This blog post is the fifth and final entry in a short series about the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP), an al Qaeda (AQ)-affiliated, originally Uyghur, Islamist terrorist group. Like many AQ affiliates, TIP has sought refuge with the Taliban in their “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,” and intermittently with Pakistan, since the 1990s. TIP also played an important role in the Syrian civil war. Its terrorist ideology, history, and continued presence in Syria raises serious questions for local, regional, and global security and stability. TIP’s close partnership with the ruling Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) is a particular cause for concern. Beyond Syria, TIP is an organization with global reach, as demonstrated by terrorist attacks in Pakistan, China, and Central Asia, and plots targeting Norway and the United Kingdom. The overall history and genesis of TIP will be at the center of this blog entry.

The transnational activities of the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) are rooted in the group’s equally transnational origins. Those origins, however, are disputed, particularly regarding the group’s aliases. The most common aliases in the literature are East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM, likely a Chinese government–given moniker) and East Turkestan Islamic Party (ETIP). TIP is not an official alias mentioned in the group’s United Nations Security Council sanctions listing (list entry QDe.088). Nevertheless, TIP has become the name by which the Security Council’s Sanctions Monitoring Team refers to the group (“ETIM/TIP”) as well as the name that the group itself uses.

ETIP

In 1996, the group’s founders left China. By 1998, they had arrived in Afghanistan (some via Mecca) and formed an organization they called ETIP. As Hasan Mahsum claimed in 2002, the ETIP he founded in 1998 in Afghanistan was a tribute to an earlier group. That group, also called ETIP, seems to have existed in China before Mahsum and other leaders left for Afghanistan. Abdulkader Yapchan, a Uyghur militant based in Türkiye, claimed in a 2015 interview that he, among others, had founded TIP as ETIP in 1988 in China. Although it appears that a group named ETIP existed in China in the 1990s, the available literature does not allow for a definitive determination on how direct the organizational transfer between China and Afghanistan was. The older ETIP in China was responsible for the Baren Township Incident of 1990. This outbreak of violence between Uyghur separatists and the Chinese government is still memorialized by the Uyghur diaspora movement today. Subsequent to the clashes, one ETIP-Baren founder, Zäydin Yüsüp, was arrested and imprisoned by Chinese authorities alongside several other figures important to the founding of TIP, such as Hasan Mahsum and the mutual mentor of Mahsum and Yüsüp, Abdulhäkim-Haji Mäkhsum. There are claims that Abdulhäkim-Haji Mäkhsum established ETIP in China under the name of TIP as early as the 1940s. According to this narrative, the group was reportedly renamed ETIM in 1956 and revived in 1980 by a Dia Uddin bin Yousef. While that narrative cannot be verified, it would validate political scientist Paul Stephen Staniland’s observation that such movements are highly discontinuous and scattered over time. Ordering this discontinuity, if Hasan Mahsum is to be believed, the ETIP is a spiritual predecessor to Afghanistan’s ETIP but not a direct organizational predecessor.

ETIM

While lines can be drawn between various movements and their names, lineage, and personnel, it is possible that a structure called ETIM (rather than ETIP) never existed. The available information indicates that ETIM was simply a moniker used by Chinese authorities to subsume several groups with similar names, alongside individuals and small cells. As a term, ETIM is traceable to official documents of the Chinese government and an unnamed Russian newspaper in the early 2000s. This possibility is also supported by the fact that many terrorist attacks in China attributed to ETIM were never claimed by any movement. Indeed, as far as public statements and propaganda are concerned, a movement called ETIM never appeared publicly in China. This confusing situation is also reflected in statements by Uyghur detainees in Guantanamo Bay about the situation in China. Some detainees did not seem to know of the existence of a group called ETIM in China and instead spoke of ETIP.

In its official statements, TIP claims that Hasan Mahsum’s organization in Afghanistan was called ETIP. However, other sources dispute this, claiming that ETIM is the precursor to TIP and was founded in Afghanistan (sometimes Pakistan) with Taliban and AQ backing. Whether or not ETIM actually existed as a discernable structure in China prior to 1998, eventually, various individuals, cells, and perhaps also groups coalesced in a structure named TIP, which developed out of Mahsum’s ETIP in Afghanistan.

