corbett chinas war on terror

| by James Corbett
|
| May 8, 2014

On October 28, 2013, an SUV carrying three passengers crashed into a
crowd of people waiting outside the gate of the forbidden city across
from the infamous Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing. All three
inside the car were killed in the subsequent fire, along with two
bystanders in the crowd. Thirty-eight others were injured. Although not
the most spectacular terror attack in the world in recent years, the
scene of flames and carnage under the watchful gaze of Chairman Mao in
the shadow of the heavily-guarded Tiananmen Square was as unmistakable
to the Chinese population as the smoking ruins of the Pentagon was to
the American population. This was, or was intended to be taken as, an
attack on the Chinese “homeland.”

It was not long before the incident was `blamed on Muslim
separatists `__
from the country’s northwestern Xinjiang province, China’s largest
administrative district and a geostrategic area that shares 2800
kilometres of border with Tajikistan, Kygyzstan and Kazakhstan. As such,
the government was quick to claim that the incident represented a bold
new escalation in China’s ongoing struggle with its restive Muslim
population, part of the ethnic Uyghur minority. Since then, two `mass
murder incidents `__
involving `knife-wielding masked
men `__
later identified as members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement have
drawn further attention to the issue.

As Pepe Escobar, geopolitical analyst and frequent BoilingFrogsPost.com
contributor, explained `last week on The Corbett
Report `__,
the Uyghurs are a persecuted minority in the country’s untamed west who
find few opportunities for advancement in China’s mainstream society,
dominated by the ethnic majority Han Chinese.

Uyghur disenfranchisement is played upon to foment Islamic radicalism
and political separatist sentiment. The East Turkestan Islamic movement
seeking to wrest Xinjiang from China’s control offers a number of
parallels to the shadowy “Al Qaeda” terror organization, including a
`mysterious leader `__
living in a secret mountain base in Pakistan’s lawless border region
and, as FBI whistleblower and BoilingFrogsPost founder Sibel Edmonds
`revealed `__
in last year’s series on `Gladio
B `__,
direct support from NATO-associated Gladio operatives seeking to
destabilize a geostrategic region in an ongoing, under-the-radar war for
control of Central Asia.

Western support for the Xinjiang terrorists is not difficult to spot,
and includes the fact that the East Turkestan
`Government-in-Exile `__,
led by `Anwar Yusuf
Turani `__,
is based in Washington, D.C., has spoken at the National Press Club, met
with President Clinton during his administration, and received explicit
offers of support from President Bush, and the National Endowment for
Democracy-funded `Uyghur World
Congress `__, a German-based
organization with a Sweden-based spokesman, Dilxat Raxit, that Central
Asia analyst Christoph Germann told The Corbett Report last week, acts
as the Western media’s “go to” man for any and all stories about the
region.

**GERMANN

The incidents so far are by no means massive or spectacular enough to
fundamentally change the course of Chinese society or bring about
Xinjiang’s independence, but they are serving a number of purposes. For
the west, the attacks help take the battle for control of Central Asia
directly into the Chinese homeland, and help destabilize a region that,
as part of President Xi’s “New Silk Road” corridor of pipeline and trade
routes, is of increasing economic importance to Beijing.

But Beijing, too, gains from the attacks in the same way that
authoritarian power structures always benefit from attacks and
atrocities: by making the formerly impossible appear probable. As Li
Wei, a terrorism “expert” at the China Institutes of Contemporary
International Relations told the Chinese government mouthpiece `Global
Times `__ last week:

“China has long been considering how to introduce a counter-terrorism
law. However, considering the complexity of the anti-terrorism
situation, and difficulties of coordinating so many government
departments and military forces involved in the issue, the
counter-terrorism law still isn’t on the books.”

Beijing is now openly mulling new anti-terror legislation that some are
calling China’s Patriot Act and many analysts are expecting to openly
target the Uyghur population. Given that the government is already
increasing its network of informants in the region with such programs as
offering cash rewards for those who inform on neighbors with `too much
facial
hair `__,
it is questionable whether formal terror legislation is even needed at
all.

In the end, as with so many of these contrived geopolitical conflicts,
the only people who clearly lose are the Uyghur people themselves, whose
economic and political marginalization seems set to increase from here.
In the great irony of global geopolitics, this will itself create a
greater pool of disenfranchised youth to draw upon for future terror
attacks, thus perpetuating a descending cycle of chaos and violence.
And, sadly, the only plausible way out of this, a plan for bringing
about greater opportunities for the Uyghur people to engage in China’s
ongoing economic miracle, is so far off the political radar that it
can’t be found on anyone’s map.