How did a few thousand Uyghur hairdressers and farmers, shoe salesmen and writers, become part of an elite fighting troop, a pivotal force in overthrowing Syria's brutal dictator Bashar al-Assad?
That is the question at the centre of this remarkable, rarely-told story. Journalist Emily Feng had gone to cover the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire in December 2024, but instead made her way to Syria as Assad fell.
In 2025, she found Central Asian fighters everywhere she went. With the help of exiled Uyghur writer Abduweli Ayup, essential when the new regime banned her from interviewing them directly, they tracked down some five dozen fighters and families from a 20,000-strong Uyghur community that had made Syria home.
About 4,000 of them took up arms. But why would stateless people endure hardship and martyrdom for a country that was not their own?
The answer is that Syria was never the point. The history of this rebel movement is not straightforward. Feng's candid interviews shed light on their complicated, fractured story. Our Hearts Burned For Home: Uyghur militants in Syria’s Civil War is the result.
A revolution within a revolution
Their presence in Syria was almost accidental; a mix of China's crackdown after the 1990s protests and 2009 Ürümqi riots, geographical chance, and revenge.
Unwilling to live in what they called the prison of Xinjiang, they made their way, some via Afghanistan to Syria, not to save Syrians but to learn how to fight for Hotan and Kashgar.
With no Arabic and no war experience, they typically got three months of training and were sent straight to the front.
In Jisr al-Shughur, in houses emptied by war, they built a state within a state: schools, businesses, their own security, raising children for the next war.
"We are raising our own army," one commander tells Feng. They decorated classrooms with cardboard tanks and anti-aircraft rockets to "acclimatise" children to war.
Never losing sight of that goal, they avoided joining other rebel groups and insisted on fighting as Uyghurs. But ideologically, things got complicated and fractured.
From 2014, ISIS/ISIS-K tried to recruit Uyghurs for a global caliphate. Most Turkestan Independence Party (TIP) Uyghurs rejected it; they wanted a Uyghur state, not a caliphate. Those who joined ISIS were arrested and became enemies.
When East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) leader Abdul Haq in Afghanistan pressed them toward al-Qaeda and the Taliban, they split from the Afghan Uyghurs in 2018, swapped the black Islamist flag for the blue flag of East Turkestan, and recast themselves as nationalists.
As far as the new regime-in-waiting was concerned, it made them rather unreliable allies. In 2016-17 they refused to formally merge into Ahmed al-Sharaa’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Their goal was Xinjiang, not Syria, and joining HTS meant mission creep.
And yet they fought against the regime. Ferociously.
From neutral newcomers, they were dragged into the rebel independence fray in 2015, earning a fearsome reputation for holding the northern front against Russian bombardment for a decade.
They lived off savings brought from Xinjiang and weapons captured from regime forces. Forced to learn fast, they fashioned shoulder-launched rockets from scrap canisters and mixed their own explosives.
"War became free training," one says, for the future war with China.
Feng is compelling on the brutal reality of that training. The rebel regime was punishing and relentless as it hammered the motley band of volunteers into disciplined soldiers versed in intelligence, strategy and logistics.
Bilal, a former hairdresser, says, "Sometimes, I was so sad I cried.” Revenge pulled him through.
The book's heart is how they fought. After ten gruelling years of fighting hand-to-mouth, the book builds to its climax: Operation Deterrence of Aggression in November 2024.
Triggered by a regime strike that killed children in Ariha, the Uyghurs used a disused tunnel at Dadikh to penetrate Assad's stronghold.
Tragically, digging 500 metres short of their target, they pushed on regardless to break the line to Aleppo. Half their team was stuck with a jammed motorcycle in the tunnel, and one of their tanks was lost to a minefield.
But by November 30, thanks to a rebel-negotiated ceasefire with Russia, Aleppo finally fell. Days later, rebel troops stormed Damascus, and Uyghur fighters waving blue East Turkestan flags rolled into town, earning the respect of the new regime and a place in Syria’s independence struggle.
A new Syria, an uncertain future
It should have been triumphant. But it was hollow.
Feng captures the mood perfectly. They had fought tooth and nail for ten years, losing hundreds of kin. But this was not their war. They wept — not for Syria, but for home. They preferred to save their tears for Hotan or Kashgar one day.
What comes next is the book's most painful part. Where do 20,000 stateless Uyghurs fit in a new Syria when their loyalty lies 4,500 km away?
There are almost as many answers as there are Uyghurs.
Some Uyghur children feel no affinity with East Turkestan and want to become Syrian.
Others, with their long black beards and children who call Alawites and Christians "infidels," frighten locals and want to remain a state within a state independent of Syrian state institutions.
Neutrality, however, might have made them good wartime partners, but how could political independence work in the new Syria?
For many others, comfortable inertia has set in, and the debate over whether to settle or keep fighting for a liberated East Turkestan now dominates.
The new Syria is moving forward anyway, with or without the Uyghurs, and it has big decisions to make.
The TIP has been disbanded into the Syrian Army’s 84th Brigade, and Uyghur commanders have been given posts in the Defence Ministry.
Many hope for citizenship and schooling. But as one interviewee tells Feng: "I hope this exile does not last very long, because they will become more and more Syrian. I hope at the end, when we have our own land back, maybe they at least will still want to visit me in East Turkestan."
Debates about their future rumble on both inside Syria and among the exiled faithful marooned in Turkey.
Many of those in Turkey are de facto stateless after Ankara refused passports over their East Turkestan independence activism.
Living under a cloud of frequent threats of repatriation to China, Syria looks like the perfect place to raise children free to study the Quran and practise their faith.
Squeezed from all sides, the Uyghurs are threatened not only by Turkey but also by Beijing, determined to drag them back to the homeland.
Radicalised Syrian Uyghur fighters have been in China's sights for years, and the fear they might stir trouble in Xinjiang is never far from the surface.
One way for Beijing to solve that problem is to use them as a bargaining chip in Syria's desperate need for reconstruction. Rumours of such a deal abound, but Damascus has denied them for now.
What comes after victory?
Feng and Ayup have done something extraordinary in Our Hearts Burned For Home. This is not just a war story, but one of exile, ideology and what happens when a displaced people borrows another people’s revolution to train for their own.
Their story is not without controversy.
Some Uyghurs fear their militancy is justified, while others find it distasteful. They fear being tarred with the terrorist brush and thereby vindicating Beijing in its crackdown in the Uyghur region.
Feng was drawn to the sheer improbability of Assad's overthrow: some 30,000 rebels in fractious bands up against the Goliaths of Iran, Turkey and Russia. And winning.
In her conclusion, she hints their story might not be over: "What several thousand highly motivated, highly experienced Uyghur fighters can do may end up surprising us all. They have already surprised me."
The author is writing under a pseudonym to protect her identity
