August 3, 2004 
PAGE ONE 

Friend or Foe
In Post-9/11 World, Chinese Dissidents Pose U.S. Dilemma
Uighur Nationalists Have Peaceful, Violent Wings;
Deciding Who Is a Threat
'Omar Is Not a Bomb Thrower'

By DAVID S. CLOUD and IAN JOHNSON 
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
August 3, 2004; Page A1

In December, the Chinese government appealed for international help in
finding Chinese exiles it describes as terrorists. Among them was a
fugitive with two gold teeth named Abudula Kariaji, who says his
anti-Chinese rebel group once received consent from Osama bin Laden to
train in Afghanistan.

Another man on China's wanted list is Omar Kanat. The balding,
42-year-old broadcaster lives in the suburbs of Washington and works
for Radio Free Asia, the U.S.-government-funded radio network that
beams news programs into China against Beijing's wishes.

After China's appeal, Mr. Kanat was called to a meeting with his boss,
Radio Free Asia Executive Editor Dan Southerland. Mr. Southerland
asked Mr. Kanat whether there was any truth to the claims he was
secretly leading a terror group Beijing accuses of conducting bombings
inside China.

"I assured him that I didn't have anything to do with the things China
was saying," Mr. Kanat says. Mr. Southerland says he came away
convinced. "Omar is not a bomb thrower," he says. A spokesman for the
U.S. State Department declined to comment on Mr. Kanat's case.


Picture:
http://tinyurl.com/47nmo
Caption:
Omar Kanat


Mr. Kanat is a Uighur (pronounced "WEE-ger"), one of a largely Muslim
ethnic group concentrated in China's impoverished western province of
Xinjiang. For years, Beijing has sought to clamp down on Uighurs who
want to carve an independent homeland from China's territory. In
addition to his radio work, Mr. Kanat is active in a U.S.-based Uighur
group that advocates independence.

The Uighurs offer a look at a thorny challenge in the fight against
terrorism: distinguishing between other nations' dangerous militants
and nonviolent political opponents. The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks
have made it even harder -- and more important -- to draw the
distinction.

Since the attacks, China's pursuit of Uighurs has gained momentum.
China has pursued Uighur exiles, claiming they are members of the same
global Islamic terror network that threatens the U.S.

Chinese Foreign Ministry officials deny pressuring other governments
to crack down on Uighur exiles, maintaining countries are acting out
of their own interests against terrorists. But U.S. officials involved
in discussions with Beijing about Uighurs say China has sought to blur
the line between violent and nonviolent factions, hoping to use the
war against terrorism to silence the entire movement.

"The last thing you want to do is go after terrorism
indiscriminately," says U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Human
Rights Lorne Craner. "What they [China] want you to do is go after
entire populations and suppress peaceful outlets."

Some Uighurs in China's sights are militants bent on establishing an
Islamic state in Xinjiang. Mr. Kariaji, the gold-toothed fugitive,
said in a recent interview that his group, the East Turkestan Islamic
Movement, has sent militants trained in small arms and explosives into
China for future attacks. (Uighur groups refer to Xinjiang as East
Turkestan.)

Yet some of those pursued by China are Uighur activists who say they
support independence, but eschew violence and links with Islamic
militants. Some of these Uighurs say they are finding themselves
subject to harassment from officials in once-friendly havens such as
Germany, Turkey and Syria. China has also sought to persuade the Bush
administration to join its campaign, with some success.

Turkic in ethnicity, Uighurs have populated Central Asia for
centuries. They have had independent kingdoms and been ruled by China,
Mongolia and others. China effectively established control of Xinjiang
region, where most Uighurs live, in 1949 with the founding of the
People's Republic of China. The government encouraged an influx of
ethnic Chinese and has given them a leading role in running the
oil-rich region's cities and economic life.

From about 6% of the population in 1949, ethnic Chinese now make up
40% of Xinjiang's population of 18 million -- about the same
percentage as the Uighur population, according to a government census
in 2000. The rest is made up of Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and Mongols.

Simmering Tensions

The Chinese influx has led to simmering tensions in Xinjiang for
decades. The U.S. government and human-rights organizations have
criticized Beijing as recently as this spring for engaging in
arbitrary detention, unfair political trials, torture and executions
of Uighurs suspected of separatist sentiment. China says the steps
were in response to antigovernment terror attacks, including bombings
and assassinations in the late 1990s. Overseas Uighur groups deny the
attacks represented an organized resistance but say they can't rule
out that some incidents were carried out by dissident Uighurs.

