Southeast Asia is another region where ISIS has sought support from Muslim extremists, with recruitment activity first seen in 2012 when the group was a branch of Al Qaeda in Iraq. After the group claimed the establishment of a caliphate last June, a number of Islamic religious clerics in Southeast Asia immediately swore allegiance to its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Many ISIS recruitment videos have been viewed on the Internet across Southeast Asia.

Furthermore, the ISIS group desires to control all Islamic extremist factions to serve the caliphate. Over the past 14 years, Al Qaeda has been badly damaged in the U.S.-led war on terrorism, but it still has many affiliated groups across the world. Separated from Al Qaeda, ISIS intends to be the world's top instigator of Islamic extremist jihad. Al-Baghdadi is eager to be the leader of a global caliphate--an Islamic world order. Thus, establishing bases in Central and South Asia is a key step to realize expansionary ambitions.

China under threat

Chinese extremists are among the international ISIS fighters in Syria and Iraq. In recent years, the number of illegal border crossings from China to neighboring countries is on the rise--most of which involve smugglers from northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Many of them plan to go to Syria and receive military training from ISIS or other militant groups and later launch terror attacks after returning to China. However, traveling to Syria requires them to pay a high price, and may even cost them their lives.

In one recent outbreak of violence, a shooting occurred in a Vietnamese police building near the China-Viet Nam border on April 18, 2014, killing two Vietnamese police officers and eight Chinese citizens. On that day, Vietnamese police detained 16 Chinese citizens sneaking into Viet Nam and prepared to repatriate them to China. Ten of the Chinese suspects made a final assault when they seized guns from three Vietnamese police officers and shot people outside from the window while shouting slogans glorifying Islamic extremism. Local police later put a stop to the attack.

Chinese police detained 852 Chinese extremists trying to sneak into neighboring countries in 2014. On one hand, these extremists are dangerous to both China and neighboring countries. On the other hand, they are also victims of international terrorism.

A Kurdish security officer in Iraq told Beijing-based Global Times in January that the ISIS group executed over 100 of its own militant members during the past six months. Most of the victims--having come from across the world, including three Chinese citizens--were executed for trying to escape from battle. It is reported that there are about 300 Chinese militants fighting for ISIS, originally associated with the extremist East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), which seeks to separate Xinjiang from China and has conducted a number of terror attacks in China.

The ETIM, which was listed by the UN Security Council as a terrorist group in 2003, has close links with international terrorist organizations including ISIS. The ETIM first established bases in Afghanistan with the help of Al Qaeda, and was later forced into hiding in the border areas of Pakistan after the war on terror. In recent years, as Pakistan cracked down on terrorism, ISIS stepped in to offer support. While ISIS instigates Muslim extremists to go to Syria from China via Central Asian or Southeast Asian countries, the ETIM obtains support and military training, which will ultimately pose a bigger threat to China's border areas and Chinese targets abroad.

In the face of the growing threat from the ISIS group, China and neighboring countries should cooperate on sharing intelligence and fighting against terrorism. To eliminate the extremism, they should also intensify efforts to boost economic development and improve social governance in remote areas, as well as cut off domestic Internet links to international terrorism websites. Moreover, border police should closely monitor the backflow of Muslim extremists from Syria and Iraq and prevent them from launching terror attacks.

The author is an assistant researcher with the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations

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