The Uyghurs Who Fought in Syria’s Civil War — The Diplomat

The Diplomat author Mercy Kuo regularly engages subject-matter experts, policy practitioners, and strategic thinkers across the globe for their diverse insights into U.S. Asia policy. This conversation with Emily Feng – author of “Our Hearts Burned for Home: Uyghur Militants in Syria’s Civil War” (Columbia Global Reports 2026) and award-winning correspondent for NPR – is the 530th in “The Trans-Pacific View Insight Series.” What was the impetus behind your reporting on Uyghur militants in Syria’s civil war? For years, I had been reporting on the ground on the Xinjiang region and the sweeping detention campaign that began in early 2017. And one of the reasons cited in rare official comments from Beijing about why authorities were detaining and arresting hundreds of thousands Uyghur people mentioned the presence of Uyghur “terrorists” in Syria and Afghanistan, but offered no evidence and since these places were nearly impossible to access, no one had done interviews with any of these supposed Uyghur militants. In late 2024, it suddenly became possible to go to Syria after the surprising collapse of the Assad regime there and the end of a terrible civil war. Coincidentally, I was in nearby Lebanon when the Assads fled to Russia, and I ended up spending much of the beginning of 2025 in Syria. Imagine my surprise when I saw Uyghur fighters…