ISIS has its sights set on a new potential ally—Uyghur jihadi groups

In July, al-Tazkirah media—an Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS)-affiliated media organization—distributed an online poster calling for Uyghur Muslims to join ISIS and destroy China’s “empire of tyranny.” The ISIS push to specifically recruit Uyghurs underscores its burgeoning alliance with Uyghur jihadi groups such as the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP; also known as the East Turkestan Islamic Movement)—and likely presents a security threat to China and its interests in Central Asia.

Beyond this most recent poster, ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K; ISIS’ affiliate based in Afghanistan) has actively worked to recruit TIP fighters, including by increasing its Uyghur-language propaganda, offering economic incentives for TIP members to join ISIS-K, and encouraging its followers to attack Chinese targets. ISIS-K’s recruitment efforts and propaganda targeting Uyghurs have already proven effective. In January, ISIS-K killed a Chinese national at a mine in Afghanistan (which was reportedly a joint attack with the TIP). ISIS-K members also conducted a shooting in late 2022 at a hotel in Kabul popular with Chinese travelers, and in 2021 an ISIS-K fighter using the kunya “al-Uyghuri” attacked Shia Muslims in Kunduz.

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