 Thank you ladies and gentlemen for re-joining us again for the next next session This session we're very pleased to welcome Raphael Pantucci Raphael is the director of the international security studies program at the Royal United Services Institute in London Raphael has written widely on on many topics related directly to the major themes of this conference China and terrorism, Uighur militancy and also Chinese foreign policy in Central Asia More broadly and Raphael as a side point also has his website China and Central Asia with many useful posts about recent developments With respect to Chinese activity and diplomacy in the region of highly recommended Raphael's publications have appeared in a range or a range of outlets Including survival the national interest and studies in conflict and terrorism and he has written widely a number of journalistic outlets New York Times financial times and so forth so without further ado, I'd like you to welcome Raphael and Hopefully some great material for conversation afterwards. Thanks, Raphael. Thank you, Mike And thank you again for the invitation to come to this really excellent conference that I think You know has brought together a whole bunch of people who are looking at some of these questions in a real level of detail Which I think is reflected in the conversations that were having subsequently So it's it's great to be here and it's great to talk specifically about this question of looking at Uighur terrorism in a fractured Middle East So what I thought I'd do in my presentation And I will try to stick within my parameters my time and if I'm not someone throw something at me I won't be offended is I want to kind of talk a little bit about the relationship between going to Uighur militancy and Al Qaeda in particular and I want to talk about a kind of history of Al Qaeda terrorism and Uighur militancy I then want to talk a little bit specifically about what's happening in Syria and in Syria to look in particular What we've seen around Uighur links to ISIL and then Uighur links to TIP the Texan Islamic Party Which is sort of the overwhelming story there and then finally touch a little bit on the relationship with Turkey And understanding that kind of dynamic a bit more And then sort of draw some broader conclusions I'm not really going to talk about sort of Chinese relationships with the Middle East And I'll touch point a very brief here and be happy to go on in more detail But try to focus really narrowly on the sort of connection between Uighur militancy and extremism and Al Qaeda or jihadist terrorism So first You know and and there's going to be in there is inevitable duplication and in sort of thinking about my presentation listen to everyone else is You know stuff that Sean was talking about stuff that Julia touched on stuff that Professor May touched on And stuff that Andrew is talking about as all elements that have sort of been touched on already Which I'll end up going over in my presentation But you know, I don't think there's any way to avoid that ultimately looking at a very narrow subject from a number of different lenses And so that's the reality of it So just start by talking briefly about the sort of history of Uighur jihadism and its connections to Al Qaeda in particular And you know in some ways this is quite a short sort of discussion because it's actually fairly limited if we're looking at sort of Al Qaeda as an organization or You know as a group that has been interested in China or that has had sort of specific links with trying to do things against China It is actually very limited You know, we've seen and as Andrew was talking about some you know substantial evidence of Sort of Uighur militants or people from you know, Xinjiang who wanted to leave the country setting up shop in Afghanistan And some of those people were connected with Al Qaeda But you know historically there really was very little evidence of a sort of direct connection between the two Al Qaeda seemed very focused on doing its thing of attacking the West and attacking sort of Middle Eastern regimes and sort of Uighurs We're kind of just a group that existed within the milieu in Afghanistan that that the Taliban created And in fact, we could even go so far as to say for some time There was sort of an awkward relationship between Al Qaeda and Uighur militancy in particular if we go back and look at sort of Many of the discussions and comments and statements that have come out of From the Taliban's rule of Afghanistan and the sort of relationship that the Taliban had with the Uighur groups that had set up in the country The overriding narrative that comes out of me is that the leadership at the time will Oh my told the group not to launch attacks in China from their territory in Afghanistan So there's very much a desire to try to constrain and contain the group's interest in launching attacks against China When we look to Al Qaeda and talk specifically about sort of Middle Eastern jihadism We can see that Osama bin Laden actually has an even it even could even you know Stranger approach in some ways to the relationship with Uighurs and the relationship with China in particular And if you look at some discussions and interviews specifically that he did in the Pakistani press pre 9 11 There was one woman where he actually even was discussing the idea of potentially seeing China as an ally Or someone that Al Qaeda could sort of think about working with Because at the time Al Qaeda was very focused on attacking the West and the United States in particular And of course China was one that was a power that had a very and still does have a contentious relationship with the United States And so there was this question of a potential sort of alignment between these two There's a long interview in in the Pakistani press they did in 1999 in which he said I often hear about Chinese Muslims But since we have no direct connection with people in China and no member of our organization comes from China I don't have any detailed knowledge about them The Chinese government is not fully aware of the intentions of the United States and Israel These two countries want to use up the resources of China So I suggest the Chinese government be more careful of the US and the West and sort of implicit within that is this sense of a potential alignment between the two In fact if we go back and look at the sort of pre 9 11 period Where we do see a sort of interesting confluence between sort of Al Qaeda terrorism and China is more in the fact of Individuals sort of parts of the Al Qaeda networks traveling through China specifically Guangzhou and Becoming part of the sort of large community of migrant traders that we saw in China that still sort of existing Guangzhou Sort of transiting through that in particular There was one Egyptian businessman who had sort of links to Egyptian Islamic jihad called Muhammad Ali Who in February 2002 sort of seemed to take this relationship one step further? And actually established one of Al Qaeda's first sort of online websites Specifically, this was one that he was doing for Egyptian Islamic jihad Which is the group that I'm an al-Zahiri the current leader of Al Qaeda We sort of in charge of but was one of the organizations that had sort of come into the Al Qaeda Umma and he set up a website in you know from his base in China buying sort of space on a Chinese server Called Malema Al Jihad, which means milestones of holy war and from this particular website He started sort of published material that sort of global You know jihadist leaders were sort of putting out this was again the sort of pre 911 period But you know this was sort of the extent of the relationship you could see with between China and Al Qaeda It was sort of a permissive territory that they could occasionally pass through and I think from the Chinese perspective There was no particular interest in focusing on these people or seeing these people as a particular threat or concern and When we're talking about Xinjiang and looking sort of Uighur militancy, there's very little evidence that any of these people ever went out to Xinjiang I think it was a territory that was way beyond their interest or way out of their sort of focus of concern When we saw sort of Al Qaeda individuals traveling through China It was very much through the sort of major transit cities of Hong Kong or Guangzhou And this is something that continues throughout the sort of 2000s where we see Individuals associated with Al Qaeda often using routes through China to travel around the world And you know this fact that we've sort of continued to see this sort of occasional flow of individual figures Who would sort of pass through China who were linked to Al Qaeda was something that you know continued in the post 9 11 period We've heard a lot of the discussion about sort of why You know why the United States decided to sort of list The East Turkestan Islamic movement as a sort of terrorist organization in the wake of 9 11 So I think tried to develop and get China on side in the sort of global war on terror that United States was fighting But you know, I think that in this sort of material sense of the word It's not very clear that we saw any sort of tangible shift And from Al Qaeda's perspective they continued to be an organization that was very much focused on Launching attacks against the West or launching attacks against the Middle East China doesn't really