Non-state Opponents 1989–2006 2007–present The Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP)[note 1] is an Uyghur Islamist militant organization founded in Pakistan by Hasan Mahsum.
After the September 11 attacks, the Chinese regime strove to include its repression of Uyghur opposition within the international dynamic of the struggle against Islamic terrorist networks.
[21] Their slogans contained anti-Communist rhetoric and calls for uniting Turks, indicating a movement akin to Islamic pan-Turkism historically congruent with southern Xinjiang rather than pure, radical Salafi jihadism or religious extremism.
[40] University of Virginia associate professor Philip B. K. Potter wrote in 2013 that, even though "throughout the 1990s, Chinese authorities went to great lengths to publicly link organizations active in Xinjiang—particularly the ETIM—to al-Qaeda [...] the best information indicates that before 2001, the relationship included some training and funding but relatively little operational cooperation.
[42][43] However, in 1998 the group's headquarters were moved to Kabul, in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, while "China's ongoing security crackdown in Xinjiang has forced the most militant Uyghur separatists into volatile neighboring countries, such as Pakistan," Potter writes, "where they are forging strategic alliances with, and even leading, jihadist factions affiliated with al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
[45] Abdul Haq was considered sufficiently influential by the al-Qaeda leadership that he served as a mediator between rival Taliban factions and played a role in military planning.
[47] In 2014, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, the al-Qaeda aligned al-Fajr Media Center began to distribute TIP promotional material, placing it in the "jihadist mainstream".
[52] In February 2018, airstrikes were conducted by American forces in Afghanistan's Badakhshan province against training camps belonging to the Taliban and the Turkistan Islamic Party.
[16] On 29 January 2025, after the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime, most factions of the armed opposition including the Turkistan Islamic Party in Syria announced their dissolution and were incorporated into the newly formed Ministry of Defense.
[66][67][68] In October 2008, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security released a list of eight terrorists linked to ETIM, including some of the leadership, with detailed charges.
[138] Andrew McGregor, writing for the Jamestown Foundation in 2010, noted that "though there is no question a small group of Uyghur militants fought alongside their Taliban hosts against the Northern Alliance [...] the scores of terrorists Beijing claimed that Bin Laden was sending to China in 2002 never materialized" and that "the TIP's 'strategy' of making loud and alarming threats (attacks on the Olympics, use of biological and chemical weapons, etc.)
[140] Uyghur expert Sean Roberts testified that the ETIM was new to him, that it wasn't until it was blacklisted that he heard of the group, and claimed that "it is perfectly reasonable to assume that the organization no longer exists at all.
"[140][dead link] The Congressional Research Service reported that the first published mention of the group was in the year 2000, but that China attributed attacks to it that had occurred up to a decade earlier.
[141] In 2010, intelligence analysts J. Todd Reed and Diana Raschke acknowledge that reporting in China presents obstacles not found in countries where information is not so tightly controlled.
[142] In 2010, Raffaello Pantucci of Jamestown Foundation wrote about the convictions of two men linked to a ETIM cell in Dubai with a plot to attack a shopping mall.