Terrorism takes firm roots in China

It all began on 5^th July 2009, when there were series of violent riots over several days in Ürümqi, the capital city of the Xinjiang, in northwestern People's Republic of China. The first day's rioting, which involved at least 1,000 Uyghurs, began as a protest but escalated into violent attacks that mainly targeted Han ("ethnic Chinese") people. Two days later hundreds of Han people clashed with both police and Uyghurs. Though Chinese army managed to quench the unrest, it was just on surface, while uneasiness continued underneath with minor skirmishes happening all along.

In July 2013. another major incident happened when trouble brewed again in the township of Lukqun, Shanshan county, Turpan district in eastern Xinjiang, when police apprehended about nine suspects, most of whom are aged 18 or 19, including some Lukqun locals. Next day a mob attacked and set fire to a government building, a local police station, a nearby construction site and more than 10 government vehicles, and stabbed both police officers and civilians indiscriminately. The casualty figures reached 35, which included police officers and civilians. Police shot dead 11 attackers and caught four at the scene. Within few days of the incident, trouble flared again in the island city of Hotan, which is on the other side of Taklamakan desert and more than a 1000 Kms from Lukqum. A mob of more than a hundred people, riding motorbikes and wielding knifes, attacked a police station here after after gathering at local religious venues. In a separate incident, on the same day, some 200 people attempted to "incite trouble" at a major shopping area in Hotan.

The simmering tensions between Uighurs and Han Chinese have taken a heavy toll in last decade. History shows that such troubled situations soon allow the terrorism, funded and aided by external sources, to raise its ugly head and that is what is happening in China now. The first incident occurred in in October 2013, when a jeep veered into a crowd in Beijing’s iconic Tienanmen Square, and then crashed and burst into flames, killing five people.

Chinese declared immediately, that it was the work of terrorists from Xinjiang, and within 10 hours of the crash, authorities had arrested five suspects in a night raid, who were in possession of long knives and flags calling for “jihad.” This was followed by one of the worst kind of terrorist attacks on the night of March 1 2014, when a group of men carrying weapons burst into the Kunming train station plaza and the ticket hall. The armed assailants dressed in black, launched a blistering attack with long knives and started slashing indiscriminately, the innocent people queuing to buy Railway tickets. Police teams were called for and they started shooting the assailants. Police shot dead at least four attackers, but by the time assailants disappeared, 29 people were lying dead and more than 130 were wounded. Photos posted on Sina Weibo — a Chinese version of Twitter — showed blood spattered across the station floor and medical staff crouching over bodies lying on the ground along with images of spectacles, shoes and baggage strewn across the floor of the waiting room behind police tape. Chinese state media called the incident as China's 9/11.

Within few hours, The Kunming city government issued a statement saying that the attack was orchestrated by separatists from the northwest region of Xinjiang. The announcement was rather surprising because so far periodic violent clashes in Xinjiang have been between locals and security forces and civilians were never targeted, it was also not very logical that terrorists would strike in politically insignificant Yunnan, more than 1,600 kilometers from Xinjiang.

The terrorists have struck again this week as a bombing attack took place outside the Urumqi South Railway Station in Urumqi in northwest China's Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region around 7 PM on 30 April 2014. The explosion occurred at the passenger exit, just after tain K453 from Chengdu to Urumqi had arrived at the station. The explosion appeared to be centred around luggage left on the ground between the station exit and a bus stop. It however was not only a bomb attack. It was followed by the attackers using knives to stab people at the station exit. Attackers fled after Armed police officers intervened leaving behind 3 people dead and 79 seriously injured. The station was closed after the incident and services suspended but was reopened later. The terrorists had chosen the time well as it was a peak travel time with China's 1^st May, labour day holiday just ahead. A BBC report mentions Raffaello Pantucci, a senior research fellow with the military think-tank at the Royal United Services Institute as saying "We have seen attacks and problems in Urumqi before, but we haven't seen anything on this scale in quite a while I think the issue is that the problem [of attacks] in Xinjiang is getting worse."

From the news, it is becoming crystal clear that these attacks are no longer bursts of public anger and unrest. They are surely professional terrorist attacks aimed at larger targets. China has now joined the league of other nations like India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq and Yemen, where terrorists can strike any day and any time. China needs to rethink its Xinjiang policy if it really wants to see peace in the region. The region's Uighur Muslim minority, who number about nine million, have long complained of repression under Chinese rule. The terrorists are simply making use of this resentment in the minds of the people. to create instability in the region.

