Interviews | Security | East Asia

The Uyghurs Who Fought in Syria’s Civil War

Insights from Emily Feng.

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........

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