Osman (1899-April 1951), was a Kirei Kazakh military leader. He was executed in 1951 for opposing the Chinese Communists.

A Kazakh of the Kirei tribe, Osman was born in an encampment in the Altai region of northeast Sinkiang. The Kazakhs of Sinkiang were nomadic herdsmen, and Osman received his basic Islamic education in various encampments. He was introduced to warfare at the age of 12, when Boko Bator, a blood brother of Osman's father, took him along on an anti-Chinese campaign. With the failure of this uprising, Osman returned to his father's encampment. Much of his later education was devoted to riding, fighting, and learning to drink kumis; and he developed into a vigorous fighting man, noted for his large size and great strength. Osman won fame among the Sinkiang Kazakhs during the administration of Sheng Shih-ts'ai (q.v.) in Sinkiang. Between 1937 and 1940 Sheng antagonized the Kazakhs by arresting many of their leaders and executing some of them. In 1940 Osman worked to mobilize resistance to Sheng's oppressive rule, but he and his rebel band were not strong enough to overcome the Chinese authorities. By the winter of 1942 Osman's small force, which had been driven out of Sharasume (Ch'enghua) had withdrawn to the upper reaches of the Bulgan River, on the Sinkiang-Mongolian border. Osman established his headquarters at Tayingkul, just inside the border of Outer Mongolia. He worked to foster Kazakh-Mongol cooperation, and he secured some arms and equipment from the Mongols. Before long, he had formulated a political program that called for Kazakh autonomy in the Altai region and for the barring of Chinese military and civilian officials from that region. Sheng Shih-ts'ai, meanwhile, strove to suppress Kazakh resistance through military action, including the use of aerial bombing, to destroy the Kazakhs, their yurts, and their livestock. Sheng asserted publicly that Osman was receiving Soviet aid and direction, and that Sinkiang would know neither prosperity nor peace until the Kazakhs were suppressed.

The Kazakh movement in Sinkiang gained support in November 1944, when the open revolt against Chinese rule broke out in the Ili district of northwest Sinkiang. Osman apparently concluded an agreement with the Ili military leader Ali Khan Türe, and his Kazakh cavalrymen took advantage of Chinese preoccupation with the Ili revolt to capture Sharasume and Chugachak (T'ach'eng), leading towns in the Altai district. With the establishment of the so-called East Turkestan Republic at the beginning of 1945, Osman received the post of special executive officer for the Altai district, with headquarters at Sharasume. In November 1945 he severed relations with the Mongols of Outer Mongolia even though he was beginning to have difficulties with the Ili rebels. In January 1946 Chang Chih-chung (q.v.) succeeded in working out an agreement that called for a coalition government in Sinkiang in which the non-Chinese nationalities of the province would gain representation. The Naiman Kazakh tribes continued to support the Ili group after this agreement was signed, but the Kirei Kazakhs, whom Osman represented, soon became restive. In April 1946 Osman, acting in the name of his Kazakh followers, denounced the Ili regime as Russian-dominated, struck camp, and marched into the mountains on the Sinkiang-Mongolian border. Later that year, after receiving a representative of Sung Hsi-lien (q.v.), the Chinese Nationalist military commander in Sinkiang, Osman came to terms with the Chinese authorities, his erstwhile enemies. He and his men clashed that summer and autumn with the Ili forces in the remote Baitak Bogdo (Peitashan) district. By 1948 Osman had demonstrated firm opposition to the Ili regime, the Mongolian People's Republic, and the Soviet Union. His continued support of the Chinese in Sinkiang won him command of three Paoan squadrons as a reward. In 1948 Osman's headquarters were located in the T'ienshan range, where he claimed power over 4,000 yurts and 15,000 Kazakhs. In the autumn of 1948 such American and British correspondents as A. Doak Barnett, Henry R. Lieberman, and Ian Morrison visited Osman at his T'ienshan encampment.

Osman took to the field again in 1949 when T'ao Chih-yueh, who had replaced Sung Hsi-lien as the top Nationalist commander in Sinkiang, switched allegiance to the Chinese Communists. After moving his forces toward Hami, Osman joined with Yolbars (q.v.) in organizing anti-Communist resistance. By September 1950, Osman had been forced to withdraw to a new base in the Gezkul district of Tsinghai. About this time, Yolbars decided that it was useless for the Kazakhs to attempt to maintain themselves against Chinese Communist power. He and many of his followers departed for India on the first leg of their journey to Taiwan. Osman, however, decided to remain behind. In February 1951 Chinese Communist military units, operating from bases in Hami and Urumchi, attacked the remnant Kazakh forces in their Gezkul encampment and captured Osman, one of his daughters, and some of his followers. Osman was taken to Urumchi, where he was executed as a counter-revolutionary in April 1951.