Chapter 4 explains that, despite the international claims of a Uyghur terrorist threat established in 2002, very few, if any, Uyghur-led premeditated acts of political violence took place inside the Uyghur homeland during the first decade of GWOT. As a result, China’s policies towards the Uyghurs and their homeland in the early 2000s were more focused on development of the Uyghur region than on combatting its virtually non-existent terrorist threat. This development also fostered a creeping settler colonialism in the Uyghur region, leading to large numbers of Han migrants to the region, facilitating displacement, and promoting Uyghur assimilation into a Han-dominated society. The chapter points to the 2009 Urumqi ethnic violence between Uyghurs and Han as the primary turning point in state policy towards Uyghurs. The state’s primary response to this violence was to expedite its development and colonization of the Uyghur region, but it also included the beginnings of a violent crackdown on pious Uyghurs, particularly in the south of the Uyghur region, initiating a self-perpetuating conflict between rural Uyghur populations and state security forces, which would escalate in coming years.