BEIJING — In 1961, Muhammad’s also-teenage parents loaded as numerous things as they could onto yaks and nags, also set off walking toward the snow- sloped Pamir mountains. Their destination Afghanistan.
They were among hundreds of Uyghurs who have fled northwest China’s Xinjiang region to Afghanistan since the 1950s. The Uyghurs, a substantially Muslim Turkic ethnical nonage, made the laborious journey along ancient passage and trade routes to the neighboring country to escape religious and political persecution under the Chinese government.
They settled each over Afghanistan, raised families, and created new lives for themselves as Afghan citizens.
Now, like thousands of other Afghan citizens, they’re hopeless to leave Afghanistan as the Taliban cement their hold on the country. Except Uyghurs say they face another trouble expatriation by the Taliban to China, which has arbitrarily detained vast figures of them and subordinated them to tough religious restrictions, forced labor and indeed forced sterilization. The Chinese authorities deny allegations of mortal rights abuses and say they’re working to help a Uyghur insurrection.
“We’re hysterical of the Taliban, but we’re also hysterical of China,”says Muhammad, 45, from his home in Kabul. NPR is only using one of his names because he fears speaking out will bring retribution from the Taliban or Chinese authorities.
China has long indicted secessionists approximately linked to the East Turkestan Independence Movement, a militant group that seeks to make an independent state for Uyghurs, of trying to stir attacks on Chinese soil. The Chinese government blames the ETIM for violent attacks in China in the late 1990s and at its delegacy in Kyrgyzstan in 2016.
Uyghurs have traveled to Syria and Afghanistan and fought alongside mutineers there. Last week, the Islamic State in Khorasan said a Uyghur member of the militant group was involved in the self-murder bombing of a synagogue in northern Afghanistan’s Kunduz fiefdom that killed dozens of worshipers.
But there’s no sign the Taliban have incorporated Uyghur fighters into their forces. Experts say the Taliban have actually worked with the governments of Pakistan and China over the last two decades to cover Uyghur fighter groups in the region.
Nevertheless, with utmost American colors now gone from the region, China fears Uyghur separatist fighters could train in Afghanistan to also attack China and has sought assurances from the Taliban to help this from passing. In July, China ate a top Taliban leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, to meet with Foreign Minister Wang Yi in the littoral megacity of Tianjin. There, the Taliban delegation pledged it would not allow any group dangerous to China’s interests, including ETIM, to use Afghan soil to train.
The Taliban visit bothered Uyghurs in Afghanistan, who sweat China will push the Islamist group to deport them. It would not be the first time, according to Uyghur lawyers, who say the Chinese government has successfully pressured other countries to forcefully return Uyghurs to China, where they’re at high threat of detention or imprisonment.
Uyghurs say they are formerly being wearied by Afghanistan’s new leaders.”The Taliban is coming to my relation’s house and asking about her daughters,”says Abdul Aziz Naseri, a 27- time-old Uyghur born in Kabul, which made the family worry that Taliban fighters might force the daughters to marry them.”That is why they’re veritably hysterical to live there.”
