founding group’s foreign fighters, some new recruits and other veteran jihadists who had fought U.S. forces in Iraq. Over the course of 2014, Islamic State was able to simultaneously overtake large swaths of territory using separate fighting forces in Iraq and Syria, eventually linking the territorial gains across the border and erecting its so-called caliphate that summer. The vast majority of foreign fighters joined Islamic State after crossing over from Turkey—a route that became known among Western officials as the “jihadist highway.”
The 118 Chinese recruits the study found in the registration records varied in age from 10 to 80, and included eight who were 16 or younger. Last year, Islamic State issued a propaganda video showing Uighur children and an 80-year-old Uighur man who it said had joined the movement in Syria.
The West Point study was published in April and based on the same leak of records but a slightly larger sample. It found 167 Chinese fighters.
Among them, 15%—a relatively large proportion—declared that they were willing to conduct suicide attacks, the West Point study found. The West Point study’s lead author, Brian Dodwell, said the majority of those people were either single or of unclear marital status.
He also said 10 Chinese fighters—including one who claimed previous jihadist experience—reported an affiliation to the Turkestan Islamic Party, a militant group that has claimed responsibility for several recent attacks in China. The group is also known as, or is an offshoot of, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement and has been based in Pakistan’s tribal areas, terrorism analysts say.
China lobbied successfully to have the movement included on a United Nations terrorist list in 2002, but has
and terrorism experts of its existence as a cohesive group that conducts attacks within China.
It stepped up such lobbying following
that bore some hallmarks of jihadist groups.
The U.S. and other Western governments have been reluctant to cooperate with China on counterterrorism because of concerns about widespread rights abuses that Uighur and foreign activists say Chinese security services have committed in Xinjiang.
Britain labeled the Turkestan Islamic Party a
earlier this month, saying it had been founded by Uighur militants in 1989 and now operates in China, Central and South Asia and Syria.
China has also been increasing pressure on some Southeast Asian countries to return Uighurs who have fled China, often attempting to reach Turkey via Thailand or Malaysia. Both the U.S. studies found that all the Chinese fighters had come via Turkey and a relatively high proportion of those who reported other foreign travel said they had been to Malaysia or Singapore.
