Countdown To Olympics: Muslim Militants Kill 16 Chinese Policemen

Buy an ad on DigitalJournal.com

The other sandal dropped with a boom Sunday as an attack on a border post in the restive Muslim region of Xinjiang killed sixteen Chinese policemen and left another sixteen wounded, according to Xinhua state news.

This attack, coming just four days before the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, in itself will have little impact in Beijing but it sure sends a message to the other dissidents that the "games" have truly begun.

Emboldened by the sure knowledge that the world will be watching and amplifying every incident, everyone in the mix, from forcibly disposed and now landless peasants to the Falun Gong to the myriad dissident groups in China's restive north-west provinces, will be stepping up their game.

In this well-planned attack, two men posing as garbage collectors waited until the group of policeman were out for a morning jog some distance away from their compound before throwing two grenades and then closing in to finish them off with knives. Incredibly, both attackers have reportedly been taken alive.

The attack happened near Kashgar, known as Kashi in Chinese, some 2,500 miles (4,000km) from Beijing, near the border with Tajikistan. In recent years it has become the operations centre for Uighur separatism who have been scrapping with the Chines government for decades.

Until recently, both sides have been content to shy away from media attention. China has spoken in the past of what it calls a terrorist threat from Muslim militants in Xinjiang, but has provided little evidence to back up its claims.

Here's where the timing of this attack gets. interesting. Last week, out of the blue, a senior Chinese army officer warned that Islamic separatists were the biggest danger to the Olympics.

Col Tian Yixiang of the Olympics security command centre told reporters the main threat came from the "East Turkestan terrorist organisation". The term is used by the government to refer to Islamist separatists in Xinjiang.

The same official also strongly stressed the bombings of buses in Shanghai and Yunnan, which killed five people, were not acts of terrorism. However, a previously little known group called Turkestan Islamic Party claimed to have blown up the buses and promised more to come. The group released a video late last month, titled Our Blessed Jihad in Yunnan. In it, the group's leader, Commander Seyfullah, said it was responsible for several attacks and threatened the Olympics. "The Chinese have haughtily ignored our warnings," BBC quoted him as saying.

"The Turkestan Islamic Party volunteers... have started urgent actions."
Back in Beijing, the suits are struggling to preserve the facade of Olympic business as usual.
A spokesman for the Beijing Games Organising Committee told Xinhua he was confident that Olympic participants and spectators would be safe.

"China has focused on strengthening security and protection around Olympic venues and at the Olympics Village, so Beijing is already prepared to respond to any threat," Sun Weide was quoted as saying.

Exactly, so why this deep concern with a threat 2500 miles away, in what will be the most locked-down city on earth.

Extreme concern for the security of their foreign visitors? Or preparing the ground for a post-Olympics wave of repression against the Uighurs?