Writing Worth Reading
Last updated 11 pm GMT
Writing Worth Reading
What personal experience, in all your years as a journalist, do you think has taught you most about Islamic militancy?
It was when I was in Najaf in August 2004 in the middle of a very intense street fight between local Shia militants and some American marines. It is important to remember that Islamic militancy is not just limited to Al-Qaeda or indeed to Sunni militancy. So these Shia militants were fighting the Americans who had tanks and the tanks were advancing up the streets, firing as they were advancing.
I was with a group of the militants in the centre of town who were panicked by the Americans and their tanks. They were shouting at each other about where to find the rocket-propelled grenades that they hoped, rather optimistically, would stop the tanks. And they were shouting things like, “Ali, Ali, where are the RPGs?” And the response was, “They are in Hussein’s house.” And then the others would say, “But where is Hussein?” – “I don’t know. I think he left town.”
So they had all these chaotic conversations about where the weapons they needed might be and no one seemed to know – and that was when I realised that Islamic militants are normal people who are often incompetent, not particularly well informed, not particularly well prepared and certainly not the classic vision of the Islamic terrorist with his shemagh [headscarf] around his head and two eyes peeping out, full of implacable hatred. They are not these inexorable, unstoppable killing machines.
So they are a lot more amateur than we might think?
Yes, basically you are talking about people, groups and a social activity – a criminal, violent, deeply abhorrent, but nonetheless social activity like many other social activities.
Let’s look at some of your choices which reflect that idea. Your first book, Jihad by Gilles Kepel, is an overview of the history of modern Islamic militancy.
Kepel is one of the best-known French experts on Islamic militancy. And the French, for a variety of reasons, have produced much of the best analysis of Islamic militancy over the years, pre- and post-9/11. It is partly due to their own history and partly due to their interest in social sciences. It is also partly due to government investment very early on.
Kepel’s book is a brilliant overview, both broad-brushed and detailed, of the last two or three decades of Islamic militancy and its antecedents. It came out just before 9/11 and had to be updated, but its thesis stands the test of time. That thesis is that the radical violence in Islamic militancy is in large part a response to the failure of political Islamist activism.
So much of it is to do with the frustration that stems from that?
Partly the frustration, but what Kepel does is to show the various ideologies that have been dominant in the Middle East and much of the Islamic world. First of all he looks at anti-colonialist nationalist agitations, often containing some religious element, in the first half of the 20th century, followed by two or three decades of often socialist or nationalist secular ideologies, followed by a surge of Islamist ideologies in the 1980s. And he looks at how all of these successive projects have failed to solve the very deep problems in those societies.
He also talks about the role of the “bazaar”.
Yes, he focuses in part on the two elements that he sees within radical militant groups. There are the poor, if you like, the lower working class and – and this is where I think he is brilliant – the lower middle class that have aspirations. These latter are often the first generation that have been educated and often the first generation that are living in cities. And he shows how their views and their values are often drivers of activism of all sorts, but particularly, recently, of militancy.
Is this a way for them to forge a new life for themselves?
In part, it is a reaction to social change which sees new groups contesting the position of old elites.
Jason Burke is a British journalist and the author of several non-fiction books. A correspondent covering South Asia for The Observer and The Guardian, he is based in New Delhi. Burke has written extensively on Islamic extremism and, among numerous other conflicts, covered the wars of 2001 in Afghanistan and 2003 in Iraq. His latest book, The 9/11 Wars, is published on 1 September
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