In the case of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, Mr. Kariaji, the
group's deputy chairman, confirmed in an interview what China has long
alleged: ETIM formed a relationship with Mr. bin Laden before the U.S.
invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.


MAP:
http://tinyurl.com/6lvk2
(China & Xinjiang)


Mr. Kariaji is wanted by the Chinese government, but there is no U.S.
indictment of him. Officials at the Central Intelligence Agency
declined to comment on whether the U.S. has interest in his case. The
U.S. has arrested and is holding other alleged ETIM members at its
facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Mr. Kariaji, who is believed to move
around frequently, agreed to an interview on the condition that its
location not be disclosed. His story can't be independently confirmed.

When he was growing up in China, Mr. Kariaji says his father arranged
to have him taught the Koran in secret, because the government had
closed most religious schools. He went to Pakistan for religious
training, he says, and returned to China in the 1990s. Spurning an
offer to preach in a government-approved mosque, he began teaching the
Koran in secret and gradually developed a following of around 100
students, he says.

Inspired by rebels in Kashmir and Chechnya, they discussed undertaking
jihad, the Islamic concept that includes fighting against
nonbelievers, he says. But lacking weapons and enough supporters, they
decided "we were not ready to take arms against China," he says.

Chinese security officials arrested him three times, accusing him of
antigovernment activity, he says. One detention lasted nearly two
years, he says, during which he says he slept on the concrete floor of
a windowless cell and was tortured for refusing to divulge names of
underground Islamic leaders. He was released in 1996, he says. Chinese
police officials declined to comment on Mr. Kariaji's alleged arrest
and mistreatment.

A year later, he says, he met a Muslim cleric who had formed ETIM,
which was opening camps in Afghanistan to train Uighurs to fight
China. The group had met Osama bin Laden months earlier, he says, and
been given permission to open a camp in the city of Khost. Eventually,
ETIM opened three camps, he says, which sheltered up to 500 Uighur
families and trained men in small arms and explosives. Dozens, he
says, went back to China from 1997 to 2001, for future attacks, though
none have been carried out, he claims.

Mr. Kariaji's account of ETIM's activities in Afghanistan parallels
descriptions provided by the Bush administration. The U.S. State
Department, in a report issued in April on terror groups, described
ETIM as "the most militant of the ethnic Uighur separatist groups."
The report said the group "is linked to al Qaeda" and "received
training and financial assistance from al Qaeda."

Mr. Kariaji says the relationship between his group and al Qaeda was
never as close as the U.S. and China claim. There were tensions over
ETIM's focus on attacking China, he says. In 1999, Mr. Kariaji says he
and a half-dozen others went to Kandahar for an audience with Mr. bin
Laden. In a lengthy speech, the Saudi militant spoke about oppression
of Muslims in Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Chechnya. He didn't
mention Xinjiang, Mr. Kariaji recalls.

Mr. Kariaji says he went away disappointed. "We had deep differences
with the Arab fighters," he says. "The Arabs told us that, as Muslims,
your first duty is to free Palestine and the sacred Arab lands."

When the U.S. and its Afghan allies invaded Afghanistan in late 2001,
U.S. officials say ETIM members fought alongside al Qaeda and the
Taliban. Mr. Kariaji, who says he was in Pakistan during the war, said
some ETIM members did fight. Hundreds of others attempted to flee into
Pakistan and many were killed by U.S. bombing, he says. The Pentagon
says it can't confirm that claim.

Soon after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, China made the first of
several post-Sept. 11 calls for international help defeating Uighur
separatists.

The initial response from the Bush administration was supportive.
Around two dozen suspected ETIM members captured along the
Afghanistan-Pakistan border in 2001 and 2002 were sent to the U.S.
interrogation facility at Guantanamo Bay. In August 2002, the State
Department named ETIM as a U.S.-recognized terror group and froze its
financial assets (a largely symbolic step since the group isn't
believed to have any assets in the U.S.)

Within the Bush administration, some officials say they worried that
while the decision to list ETIM as a terror group was justified, the
U.S. was in danger of siding too openly with China against all
Uighurs. Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights Mr. Craner said
in an interview that the U.S. learned in 2002 that Chinese officials
were telling Uighurs the Bush administration had "bought into the
notion that Uighurs are terrorists."

To counter this, Mr. Craner traveled to China in December 2002 and
warned in a speech at Xinjiang University that the "the U.S. does not
and will not condone governments using counterterrorism as an excuse
to silence peaceful expressions of political or religious views."

