Ahmed Rashid, Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia (Lahore: Vanguard, 2002), pp.281. Price Rs. 695/--.
Ahmed Rashid is a name to conjure by in the world of contemporary history. His name first came to the fore when he published The Resurgence of Central Asia: Islam or Nastionalism (1994) because there were very few experts on Central Asia and Pakistan had nobody who had visited the region and then written a book on it. His next book Taliban: Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (2000) became a bestseller after 9/11 when people the world over wanted to understand who the Taliban, whom the Americans were bombing out of power in Afghanistan, really were. This book too is about the same concerns. Indeed, it is a sequel to the first book which warns the world about the consequences of ignoring a volatile region of the world.
In the first few chapters the author tells us briefly about the history of Central Asia. This account is based on published secondary sources, as introductions generally are, but has the merit of putting the region in a historical perspective. Chapter 3 is about Islam and how Soviet policies created an ‘official’ and an ‘underground’ Islam. It seems that Russia’s monumental folly, the war is Afghanistan, changed the nature of Islam in that region. Whereas earlier this was a land of sufi (mystic) Islam with much tolerance for variations in belief, after the war it became a hotbed for the Wahabi and Deobandi sub-sects of Sunni Islam. The former owed its origins to Saudi Arabia and was also disseminated on the strength of Saudi petro-dollars. The latter belief come from Pakistan. Both were brought in by the fighters who came from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan or were trained in Pakistani madrassas.
In December 1991 independence was thrust upon the ex-Communist leaders of Central Asian states. These states had been totally dependent on Moscow and now they had no time to create institutions of their own. Most of their leaders, threatened with the unknown, chose to clamp down in the time-honoured dictatorial ways of Stalinism they had grown up with. These methods and reactions to them is the subject of Chapter 4 which has sections on Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkemenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Briefly, Kazakhstan, which has vast resources, is ruled by President Nursultan Nazarbayov. He is authoritarian and corrupt and living standards are going down. As a reaction to things young people are joining the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and the less militant Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT). In Krygyzstan Askar Akayev ruled initially through the adoption of IMF programmes and the privatization of state-owned businesses and land. As debt mounted, hunger and poverty grew, and Akayev too turned to authoritarian measures. In Turkmenistan President Saparmurad Niyazov has fostered a personality cult such as was seen in Maoist China, North Korea or Stalinist Svoiet Union. The opposition is in exile but militant Islam is not in evidence as it is elsewhere. It is in Uzbekistan that militant Islam is really active. The Fergana Valley (Mughal King Babar’s home) is the centre of such movements. President Islam Karimov’s record for human rights violation is abysmal. It was because he crushed the moderate opposition that religious extremism became the only alternative for opponents. The IMU operates from here and raids other republics. Tajikistan is different from the other republics as it is Persian-speaking whereas the other states are all Turkish-speaking. It was devastated by a civil war (1992-1997) but now has a coalition government headed by Emomali Rahmanov’s Peoples’ Democratic Party. Unfortunately, it too is suffering an economic crisis.
Ahmed Rashid’s most important contribution is to provide much first hand information about the Islamic militant movements in this part of the world. He tells us that the Islamic Renaissance Party, the one which fought against the government in Tajikistan, is based on indigenous understandings of Islam rather than imported beliefs associated with Wahabism and Deobandi sectarianism though it di dhave elements of the latter because of its pioneer Mullah Rustamov. The Islamic revival in Tajikistan was fast and widespread and, furthermore, it was linked with Tajik nationalism. Its leader, Mullah Rustamov, was called “Hindustani” as he studied at Deoband and opened madrassahs in the 1970s. He was imprisoned in Siberia where he died in 1989. His legacy, carried on by Sayed Abdullah Nuri and Sharif Himmatzada, lived on.
The author devotes two chapters to the description of the two major Islamic movements: Hizb ut-Tahrir (chapter 6) and IMU (chapter 7). Both aim to create an Islamic state but the Hizb is not yet militant. However, it is growing fast because of an aggressive propaganda campaign using modern media. It was founded in Saudi Arabia and Jordan in 1953 by Sheikh Taqiuddin an-Nabhani Filastyni. The present leader, Sheikh Zaloom, also a Palestinian has also written many pamphlets and books and the middle classes are reading them.
The Islamic Movement for Uzbekistan began in Fergana Valley a few months before independence. Initially the leader was Tohir Asdouhalilovitch Yuldeshev, a college dropout. Later, the movement was led by Juma Namangani, a charismatic guerrilla leader who had served in the Soviet army in 1987 in Afghanistan. The aim of the IMU is to set up an Islamic government and, being militant, it raids other countries and takes hostages in its ongoing battle with the government. The government of Karimov indulges in widespread repression torturing IMU members and creating anger which creates more militancy.
The chapter on ‘Central Asia and Its Neighbours’ (chapter 10) repeats some of the information in the earlier books but this is inevitable considering that the historical content would not be clear without it. While Russia, Turkey and the United States want to extend their influence it is Pakistan’s role which most concerns readers in this country. The author tells that the IMU, the HT and Chechen rebes have all sent their young men to study in Pakistan and the ISI, until recently, has been supporting radical Islamic groups in a bid to spread the war in Kashmir and put India under pressure. This policy, however, is being reversed but it has already radicalized Pakistan’s own religious movements.
One major lesson which emerges from the study is that misgovernment, repression and poverty create militant resistance. It may take the form of Marxist guerrillas or Islamic militants in different contexts but both fight, in their perception, against injustice and oppression. They are, of course, totally convinced that they are fighting for their ideology but many, possibly most, of them joined the fight because of the anger generated by awful living conditions, open injustice and brutal oppression. If Pakistan is to control militancy, it must first reduce ignorance and poverty and give justice to all its citizens.
Ahmed Rashid’s outstanding merit as a researcher is that he does a lot of field work. He has travelled extensively in Central Asia and interviewed important figures in the Islamic movements. This is a difficult and dangerous undertaking and Rashid deserves unstinting praise for carrying on such painstaking research. One glaring omission is that the author does not refer to original, unpublished, primary sources in Russian, Turkish or Persian. He does refer to secondary sources and often to newspaper articles, but these are not a substitute for archival sources which must be available. It is also not clear to what extent Ahmed Rashid is competent in the languages in which conversation goes on in these different republics of Central Asia. If he had added a note on translation, linguistic competence and such matters his work would have appeared more professionally satisfactory for those who concern themselves with the methodology of research and the quality of evidence in a scholarly work.
These defects, however, do not detract from the immense value of the author’s research. I believe the book has presented a very readable and credible account of contemporary Central Asia and how the Islamic resistance is fueled by the oppression and economic failure of the regimes in this part of the world. Because of the insights it offers, the book is recommended to scholars, policy makers and the general reader in Pakistan and abroad.