Deadly attack in western China suggests new tactics for separatists

Originally published Thursday, May 22, 2014 at 8:24 PM

Andy Wong / news3blog.blogspot.com

HONG KONG -

If there had been any doubt that the rebellion in China's most western region has entered a new, bloodier phase, it was erased Thursday by explosions in the city of Urumqi that killed at least 31 people and injured 94.

Urumqi, a city of 3.3 million some 2,000 miles west of Beijing, is the capital of Xinjiang province, home to Uighurs and other Muslims who have long chafed under Chinese rule. Xinjiang has a violent history that stretches back centuries, but the latest attacks, on the heels of others this year, suggest that the region's separatists are becoming more organized and are unleashing their fury against civilians, not just police and other government officials.

Michael Davis, a law professor at the University of Hong Kong who visited Urumqi in 2009, said Xinjiang's capital turned a corner that year when a clash between Uighurs and police became a riot that left nearly 200 people dead. 'Now these incidents seem more targeted; tactics of armed groups instead of angry citizens,' he said Thursday.

Thursday's morning explosions took place at a busy street market, according to China's state-run Xinhua news agency. Two cars with no license plates sped through crowds of shoppers while their occupants tossed explosives. The cars then crashed head-on into each other and exploded.

While the Xinjiang government didn't blame Uighur militants for the bloodshed, it said the attack was 'a serious violent terrorist incident of a particularly vile nature.'

One analyst went further. 'This is the single most lethal terrorist attack that China has suffered,' said Rohan Gunaratna, the head of the International Center for Political Violence and Terrorism Research in Singapore.

Gunaratna said he's virtually certain the attack was carried out by the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, an al-Qaida-backed militant group based in Pakistan. The Chinese government previously blamed the group for last month's suicide attack at an Urumqi train station, which killed three people and wounded 79.

Militants may have timed that incident to embarrass President Xi Jinping, who had visited Xinjiang a day earlier, pledging to help police 'make terrorists like rats scurrying across a street.'

Shortly after the bombings, Xi 'pledged to severely punish terrorists and spare no efforts in maintaining stability,' the state-run Xinhua news service reported.

State media also reported that Xi had ordered authorities 'to step up patrols' and 'prevent ripple effects.' He also dispatched a working group led by Minister of Public Security Guo Shengkun to Xinjiang to supervise the investigation.

Xinjiang, a vast region that borders Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Pakistan, is home to more than 10 million Uighurs who speak a Turkic language. In recent decades, they've become greatly outnumbered by Han Chinese, many of whom have migrated to Xinjiang to work in the region's expanding oil and gas industry.

On his visits to Xinjiang, Davis said, he's watched China's steady efforts to overwhelm Uighurs' culture and force the desert people to give up their old ways and religion. He suspects Chinese leaders will crack down even harder after the latest attacks. 'Their answer is more repression, and it does nothing to stir less resistance,' he said.

Gunaratna offered a different view. He said China had 'economically developed Xinjiang tremendously' but hadn't done enough to 'engage Uighurs and build a strong partnership between them and China.'

He said China needed to build stronger relations with the United States and other countries that were dealing with Islamist terrorists. 'The Chinese need to build the kind of high-grade intelligence needed to stop these attacks,' he said. 'They are 20 years behind.'

In addition to the recent bloodshed in Urumqi, two other attacks in China have been blamed on 'Xinjiang separatists.' In March, knife-wielding assailants killed 29 people and wounded dozens at a train station in Kunming, in southern China. Last October, three Uighurs drove a jeep into a crowd in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, killing two people and injuring 40 before setting the vehicle on fire, killing themselves.

One photo from Urumqi that Chinese state media posted Thursday on Twitter showed bodies lying on a street amid debris. Another showed a massive cloud of smoke wafting from the marketplace.

It wasn't clear whether Uighurs and Han Chinese frequented the market. The South China Morning Post on Thursday quoted a witness named Fan Fangfang as saying the market catered predominantly to Chinese.

According to other witnesses and state media reports, the vehicles crashed through metal barriers at an open-air market in the Shayibake district at 7:50 a.m., striking shoppers as the assailants lobbed explosive devices. Witnesses said the vehicles appeared to come from opposite ends of the street and that the drivers sought to kill as many people as possible.

Aygul, who works at a store around the corner from the market, said she heard as many as a dozen explosions as she was preparing to begin her shift. When she ran outside, the street was strewn with bloody bodies and the air was thick with smoke. 'It was mostly old women,' said Aygul, who only gave her first name.

According to a police bulletin released late Thursday, investigators are hunting for two Uighur men in their late 20s who reportedly escaped during the chaos and were later seen on a public bus.

Davis thinks it's possible that Uighur terrorists carrying out the recent attacks are attempting to slow the migration of Han Chinese to the far west of China. 'They may be aiming to make the Chinese less enthusiastic about being there,' he said.

Material from The New York Times is included in this report.