Uyghur jailbreak risks Taliban’s China links

Escape of 35 militants may undermine new Afghan regime’s relations with ‘closest ally’ in Beijing

THE Taliban’s efforts to win the backing of China have been complicated by the escape of dozens of Uyghur prisoners.

The Islamic regime has made wooing Beijing a diplomatic priority since its rapid takeover of Afghanistan, declaring China “our closest ally”. But attempts to win investment and diplomatic recognition from the ruling Communist Party have been made more difficult by the escape of Uyghur militants during the chaos of the takeover.

China’s top priority in Afghanistan is rooting out Uyghurs belonging to the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM). “We had 35 ETIM militants in jails all over Afghanistan. All of them escaped after the Taliban takeover,” a former senior security official said.

Beijing blames ETIM for unrest in its western region of Xinjiang, where state security forces have introduced mass surveillance and locked up nearly a million Uyghurs in camps since 2017 in order to “re-educate” residents.

The Taliban gave assurances to Beijing that it would not allow Uyghur militants to stage attacks from Afghanistan. They reportedly rounded up members of the ethnic community from areas bordering China. It is understood they were deported to China after the Taliban won assurances from Beijing that they would not be tortured or executed.

But China’s concerns were most likely deepened last week as it was announced that a suicide bomber who killed more than 50 people in an attack on a mosque in Kunduz was an Uyghur.

The Taliban declined to comment on what talks it was having with China on the Uyghurs. In an attempt to downplay the issue a senior Taliban intelligence official said: “We don’t know much about Uyghurs in Afghanistan.”

Earlier this year, the United Nations estimated there were 500 ETIM members hiding in north-east Afghanistan.

The UK government says ETIM is linked to al-qaeda and aims to set up a caliphate in Xinjiang. The United States also had the group on a watch list until Nov 2020, when it revoked the group’s terror designation.

Suhail Shaheen, a Taliban spokesman, told the South China Morning Post the movement would no longer allow Uyghur fighters from Xinjiang to seek refuge in Afghanistan.

“We care about the oppression of Muslims, be it in Palestine, in Myanmar, or in China, and we care about the oppression of non-muslims anywhere in the world. But what we are not going to do is interfere in China’s internal affairs,” a senior Taliban official previously told The Wall Street Journal. Raffaello Pantucci of the Royal United Services Institute, said the issue of how to deal with the Uyghurs was divisive for the Taliban.

He said: “I think within the organisation there’s some groups who are more supportive of protecting these guys because they have been fighting with them for 20 years.”

Yesterday, suicide bombers killed 47 people at the Shia Fatimiya mosque in Kandahar. There was no immediate claim of responsibility but suspicion again fell on Islamic State Khorasan.