Asked about Mr. Craner's comments, a spokesperson for the Chinese
embassy in Washington, Jian Hua Li, said, "I have not heard about us
trying to get support from the U.S. to crack down on nonviolent
Uighurs." The top Chinese government official in Xinjiang, Ismail
Tiliwaldi, said at a Beijing news conference in March that the
international campaign against Uighur separatists was succeeding.

Though the U.S. doesn't endorse the Uighurs' calls for independence,
it has taken other steps lately to show it isn't backing China against
all Uighurs.

U.S. officials recently decided not to return the Uighur prisoners at
Guantanamo Bay to China, fearing they would be tortured or killed. It
isn't clear when the Uighurs will be released or to whom.

In April, the U.S.-government-funded National Endowment for Democracy
gave $75,000 to the pro-independence Uyghur American Association, its
first grant to a Uighur exile group. (The ethnic group's name is
sometimes spelled Uyghur.) The association promptly opened new offices
less than a block from the White House.

Under Pressure

But Uighur exiles in other countries say they have felt government
pressure. Ahmadjan Osman, a 39-year-old Uighur who had lived in Syria
for nearly 15 years, was expelled from that country in January. He
says a Syrian immigration official summoned him and told him he had
four days to leave. Now he lives in Turkey on a temporary visa,
awaiting asylum in Canada.

Officials offered no formal reason for his expulsion, he says, but he
thinks it was because of his involvement in Uighur causes. Mr. Osman
had developed a following in Arab countries for his free-verse poetry,
which he published in Uighur and Arabic. "I had contact with all the
Uighur groups, and China was very worried that I would use my fame to
publicize the East Turkestan issue."

China's Foreign Ministry spokesman said there was no pressure on
Damascus to remove Mr. Osman. A spokesman for the Syrian embassy in
Washington declined to comment. But in some Arab circles, there was
little question: The London-based newspaper al-Hayat published a
front-page story about Mr. Osman headlined, "Syria Becomes a Province
of China."

China's list of wanted terrorists includes several Uighur activists
living openly in the West. One is Dolkan Isa, who fled China in 1995
and later received asylum in Germany. Until this year, he headed the
World Uyghur Youth Congress, based in Munich. China said Mr. Isa had
"organized and participated in all sorts of terrorist activities" -- a
charge Mr. Isa denies.

"They've known me for years and now they say that Dolkan is a
terrorist. It's ridiculous," he says.

When planning a meeting of Uighur groups in Munich this spring, Mr.
Isa says he received a call from government officials in China. "They
had my parents and brother in the room and asked me if we wouldn't
cancel the meeting in Munich. They didn't threaten, but they had them
in the room." Officials with the Xinjiang provincial police department
declined to comment, saying they hadn't heard about Mr. Isa's case.

The meeting wasn't cancelled. The day before it took place, China
issued a warning to German police to be on "high alert because Eastern
Turkistan terrorist groups are reportedly meeting in Munich."

Some Uighurs say they had trouble getting visas to attend the meeting.
Mohammed Tohti, a Uighur from Canada, says German police detained him
for two hours after he arrived in Frankfurt and questioned him about
his intentions. German officials said they couldn't comment on
individual cases but said there was Chinese pressure to ban the
meeting. Due to Beijing's opposition, "we weren't eager for many
delegates to travel to Germany to participate," said an official in
Berlin.

At the meeting, two exile groups joined, to form the World Uyghur
Congress. It's led by 65-year-old Erkin Alptekin -- one of the 11
Uighur exiles China named as a terrorist in December.

Mr. Alptekin, whose father was a Uighur exile leader, says he is
firmly nonviolent and an admirer of the Dalai Lama's peaceful
resistance to Chinese rule in Tibet. Mr. Alptekin, who was
hospitalized after a heart attack last month, avoids calling for
independence. Instead, he says he seeks "dialogue" with Beijing. To
survive, he says, the Uighur movement will have to lobby for support
from the U.S., the only country with the power to stand up to China.
"We live or die by the Americans," he says. "Otherwise, we're
finished."

But China is lobbying Washington, too. When Mr. Alptekin traveled to
Washington in May, Chinese embassy officials asked the U.S. State
Department to deny him entry on the grounds that he is a security
risk, Uighur activists and a U.S. official say. Mr. Alptekin was
allowed in without incident. But his supporters say Federal Bureau of
Investigation agents contacted them the day of his arrival to question
them about his plans. The FBI didn't respond to calls seeking comment.

--Charles Hutzler contributed to this article.


http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109149176842581209,00.html