How to Begin to Understand Violent Political Movements:
Part I
The issue of terrorist attacks on
America has been politically so sensitive that most commentators have simply
wrapped themselves in the flag and closed their eyes and ears.
Even in fairy tales, ostriches were
never saved by burying their heads in the sand. It is not a good defensive
posture. Hopefully, real-life Americans won’t
behave like make-believe ostriches. If we want to be safe rather than sorry in
the dangerous world we now inhabit, we need to be clear headed, logical and
informed. Those characteristics do not
arise from anger or impulsiveness. They can arise only from sober assessment of
causes and intelligent evaluation of possible actions. Achieving them has become ever more necessary
because we face an uncertain and increasingly complex future.
So in this first of two essays I will put together and consider what motivates
terrorists, what they remember and what we have done; then in Part 2 I look at what
we can do and what we cannot do to achieve what I have called
“affordable world security.
I begin with a simple fact of human
nature: human beings, like even puny and
ill-armed animals, strike out when they perceive an attack or threat to their psychological, cultural or
physical existence. Protecting what
Freud called the “ego,” the intrinsic sense of being, is the ultimate form of
self defense. Whether the attack is real or not, intended or accidental, it is perception that triggers and shapes the
response. The key word is
“perceive.”
Legal or moral justification, while usually vigorously
proclaimed, does not play a key initial role in determination of action. Justification is usually claimed by both sides. It is usually equivocal and can be “proven” only
by a selective gathering of events. That
selection, naturally, is governed by the mindset of each side. Moreover, it is time sensitive: yesterday’s
attack may justify today’s response, but what about events that occurred the
day before yesterday? The clock starts
at different points for each party and the flow of events cannot be “cherry
picked,” except for propaganda purposes.
If we wish to understand – not to condone but to understand – we need
at least temporarily to put aside the issues of guilt and justification. Rather, we need to attempt to see whole
patterns including the views of our opponents
This is not a simple procedure and is not undertaken with slogans in a
sound byte. So, how to do it?
My answer is analogous to the procedure of physicians in their attempt
to understand an illness – taking a case history. That case history, by definition, cannot be
just the events of the present or the immediate past. It requires digging into what I have called
“deep history.” Only if the past is
“squeezed” to bring out angers, hopes, fears and perceptions from their origins
and through their mutations can a sensible approach be made to designing successful
policies to deal with the present. And the
future. Otherwise, we are likely to make
snap judgments that may exacerbate rather than solve the problem. That, I will argue, is what we are now doing
with insurgency, guerrilla warfare and terrorism.
The first step in moving toward understanding may be the hardest: to understand , we need to credit the fact
that our opponents believe in the rightness of their cause, just as we believe
in ours. It is puerile to ascribe to
them trivial or inappropriate motivations.
The second step is to inform ourselves. As the great Chinese
strategist Sun Tzu wrote nearly three thousand years ago, “Know yourself. Know your enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories.” Despite his admonition, even such statesmen
as Napoleon (in the Spanish guerrilla war against the French) and Churchill (in
the Greek guerrilla war against the Germans first and then the British)
denigrated their opponents. As Churchill said of the Andartes, they were just “miserable Greek banditti.” Churchill got
away with his blindness because America baled out Britain’s Greek policy with
the Truman Doctrine. Napoleon was not so lucky. He lamented from his exile, that the Spanish
“little war,” la guerrilla, “destroyed me…All the circumstances of my
disasters are bound up in that fatal knot.”
Too late, Napoleon began to understand that the Spanish guerrillas were
motivated by ideas similar to those that gave his own forces, and his own
people, their unity and power.
Ideas mattered then. Impelled by them, farmers became guerrillas. Similar ideas today are turning tribesmen, farmers,
fishermen, religious students, teachers, shopkeepers and even lawyers into guerrillas,
terrorists and suicide bombers. So what
are the ideas?
The ideas that matter today – usually grouped under the headings of
nationalism and religion -- have long
pedigrees. They began to take shape at
the dawn of animal life on Earth. How this happened is now a fairly well-known
story, but it was not a widely known story at the beginning of my own academic
career and still may not be entirely familiar; so at the risk of duplication,
allow me to touch on the main points.
