EMILY FENG, HOST:
The long civil war in Syria was deadly and destructive. Millions of Syrians fled before Bashar al-Assad's regime was overthrown in 2024. But some people also came to Syria for the war. For the first time, we hear the story of the thousands of foreign fighters who joined in the war. These fighters are Uyghur, an ethnic minority often at the center of tensions in the U.S.-China relationship, though they were absent from diplomatic talks as President Trump visited Beijing last week. Today, I have a story of why the Uyghurs came to Syria. And before we begin, this story contains the sound of gunfire.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE #1: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: I met some of the foreign fighters as they headed to a training camp...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: ...Part of a standard three-month curriculum held on a dusty, sunbaked Syrian field...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Non-English language spoken).
(SOUNDBITE OF GUNFIRE)
FENG: ...Now standard for all Uyghur militants here in Syria. They have come a long way from their home, the Xinjiang region in China, or as the Uyghurs call it, East Turkestan. At about 4,000 fighters strong, Uyghurs made up the largest contingent of foreign fighters who battled the Assad regime. They are a Turkic people, primarily Muslim and spread out across the Asian continent.
I've spent the better part of the last decade reporting on them from China, where about 12 million Uyghurs live and where human rights groups have accused the Chinese government of persecuting them. The first Trump administration also labeled this persecution a genocide because human rights organizations say that beginning in 2017, the Chinese government began detaining and jailing hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs, mostly without due process. China justified this mass detention in part because Beijing believes thousands of attacks, some of them deadly, over a three-decade period were inspired or coordinated by Uyghur militants abroad...
MOAZ: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: ...Uyghur militants like this man.
What is your name?
MOAZ: Moaz (ph).
FENG: Moaz - like all the Uyghurs in this piece, he requested that NPR only use his first name because he fears the Chinese government will arrest his family members who remain in China.
MOAZ: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: We met Moaz at a tea house by the turquoise Orontes River in northern Syria. He and the four dozen Uyghur fighters and their families who NPR spoke to have never given media interviews before. Now 55 years old, Moaz says for years he thought peaceful dissent could win Uyghurs more rights in China. But during an 11-year prison stint for publishing banned history books and pamphlets, Moaz says Chinese guards once beat him for several days in a row.
MOAZ: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: And that was when Moaz decided words would never change the Chinese government's policies.
MOAZ: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: "The world might call us terrorists, but it was China who taught us what terror means," Moaz says.
MOAZ: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: Coming to war-torn Syria was an act of desperation and picking up a gun a last resort, he says. The same is true for 36-year-old Choghtal (ph), now one of the most senior Uyghur commanders in Syria.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOOR BANGING)
FENG: We met Choghtal in his closely guarded villa. Wearing a periwinkle polo, he gives off a professorial air. He says his political awakening came from devouring books on Uyghur history.
CHOGHTAL: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: From the books, he says he learned the Uyghurs had not always been oppressed, that they'd once had their own kingdom and then state. That is, until nearly 80 years ago when China annexed the western region of Xinjiang where most Uyghurs live. But then came a day when Choghtal says history became real for him, July 5, 2009.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Yelling in non-English language).
(SOUNDBITE OF EXPLOSIONS)
FENG: Uyghur protests devolved into fatal riots between China's ethnic Han majority and Uyghur residents in Xinjiang.
CHOGHTAL: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: Choghtal says he watched the protests from afar, and then his Uyghur friends started to disappear, among the estimated thousands of mostly young Uyghur men who human rights groups believe China arrested in the aftermath.
CHOGHTAL: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: And when he fled China, it was a departure so hasty, he says he never said goodbye to his family. The vast majority of Uyghur fighters NPR interviewed say they also left, losing hope for change in China after those deadly riots in July 2009. And like most of them, Choghtal says he first headed to Turkey, where there was an already established Uyghur diaspora.
CHOGHTAL: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: But Turkey would not recognize his university diploma from China or give him papers to stay. So Choghtal says he easily slipped across the border into Syria, where a full-blown civil war had already begun. And that's what many Uyghurs realized they could not only find refuge in Syria...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE #2: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: ...But also, being in Syria could teach them how to fight, and they learned to fight in these three-month training camps. But the Uyghurs always kept their overarching goal in mind, fighting China for independence. One Uyghur who goes by the name Abu Zuheir (ph) tells NPR, as long as he still has breath in his body...
ABU ZUHEIR: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: ...He is prepared to fight the current Chinese government to free Uyghur prisoners and ultimately establish an independent Uyghur state.
China's foreign ministry and State Council did not respond to NPR's requests for comment, but China has called these Uyghur fighters terrorists, linking them to other sanctioned Islamist groups. And some of the earliest Uyghur militants in Syria did train first with al-Qaida in Afghanistan, and some Uyghurs in Syria even joined ISIS. The Uyghurs NPR interviewed in Syria deny China's terrorism allegations and any ties to these groups.
Jerome Drevon is a researcher at the Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding in Geneva. He's embedded for months with Syrian rebels, wrote a book about them and met several Uyghur fighters. He says China's characterization of them is incorrect.
JEROME DREVON: To see them as linked to al-Qaida only means we see them through this internationalist angle of an armed group fighting Western countries to liberate the Muslim world.
FENG: Drevon says that's just not what the Uyghurs in Syria stand for.
DREVON: They are much closer to just the national liberation movements.
FENG: Liberation from Chinese rule. But Choghtal, the commander, believes China is too strong for the Uyghurs to attack. For now, he wants to build a community of Uyghurs right here in Syria.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: (Chanting in non-English language).
FENG: When the Friday call to prayer sounds nearby...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: (Chanting in non-English language).
FENG: ...He excuses himself to pray. And when he returns, Choghtal lays out his vision for his people. He believes the past decades spent in Syria has been useful. They have become a formidable fighting force.
CHOGHTAL: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: "But Uyghurs cannot win independence in China with Kalashnikov rifles, by arming ourselves alone," he says. "Uyghurs hearts and their minds also must be liberated through education and from contact with the outside world. And for that," he says, "they need to stay here for now."
CHOGHTAL: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: This reporting was supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center and is the first in my series about the Uyghurs in Syria airing on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED this week. And for more, visit npr.org.
(SOUNDBITE OF TAEMIN SONG, "BONES") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
