The Resurgence of Central Asia Islam or Nationalism? By Ahmad Rashid. London, UK: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Abstract

As Boris Yeltsin's ruthless suppression of Chechnya's struggle for
independence becomes one more item in a series of turbulent and bloody
events involving Russia and some of the republics of the former Soviet
union and the former Yugoslavia, Ahmad Rashid's The Resurgence of
Central Asia: Islam or Nationalism grows in significance for students of
that region. The author is a Pakistani journalist with a vast knowledge of
the area. He has utilized effectively his many travels to the region in developing
an authoritative history of Central Asia.
Rashid shifts gears back and forth in history quite effectively in this
study to make his points. For instance, in the first chapter he notes that
"much of the world's ancient history originated in Central Asia, for it was
the birthplace of the great warrior tribes that conquered Russia, India, and
China" (p. 8). Also note his following observation: "Central Asia has
always been different At the heart of Central Asia is not the story of princes
and their courts, but the story of the nomad and his horse" (p. 9). In the
same chapter, he quotes a Turkoman foreign ministry official's concern,
expressed to him in the aftermath of the Soviet Union's implosion to the
effect that "the future is extremely bleak. The West will help Russia and
other Slav republics to survive, but who will help us?" (p. 4). This book is
replete with such examples. The first chapter contains a condensed version
of the " great game" between the two colonial powers of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries: Russia and Britain.
Russia underwent two major revolutions in the twentieth century: one
in 1917 and the second in 1991. The first revolution, bloody as it was, ...