The blast occurred as China's President Xi Jinping had just completed a tour of the region. He has said that he would implement appropriate policies to improve ethnic harmony and common prosperity of all ethnic group in Xinjiang. It is to be hoped that this is not just lip service because now it is certain that terrorism has taken firm roots in China and mere harsh measures against the population would no longer help.

2^nd May 2014

p.s.

 Attackers killed at least 31 people Thursday when they ploughed two vehicles into a market and threw explosives in the capital of China’s Xinjiang region, in what authorities called the latest “severe terrorist incident” to hit the Muslim Uighur homeland.
More than 90 people were also wounded when two off-road vehicles drove into a crowd in Urumqi, with one of them exploding, the regional government’s Tianshan web portal said, in an attack with echoes of a fiery car crash in Tiananmen Square last year.

22nd May 2014 

A night of the long knives

There are regions in the world like Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which remain politically unsettled and trouble can flare up there at any moment on any day. There are also some regions, which are politically stable, yet a turmoil can happen their at a slightest pretext. China's western autonomous region of Xinjiang is one such dangerous area. It is home to an ethnic Muslim minority called Uighurs, who are a Turkic-speaking people who regard themselves as culturally and ethnically close to central Asia, despite a long history of Chinese rule there. The Chinese Communist Party gained control over the region in 1949. In 1955, it was declared an autonomous region, giving it a status on the paper, similar to that of Tibet.

Politically, Xinjiang can be called as a cross road, because it shares borders with Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. Over the decades, Chinese Government has encouraged large scale migration of Han Chinese migrants to the region, displacing Uighurs from their traditional lands and fueling tensions. There are more than eight million Han Chinese in Xinjiang against 10 million Uighurs. The newcomers take most of the new jobs, and unemployment among Uighurs is high. There is wide spread resentment against discrimination and harsh treatment by security forces, despite official promises of equal rights and ethnic harmony. Some of the Uighurs even want outright separation from China and want Xinjiang region to become an independent country called “East Turkestan.”

The simmering tensions between Uighurs and Han Chinese have erupted into riots in last decade. In July 2009, rioting killed some 200 people and injured 1,700. In July last year (2013), 35 people were killed in a town. Renewed protests last year also turned violent and are believed to have claimed more than 100 lives. Hundreds are believed to have died in recent years, but the violence has always been restricted to Xinjiang region only.

However in October last year, when a jeep veered into a crowd in Beijing’s iconic Tiananmen Square, and then crashed and burst into flames, killing five people, Chinese declared immediately, that it was work the work of terrorists from Xinjiang, and within 10 hours of the crash, authorities had arrested five suspects in a night raid who were in possession of long knives and flags calling for “jihad.” Many international analysts think that China has found it useful to blame ethnic tensions on any act of terrorism to gain sympathies at home though we shall never know the truth. Incidents involving Uighurs are always labelled as “terrorist attacks” by Chinese authorities, although the description is rarely used for incidents carried out by members of the Han majority, who may have some grievances against society or the state to settle and have resorted to violence.

Yunnan is the southwest province of China, bordering with Myanmar, Laos and Thailand. It is more of a tropical region with a lush green cover. It is also one of the most beautiful regions of China and is the home of the famous Chinese Tea, which is grown in the hilly region around state capital Kunming- also is a popular tourist destination in China. Yunnan is a peaceful region and has no history of any violent clashes between locals and security forces. Yunnan also happens to be 1600 Km away from troubled Xinjiang region.

On the night of March 1 2014, a group of men carrying weapons burst into the Kunming train station plaza and the ticket hall. The armed assailants dressed in black, launched a blistering attack with long knives and started slashing indiscriminately, the innocent people queuing to buy Railway tickets. Police teams were called for and they started shooting the assailants. Police shot dead at least four attackers, but by the time assailants disappeared, 29 people were lying dead and more than 130 were wounded. Photos posted on Sina Weibo — a Chinese version of Twitter — showed blood spattered across the station floor and medical staff crouching over bodies lying on the ground along with images of spectacles, shoes and baggage strewn across the floor of the waiting room behind police tape. Chinese state media are calling the incident as China's 9/11.

Within few hours, The Kunming city government issued a statement saying that the attack was orchestrated by separatists from the northwest region of Xinjiang. The announcement was rather surprising because so far periodic violent clashes in Xinjiang have been between locals and security forces and civilians were never targeted, it was also not very logical that terrorists would strike in politically insignificant Yunnan, more than 1,600 kilometers from Xinjiang.