To live in what Seventeenth and Eighteenth century philosophers -- Hobbes,
Locke, Montesquieu and Rousseau -- called “the state of nature,” early humans had
to secure access to sources of food and water.
So little groves of fruit and nut trees and patches of edible roots and
legumes around a spring or pond became miniscule “states.” Among our remote ancestors, such “states” were no larger than a day’s walk across.
Living in them were miniature “nations,” usually composed of less than
a hundred individuals whose survival depended on their defending, feeding and
caring for one another. The tie that bound them together was kinship. But, because
kinship erodes as generations pass, clans tended to sunder and move apart. Over about two million years, this process of
continuous alienation populated the planet.
Alienation is deeply “programmed” in all of us.
Then, about ten thousand years ago, people found ways to intensify
their sources of food and to improve their means of collecting it. Doing
so enabled them to gather together in unprecedented numbers. Hunters and gatherers became herders and
farmers. Having more, they were less able
to scatter. Little bands settled into
villages that grew into towns and then into cities. As they settled together and grew more
numerous, kinship no longer was
immediately evident and no longer provided a satisfactory means of defining
their relationship to one another.
We don’t know exactly how it happened, but roughly five thousand years
ago, in various parts of the world, peoples independently discovered other
sources of affinity. They became aware
that even those they no longer
recognized.as cousins spoke in the same way, dressed in a similar fashion, ate the same foods – and did not eat other
foods – and accepted as suitable shared customs and beliefs. While they may still have thought of one
another as somehow kindred, they began to enlarge that concept into the
combination of custom and locality,
Thus, they began to think of neighbors as surrogate kinsmen. As they grew closer together, they came to
regard themselves as “the people” and to regard aliens as enemies or as virtually
“non-people.”[1] Fear of the foreigner is deeply ingrained in us.
As I have argued, perhaps the single most compelling force in the
evolution of our social, political, commercial and military institutions has
been the tension inherent in having to live contiguous to those who do not
share “our” customs: that is, the
dilemma of being simultaneously both neighbors and strangers.[2]
“Imprinted,” generation after generation, century after century of
warfare, with fear of foreigners, and despite sporadic and feeble attempts to
achieve a sense of a common humanity, we still have trouble comprehending those
whom we regard as “not us.” This worldview is obvious in all our foreign relations
and in many aspects of our domestic affairs.
It is crucial in trying to reach an understanding of what I have called
violent politics.[3] So how are we doing in that quest?
* * *
Most of the books and articles I have read and practically all of the discussions I have
heard, on insurgency, guerrilla warfare, terrorism and counterinsurgency, skip lightly over motivation to portray events.
Many seem almost to revel in the ugliness of the conflict. This
obviously sells books but hardly enlightens us.
While individual reporters are often very good at describing events, they
rarely offer much help in guiding us to an understanding of causes. The
media does not have much time for analysis.
But their reports at least make clear that the situation we face has not
improved and in many aspects is getting more dangerous. What we read in the
press is not much improved by the advice offered to governments by “think
tanks.” Not surprisingly, the available
reportage and advice has led to a dead end.
We, the French, the British, the Russians reached that dead end in
Afghanistan. The Chinese in Tibet and Central Asia are also
approaching it.
That is where the governments of all the major powers now find themselves. Despite huge expenditures of blood and money,
the rich “North” has not been successful in subduing conflict in the poor
“South.” Nor do intelligence and
security services believe we can prevent attacks from the “South” on our own
homeland. The sequence appears unending: insurgents hit; dominant powers respond; they
respond; we respond; they re-respond… And warfare becomes not only ever-lasting
but ever more brutal and ugly.
In these circumstances, trying to
suppress guerrilla warfare and terrorism by using lethal force has proved to
have an effect similar to trying to
douse a fire with gasoline. So what are the circumstances? What are Jomini’s “wars
of opinion.”
A careful reading of history
shows that what Jomini called wars of opinion are actions that whole societies come
to believe aim at destroying not only their governments and institutions – what
is now called “regime change” -- but also their way of life and beliefs.