sort of come into their sort of peripheral area of interest or concern Where we start to see that sort of narrative change Was arguably in the sort of late 2000s when we had the Beijing Olympics And we first start to see videos emerging from what was then called TIP There was quite specifically targeting and talking about launching attacks against China Now the link between TIP and Al Qaeda is one that is sort of much Debated and sort of what point did the two groups really come together? But I would argue the sort of easiest and most obvious thing to point to is if you look at the first videos that emerged from TIP in 2008 That was sort of specifically were quite low-grade things that were sort of put on the internet through youtube Which at the time was really not the model that you saw for Al Qaeda releasing its media publications Its media publications have come out through sort of officially recognized media outlets like the Al Fajr Media Center And they were actually of a relatively higher quality You would see sort of quite you know videos of the certain level production qualities Interviews with people it was very sort of structured and well delivered thing For the time of course now what we see ISIS doing is sort of wildly different But what we see this first video is the ones that instead were very kind of low-grade very Limited quality and we're just sort of dumped on youtube and then released out for everyone to go watch there But after we see a couple of videos emerging through that Sort of format we see Al Qaeda actually seeming to take the group into its into its kind of Into its orbit and more formally starting to see some bits of it is being released through the Al Fajr Media Center And specifically coming out through media outlets that previously have been much more associated with Al Qaeda And so in some ways there we can see that the two sort of seem to be coming together And this sort of connection and the sort of willingness to acknowledge The sort of Uighur struggle and the Uighur plight is sort of part of the global struggle that Al Qaeda was shouting about The sort of clearest evidence we have of it coming into Al Qaeda's orbit is of course in the wake of the July 2009 riots Whereafter we saw the the writing in the room chi and there was you know a global surge of attention around what was happening with Uighurs And what was actually going on in Xinjiang before then I'd argued very few people A few notable exceptions many of whom are in this room were sort of following the subject in a great detail But it wasn't really saying that anyone really focused on or knew much about in the wake of that We see a sort of surge in attention and we see Al Qaeda starting to talk about it as well And one of the sort of biggest markers of this is one of the very prominent Al Qaeda ideologues Abu Yaqa and Libby who's a very popular ideologue as well within the organization very influential Um gave a speech in which he specifically highlighted the plight of the week Is and talked about what had happened in Xinjiang and talked about it as something That you know was kind of fit within the broader context of what Al Qaeda was thinking about You don't really see any evidence of specifically trying to direct attacks against China or trying to do things in that direction But you start to see basically it starts to come into the orbit of the groups and the places that Al Qaeda leaders or individuals will talk about As another you know battlefield in the global struggle that they're that they're leading We saw and we've seen other sort of groups Like this as well many of the others within the sort of Al Qaeda orbit start to include Xinjiang or start to include China as one of the potential enemies in one of the countries that they're focusing against But we don't see through any of this period and this is saying that you really see consistently right up till very recently Is much evidence of Al Qaeda dedicating resources to follow up on some of these statements Where we see Al Qaeda continuing to focus its attention is on launching attacks against the west or launching attacks Against the upper state regimes in the middle east that they are sort of focused on as their priority Um the sort of idea of targeting China and directing material and resources towards doing that seems very limited In fact, there's really almost no evidence of it What we do see is a couple of plots that start sort of materialized in the sort of late 2000s in 2009 and 2010 In which we start to see evidence of Uyghur individuals showing up in terrorist networks that can sort of broadly speaking be connected to the kind of Al Qaeda community The first one was in In 2008 when a couple of Uyghurs were arrested in Dubai Accused of trying to launch an attack on Dubai mall one that was Associated with China because it sold lots of chinese products In fact was owned by the the authorities of the UAE and was very much kind of a local thing and these individuals Were apparently individuals who there was two Uyghurs one of whom had apparently been recruited And we get all this information from court documents that were released in in UAE in association with the with the sort of court case An individual who seems to have been first recruited by individuals who he claimed were linked to etim at the time in 2006 When he was potentially going on hodge in Saudi Arabia It's not exactly here where in Saudi Arabia this sort of recruitment take took place I mean he was then sort of recruited there He then went to do some training in Waziristan and then from there seems to begin direction by Someone within etim tip. We don't exactly know The names he doesn't provide a sort of exact name of the individual. He just says it was a deputy leader in the organization That was fighting in Waziristan to go back and launch an attack in Dubai Now this is sort of an odd Choice of targets on the one hand, but it's also an odd choice of individual to launch this kind of attack Because this guy whose name was um Whose name was a very long weekend in which I'm going to mispronounce met me Maima Yutming Shalmo He Did not speak any English did not speak any Arabic And was being sent back to launch, you know a terrorist attack by himself in Dubai So he recruited another individual who you found on the ground and this individual helped him Start to at least assemble some of the chemicals that be required to launch a plot somewhere along the way The authorities got wind of this and clamped down very heavily and arrested them most immediately after they sort of discovered them And then put them into the court process and both individuals were convicted of terrorist offenses But interestingly, it's worth noting that in Dubai if you are convicted of terrorist offenses It is sort of an instant capital offense But the judge in this case decided to waive the capital punishment because he said the plot was such an immature phase that it wasn't Proper for them to be sentenced to death And they both received 10 years in prison The next plot which in some ways is more interesting in trying to sort of paint Try to understand the link between sort of al Qaeda and and the sort of Uighur militant networks Is a plot that was disrupted in Oslo in july 2010 Where there was an in group of three individuals one of whom was Uighur another was Uzbek and the other was Iraqi Who were accused of trying to launch some sort of an unspecified plot against the target in Oslo Now this network or this cell was disrupted And the reason it's sort of interesting its connection with al Qaeda In that the three individuals one of them the sort of lead the the Uighur individual a chap called Mikhail Davoud Which is a name he'd he changed by deed poll when he moved to Norway Was an individual who was talking to an email account that was also in contact with Plotters in north of it in the north of England and plotters in the United States Who were part of very sophisticated plots that were trying to launch attacks Directed by al Qaeda leadership against the United States and the United Kingdom And this same email account was also talking to this individual in Norway And so, you know, the authority was sort of watching this plot for a very long time But it was very unclear how much there was actually some evidence of activity happening Mikhail Davoud seems to be a fairly radicalized individual who was talking to al Qaeda linked extremists who are based in Turkey Who are based in Waziristan And you know, there's sort of ample evidence that he was an individual who had clearly been to a training camp Received some sort of indoctrination and maybe had an idea to do some sort of a plot But the other two people in the plot didn't really seem to know what was going on One of them was in fact reporting to the authorities It was actually sort of telling the cops about what was going on So the cops had a very sort of a good sense of what was actually going on with this plot The reason he was actually arresting them was he hadn't told them everything that he knew was going on In particular the fact that they had actually managed to source some chemicals and had started to talk about actually doing a specific plot The other thing essentially to note about Davoud is that he Appeared to have in his possession some photographs of some other western jihadists who were linked to al Qaeda And were part of networks in the United Kingdom who, you know, had