The overseas fighters who helped topple Assad — and why China worries about them

JISR AL-SHUGHUR, Syria — The plan was daring: Below cowl of evening, an elite group of forces would ambush Syrian authorities troopers and reduce off strategic provide strains supporting the regime-held northern metropolis of Aleppo.

For months, the fighters had been quietly clearing a disused water tunnel simply over 2 miles lengthy, deep behind enemy strains within the countryside round Aleppo.

Throughout a secret assembly with Ahmed al-Sharaa — then the chief of the insurgent group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and now the chief of Syria — they agreed to organize a joint assault to liberate Aleppo from regime management.

These elite fighters weren’t from Syria. They had been Uyghurs — a largely Muslim ethnic minority lengthy persecuted in China. And when the offensive kicked off one evening in November 2024, they went to work.

One unit of troopers sporting oxygen tanks stationed itself within the poorly ventilated tunnel, which at factors was lower than a yard excessive. A second unit lay in wait in olive groves dealing with Aleppo.

At daybreak, the unit within the tunnel emerged behind regime troops, whereas the second unit hit from the entrance, inflicting the federal government troops to scatter in panic. In the meantime, different insurgent models from numerous militant teams started attacking Aleppo itself. Inside days, Syria’s once-largest metropolis was in insurgent fingers.

“We remained steadfast. Miraculously, all the brothers who charged into death itself came out alive,” remembers Hobayd, 31, the commander of the unit contained in the tunnel. He recollects the weeks that adopted after they chased military troopers all the best way to Syria’s capital, Damascus. “Every one of us survived and witnessed the liberation of Syria.”

Simply over every week after Aleppo fell, Syria’s not too long ago toppled dictator, Bashar al-Assad, fled to Russia: “From Aleppo, our way to Damascus was clear,” provides Hobayd.

That is the story of how the Uyghurs, a Turkic and predominantly Muslim ethnic minority unfold throughout Central Asia however concentrated in China’s far-western Xinjiang area, ultimately grew to become the biggest contingent of overseas fighters in Syria.

“They’ve been some of the key fighters that have been associated with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham prior to the fall of the [Assad] regime and had an outsized role” within the civil warfare, says Aaron Zelin, a researcher on the Washington Institute for Close to East Coverage. “In many ways, they’re some of the most battle-hardened folks [in Syria].”

But the secretive Uyghur group in Syria has not agreed to grant interviews — till now. Over the course of a month, greater than 40 fighters and their households spoke to NPR.

Within the rebel-held north, they quickly established themselves as extremely disciplined and efficient fighters who would tackle duties that different insurgent teams failed to perform. Their position in vital battles within the nation’s almost 14-year-long civil warfare helped Sharaa, Syria’s present chief, cement sufficient energy to ultimately push out the Assad regime.

In gratitude, the brand new Syrian authorities this 12 months built-in the biggest Uyghur militia into the reconstituted Syrian Nationwide Military and appointed a number of Uyghur commanders as officers throughout the new protection ministry. There’s speak of giving a few of the Uyghurs Syrian citizenship.

Regardless of their clout throughout the new Syrian authorities, the Uyghurs’ place in Syria is tenuous. Some Syrian Arabs view them and different overseas fighters with suspicion and worry.

In the meantime, China has ramped up diplomatic strain on Syria to expel the Uyghurs. For a lot of the final quarter century, Beijing has thought of all Uyghur militants overseas as terrorists and has repeatedly accused Uyghur actions of inspiring or instructing 1000’s of terrorist assaults, some lethal, inside China over a three-decade interval.

Chinese language authorities have additionally cracked down on Uyghurs at dwelling, within the Xinjiang area. Beginning in 2017, authorities started sending tons of of 1000’s of Uyghurs to “reeducation camps,” the place they had been taught Mandarin and compelled to memorize Chinese language chief Xi Jinping’s speeches, in keeping with human rights organizations. Others had been positioned underneath home arrest, harassed or topic to in depth surveillance, or had their passports confiscated, in keeping with prior NPR reporting and the findings of the United Nations and rights teams. In 2021, the U.S. labeled China’s marketing campaign a “genocide” geared toward eradicating Uyghur id. Beijing slammed that call and has defended the detention camps as a crucial side of a wide-ranging de-radicalization effort within the area.

China, a everlasting member of the U.N. Safety Council, has for now refused to raise terrorism sanctions on Syria, arguing that the nation’s authorities should first cope with its Uyghur fighters.

