Uyghur fighters in Syria vow to come for China next
A Uyghur militant group that helped to topple Bashar-al Assad has vowed to take the fight to China.
The Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) threatened Beijing in a video released on Dec 8, the day the Syrian regime collapsed, showing its fighters holding machine guns and wearing military fatigues.
“Now here in Syria, in all the cities here, we fight for Allah, and we will continue to do this in our Urumchi, Aqsu and Kashgar in the future,” said one masked man, listing cities in China’s Xinjiang region, from where the Uyghurs hail. “We will chase the Chinese infidels away.”
Using the Uyghurs’ preferred name for their homeland, he added: “We have fought in Homs, in Idlib and we will continue the fight in East Turkistan.
“Allah has given us a victory here. May he also grant us a victory in our own land.”
The TIP has been based in Syria for more than a decade, with its members fleeing to the Middle East to escape China’s severe oppression of the Uyghurs, a largely Muslim minority group. Its fighters joined Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Islamist group that led the rebel offensive, in a thrust out of the north-west of Syria.
In recent days TIP has engaged in an unusual publicity blitz, showcasing its leader Abu Muhammed alongside his battalions.
One video claims to show the TIP fighting against Assad’s forces on the front lines in late November 2024, shortly after the rebel offensive was launched. Another shows TIP fighters rolling into Damascus on tanks, waving light blue flags bearing the group’s crescent-and-star symbol.
According to the video captions, TIP fighters entered the strategic port cities of Latakia and Tartus on Dec 10 and 11. Both are situated along Syria’s coastline and previously hosted Russian forces.
“So many groups allied against us. Russia came, Iran came, Hezbollah came – with strong weapons and all kinds of soldiers,” said one man in the Dec 8 video. “But each time, Allah as our witness, we did not retreat.
“With the help of Allah, we have fought our way here. We did not once show weakness or fear; we were never afraid.”
TIP certainly had a role to play in the rebel victory, said Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, an independent researcher who specialises in the Syrian civil war.
“They weren’t necessarily a larger force than the other Syrian insurgent groups that were assisting HTS, but they were part of the offensive,” he said.
In 2021, Syrian television reportedly described the group as HTS’s “favourite ally”. TIP senior leadership have also indicated previously that the group was glad to support their “Syrian brothers’ demand that the Assad regime leaves”.
TIP has stayed in Syria during 13 years of civil war and appears to have retained an independent identity despite ties to other factions.
The group, established some time in the 1990s with a previous presence in Afghanistan and Pakistan, has continually highlighted its priority as Uyghur independence, describing a goal to “liberate the Muslims of East Turkistan from the Chinese occupation”.
On Dec 6, as the Syrian rebel offensive pushed onward, TIP’s emir, Abd Haq al-Turkistani, released a statement stressing the group’s plans to attack China in the future.
“While the Muslims are celebrating these victories in every place, the Muslims of oppressed East Turkistan remain far removed from the news of them as they live under a filthy oppressive, disbelieving occupation that suppresses them by every means possible,” he said.
“Through God’s support, the Chinese disbelievers will soon taste the same torment that the disbelievers in al-Sham have tasted, if God wills.”
The group has posted pictures on social media of blood splattering the face of Xi Jinping, the Chinese president.
Other clips highlight grievances such as the 1990 Baren Uprising, when possibly thousands of Uyghur protesters were killed by the Chinese government, a massacre that was later whitewashed by the authorities. The real number of fatalities is unknown.
Rune Steenberg, an anthropologist who specialises in the Uyghurs at Palacky University Olomouc, said: “They see this as one step of a global jihad, where one day all Muslims will be free, and part of that will be the Muslims in East Turkistan. They’re saying, ‘Now we are guests, but with God’s help, we will soon be hosts.’”
China’s crackdown on the Uyghurs has seen more than one million people forced into re-education camps, with thousands more imprisoned for “crimes” such as praying or fasting.
In interviews with The Telegraph, former detainees have described being beaten in solitary confinement and made to pledge loyalty to Mr Xi.
Many chose to flee China by paying thousands of dollars to smugglers.
Some hoped to go abroad to learn more about their own religion of Islam, the independent practice of which is banned by the government. Only state-sanctioned Qurans and state-controlled imams are allowed.
A handful of Uyghurs who either planned to go or went to the Middle East have told the Telegraph before that they wanted to learn from other Muslims ‘how to perform jihad the right way’, without violating religious principles.
Whether TIP can materially organise and launch attacks against the Chinese government remains to be seen.
Beijing has long emphasised and perhaps overstated TIP’s strength as a pretext to justify its crackdown on the Uyghurs, while some Uyghur experts have debated how cohesive the group really is, saying that it’s virtually non-existent.
While TIP’s latest propaganda – set to a score of sweeping music – indicates that it does indeed exist and is active, it remains unclear what their full capabilities are in terms of numbers, training and firepower.
China boasts the world’s largest military at two million strong, and has advanced weapons systems and armed drones.
But the country’s growing overseas investments – a cornerstone of Xi’s foreign policy – means there are infrastructure assets and an influx of Chinese workers internationally that could be at risk of attack.
China is very likely to request the extradition of TIP members, a group it considers a terrorist organisation.
Its presence in Syria “will definitely be a sticking point if the new Syrian government wants a relationship with China”, said Mr Jawad al-Tamimi, adding: “But if HTS hands them over, it’s a big compromise of one of their principles.”
One of HTS’s founding principles, he said, was that the foreigners who joined the Syrian insurgency had to be protected. In exchange, they had to promise not to use Syria as a launching pad for terrorist attacks abroad.
In 2020, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, the leader of HTS, said: “These guys have been in Syria for seven years and have never constituted a threat to the outside world.
“They are committed solely to defending Idlib against regime aggression.
“As Uyghurs, they face persecution in China – which we strongly condemn – and they have nowhere else to go. Of course, I sympathise with them, but their struggle in China is not ours, so we tell them that they are welcome here as long as they abide by our rules – which they do.”
There is also a question of how much influence TIP will have as al-Jolani and other armed groups set up a new governing system in Damascus, said Broderick McDonald, an associate fellow at King’s College London’s international centre for the study of radicalisation.
“For the Uyghurs and other foreign fighters now stepping out of the shadows [in propaganda videos] as they feel more secure, what does that mean for what they do with minority groups, and will they try to shape the future of Syria?
There is a chance that a more hardline faction could splinter off, but for now, TIP propaganda indicates the group is grateful for their gracious host in Syria.
In one video from Dec 10, a masked fighter addressed a congregation at what the group says was a mosque in Latakia.
“The Chinese government drove us out of our country, oppressed us, killed us and imprisoned us,” he said. “We left our country and came here … we have seen from you all the goodness for the past 10 years. We are the mujahideen of East Turkistan.”