Since 2013, thousands of Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority from western China, have traveled to Syria to train with the Uighur militant group Turkistan Islamic Party and fight alongside al-Qaida, playing key roles in several battles. Syrian President Bashar Assad's troops are now clashing with Uighur fighters as the six-year conflict nears its endgame.
But the end of Syria's war may be the beginning of China's worst fears.
"We didn't care how the fighting went or who Assad was," said Ali, who would only give his first name out of a fear of reprisals against his family back home. "We just wanted to learn how to use the weapons and then go back to China."
Of course, China gets a pass in the hate sermons that drive jihadis to go to war. China is ethnically cleansing Xinjiang by pushing ethnic Han Chinese into the area as colonists to swamp the locals with numbers; but according to conventional wisdom, all that anger in the Islamic world is created by the existence of Israel and by the American-led liberation of Iraqis and Afghans from totalitarian scumbag rulers.
And the location of our embassy in Israel, of course. Bigly.
So after the defeat of ISIL, will these jihadis take the jihad back to Xinjiang?
Rozi Tohti, the middle-aged fighter from Hotan, sat in a meadow facing the ruined walls of old Constantinople and ruminated on the choices facing his compatriots in Turkey: give their lives to a radical Islamic movement that they did not believe in or struggle to settle into a Turkish society where they did not fit in.
One thing was clear. Returning to their homeland was out of the question.
"Who wants to live in a war zone?" Tohti said. "We once had paradise in our country. But it was being erased by the Chinese, so instead we looked for paradise in Syria."
So don't assume that the jihadis from China will return to China to fight. They might reflect that China is too tough and ruthless of a target and will prefer to fight somewhere else. They are now warriors for hire as long as the payment is a ticket to Paradise. Who pays is of no matter to them, I think. For these nutjobs, their anger has an outlet anywhere .
As I've asked before, stop trying to figure out what we do that sets them off. Good God, people, what doesn't anger them?
Of course, this also demonstrates that keeping jihadis from having a sanctuary where they can recruit, train, and plan attacks isn't just an American interest. Any nutball from anywhere could go to a sanctuary to learn to fight anywhere.