Public Emergence of TIP

Following the invasion of Afghanistan at the end of 2001, ETIP moved to Waziristan, Pakistan, alongside the Taliban, AQ, and other terror groups. The Chinese government claimed that in Pakistan, a meeting between ETIP leader Mahsum and Osama bin Laden (OBL) took place in 2002. According to Chinese authorities, OBL provided Mahsum with $300.000. A year later, in 2003, Hasan Mahsum was killed in a shootout with Pakistani military in an AQ compound. In May 2004, Mahsum was eulogized in an Arabic-language video biography published by an organization announcing that it had renamed itself from ETIP to TIP in 2000. This organization claimed Mahsum’s legacy, saying he was its first emir. In 2006, a video circulated calling for jihad in East Turkistan, but it cannot be determined whether it originated from the same source. However, the second video generated public attention for TIP, which has led some to claim TIP only emerged in 2006.

TIP’s propaganda activities increased between 2008 and 2009, including its threat against the 2008 Beijing Olympics, published on March 1, 2008. Through 2012, the group released 55 videos, in addition to regularly publishing the Arabic-language online magazine “Voice of Islam” (“Islam Awazi”). In 2009, the riots in Ürümqi, Xinjiang’s capital, led to increased solidarity of terrorist groups with the Uyghur cause and growing threats against China, bolstering the public profile of TIP. 

However, TIP also faced setbacks, such as the reported death of its second emir, Abdul Haq al-Turkistani, in 2010 in Waziristan after a US drone strike on an AQ camp. Abdul Haq had been an early companion of Hasan Mahsum in Afghanistan. According to Sean Roberts, Abdul Haq was a student of Abdulhäkim-Haji Mäkhsum, like Hasan Mahsum and the ETIP-Baren founders. Abdul Haq was also a member of AQ’s governing shura council since at least 2005. His successor, Abdul Shakur al-Turkistani, mirrored this commitment in becoming AQ’s commander for Pakistan’s tribal regions after being named TIP emir. In 2012, Abdul Shakur was also killed by a US drone strike. Interestingly, in 2015, Abdul Haq al-Turkistanireappeared in a video, demonstrating that earlier reports of his death were incorrect. Since that time, he has been instrumental in guiding the group’s engagement in Syria.

For completeness, another narrative concerning the origins of TIP should be mentioned. According to this narrative, TIP was founded in 2006 in the border regions between Afghanistan and Pakistan and emerged more directly from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), another AQ affiliate. The theory might be somewhat valid, given that TIP likely emerged from several different cells, movements, and individuals.

ETIP, TIP, or ETIM? 

Given conflicting accounts, this paragraph offers a synthesis of the various origins presented. Based on the available information, it is conceivable that organizations under various names, like ETIP, preceded TIP and were subsumed in this new structure. This process validates the idea of a summary term like ETIM, though not the term itself. While ETIM as a moniker correctly describes the multiple organizational influences on TIP and its meandering path into an organization, there is only doubtful evidence that ETIM ever existed on its own. Whether Hasan Mahsum even headed a formal organization in Afghanistan is not clear, given that such an organization did not appear publicly. What Hasan Mahsum founded was likely some kind of network existing within AQ and the IMU in Pakistan and Afghanistan, referred to (from 2002 at the latest) as ETIP. It was only around 2006, once TIP began appearing publicly, that Hasan Mahsum came to be seen as TIP’s first emir. Whether he ever assumed that role cannot be definitively said, since TIP only emerged publicly after Mahsum’s death in 2003. Given the nature of TIP’s emergence, multiple origin stories can be accommodated. It is even plausible that an organization named TIP emerged in the 1940s and remained publicly dormant and then eventually would be one of the networks to form TIP. Additionally, Yapchan may be right in claiming that ETIP was founded in 1988 and would eventually become part of TIP. Neither account falsifies the idea that the immediate precursor networks were formed around 1997 or 1998 in Pakistan or Afghanistan by Hasan Mahsum and others who had fled China. This ETIP would become TIP. Unfortunately, much about TIP’s origins remains unclear. Those developments since TIP’s public emergence, which are reasonably sourced, have been the topic of this blog series.