ABSTRACT
Prior to the establishment of the East Turkestan Republic in the Ili valley, a series of incidents in the northern Xinjiang area foreshadowed the violence that was to erupt in 1944. During 1943 and 1944 incidents increased in both number and intensity, and by July 1944 Kazak attacks on Chinese police posts and small garrisons were endemic. Referred to as “bandit raids” by the Chinese, such attacks were directed at both Chinese military and police and, in at least one case, the Xinjiang Provincial Government itself: in early July Uighurs at Jimunai on the Sino-Soviet border took all the cattle and sheep belonging to the provincial government and drove them across the Soviet border. On October 8, 1944, a force variously reported as being from six hundred to a thousand men strong stormed Nilka, the county seat of Gongha County, some seventy miles east of Yining.
