United States forces attack anti-China militants in Afghanistan
Strikes in Badakhshan province destroy Taliban training camps that support militant operations by East Turkestan Islamic Movement, Nato-led mission says
US forces in Afghanistan have attacked networks of anti-China militants in an action that is likely to please Beijing, which had called for Western cooperation in its fight against a group it said it wanted to split off its Xinjiang region.
The strikes in the northern province of Badakhshan destroyed Taliban training camps that support militant operations in Afghanistan as well as operations by the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) in the border region with China and Tajikistan, Afghanistan’s NATO-led mission said on Thursday.
“The US strikes support Afghanistan in reassuring its neighbours that it is not a safe sanctuary for terrorists who want to carry out cross-border operations,” it said.
The force gave no more details about the attacks or any estimate of casualties but said the ETIM was behind attacks both inside and outside China, and that two of its members had been involved in a 2002 plot to bomb the US embassy in Kyrgyzstan.
“They pose a threat to China and enjoy support from the Taliban in Badakhshan and throughout the border region,” the force said.
The group is drawn from members of China’s mostly Muslim Uygur minority, who speak a Turkic language and live in Xinjiang.
In Beijing, a foreign ministry spokesman said he did not have information about the issue, but said fighting ETIM was a “core counterterrorism concern” for China.
“Striking against terrorism is the responsibility of all countries in the world,” Geng Shuang told a news briefing on Friday.
In 2016, Beijing was angered at a US State Department report that said there was a lack of transparency or information from China about incidents it called terrorism, and that cooperation on the problem was limited.
The US has since urged China to play a bigger role in combating global terrorism.
In the past, some Western countries have been reluctant to share intelligence with China on terrorism issues, citing concern about possible human rights abuses in Xinjiang.
China has long been worried that instability in Afghanistan could spill over into Xinjiang.
Hundreds of people have been killed in violence in recent years in Xinjiang. Beijing blames the bloodshed on Islamist militants and separatists, though rights groups say the unrest is more a reaction to repressive Chinese policies.
The United States, Britain and the United Nations have listed the ETIM as a terrorist group.