Feeling embattled, both sides
believe themselves to be the victims; neither side is willing to understand,
much less to excuse, the other. “Common
ground” is demarcated by fear and
hatred. “War” is transmuted from an issue -- one partly governed by law -- between governments into a deeper, unbridled, even
primordial conflict among peoples. And, as incident follows horrifying incident,
this “opinion” comes to be shared ever more widely by both insurgents and
counterinsurgents. Each side, virtually
each person, comes to think of his
opponent as intrinsically evil and himself as justified in taking any action,
adopting any tactic, no matter how brutal or indiscriminate that is judged to
be effective.
That cycle of hate, as I will illustrate is
where we are today in the clash between “us,” the established nation-states of
the “North, ” and the Muslim insurgents of the “South.”[5]
This
conflict is not solely a matter of contemporary “opinion.” Rather there are
deep and still vivid – indeed constantly renewed -- memories that shape actions
and beliefs today. As with the
physician’s case history, knowing and understanding them is crucial to our
interpretation of our current dilemma and our possible choices of what to do
about it. To elucidate them, I will touch on key elements in our past
relationship that form the backdrop to the present. I begin where both insurgents and counterinsurgents
begin, with religion.
Islam
is the third and most recently announced of the great monotheistic
religions. Each religion claims a direct
and essentially unique relationship to the Divinity, but to a secular
historian, the relationships among the three are obvious. Judaism and Islam are particularly close and
share many beliefs and customs. As the
Quran defines Islam, it is “the religion of Abraham” from whose “true faith”
Muslims believe the Jews strayed; to the
contrary, Jews have always regarded Islam as an imperfect attempt to copy
Judaism. Islam and Christianity are less
similar. Islam views Jesus as a prophet with a special relationship to God but holds
that treating Jesus as “the son of God” or as a god himself is to commit the
mortal sin of polytheism (Arabic: shirk).
As viewed by the Christian Church Muslim
denial is sacrilege. Even worse in
Christian eyes was Judaism’s total rejection of Jesus. So, despite or even because of their
similarities, the three religions regarded one another as perversions. Each saw
the very existence of the others as a sin against the true God-ordained faith
which it alone held.
The
attitude of each was partly shaped by geography and history. Christian Byzantium (East Rome) was the
established world power defending against Islam. As the Islamic Caliphate expanded,
conquering much of Byzantine empire and all of the Sasanian Persian empire, it
acquired resident Christian, Zoroastrian and Jewish communities.[6]
Except in the heat of warfare, Islam
incorporated these peoples into its system but left them
free to practice their religions, engage in their distinctive diet and dress, enforce
their own laws and customs and to govern themselves under their own
authorities.[7] Both Christians and Jews generally lived securely
in communities within Muslim states whereas both Jews and Muslims were always
at risk and often persecuted, occasionally driven away or even slaughtered in
Christian states.
Over centuries many Christians
and Jews converted to Islam. That Islam
forcibly converted them is a myth; actually, the Islamic states were keen that
the conquered peoples remain non-Muslim because that status required them to
pay an extra tax. As Persian Zoroastrians converted, they
continued to stress their non-Arab identity by a distinctive interpretation of
Islam, Shiism.[8] (And, as poorer Hindus converted, they
escaped the tyranny of the caste system, exchanging the virtual slavery of being
an “untouchable” (achuta or dalit) for the “brotherhood” (ikhwaniya) that is one of the most
attractive aspects of Islam.) Historically, Islam has been the most tolerant
of the three religions.
Judaism
began, as we know from the Old Testament, as a far more militant and ruthless conqueror
of the non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine.
It offered no means for non-Jews to achieve safety comparable to the
status of protected community in Islam:
its God, Yahweh, authorized the massacre
of all who stood in the way of the Jewish nation. It was the Roman Empire that pacified the
Jewish nation. Breaking out of Israel, Jews
became among the most civilized and cosmopolitan of the Romans. They drew back from militarism and, although they continued to
convert distant peoples in Africa, Asia and Europe, they became politically passive. For that they have paid a terrible
price. It was this tradition of
passivity against which Zionists revolted and returned Judaism to militarism.
