On the War on Terror, Part II: East Turkestan

Tomorrow is the four-year anniversary of the September 11 attacks. For that reason, I have chosen to hold the more detailed indictment of Communist China for its support of anti-American terrorists until then. With this post, I hope to remove the smoke and mirrors the Communists throw up to distract attention from their own nefarious deeds and policies, namely their slanderous claims that they are fighting bin Ladenite terrorists in occupied East Turkestan (what the cadres call “Xinjiang”).

When the War on Terror is discussed, Communist China is almost always ignored or avoided. As such, the Communists’ role in providing aid and support to our enemies is hardly ever in the conversation. Of course, the cadres themselves have been very eager to make sure no one knows about their weapons sales to Saddam Hussein, their involvement in Iran’s nuclear weapons program, their economic deal with the Taliban, their laundering of drug money for Osama bin Laden, their continuing support for Stalinist North Korea, etc. However, they have been very effective in keeping attention away from the above information by insisting that they are victims of al Qaeda. In making this claim, they are, in fact, wrongfully slandering the most pro-American Muslim nation on the face of the earth, a nation that has suffered horribly at the hands of the Communists: occupied East Turkestan.

The lies the Communists spew on East Turkestan have hidden two critical aspects of the War on Terror. Before I get to those, a brief history of the occupation is in order.

In 1949, when the Chinese Communist Party defeated Chiang Kai-shek’s government on the mainland, they invited the leaders of East Turkestan, which at that time was still independent, to come to Beijing for talks on the country’s future. On August 27 of that year, the plane carrying the leaders of East Turkestan crashed, killing all on board. The Communist marched in and have occupied the overwhelmingly Muslim country ever since (they even renamed it “Xinjiang”).

The occupation has been beyond brutal: executed political prisoners, razed mosques, mass forced immigration of ethnic Chinese, deliberate economic discrimination in favor of said ethnic Chinese, “Sinicization,” etc. Folks who are familiar with the painful history of occupied Tibet will find all of this familiar. However, there is one additional outrage from which the Tibetans were spared: open-air above-ground nuclear tests that killed over 200,000 East Turkestanis. Among other things, this means that East Turkestan – not Palestine (however one defines it), and not Iraq – has suffered more deaths at the hands of a foreign military than any Muslim nation since World War II.

So the Communists certainly gave Osama bin Laden a perfect victim to exploit in his apparent war against the non-Muslim world. The trouble is, bin Laden’s supposed hatred of occupying infidels has not extended to East Turkestan. While he has spoken out against the American military presence in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, the Israeli military presence in the West Bank, and even the Spanish presence in Spain (last under Muslim control in the 15th Century), he has been completely silent on the brutal treatment of East Turkestan – despite it being right next door to his five-year headquarters in Afghanistan.

So, despite all the Communist post-9/11/01 ranting about bin Ladenite terrorists in East Turkestan, bin Laden himself has no interest in the place. This is for two reasons – which bring us back to those two critical aspects to which I hinted earlier.

First, there is Osama’s relationship with Communist China (the use of Communist financial front companies to launder his drug money for him, the Communists’ support for the Taliban (second and third items) and its Pakistan enablers, etc.). The Communists don’t want the rest of the world to know, but they have found bin Laden to be quite useful, or to quote CNN’s Willy Lam: “some kind of check on U.S. power.” So long as the Communists’ lies on East Turkestan are believed, the American people are far less likely to examine the Communists’ real history – in support of the terrorists.

Secondly, but just as important for bin Laden, is the people of East Turkestan itself. As numerous American reporters have discovered (third, third, second, and second items), the East Turkestani people (usually called Uighurs, who are the overwhelming majority among non-Chinese) are just about the most pro-American Muslim on Earth. I can attest to that personally from my numerous encounters with this proud people during and after I wrote my book on the Communists’ ties to terrorism.

On September 14, 2004 (on my advice) they formed the East Turkestan Government in Exile, to give those in occupied East Turkestan a voice once again, and let the American people – indeed, the peoples of all democracies – know that there was a Muslim nation that condemned terrorism and supported freedom. They have proclaimed that message ever since.

How would America view the War on Terror if they knew the Communists’ support of our enemies and the fact that the Muslim nation the Communists occupied are strongly pro-American and anti-Islamist (one member of the diaspora dismissively referred to Wahabbism as a “Saudi religion”)? This is one question the Communists do not want answered. As I mentioned above, I’ll go into detail on what the Communists do not want you to know tomorrow.