From The Scotsman:

A major row has broken out between China and Russia over the location for joint military exercises.

According to the Kommersant daily newspaper, the Russian military had suggested the Xinjiang autonomous region of China, because of the area’s problem with Uigur separatists and its proximity to Central Asia, a focus for the international fight against terrorism.

However, Beijing flatly rejected the proposal, and instead suggested the Zhejiang province near Taiwan.

Exercises in this area, the newspaper noted in its report yesterday, “would look too provocative and trigger a strong reaction not only in Taiwan, but in the US and Japan, which recently included the island in their zone of common strategic interests.”

“Beijing is trying to use Russia as an additional lever of pressure on the disobedient island,” it said.

Beijing is presumably also mindful of the history of Russian influence in Xinjiang prior to the assumption of full PRC control (the warlord Sheng Shicai who ruled the province prior to the arrival of KMT nationalists during the 1930s operated under heavy Soviet patronage, and the Soviets invested in the area during the period of the second East Turkestan Republic in the late 40s), which might explain why they would be leery about inviting the Russians into what remains a sensitive area.

There were articles on it inside the Times and the Post today so I assume most people have heard of it by now, but Rebiya Kadeer, a leading Uyghur businesswoman, civic leader, and prominent political prisoner for the past five years, has been released from China in advance of Condoleeza Rice's visit to the region. No one has missed the fact that the White House has returned the gesture by dropping a resolution against China's human rights practices in the UN Human Rights Commission, something groups like Human Rights Watch have decried as rewarding China's tendency to release a small handful of high-profile prisoners at moments of greater public scrutiny in order to gain rights concessions from the US. While undoubtedly true, her release still comes as a relief to her family, human rights advocates, and the Uyghur community.

The "crimes" for which Kadeer was imprisoned, as has been widely reported, consisted of mailing Xinjiang newspaper clippings to her husband Sidik Rouzi, an activist in the Uyghur expatriate community living in the United States and working for the US Radio Free Asia service. Dave reports from Under the Tenement Palm that the Han gossip mills in Xinjiang are suggesting much worse about her (without any supporting evidence to the effect, of course), and that no mention has been made of her release at all in Xinjiang itself, reinforcing the notion that this was intended primarily for foreign consumption rather than telegraphing any sort of shift in policies towards the Uyghurs (you can read more about those policies in my paper on the subject from last fall). He promises further updates as knowledge of Kadeer's release becomes more widespread in the community; upon her arrival in Chicago Kadeer was quoted speaking to Radio Free Asia sounding fairly upbeat for someone who's just suffered the past five years in a PRC prison:

"I can smile at my people. I can work for my people, and I can work for the entire Uyghur nation. I can shout out 'Greetings' to my people. For the rest of my life, I will create my own history.”

I'll be curious to know what kind of role Kadeer plays in Uyghur diaspora politics now that she's been freed, but for now it's worth some celebration.

In other Uyghur news, the US is having trouble finding somewhere willing to take captured Uyghur militants due to be released from Guantanamo, since Europe, looking to improve its ties to China, doesn't want to take them. Wu'er Kaixi, probably the second most famous individual Uyghur dissident after Ms. Kadeer (he was a student leader during the Tianenmen protests) takes the Europeans to task for their eagerness to conduct arms sales in the (unfortunately subscription-only) Asian Wall Street Journal.

I'm taking a break from hacking away at my Uyghur paper in order to cut it down to the six pages max requested by the New America Foundation for its application writing sample — a painful task if there ever was one, considering the original version runs in at 26 in full — in order to note the release of the State Department's Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2004. Many of its findings confirm the continuation of policies previously detailed in my paper; not too suprisingly, the situation is not good for Xinjiang's Uyghurs.   more »

The December 2004 issue is now online. Looks fascinating. Its focus is on Arab media and how it relates to reform. In addition to a number of country-specific articles, it has statistics, regional trends of various sorts, and information on journalists and funding.