Christianity
has been generally intolerant and violent in its relationship with both Jews
and Christians. Christians forced European
Jews into ghettos, made them wear distinctive dress and subjected them to all
sorts of indignities and dangers. The
Crusades began with attacks on Jews resident in Europe. Except in what became Spain,
which was partly Muslim for about 700 years, and areas of southern Italy and
France, Muslims were effectively banned from Europe. Whereas Jews and Christians established
trading posts through the Islamic world,[9] Muslims hardly ever dared visit Europe and until
the rise of the Ottoman empire in the 14th and 15th
centuries none became residents.
Wars between Christians and
Muslims began already in the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad. This was partly because Islam was founded on
the frontier of the great Christian empire of Byzantium. The first Christian-Muslim clash was in 636
AD. Wars have occurred intermittently
ever since. In campaign after
campaign, European Christians fought Spanish, North African, Middle Eastern,
Balkan and Central Asian Muslims.[10] The campaigns of what we think of as the Crusades lasted 176 years -- from 1096 to 1272.
Struggle became endemic in more modern times. And the nature of the conflict was partly transfigured
from religion to imperialism. The record
is both clear and asymmetrical: it was the Christian “North” that attacked the
Muslim “South.” Here briefly are some
of the key events:
* * *
Portugal and Spain continued their moves against the “Moors”
into Africa and then on to India while Russian tsars beginning with Ivan the
Terrible moved south to crush kingdom after Muslim kingdom in Central
Asia..
By the end of the 18th century, the French and the
British had gained overwhelming military, commercial and organizational advantage. For them, as for the Russians, Muslim India
was the ultimate prize. But the road to
India was blocked by Muslim states that had to be subdued. Relatively speaking these states lagged far
behind Europe. Partly blinded by their
vision of their past, the Muslim rulers and their medieval armies almost
literally did not know what hit them. On
the east, Peter the Great and Catherine defeated the horsemen of Asia one after
another. The Russians were matched by the
French on the west. In one of the most
colorful battles of all time, the gloriously dressed and splendidly mounted
Mamluk horsemen of Egypt charged Napoleon’s artillery. They were not only slaughtered but humiliated. That was to be the fate of the Muslims in the
centuries to follow.
In India, Britain first
conquered Bengal and then set about destroying the great Mughal Empire. Already
intent on blocking Russian expansion, the British then pushed toward Central
Asia and the Middle East. They fought Afghan Muslims along the “Northwest
Frontier” for generations; took over and ruled Egypt; defeated the Muslim revivalist movement, the Mahdiyah, in the Sudan; established
hegemony in the Persian Gulf; dominated Iran; and ultimately acquired control over what
became Iraq, Jordan and Palestine. Some
of these conquests were particularly violent:
in Afghanistan, the British killed hundreds of thousands of Afghans (but
lost a whole army in one of its three wars) and in Iraq they wiped out Arab
tribesmen with poison gas,. Only on the
“Northwest Frontier,” was warfare still at least partly a Great Game.
For the Italians, war was no game; in Libya it became
genocide. They tried to wipe out not
only the Islamic revival movement, the Sanusiyah,
but also the entire tribal population. Everywhere, the colonial campaigns
were ugly. “Subduing the natives,” as the
Dutch did in their wars in Indonesia were brutal affairs. They reached the nadir in the Congo where the
Belgians killed between 10 and 15 million Africans – about twice the number of Jews killed by the
Nazis in the Holocaust -- engaged in systematic rape, cut off the hands or feet
of unproductive natives and stripped the Congo of its raw materials.[11]
Meanwhile, the French conquered North, West and Central
Africa, killing hundreds of thousands of Muslims and destroying their social
and religious organizations. They invaded
and brutally suppressed the people of Algeria, stealing their lands. Having invaded Syria, they twice bombarded Damascus
when the Syrians tried to prove that Europeans were wrong that they were “not
yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern
world…” The Covenant of the League of
Nations proclaimed a more polite version of “the White Man’s burden,” the “sacred trust of civilization.” France espoused the words but violated them
in deeds.
