Breaking the back of a restive region

Arabic and Chinese signage reflect the diverse make-up of Xinjiang's population

(CNN) -- The Chinese call it "beating a dog even though it's already down in the water."

The administration of President Jiang Zemin is taking advantage of the global anti-terrorist movement to break the back of the secessionist movement among the Uighur ethnic minority in far-off Xinjiang.

Diplomatic sources in Beijing say since September 11, more than 2,500 suspected separatists have been detained in western and southern Xinjiang as a result of a "Strike Hard, Severe Suppression" campaign.

Fresh troops and police, including crack units made up of anti-terrorist officers who speak Uighur, Tajik and Afghan languages, have been moved to this restive region since mid-September.

The sources say a major goal of these forces is to identify -- and in many instances arrest -- Uighurs who have visited Afghanistan in the past several years.

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In a meeting with local officials in late October, Xinjiang Communist party Secretary Wang Lequan disclosed that since 1997, Urumqi had deployed annually units totalling 15,000 officers and agents to "hit at enemy forces, purify society and educate the masses."

What then, is the difference between the current anti-separatist movement and past efforts along the same lines? First of all, the current crusade is much harsher.

"In the past, soldiers or police were asked to avoid exacerbating tensions between Uighurs and Han Chinese," said a Beijing-based cadre familiar with the campaign in Xinjiang.

"When soldiers or police were not sure about the identity of a suspected separatist, they often gave him the benefit of the doubt."

"Now, the orders are to detain and investigate all suspects," he added.

Secondly, not only bona fide separatists but also Muslim clerics suspected to harbor extremist tendencies are targets for surveillance if not also suppression.

Tibet as the model

As local officials put it, troops and police have to all intents and purposes lumped together three groups of undesirable elements: "core separatists, leaders of the forces of religious extremism, and violent, terrorist criminal elements."

Wang also disclosed that a "responsibility system" had been established whereby cadres would monitor activities in mosques in areas under their jurisdiction.

He added that the education and training of religious personnel, including those working in mosques, would be beefed up in order to "strike hard at forces of religious extremism and to suppress illegal religious activities."

Quite clearly, law-enforcement officials are following the Tibet model.

In Lhasa and other cities, Buddhist monks and nuns, deemed to be masterminds of the Tibetan separatist movement, have since the mid-1990's been placed under tight control. In many instances, the lamas are forced to undergo "patriotic education."

Among those detained in Xinjiang the past month are also Uighur academics who are suspected of spreading anti-Beijing ideas in colleges.

Bin Laden as scapegoat

Why these sudden developments? It is true that the Beijing leadership, including the Central Military Commission, had planned the Strike Hard campaign earlier this year.

In August, an unprecedented large-scale war game was conducted in western and southern Xinjiang.

However, Beijing's decision to go for the jugular was made only after September 11. And for the simple reason that the harshest military and police actions can be conducted -- and international censure avoided -- under the overall umbrella of fighting global terrorism.

Spin-doctors in Beijing have virtually cast the entire secessionist movement as a chapter in Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.

This is despite the fact that like most separatist movements in the world, the Uighur underground is divided into different factions.

It may be true that a majority of Uighur "splittists" have received aid, including funds and weapons, from their Muslim brethren in Central Asia.

Yet only a small proportion of secessionists can be classified as terrorists -- or has been trained by al Qaeda and other Taliban groups.

Avoiding U.S. criticism

A semi-official magazine last week quoted People's University expert on Central Asia, Professor Zhang Guofeng, as saying more than 1,000 Uighur fighters had undergone training in terrorist camps in Afghanistan.

Russian officials and Western diplomats, however, put the number at just a few hundred.

So far, however, Beijing seems to be getting away with equating the entire corps of Uighur separatists with the East Turkestan terrorist movement, which is also active in Chechnya.

And despite the warnings by President George W. Bush that no government should use fighting terrorism as a pretext to crack down on ethnic minorities, Beijing has successfully avoided criticism for its "Strike Hard, Severe Suppression" campaign in Xinjiang.

After all, the U.S. already has its hands full with the uncertain progress of its war in Afghanistan. Moreover, Beijing has shrewdly taken up the Maoist tactic called "attack is the best form of defense."

In an apparent attempt to pre-empt criticisms of its record in Xinjiang, Beijing is making demands on American and Western governments to stop giving shelters to overseas Uighur organizations.

Analysts say President Jiang is reasonably confident that Beijing can turn a new page in its decades-old struggle against the secessionists.

Minority in own land

Beijing has largely sealed off Xinjiang's boundaries with Afghanistan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan.

And should the U.S. and its allies be successful in cracking down on the Taliban and other Islam fundamentalist groups, the supply routes of weapons and funds to the Uighurs might be cut off.

In the mean time, Beijing can step up its program of hanhua, or moving Han Chinese from the rest of the country to Xinjiang.

Under the ambitious go-west program, thousand upon thousand of entrepreneurs and workers have in any case been scheduled to migrate to the autonomous region in the rest of the decade.

After all, the "splittist" movement in Tibet has become an intractable problem for Beijing partly because the hanhua program has not worked well in the mountainous, oxygen-scarce autonomous region.

However, Han Chinese have no problem adjusting to life in Xinjiang. In many cities in northern Xinjiang, Uighurs have become minorities in their own homeland -- and have ceased to pose a threat to the central government.