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The Feb. 15 killing of militant Uighur leader Abdul Haq al-Turkistani by an American drone in the border regions of Pakistan highlights China’s continued sensitivity about its remote and vulnerable western region, Xinjiang.

It also brings into focus the role of the Afghanistan-Pakistan region as an international sanctuary for Islamic militants and the reasons for China’s worries about social stability and potential terrorist threats in Xinjiang. China’s neuralgia about security in Xinjiang will continue — and perhaps even increase — as big power competition for influence and resources in Central Asia and its ties to the rest of the world continue to expand.

China’s troubles with the minority Uighurs are not new. But with the break up of the Soviet Union and the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the regional dynamic changed. Since the early 1990s, China has faced recurrent waves of unrest in Xinjiang and widespread acts of violence, some of which seem to have been terrorist acts by disgruntled Uighurs. The 2008 attempted hijacking of an airplane in China was one of the latest — and scariest — examples. There also have been several attacks against perceived Uighur collaborators in China and against Chinese interests outside the country. The capture of Uighurs fighting against coalition forces in Afghanistan, some two dozen of whom were imprisoned in Guantanamo, also indicate that China faces a real threat of terrorist acts.

The Chinese, however, have aroused skepticism by dubiously attributing dozens of explosions and incidents of civil unrest to “East Turkistan terrorist forces.”

Officials, for example, blamed an August 2008 attack on a military police unit, in which 16 officers were killed, on a Uighur terrorist group, despite the fact that the officers apparently were run down by a truck and then attacked by a taxi driver and a vegetable vendor. Even last July’s massive race riots in Urumqi – set off by rumors that a Uighur woman had been raped and several Uighur men killed by Han Chinese in far-away Guangdong — was labeled an “organized, violent action against the public” and an act of terrorism.

So, while China does face periodic upsurges in politically motivated violence by Uighurs, one has to ask, why? The answer: Beijing has engaged in a systematic, multidecade program of marginalizing Uighurs in their own homeland, fostering economic growth that favors the Han majority and that encourages the exploitation of Xinjiang’s natural resources for Han areas.

Beijing has organized and encouraged an influx of Han into Xinjiang, changing the ethnic ratio since 1949 from about 5 percent Han to more than 40 percent today. Moreover, Uighur culture and the Muslim religion are tightly restricted. Beijing proudly points out that Xinjiang in recent years has been among the fastest growing areas in the country, with per capita income higher than all regions except China’s southeast coast. Most of that growth, however, has accrued to state-owned enterprises, Han entrepreneurs or the government; not to Uighurs. And income inequalities have actually expanded significantly in recent years. The region also suffers from some of the worst environmental degradation in China. It is hardly surprising that frustration occasionally boils over into civil unrest.

That many of China’s problems with terrorism and unrest are largely of its own making has reduced international trust and sympathy. China’s concerns also have both shaped its approach to the broader region and reduced China’s willingness to cooperate with the United States in counterterrorism, negatively affecting the overall US -China relationship.

Xinjiang, more than any other area of China, is strategically vulnerable, partially as a result of its location in one of the most fractious regions outside the Middle East. Representing one-sixth of China’s territory, Xinjiang is rich in oil, gas and mineral deposits and contains numerous sensitive military installations, including nuclear research and testing facilities. It borders Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, all of which are less than politically stable.

Complicating China’s relations with the Central Asian states is the fact that as many as 500,000 Uighurs — and sizable populations of other Chinese “minorities” — live across relatively porous borders and engage in extensive trade. Several of these countries contain anti-China Uighur separatist organizations, both peaceful and terrorist. And China is very afraid of the potential contagion of “color revolutions” from Central Asia — like the 2005 “Tulip Revolution” in Kyrgyzstan — destabilizing China’s control in Xinjiang. Uighur activities — including violent attacks — have complicated China’s relations with Turkey, a country where public and official sentiment is highly critical of China’s treatment of the Uighurs.

To control this potentially chaotic situation and to manage Sino-Russian competition for influence, China launched the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which includes Russia, China, the Central Asian republics and a growing number of observers from around the region. China has pushed hard to keep the focus of the SCO on cooperative activities against the “three evils” of “separatism, fundamentalism and terrorism,” a fear all the member states have in common.

Along some of Xinjiang’s most remote and sensitive borders are Tibet, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the disputed state of Kashmir — any one of which could quickly embroil China in an international crisis. China also tested its “all-weather” friendship with Pakistan, pressuring Islamabad to crack down on Uighur militants within its borders. Pakistan reportedly has responded by sending a number of Uighurs to China for prosecution. Its recent stepped-up attacks on terrorist groups — and especially the killing of Abdul Haq and more than a dozen other Uighur militants — has warmed relations with China.

The US intervention in Afghanistan in 2001 introduced another variable for China with regard to Xinjiang. In the conflict that followed, global support for Al Qaeda drew in more militants to the region, including some Uighurs (as Abdul Haq’s death proved), but it also changed the strategic landscape for China. The introduction of massive US forces into the region raised visceral and longstanding fears of encirclement by a hostile United States. Beijing has pressured its Central Asian neighbors to expel or severely limit any US military presence and has refused to allow US forces to use Chinese territory for staging or overflights in the war in Afghanistan. China also is working hard to enhance cooperation with its neighbors on energy exploration, exploitation and transportation as a way of keeping the United States and Russia from monopolizing Central Asia’s vast oil and natural gas resources.

These competing interests, and the residual worry that the United States and Russia want to minimize Chinese influence in Central Asia, will continue to contribute to Beijing’s fixation on assuring stability in its far western extremity, even if the real terrorist threat to China has diminished.

Christopher M Clarke retired in 2009 after 25 years as a China analyst and head of the China Division of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Copyright © 2010 Yale Center for the Study of Globalization.