"The Chinese Government is a Threat to the Entire World"

New Message from the Turkestan Islamic Party

How do groups that have jihadist origins and backgrounds try to realise their primary objectives and frame those objectives to external audiences? The most recent example that comes to mind is of course Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, whose ultimate origins lay in Jabhat al-Nusra that was initially an extension of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s Islamic State of Iraq and then declared allegiance to al-Qa‘ida, with the ties to al-Qa‘ida broken by January 2017 with the formation of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham. Over time, the primary objective (the overthrow of the Assad regime) became increasingly framed within the more realistic confines of the international system/nation-state system: that is, the overthrow of the Assad regime in order to establish a new Syrian state that works within the framework of nation states, and does not seek to overturn that order. And thus today one sees Ahmad al-Sharaa (previously better known as ‘Abu Muhammad al-Jowlani’) as Syria’s president. This is to be contrasted with the Islamic State’s global caliphate conception that recognises no nation states.

In this new message, the Uyghur-led Turkestan Islamic Party, whose Syria branch has served as an important ally of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, frames its own primary objective (the removal of Chinese rule over East Turkestan/Xinjiang) in a similar way to how Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham came to frame its struggle. That is, the independent East Turkestan it seeks to realise will be part of the existing nation-state order and not seek to threaten other states. The cause is presented as fundamentally just and in the interest of other nation states and the world, and so this cause deserves international support.