Struggle of the Uighur people is quite real

In the context of violence in Xinjiang, I am "re-publishing" my opinion piece from the Register Guard (February 5, 2009):

A wonderful aspect of teaching is that it is a version of “life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re gonna get.” The latest was when students introduced themselves in one of my classes, and one said that her off-beat name reflects her Uighur heritage.

When I, from a land of a billion people, am a rare ethnic representative on campus, a Uighur student at our university was beyond my wildest imagination. So, naturally, excited am I!

Until this term, the Uighurs (also spelled Uyghurs) had been only an abstract concept to me ever since reading about Muslims in China, in the far western province of Xinjiang. Not anymore I am now able to connect this academic concept with a real person.

As a student many years ago, one of the first things I did upon reading about the Uighurs was to play my favorite game in such contexts, which is to establish a connection to India. It turned out that it was not a difficult process between India and the Uighurs there are not many degrees of separation.

In the English language, we use a word “mogul” when we refer to highly powerful businessmen. This word derives from the powerful and influential Mughal empire that ruled a large part of the Indian subcontinent, until it was replaced by the British.

The Mughal dynasty began in 1526, when Babur defeated the reigning sultan in Delhi. The empire had some of its glorious years under Akbar and Shah Jahan, who built the Taj Mahal. Babur was descended from Timur (also known as Tamerlane), who was Turkic, with some Mongol heritage. The Uighurs also speak a Turkic language. Aha! I had linked up the Uighurs to India.

But I was not happy once I understood that the Uighurs were pretty much in the same situation that the Tibetans are, and fear the loss of language, culture and traditions under the heavy-handed rule of the Chinese government.

A reader might wonder why we should care about some 8 million Uighurs in a remote part of China. Well, we in the United States have even fewer degrees of separation, through a direct and controversial connection Guantanamo.

Soon after the U.S. and NATO forces liberated Afghanistan from the Taliban regime, the U.S. picked up a number of people while sweeping the area for Taliban and al-Qaeda militants. In the process, we apparently also picked up a few Uighurs who happened to be in that area. Their presence in Afghanistan is not that difficult to imagine, given that Xinjiang is so far out in the west of China that it borders Afghanistan.

Designated as enemy combatants, these Uighurs were confined to Guantanamo. However, as it became clear that the Uighurs were not involved with any militant activity directed against the U.S., five of them were released. But they did not want to be sent back to China out of a fear that they might be tortured there. No other country offered to take them, either except Albania, which is where they have been since their release in 2006. What a strange story of globalization!

Meanwhile, another 15 of the remaining 17 Uighurs in Guantanamo have been cleared for release, but more than a hundred countries contacted by the U.S. have refused to take them. While Uighur families in the U.S. have offered to house and help rehabilitate them, our government is not in favor of 15 Guantanamo alums living within our borders.

The status of the Uighurs in Guantanamo will soon have to be addressed by the Obama administration. The fundamental issue, though, is that the Chinese government continues with its policies of denying rights, particularly to minorities. The Tibetan story is all too familiar to us; the situation in which the Uighur are trapped in is very similar which is why it is also referred to as China’s other Tibet problem.

The slide from Timur’s expansive empire, which provided an environment for Turkic culture to flourish, to having a few of their people locked up in Guantanamo has been quite a tragic tale for the Uighur people. I suppose not everything in life’s box of chocolates is good.

Pakistan is not salvageable

I am always worried about Pakistan. And it is not because I was born in India, but because of the immense geopoloitical fallout from the Pakistan disaster.
It, therefore, feels good to know that I am in good company; here is Christopher Hitchens in an interview with The Walrus Magazine:

On a bit of a different subject, I’ve been reading your more recent columns, and in your opinion, what do the next few years hold for Pakistan?

