DAMASCUS—On a latest Friday afternoon on the Umayyad Mosque in Syria’s capital, Uyghur fighters joined 1000’s of different worshippers for weekly prayers as simply one other group of rebels in uniform. For the reason that fall of dictator Bashar al-Assad, Uyghurs have change into more and more seen round Damascus, however their future within the nation is tenuous and will show an impediment for a brand new authorities in Syria searching for to guarantee international powers that it might probably maintain overseas fighters from threatening these past its borders.
During the last decade or so, 1000’s of Uyghurs made their option to Syria from China through Turkey. At the moment, Uyghur leaders in Syria say their group numbers round 15,000, together with 5,000 fighters. Most dwell within the rebel-held metropolis of Idlib or in enclaves close to the town of Jisr al-Shughur. The “Turkistanis,” as many Syrians seek advice from them, have opened colleges and function fuel stations and eating places. At neighborhood bakeries, they churn out conventional spherical, thick flatbreads, which a few of their Syrian neighbors have developed a style for as effectively. The overwhelming majority do not need passports, however like others within the rebel-held areas, they’ve ID playing cards, and a whole lot are enrolled in Idlib College, the place the interim authorities has introduced they, like native Syrians, can attend tuition-free.
DAMASCUS—On a latest Friday afternoon on the Umayyad Mosque in Syria’s capital, Uyghur fighters joined 1000’s of different worshippers for weekly prayers as simply one other group of rebels in uniform. For the reason that fall of dictator Bashar al-Assad, Uyghurs have change into more and more seen round Damascus, however their future within the nation is tenuous and will show an impediment for a brand new authorities in Syria searching for to guarantee international powers that it might probably maintain overseas fighters from threatening these past its borders.
During the last decade or so, 1000’s of Uyghurs made their option to Syria from China through Turkey. At the moment, Uyghur leaders in Syria say their group numbers round 15,000, together with 5,000 fighters. Most dwell within the rebel-held metropolis of Idlib or in enclaves close to the town of Jisr al-Shughur. The “Turkistanis,” as many Syrians seek advice from them, have opened colleges and function fuel stations and eating places. At neighborhood bakeries, they churn out conventional spherical, thick flatbreads, which a few of their Syrian neighbors have developed a style for as effectively. The overwhelming majority do not need passports, however like others within the rebel-held areas, they’ve ID playing cards, and a whole lot are enrolled in Idlib College, the place the interim authorities has introduced they, like native Syrians, can attend tuition-free.
The interim Syrian authorities has included them in its official army construction as effectively, a nod to the position their fighters performed in toppling Assad—a warfare that Uyghur leaders say value round 1,100 Uyghur lives. In January, a whole lot of army commanders wearing uniform assembled to listen to Syrian chief Ahmed al-Sharaa give his first speech since toppling Assad, and amongst them was Abdulaziz Davud Hudaberdi, an ethnic Uyghur from a village close to Aksu in China. Hudaberdi got here to Syria in 2012 and leads the native department of the Turkistan Islamic Celebration (TIP), a bunch that a lot of the Syrian Uyghurs belong to. As the pinnacle of the rebels’ 133rd Division, he was instrumental in serving to to finish the Assad regime and was rewarded with a place as a brigadier common within the Syrian military, together with two different Uyghurs who had been appointed colonels. There are about half a dozen overseas fighters who’ve been given such ranks within the new Syria.
The TIP’s presence in Syria may show consequential for the way forward for the nation because it appears to have worldwide sanctions towards it lifted. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which led the cost towards Assad and has since been dissolved and folded into the brand new authorities, is listed as a terrorist group by the United Nations. China has indicated the presence of teams such because the TIP proceed to dissuade it from supporting any change in that designation.
Beijing’s views on the TIP, although, run up towards issues about the way it treats the Uyghur minority at residence, sparked by reviews of mass incarceration and allegations of a state-led effort to erase the ethnic group’s non secular and cultural distinctiveness. China’s coverage in Xinjiang—or East Turkistan, as some Uyghurs seek advice from it—has garnered the ethnic minority sympathy amongst Western governments and emboldened some within the Uyghur diaspora to overtly name for independence from Beijing, even when meaning preventing for it. For the Uyghur diaspora globally, the TIP is the primary profitable preventing pressure their trigger has had.
“We’re happy with them,” stated Rukiye Turdush, a Uyghur Canadian tutorial and former head of the East Turkistanian Federation of Canada. She stated the scenes of Syrian prisoners being free of captivity gave her hope that Uyghurs, stored in prisons and so-called reeducation camps in China by some estimates within the a whole lot of 1000’s, would at some point be free as effectively. “Some individuals stated once they opened the doorways of Assad’s prisons, they cried lots as a result of they felt like they had been opening Chinese language prisons,” Turdush stated.
Like lots of the Uyghurs who ended up in Syria, Hudaberdi spent years on the lookout for a spot to settle outdoors China. The 48-year-old was out and in of jail in China by the late Nineteen Nineties and 2000s. In 2010, he obtained a pretend passport and made his option to Malaysia. From there, Hudaberdi traveled to Iran after which Afghanistan, the place he linked up with fledgling Uyghur militant teams that struggled to take care of a presence amid U.S. drone strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistani army operations throughout the border in Waziristan.