Most of the 40-odd Uyghur fighters and their households that NPR spoke to for this story — all of whom requested that they be recognized by solely their first names to guard remaining members of the family in Xinjiang from reprisals by Chinese language authorities — say they fled to Syria and fought the best way they did due to their deep hatred of the Chinese language authorities.

They are saying they now hope to protect their tradition and maybe in the future increase a military highly effective sufficient to grab management of Xinjiang, or East Turkestan because the Uyghurs name it, the area that the Uyghurs think about their homeland and that the Chinese language Communist Social gathering took management of in 1949.

“Our boys, because of their deep and overflowing hatred toward the Chinese — their resentment had grown so intense — they had this stubborn courage, fearless of death, pure-hearted and determined,” says Nurmemet, 40, a Uyghur fighter. “The Syrians explained the oppression they had suffered — how they had been tormented by Bashar al-Assad’s regime. We thought: If we could first rescue these people from this oppression … perhaps Allah would one day rescue us from China’s oppression as well.”

China’s Ministry of International Affairs and China’s cupboard, the State Council, didn’t reply to questions submitted by NPR within the preparation of this story.

“They drove us out”

In a villa inside a walled compound within the Syrian countryside, Choghtal, 36, deputy commander of the Uyghurs in Syria, recounted how he determined to go away his household and his life behind in China to hitch a warfare in Syria.

Choghtal is diminutive and has the way of somebody extra suited to an workplace than a battlefield. He had been a star pupil in highschool and hoped to check chemistry or physics. However he says he rethought his future after July 5, 2009, when police aggressively dispersed Uyghur college students protesting in Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi. The scholars had been demanding that authorities examine a manufacturing facility brawl from the prior month in southern China, through which two Uyghur males had been allegedly crushed to demise by ethnic Han employees. The Han are China’s largest ethnic group, they usually represent the vast majority of its inhabitants.

The police’s alleged heavy-handedness whereas dispersing the crowds unleashed a violent Uyghur rampage towards police and Han civilians on the streets of Urumqi, instigating, in flip, Han reprisals on Uyghurs, who then fought again. From his hometown in southern Xinjiang, Choghtal says, he watched in horror because the spiral of violence unfolded, from the movies his buddies in Urumqi despatched him.

The Chinese language authorities estimates that the riots killed a minimum of 192 folks, about two-thirds of them Han. Uyghur rights advocates declare 1000’s of Uyghurs might have died. Lots of of largely younger Uyghur males had been arrested within the ensuing safety crackdown. Choghtal started searching for methods to go away the nation.

“If I had not left China, I would have died in prison,” he says. “They forced me to leave. They drove us out.”

Elements of his story had been echoed by the Uyghur fighters and their households whom NPR interviewed in Syria. Of their interviews, the Uyghurs described many years of Chinese language state repression and state controls that they are saying led them to imagine armed resistance was the one viable option to defend their rights.

“Can slogans alone free [my family]? Can I liberate them by mere words or empty statements? China will not stop just because we complain,” says Yasir, 37, who’s from the traditional Silk Highway metropolis of Kashgar.

A number of the older fighters described dropping their religion within the efficacy of political activism after Chinese language authorities crackdowns following Uyghur uprisings in 1990, towards state-mandated contraception insurance policies, and once more in 1997, in protest of a state safety marketing campaign.

However many of the Uyghurs in Syria, even those that had been educated inside elite Chinese language establishments, say the occasions of July 2009 made them lose religion in China’s stewardship of the area and galvanized them to take up arms.

“So many tensions have erupted between Uyghur and Han people, and we used to be colleagues, but after July 5, Han people looked at us [Uyghurs] with scrutiny, as if any one of us would pick up a knife and stab you, which hurt my heart greatly,” Guli, a Uyghur physician in inside drugs, remembers telling considered one of her Han Chinese language supervisors in Xinjiang. She says persistent ethnic discrimination made it inconceivable for her to do her job effectively. Within the years afterward, her husband grew to become a fighter in Syria and she or he educated as a warfare surgeon.

The one option to regain that dignity, in keeping with Uyghurs like Choghtal, was to coach to struggle and maybe have the chance in the future to wrest management of Xinjiang away from the Communist Social gathering.

“We are in fact a nation of our own, that we once had a glorious history and that we were not originally a humiliated or oppressed people. It only became so after the Chinese came and conquered us,” says Choghtal.