disappeared for a very long time Authorities had lost track of them and they were known to be somewhere in Waziristan They were maybe suspected to have drowned a drone strike, but no one really knew And Mikhail Davoud was found to have passport-sized photographs of them Which is an interesting element to sort of think about because it seems there what we're having is we have an individual who was Connected to sort of some of the tip at this point. It was sort of tipped There was a particular individual called commander say fuller who was talking to Davoud by telephone It seems as though this sort of connection that definitely flowed through a sort of Uyghur network was being used by al Qaeda to potentially try to launch some sort of an attack It did remain a fairly immature plot though and actually when we when the individuals were arrested It wasn't very clear what they were going to target They all sort of gave different reports about what the ultimate target was Davoud said I wanted to target the Chinese embassy But it's not clear that there was any clear evidence that he'd actually planned or done much preparation in terms of targeting that specific place Rather he was sort of talking about doing a plot He seemed to have half persuaded one of the people he was talking to the other one As I said was actually talking to the authorities at the same time But you know, it's a sort of interesting element in terms of showing that you have an individual Who's definitely part of a sort of Uyghur community of radicalized individuals Goes through training camps there and then becomes a tool that's being used by al Qaeda to try to launch an attack of some sort The actual reason why the authorities arrested him was that the very day before that they sort of launched the arrest against these individuals they They had unsealed some documents in the united states about the american network the american end of this plot And there was concern that with this information getting out Suddenly these individuals would be alert to the fact that someone's probably onto them and might you know run away Or launch action to sort of get ahead of the get ahead of authorities So the decision wasn't said to move quickly and detain and arrest them But you know suffice to say in this long sort of history of connections between china and al Qaeda It's very unclear to me that there's any direct evidence of al Qaeda trying to launch specific plots or attacks Or dedicate much resources towards supporting the Uyghur cause or launching attacks against china So fast forward to today to syria and iraq and i'm conscious i've gone on a little bit So i will try to be concise in this what i want to talk about now was looking at what we're seeing happening in syria and iraq And to talk about the three sort of lenses The first is talk about through isle And looking at the sort of the isle community and the link that we see with Uyghur extremists there The second is talk about tip and the third is talk about the relationship with turkey Now on the one hand if we're looking at sort of Uyghur jihadis or you know jihadis or extremists from china going to fight in syria and iraq It's not really that surprising or novel, you know Pretty much You know every country that has some sort of a muslim population has got some sort of representation on the battlefield in syria and iraq I think the last count i'd seen was somewhere in the region of 90 plus countries had individual nationals who'd been identified on the battlefield And this is everything from people from chile People from north america people from, you know, australia from new zealand from across sort of asia Really, you know all sorts of countries that you never imagine have had individuals who've been radicalized to go and fight So the fact that we're seeing you know chinese nationals, uh be they uyghurs or pretend or even You know other ethnicities as well is really not surprising within that context And you sort of have to just start to understand syria as a sort of real flame on the jihadist sort of map Which is enjoying in moth from sort of all over the place But you know understanding exactly what the nature of that connection is in particular when we're looking at Uyghur extremism is Is really interesting and very specific and To start looking at the isis question in particular What's interesting by the isis connections We can see that we actually do have some sort of data that we can use to understand What is the sort of nature of this link in the form of various documents that have leaked out from the organization? That are sort of entry forms for individuals who are sort of going to join the group This large lump of documents is one that leaks out sometime I think a year or two ago And that various institutions have sort of got different parts of and have started to sort of publish around My root mind see rusi was lucky to get a sort of portion of these documents And so what I wanted to quickly do is basically go through some of the other researchers who've managed to get access to the documents Some of the findings they've had looking specifically at the sort of Uyghur networks that show up in there And then also compared a bit to what we'd sort of found in the research that we've done around the documents we have so three reports that were sort of That that had emerged was one was that was mentioned before yesterday by shawn Which is by a chap called nick rosinblatt at the new america foundation And then another was one that was released by brian dodwum Daniel milton and don rassler at the combating terrorism center at west point Both of these in you know groups of researchers got access to these documents Though, you know, the numbers of documents they have vary. They don't match up We also got access to an arm numbers don't match up with what they have So I suspect we're all getting different pieces of kind of the same jigsaw And the jigsaw is one that is is very confusing But in essence what you're looking at is a series of different documents one is entry and exit forms So people are coming to join isle and when they're coming to join ice So they have to kind of fill out basic number of information their name where they've come from What their sort of level of knowledge of jihadi ideologies is what training they've had what they sort of are here to do And then others are some exit forms So people who are leaving the islamic state to go out to mostly turkey to connect with family or do things there But then also some of the other ones and this is one that we particularly seem to got access to others Don't seem to have been reporting about but I don't know maybe they haven't talked about it Is documents which appear to show Um People who are participating in specific training camps So individuals you know the sort of training camp the guy who leads it is saying okay So who's in the camp what are these individuals and they have a sort of a large excel sheet Which basically has uh all the information about the fighters who they've trained in this particular sort of month in this particular camp And so these are sorts of various sources and the sort of analysis that we've seen so far has been Fairly superficial from the others and I say that not to uh, you know deride their research But more because looking at the Uyghur community within this hasn't been a sort of focus of their attention So when we look at the sort of Nate Rosenblatt report, um, we see that he Identifies 118 individuals within his data set who are from china of whom 114 were identifiable as from Xinjiang We see that only very few of them were identified having any previous employment Only two of them are reporters having a professional job and over 70 percent had never left china before they decided to come to jihad Um, we also see that there is a huge disparity in the age range the hero ports The youngest person is able to identify as 10 years old the oldest is 80 Which is a pretty broad bracket There is no evidence of any of them having said that they fought jihad previously and This is an interesting data point that he picks up Which doesn't correlate with some of the others was that 73 percent of the cases he looked out of is under an 18 Um were individuals who had joined after The islamic state had sort of announced its caliphate You know, so after that sort of big revelation, there seems to have been in his data analysis They seem to be in a surge of people Uighurs in particular going to join islam The ctc report instead identifies 138 cases on the basis of chinese citizenship in their response But 167 on the basis of where their residence is You know, so some people don't necessarily identify their citizenship, but they do identify, you know, where they were living before Um all of the cases that they look at they identify that only six of this group of people who identified as having an Advanced knowledge of the religion that they're purporting to fight for The unemployment numbers that they register is very different with only between 10 to 17 percent as registering as unemployed And the reason there is a bit of a disparity there is that often people don't put anything in some of these forms These forms are clearly badly filled out So in some cases you'll see the person saying yeah, I was doing this job in others It's just a blank spot. So you don't know does that mean he's unemployed? Does that mean the guy asking the question? Who