.Except for the Philippines, these were not American wars,
but the American role in the slave trade
that bought millions of Africans to America is now being reëvaluated. No one knows much about the enslaved peoples
of Africa, but certainly a large portion
of them were Muslims.
In short, Muslim experience mainly with Europeans but also to a lesser
extent with Americans has been a key element in their attitude toward the white, Christian “North.”
Even if we, the Northerners, choose
to ignore the history of our relationship,
the descendants of the victims will not. Muslims, like Jews,
increasingly probe into and publicize their holocaust. The memory of the “deep past” already plays a significant role in the
growth of Muslim sentiment toward the Christian North. It will play an important role in
international affairs far into the future.[14] Memory
of it is a cause in the growth of Muslim hostility today in such movements as
the Taliban, al-Qaida, various movements of Salafiyah[15] and
more recently, the Islamic State.
But, one may object, that is all so far in the past that it surely can be
put aside. To consider that opinion,
look briefly at the more recent past. What has been the recent relationship of the
Christian “North” and the Muslim “South.”
* * *
.
Dividing history into periods is useful
for analysis, but it is a simplification.
For the vast majority of the “Southern” people there was no new era;
they continued to live as their parents and grandparents had lived. More
rapidly and more nimbly, their rulers often tried to copy the drill, the
uniforms and the weapons of the European invaders. They
thought that if they looked modern, they would be strong.[16] Deeply disturbed by change but growing aware
of their weakness, some religious leaders tried to gain strength by going back
to draw on their heritage.
None of these activities slowed Western penetration. The Industrial Revolution had given the West
irresistible power. Handicraft industries collapsed before cheap imported
goods. Governments became enmeshed in
debt they hardly understood. Food crops
were replaced by cotton for export.
Intermediaries proliferated. Traditional patterns of land ownership were
overturned by changes that converted Indian, Iraqi, Palestinian and Egyptian farmers
into serfs. Even styles in dress changed
so the turban gave way to the Fez. Local authorities from Morocco to Indonesia were
replaced or became puppets of the new, European-imposed order.
Among the small elite, nationalism was
espoused – as it had been in Italy, Greece, Poland, Germany and France – as the
guide to liberty and dignity. It was thought to be the “secret” of Western power. For many younger Arabs, Caucasians and Indian
Muslims, the “Young Turks” became role models. Then, encouraged by the proclamations
of the First and Second World Wars, nationalist movements gained momentum. Those were heady days of manifestos, marches
and the first real political parties. A
new day seemed to have dawned. And, step by step, nationalism itself was
refined toward its apex, secular Baathism.
But, along the way many of those who protested, marched and organized would
become willing agents of the European rulers or their native agents. After what were often sharp lessons of the
danger of speaking truth to power, most leaders quickly traded youthful exuberance
for adult calculation. This transition
was made easy and financially attractive by the Western-installed or Western-tolerated
monarchs of Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt,
Libya and Morocco. For both reformers
and opportunists the issue of preservation of the cultural values of what had
come to seem an archaic society became irrelevant. Soon it was overshadowed by the great new
challenge of Communism, the dangers of resurgent Israel and the heady
opportunities of the Cold War.
It was the Cold War that brought the
United States into the Middle East.
Taking over from Britain first in Greece and then generally throughout
Africa and Asia, America assumed Britain’s role but played it with far more
vigor and money and far less subtlety and skill. Using the “façade rulers” the British had
cultivated or creating new proxy rulers through subversion, bribery and threat
became the strategy of the Eisenhower-John Foster Dulles-Allen Dulles
period. Coups were organized and carried
out in Iran, Iraq and Syria and help was given to prevent them in Jordan, Saudi
Arabia, Libya and Morocco. Seeing these
events, many of the next generation redirected their anger from Britain and
France to America.
