Since early 2007 a new breed of combatants has appeared on the streets of Mogadishu and other towns in Somalia: the 'Shabaab'; or youth; the only self-proclaimed branch of al-Qaeda to have gained acceptance (and praise) from Ayman al-Zawahiri and 'AQ centre' in Afghanistan. Itself an offshoot of the Islamic Courts Union; which split in 2006; Shabaab has imposed Sharia law and is also heavily influenced by local clan structures within Somalia itself. It remains an infamous and widely discussed; yet little-researched and understood; Islamist group. Hansen's remarkable book attempts to go beyond the media headlines and simplistic analyses based on alarmist or localist narratives and; by employing intensive field research conducted within Somalia; as well as on the ground interviews with Shabaab leaders themselves; explores the history of a remarkable organisation; one that has survived predictions of its collapse on several occasions. Hansen portrays al-Shabaab as a hybrid Islamist organization that combines a strong streak of Somali nationalism with the rhetorical obligations of international jihadism; thereby attracting a not insignificant number of foreign fighters to its ranks. Both these strands of Shabaab have been inadvertently boosted by Ethiopian; American and African Union attempts to defeat it militarily; all of which have come to nought.
#1422797 in Books 2016-02-15Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 5.90 x 1.30 x 8.80l; .0 #File Name: 0190233044464 pages
Review
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Five StarsBy Eric PohlAs described; shipped quickly.22 of 23 people found the following review helpful. A treasure trove – of the sort that leaves me wanting moreBy Lost JohnThe title of this book brings to the fore three points of contention: – the plural of Civil Wars; the placing of Russian in inverted commas; and that the extent of the wars was from 1916 to 1926. Those points are all central to Jonathan Smele’s argument: it isn’t true to speak or write of only one Civil War following the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917; neither is it true that they only began with the Revolution; or in early 1918; nor that all the wars ended with the major White defeats and withdrawal of intervening foreign troops in the very early 1920s (or the introduction of the New Economic Policy in 1921) – some of the wars went on well beyond that; and it isn’t true that all the wars took place in Russia; or even primarily involved Russian combatants.Jonathan Smele sees the ‘Russian’ Civil Wars as having both begun and ended with the Basmachi (Muslim rebels) of Central Asia. During the summer of 1916; a large number of the Tsar’s Muslim subjects rebelled against forced mobilization into labor battalions to service the Imperial Russian Army and the armaments industry. The rebellion was brutally suppressed; broke out again the following summer; and in February 1918 an anti-Soviet Muslim assembly established in November 1917 was put down – this time by Red Guards – with great loss of life. The formation of the guerrilla Basmachi movement followed. Their anti-Soviet resistance continued into the 1930s; but Smele draws a line in June 1926; after which policing of the Central Asian Military District became a civilian matter; not one for the Red Army.In between; and mostly in the period 1918 to 1920; the three big names of the White Army campaigns; Kolchak; Denikin and Wrangel; were active; also many others such as Skoropadsky; Petliura and Makhno; troops from Britain; France; the United States; Japan; China; Australia and others were involved – also Germany and the other Central Powers all played a part; and the Baltic States and Finland secured their escape from the Russian Empire and independence. Admiral Kolchak headed; as a dictator; the Provisional All Russian Government centered on Omsk; Siberia; but proved a weak leader and was ultimately delivered into Bolshevik hands and executed. Denikin; with others; raised an anti-Bolshevik Volunteer Army in the Northern Caucuses; operated in the Don lands and the Kuban; and in summer 1919 pressed as far north as Orel; threatening Moscow. The Red Army successfully pushed back and Denikin retreated eventually to Crimea. Wrangel; who had earlier been subordinate to Denikin; took over from Denikin and managed to break back out of the Crimean peninsula and challenge the Red Army as far north as Aleksandrovsk (Zaporizhia) and as far east as Mariupol. However; the Red Army held firm and soon pushed Wrangel and his army back to Crimea; from whence he sailed into exile; taking with him – to his credit – most of those who also wished to go.All of this and vastly more is covered in Jonathan Smele’s book. I was surprised not to find dedicated biographical sections on the principal players; but with such a wide field and so much information he presumably decided to leave such things to those who have already written histories and biographies (plus Wikipedia) and use his limited space for newer material and the wider view – and I am sure he was right. Even so; a lot of ground is covered very quickly. One campaign of which I would have liked to read more is the North West Army’s advance through the summer of 1919 to take (in October) Tsarskoe Selo; only 12 miles from Petrograd; and Trotsky’s successful (if perilously last-minute) counter-offensive.But I can no doubt read up on it elsewhere; and Smele provides many pages of detailed notes; plus an extensive Bibliography that includes sections