Kashgar’s old city: the endgame

May 22, 2012 | openDemocracy | By Henryk Szadziewski

Time is almost up for the old city of Kashgar. For the last three years, and over the silence of the international community, the din of bulldozers has reverberated across this ancient Silk Road hub. The demolition of the heart of Kashgar, a process^↑ accompanied by countless individual stories of loss, heralds the end of a distinct Uyghur culture. In the People’s Republic of China, development planning equates to a no-choice acceptance of whatever blueprint for the future of communities the party-state chooses.

Kashgar old city has long held a central place in Uyghur culture and history^↑ . A distinguished line of Uyghur scholars, such as the renowned 11th-century Turkic-language lexicographer Mahmud Kashgari^↑ , made Kashgar a focal point of learning. Throughout its many-layered existence – as a major Silk Road^↑ trading axis, “great game” listening-post and birthplace of the first East Turkestan^↑ republic – the Turkic people of this urban oasis have formed the core of its ingenuity and progress. It can be said without exaggeration that Kashgar old city is the physical embodiment of Uyghur history; but it is also, amid the current desecration, the source of Uyghur thinking on the Uyghurs’ own preferred course of development.

Read the full op-ed here: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/kashgars-old-city-endgame/