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Abstract
This article explores the mobility infrastructure that enables and facilitates trans-national fighters traveling into conflict zones. The research on trans-national fighters focuses largely on the departure and arrival stages but rarely addresses how fighters arrange and execute their travel routes. The acts of border-crossing pose trans-national security threats while constituting the transformative processes in which individuals adapt to the identity of militant fighters. Drawing on studies of clandestine migration, this article uses primary multi-lingual materials collected through multi-sited ethnography in China and Syria to illustrate how Uyghur jihadists have traveled from Xinjiang to Southeast Asia and then to the Middle East. These circuitous routes were not made for the purpose of jihadists but assembled from existing commercial, religious, and illicit networks and infrastructures, intersecting with multiple layers of state and non-state actors.
Acknowledgements
I thank the Institute of Area Studies at Peking University for supporting this research. I benefited from discussions with Professor Qian Xuemei and Professor Ma Rong at Peking University and Dr Duan Jiuzhou at Tsinghua University for earlier drafts, and I deeply appreciated the research assistance provided by Huang Yushan and Shao Meixuan. Many thanks to two anonymous reviewers who helped to improve this manuscript and other anonymous informants in my field who were generous to share their experience and engage with this research.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Jianying Xu, “ETIM, Hijrah and the International Struggle,” United Front Studies, no. 3 (2018): 55–60.
2 Lorenzo Vidino, “European Foreign Fighters in Syria: Dynamics and Responses,” European View 13, no. 2 (2014): 217–24. Daniel Byman, “The Homecomings: What Happens When Arab Foreign Fighters in Iraq and Syria Return?” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 38, no. 8 (2015): 581–602. Lorne L. Dawson and Amarnath Amarasingam, “Talking to Foreign Fighters: Insights into the Motivations for Hijrah to Syria and Iraq,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 40, no. 3 (2017): 191–210. Meirav Mishali-Ram, “Foreign Fighters and Transnational Jihad in Syria,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 41, no. 3 (2018): 169–90. Elena Pokalova, “Driving Factors Behind Foreign Fighters in Syria and Iraq,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 42, no. 9 (2019): 798–818.
3 See in Luigi Achilli and Alessandro Tinti, “Debunking the Smuggler-Terrorist Nexus: Human Smuggling and the Islamic State in the Middle East,” Studies in conflict & terrorism (2019): 1–16. Christian Vianna de Azevedo, “ISIS Resurgence in Al Hawl Camp and Human Smuggling Enterprises in Syria,” Perspectives on terrorism 14, no. 4 (2020): 43–63.
4 David Malet, Foreign Fighters: Transnational Identity in Civil Conflicts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
Murat Haner, Ashley Wichern, and Marissa Fleenor, “The Turkish Foreign Fighters and the Dynamics behind Their Flow into Syria and Iraq,” Terrorism and Political Violence 32, no. 6 (2020): 1329–47.
5 Dawson and Amarasingam, “Talking to Foreign Fighters: Insights into the Motivations for Hijrah to Syria and Iraq”; Mishali-Ram, “Foreign Fighters and Transnational Jihad in Syria,”; Pokalova, “Driving Factors Behind Foreign Fighters in Syria and Iraq,”
6 Timothy Holman, “‘Gonna Get Myself Connected’ The Role of Facilitation in Foreign Fighter Mobilizations,” Perspectives on Terrorism 10, no. 2 (2016): 2–23.
7 Mohammed Masbah, “Transnational security challenges in North Africa: Moroccan foreign fighters in Syria 2012–2016,” Middle Eastern Studies 55, No.2 (2019):182–99.
8 Louise I. Shelley, Dirty Entanglements: Corruption, Crime, and Terrorism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
9 Svante E. Cornell, “The Interaction of Drug Smuggling, Human Trafficking, and Terrorism,” in Human Trafficking and Human Security (Routledge, 2012), 60–78.
