Remembering The Uighurs - And Albania

by Chris Bodenner

Nathan Thrall has a great piece in the current print issue of TNR profiling the Uighurs who resettled in Albania. The men were basically sold out by the Bush administration:

[I]n December 2001, the United States denied China's request for custody of the Uighur detainees and refused to link Uighur separatists to the global war on terrorism. But, as military action against Iraq loomed, and the United States faced the possibility that China's representatives on the United Nations Security Council would veto any such action, U.S. policy toward the Uighurs changed. In the last week of August of 2002 ... [the administration] announced that the United States was acceding to China's demand to label an obscure Uighur group, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a terrorist organization.

There are more than a dozen innocent Uighurs still sitting in Guantanamo, waiting to be released. But no country is willing to accept them, above all the U.S.