A New Turkic Empire?
The CIAs main tool to spread Islamist ideology in all the key Central Asian
regions, including in Xinjiang, after the Cold War was a reclusive Turkish
former Imam named Fethullah Gulen.
The CIAs Graham E. Fuller was a main sponsor of Gulen. Fuller
and former CIA agent and US Ambassador to Turkey Morton Abramowitz
enabled Gulen to obtain permanent residence in Pennsylvania in the 1990s,
over the objections of the US State Department ABD Dileri Bakanl, FBI, and Department
of
Homeland Security.10 The lawyers from the State Department at that court
hearing even claimed Gulen had ties to and was financed by the CIA as
reason for denying him US residency.11 Gulens organization, like most of
the political Jihadist organizations backed by the CIA since the Mujahideen
in the 1980s, was also alleged to finance its vast empire by dealing in the
distribution of Afghanistan heroin.12
The CIAs Gulen Movement has a network covering the
entire New Silk Road Yeni pek Yolu of China into Xinjiang.
Gulen, a vital asset of the CIAs neoconservative faction that was out
to wreak chaos across China and Central Asia to Russia, Iran, and beyond,
reportedly was tied to Turkish heroin mafias smuggling Afghan heroin to
the West.13
Sibel Edmonds was a former FBI Turkish-language translator who was
silenced by the US Justice Department from going public with her uncovering
of a deep network of money laundering, illegal drugs, and weapons
dealings, including nuclear weapons. She charged that the network she
discovered from translating secret FBI wiretapped conversations involved
Gulen-affiliated Turkish police, business networks, criminal rogue CIA
agents, the State Department, and US Defense Department neoconservative
networks at high levels in Washington. According to Edmonds, who
brought a US Ohio Court case to force disclosure of this criminal network,
Gulen by 2013 had established
more than 300 madrassas in Central Asia and what he calls
universities that have a front that is called Moderate Islam, but
he is closely involved in training mujahideen-like militia Islam
who are brought from Pakistan and Afghanistan into Central
Asia where his madrassas operate, and his organizations network
is estimated to be around $25 billion.
It is supported by certain US authorities here because of the
operations in Central Asia, but what they have been doing since
late 1990s is actually radical Islam and militarizing these very,
very young, from the age 14, 15, by commandoes they use, and
this is both commandoes from Turkish military, commandoes
from Pakistani ISI in Central Asia and Azerbaijan. After that
they bring them to Turkey, and from Turkey they send them
through Europe, to European and elsewhere.14
The Gulen Movement founded madrassas in the 1990s, mostly in the
newly independent Turkic republics of Central Asia and Russia. Gulens
Central Asian madrassas were used as training schools for al Qaeda and
served as a front for undercover CIA and US State Department ABD Dileri Bakanl officials
operating in the region.15
One of Gulens proteges was Anwar Yusuf Turani Enver Yusuf Turani, the person who
started the East Turkistan Independence Movement from his exile in
Washington, DC. In 2004, Turani set up the East Turkistan Government
in Exile and was elected Prime Minister.16 It was not clear who exactly
elected Turani. Washington was clearly happy to give him a platform for
his anti-Beijing activities in Xinjiang.
Significantly, according to a report in a Turkish investigative magazine,
Turk Pulse, Turanis organizations activities for the government in exile
are based on a report entitled The Xinjiang Project. That was written by
Graham E. Fuller in 1998 for the Rand Corporation RAND irketi and revised in 2003
under the title The Xinjiang Problem. 17
In a 1999 interview, Anwar Yusuf Turani Enver Yusuf Turani claimed that he received
financial support from wealthy patrons in Saudi Arabia, home of the ultraconservative
Wahhabite Sunni form of Islam that provided the core of
Osama bin Ladens Jihadist Afghanistan Mujahideen terrorist guerrillas
in the 1980s.18 Saudi intelligence cooperated with the CIA in those global
Islamist Jihad operations.
ETIM and CIA Jihad in Xinjiang
Another CIA-sponsored Islamist movement involved in terror acts and
activities in Xinjiang was the East Turkestan Islamic Movement Dou Trkistan slami Hareketi
(ETIM),
otherwise known as the Turkestan Islamic Party Trkistan slam Partisi.
Turkestan Islamic Party Trkistan slam Partisi Seala Koran surrounded by two Scimitars.
