# Kazakh exodus from Xinjiang

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There were two Kazakh exoduses from Xinjiang. The first occurred between the 1930s and the 1940s as Kazakhs fled from the Soviet Union into Xinjiang, Gansu, Qinghai, Tibet, India, and Burma. The second came in waves during the 1950s and 1960s after the victory of the Chinese Communist Party in Xinjiang.
In 1936, after Sheng Shicai expelled 30,000 Kazakhs from Xinjiang to Qinghai, Hui Chinese led by General Ma Bufang massacred Muslim Kazakhs until there were 135 left.

## Hui, Tibetan and Oirat claims against Kazakhs

The Kazakhs were plundering and looting the Tibetan-Kokonor plateau in Qinghai and came through Gansu and northern Xinjiang, over 7,000 of them between 1938 and 1941. On the Kokonor plateau, Hui Dungans, Tibetans and Kazakhs continued to battle one another, even though the Kazakh nomads had been settled onto demarcated pasturelands under Ma Bufang in 1941. Japanese spy Hisao Kimura [fr; jp] was told by a Tibetan lama in Qinghai that Kazakhs were enemies of Tibetans, saying
   "This land, is very unsettled compared with Inner Mongolia. To the west the Kazakhs persecute our people, and we are powerless to stop them. Therefore I advise you to leave for your native land as soon as you have finished whatever you came to do: otherwise leave for Tibet. In that holy land there is peace."
The Kazakhs who migrated to Iran and Pakistan via India and Tibet later, in the 1950s, moved to Turkey, and some of these Kazakhs in Turkey in the 1960s wound up as guest workers in Germany.
Oirat Buddhists in Qinghai were slaughtered and looted by Kazakhs (Moslem Khyber Khasaks) who invaded Tibet through the Nanshan mountains in Xinjiang. The Salar and Hui Muslims of Qinghai told Office of Strategic Services agent Leonard Francis Clark that the Kazakhs had killed 8,000 Mongols.
A local Hui Muslim in Qinghai told Clark that if the Muslims and Communists united, they would be unstoppable, and that if China fell to the Communists, the Americans would be unable to defeat China and therefore suffer huge death tolls in battle.
The advance of the Communists under Li Bao (Lin Biao) forced the Hui general Ma Dei-bio to leave Qinghai to confront them. Kazakh bands were still looting and killing people. The Mongols were slaughtered by the Kazakhs; the Nationalist government of China had disarmed the Mongols.
The Tibetan Rongpa taught agriculture to the formerly nomadic Mongols, who began using camels to plough their land in Tsaidam. Hui Muslim governor Ma Bufang appointed Hui Muslim colonel Ma Dei-bio as southern Qinghai's amban. Me Dei-bioo slaughtered 480 Golok families by throwing them into the Yellow River after wrapping them in leather. He built a fort surrounded by Chinese stone lions, guarded by Hui Muslims, to control the Tibetans. Hui Muslim Ma Sheng-lung wore a white Moslem skull-cap, had a white stallion and a Tibetan cap made of red fox, and a poniard and sword.
The Chinese Communist Party succedded and eventually took all of China, and 300,000 anti-Communist forces were lost. After the Communist victory, Ma Bufang ordered that the expedition under Clark by radiogram flee back to Xinjiang. A group of dancers and musicians from the Khotan Kingdom were entertaining the Clark expedition when the news broke. Kazakhs stole Mongol horses from the expedition and the Hui Muslim leader was told by a Tibetan scout that the Kazakhs did it. The Kazakhs fled to the Afghanista–(British) India border, and Mongols were unable to stop them until they reached there.
Some Tibetans in Qinghai claimed descent from the Tanguts of Khara-Khoto in Western Xia. It is said that their ancestors fled to Qinghai after a Chinese army expelled them. The Oirat Mongol Prince Dorje told Clark and the Tibetans and the Hui and Salar Muslims Abdul and Solomon Ma that the Manchus carried out the Dzungar genocide against his Oirat people and conquered Xinjiang from the Oirat Mongol Torgut West banner and destroyed the south wing of the Mongols. They took control of the four Khanates of the Khalkha in Outer Mongolia and the fifth Khanate (the Oirat Torgut horde). He also spoke of the Torgut Oirats who had earlier migrated to Kalmykia in Russia, fought the Ottoman Empire, and crushed the Swedish king Charles XII. Then 400,0000 Torguts migrated back to Dzungaria in 1771, to fight against the Cossack armies of Catherine the Great. They lost 300,000 men, women and children to the Cossacks as they went back to Xinjiang. He mentioned how this had made Russia "lose" the support of Mongols. 50,000 Oirats survived after 300,000 Oirat Mongols were slaughtered by Russian Cossacks on Catherine's orders. Prince Dorje then proclaimed that the Oirat Torghut banners were ready for revenge against the "Slavic masses", by fighting against the Soviet Russian red army and asked Clark for America to help the west Mongols against the Slavic Russians. Clark said that the Pentagon and White House would decide and that he could do nothing about it since he was busy with inciting Muslims in Qinghai to jihad against communists and on the Amne Machin mountain to find radioactive material.
From the Khyber pass, some Sharaunis and Afridis came to Qinghai to join the Dungan Hui and Salar cavalry of Ma Bufang. One of the Tungn and Salars had 19 shotgun, sword and gunshot injuries and his name was Habibu. They came from Hezhou and Shenghua, and numbered 50 wearing black Cossack polished boots or Tibetan boots, red robes and fur caps. They had Tibetan broadswords, chained Tibetan short daggers, fifty shot magazines with Belgian and German automatic battle pistols and European rifles..
Colonel Ma and the expedition with Clark were armed with miscellaneous weapons and had three Japanese Nambu machine guns and 50 rifles. They also had Chinese potato-masher hand grenades, American Tommy sub machine guns manufactured in China, Skoda rifles and a small Japanese mortar. They kept their safeties on with bullets in chambers and guns loaded and protected their flanks and rear by riding in fan formation against Tibetan brigand attacks.