The fighters say they felt that the Chinese language authorities’s insurance policies needed to be met with equal brutality and left them no various however to take up arms.

“The reason we came here today, taking up arms in foreign lands, the reason we walk with death next to us — China is responsible. China forced us into this,” says Moaz, 55, a fighter.

He and most different Uyghurs first headed to Turkey, dwelling to a giant Uyghur diaspora group. However many Uyghurs had been unable to safe residency paperwork in Turkey and feared deportation to China. In 2012, they started trickling into northern Syria via Turkey’s largely porous southern border.

There in Syria, across the northern metropolis of Idlib, a unfastened coalition of 1000’s of Uyghurs and their households started to cool down.

Establishing a stronghold

Throughout the heady early days of the rebel towards Assad, Uyghur fighters in Syria say, at first they tried to distance themselves from taking sides within the civil warfare.

“We did not come to Syria to wage war, neither against Bashar al-Assad nor anyone else,” says Choghtal, the deputy commander. “Our original goal from the beginning was military training.”

The Uyghurs say they first sought out coaching in Aleppo however struck out farther west with their households towards a small metropolis known as Jisr al-Shughur, partially motivated by the necessity for extra housing as their ranks swelled. Hungry for battlefield expertise, they had been additionally not too choosy about whom they educated with at first. Insurgent teams, equally hungry for fighters, weren’t too selective both.

Uyghur officers describe how they had been pulled — inevitably, they are saying — into what ended up being a greater than 13-year-long civil warfare between insurgent and regime forces in Syria. Within the spring of 2015, Syrian army forces bore down on Jisr al-Shughur, which sits at a strategic juncture alongside a significant freeway.

The Uyghurs initially managed to repel them, however the army drive regrouped and attacked a second time utilizing tanks and artillery. The drive got here inside a number of dozen yards of Uyghur positions.

“Before entering battle, no matter how brave a person may be, there is always fear. Every human feels it. Anyone who says otherwise is lying,” says Abdulhey, a Uyghur commander within the battle.

It took one other month of bloody combating to definitively push Assad’s forces out of Jisr al-Shughur. That received the Uyghurs a status amongst Syrian insurgent teams for being organized, motivated troopers. From then on, the Uyghurs largely primarily based themselves in Jisr al-Shughur and in a number of surrounding villages that they recaptured from authorities forces. Most nonetheless dwell round there in the present day.

As religious Sunni Muslims, many Uyghur fighters sympathized with the largely Sunni Islamist militias, particularly people who grew to become a part of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an alliance of militia teams, together with Jabhat al-Nusra, which till 2016 was affiliated with al-Qaida. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham was looking for to ascertain a stronghold in northern Syria. Most Uyghurs in Syria affiliated themselves with a broad motion known as the Turkestan Islamic Social gathering (TIP), which as soon as additionally had a presence in Afghanistan.

To discover ways to struggle, former TIP fighters described working and coaching alongside the Sunni combating group Ahrar al-Sham and different Sunni teams that later grew to become Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. To arm themselves, the Uyghurs say, they used weapons seized from regime forces and say additionally they funded themselves via donations from the Uyghur diaspora and companies they began in Syria.

Uyghurs in Syria weren’t fully united at first; some fighters in Syria say that a minimum of tons of of Uyghurs break up off to hitch ISIS. Analysts who adopted Syria’s civil warfare and militant teams within the area say ISIS was at one level a critical political rival to the extra nationalist TIP.

ISIS “was a big issue,” says Jerome Drevon, a former senior analyst on the Worldwide Disaster Group who has intently adopted Sunni militant teams in Syria. TIP then had “to differentiate themselves” from ISIS’ fundamentalist interpretation of Islam and had “to tell the people, not only would you disagree with [ISIS] politically, but even religiously, this is not our way.”

For years, TIP manned arduous front-line battle posts, safeguarding a protracted stretch of rebel-held territory within the north whereas enduring heavy bombardment from Russian forces aligned with Assad. Former TIP fighters recall that working 20-day shifts on the entrance line was so grueling that they didn’t have time to take their footwear off. Of their spare time, former TIP officers say, they intently studied the doctrines of the U.S., Syrian, German and British armies, which, they are saying, helped them reform their very own disciplinary and combating requirements.

