Terrorists Then and Now

By Odil Ruzaliev December 2 Terrorism is not a new phenomenon. Every period in the history saw its terrorists even though they are judged and labeled today differently. What is called struggle for national liberation in most history books today was called terrorism or brigandage by the ruling regimes of the past. Those who have been freedom fighters for their countries and people were labeled as "terrorists" by those whom they fought against. Terrorists of yesterday and today, of then and now are not the same. But as the globalization process has taken deeper roots in the world and forms of threats have been globalized, actions and efforts of many countries have taken collective forms rather than individual as in the historic past with labeling becoming collective too. If, for example, Afghan Mujaheddin were freedom fighters for the West and savage guerillas for the Soviet bloc, today terrorists from al-Qaeda are labeled as terrorists almost everywhere in the world. As the state-building process has come to its conclusion in the world, the globalization and global collectivism have made national liberation movements irrelevant and erased the distinction and clear line between terrorism and struggle for national liberation. What has been considered as a struggle for national liberation in Chinese Xinjiang province by local Uyghurs has to be called "terrorism" today under the pressure from the economically growing China and from the necessity to have its political support in the war on terror. Even though Uyghurs in Western China are only trying to preserve their national and cultural identity and to get rid of a Communist influence, something that only decades ago, the United States and the rest of the Western bloc would be happy to accomplish. Uyghurs are just following the footsteps of their Central Asian brethren who, aided by Britain and Imperial Russia, tried to drive the Communist Bolsheviks from their lands in 1920s and it was only Bolsheviks who then called them "Basmachis" - brigands or terrorists. To some people in Iraq today the Mahdi Army may be freedom fighters struggling against a foreign military force. In Central Asia in the 1920s Bolsheviks too freed the people of Turkestan from the Czar's rule and that of the local feudalists like the vicious Emir of Bukhara, but then incorporated them into their new socialist empire. Locals, who at first welcomed the Bolsheviks (mostly Russian), turned against them when the latter did not grant them self-determination as was promised to occur following the Revolution. Even though the United States does not pursue a colonialist policy in Iraq today, some Iraqis do not believe Americans will leave their country anytime soon and that their goal is more than just freeing the Iraqis from the tyranny. The situation in Central Asia worsened when in 1918 a short-lived Autonomous Turkestan with its capital in Kokand was crushed by the Red Army and the city's inhabitants were brutally massacred. The policy of collectivization hit the Muslims of Turkestan hard in a place where agriculture and livestock-breeding were the main sources of income. The Bolsheviks nationalized their lands and those of the land owners forcing them to surrender their stocks of cotton and confiscating their domestic animals. At least 900,000 people died in the resulting famine. Within weeks of the Kokand massacre, Basmachi groups appeared in almost every town and village in the surrounding area. Even moderately viewed locals soon joined this Muslim resistance movement which the Russians called basmachestvo (brigandage) which the fighters never referred to themselves as. Luckily for the United States, unlike the Bolsheviks in Central Asia, it did not crush Iraqis' aspiration for a free country and did not appropriate their oil industry as some have suggested they would do. The scheduled hand-over of the power over to Iraq's Provisional Government took place even ahead of schedule. For more than a decade Basmachis fought the foreign "Bolshevik infidels" as well as those locals who supported Moscow's rule and served in the new Turkestan Soviet Socialist Autonomous Republic. Home to at least five large ethnic groups, this republic did not live long: as part of Stalin's national delimitation plan Turkestan was divided into five Soviet Socialist republics between 1924 and 1929. The borders were not drawn along ethnic lines in order to prevent them from seceding from the Soviet Union. As a result, today the five independent states - Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan - are still reaping the fruits of Stalin's policy, constantly quarrelling over border lines and numerous enclaves. Even though each major ethnic group in Turkestan got their own piece of land and had their own local leader and parliament, it was all nominal and symbolic since all the major decisions were still made in Moscow and local leaders were appointed by party bosses in Moscow. Iraq too is a multi-ethnic country in which each group wants to keep the best and largest portion of the pie. Kurds want their own state. Some Shias wouldn't mind becoming part of Iran and traditionally dominant Sunnis want to retain their power. Even with the elections in Iraq in 2005 it is not known how much influence the U.S. Embassy