Well, the column I’d like you to read is called “On The Frontier Of Apocalypse,” and I wrote it in late 2001 after I went out to the Afghan, Pakistan and Kashmir after 9/11, for Vanity Fair. It’s in my collection, called Love, Poetry and War. And in there I say the problem is not Afghanistan, the problem is Pakistan. And I give quite a lot of reasons why that is. If I can say it without being facetious, in the last year or so I’ve been sort of almost hysterically proven right, with people crowding around me to say “Goddamn.” I’ve had more vindication than anyone should have. The original mistake in that region was the creation of separate states. The amputation of India instead of independence; the worst thing the British empire ever did was to give way to religious sectarianism, and not promise that we were there to unify India, not divide it. A terrible betrayal, and it got worse every decade. And this decade is no exception. We will never stop paying for the mistakes of 1947-1948. It’s one of the reasons why Salman’s novel Midnight’s Children is almost better than The Satanic Verses, because it’s prescient in just the right way. So I think the endgame in Pakistan... it’s conceivable that the state has enough resources left to battle those who care more about the Muslim bit than the state bit. Pakistan’s institutions are fighting the people who take the idea of Pakistan seriously, the idea of a Muslims-only state. Boy, we are gonna pay for this. Obama has no idea.

You don’t think?

He made a glib decision, the same mistake John Kerry made, that you can’t lead an anti-war, pacifist, isolationist party into an election, that you could in essence say there’s a great war in Afghanistan and a bad one in Iraq. One is good and just and legal and winnable, and the other is none of the above. And it’s exactly to the contrary. Well, not exactly to the contrary, because of course Afghanistan is a just war and a legal one. But it’s not winnable, though, and it’s not the important battle. But because [Obama] thought this was such a clever idea, and because it worked so well with his Democratic constituents, and because it confused the Republicans, he promised a demonstration of a very private stand. I put it down in several columns before the election. His supporters have no idea how much war the president is promising. Endless, endless. So if there’s anything keeps him awake, it should be that. Because he’s either got to go through with it, and see a lot go straight down a rat-hole, or he’s got to do a scuttle that will be more humiliating than any American president has ever had to face. It’s much, much worse than the risk Bush took in Iraq. And hey, the wonderful thing is that there isn’t a single liberal in North America who understands this. Or is willing to admit it. That makes me laugh. I do not want to give up Afghanistan or Pakistan, but I do not think the state of Pakistan is salvageable.

It is a stark choice for the president.

The best thing Bush did as president, apart from removing Saddam Hussein and removing the Taliban, was to make friends with India, and shift American foreign policy away from Pakistan. I think that was a long and vastly overdue move. And he gets so little credit for it. And I think Obama should build on that. I’m not sure we can save Pakistan; I’m pretty sure we can save Iraq and defeat Al Qaeda in Iraq, and Iraq is important to us, strategically, economically. We don’t need to control Afghanistan. We need to have a say, and make sure it isn’t controlled by our deadly enemies — or that if it is, they live in constant fear. But anyway.

If Pakistan falls, then Afghanistan falls too?

Well, the British partition lines, I’m an expert — well, I’m not an expert, but I know more than most people do — but the British drew the lines of partition in Kashmir, which is where Pakistan once raised fight with India; they drew the Durand line, which is what separates Afghanistan and Pakistan; it runs through Pashtunistan, as you know; they drew the other line separating India from Bangladesh, which used to be East Pakistan. I thought all of those lines were lines in the sand, they were very well positioned. Fighting to keep them going any longer is very problematic. There are large bits of Pakistan that wouldn’t submit, I think ever, to Taliban rule, and of Afghanistan too. They’ve come up against some really tough opposition from people who’ve never put up with them.

But not the region they’ve just been handed.

What, the Swat valley? No. No one fought the war on that. Swat is like giving the Christian Coalition Northern California. There’s a difference between fundamentalist rule in an area like this, and having a launching pad for jihad. They just took it as their due, most of the inhabitants ran away, and then they used it to try and attack the capital city. And they’re twenty miles from where the [nuclear] reactor is.

President Obama Still Smoking

What do people think about this?