Behind the China Riots -- Oil, Terrorism & Misunderstandings

Chinese media reported that the Urumchi riots were sparked by a clash between migrant workers in a Hong Kong-owned toy factory in southern China. But other evidence indicates the incident was merely a convenient pretext for a premeditated plan to destabilize Xinjiang province, the center of China's oil and gas industry. NAM contributor Yoichi Shimatsu is an environmental consultant for agricultural businesses in western China's arid regions and former editor of the Japan Time Weekly.

DUNHUANG, China -- Along the Silk Road super-highway, olive-green truck convoys of the People's Armed Police, China's internal security force, roll past sand dunes and crumbling fire-signal towers toward riot-hit Urumchi. The absence of army vehicles on the morning after indicated the situation in neighboring Xinjiang province was under control.

On the previous day, just hours before the Urumchi eruption, tension was palpable in this gateway to Xinjiang. The residents of this historic caravanserai, once the last fortress of the Chinese Empire in Central Asia, were not donning their customary white caps, and none offered a smile of welcome. Residents avoided eye contact; the sun-toasted plazas crackled with tension.

That evening, as angry mobs knifed passersby, torched shops and stoned buses, a longtime friend in Urumchi, who is an Uyghur scientist, sent me a curt message: "My heart is crying." The sight of screaming children and blood-gushing wounds was a scene from hell -- a long stretch from Urumchi's image as a prosperous oasis of gleaming towers at the foot of the snowcapped Tianshan mountains. By Friday prayers, Muslims across the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region asserted that the riots had nothing to do with religion or ethnicity, and that the violence and looting were simply criminal acts of a hate-demented mob.

The Chinese media reported that the Urumchi riots were sparked by a clash between migrant workers in a Hong Kong-owned toy factory in faraway southern China. When Han Chinese workers accused several Uighurs of raping two coworkers, a bout of shouting and scuffling ended with the death of an alleged rapist.

Yet other strands of evidence indicate that the toy factory incident was merely a convenient pretext for a premeditated plan to destabilize Xinjiang province, the center of China's oil and gas industry. An uneasy coalition of exiled Uighurs has been riven with personal rivalries between the veteran Munich-based separatists and the newcomers in the United States led by Rebiya Kadeer, an Urumchi businesswoman and former member of China's parliament. The distrust between old-timers and newcomers was heightened by Washington's drive to install Kadeer as the leader of the World Uighur Congress, usurping Germany-based figures like Isa Dolkun and members of the Alptekin family. Kadeer's husband was promoted to head Radio Liberty's Uighur section, making him the boss of the Munich staff. As tensions smoldered among the exiles, action was clearly needed to unite the separatists.

Enter the Grey Wolves, one of the world's most notorious terrorist organizations. Founded in the 1960s, the Wolves are a pan-Turkic paramilitary group with 1 million followers across the Near East, Central Asia and inside Xinjiang. During the decade of political violence in Turkey in the 1980s, the military-backed activists launched a wave of assassinations, massacres of ethnic minorities, and extortions of businesses. By official count, the Turkish government holds the Wolves responsible for more than 600 murders, while leftists estimate the victims numbered in the many thousands.

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