LAHORE: The recent killing of Abdul Haq al-Turkistani, the chief of Turkistani Islamic Party (TIP), a Chinese Muslim separatist movement, in a US drone attack in North Waziristan area of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan has come at a critical juncture when Islamabad was under rising pressure from Beijing to allow it to set up military bases in Pakistan to counter the Chinese rebels operating from its soil.
A TIP spokesman has already confirmed that the Chinese separatist commander was among the three militants killed in an American drone strike in Tappi village of Miramshah in North Waziristan on February 15 while they were traveling in a vehicle. Abdul Haq al-Turkistani was closely linked to al-Qaeda and happens to be the second successive chief of the Turkisatni Islamic Party to have been killed in the Pakistani tribal areas. Abdul Haq, also known as Maimaitiming Maimaiti, became the TIP chief after the killing of Hassan Mahsum, the group’s previous head, by the Pakistani security forces in South Waziristan on October 2, 2004. His importance can be gauged from the fact that the US Treasury Department had designated him a global terrorist in April 2009, stating that he has already been appointed a member of al-Qaeda’s Majlis-e-Shura or executive council, way back in 2005. Soon afterwards, the United Nations had too designated him a terrorist leader.
According to well-placed diplomatic circles in Islamabad, the growing strength of the Pakistan-based Chinese separatist movement under the command of Haq was a matter of serious concern for Beijing which had even asked Islamabad to allow it military presence either in the NWFP or in the FATA, as is the case with the Americans, so that it could effectively counter the Chinese separatists there. They added that the killing of Abdul Haq has come as a good omen for Pakistan as it would ease off the Chinese pressure to establish military bases in Pakistan. Yet diplomatic circles said the Chinese wish to have military presence in Pakistan should not be painted as an attempt to set up military bases there. They added that China does not have any military bases outside its land unlike the United States and its prime concern was the spread of violence from the Pakistani tribal belt to the trouble-stricken Chinese region of Xinjiang, the main Muslim majority province.
The Turkistani Islamic Party (TIP), which is also called East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), is an Uyghur militant group that advocates the creation of an independent Islamic state of East Turkistan, in the Muslim-dominated Xinjiang region of China. East Turkistan had maintained a measure of independence until the early 1950s, when Mao’s victorious rebel armies turned to the peripheries and began securing Chinese borders, capturing Manchuria, Mongolia, Tibet and East Turkistan. The native Uyghurs resisted the Chinese occupation until 1960s, but failed to win support from neighboring Muslim states due to their fractured tribal nature. Since the mid-1980s, however, an active pan-Islamic movement has been trying to cement the opposing groups together against Chinese occupation of their homeland, pressing for an independent East Turkistan state. Yet Beijing, which views Xingjian as an invaluable asset due to its crucial strategic location near Central Asia and its large oil and gas reserves, is using all possible methods to quell the separatist movement.
Beijing blames the Uyghur separatists for carrying out sporadic bombings and shoot outs in the past, causing an atmosphere of insecurity and fear in China. Abdul Haq appeared in a video only last year, calling for Chinese people to be attacked at home and abroad. “Their men should be killed and captured to seek the release of our brothers who are jailed in Eastern Turkistan,” said Haq who was shown somewhere in the Pakistani tribal areas while carrying an assault rifle. Chinese President Hu Jintao subsequently asked his Pakistani counterpart Asif Zardari during a meeting in Beijing to take stern action against the Chinese militants hiding in Pakistani tribal areas and running terrorist activities in China, adding they might threaten the security of over 5,000 Chinese nationals working on numerous development projects in Pakistan.
In June 2009, Islamabad arrested and extradited ten Chinese militants to Beijing wanted on terrorism charges. But the death of Haq has come as a significant success in the ongoing Chinese campaign against Islamic separatists. He used to run a training camp for his recruits in Tora Bora in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province prior to the US invasion in October 2001. However, he had relocated his camps to Pakistan’s lawless Waziristan region. Haq was considered influential enough in al-Qaeda’s leadership circles that he was dispatched to mediate between rival Taliban groups after the death of Commander Baitullah Mehsud. He was spotted in the Pakistani tribal areas in June 2009, attending an important meeting with Baitullah Mehsud, who was finally killed in an American drone attack in August 2009.
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