10 Serigne Bamba Gaye, “Connections between Jihadist Groups and Smuggling and Illegal Trafficking Rings in the Sahel,” (Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Peace and Security, Centre of Competence Sub-Sharan Africa, 2018).
11 National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, “9/11 and Terrorist Travel: Staff Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States,” (National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, 2004), 55–61.
12 Ibid., 61.
13 Luigi Achilli, and Alessandro Tinti, “Debunking the Smuggler-Terrorist Nexus.”
14 Christian Vianna de Azevedo, “ISIS Resurgence in Al Hawl Camp and Human Smuggling Enterprises in Syria,” Perspectives on terrorism 14, no. 4 (2020): 43–63.
15 Matan Uberman, and Shaul Shay, “Hijrah According to the Islamic State: An analysis of Dabiq,” Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses 8, no. 9 (2016): 16–20. Erkan Toguslu, “Caliphate, Hijrah and Martyrdom as Performative Narrative in ISIS Dabiq Magazine,” Politics, Religion & Ideology 20, no. 1 (2019): 94–120.
16 Darryl Li, The Universal Enemy (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2020).
17 Ruben Andersson, Illegality, Inc (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014), 5. The examples of clandestine migration can be seen in Franck Düvell, “Clandestine Migration in Europe,” Social Science Information 47, no. 4 (2008): 479–97. Ċetta Mainwaring, and Noelle Brigden, “Beyond the Border: Clandestine Migration Journeys,” Geopolitics 21, no. 2 (2016): 243–62. Noelle K. Brigden, “Improvised Transnationalism: Clandestine Migration at the Border of Anthropology and International Relations,” International Studies Quarterly 60, no. 2 (2016): 343–54. Gabriella Sanchez, “Critical Perspectives on Clandestine Migration Facilitation: An Overview of Migrant Smuggling Research,” Journal on Migration and Human Security 5, no. 1 (2017): 9–27.
18 Franck Düvell, “Transit Migration: A Blurred and Politicised Concept,” Population, Space and place 18, no. 4 (2012): 415–27.
19 Luigi Achilli and Alessandro Tinti, “Debunking the Smuggler-Terrorist Nexus”; P6. Also see in Matthias Neske, “Human Smuggling to and through Germany,” International Migration 44, no. 4 (2006): 121–63.
20 Noelle K. Brigden, “Improvised Transnationalism: Clandestine Migration at the Border of Anthropology and International Relations,” International Studies Quarterly 60, no. 2 (2016): 343–54.
21 Ilse. Van Liempt, Navigating Borders: Inside Perspectives on the Process of Human Smuggling into the Netherlands (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2007).
22 Timothy Holman, “ ‘Gonna Get Myself Connected’ The Role of Facilitation in Foreign Fighter Mobilizations,” Perspectives on Terrorism 10, no. 2 (2016): 2–23.
23 Biao Xiang and Johan Lindquist, “Migration Infrastructure,” International Migration Review 48, No.1 (2014): 122–48. P124.
24 There are reports of one Chinese individual named Ba Si Pan who joined the Kurdish People’s Defense Units (YPG), see “The Chinese Man Fighting Islamic State with the YPG,” BBC News, 8 December 2015, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-35036879 (accessed 23 November 2021).
25 Clint Watts, “Beyond Syria and Iraq, The Islamic State’s HR Files Illuminate Dangerous Trends,” War on the Rocks, 2016.
26 Zachary Abuza, “The Uighurs and China’s Regional Counter-Terrorism Efforts,” Terrorism Monitor 15, no. 16 (2017): 15.
27 Uran Botobekov, “China’s Nightmare: Xinjiang Jihadist Go Global,” The Diplomat, 17 August 2016, https://thediplomat.com/2016/08/chinas-nightmare-xinjiang-jihadists-go-global/ (accessed 22 November 2021). Ben Blanchard, “Syria Says Up to 5,000 Chinese Uighurs Fighting in Militant Groups,” Reuters, 11 May 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-mideast-crisis-syria-china-idUSKBN1840UP (accessed 22 November 2021); Mathieu Duchatel, “China’s Foreign Fighters Problem,” War on the Rocks, 25 January 2019.
