China on the Radar of Al Qaeda

Several pro-al-Qaeda websites posted the Islamic Turkistan magazine in an attempt to raise the profile of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, which has been struggling against the Chinese government to establish an independent Islamic State in the region of Xinjiang. The magazine carried articles entitled "the crimes of the Chinese communist regime" and "why we are fighting China."

The U.S. Department of State had stated that the group was linked to al Qaeda and the Chinese government claimed that its leader Hassan Mahsum, killed by the Pakistani army in October 2003, had met al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden in 1999.