knows? But you know, the data does seem to point that there is a higher level of employment amongst them 25 of the cases that they identify say that they want to be suicide bombers Which is a relatively high proportion in comparison to the other countries sort of middle eastern countries like Saudi Arabia Lebanon and Libya are sort of ones that also have higher Sort of proportions of people who are willing to go and fight and die for the organization in this way And they Identify that there were seven Uighurs amongst the individuals who were identified in exit forms as trying to sort of leave the territory in a in a in at some point in time The analysis of the data we had was we were only able to identify. I think it was 28 That would have a definable link to Xinjiang or Uighur And you could tell this because of the address of where they were from because they would identify themselves as Turkestani Or a telephone number that they provided on the forms was a clearly a chinese one And all of these 28 the average age of them was around 24 The oldest week found was 43 in the youngest 16 17 of them were married with many of them saying that they have multiple children One of the exit forms we had is of an individual who was going out of the country and bring back his family to the Islamic state And some of the other interesting data which I would identify is some of these travel patterns Which you know, they they they seem to follow a path which we sort of identified before as we mentioned a few times Which is of traveling sort of through Malaysia Specifically a lot a number of them identify Kuala Lumpur as a place they go to And then from there to Turkey and then into Syria But again, it's slightly confusing because if you look at some of these the forms It says, you know the the sort of specific question is, you know, have you been to other countries before? And it's not clear if some of these people are answering that question Is and I have traveled to countries and they sort of provide a laundry list of places that they visited Whereas other people see a clearly identifying the route that they took to get to Syria and Iraq One of the odd cases we came across is a chap who identified himself as a former footballer Who had traveled through the Italy UA and Russia and Malaysia before he'd come to fight in the Islamic state He was also interesting because he was part of a cluster of three guys who identified as individuals who had actually fought with TIP The text on Islamic party before they decided to go join ISIL There's no reason given why they made this choice The only sort of common thread that we could find between them is the individual who they say Reference them into the organization. The sort of recommender is the same person So that that's the only link the times that they decide to go join ISIL don't match up You know, but they all appear to use the same chap Abu Muqtil as the individual who sort of gets them into the organization One of our guys actually said that he had fought jihad before saying he'd fought jihad in east Turkestan Again, we've no real idea what this means Another one not the same case is an individual who said he'd been a convict and served some time in prison But I think the real key thing is that it's a very it's a it's a kind of mixed bag And you know if we're looking at this group, it's not totally clear that we can draw anything out of it Some of the interesting data points which are relevant for china in particular Is that none of them, you know, there is no elemental discussion within any of these documents Of these individuals wanting to launch attacks back in china or expressing an interest in that regard They're all very much focused on sort of joining the islamic state and participating in the organization there An interesting thing which a few of them mention is that when they get to the question of do you want You know, who's your kind of next to kin? Who would you like us to contact in the event of your? Your demise A lot of them leave it blank a couple provide phone numbers But actually about four of them say specifically They don't want to communicate with their parents because they're worried that the chinese will take them Which is interesting if you think about it because in the context what we're seeing here is documents that these individuals are giving to Isle the group they're going to fight with and they don't trust the isles going to have sort of you know Protection of their data That that can say, you know, there's this sort of which is an interesting Uh, sort of data point about the level of trust and you know, uh, I don't know faith that they have in the organization So, you know, this is uh, this is sort of what we've been able to draw from this data Which is frankly fragmentary and confusing But I think many ways reflects what you see in a lot of the other countries in this data set Which is that you've got a very wide range of people are going to fight alongside isle You're seeing these people are coming from all sorts of different backgrounds You're seeing people with professions one of these guys identifies themselves as a surgeon There's people with the university education. There's people with no education It's a very sort of mixed bag of people in terms of looking at the output of material that we're seeing isle put out We haven't really seen any weager videos emerge There was one nasheeda religious song that was put out in weager But we haven't seen much evidence of the organization sort of focusing its attention Specifically on the weager community They seem to very much see it as part of the sort of broader radicalized individuals who are being drawn Alongside them to help them sort of build their state In contrast to this, um, if we look at the turkistan islamic party We can see we instead looking at organization has really quite Single-mindedly continue to focus its attention on its kind of core constituency The exact numbers of people who we see fighting with a tip in syrin Iraq is very unclear Um, I think you know, we could broadly say that we're probably talking about the hundreds But whether we're talking about up to a thousand. I just don't know I say hundreds on the basis of we look at the videos that they put out fairly frequently on the photo footage that we see We see a lot of material and we see a lot of people sort of there, you know, and a lot of people who are identifiably Potentially weaker. I mean, you know, it's it's it's often hard to tell But you know, there is clearly quite a substantial number of people in terms of where they're fighting They're fighting all over the country, you know, they tend to fight more alongside some of the salafi jihadi groups So groups like jai shall jai shall fath ahar al-sham and jabbath on lusra Which is of course changed its names recently And they tend to fight alongside them, but they do tend to also seem to be a fairly autonomous entity We've seen them recently participating in in the breaking of the siege in Aleppo just before the attack They put out a video which sort of celebrated the fact they're going to participate in it And we've also seen them showing up and fighting in latakia So we can see that they're an organization that seems quite substantial in the videos they put out We can see that there's lots of Evidence of them having quite a lot of hardware military equipment That they're sort of using to to launch to fight against the regime And they seem very much aligned with the kind of nusra and al-qaeda strain in salafi jihadi strains of the battlefield Rather than the kind of free Syrian army or certainly isil I'm conscious a bit of the time so i'm going to compress myself a bit here And say there's sort of two other videos which I think are useful to highlight Within this context of a tip in particular because I think they sort of help feed the bigger picture One is a video that was released recently by Aman al-Zahiri In which he it was part of a sort of broader collection of videos that he he put out Which were called the islamic spring and these were essentially a bunch of videos Where he sort of delivers a monologue over Montage of footage of various sort of jihadi battlefields and jihadi leaders in which he sort of Rejects the arab spring and says, you know, this is a huge failure and our our struggle is a much better one And he also fights rejects isil But in one of these videos he very specifically talks a considerable length about Oigas and the east turkistanis and notwithstanding what i said before about asama bin laden quite clearly saying We have no contact with these people. Um, you know Zahiri seems to remember a very different time in a very different picture He recalls hasan maksoum as one of the great leaders of jihad putting him up in the sort of pantheon of leaders of abdulla azam the famous palestinian who is sort of the father of the soviet jihad and asama bin laden abu musab al-zakawi the sort of founder of Of isil's a precursor organization al-qaeda in iraq And he says the east turkistani warriors fought alongside al-qaeda in torabura and were active members of the sort of mujahedin there He specifically says afghanistan's mountains and valleys know well the mujahedin from east turkistan Now this is sort of a slight remembering of history If we go back and think to what asama bin laden said about them before But i think it's suffice to say al-qaeda seems very keen to embrace