28 Interview with conflict mediation project field officer, Online, 24 March 2020.
29 Antoine Vagneur-Jones, “War and Opportunity: The Turkistan Islamic Party and the Syrian conflict,” Fondation Pour La Recherch Strategique 07(2017). Interview with Syrian former military personnel, Online, 6 October 2021.
30 Also see in Crisis Group Middle East Report N°197, The Best of Bad Options for Syria's Idlib, 14 March 2019.
31 Abdullah Al-Ghadhawi, “Uighur Jihadists in Syria,” Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy, 18 March 2020.
32 “Over 100 Turkistani and Uzbek Families Inhabit in Three Alawite villages in Jisr al-Shughour,” Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 8 June 2021.
33 Mohanad Hage Ali, “A Different Type of Jihadi,” Diwan—Carnegie Middle East Center, 2017.
34 Maria A.Soloshcheva, “The Uyghur Terrorism: Phenomenon and Genesis,” Iran and the Caucasus 21, no. 4 (2017): 415–30.
35 Colin P. Clarke, and Paul Rexton Kan, “Uighur Foreign Fighters,” (International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, Policy Brief, November 2017).
36 “Ministry of Public Security Launched Special Campaign to Fight Organised Smuggling in Southwest Borderlands,” Xinhua News, 19 January 2015.
37 Bing Huang,“The Evaluation and Reality of Terrorism-related Actions under the Hijirah Perspective,” Chinese Journal of Criminal Science 4 (2018): 101–13.
38 Mettursun Beydulla, "Experiences of Uyghur Migration to Turkey and the United States: Issues of Religion, Law, Society, Residence, and Citizenship,” Migration and Islamic Ethics (2019): 174–95. Brill, 2019.
39 Xu, “ETIM, Hijrah and the International Struggle,”
40 Ibid,. also see in “Ministry of Public Ministry Launched Campaign against Smugglings in Southwestern Borders,” Xinhua News, 18 January 2015.
41 Zengfu Chen, “On the Features of Hijrah in China and the Analysis of Policy Responses,” Journal of Yunnan Police College no. 1 (2017): 31–6.
42 Colin P. Clarke and Paul Rexton Kan, “Uighur Foreign Fighters: An Underexamined Jihadist Challenge,” The Hague, The Netherlands: International Centre for Counter-Terrorism. The Hague, November 2017. Soeriaatmadja, Wahyudi, “Indonesia jails three Uighurs for terror ties,” in The Strait Times, 14 July 2015.
43 Nodirbek Soliev, “Uyghur Militancy in and Beyond Southeast Asia: An Assessment,” Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses 9, no. 2 (2017): 14–20.
44 “Exile Group Presses China on Uighur Deportees,” AFP, 27 January 2012, https://www.bangkokpost.com/world/277098/exile-group-presses-china-on-uighur-deportees (accessed 4 April 2022).
45 Omer Kanat, “Uighur Refugees Deserve Freedom,” Bangkok Post, 20 November 2018, https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/1578974/uighur-refugees-deserve-freedom (accessed 4 April 2022).
46 “Suspected Uighurs Rescued from Thai Trafficking Camp,” Reuters, 14 March 2014, https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/politics/399882/suspected-uighurs-rescued-from-thai-trafficking-camp (accessed 22 November 2021).
47 “Suspected Uighurs Rescued from Thai Trafficking Camp,” Reuters, 14 March 2014, https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/politics/399882/suspected-uighurs-rescued-from-thai-trafficking-camp (accessed 4 April 2022).
48 Omer Kanat, “Uighur Refugees Deserve Freedom,” Bangkok Post, 20 November 2018, https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/1578974/uighur-refugees-deserve-freedom (accessed 4 April 2022).