In the late 1990s, Hasan Mahsum, also known as Abu-Muhammad
al-Turkestani, founder of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement Dou Trkistan slami Hareketi,
moved
ETIMs headquarters to Kabul, taking shelter under Taliban-controlled
Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, ETIM leaders met with Osama bin Laden
and other leaders of the CIA-trained Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and the Islamic
Movement of Uzbekistan zbekistan slam Hareketi
to coordinate actions across Central Asia.19
In his own study of Xinjiang, the CIAs Graham E. Fuller noted that
Saudi Arabian groups had disseminated extremist Wahhabi religious literature
and possibly small arms through sympathizers in Xinjiang, and that
young Turkic Muslims had been recruited to study at madrasas in Pakistan,
Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. He adds that Uyghurs from Xinjiang also
fought alongside Osama bin Ladens Al Qaeda in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Fuller noted, Uyghurs are indeed in touch with Muslim groups outside
Xinjiang, some of them have been radicalized into broader jihadist politics
in the process, a handful were earlier involved in guerrilla or terrorist
training in Afghanistan, and some are in touch with international Muslim
mujahideen struggling for Muslim causes of independence worldwide.20
The goal of the various Islamist Jihad groups the CIA covertly backed,
beginning the time of the Afghan Mujahideen in the 1980s, was to spread
a cancer of radical Islamic terror and fanaticism to displace the tradition
of moderate, peaceful Islam across Central Asia and into Xinjiang, as the
earlier cited statement from the CIAs Graham E. Fuller indicated.
ETIM Joins with IMU
The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan zbekistan slam Hareketi
(IMU ), allies of the East Turkestan
Islamic Movement, were tied with Al Qaeda of Osama bin Laden. In the
period after 1997, the IMU moved into Afghanistan to wage Jihad against
the Kabul Government on behalf of the Taliban. They also incorporated
Uyghurs from Xinjiang in their battles, giving them vital combat training
to return to Xinjiang to wage Jihad inside China.21
After the chaotic collapse of Soviet rule in the early 1990s, the initial
focus of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan zbekistan slam Hareketi
was grabbing control of
the vital Fergana Valley spread across eastern Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan,
and Tajikistan. Returning Afghan war veteran and Uzbek paratrooper
Jumaboi Khojayev, radicalized by his contact with Osama bin Ladens
Saudi Jihad Islamist fighters, joined with Tohir Yuldashev to form a
radical Salafist Islamist group in Namangan which they called Adolat
(Justice) Adalet. They seized control of the civil government in Namangan
and quickly imposed Sharia Law, which was ruthlessly enforced by
Adolats vigilantes.
Adolat was initially tolerated by the newly installed President Karimov.
When Adolat demanded that Karimov impose Sharia throughout Uzbekistan
in 1992, Karimov moved to outlaw Adolat and reestablish central control over
the Fergana Valley regiontraditionally one of the most militant Islamic
regions in Central Asia. The IMU received large sums of money from patrons
in Saudi Arabia, reportedly close to then chief of Saudi Intelligence Prince
Turki al-Faisal.22 The triangle of CIA and Saudi intelligence financing
Jihadist Islamic groups was to appear again and again.
Fethullah Gulens madrassas and Islamist schools were all over
Uzbekistan at the same time, many harboring dozens of CIA agents posing
as English teachers.23 It was Graham Fullers strategy being implemented
across Central Asia. Both Russia and China were the ultimate targets.
Significantly, there was a large Uyghur exile Muslim population with
offices in Istanbul, where Fethullah Gulens Hizmat, or movement, was deeply
entrenched within the government of Islamist Recep Erdoan. According
to the Turkish journal TurkPulse, One of the main tools Washington is
using in this affair in order to get Turkey involved in the Xinjiang affair
are some Turkish Americans, primarily Fetullah Gulen.24 The Uyghurs
in Turkey were actively engaged in promoting East Turkestan autonomy
and separatism.25
It was no accident the Osama bin Laden-linked Islamic Movement of
Uzbekistan moved into the Fergana Valley. The valley was also a center for
Afghanistan heroin traffic. The massive opium production in Afghanistan
passed uninterrupted through the Fergana Valley to Russia. The IMU
was a product as well of the Saudi-funded and Britain-centered Wahhabi
jihadists of Hizb ut-Tahrir (HuT).26 According to Graham Fuller, Hizb
ut-Tahrir, in 2004, was the strongest Islamist opposition fundamentalist
movement across Central Asia and had made inroads into Xinjiang. It was
headquartered in London, where the British intelligence services reportedly
managed them on behalf of the CIA.27
The International Crisis Group, an NGO reportedly with very close
ties to the US State Department ABD Dileri Bakanl and US intelligence services, issued
the
following prediction about the future of Xinjiang Islamist terrorists:
There is a risk that Central Asian jihadis currently fighting
beside the Taliban may take their struggle back home after
2014. This would pose major difficulties for both Central Asia
and China. Economic intervention alone might not suffice.
The planned 2014 withdrawal of U.S. and NATO troops from
Afghanistan is of special concern: Chinese separatist organizations
have trained in Afghanistan as well as Pakistan,
and stabilityor lack thereofwill have, Beijing feels, direct
bearing on Islamist insurgency in Chinas border areas.28
Relevant to the above statement was the fact that the International
Crisis Group was founded by Morton Abramowitz, the former CIA agent
and later Ambassador to Turkey, who was a close associate of Fethullah
Gulen. In fact, Abramowitz, along with Graham Fuller, enabled Gulen,
in 2008, to gain permanent US residency and avoid being deported back
