The Diplomat author Mercy Kuo regularly engages subject-matter experts, policy practitioners, and strategic thinkers across the globe for their diverse insights into U.S. Asia policy. This conversation with Emily Feng – author of “Our Hearts Burned for Home: Uyghur Militants in Syria’s Civil War” (Columbia Global Reports 2026) and award-winning correspondent for NPR – is the 530th in “The Trans-Pacific View Insight Series.”
What was the impetus behind your reporting on Uyghur militants in Syria’s civil war?
For years, I had been reporting on the ground on the Xinjiang region and the sweeping detention campaign that began in early 2017. And one of the reasons cited in rare official comments from Beijing about why authorities were detaining and arresting hundreds of thousands Uyghur people mentioned the presence of Uyghur “terrorists” in Syria and Afghanistan, but offered no evidence and since these places were nearly impossible to access, no one had done interviews with any of these supposed Uyghur militants.
In late 2024, it suddenly became possible to go to Syria after the surprising collapse of the Assad regime there and the end of a terrible civil war. Coincidentally, I was in nearby Lebanon when the Assads fled to Russia, and I ended up spending much of the beginning of 2025 in Syria.
Imagine my surprise when I saw Uyghur fighters milling about Syria! Indeed, there were thousands of Uyghur fighters in Syria, and I was later to discover, their role in the civil war had been much more impactful than anyone expected.
But I sensed there was much more to the story about these Uyghur fighters than Beijing’s narrative – that these were masterminds behind fatal attacks on Chinese civilians who were now hellbent on destroying China. I wondered what had made them leave their families and livelihoods behind to live in an active war zone, and how they had transformed themselves from hairdressers and engineers and teachers into hardened militant fighters, working in alliance with Arabic-speaking, Syrian rebel groups.
I was also sensitive to the possible implications of reporting on Uyghurs. In no way is their existence in Syria justification for the detention and arrests, mostly without real due process, of so many Uyghur citizens of China. I resolved to find a way to contact the Syrian Uyghurs and interview them – a difficult task, as they had operated as a secretive and highly-disciplined force for more than a decade – and learn more about why they had come to the Middle East.
Analyze the factors propelling Uyghur militants to join the civil war and how they contributed to the overthrow of the Assad regime.
I don’t want to give too much away here! The details are in the book. But in short, many Uyghurs who ended up in Syria had initially hoped to put down roots in Turkey, where a sizeable Uyghur diaspora already exists. However, Turkey does not want these Uyghurs, and it has stymied their ability to get residence documents and even aided in their deportation back to China.
Turkey happens to share a long, mostly unfortified border with northern Syria, however, where a rebel-held swath of territory had been established in a growing civil war. And so that’s where a lot of Uyghurs headed, because Syria was not checking documents or asking for visas, frankly. All of them were also looking for a constructive way to help Uyghurs back in Xinjiang, or East Turkestan as the Uyghurs call it, and they hoped Syria would become a base to fight back politically or militarily against the Chinese Communist Party.
A good number of Uyghurs had also already heard of the possibility of Uyghur fighters in Syria, and they were eager to train militarily. An active war, one Uyghur commander later told me, was free practice.
The Uyghurs’ wholehearted embrace of violence for the sake of establishing an independent Uyghur state is controversial, I should mention, among the Uyghur diaspora globally. But of the five dozen or so interviews I did with Uyghur fighters and their families, all of them described experiences where they felt diplomacy or political activism had failed them, and they felt they had nothing left to lose anymore by taking up arms.
The deadly race riots that began July 5, 2009 in Urumqi, which left scores of both Han Chinese and Uyghur Chinese dead, was a real turning point for many Uyghurs I met. The mob violence they witnessed from all parties that week and the ensuing crackdown and racism Uyghurs experienced in the aftermath convinced the majority of the fighters I spoke to to seek their fortunes in Turkey and later Syria.
What surprised me the most after weeks on the ground in Syria with Uyghur fighters was discovering the reach and breadth of the Uyghurs’ role in the Syrian civil war. The participated in major battles, played a key role in helping rebels with Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) take Aleppo, and eventually marched into Damascus to establish the new government. HTS’ Ahmed Al Sharaa, now Syria’s president, privately credits the Uyghurs with being a consistently loyal, effective fighting force, and for that reason, the Uyghurs now have an unusual political purchase in the new Syria.
