The Resurgence of Central Asia

As Boris Yeltsin's ruthless suppression of Chechnya's struggle forindependence becomes one more item in a series of turbulent and bloodyevents involving Russia and some of the republics of the former Sovietunion and the former Yugoslavia, Ahmad Rashid's The Resurgence ofCentral Asia: Islam or Nationalism grows in significance for students ofthat region. The author is a Pakistani journalist with a vast knowledge ofthe area. He has utilized effectively his many travels to the region in developingan authoritative history of Central Asia.Rashid shifts gears back and forth in history quite effectively in thisstudy 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 wasthe birthplace of the great warrior tribes that conquered Russia, India, andChina" (p. 8). Also note his following observation: "Central Asia hasalways been different At the heart of Central Asia is not the story of princesand their courts, but the story of the nomad and his horse" (p. 9). In thesame chapter, he quotes a Turkoman foreign ministry official's concern,expressed to him in the aftermath of the Soviet Union's implosion to theeffect that "the future is extremely bleak. The West will help Russia andother Slav republics to survive, but who will help us?" (p. 4). This book isreplete with such examples. The first chapter contains a condensed versionof the " great game" between the two colonial powers of the eighteenth andnineteenth centuries: Russia and Britain.Russia underwent two major revolutions in the twentieth century: onein 1917 and the second in 1991. The first revolution, bloody as it was, ...