The best known action of America was
the 1953 overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Muhammad Mossadegh, an action
proposed by the British to enable them to regain control Iranian oil. Followed by the coöption of the Shah, the
coup may be taken as the starting point for the Muslim reaction against
America, but already four years before in 1949, the CIA had engineered a coup
d’état in Syria. In testimony in the US
Senate, it was shown to have tried to murder various Middle Eastern leaders
including Prime Minister Qasim of Iraq and President Nasser of Egypt. A few years later in 1980, it helped to make
a military coup in Turkey. In the
following years, America has intervened overtly or threatened invasion almost
everywhere in the Middle East and parts of Africa. Additionally, it has imposed “crippling
sanctions” that have impoverished and infuriated large numbers of people.
Arab, Pakistani, Kashmiri, Somali,
Berber and other Muslim people, often led by secular rulers, have themselves
engaged in a remarkable series of ugly violations of civil liberties, blunders
and wars during this period. One after
another, rulers have adopted the security state model: militarism without
compensating civic institutions.
Generally speaking except for the oil-rich states, they have kept their
people quiet by giving them little bread but many circuses. As a group the
leaders and their cronies are known for their greed, corruption and brutality. Their records of torture and imprisonment are
among the worst in the world. To the
“man in the street,” there is little to distinguish the local tyrant from the
foreign ruler.
In two crucial aspects, the Muslim
states still suffer from the aftermath of imperialism: first, most of the governments have not grown
from their own social “soil” but from foreign transplants. Consequently, civic
institutions have rarely taken root.
Parliaments, law courts and the media remain, as they were under
imperialism, tools in the hands of rulers.
Military and security forces, the key legacy of foreign rule and the
result more recently of subsidy and training, are the most – often the only -- efficient,
mobile and powerful organizations. They
form autonomous states within nominal states.
A second heritage of the imperial
period is disunity. Domestically, the
older tradition of brotherhood (ikhwaniyah)
and mutual responsibility has been largely replaced by individualism and
selfishness. Those who can take, take; few
any longer honor the Islamic obligation of tithe (Arabic: zakat). Enrichment by any
means is avidly sought: “the Devil take the hindmost.”
As among individuals so among societies, there is little or no sense
of unity. While rulers join interstate
organizations and loudly proclaim their unity, they often bitterly and covertly
work against what they publicly identify as common causes. Rulers connive in
the overthrow of their peers and quietly make deals behind their backs. This also is largely a heritage of
imperialism. Each European state pulled its colonial elite into its own
educational system. I observed this
when, in 1953, the Rockefeller Foundation convened a meeting of the outstanding
Arab intellectuals. So “embedded” were
they in the cultures of their former masters that some were comfortable only in
French, others in English, one in Italian while none was able to express
himself satisfactorily in standard Arabic.
What was evident in language spilled over into law, politics, economics
and bureaucratic organization.
The lack of unity has, of course, been heightened by subversion,
espionage and foreign manipulation.
Individuals have learned not to trust one another. And this sense of wariness has been
heightened by the almost continuous wars with Israel[17] and by the
common belief that rulers and whole governments covertly collude with
Israel. Israeli intelligence operatives
have been able to profit from this lack of cohesion.[18]
The bottom line is that a significant portion of Muslims and
particularly of Arab Muslims believe that their governments have failed their
peoples; they have not created institutions that are regarded as constructive,
representative and honest; they have not created a sense of dignity which was
their repeatedly proclaimed quest; they are generally believed to be corrupt,
brutal and tyrannical. Many believe that
the governments we see today are only slightly veiled continuations of imperialism,
installed either or both to protect such Western interests as oil, to
underwrite American policy toward Israel or to bring about the complete
subjugation of Islam. Many also would
say that the few local rulers who tried to carry out an independent policy were
deposed by force. Nasser, Saddam and Qaddafi – dictators as they certainly were
– were engaged in efforts to create a modern, progressive and self-sufficient society and to
uplift their peoples. However unsavory they were politically, they did bring
education, better health and security.
We didn’t like them. We tried to kill Nasser and did kill Saddam
and Qaddafi.
Nationalism and what was called “Arab Socialism” failed. All that was left was religion. To the forces now operating in the name of
Islam, I will turn in the next essay.
