It's The Return of Uyghur Wednesday!

[4est_4est_Gump]

I wonder what our madcaps are up to?

So while enormous numbers of Syrian refugees are attempting to get out of the Middle East and into Europe, what is happening in the empty villages they have left behind? According to Al Mayadeen, a Beirut-based satellite news service, at least some of the abandoned villages in northern Syria are filling up with the families of Muslim Chinese Uyghurs. These Uyghurs, claims the report, are entering the country along with their wives and children to fight alongside the Al Nusra Front and ISIS against the Assad regime.

Al Mayadeen reported in September that after a successful raid on Jisr Al-Shughur, a city of some 50,000 people near Aleppo, "this Syrian city looks more like China than Damascus. Thousands of Chinese Turkestani families were resettled in the area. Especially in the village of Zanbaq." (Translation by MEMRI.)

Let's pause to review the players. Uyghurs are actually a Turkic people, millions of whom live in western China. Though some Uyghurs look like Europeans, a lot of them have Asian features. They have sometimes been in conflict with the Chinese state; there were serious problems in China's Uyghur-majority regions in 2008 and riots in 2009.

Al Mayadeen needs a word of exposition, too. Established as an alternative to Qatar's Al Jazeera and Saudi Arabia's Al Arabiya, both of which reflect Sunni Muslim viewpoints, Al Mayadeen has been accused by its critics of connections to the Assad regime, to Iran, or to Iran's Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah. Al Mayadeen won't identify its backers, describing them only as "businessmen." Whoever its backers are, the news service is on Assad's side.

From Al Mayadeen's perspective, the entry of Uyghur fighters and their families into Syria is part of a Turkish plot to alter Syrian demographics. An unidentified analyst appears briefly to "explain" the coming of the Uyghurs. "This confirms that terrorists continue to cross the borders, and that Turkey continues to let the terrorists and their families pass through," he says. "It proves that [Syria's] demography is being targeted, and this aggression has transformed into a colonial occupation." In other words, it's the Turks' machinations that have led Syrians to abandon their cities and villages, and it's the Turks' plan to repopulate at least some of northern Syria with jihadist Chinese Uyghurs.

But that's hardly all: The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has been importing the Uyghurs as well. "The resettling of Chinese Uyghurs, and driving the Syrians out of their villages, is not limited to the Al Nusra Front and the Turkish intelligence," reports Al Mayadeen. "Two years ago, ISIS transferred thousands of Uyghur families from Turkey to the village of Abyad, in Raqqa province, and to the area around the oil fields in Deir ez-Zor, enlisting a thousand fighters from among them."

The Uyghurs' assignments include killing Russians who are aiding the Assad regime....

https://reason.com/archives/2015/10/03/syria-chinese-uyghurs-killing-russian-sp

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

What?