## Kazakh claims against Tibetans, Oirats and Huis

Over two years of battles, 5,000 Kazakhs were killed by Hui Muslim Chinese and Tibetans in Gansu. Only 13,000 Kazakhs survived out of the original 18,000 before the battles. They fled to British India in September 1940. Tibetan cavalry numbering 1,000 attacked and fought for three days to block their path but lost, and the Kazakhs made it to the border of Britsh Raj. Many died, however, when the British ordered Indian guards to shoot. When they found out they were civilians the 3,039 surviving Kazakhs were then let into India in September 1941. In three years, 15,000 Kazakhs were killed. The Hindu maharaja of Kashmir did not want the Kazakhs in their region, so they expelled them to an open camp on the outskirts of Muzaffarabad. More than 10 Kazakhs died from illness due to heavy monsoon rains on their tents. Their livestock died and Indian soldiers prevented them from leaving the camp. When Muslim leader Muhammad Ali Jinnah heard about their plight he helped them, arranging for them to go to Garhi Habibullah in April 1942 and then Indian Muslims hosted them in Ternova village. Some Kazakhs further escaped India into neighbouring Burma and Nepal; in Burma, Kazakhs often settled in regions with significant Muslim Panthay minorities.
Kazakhs received residence permits to leave camp after Eliskhan appealed to the Sir Lord Halifax, when he visited them in 1941. The news about the Kazakh situation appeared in newspapers so they received help from the Muslim nawabs Hamidullah Khan of Bhohal and Osman Ali Khan of Hyderabad. About 450 Kazakhs moved to the colder Bhohal province. Chatyral, Suvat and Abutabad received 700 Kazakhs. Then Delhi, Calcutta and Lahore received the Bhopal Kazakhs in 1944. Pakistan then received the majority of the Kazakhs after partition on 14 August 1947.
The Kazakhs accused Tibetans and Dungans of attacking them in Gansu, Qinghai and Tibet when they reached British India and Burma, and were debriefed by British officials.
The Kazakhs said that they were fleeing from the Soviets and from the Soviet-backed warlord Sheng Shicai in Xinjiang, and when they entered Qinghai and Gansu, they originally numbered 18,000. These Kazakhs accused Tibetan raiders of killing their Kenjebai—a relative of their leader Elisqan—and accused the Qinghai government of Hui Muslims of ignoring their complaint about the Tibetans murdering hi. As a result, in 1940 they moved from Qinghai to India, Tibet and Burma, but were stopped at Altynşöke on the way for pasture.
From Northern Xinjiang over 7,000 Kazakhs fled to the Tibetan Plateau via Gansu and were wreaking massive havoc so Ma Bufang solved the problem by relegating the Kazakhs into designated pastureland in Qinghai, but Hui, Tibetans, and Kazakhs in the region continued to clash with each other.
In northern Tibet, Kazakhs clashed with Tibetan soldiers and then the Kazakhs were sent to Ladakh.
Tibetan troops robbed and killed Kazakhs 400 miles east of Lhasa at Chamdo when the Kazakhs were entering Tibet.
Soviet persecution of Kazakhs led to Kazakhs from Soviet Kazakhstan moving to Xinjiang.

## Second exodus

The initial exodus began in 1950 when the victorious Chinese Communist Army took control, not guaranteeing nor overtly denying the Kazakh way of life: tribalism and Islam. Families voted at Barkol and set out to preserve their way of life on the steppes of Kashmir.
This initial journey to Kashmir was opposed by the Chinese Army as they passed through Chinese territory. The first attack happened at Barkol in Kumul Prefecture and the second near Timurlik. The Kazakh groups that survived fled into Tibet to survive. Illness killed countless Kazakhs as well. Kazakhs left crossed Tibet entered Kashmir, Burma, and Nepal.
In 1962, toward the end of the Great Leap Forward, Kazakhs embarked on another exodus from Xinjiang. This time the Kazakhs, along with other ethnic groups, fled to the Soviet Union due to famine, mass riots and communist reforms. Additional refugees were part of a mass migration that left the continent for Australia and North America in search for a better life.