• Military
• WMD
• Intelligence

• Security Menu                     

• Systems
• Industry
• Operations
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• Space

Backgrounder: The East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM)

Council on Foreign Relations

Authors: Holly Fletcher
Jayshree Bajoria, Staff Writer

Updated: July 31, 2008

Introduction

The East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) is a militant Muslim separatist group in Xinjiang province in northwest China. The U.S. State Department listed the ETIM as a terrorist organization in 2002 during a period of increased U.S.-Chinese cooperation on antiterrorism matters in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The Chinese authorities have called the group a threat (ChinaDaily) to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, but human rights organizations say this was exaggerated to allow the government to crush any form of dissent. However, some experts say the ETIM does pose a security threat. The question of China's vulnerability to terrorism resurfaced in July 2008 when a group calling itself the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) took credit for a series of attacks (Xinhua) in several Chinese cities, including deadly bus explosions in Shanghai and Kunming. The group also threatened to target the Beijing Olympics. Some counterterrorism experts claim the TIP was the ETIM using another name.
What is the East Turkestan Islamic Movement?

A small, militant Muslim separatist group based in western Xinjiang province of China—a vast, thinly populated region that shares borders with several countries, including Afghanistan and Pakistan. The ETIM is one of the more extreme groups founded by Uighurs, the Turkic-speaking ethnic majority in Xinjiang, seeking an independent state called East Turkestan. Most Uighurs, according to the U.S. State Department, do not support the movement to establish an independent East Turkestan. China’s communist regime, which fears that China could splinter if regional separatist movements gain ground, has long called the ETIM a terrorist group; after September 11, China warned the Bush administration that the ETIM had ties to al-Qaeda.

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2008 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.