Our Hearts Burned for Home: Uyghur Militants in Syria's Civil War

A people without a country in a country at war

What drove a few thousand men and women from the deserts and cities of western China to the front lines of Syria’s war? Journalist Emily Feng unearths the untold story of Uyghur exiles who fled China’s expanding police state—only to become a pivotal force behind the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. At the heart of this narrative is a startling paradox: Beijing’s repression, meant to crush dissent, instead scattered and radicalized a generation.

...