Author: Swapan Dasgupta
Publication: India Today
Date: February 25, 2002
Every book awaits its big moment.
Ahmed Rashid's Taliban began life as a well-researched study on one of
the most obscure and forbidding corners of the world-on a par with, say,
Eritrea, Western Sahara and Myanmar-and was catapulted into the top of
The New York Times bestsellers list by the events of September 11. Now,
with the spectre of Islamism dominating the global agenda, this intrepid
Pakistani journalist has returned with a study of an equally forbidding
regime.
In the early 20th century, Central
Asia captivated Lord Curzon and a handful of crotchety old Russophobes
in London's clubland. Two years ago, a mainstream publisher would think
many times before putting his money on a book about countries that every
diplomat regarded as good places to avoid. Post September 11, Uzbekistan,
Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan have muscled their
way back to the geopolitical centre as the new growth areas of jehad. And,
like with Taliban, Rashid is riding the crest of the rediscovery.
It is a fascinating story Rashid
has told with lucidity, richness of detail and fullness of understanding.
The former Soviet republics were at the receiving end of the worst form
of Stalinist excesses. Between their incorporation into the Soviet Union
and their re-emergence as independent republics, they experienced the near-total
destruction of a traditional way of life, ethnic engineering, cartographic
vandalism and the outlawing of faith. When the Soviet Union collapsed in
1991, the long-suppressed energies began finding political expression despite
the persistence of old-style Stalinist regimes-Turkmenistan has a president
who is a living reincarnation of Albania's Enver Hoxha. With the entry
into the market economy proving extremely troubled-notwithstanding the
surfeit of natural resources-popular disaffection found an easy outlet
in Islamic revivalism. From the rediscovery of religion to the emergence
of a jehadi opposition was an instinctive step.
At the centre of the turmoil is
Uzbekistan where President Islam Karimov has been waging a difficult war
against the Wahabist Hizb-ut-Tahrir (HuT) and the pro-Taliban Islamic Movement
of Uzbekistan (IMU). Led by the charismatic Juma Namangani-a Mullah Omar-like
figure who was killed in Mazar-e-Sharif last year-and Tohir Yuldeshev,
the IMU used the safe haven of Taliban Afghanistan to harass the Karimov
regime and preach jehad. And like other jehadi movements, the IMU has used
the network of illegal madarsas inspired by the Deobandi ideology, newly
created mosques, profits from drug trade, extortion and financial aid from
Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to sustain itself.
After the fall of the Taliban and
the deaths of many Central Asian jehadis in the battles for Kunduz and
Mazar-e-Sharif, the immediate jehadi threat has receded. However, it will
take the inevitable diversion of international attention before the problem
resurfaces. Rashid believes that the totalitarianism of the Central Asian
rulers and their record of brutal incompetence has made jehad attractive.
He argues for a greater degree of power sharing between the ex-communists
and the moderate Islamists, as has happened in Tajikistan. He presses his
case by suggesting an extension of the scope of jehad-from the lesser jehad
of political activism to the greater jehad of moral discipline and finding
God within.
It sounds appealing. But the problem
is that the "greater" jehad has invariably been subsumed by the "lesser"
one. Positing any jehad as a humane politico-theological solution for the
Islamic world is about as ridiculous as suggesting that the Final Solution
is actually something as innocuous as the answer to an algebraic riddle.
Afghanistan has shown that the alternative to jehad isn't liberal angst
but superior might coupled with choking supply lines. Liberal democracy
in the region is a good idea that must wait another age.
