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larsdhhedbor's review against another edition
4.0
This was a fascinating book for me, and not just because I've hosted a high school exchange student from the region. It clearly lays out who the main actors are, and identifies which ones are radical jihadis, versus those groups which take political action instead to work toward their religiously-inspired goals.
One of the more interesting insights I gained in the course of reading this is just how chaotic the dissolution of the Soviet Union was for the former SSRs. As the author notes, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus worked out how they might transition from a single state into separate nations under the CIS banner, but never bothered to consult with the southern SSRs.
These folks basically woke up one fine day and learned from the news that they were now independent nations, and had just lost the subsidies and easy market access that had been part of the Soviet package. With borders carved up by Stalin to deliberately undermine any ethnic cohesion they might have had (as well as massive placements of ethnic Russians), these new countries all basically failed to make a transition to functioning statehood... but they all failed in different, and interesting ways.
Of course, the book's coverage ends even before the peaceful revolution in Kyrgyzstan, or the invasion of Iraq, so there is much more that one needs to learn in order to be current on the state of Islamic influence and intent in Central Asia. This book, however, serves as a solid foundation from which to launch that study. Since this region is potentially the next powder keg in the conflict between the radical, nihilistic jihadis and the civilized world, it's worthy of study.
One of the more interesting insights I gained in the course of reading this is just how chaotic the dissolution of the Soviet Union was for the former SSRs. As the author notes, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus worked out how they might transition from a single state into separate nations under the CIS banner, but never bothered to consult with the southern SSRs.
These folks basically woke up one fine day and learned from the news that they were now independent nations, and had just lost the subsidies and easy market access that had been part of the Soviet package. With borders carved up by Stalin to deliberately undermine any ethnic cohesion they might have had (as well as massive placements of ethnic Russians), these new countries all basically failed to make a transition to functioning statehood... but they all failed in different, and interesting ways.
Of course, the book's coverage ends even before the peaceful revolution in Kyrgyzstan, or the invasion of Iraq, so there is much more that one needs to learn in order to be current on the state of Islamic influence and intent in Central Asia. This book, however, serves as a solid foundation from which to launch that study. Since this region is potentially the next powder keg in the conflict between the radical, nihilistic jihadis and the civilized world, it's worthy of study.
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