this organization Go some length at praising what it's doing in syria and iraq and saying that tip is very much It's kind of entity on the battlefield the other interesting video to highlight within this context is another video that emerged fairly recently in which The the the sort of long suspected dead but then sort of revived from the dead A tip tip leader abdel haq Released a video again It was one of these ones we have a sort of audio message Over a whole montage of various footage in which he talks up sort of what the group is doing in syria They're saying that emerged fairly recently. I think it was in may And in it he sort of praises the the the conflict that they're doing and says all the wonderful things that they're achieving on the battlefield And they're really part of the sort of al-qaeda's dumma He praises a number of the sort of prominent jihadi al-qaeda leaders And he goes to some length to talk angrily about isis and sort of shout about isis and how this is a Evil organization and one that they sort of reject and it's leading muslims in the wrong direction not fighting the correct jihad And he also goes at some length to berate the leadership of the islamic room to zbekistan Saying that this organization is sort of busted flash and their leadership has you know made the wrong choice of going To support isil Messages which very much fit in with the sort of broader picture of what we see al-qaeda Talking about when it's fighting in syria But within all of this well in all these videos that i've sort of talked about the one thing which is noticeable Is the lack of many direct threats against china adil haq's video He does quite specifically talk about the sort of conflict in syria as being something where the group is training and fighting To gain experience to ultimately go back and launch jihad at home But you know Is our hearing never explicitly makes the threat of launch and attack against china And a lot of the videos that tip put out separately They seem to be much more focused on fighting the jihad in syria It's very much talking about what we're doing here and talking about how muslims in in xinjiang are oppressed And should take advantage of this struggle to come and join it and to come and fight rather than you know Let's all launch attacks against china So to sort of conclude a bit on on the sort of turkey angle Which is something that has been touched on before i think turkey is clearly Is a really interesting question and understanding exactly what the nature of the relationship between turkey and Specifically the sort of wiga groups is is very difficult You know, there is a strong history of the the President erdoğan having a lot of sympathy for the wiga cause and you know being quite vocally sympathetic towards them In his time as mayor of istanbul He sort of you know created the martyrs park, which was clearly venerating some previous Wiga liters at akp rallies You will regularly see the sort of turkistani flag the blue flag being flown by some of the supporters there You know, and i think that it's it's if we look at the numbers of Wigas who are showing up in other countries with you know, seemingly legitimate turkish travel documents It makes you wonder there must be some sort of an official Complicity at some level With this transit of people who are sort of leaving the country some of whom are ultimately showing up on the battlefield in syria and in some ways Why i think china should begin to why china i think is beginning to understand me to worry about this and Understand a little bit where this is going is that we've also seen from this sort of flow And again, we don't know exactly where the sort of lines are drawn between the turkish state or Individuals who are part of the turkis they're acting on their own volition or others who are just sort of you know turkish nationals or whatever Is the incident that we saw in the erdoğan shrine and the bombing which was quite clearly targeting sort of chinese tourists there Which is clearly linked to the sort of human smuggling network is helping That was working with Uyghurs to get out of china in some cases to to get over to turkey and some of them ending up fighting Because in that particular attack we can see an incident of You know a specific targeting of chinese interests and chinese nationals as a result of the sort of Uyghur Struggle and that is not you know if we look back at the history there has been very limited evidence of this Actually taking place with china being specifically targeted I think you know and you pointed out some cases in pakistan And I think that speaks to sort of pakistan china relationship and a desire by the group to sort of strike the pakistani state through the sort of chinese But we hadn't really historically seen this happen where we had seen it happen was you know, for example It tended to be by chance So chinese nationals happened to be in a place when it was attacked by a sort of al-qaeda's group And al-shabaab was actually quite pragmatic about this When in uh in july 2015 they rocketed a building in downtown mogadishu It turned out as a hotel that you know The chinese embassy was in and in fact a chinese guard was killed and the group immediately put out a video after saying Yes, this was you know in sympathy for our brothers in shinjiang There is no evidence that there is any that this is a pre-meditated act with any sort of conscious effort It was purely a sort of opportunistic effort by al-shabaab to take advantage of a thing which had happened sort of very much by chance But what we see in the attack in iran shrine And i'd argue what you're seeing in this kind of relationship with turkey Which is i think one that is very tense and very unclear and you've got a government that has Some level of tacit support or overt support for the wiga cause you have a very interesting and boring dynamic I would argue for china in which you do have a sort of potential for something to escalate Into something which is more directly targeting their interests as a result of what is sort of happening in shinjiang And that is a sort of novel twist that um that i think is Clearly going to concern a chinese authorities going forwards And i think you know if we look at tip and we think about it as an organization That seems very focused on what's happening in syria and iraq and fighting the sort of battlefield there I would say that you know A lot of attention pretty excessive amount of attention is often focused on isle As kind of the main threat that we see in syria and iraq This is an organization that's been around since you know the late 90s and has sort of waxed and waned in its size and capabilities Al Qaeda has been a consistent presence throughout this time And i think there's very strong evidence that part of the reason why we saw jebadan usur changed its name recently Was part of a very conscious effort um because you know the group changed its name And when it changed its name al qaeda recognized that it had changed his name You know which theoretically if you're breaking away from a group, it's not going to be acknowledged or praised by the group that you're leaving Um, and I think what we're seeing there is the group is basically trying to win Effort on the battlefield and show itself as the one that is really Protecting the sort of umma in syria and fighting against the Assad regime as a way of kind of refreshing The al qaeda brand, you know, it's a brand which had been very tired over time and had lost a lot of its appeal But to sort of win a battle like this in the sands of the levant Potentially means that then going forwards you could see it Using that as a springboard to continue a sort of longer term struggle of attacking the west and if we think about it within that context and the fact that tip is so closely aligned with This organization and fighting alongside them and clearly quite closely linked to them um That presents a sort of worrying trajectory going forwards of if this group is able to secure territory You know, maybe it's focused on fighting the battle here in syria and iraq now But wait five to ten years You could see an organization that feels more confident and wants to actually do something about the biggest struggle It's always been talking about And i've gone way over my time so i apologize Fantastic, thanks so much for that presentation rafiello I'd now like to invite dr. Kirill nozanov to give his impressions and comments on rafiello's paper Kirill Is a colleague here at anu at the center of arabic islamic studies over to you. Thanks michael It was a brilliant presentation. We learned an awful lot and i would particularly like to highlight the detailed and richly textured Nature of information that rafiello shared with us. It's indeed a rare occurrence That there is no fluffy stuff here. It's all based on hard data I did have a couple of questions actually that Sort of intrigue me throughout the presentation and rafiello of course provided us with a great Picture of who those uber militants are Loitering in syria iraq and elsewhere in the middle east When they came to the region What they are doing what kind of clothes they participated and of course the One of the great discoveries here is the continuation Of the old association with al-qaeda dating all the way back to the time Of the late night in mites and early notice and continuing today and i can't over emphasize the importance