49 Richard Bernstein, “Thailand: From China to Jihad? ,” Pulitzer Center, 9 September 2014, http://pulitzercenter.org/reporting/thailand-chinajihad (accessed 9 March 2017); Luke Hunt, “Uyghurs Test ASEAN’s Refugee Credentials,” The Diplomat, 19 March 2014, http://thediplomat.com/2014/03/uyghurs-test-aseans-refugee-credentials/ (accessed 9 March 2017).
50 Mathieu Duchâtel, “Terror Overseas: Understanding China’s Evolving Counter-Terror Strategy,” (ECFR Policy Brief, European Council on Foreign Relations, Brussels, October 2016).
51 “China Police ‘Shoot Two Uighurs Trying to Enter Vietnam,” BBC News, 19 January 2015, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-3087596 (accessed 4 April 2022).
52 Michael Clarke, “Bangkok Bombing Spotlights Uyghur Woes in Southeast Asia,” The Diplomat, 28 August 2015, http://thediplomat.com/2015/08/bangkokbombing-spotlights-uyghur-woes-in-southeast-asia/ (accessed 9 March 2017).
53 Yuwen Wu, “IS Killing of Chinese Hostage: A Game Changer? ,” BBC News, 19 November 2015, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-china-blog-34865696 (accessed 25 November 2015).
54 “China Condemns Mali Hotel Attack, Pledges Improved Cooperation to Fight Terrorism,” Xinhua News, 26 November 2015, http://www.focac.org/eng/zjfz/t1318651.htm (accessed 15 December 2015).
55 Paul J. Smith, “China’s Economic and Political Rise: Implications for Global Terrorism and U.S.-China Cooperation,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 32, no. 7 (2009): 631.
56 Stephen M. Walt, “The End of the American Era,” The National Interest, no. 116 (November/December 2011): 6–16.
57 Brian Fishman, “Al-Qaeda and the Rise of China: Jihadi Geopolitics in a Post Hegemonic World,” Washington Quarterly 34, no. 3 (2011): 47–62.
58 Michael Clarke, Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism in China (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 182.
59 Wassana Nanuam and Wassayos Ngamkham, “Fears of New Shrine Strife Spark Alert,” Bangkok Post, 7 August 2017, https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/1301267/fears-of-new-shrine-strife-spark-alert (accessed 4 April 2022).
60 “Defying China, Malaysia Releases Uighur Detainees,” Reuters, 11 October 2018, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-malaysia-uighurs-idUSKCN1ML1LH (accessed 4 April 2022).
61 “China Urges Thailand to Find Uighur Escapees Quickly,” Bangkok Post, 21 November 2017, https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/1364527/china-urges-thailand-to-find-uighur-escapees-quickly (accessed 4 April 2022).
62 Buo-da Yang, “On the Position and Network of the Jade Road,” in Academic Forum of Nan Du, vol. 3 (2004).
63 Qiang Sun, “The Reconstruction of Uyghur Women’s Gender Role in Nanyang,” Ethnicity Studies (2018): 54–62. P55.
64 See in Ben Blanchard, “Poor Intelligence, Porous Borders Stymie Chinese Control of Uighurs,” Reuters, 13 July 2015, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-xinjiang-idUSKCN0PN0ZH20150713 (accessed 3 December 2021). Flexible management of border-crossing has been suspended due to the Covid-19 pandemic and border surveillance methods have been strictly imposed since early 2020.
65 Interview with border patrol police P2, 25 September 2021.
66 Lesley Turnbull, ““In Pursuit of Islamic” Authenticity”: Localizing Muslim Identity on China's Peripheries,” Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review 3, no. 2 (2015): 482–517. Yi Lin and Qi Ma, “A study of Social Development in Rural Communities of the Hui Nationality in Shadian, Yunnan Province,” Journal of Hui Muslim Minority Studies 2 (2016): 25–30.
