Posted on 06/07/2002 11:03:13 PM PDT by Chal
View: Islamic wars flare on global faults
By George Jonas
From the International Desk
Published 6/7/2002 4:43 PM
TORONTO, June 7 (UPI) -- The 39 people, including 12 children, who died last month in the Russian republic of Dagestan weren't the first victims of Islamist terror in the region. When militants exploded 11 pounds of TNT along the route of a parade commemorating Victory Day over the Nazis in World War II, they were just writing another chapter in the conflict that began with an invasion of the Botlikh region of Dagestan by militants from Chechnya on Aug. 7, 1999.
The leader of the Islamists, Shamil Basayev, vowed at that time to expel the "infidels" form the North Caucasus. By "infidels" he meant non-Muslims. Basayev's forces declared themselves to be the government of "Independent Islamic Dagestan." Since then, Muslim secessionist attempts, coupled with Russia's efforts to eradicate them, claimed thousands of civilian lives in the region.
My reason for raising this just as Russia has become the newest -- junior -- member of NATO is this: The news in the West tends to be dominated by the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The fact is, though, that if Israel didn't exist, our times would still be characterized by clashes between the Islamic and non-Islamic world.
As Professor Bernard Lewis pointed out in his Donner Foundation lecture in Toronto last week, conflicts have been alternately smoldering and raging at Islam's perimeters all over the globe. Some principal flash points have been well covered by the media; some have hardly been noted. Kashmir and Kosovo are examples of the former; Dagestan and the Chinese province of Xinjiang are examples of the latter.
Few people are unaware of the conflict between Pakistan and India over Kashmir - not surprisingly, since the clash is threatening to erupt in the first thermonuclear, or hydrogen bomb, war in history. The August 1945 explosions over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, devastating as they were, were "only" atomic fission attacks, not the infinitely more devastating thermonuclear fusion detonations of hydrogen bombs.
Muslim ambitions in the Balkans, whether for autonomy or for dominance, have been fully covered by the media - again, not surprisingly, since they have been supported by the West, not just diplomatically but militarily. NATO ended up going to war in the Balkans, first to secure Muslim Bosnia's desire for independence, then Muslim Kosovo's desire for secession, or perhaps union with Muslim Albania.
Far less has been written about Dagestan, or Xinjiang, or Indonesia's North Maluku and Central Sulawesi regions. In Indonesia scores of Christians were killed by Laskar Jihad, an Indonesian Islamist movement, last year. In the village of Lata-Lata, for instance, 1,300 Christians were held hostage and given the choice of conversion to Islam or death. Though Lata-Lata's Christians were rescued after 18 months, many others were not so lucky.
Xinjiang in northern China is at one end of an Islamic continuum that extends northwest into Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and eventually the North Caucasus, and southwest into Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, and ultimately the Middle East. The total Muslim population of Xinjiang is about 35 million, of whom some five million are Uighurs, also known as Taranchis or Kashgarliks. Some Uighurs had come under the sway of militant Islam. According to China, Uighur separatists have been responsible for 200 violent incidents in the last 11 years.
Dagestan, a poor region of the Russian Federation, is at the other end of the Islamic continuum. It neighbors Chechnya. Its population of about 2 million people, mainly Muslims, belong to more than 30 different indigenous ethnic groups, including Chechens, Laks, Avars and Dargins. They speak 27 different languages. Dagestan's backwardness and tribal diversity are naturally troubled waters for Islamic militants to fish in.
This, by the way, is only to describe the Islamist impulse, not to fault it. Nations require organizing principles. Such principles are readily provided by shared ethnicity, culture, and language in some regions, but not in others. Their absence usually calls for a substitute, such as a shared dynasty, ideology, or religion. The collapse of the Soviet organizing principle in multi-ethnic regions of Russia created a vacuum for Islam to fill. Islam cannot be faulted for doing so, only for blowing up civilians, including women and children, in the process.
The point is, the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis is not the cause of the clash between the Islamic and non-Islamic world. It is merely a flashpoint on a long front that extends from the Black Sea to the Altai mountains, and from Kashmir to Kosovo. Though this larger battle dares not speak its name, it will probably define the coming period, just as the previous period was defined by a clash between Nazi- or Soviet-type systems and the free world. The evil empire hasn't vanished, only changed its address.
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George Jonas is a regular columnist for the National Post in Ottawa, where this column first ran. It is reprinted by permission.
Copyright © 2002 United Press International
The 9/11 Atta cell was organized, financed and recruited from Bosnian/Balkans jihadist. IMHO our nation's past support for Islamic rebels in the Balkans under Clinton somehow became our Achilles heel.
Since so many Democrats and some (few) Republicans have been tainted by support of the Bosnians and Albanians we can doubt that these important men would allow their reputations and careers to suffer if such a thing was widely published in an American media that also cheered on the Islamic warriors of the Balkans.
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