of the of the discovery with which i totally agree that the Link is quite often On the individual level it's the continuity of personnel. It's people who know people Who migrate from one side of jihad to another? And i think that the rigs true for me, but still this Did generate a question for me Can we stop there can't we look at the bigger question as to why why the uber militants currently located in syria or in the middle east to solidarize with uh, well either Isle or Al-qaeda offsprings jihad and usra. What have you? There were some crumbs and the bits and pieces and the presentation that provided us with some clues so rafaelo mentioned the aiman azawahiri and his take on the continuity ideological continuity between Uighur militants and al-qaeda but then rafaelo made a statement that What the uighurs might be doing in syria right now is protecting the syrian umma Which is kind of a bit divorced from what zawahiri is saying and that and yet Also, there are discourses that whatever uighur militants are doing in syria today is targeting china This is the weakest discourse of them all according to your findings. Well Perhaps so that's in a nutshell I think the paper would benefit from an analysis of ideological frameworks that assorted groups of Uighur militants in the middle east are deploying to mobilize and to translate to the rest of the world as to why the hell We're here. Why are we fighting and why we're fighting in a particular way and um one Suggestion that might be useful indeed is to Um analyze the Statements the speech acts by The leaders of uighur militants in the region as to well, obviously they all come from the same could be stable but which trend could be the takfir wahidjur kind of logic do they follow it indeed it can be Assam and the aiman azawahiri or on the other hand and they may have embraced Baghdadi and This can be gauged in quite a simple method. It's just having a look as to What they understand by the notion of jihad who are the targets of jihad jihad for the uighurs in syria are they aiming at the near enemy or the outside enemy And I think most importantly we should look we should be looking as to who are the objects of this jihad So one litmus test may be whether women and children in the pro asset territories are included or excluded and this May go a long way to identifying the Uighur militants with one stream of uighur ideology or the other The second question And you covered it masterful. I thought is about the exact Extend the dimension of the uighur militancy problem in the middle east And my impression is that you subscribe to the glass half full Perspective that they're not that many of them to be honest that your research identified clearly 28 Uighur or chinese citizens in the ranks of In isle and you said there may be hundreds of them associated via tip with jihad annusra and its associates well again, I I Defer to your judgment here, but There are other voices out there and one of them is rohan dunarat. I don't know whether he is popular here in this room But recently he said it's 500 in isle and it can be really thousands of Uighurs in syria who Fight under the banners of a tip. I can give you another example and this is a very spurious source It's the russian deputy defense minister antonov with an record a couple of weeks ago saying all told there are 5000 syria, sorry Uighur militants in syria alone. I'm sure he's confused and He probably took that famous article from last stamp and that's extrapolated and every uighur on the territory of syria Is a nasty turban headed rafian? but still I think it would be safe and potent for an academic to at least acknowledge that alternative viewpoints exist and that perhaps dozens or hundreds Is a kind of figures that can be questioned the third issue and again, I appreciate your caveat that The paper is not dedicated to an analysis of china's relations with the middle east Is the Still the lens of international relations and of course turkey china relationship is The elephant in the room and you will cover this really well but Again in light of most recent developments I dare say that you cannot talk about the dynamics Of uighur militants in the middle east without Taking account of what Saudi arabia has to say on the subject The relationship between China and Saudi arabia has been kind of a roller coaster one and I think at the moment it's reaching its bottom So and with 8 000 or so uighurs on the territory of Saudi Arabia and the potential for Financial sponsorship for uighurs fighting in syria. I think it's a dimension that really should be covered and on the other side of the Iraq syria zone of confrontation. Of course, there is Iran and As we all know recently china has been making all sorts of overtures towards Iranians and the the tantalizing proposal of a united front featuring Iran china and Russia and of course the regime of Bashar al-Assad is Very taunting geopolitical perspective that perhaps needs to be covered I think Thank you. I mean, I'll touch on a number of the points that cure made and they're all well taken And you know, I think the people benefit substantially from it. I think in terms of the numbers point I would agree. I think you know, I'm not saying that there's 28 Uighurs with iso It is probably in the hundreds. How many hundreds it's very difficult to know I mean as I said, there's other data sets pointed to 100 plus in both cases And you know having I know where they got their data from and I know the data I have and I know how it comes about and basically it's a very specific slotted time Which usually sometime in mid-2013 to mid-2014 and so people are joining before people joining after so, you know It's it's an incomplete data set. I would not doubt that are the numbers highest 5,000 that sounds like an awful lot to me Um Rohan gonna ratness numbers that sounds potentially about right Maybe though though I really don't know that we know for sure. I think it's very difficult to have any accurate numbers whatsoever Um, you know, it's certainly saying 500 and a thousand sounds very precise to me And a bit more of a kind of ballpark figure than a sort of precise number But I think that's also because you know, one of the interesting aspects which I always wondered about when we're looking at some of these individuals who are fighting is Are they all Uighurs who've come from china? You know, as we know Uighurs, it's a big diaspora There's communities as substantial communities have been in Turkey for a very long time in central Asia If people are coming from there, would they identify as Uighur when they were pulling in an entry form or would they identify as You know, it's difficult to know. So I think there's sort of whole question there around Some of the data in terms of going about the ideology point. I think when we're looking at tip in particular I think they're very classically linking themselves to al-qaeda proper If we look just I noticed um on their telegram account today They released a video of or a recording of abu kattada al-falistin receive, you know a message of you know supporting jihad He's a very substantial al-qaeda ideologue And I think they're clearly always linked themselves to those individuals who we'd recognize as the sort of very much of the al-qaeda Strain of sort of jihad rather than bagdadi who we see them regularly sort of vilified As I say abd al-haqq specifically had a whole video in which he said this organization is, you know kaffar and It's you know, it's a bad organization And then when I saw launched an attack actually, uh, you may remember in mecca back in July I think it was or in june There was an incident of some sort in mecca Um, they put out a statement afterwards saying, you know, this is more evidence of how evil this organization is They're even attacking the prophets, you know So I think they target their hatred in that direction. They're very much in the sort of straight in the classic al-qaeda ideologues On the question of the kind of middle east, uh, and turkey and kind of how the relationship with china is being shaped I think it's really difficult. I actually think when you're looking in the middle east, um I uh Not with signing whatever rocky Moments there might be at the moment And you know, I think china has difficult relations with iran and saudi arabia that sort of oscillate back and forth historically I Think that the one thing that has always been fairly consistent is these governments have not been willing to come out And sort of too vocally support the uiga cause and too much sort of attack china I think they all see china as an opportunity they want to sort of partner with and engage with And that sort of seems to be the overriding priority in a lot of the cases Turkey is the exception to this which does seem willing to have a leadership Which will vocalize its anger at the uiga cause and sort of support of it In contrast to all of the other middle easterners who who don't seem to want to do that And I think that's because they they would rather engage with china The interesting question for me in some ways is if we take forward the logic I'm saying of tip being one that's very close to al-qaeda and the sort of nusra front that's fighting there And if we go forward and see nusra establishing some sort of a territory Which is being controlled by them or which tip sort of has a piece of it, um, you know Nusra harasham some of these other groups have