[1] Many
of the words we use as names of primitive societies actually mean “the
people” while some of their names of
other societies mean “the enemy.”
[2] For
the results of this tension in the origins of all aspects of world affairs, see
my Neighbors and Strangers: The Fundamentals of Foreign Affairs (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2000).
[4] The Art of War (Précis
de l’art de la guerre), first published in English in 1862, was used as a
textbook at West Point. A very good
study of his thought is Crane Brinton et al, “Jomini” in Edward Mead Earle
(ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1943)
[5] Ironically,
when Samuel Huntington wrote “The clash
of civilizations,” it was a gross simplification, but, inspired by it,
governments have helped to turn the interpretation into reality.
[7] This pattern of autonomous
“nationhood,” (Arabic/Turkish: millet)
grew out of the pagan Arab tribal custom of granting hospitality to a “protected stranger,” (Arabic: jar).
[8] The
development of Shiism within Islam like Protestantism within Christianity is
complex but in part both were determined by ethnicity. The bitter relationships between Sunnism and
Shiism today are reminiscent of the religious wars in early modern Europe.
[9] One
of the great contributions medieval history is the multivolume portrayal of the
Jewish communities in the Mediterranean and particularly in Egypt by S.D.
Goitein, A Mediterranean Society (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1989 ff, multivolumes)
[10] Among
the victims were both European Jewish communities (the First Crusade started
with an attack on them) and resident Christians in Palestine (who were burned
to death in their Jerusalem church by the Crusaders when they finally reached
Jerusalem).
[11] While
these horrible crimes were not attributable to Americans, natives both there
and throughout the colonial world tended to group Americans with Europeans as
“whites” so we have been dammed by association.
On the Congo see Adam Hochschild, King
Leopold’s Ghost (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997). A summary was published by Andrew
Osborn, “Belgium confronts its colonial
demons,” The Guardian, July 18,
2002. Osborn points out that the scale of
massacre was almost double that of the Holocaust yet Belgium has made neither
apology nor restitution.
[12] Further
information on the Sudan and Libya is offered in my book, The Arab World Today (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991),
Chapter 11 and in my book, Humpty Dumpty: The Fate of Regime Change (Washington
D.C.: Panda Press, 2013) , Chapter 14.
[13] Sporadically ,without coherence
or coordination, and often without leadership, wars of resistance or rebellion were fought in Indonesia (1825, 1871, 1888, 1927),
the Caucasus (1817-1864), Bukhara ( 1866-1868), Khiva (1839, 1873) ,
Algeria, (1830-1847), Afghanistan
(1839-1842, 1879, 1919), India (1857),
Egypt (1879-1882,1919), Sudan
(1881-1899), the Rif ( 1911), Libya (1911-1939), Iraq (1919), Syria (1920
1925-1927) and Palestine (1936-1939).
[14] As
Graham Fuller pointed out (February 22, 2015 http://grahamefuller.com/yes- it-is-Islamic-extremism-but- why/) “there are a dozen good reasons
why there is bad blood between the West and the Middle East today, without any
reference to Islam or to religion.”
[15] Salafiyah a complex doctrine and has
been generally misunderstood: It is
roughly comparable to the Puritan movement in Protestant Christianity. That is, it sought to gain strength and
purity, and so to advance, by returning to the “pure” religion at its
origin. I have discussed it in detail in
my 2013 essay “Sayyid
Qutub’s Fundamentalism and ‘Abu Bakr Naji’s’ Jihadism.”
[16] Military
modernization was particularly marked in Egypt under Mehmet Ali Pasha and in
the Ottoman Empire under Sultans Selim III and Mahmud II.
[17] In
wars and other forms of conflict the more recent include 1948-1949, 1956, 1967, 1969-1970, 1973, 1982, 1982 1996, 2008, 2012
and 2014.
[18] In
1970, I was asked by the chief of the office of the Israeli Prime Minister to
negotiate a cease fire on the Suez Canal with President Nasser of Egypt. To reassure me, the Israeli official casually
mentioned that the Israelis knew Nasser’s opinion of me. There and elsewhere, Israeli intelligence had
an often astonishing access to intimate information.
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