geopolitical orphans

The Guantanamo Uighurs are still in limbo:

In a sense, the Uighurs have fallen prey to two conceptions of things. There’s the post-9/11 American idea that Afghanistan was a terrorist haven, headquarters of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. Because that was indeed the case, it seems logical that any non-Afghan Muslims in the country, the Uighurs included, must have been in association with these international terrorist entities, as Mr. Webb put it. That view gains some credibility because there have been terrorist attacks in Xinjiang carried out by Uighur nationalists.

But the reality is quite different, said Alim Seytoff, the vice president of the Uighur-American Association. Over the years, he said by telephone, many young Uighur men, fearing political persecution and also needing jobs, have tried to go overland from Xinjiang to other countries, with Turkey, whose language the Uighurs can understand, a highly desired destination. Many of them, unable to get visas to Turkey, have ended up in Afghanistan, which shares a strip of border with Xinjiang, living in a village that has been wrongly portrayed as a terrorist training camp — a portrayal very much encouraged by China.

Back in the eighties, quite a number of Uighurs went to sign on with the communist Afghan government as mercenaries. This was partly because the Chinese supported the mujahideen, mainly with US$200 million or so of weapons, ultimately bought by the US taxpayer and passed on to the Chinese by Pakistan. So by fighting for the Afghan government you were fighting against China. Possibly more importantly you were getting training and experience: you were learning to fight China come the glorious day. And putting youself on the Soviet side of the Soviet/Chinese split must have semed like a good bet at the time, especially given Soviet support for the short lived East Turkestan Republic before 1949.

So also, I think, now. I don’t think the Guantanamo Uighurs just kinda sorta ended up in Afghanistan. I think they were doing the same as before: learning to fight China. They’d have joined anybody who taught them to fight. Islamist, Chinese, whatever. The constellation of forces around them has changed position but their purpose has remained the same.

Apparently the Palau deal is still under negotiation. My guess is that what lies behind that is the fact that the Kuomintang government on Taiwan aren’t as interested as their predecessors in paying various pacific microstates for diplomatic support. So you offer take some embarrassing people off the hands of the US, for a price to be haggled over. Oh, well. Life’s a hustle among the palm trees.

If I was the supreme high exalted boss of Palau, I’d seriously consider opening the island up as a kind of theme park for the exiles of lost nations: Uighurs, promoters of Sicilan autonomy, dreamers of Brittany restored, men who yearn to release Transylvania from Romanian tyranny, lone representatives of imaginary federations of Southeast Asian montagnards, Karelian particularists: geopolitical orphans all engaged in complex and pointless intrigues with one another. Look, I’d say to the UN, give me the dosh and I’ll put all these folk out to pasture in our island paradise. And we could make money from academic tours, too.

Comments

[Fellow Traveller]

So Palau ought to become William Burrough's Interzone?