backers in the gulf You know, I don't think this is a big surprise to anyone And some of those, you know, there's a question about would china be able to leverage this relationship with some of these gulf countries To try to influence the behavior of these groups on the battlefield And that's an interesting dynamic that I wonder if we could see that playing out forwards If they would be able to do it or if it would be something that they uh, that they well I can imagine they would want to do it But if they would be able to and whether those countries be able to deliver Maybe in the same way that maybe historically you've seen pakistan deliver on, uh, you know Uighur networks that they're concerned about there So I think that's an interesting space to watch going forwards But I think the overriding uh logic of you know These countries wanting to engage with china as a sort of economic opportunity will be the kind of continuing priority And I can't see that changing for the Uighur cause There are other muslim causes in the world Which are equally ignored and if you think about the plight of the rahignia in Myanmar Which no one really talks about and they've been having a horrible time for a very long time You know, there's no muslim government which is getting up and shouting about that So, you know, I think that you know, some of these more pious Countries in the middle east who sort of preach this thing of being protected the umma They don't always follow through on it and I have a suspicion that Uighurs will probably Fall in the category of ones that they will sort of overlook because of bigger geopolitical relationship with the priority Raffaele, thanks for your presentation. My name is Tim. I'm an analyst with the Department of Immigration and Border Protection I'm considering in your research the limited number of Uighurs that Indicated a previous exposure to jihad or previous Exposure to militancy Do you think Uighurs are leaving China intentionally to take part in the conflict in Syria and Iraq? Or are they leaving on more humanitarian refugee grounds and getting caught up in that jihadist narrative During their travels and finding themselves in Syria and Iraq Um, I think uh, that's a really difficult question to know for sure, frankly Um Because you know the sort of chains of how they got there I mean, I think and I'll be really interested to hear Stephanie's presentation later and looking at the sort of southeast asian connection because I think some of the recent Reports we've seen of Uighurs showing up in sort of, you know Close proximity to santoso and some of the networks the MIT networks we've seen in in in indonesia You know, you don't get there unless you know someone, you know And you have a specific goal in mind and they're not going to let anyone in and you know some wandering Uighur who decides Oh, actually maybe I'll go to jihad You know, I so I think there's there's got to some of these people are clearly going with some dedicated thing But I don't think they all are and I would suspect that some are getting sort of swept up along the way Um, I would suspect some are being recruited in turkey quite frankly, you know I think that there's probably there's quite substantial networks of isle and nusra networks there Um, I would suspect the summer are being drawn in there But I I don't know that we know for sure in terms of the data that we had these sort of entry and exit forms Um, it really doesn't identify that at all. Um, there's no question about why are you here? The only aspect which you could maybe touch on which would hint in this sort of direction Be one of the questions that's asked is what's your level of understanding of sharia? And in almost every case, it's basic There's a couple who had a sort of more advanced knows one who was a hafiz al-Quran said memorized the whole current Um, so maybe the ones who are religiously minded have You know, but I'm superimposing, you know on a very limited sort of data set But you know, it's I think it's a very difficult question to know for sure And I suspect there is no clean answer either. I suspect it's a bit of a mixed bag I I had a question just about I thought it was very interesting that you um Looked to the bombing in thai thailand is the first kind of example of targeting Chinese citizens Or any kind of chinese Asset abroad I was wondering I haven't looked that closely into that incident But I had seen, you know various descriptions where you had all kinds of different Speculation about what had happened and was was it just that there were chinese there or was it targeting? So I'm just curious to hear why you seem very um Sure that that was actually targeting the chinese Um, I think that, you know, if we look at The individuals who are arrested subsequently who are linked to it Who were Uighurs who are part of sort of human smuggling network that had sort of been cracked down very heavily on Um, I guess they assumed that they're at the behest of the sort of chinese authorities Um, you know, I think that there was, you know, clearly targeting also It's an odd shrine. It's an odd target. It's an odd choice of targets, you know, a shrine like that You know thailand notwithstanding the sort of bombings you've seen recently, you know The history of terrorism there is separatism in the south And of political terrorism and political terrorism in the sense of political parties, you know lose an election or something And you know a bombing is kind of your way of expressing your anger And I think that's what we've just seen recently in a whole spate of incidents that we've seen around the country So this kind of a very targeted political act again It's it was different, you know, it was materially different even if we look back at history You know, there's a long history of al-qaeda networks of hezbollah networks of other terrorist groups using thailand as a kind of staging point And the narrative always was don't attack here because this is a useful Conduit point and a useful place to transit and other activity And so, you know, you don't want to disrupt that and get the authorities on everyone's case So everyone just kind of leave it alone. And so that, you know decision and so, you know Within that context, I think you'd seen the authorities that had been clamping down They've been sending Uighurs back to china They've been sort of clamping down on this network And I think that was kind of an expression of anger against both the sort of thai authorities But also specifically the chinese and irwan's right, you know, look, I knew the chinese afterwards who uh, who, you know Who sort of contacted me to talk about it. They all said god Yeah, everyone in china has heard of that shrine because they will go visit it That's you know, if you go to bank you go check out the irwan's right And if you're chinese and or thai or taiwanese or hong kong or you know, so they felt instantly that it was kind of directly targeted at them So all of that, you know puts A picture to me that says that it was quite specifically looking to strike at some sort of a chinese target So three sort of slightly intertwined um questions. Um First of all, you you touched on this bit. I asked you three didn't I? Revenge, um The first I mean you touched on it a bit But I kind of was curious to get your assessment a little bit more on sort of what affected T. I. P. Sort of somewhat heightened standing Um in the al-qaeda network I mean, do you attribute that to the specific individuals like abdul Hack and their position within the group to relations between the group in north waziristan Or specifically the role that they've played and their relative effectiveness in campaigns in in syria. I mean just kind of which elements Do you think have have fed into that? Um, and then related to that What is the what is your assessment of how t. I. P. Are functioning on the battlefield? in syria, what what's your sense of their status reputation what particular role they play kind of heard some assessments that are that they are Actually particularly operationally effective there Um, I mean there is this sort of description that you sometimes hear from the chinese side of them being cannon fodder and doing sort of Advanced actions in various campaigns and things, but I'm kind of curious as to what your assessment is in I mean it's difficult to to assess but in in so far as you have a sense of of that And then lastly on the bombing campaign from the russians and And and the regime and what what's your at the beginning of this year? There were various Analysts including the un camp tears and people who were kind of expecting that there'd be an outflow of many of the week is from syria as a result of The level of attacks that were being launched on their positions and And the things like that. I mean it doesn't seem to have happened in the end on on that scale But I'd just be curious to get your Take on the what sort of impact the particularly over the last Year, uh, since the beginning of 2016 What impact some of what's played out on the battlefield? You mentioned aleppo and and and some of the particular Cases in which there has obviously been kind of specific targeting of some of their positions both By the syrian government and by the russians Thank you. I I think on on the first question about the why is the group sort of getting this elevated standing in The al Qaeda network um I I you know the chance. I don't