Explain the difference between the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) and East Turkmenistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) and how China views their respective identities.
Both of these entities are part of a broader movement of Uyghurs who have taken up arms and seek to establish an independent Uyghur homeland in the Xinjiang region. I found evidence that members of both groups still maintain communication links, and some of the earliest TIP fighters in Syria initially tried to train with ETIM officials along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
But to call ETIM in particular an organization would be a stretch, based on what I was able to find. The ETIM-linked fighters I met said there were never many Uyghurs along the Af-Pak border, many were killed in American bombings, training was nearly impossible due to the difficult geography of the place, and there were ideological differences between the more relaxed Uyghurs and the more conservative al-Qaida-linked and Taliban fighters there.
TIP, the Syria branch of this nationalist Uyghur militant movement, was much more successful. They became highly disciplined and managed to remain organized, sharing scarce financial resources in self-sustaining communities in Idlib, in northern Syria, and setting up robust social services for a growing Uyghur population that has now reached 20,000 men, women, and children.
While TIP also maintained substantial links to al-Qaida affiliated groups, including with HTS, for years, these links later became problematic and internally divisive as TIP and HTS tried to brand themselves as politically more mainstream and welcoming to Syrians and Uyghurs of all castes. Yet TIP remains controversial within Syria, and also within much of the Uyghur diaspora community, who view their militant past with distaste.
Why are Uyghur militants controversial in Syria?
The Syria Uyghurs find themselves in an awkward position. At home, they were the oppressed. In Syria, they are widely viewed as oppressors, in the eyes of Syria’s many minority communities.
Foreign fighters, including the Uyghurs, are viewed with fear and suspicion, as the civil war quickly devolved into a proxy war for various nation states and Islamist groups. Many remain in Syria in peacetime, creating resentments among Syrians who wish for the foreigners to return to their home countries. All the time, Uyghurs are confused with Uzbek fighters, and so many Syrians also do not know why the Uyghurs came to Syria in the first place, and do not understand why they cannot simply return to China.
During the civil war, the Sunni Uyghurs were active in besieging Shiite Syrian villages. They were frequently attacked by Hezbollah proxy forces and retaliated against Shiite populations in response. And for many years, the Uyghurs occupied and lived in several Shiite and Christian villages whose residents had fled in advance of Sunni Islamist groups like TIP arriving, which sowed more distrust and fear among Syrian minority communities who are increasingly on edge under the Sunni HTS-dominated government in Damascus. The Uyghurs maintain they are friendly neighbors and open to Syrians of other faiths and have tried to moderate their religious beliefs somewhat, but there are often significant cultural and linguistic gaps between them and Syrians, which the Uyghurs themselves sometimes do not even fully grasp.
Finally, there were also reports that the Uyghurs were among the perpetrators, alongside Syrian government soldiers, of horrific massacres of mostly Alawi Syrians in 2025. I found no evidence to suggest Uyghurs were involved, and they have no interest in doing so, as involvement would certainly imperil their still uncertain and vulnerable status as stateless refugees in Syria.
Assess the role of Uyghur militants in China-Syria relations and the implications for China-U.S. relations.
In some ways, the Uyghurs are not very important to China-Syria, or broader China-Middle East, relations. Syria has made it clear that it will not let groups on its soil threaten China, even though they also have made it clear they will not send the Uyghurs to China, as Beijing has demanded.
For China however, the Uyghurs are the top issue for them in Syria, and successive diplomatic delegations to Damascus have always mentioned TIP and the Uyghurs as the dominant concern Beijing has for the new government.
The result is that Gulf states, notable Saudi Arabia, have become major investors in Syria’s post-war reconstruction. China was once one of Syria’s top economic partners before the civil war, and it does not look like it will regain that position.
It will be interesting to see how the Uyghurs navigate their future in Syria. Will they buy land and build houses — setting up a much more permanent community in Syria? Will their children born in Syria still maintain strong Uyghur identity links and a commitment to set up a Uyghur state, when they feel more and more wedded to their Syrian upbringing as the years go by?
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