Uyghur immigrants who traveled to Afghanistan within the Nineteen Nineties got permission to settle there by the Taliban. By 1998, one Uyghur chief there, Hasan Mahsum, had established coaching camps and launched the East Turkistan Islamic Motion (ETIM). After 2001, China efficiently lobbied to have ETIM listed as a terrorist organization by america, and the group’s management fled to Pakistan’s Waziristan space, the place they developed nearer ties to al Qaeda. Mahsum was killed in a Pakistani army raid on an al Qaeda base in 2003. His successor, Abdul Haq al-Turkistani, was appointed to al Qaeda’s management council in 2005 and managed to outlive U.S. drone strikes over time, however the group was diminished in numbers to the purpose that america delisted it as a terrorist group in 2020, saying that “there was no credible proof that ETIM continues to exist.” Beijing insists the TIP is simply the ETIM working beneath a special title and that it continues to be affiliated with al Qaeda, attributing a string of incidents in China—from assassinations of pro-government imams to knife assaults—to the group, in addition to the 2016 suicide bombing of the Chinese language Embassy in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.
Sean Roberts, a professor at George Washington College who research Uyghur populations, says none of those assaults are “clearly attributed” to both the TIP or ETIM. The TIP spokesperson in Syria affirmed that the group was not chargeable for these assaults. The spokesperson added that the TIP has no aspirations to launch worldwide terrorist campaigns, as these are counterproductive to the group’s long-term mission to garner international political help, and that it now not has ties to al Qaeda.
When Hudaberdi moved to Syria in 2012, it was at a time when a stream of Uyghur migrants had been making their means there. By some estimates, 1000’s of younger males crossed into rebel-held Syria, mainly by neighboring Turkey. This was a part of a motion that was inspired partially by the tacit approval of the Turkish authorities, stated Roberts, who performed in depth interviews with the migrants. In so doing, Turkey was making an attempt to stroll a fantastic line: It already hosted tens of millions of Syrian refugees, however President Recep Tayyip Erdogan additionally sought to take care of public help for the Uyghur trigger to maintain nationalists onside.
“Lots of the individuals who ended up [in Syria] had been individuals who principally had left China to go to Turkey,” Roberts stated. “It appears some individuals inside Turkey, probably a few of them with Turkish authorities approval, advised they go right down to Syria, that there you need to work with this group, you’ll get coaching with the army, you’ll be capable to sometime return and combat in your homeland, and your households will probably be taken care of.”
The TIP in Syria says its members had been drawn to the nation on the lookout for a spot to settle however that many joined the combat towards Assad as a result of it reminded them of techniques deployed towards them in China: large-scale spying, indefinite imprisonment, and discrimination based mostly on ethnic and spiritual beliefs. “The Uyghurs noticed parallels between the oppressive regime of Bashar al-Assad and that of the Chinese language Communist Celebration,” the TIP spokesperson stated, “and in consequence, they joined the combat alongside Syrians.”
Within the ensuing years, TIP fighters went on to participate in insurgent campaigns in Jisr al-Shughur, Aleppo, Idlib, and Latakia. Hudaberdi misplaced members of the family to regime airstrikes, together with his spouse and two sons. In 2021, he graduated from HTS’s army academy in Idlib, and in late 2024, he led fighters taking part within the blitz that noticed the rebels finally attain Damascus.
The prospect of the TIP nonetheless having hyperlinks to international jihadi teams has stored some Uyghur diaspora leaders from expressing help for it, Roberts stated. Many Uyghur diaspora teams within the West “have shied away from saying the group even exists, claiming [the TIP] is a conspiracy by China to discredit them globally.” In the meantime, others take the place that “we must be proud to have overthrown Assad, who’s a horrible dictator, and this reveals if we ever did have a state, we may have a army.”
One such group is the Worldwide Union of East Turkistan Organizations, which has been lively for almost 20 years in Turkey. The largely conservative umbrella group is led by Hidayet Oguzhan, an ethnic Uyghur from Kashgar who studied in Pakistan and later settled in Turkey. “The Syrians overthrowing the dictator and murderous Assad regime and taking on the federal government has been an extremely nice glimmer of hope for us, the individuals of East Turkistan,” Ogyzhan stated in a statement posted on social media.
The way forward for the TIP in Syria will rely upon what sorts of concessions the brand new authorities is compelled to make to outdoors powers. Technically, Hudaberdi and the 1000’s of Uyghur fighters who make up the TIP are actually a part of the Syrian army. However they nonetheless do not need Syrian citizenship. Sharaa, for his half, has stated overseas fighters had been an integral a part of the insurgent victory and has mused that offering them with citizenship was one thing price . His authorities has additionally tried to guarantee others that it now not has international jihadi ambitions.
And whereas HTS made way more headway than the Taliban have since taking energy in Afghanistan, there could also be vital classes from that battle for Syria, stated Iftikhar Firdous, the editor of the Khorasan Diary, which displays jihadi exercise within the area. “The HTS takeover of Syria is the second case of a jihadist militant group that has taken management of a full nation on this century,” Firdous stated. He questioned whether or not the TIP’s members have been organically built-in into Syria or just included on paper to assuage international issues about their presence. In Afghanistan, the Taliban have paid overseas fighters to place apart their international jihadi aspirations, whereas in Syria, HTS took an equally top-down method, together with the TIP in its army chain of command.
For China, a militant Uyghur presence in neighboring Afghanistan was an even bigger risk than one in Syria. That’s partly why Beijing has been eager to court the Taliban, hoping to extract assurances that jihadis received’t launch assaults from the nation, and to a point it has succeeded: Up to now 20 years, solely a handful of assaults on China or Chinese language pursuits overseas have been linked—and even then, tenuously—to the TIP. Whether or not that very same success is repeated in Syria stays to be seen.
