A wake-up call to the world from central Asia’s jihadists

richard spencer, middle east correspondent

Central Asia’s expanse of mountains, deserts and cotton fields is the biggest emerging source of jihadists — and their most worrying new target, analysts say.

Turkish reports suggested that the man identified as the Istanbul killer by police was an ethnic Uighur from the Chinese province of Xinjiang, and had flown to Turkey from neighbouring Kyrgyzstan.

These names mean little to most in the West. The Istanbul killings, though, may propel their festering low-level conflicts into the spotlight.

When an Islamic State propaganda video emerged in 2015 of the group’s oldest warrior, a white-bearded 80-year-old who called himself Mohammed Amin, it was regarded as an entertaining curiosity. In fact, his circumstances were a warning. He said he had become fed up with decades of repression by the Chinese authorities and had followed his son, who had been killed fighting for Isis in Syria. Like the alleged Istanbul killer, the elderly former imam had brought with him his wife, his daughter and four grandchildren.

He did not explain how he reached Syria. It most probably involved crossing the mountains to the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek, from where there are daily flights to Istanbul. There he would have found a thriving network of jihadist cells which were regularly smuggling people into Syria and Iraq.

n 2015, the Chinese government estimated that 300 of its citizens were fighting in Syria. Most joined a Uighur-dominated sub-group called the Turkestan Islamic Party. Now it has hundreds if not thousands of members, fighting in close co-ordination with Fateh al-Sham Front, which was formerly aligned with al-Qaeda. Leaked Isis papers a year ago showed a smaller number — at least 114 — had joined Isis.

Many, like Mohammed Amin, brought their children — a sign, perhaps, that they had no imminent expectation of being able to return.

These Uighur children, along with other central Asians like Kazakhs and Kyrgyz, form a substantial number of the so-called Caliphate Cubs — children trained as fighters. Kazakh children emerged as the first baby-faced executioners, boys as young as ten filmed shooting “spies” in the back of the head.

Altogether, more than 2,000 and perhaps as many as 4,000 central Asians — Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Turkmen and Uighurs — are thought to have joined Isis.

Their home countries are all repressive — Kyrgyzstan less than others, but also more impoverished, dysfunctional and in rural areas conservative. In all cases, returning home will be difficult as states close borders. In Turkey, though, they can blend in. All their languages, except Tajik, are Turkic in origin.

Charlie Winter, who monitors jihadist propaganda at King’s College London, said the central Asians had a reputation as an elite force within the movement, many being used for suicide operations.

“I think the central Asian population [of fighters] is really going to come into its own in the next few years,” he said.

When the five southernmost republics of the Soviet Union were forced into independence in 1991, predictions for their future ranged from widespread ethnic violence to hopes that Kyrgyzstan, a country of snow-capped mountains and valleys, would become Asia’s Switzerland.

Neither happened. But with dictatorial leaders, and with Russia seeking dominance, Islamism has proved a third way. The proximity of Afghanistan to the south has helped.

“I think there is a major strategy by Islamic State to push into central Asia,” said Theodore Karasik, a senior adviser with Gulf State Analytics who tracks relations between the Middle East and central Asia. Xinjiang was an obvious next target. “I think part of Isis’s strategy is to destabilise Turkey enough with these attacks to draw the attention of the rest of their community to them. This is a recruitment exercise.”