Word: qaeda
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...Libi, a Libyan national and al-Qaeda suspected third in command, railed against China's treatment of the Uighurs, a Turkic Muslim minority group in the country's far west who chafe under Beijing's rule. Uighurs complain of government discrimination, from being frozen out of jobs to having their language and religion suppressed. Those grievances and frustrations seemed to boil over this summer, when ethnic riots city of Urumqi left nearly 200 people, mostly Han Chinese, and were answered by a ruthless state crackdown. The Chinese hope, said Libi, "for [the Uighurs'] demise and destruction so that their numbers...
...Chinese government has yet to make an official statement reacting to Al Qaeda's provocative remarks. Beijing has remained on the sidelines in the war on terror, watching the U.S. and other European nations become mired militarily in Afghanistan. But China's profile in the Muslim world still grows with its economic ambitions and interests. China's bottomless appetite for oil has led to its companies investing in every country along the Persian Gulf and other Muslim states. Chinese funds and labor are behind oil and gas fields from Sudan to Turkmenistan and are shaping lucrative megaprojects like the massive...
...kidnappers in the cities of Pakistan and the Nigerian river delta. Violent protests against an enclave of Chinese workers in Algiers - resented for depriving locals of jobs and being insensitive to Muslim customs -convulsed the Algerian capital in August. Before the riots, a decree by a commander of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, a North African off-shoot of the terrorist organization, urged attacks on Chinese nationals across the region as revenge for China's heavy-handedness with the Uighurs. "An ideology is being built by the Al Qaeda leadership," says Gunaratna, "to create an image of China...
...fall, likening it to the similarly atheist and communist USSR. Some of the impoverished former Soviet states that border China's Xinjiang region - where the majority of Uighurs live - are a potential powder keg for insurgency. Suspected Uighur terrorists operating along China's borderlands allegedly have ties to Al Qaeda-affiliated groups in Central Asia, who, according to observers, are consolidating in remote parts of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan after setbacks in Pakistan reportedly saw many foreign jihadis return to their homelands...
...Still, most Central Asia watchers doubt the capabilities of militants there, whether connected to al-Qaeda or devoted to more local struggles. Both Moscow and Beijing have wielded their influence among Central Asia's authoritarian governments to ensure that radical strains of political Islam get largely quashed. Uighur dissidents in exile have also repeatedly rejected any connection with terrorist activity and argue that, despite a few incidents of bombings and attacks in China, China exploits the specter of a terrorist threat to further repress Uighur rights. Al-Qaeda's recent statement does their cause few favors. "China could...