on Internet Resources; Fiction (Babel; Blok; Bulgakov; Grossman and Sholokhov) and Film. This book is a treasure trove – of the sort that leaves me wanting more.3 of 3 people found the following review helpful. Broad yet narrowBy R. L. HuffJonathan Smele is one of the distinguished "Glasgow cadre" of Russian/Soviet historians that have colonized much of post-Soviet historiography. His offering here is a very in-depth accounting of that "Time of Troubles" across north Eurasia a century ago. An impressive amount of detail is compressed into one volume. Reading it is like walking over a familiar field with a trained archaeologist; who manages to pull something fresh out of familiar earth before your eyes. That said; a I have a few constructive criticisms that I hope won't detract from the book's overall impressiveness.In putting the Russian civil wars in quotation marks; he seems to give the nationality aspect a bit too much play. Russia was understood as both an empire and a nationality; and in the imperial sense the term "Russian" is appropriate and was so used by the overwhelming majority of its participants. I can't quite see this period as beginning with the Basmachi revolt in Turkestan in the summer of 1916; and conveniently ending there a decade later. That seems a historian's too-obvious deck stacking. Reversals at the front had much longer-term impact; including distribution of needed materiel; leading to the demoralization and breakdowns in the rear. I do not recall anyone arguing Russian soldiers were marched against German tanks with pitchforks; as Smele alleges; but troops were "voting with their feet" as early as 1915 and never really stopped.I also believe he oversimplifies in saying that nearly all 20th century history revolves around the Russian civil war - though much of it obviously does. Socialism and revolution were in the air all over Europe and rose together out of the war; in Germany and Italy and Austria-Hungary as surely as in Russia. Without the Russian precedent these outbreaks might have been successful; rather than contained by a forewarned Europe. Spain; for instance; had a long tradition of civil war - republic vs. monarchy; intersected by socialism and anarchism - and to posit this as irrelevant to its own civil war of the '30s; in favor of Russia's; seems a broad over-reach.Smele's account seems somewhat detached from the social passions motivating these apocalyptic protagonists. Their mysticism; on all sides; appears a bit beyond British historians. I also can't agree that the struggles in the streets of Petrograd were only "partly" related to the civil war. While it's true that it took the Red Army to put "Soviet Power" across - workers' and soldiers' soviet rebellions were too easily reversed in the early post-October months - the civil war openly grew out of the polarization in the capital and spread across Russia in gathering momentum as surely as Bleeding Kansas led to the American civil war. To put it another way; revolution meant seizure of power; civil war its consolidation from challenge; the first as seed; the latter reaping its fruit. Which leads to a passing point: an important "front" of this war was the Volga famine of 1921 that drove the central Russian peasants into rebellion against the Soviet state. This took as many lives as claimed for the Ukrainian "holodomor" a decade later; yet is largely forgotten as no political capital can be squeezed out of these particular corpses.Another issue; for me; is Smele's characterization of the Constitutional Democratic Party (The Kadetsy) as "radical-liberal." Maybe in the post-Maggie UK they may qualify as such; but the Kadets' alleged radicalism dates solely from the 1905 era. After the Duma's creation; the Kadets became a strictly legal organization composed (as he states) of socially conservative professional men. Their political liberalism waned throughout the inter-revolutionary years; especially after the socialist and populist eruptions of 1917. Here I must agree with the Kadets' primary English-language historian; William G. Rosenberg; who has them as a party of the Right by 1917; a pseudo-liberal magnet for all those opposed to social revolution. Along these lines Smele insists on referring to the underground activists of the Socialist Revolutionary Party - the "Greens" - as the "democratic counter-revolution." Here he betrays his Brit/Western bias: for all conscious SR/Greens considered themselves democratic *revolutionaries*; with Whites and Reds alike the true "contras."And; the final question - which Smele somewhat avoids - is why a Russian civil war at all? One might ask this of any country undergoing such tragic unpheavals; yet there are cogent reasons besides human nature as to why they erupt. In the case of Russia; was it at all possible that a middle of the road democracy could emerge out of March 1917? And the answer must be no; which Smele gives at least indirectly. There was too great a social gulf in Old Russia; and a weak middle class "civil society;" afraid of the "dark people" below and captive to the army - at least its rightist commissioned officers; who tolerated the revolution on condition its leaders didn't go too far and stayed in the war. Said leaders had no loyal forces of their own; it fell to others to recreate new ones (per Lenin's "State and Revolution.")So; for all my picking; I do find this book a worthwhile addition to the literature; and will recommend it over the partisan accounts of Vladimir Brovkin or Richard Pipes.
