HVK Archives: The Infidel is rising again in Mother Russia
The Infidel is rising again in Mother Russia - The Economic Times
Posted By HVK Editor (hvk@hindunet.org)
Fri, 4 Oct 1996 18:18:10 -0500 (CDT)
The Infidel is rising again in Mother Russia
By Alan Philps in Moscow
RUSSIAN history appears to have gone into reverse,
with the country's Islamic foes - most recently Afghanistan's
Taliban - winning back territory conquered by Tsars and
communism.
For centuries the Russians held the Turks, Tartars and
marauding Central Asian nomads at bay, saving, as they saw it,
Christian Europe from the barbarians. Then they drove them
back, empire-building on the way. Many Russians still portray
themselves as civilisation's last bastion against the Muslim
threat. But for a nation always paranoid about encirclement,
last week's bloody scenes in Kabul were alarming.
In 1979, the Kremlin sent troops into Afghanistan to try to
keep that country a loyal ally. On Friday the Taliban, most
militant of the country's Islamic factions, hanged the man whom
the Russians left in charge when they withdrew, the former
secret police chief Najibullah.
"This was a lynching," said Mikhail Gorbachev, the former
Soviet leader, who took the decision to pull Soviet troops out
of the mess they had helped to create.
Russians have been shocked at the imposition of a rough kind of
Islamic justice in Afghanistan and also in Chechnya by the
rebels. Most Russians were probably behind the retired
paratroop general, Alexander Lebed, when he [6]signed a truce
with the Chechen separatist rebels at the end of August. But
when television began to broadcast pictures of Islamic justice
being handed out in Grozny - once a majority Russian city - the
tide of opinion started to change.
"Islam has come to our house," commented the newspaper
Moskovsky Komsomolets. How long would it take for Islamic
prayers to move from Grozny to Red Square in the heart of
Moscow?
Russian nationalists are asking which will be the next domino.
They already see Chechnya - if the promised Russian withdrawal
ever takes place - becoming a Turkish satellite. And few
ordinary Russians appreciate the distinction between supposedly
secular Turkey and its militant Islamic neighbours.
'Ahmad Shah Massod could take the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, in two days and
there would not be much the Russians could do about it'
Russia is already deeply involved in defending the government
in Tajikistan, almost 2,000 miles from Moscow, with thousands
of border guards deployed along the Pyandzh river to stop the
rebels crossing from northern Afghanistan. Despite the
distance, there are few politicians in Moscow who do not see
Tajikistan as Russia's strategic frontier.
As if to underline the scale of the problem, up to 300 Islamic
fighters have just tried to push into Tajikistan from
Afghanistan for a second day running, leading to heavy clashes
with border guards, military officials said yesterday.
The Taliban are unlikely to appear soon in the Russians'
sights: they are Pashtuns, and have now conquered all their
tribal territories, plus the capital. The north is likely to
remain the fief of the ousted president, Burhanuddin Rabbani,
and his military chief, Ahmad Shah Masood, both of whom are
ethnic Tajiks - a people akin to the Persians who straddle the
border.
The Russians fear that, if Mr Rabbani is kept out of Kabul, he
will give more of his attention to the Tajikistan guerrilla
conflict, where for the moment the Russian-backed government
seems to be able to hold the line. "Ahmad Shah Massod could
take the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, in two days and there would
not be much the Russians could do about it," said Andrei
Piontkowsky, director of the Moscow Strategic Studies Centre.
For the moment the Russians have on their side the legacy of 70
years of communist atheism, which has made most Muslims in the
former Soviet Union unable to see Islam as a driving political
force. But mosques and madrasahs are springing up everywhere,
and a new generation is growing up. In Uzbekistan, mullahs who
preach too virulent a form of Islam are going underground,
providing an enticing forbidden fruit for youth that has
nothing else to believe in.
Dmitry Donskoy, Ivan the Terrible, Suvorov - the commanders who
defeated the Mongol and Muslim hordes remain Russian heroes to
this day. But many Russian nationalists would argue that these
historical figures never finished the job. And, if today's
generals are ever to complete it, they will be hoping for
understanding from the West, threatened by Islam as much as
Moscow.
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