China will mount a 100-day security crackdown from October 1 in its tense Muslim northwest, police said, a day after Beijing agreed with Russia and Central Asian countries on plans for a regional anti-terror centre. A spokesman at the Office of Public Security in Xinjiang said the anti-crime campaign in the region, where Muslim Uighurs are agitating for a free state, was timed to cover the period from National Day on October 1 to Chinese New Year in late January. After the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, China began pressing harder for international support against Uighur militants, who it says have plotted a series of uprisings and bombings since the 1980’s and trained in camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Looks like a bit more pressure on Hizb ut-Tehrir and Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. I'd call this a good thing, though I'd expect to see a steady stream of Bad Guys departing in haste for the next six months. Chinese interrogation methods are considerably less people-friendly than those used at Guantanamo, and they often end with a one-round splitting headache. Keeps down recidivism, y'know...
Taken with Chinese moves to provide peacekeepers, their problems with NKor, and the Beturbanned Bad Guys of Xinjiang, China's being pushed toward more normal relations with the West, specifically with us. One of my favorite O. Henry stories involves a burglar who's surprised by the occupant of the house. The two discover they have something in common — to whit, rheumatism — that transcends their differences. I think of turbans as cultural rheumatism. |
|