In September 2024, TIP was amongst a number of insurgent teams known as in for a gathering by Sharaa within the border city of Bab al-Hawa. They agreed to hitch forces to preempt a deliberate regime offensive by attacking Aleppo. When Aleppo fell in late November, partially as a result of that tunnel operation that reduce off the regime’s provide strains, the insurgent teams made a split-second determination to proceed the offensive.

“When dawn broke, they retreated. After that, we reorganized our groups and continued moving forward” all the best way to Damascus, remembers Nuredin, 30, one of many TIP commanders within the offensive.

On Dec. 8, 2024, the Uyghurs had been among the many troopers marching into Damascus and the coastal metropolis of Latakia. Ecstatic Syrians threw sweet and flowers at them, the Uyghurs say.

Choghtal says the scenes of pleasure transported him into vivid fantasies that they had been again dwelling in Xinjiang and that the Syrians embracing them had been their very own relations.

“If only it were Hotan, or Aksu, or Urumqi, I thought. Whenever I picked up my weapon, that was the thought that came to my mind,” says Choghtal, naming numerous cities in Xinjiang.

To remain or go

After almost 14 years of combating, the Uyghurs in Syria say, they’re keen to construct new lives for themselves in Syria. They need to protect Uyghur tradition and apply Islam freed from state restraints in Syria. They’ve expanded communally run companies importing automobiles and working gasoline stations and have established a number of Uyghur-language colleges, although many youngsters have opted to enroll in native, Arabic-language Syrian colleges and public universities.

In the present day, the Uyghur group in Syria numbers round 20,000, together with ladies and kids, in keeping with senior commanders, they usually hope to entice extra diaspora Uyghurs to maneuver to Syria.

Having backed Sharaa and the militant group that the present president as soon as led, Uyghurs have been rewarded with senior appointments within the nation’s protection ministry. Numerous former TIP fighters, the biggest Uyghur combating drive, have been folded into Syria’s reconstituted nationwide military, say Syrian protection officers and Uyghurs.

In an announcement to NPR, Syria’s protection ministry stated that the Uyghurs in Syria “pose neither an internal nor an external threat, but rather adhere to what ensures Syria’s security and stability.” It went on so as to add: “Their integration into the [Syrian] system serves the interest of protecting Syrian sovereignty and preventing anxiety in their countries of origin.”

However two points dangle over the Uyghurs’ continued presence in Syria.

Many Syrian Arabs oppose the continued presence of overseas fighters, together with the Uyghurs, in Syria. Exterior Idlib, most Syrians have by no means seen or met a Uyghur fighter earlier than, and the conservative Sunni Muslim beliefs held by many Uyghurs in Syria have scared Syria’s minority communities.

Throughout the warfare, Uyghur fighters had commandeered homes, a lot of them deserted, in traditionally Shiite and Christian communities.

Christians like Denise Khoury, 75, returned on the finish of the combating to verify on their ancestral villages in northern Syria, solely to seek out their properties occupied by Chechen, Moroccan and Uyghur fighters.

“We [Christians] cannot live alongside Uyghurs or other Sunni Muslims anymore. … They are opposed to our way of life. They see us as infidels,” Khoury says.

After months of negotiation among the many new Syrian authorities, Uyghur officers and Christian leaders, Uyghurs have began handing again a few of the land and homes that they had occupied in a number of largely Christian villages.

Most Uyghurs whom NPR spoke to say it was the precise factor to do.

“No matter which religion or group someone belongs to, their security must be guaranteed. They have the right to demand their legal property,” says Bilal, 36, a fighter.

China and beliefs

Uyghur officers say the second — and largest — menace to their continued presence in Syria is China. In November, China agreed to reopen its embassy in Damascus however as soon as once more raised the difficulty of Uyghur fighters. “Syria has pledged not to allow any entity to use Syrian territory to undermine China’s interests. China appreciates this promise and hopes that Syria will take effective measures to implement it,” stated Wang Yi, China’s overseas minister. Beijing additionally abstained from a November 2025 U.N. vote on a decision dropping sanctions on Sharaa, citing its considerations over “foreign terrorist fighters” in Syria.

The U.S. listed a Uyghur militant group, the Japanese Turkistan Islamic Motion (ETIM), as a terrorist group in 2002 within the aftermath of the 9/11 assaults. China says ETIM is behind many violent assaults on Chinese language soil.

The U.S. eliminated this classification on ETIM, nevertheless, in 2020, as relations between the U.S. and China nose-dived throughout the first Trump administration. China labeled the transfer politically motivated. The group continues to be sanctioned by the United Nations, the UK, Japan and New Zealand, amongst different international locations.

