August 6, 2007

If the War on Terror is Serious, Look to China

The communist/capitalist chimera that is China fascinates us with its challenge to our understanding of communism as mutually exclusive from significant economic growth, much less market domination.

Yet as uncomfortable as members of organizations from Greenpeace to the Heritage Foundation and everyone in between are with China emulating the U.S., it is undeniable that if imitation is truly the ultimate form of flattery, the Bush administration should be blushing.

Avoiding denigration for its economic maneuvers by emulating the actions of its firmest critic has worked so well for the Chinese that they are applying the same model to their dealings with the international community.

After all, why stress out the nice people at Amnesty International and have them waste their precious resources writing yet another report on your human rights abuses, when all you have to do is stamp a prisoner list with “Terrorist” to legitimize the execution? Communist regimes have never been known for their efficiency, so this is killing two birds with one stone.

The Turkic Muslims who live in the Xingjian province in the northern part of China have the honor of gracing China’s first terrorist list. Back in the 1940s they fought for the independence of the Republic of East Turkistan, but given their current position, that clearly didn’t work out so well. Consequently, the separatist movement in the region is now labeled as a threat and participating groups are accused of planning a creation of an Islamic state.

To legitimize its accusations, China appealed to the U.S. and the UN, asking both entities to ban groups like the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) as it allegedly poses a threat to the internal security of China as well as the stability of the region. Both the UN and the U.S. obliged. Other groups that support the separatist movement are based abroad, and China has also requested that they be terminated.

Perhaps because the U.S. has already paved the way, it is not quite as shocking to see China boldly ask another sovereign nation to comply with its wishes based on no other evidence than the word of the Chinese government. In fact, Beijing is currently pressuring Washington to hand over several of the separatist prisoners who have been held at Guantanamo Bay since being detained by U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

That sounds like a great idea. You want justice to be done? Get the Chinese involved.

Transparency and commitment to the well-being of the American people are high on their agenda, right between environmental protection and Tibetan freedom. Speaking of Tibet, it will not be long before this southern neighbor of the Xingjian province also makes it on the terrorist list. Those sneaky Buddhists have been lying low for millennia, something’s gotta be brewing.

If the world community, especially the U.S., begins to dignify the increasingly outrageous demands of the Chinese, it will solidify that the war on terror is a pretext for stronger control over strategic areas of the world when its scope extends to settling domestic conflict by countries not affected directly by the original threat.

Gaining a mandate to do as they see fit by playing the terror card defies the point of a war on terror, as opposed to war on all things we don’t like. If everything is the war on terror, then there is no war on terror. Appeasing the Chinese in the case of the Xingjian separatists is an invitation to further abuse of power for unrelated goals. It won’t be long until China is using the same reasons to control Tibet or Taiwan as it uses to control Xingjian today.

If and when this happens, especially in the case of the former, it is safe to say that the entire international community will be threatened far more than it is by the proponents of East Turkistan’s independence.