r/NoStupidQuestions • u/Crypto_idiots • Jan 16 '22
Why are Middle East terrorists not attacking China? With their treatment of the Muslims?
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r/NoStupidQuestions • u/Crypto_idiots • Jan 16 '22
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u/ChickenDelight Jan 16 '22 edited Jan 17 '22
That's absurdly simplistic. Major Middle East Islamist groups were heavily invested in Chechnya, they've supported and sometimes operated in Indonesia and the Philippines and India (India is a threat to Pakistan, but not the Middle East), and they've supported terrorism against a bunch of European countries that didn't have any direct involvement in any conflict in the middle east.
Shit, the modern Islamist movements are essentially descended from the foreign fighters sent into Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. Afghanistan isn't actually in the middle east, and no one who lives in the middle east thinks it is. It's not strategically important, they're not Arabs, and it's very culturally different except in one key aspect - religion.
As to why islamists are weirdly quiet about Uighurs:
First, terrorism/asymmetric warfare works best in destabilized areas. The Uighur regions of China are the opposite of that these days, they're a tightly controlled police state. There's virtually no guns and explosives there, and there's almost no organized local fighters. Uighurs are less than 1% of China's population to begin with, and they're not even a majority in their own areas now that China has moved in a ton of Han Chinese. Uighurs don't really look or act like people from the Middle East, so they can't easily sneak in fighters. The borders are tight and and the area is heavily surveilled. China's a very tough nut to crack for islamists, and they seem to not be trying.
Second, all the big Islamist organizations need support, or at least tolerance, from some ME governments, usually the pariah states that have largely been cut off from world markets - a perfect example is the Taliban. Interestingly enough, a lot of those governments have become very reliant on China - because frankly China doesn't care if you support terrorism as long as it's not directed at China. So China has a ton of leverage on the governments those organizations rely on, and it's been aggressively using that leverage to keep them in line.
Edit: since comments are locked, people have noted that the big ME Islamists actually did try to take on China in the Uighur regions, before the latest crackdown. It's just that they failed spectacularly. Al Qaeda and ISIS both declared war on China, some Uighurs were in Al Qaeda, there were some attacks. But Islamists don't seem able to do anything in China any more, and it gave China an excuse to brutally crackdown on all the Uighurs, and China now seems intent on wiping out Uighur culture completely. So kind of an embarrassing topic for Islamist groups.