know exactly I would suspect it probably is something to do with their effectiveness on the battlefield Which kind of goes to answer some of your next question I think they have shown themselves to be a fairly effective force I think when there was a fight for jicero sugar They were quite clearly the ones that were sort of able to break through and Were the ones that really sort of pushed through and took a lot of of the city And I think a lot of the other groups sort of praised them And you saw they used a couple of suicide bombs in that attack And they put out a video after it's sort of praising these individuals But you saw those photos show up in other groups videos as well And so I think the group was kind of clearly seen as quite an effective Sort of fighting force and so I think the narrative of them as kind of cannon fodder Doesn't really hold I think the other point to make is they seem a fairly coherent Independent unit that's fighting on the battlefield, you know And I think they aligned themselves with the sort of nusra and salafi jihadi strain on the battlefield Rather than the sort of fsa and they fought as the sort of under the umbrella that you see You know har al sham and nusra fighting under But they do also operate independently, you know, they are a sort of effective coherent fighting force that is able to control territory A journalist I spoke to who'd gone in and was managed again to nusra territory Said that you know the the place where he was at a certain point He was sort of trying to go down the road and the sort of his is you know His guides or guards or whatever So no, no, we can't down down there. That's where the tip guys are, you know And they kind of control their territory and we don't want to sort of impede on it We you know, we fight together with them, but we let them do their own thing and we do our own thing, you know So I think there's a sense of it being a fairly coherent effort a coherent unit That is quite effective on fighting in the battlefield And then I suggested, you know, you've seen it showing up all over the country Which maybe helps answer the question about numbers, you know If you're able to project a force that can launch attacks in Latakia in Aleppo all the way up on the border with Turkey You know, it can really launch all over the country That suggests you've got a pretty substantial force to play with or to use and deploy And then the other thing is if you look at the the the material that they have, you know, they've got Pretty big piece of hardware, you know, they managed to get their hands on apc's tanks trucks, you know And some of it's probably stolen Some of it's taken to the battlefield, you know, but you know, there there's quite a bit of sort of equipment And so I think they're a fairly effective and coherent sort of fighting force and you know The sort of volume of material that they're churning out in terms of, you know, videos and others Indicate not only that they've got substantial numbers that they've got good equipment But also they're doing the state building part of it as well You know, they've sort of released videos showing kids being trained of them, you know Showing them cooking and them having a good time, you know Generally, you know being jatties on a battlefield but very much in the sort of state building model So I would suspect that all of that I think would suggest that it's a fairly coherent and strong entity I would suspect that probably has played into al-qaeda wanting to, you know, embrace it more tightly I think in terms of the impact of the russian bombing You know, I think the I can't think of anything specific Frankly looking at the impact that's had on tip in particular What I would suggest however is that the sort of russian bombing has been very effective Eliminating a lot of the moderate forces on the ground in Syria And strengthening and in reducing them because in a lot of those cases What you're seeing is sort of fsa units getting bombed to hell And then the guys that left basically have swept up by one of the other groups, you know Be it akhal shahm be it Nusra or anyone else And so they kind of go from being a guy who's maybe a moderate group to being somebody's involved in an al-qaeda network You know And so that is kind of strengthening those And I think that tip is probably benefited from that because a lot of those groups are ones that are its allies And it's fighting with on the battlefield You know in terms of them being targeted directly Again, I haven't seen it have a material impact myself I just wonder have you ever Searched or researched about Uyghurs inside East Turkistan And do you know how do they feel? How do they identify themselves? Or you just searched or researched only a few Uyghur militant groups organizations according to your presentations My question is related to the roots of terrorism in China Um, let me put it this way How do you feel when you go to church on sunday? Then you get arrested If your wife or sister or mom Or any female audiences here in this room Is forcibly put on long dress Or scarf on the head By the um security officers. How do you feel? If it's against your nature or freedom How do you feel when you see over 15 million immigrants In the last few decades And you see a new series Next to every existing cities in capital cities And how do you feel if you're forced to call your country by another language For example, like our dahlia you can't call Australia And you just said chinese muslim you just mentioned chinese muslim. We are not chinese muslim We are turkish muslim in east turkistan. There's some chinese muslim called. Hey, you know By the way, i'm not Supporting any terrorist organizations on terrorism I'm against all kinds of terrorism including the state um State terrorism carried out by china towards uighurs My question is very simple Like how do you feel Don't forget you are terrorist and what would you do? Are you? Like do you still live in peacefully or? I don't know Thank you I mean it's more of a statement really than a question. Um, I mean I think clearly I have done research about weeks in china here I was talking specifically about the sort of links to al-qaeda and looking at some of these sorts of networks I think that you know I have no doubt that some of the actions that the chinese state is undertaking in xinjiang are probably exacerbating some of these problems Um, and I actually have spoken to people in china who would agree with that sort of assessment. So, yeah Helen carvalita from defense um I have uh Couple questions Sorry This one, um, I'm I was born in china Siberian china Siberian on china side and the grew up in on the chinese communist region and that history about um How do you pronounce that uh uighurs? Uighurs, um, we call it we were too um Were not called. So my question is how long sorry for my ignorance. I never I didn't study that history. How long have these uighurs been living in china and thousands of years I have heard and the second question is we have um We have in australia. We have four hundred seventy six thousand muslims living in our country And i'm australian citizen um, so I just want to ask one question. How long um, do it of course, you know, we have a social coherence issues In china and in australia And we kind of ignore that and that issues cause some friction flicked How what we have learned australia you know licensed to learn from china and uh, can we Um, I mean in your country. Are you from uk? Yeah. Yeah, so in your country same So, okay. Do you have an answer for that? And first question is how long have We're just living in china. Well, I I think our former uh, last question probably help you answer that question Uh better than me, but I think we guess have always been in Xinjiang What is now called Xinjiang which previously wasn't for a very long time. Um, david brophy who is somewhere here Has written a very good book about the wigan nation, which I'd recommend reading to sort of get a clearer view of that Of the the sort of origins and ethnicity of the community there, but I think they've been there for yes As far as I know forever. I don't know You know, I think they're one of the sort of turkic central asian peoples that ultimately when the borders were defined ended up being Uh, uh within china. Um, I think to your second question, which you know, if I if I sort of interpreted as I thought I answered it was a question of what you do about kind of radicalization About people being drawn to these sorts of extremist ideas and the answer is it's very difficult Because it's very different in every individual case You know, um in the uk we have a very similar problem that you have here in australia about radicalization Um of people who are going to fight in syria and ira with people who are trying to launch attacks against their home countries And if you look at the cases in individuals, it's it's often there's a different reason in each and every case And so it's very difficult and so there is no sort of clean answer to this You see communities and countries that have very, you know, solid multi-ethnic coherent Societies that produce this problem and you have ones that are very polarized that produce this problem So it's it's very difficult for me and there is no sort of clean answer to it Um radicalization is unfortunately a problem, which I think we're going to see Uh continuing to express itself to um bearing degrees