67 Interview with police, P1, 15 July 2020.
68 The locations were mentioned in the public record of the court judgement, see in “Kunming ‘March 01’ Serious Terrorism Case First Public Instance and Pronouncement of Sentence in Court,” People’s Court Daily, 13 September 2014. For the eviction of the Uyghur population in Nanyang’s Uyghur residents, see in Qiang Sun, “The Reconstruction of Uyghur Women’s Gender Role in Nanyang,” in Ethnicity Studies (2018): 54–62. For the Shadian case, see in Alice Su, “Harmony and Martyrdom among China’s Hui Muslims,” New Yorker, June 6, 2016. The eviction campaigns in Ruili took place in 2014 and again in 2017, with a mixed means of coercion and persuasion from the local police and government, fieldwork note from July 2020.
69 Cindy Yik-Yi Chu, “Human Trafficking and Smuggling in China,” Journal of Contemporary China 20, no. 68 (2011): 39–52. Peter Munro, “Harbouring the Illicit: Borderlands and Human Trafficking in South East Asia,” Crime, law and social change 58, no. 2 (2012): 159–77.
70 Nodirbek Soliev, “Uyghur Militancy in and Beyond Southeast Asia: An Assessment,” Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses 9, no. 2 (2017): 14–20.
71 The accounts of travelling are based on comparison of materials published in the TIP’s Arabic journals, No.1 issue, titled The Hijrah Story of Umm Abdullah and the stories of travellers who later returned to Xinjiang, published in Chinese in the social media account “The Last Kilometre” run by the Department of Publicity of Xinjiang Province.
72 J. Todd Reed, and Diana Raschke, “The ETIM: China's Islamic Militants and the Global Terrorist Threat,” ABC-CLIO, 2010. P135. Mariya Y. Omelicheva and Lawrence Markowitz, “Does Drug Trafficking Impact Terrorism? Afghan Opioids and Terrorist Violence in Central Asia,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 42, no. 12 (2019): 1021–43.
73 Yantao Ji, “Human Movements through the Lens of Terrorists Crimes: Trends, Structures and Threats,” Journal of Beijing Police Institute. 2017 (06): 21–6. Xiangyang Hu and Wei Zhang, “On the Structure and Trend of Drug Financing—From the Internet Trade Perspective,” Journal of Jiangxi Police Institute, no. 2 (2020):18–24.
74 Chenyang Li and Shaojun Song, “On the Illegal Movements of Uyghurs in Southeast Asia,” Xinjiang Social Sciences no. 1 (2016): 70–6.
75 Thomas Fuller and Edward Wong, “Thailand Blames Uighur Militants for Bombing at Bangkok Temple,” New York Times, 15 September 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/16/world/asia/thailand-suspects-uighurs-in-bomb-attack-at-bangkok-shrine.html (accessed 7 December 2021).
76 “Uyghurs in Turkey File Criminal Complaint against Chinese Officials,” Reuters, 5 January, 2022.
77 Emrullah Uslu, “Jihadist Highway to Jihadist Haven: Turkey's Jihadi Policies and Western Security,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 39, no. 9 (2016): 781–802.
78 “Ten Turks Arrested for Organizing Terrorist Smuggling from Xinjiang,” Global Times, 14 January 2015. Also see in Edward Wong, “Turks Are Held in Plot to Help Uighurs Leave China,” The New York Times, 14 January 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/15/world/asia/10-turks-said-to-be-under-arrest-for-aiding-terrorist-suspects-in-china.html (accessed 20 November 2021).
79 Abuza, “The Uighurs and China’s Regional Counter-Terrorism Efforts,”
80 Chenyang Li and Shaojun Song, “On the Illegal Movements of Uyghurs in Southeast Asia,” Xinjiang Social Sciences 1 (2016): 70–6.
81 Timothy Holman, “‘Gonna Get Myself Connected’ The Role of Facilitation in Foreign Fighter Mobilizations,” Perspectives on Terrorism 10, no. 2 (2016): 2–23.