Most Uyghurs in Syria as soon as belonged to the not too long ago disbanded TIP and deny involvement with ETIM or any assaults on Chinese language civilians.

“Why would we target civilians? They are human beings as well and have the right to live,” says Choghtal, the deputy commander. “We have no quarrel with normal civilians. Let them live. We are fundamentally against such actions.”

Edmund Fitton-Brown, a former coordinator of the U.N. staff that monitored counterterrorism sanctions till 2022, says he by no means noticed proof immediately linking Uyghurs in Syria with violence in China. “Never once did I see a claim, even from China, that this person in Afghanistan or that person in Syria was in touch with this person in China, who then shot this police officer or set off that explosive device,” says Fitton-Brown.

The Uyghurs NPR spoke to say they’re extra reasonable than different Uyghur armed teams, particularly ETIM, which educated with al-Qaida and the Taliban within the Nineties in Afghanistan and Pakistan. At almost 4,000 fighters in Syria, they’re actually extra quite a few than different Uyghur militant teams, they usually helped Syria’s new chief, Sharaa, notch necessary battle victories.

A handful of TIP’s earliest members in Syria got here from ETIM camps in Afghanistan, however analysts who monitor Islamist teams say the 2 are functionally impartial in the present day.

“There is a divide between the two branches, the one based in Afghanistan … and the Syrian branch, which is now totally different,” says Riccardo Valle, an impartial researcher of extremist teams.

Nonetheless, China maintains that every one Uyghur militants are ideologically united and that fighters in Syria take orders from a sanctioned Afghan-based, al-Qaida-affiliated Uyghur chief named Abdul Haq.

“I don’t have a clear answer, I’m afraid, on that particular question,” says Colin Smith, the present coordinator for the United Nations’ monitoring committee, noting conflicting reviews from U.N. member international locations.

Fitton-Brown says most Uyghur fighters in Syria had been largely recruited from embittered Uyghur exiles who had by no means been to Afghanistan or Pakistan. “There wasn’t movement back and forth between Syria and Afghanistan. It’s not easy and not common,” says Fitton-Brown.

Specialists say the Uyghur teams in Syria had been, for probably the most half, centered on slender targets and should be seen as a religiously impressed nationalist liberation motion. “They just care about their cause in China,” says Drevon, the previous Worldwide Disaster Group analyst.

Given China’s financial and army strengths, Choghtal and different Uyghur fighters NPR interviewed say that regardless of their ardent need to show their consideration to China, attacking it’s unrealistic, even foolhardy, and they should bide their time. “We believe the Communist Party of China will collapse one day, just like we believe in the sun and the moon,” Choghtal says. “And then we will be ready.”

Within the meantime, he says, he has put the group’s deal with self-strengthening and training. His officers say they’re learning the Zionist motion. “Whatever [the Jewish people] needed to do, they did, restored their unity and built a state,” says Abu Mohammad, 39, one other fighter. “If we also strengthen ourselves from every side, like they did, I believe we could build a state — perhaps even stronger than the one they built.”

And whereas they’ll all the time think about Xinjiang their homeland, they are saying they’ve shed sufficient blood in Syria to depend it as a house as effectively.

On the outskirts of Jisr al-Shughur, excessive on a hill, amongst inexperienced shrubs lie the graves of tons of of Uyghur fighters who perished combating the Assad regime. The final man was buried right here in December 2024.

Anas, a Uyghur fighter, factors to the grave of an in depth pal, the white headstone blinding towards the rusty-red soil frequent to northern Syria. Like many Uyghurs, he says, his pal died from Russian bombardment throughout the Syrian warfare. On the foot of his headstone are three smaller plaques: of the boys who died making an attempt to convey his physique again from the entrance strains.

Most of the gravestones on this makeshift cemetery don’t have any full names, solely the fighter’s nom de guerre, as a result of they had been buried within the haste of warfare.

“Even if it takes until the end of our lives, if only we could return to our homeland, liberate it and live there. To be buried in the earth of our homeland — that is what we dream of,” Anas says. “We do not want our children to wander in foreign lands all their lives. Even if we ourselves cannot achieve it, if we open this path, then maybe one day our children can.”

Jawad Rizkallah and Abduweli Ayup contributed analysis from Idlib and Jisr al-Shughur, Syria.

This reporting was supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Middle on Disaster Reporting.