Insights and Analysis

• Shattering the "Politics of Silence:" Satellite Television Talk Shows and the Transformation of Arab Political Culture By Marc Lynch
  Arab satellite news stations represent one of the Middle East's most potent forces for reform.
• Arab Satellite Television: Can It Rise Above Spectacle? By Jon B. Alterman
  Pan-Arab satellite TV has brought more open political talk into studios, but not yet more open politics on the ground.
• Privatization Alone Will Not Loosen Arab Governments' Grip on Broadcasting By Naomi Sakr
  Until Arab broadcasting is independently regulated, aspiring independent broadcasters will face pressures from above and below.
• Cyber-Struggle: Islamist Websites versus the Egyptian State By Omayma Abdel-Latif
  Islamist websites are trying to break the state's monopoly over the political and social agenda.
• Washington and the Challenge of Arab Press Freedom By William A. Rugh
  It is no simple matter for the United States to apply its cherished press freedom principles in its Middle East policy.
• Iraq: Nightmare of Violence Dashes Hopes for a Free Press By Borzou Daragahi
  Iraqi journalists face dangers from the insurgency, U.S. forces, and the Iraqi interim government.
• Kurdish Media After the War By Maggy Zanger
  Kurdistan is the most secure and economically thriving place in Iraq, but the Kurdish media are slow to take advantage of the situation.
• Media Reform in Syria: A Door Ajar? By Ammar Abdulhamid
  The Syrian regime is tolerating limited expressions of dissent in the media, but will reformers take advantage of the new opening?
• Still Shooting the Messenger in Morocco By Aboubakr Jamai
  King Muhammad VI has displayed an ambivalent, sometimes hostile attitude toward Morocco's new independent press.
• Egypt: Political Films and the Politics of Filmmaking By Walter Armbrust
  The politics of Egyptian film reflect an often complex mix of internal and external forces for change.

News and Views

• Statistics on the Arab Media
  
• Trends in Media Law Reform
  
• Trends in New Arab Media
  
• A Snapshot of the Iraqi Media Scene
  
• Reports on Press Freedom in Arab Countries
  
• Private Broadcasting in Palestine
  
• Al Jazeera Initiatives
  
• New Journalists' Associations
  
• U.S. Funding for Arab Media
  
• Views from the Arab Press

Read On
A roundup of new writings on Arab media and reform.

The Arabic edition of this issue of the Arab Reform Bulletin will be available by December 22 at http://www.alwatan.com.kw/arb.

Revised December 6, primarily illustrations and format

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Uyghur Separatism and the Politics of Islam in China's Western Frontier

Colin Cookman

From its earliest inception, the modern Islamic terrorist movement has been transnational and pan-Islamic in character. Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network had its origins in the corps of volunteers known as the "Islamic Internationale", or "Arab Afghans": young men hailing from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the whole breadth of the Middle East who flocked under the banner of jihad to the mountains of the Hindu Kush and the training camps of Peshawar. There they gathered to wage guerrilla war in the name of Islam against the godless Soviet Communists, while the American government looked on with grim satisfaction as it covertly supported efforts to bleed the Russians in their own "Soviet Vietnam".

Following the United States' campaign to topple the Taliban and disrupt Al Qaeda's base in Afghanistan in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, news reports tracking captured fighters and key figures in the Al Qaeda leadership regularly reiterated, either explicitly or through non-commental labels of ethnicity, the multinational character of the terrorists' network: U.S. President George W. Bush's "coalition of the willing" was facing off against a stateless, loosely affiliated coalition of the dispossessed, the globally marginalized, and the violently revivalist. Although the biggest names and largest percentage of captured Al Qaeda members continue to be primarily of Middle Eastern or South Asian origin, every now and then reports mention other, more exotic figures in the mix of captured and killed: Chechens from the Caucuses, Uzbeks, Filipino Moros, and, infrequently but not unnoticed, Uyghurs from China's Xinjiang province.

What motivates those small handfuls of anonymous young men to cross the Pamir mountains into Afghanistan and fight alongside the militants of Al Qaeda and the Taliban? In order to attempt an answer, we must examine the origins of Xinjiang's oasis peoples, the Uyghurs, and their aspirations for nationhood; the nature of Chinese rule over them today, and its effects on those aspirations; and the extent to which militant Islamic revivalism may have infiltrated China's western hinterlands, and what implications that holds for the Uyghurs and their region. This paper argues that China's discriminatory policies have, more than any other factor, served to alienate the Uyghurs and increase the appeal of militant Islam, in effect making Beijing's worst fears a reality.
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The highest rank one can attain in Shi'ism is that of Grand Ayatollah, or marjah al-taqlid, which translates roughly as "object of emulation." The good folks at GlobalSecurity.org explain the matter thusly:

A marjah is the highest authority on religion and law in Shiism. Where a difference in opinion exist between the Marjah, Aalims (Religious Scholar) try to provide different opinions. Four senior Grand Ayatollahs [Ayat Allah] constitute the Religious Institution (al-Hawzah al-`Ilmiyyah) in Najaf, the preeminent seminary center for the training of Shiite clergymen.

