On Oct. 20, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo quietly entered into the Federal Register that the United States no longer recognized the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) as a “terrorist organization.” China, which portrays ETIM as part of the supposed Uighur terrorist threat that justifies its brutal crackdown in Xinjiang, immediately complained bitterly. Eighteen years ago, on Aug. 19, 2002, then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage designated ETIM as a terrorist organization in a similar manner. Despite being complete opposites, both moves were fundamentally similar; they were not motivated by ETIM’s reality but instead were largely about the U.S. position on other issues.
The reality of ETIM itself, and of the original listing, is complicated and political. As I explore in my recent book, no group ever called itself ETIM, but the name has become associated with a small group of Uighurs who came to Afghanistan in 1998 with the intent of launching a religiously inspired insurgency against Chinese rule. The leader of this group, Hasan Mahsum, traveled to both Saudi Arabia and Turkey after leaving China in late 1997 in an attempt to get the support of these countries’ respective Uighur diasporas for this plan, but he found little to no support. Nonetheless, he set out to Afghanistan with a handful of other Uighurs to realize his dream.