Though some China analysts are raising a question mark about participation of Uighurs in Kunming attack because it is so far away, it must be noted that it is entirely possible. I am more inclined to call it China's, 26/11, comparing it with the carnage carried out by Pakistan based terrorist outfit in Mumbai in 2008. In this attack also, hundreds of innocent people were killed and terrorists had came all the way from Karachi, a place at least 900 Km away. Unfortunately, total lack of transparency in China, makes it rather difficult to comment and be sure about the real facts.

One thing that surely has come in as an aftereffect of this incident, is the widening of the rift between Han Chinese of Yunnan and Uighur, who would now always be watched with suspicion there, leading to their further isolation from mainstream politics. There is a fear that if the Chinese government starts using this threat of separatists to justify their heavy-handed security and policies in Xinjiang, such incidents might even recur frequently as a backlash.

4^th March 2014

The hero or a villain

Richard Phillips Feynman was an American theoretical physicist known for his work on particle physics and quantum theory. He assisted in the development of the atomic bomb during World War II, though at a junior level. When the first ever atomic bomb was dropped over Hiroshima in Japan, Feynman was reported to have said:
“I returned to civilization shortly after that and went to Cornell to teach, and my first impression was a very strange one. I can't understand it any more, but I felt very strongly then. I sat in a restaurant in New York, for example, and I looked out at the buildings and I began to think, you know, about how much the radius of the Hiroshima bomb damage was and so forth ... How far from here was 34th street?... All those buildings, all smashed - and so on. And I would see people building a bridge, or they'd be making a new road, and I thought, they're crazy, they just don't understand, they don't understand. Why are they making new things? It's so useless. ”
I find this reaction quite natural as Feynman must have had a certain guilt in his mind about having assisted in creation of a monster killer weapon that killed more than 60000 to 70000 Japanese people in an instant.
However if readers think that the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan in WW II were the greatest killers, they might be wrong as there is one deadly weapon around the world that perhaps must have surpassed this number of kills of the atomic bombs. This deadliest weapon is none other than a rifle named after its designer Mikhail Kalashnikov. This Kalashnikov rifle is popularly known as AK-47. The AK-47 is probably the only weapon that has been used in almost every large scale conflict in the second half of the 20th century, and can boast more kills than any other single firearm. More than 100 million Kalashnikov rifles have been sold worldwide and they are wielded by fighters in such far-flung conflict zones as Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia. This rifle and its variants are the weapons of choice for dozens of armies and guerrilla groups around the world. The weapon also has became synonymous with killing on a sometimes indiscriminate scale and has received a bad name because of its exclusive use by terrorist organizations. The AK-47 was designed by Mikhail Kalashnikov in 1947, to provide better weapons for the Soviet soldiers, who had earlier had big defeats in the early years of World War II at the hands of far better armed German soldiers. However it was never used against the Nazi Germany.

So what did Mikhail Kalashnikov felt, when he heard about the massive killings done by terrorists using the rifle, which he had designed. Unlike Feynman, Kalashnikov had no guild in his mind. He had been honoured with the Soviet Union’s top awards including the Lenin and the Stalin prizes. About 4 years back he was lavished with honours again including the prestigious Hero of Russia prize for designing the iconic rifle to mark his 90^th birthday. During the award ceremony, Kalashnikov has said he had never intended the rifle to become the preferred weapon in conflicts around the world. He said:
“I created a weapon to defend the fatherland’s borders. It’s not my fault that it was sometimes used where it shouldn’t have been. This is the fault of politicians.”
Kalashnikov was born in a Siberian village as the 17th child of the family on November 10, 1919, He however had a tragic childhood as his father was deported under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in 1930. He joined the army later but was heavily wounded and shell-shocked in October 1941. He had first conceived of the weapon while recovering in hospital. The rifle soon became famous and was prized for its sturdy reliability in difficult field conditions.

Kalashnikov however never gained financially from his invention and lived modestly in Izhevsk, an industrial town 1,300 kilometres (800 miles) east of Moscow. An ordnance factory that had become the principal manufacturer of this famed rifle was located at Izmash, in the central Russian region of Udmurtia. After the fall of USSR in 1991, the orders placed by the Russian army for this order collapsed and the factory fell on hard times. Kalashnikov had to make a personal appeal to President Vladimir Putin for revival of the factory.

Mikhail Kalashnikov, inventor of the deadly AK-47 rifle died on 23^rd December 2013. What would he be called? A hero or a villain? It is for the readers to decide.