Taqlid means acting according to the opinion of the jurist (mujtahid) who has all the necessary qualification to be emulated. So you do what the mujtahid's expert opinion says you should do, and refrain from what his expert opinion says you should refrain from, without any research [in Islamic sources] on your part. It is as though you have placed the responsibility of your deeds squarely on his shoulders. Among the conditions which must be found in a jurist (mujtahid) who can be followed is that he must be the most learned (al-a'lam) jurist of his time and the most capable in deriving the religious laws from the appropriate sources.

There are generally six ranks among Shi'ite clerics. The highest, grand ayatollah means "great sign of God". In the past, there were usually no more than five grand ayatollahs in the Shi'ite Islamic world. Today however it is suspected that there are at least seven and possibly more. Under grand ayatollah is ayatollah ("sign of God"). Below ayatollah is the rank of hojat al Islam, which is Arabic for "authority on Islam". Next is mubellegh al risala or "carrier of the message". While mujtahid often refers to clerics in general, it is also a specific rank, which denotes one has graduated from a religious seminary. At the bottom of the ladder are religious students, talib ilm. Besides the obvious factors such as graduation to be promoted to mujtahid, promotion in the ranks is a rather subjective matter. Two important factors behind promotion are the size and quality of one's student following and authorship of scholarly works on Islam.

As noted above, there are only a handful of guys alive who have reached the top level. Here's the list I was able to assemble from online sources: Al-Sayyid Ali al-Sistani, Muhammad Said Hakim, Muhammad Ishaq Fayyad, Bashir Hussein al-Najafi, Mohammad Taqi al-Modarresi, Hassan Tabataba'i-Qomi, Muhammad Sadeq Ruhani, Kazem al-Hosseini al-Haeri, and Hossein-Ali Montazeri, the first five of whom are in Iraq.

Sistani, whom we all know about by now, is the top dog. Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Said Hakim is the uncle of Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, who was murdered last August by a massive car bomb outside the Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf. Tawhid wal Jihad, Zarqawi's group, is the most likely culprit. Grand Ayatollah Hakim himself was wounded in the neck during a bomb attack on his home at around the same time. Fayyad and al-Najafi put the quiet in quietist; they tend to stay out of political matters altogether. Al-Modarresi I hadn't heard of before because he isn't generaly mentioned among the top four Iraqi Grand Ayatollahs, but from what I can tell he's a moderate based in Karbala. The English website of one of his younger relatives is here, and his own site is here. Grand Ayatollah al-Haeri is a hardliner based in Qom, Iran, and had until their recent split been Muqtada Sadr's mentor. As of 2002, Tabataba'i-Qomi and Ruhani had been under house arrest for many years, and there's another Grand Ayatollah named Ya'sub al-Din Rastgari who was placed under house arrest in 1996, but I'm not sure whether Rastgari is alive or dead. I think Ruhani may have a brother who is a Grand Ayatollah as well, but I'm not certain.

I'm in the middle of reading Ken Pollack's new book, The Persian Puzzle, and it made the following point that for some reason I hadn't realized before. As you can see from the above list, the current Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, isn't a Grand Ayatollah. The rules had to be changed to allow someone of his low stature to succeed to the rulership over Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, who had been Khomenei's designated successor but was deemed insufficiently radical when he criticized some of Khomenei's repressive policies (Khomenei's letter to Montazeri is pretty harsh). Khamenei's website reveals his insecurity about his position; everyone knows he didn't get where he is by scholarly merit. The unshackling of Iraq's Shi'ites represents a direct threat to Khamenei's legitimacy in the sense that now the center of Shi'ite learning is in Najaf, which is led by several clerics of higher rank and with a different judicial philosophy. In addition, Khamenei's rival Montazeri has recently re-emerged in Qom after serving five years under house arrest for criticizing him and the regime, and has since been surprisingly outspoken on reform, civil rights, relations with the United States, and, most recently, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I'm not sure why Montazeri has been so emboldened, but my guess is that the return of Najaf has something to do with it. Sistani has showed signs of picking off Qom's other top religious scholars, according to Amir Taheri and the good folks at Benador Associates. Even if the Sunni areas of Iraq continue to be chaotic and violent, the undermining of the Islamic Republic's radical, klepto-theocratic rule may make the whole thing worthwhile after all.

UPDATE2 [11 Sep 2004 10:06 EDT]: According to this AFP report, the Iraqi commission charged with settling land disputes in Kirkuk has yet to process a single claim.

UPDATE: Spencer Ackerman provides some context.

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Uh-oh:

"Kirkuk is the heart of Kurdistan and we ready to wage a war in order to preserve its identity and to sacrifice ourselves for what Iraqi Kurds have already achieved," said Massud Barzani.

Is Kardox's nightmare scenario avoidable?
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