or Washington will have on Iraq's internal politics since freedom from Saddam cost so much of American money. What is interesting is that back then in Central Asia, like in Iraq now, Islamist resistance carried more a religious than national character. They too had foreign fighters joining them for an Islamist cause and helping them slay local Bolshevik leaders and their families, beheading them, poisoning water wells, looting, and carrying out other "terrorist" activities like ambushes and sabotage. One of the most famous foreign fighters was Enver Pasha, former minister of war of Turkey who had been blamed for the Turks' defeat in World War One but escaped the prosecution and went to Berlin, Moscow and then to Central Asia in order to unite its Muslims against the Bolsheviks and create a great new Pan-Turkic Empire, stretching from Constantinople in the west to Chinese Turkestan and Mongolia in the east. Pasha, the Osama bin Laden of his period, too had contacts with the enemy's leader - Vladimir Lenin who wanted to put the Turkish in charge of the Red Army in Turkestan. But Enver Pasha switched sides and fought the Bolsheviks for two years before he was killed during battle. Basmachis, like many present-day Islamist militant groups, did not have a center or a core, but acted independently. The movement was divided by rivalry, distrust between different groups and leaders because of the conflict of interests and tribal differences. Some groups wanted a single Islamic state, others had a nationalistic agenda and yet others were a mixture of common thugs, rabble-rousers and those deprived of their property by the Bolsheviks. Basmachis, like militants in Iraq today, Afghan Mujaheddin during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and Chechens in Chechnya until 1999-2000, were difficult to fight with because they enjoyed local support, acted like normal civilians during the day and resisted mostly at night and knew the area very well. Moreover they were fighting the forces of a different faith on their own soil and therefore the notions of Islam and Freedom were decisive consolidating factors. It took the Bolsheviks a little more than a decade to crush the resistance and force the Basmachis to flee to Afghanistan and elsewhere. The Bolsheviks were successful for several reasons. First, they were ruthless, even destroying mosques where Basmachis would try to find the refuge. Second, the Red Army also incorporated locals and made them fight so that the struggle against the resistance would not be seen by locals as a war against Islam. Third, because most Muslim nations were Western colonies at that time, Basmachis could not attract their attention and receive support from them. Today the United States is in a completely different situation with the major difference being the power of media and imagery restraining the U.S. military from being ruthless, even if they wanted to, and keeping it under the world's watch, but at the same time helping the Islamists spread their message and generate worldwide support for their cause. Even though some Islamist groups do not have any relationships with al-Qaeda, they act out of solidarity with al-Qaeda's cause and the media plays a large role in that. Today Central Asians view Basmachis as freedom-fighters and new history books do not refer to them as Basmachis. However what was fighting for freedom then is considered terrorism today. In Western China, Uyghurs have lost their hopes for freedom. Fighting against Han oppression is considered terrorism. But not only Basmachis were the terrorists of yesterday. Early Bolsheviks at the start of their campaign and their 19th century predecessors like Decembrists and members of the Narodnaya Volya group also were viewed as terrorists by the Czar administration. In a way they resemble today's Islamist terrorists. They assassinated Imperial officials, blew up government offices and terrorized rich societies. Lenin's brother, Alexander Ulyanov, was directly involved in a failed 1887 plot to assassinate Czar Alexander III and was hanged. Lenin then said: "We will take a different path" and changed the tactics that led to the October Revolution. Bin Laden and al-Qaeda too have recently changed their tactics focusing on undermining and overthrowing the Royal Family in Saudi Arabia and targeting police officials and offices and foreigners inside the country, forcing the United States to put extra pressure on the monarchy. Like Islamist terrorists today, the Bolsheviks and their predecessors too had a grandiose plan. While Bolsheviks wanted to establish socialism in the world through World Revolution, Islamists want an Islamic Caliphate uniting all the Muslims of the world through a global jihad. Terrorism of today and yesterday does have resemblance. But what has changed is the interpretation of the history and globalization of the threat of terrorism and consolidation of efforts to fight it. Decades later Basmachis turned into freedom fighters, freedom fighters in Afghanistan into global terrorists; Communism was as a dangerous phenomenon to the West as terrorism today. Will the present-day Islamist terrorists, Osama bin Laden or Muqtada al-Sadr be viewed as freedom fighters a hundred years from now by Afghans or Iraqis? Only time will tell.