25^th December 2013

Postscript

Russian new agency Izvestia has now reproduced a letter written by Kalashnikov to head of Russian Orthodox Church shortly before his death to express guilt for those it had killed.
"My spiritual pain is unbearable. I keep having the same unsolved question: if my rifle took away people's lives, then can it be that I... am guilty for people's deaths, even if they were enemies?" he asked.
The typed letter on Kalashnikov's personal writing paper, reproduced by Izvestia, is signed with a wavering hand by the man who describes himself as "a slave of God, the designer Mikhail Kalashnikov."  14th January 2014 
 

Backpack

Last week I made a journey by one of these Intercity coach services. The air conditioned coach was no doubt pleasantly luxurious and comfortable. While riding the coach, even on bumpy or rough patches of the road, the ride was superbly smooth, thanks to the latest technology used in the manufacture of the coaches. Though my journey was from a city to city, we passed through many mofussil or upcountry areas, villages, small towns and Bazaars. Since it was a working day, I saw number of school and college going kids on my way, wearing uniforms which varied from school to school. I however noticed something very common amongst all of them. Right from primary school kids to young men and women attending colleges, everyone had a backpack on their backs. Backpacks have become so common now that they could be called as universal accessory irrespective of age, sex or dress no doubt. 

 

Backpack probably is a symbol of present day youth. Backpacks are usually stitched from waterproof fabrics like Nylon and come in so many vivid colours. Backpacks also have different kind of pockets. All backpacks however always have two straps with which they can be hung on the shoulders and a packet usually made from Nylon net on a side, in which another symbol of present age, a PET bottle carrying potable water is usually squeezed in. Main advantage of a backpack is that it can be strapped on your back, leaving both hands free. Because of this advantage, backpacks are extremely popular with two wheeler riders.

I remember that about fifty years ago, when I had bought my first two wheeler, I had preferred a scooter to a motorbike primarily, because Scooters in those days came with a Dicky to dump all kind of odd shaped stuff while driving. Since now, most of the motorbike riders carry a backpack on their backs, the advantage of having a Dicky on your vehicle is almost lost. This must be one of the reasons of increasing popularity of motor bikes over scooters these days. 

 

Soldiers fighting in second world war used to carry a bag made from Khaki coloured canvas on their backs. These bags were called backpacks or rucksacks and were usually strapped on the back by help of two thick woven straps. The soldiers used to carry in this sack their rations, medicines, clothes and ammunition. Somehow these backpacks came to be called as haversacks for unknown reasons.( An haversack is a bag carried on hips and is tied to the waist with a single strap. We might consider this WW II rucksack as grand mother of all present day backpacks without least doubt. When I was a school going lad, my father always wanted me to carry one such army disposal rucksack as my school bag; an idea, which I very much hated. Almost everyone in my school used to bring an ordinary cloth bag as a school bag and I was always afraid that I would look an odd kid out. That might be the reason why I never liked a backpack.

 

Today's backpacks, in spite of their high fashion look, are essentially the same army disposal bags only made differently and with different materials. For young mothers travelling with infants or small kids, these bags turn out to be a real boon. However, whenever I see some such young mother with a backpack travelling along with me on the same bus or aircraft, I am extremely cautious and maintain my safe distance from her. If these backpacked young mother is sitting nearby you, you never know, when you would receive a direct hit, when this backpacked person turns around or tries to remove or put on the backpack or tries to place it in overhead luggage compartments. And if you have the misfortune of travelling with such backpacked person, you are likely to suffer all the time as you may be asked with odd jobs like taking out baby wipers from front pocket or sipper from the middle pocket or diapers from the bottom packet etc. At the end of the journey , you are likely to go almost nutty.

The brand image of backpacks had suffered a serious body blow sometime back. Can you imagine the photograph of the lone terrorist from the Mumbai bombings, who was caught alive by police. I am sure that you would remember his image in which he is wearing a backpack and is firing from his AK 47 rifle. The Bombing of German bakery in my hometown Pune was done by placing explosives in a red coloured backpack and which was kept on a chair in the cafe. If people on the streets saw those days an unclaimed backpack lying anywhere, they immediately panicked. People wanted that backpacks should be banned. Any way it is easy to realize that it would be impossible to ban backpacks though it may be possible to place some restrictions on their size surely. Fortunately, that worrying phase is gone now and we again see common people of all ages carrying a backpack with them everywhere.

Finally, coming back to my intercity travel, which I described in the beginning, I watched my co passengers disembarking from the bus after we reached our destination. It was bit of a surprise to me that almost everyone was carrying a backpack. And here, at the end, I also must make an confession. In spite of my early reluctance, I invariably carry a backpack these days. After all it is so convenient! HaHa!

14^th October 2012