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Violent politics: A
History of Insurgency, Terrorism and Guerrilla Warfare
The author casts his account in 11 chapters, each designed to show how a particular climate of insurgency was created, how an outbreak of violence was triggered, progressed, and finally the outcome of each struggle. The book raises burning insightful questions—social, political, and cultural, nevertheless, the author avoids diving deep into the problematic of the global economic and religious issues without suggesting eradication of the cancerous menace of terrorism and economic recession. These problems can’t be completely done away with because these are inherently embedded in human nature. The secular and rational-minded people are to note that politics of religious intolerance breeds hatred. Politicians in connivance with the religious bigots exploit religion. They muzzle rational thinking and suppress critical faculty and blur vision of truth of the followers. But enlightened persons of integrity shun exploitation and remain aloof from the quagmire of political filth. The author comes out with well-researched revealing insights related to 11 insurgencies, which have taken a telling toll of lives over the last 230 years world over. These will alert tens of thousands for saving lives of innocent people from the horrendous game of violence of the crossfire of the guerrilla wars, insurgencies and terrorism. We read newspapers highlighting outrageous attacks and killings of allies of the US-Britain and counter attacks of the terrorists on the Asian counties. These are violent reactions of the al-Qaida, the Taliban and other militant groups against the US-Britain on Iraq and Afghanistan. William R. Polk rightly says, "The heart of insurgency is essentially anti-foreign and is the central thesis of the book." Natives tend to react violently if they perceive that foreigners are corrupting their culture and religious faith, while the colonisers seek to suppress their dignity and emancipatory rebellious outbursts. The climate of insurgency is created. Overlords suppress the natives and the foreigners crush their ideologies and religious traditions. This is what Polk calls motivation of violent political. The central emphasis of the book is on the Westerners’ decolonisation of nations. The colonisers are opposed in all corners of the world. The present trend is anti-unipolar hegemony or concentration of power in the hands of the US-Britain combine. This trend has set in forming multipolar cultural diversities and revival of native cultures. The Westerns are bound to eat a humble pie for their unbridled hunger for power and political hegemony, while the Obama administration is trying to wriggles out Afghanistan and Iraq. In the present crisis, humanity is standing confused at the crossroads of chaos amidst mushroom killing and cry for co-existence, peace, and religious tolerance. The Taliban have strictly imposed Shari’ah (Muslim religious practices in Afghanistan and Pakistan). The book is a critically-researched document on untold devastation that blends terrorism, insurgence, and guerrilla wars. The merit of the book is that it raises questions, which pinpoint the cases of the present alarming peril to humanity of the terrorists in ‘violent politics’. The Muslim fundamentalists of Afghanistan may belong to a poor country, but the most precious thing they have in their hearts is their faith without it they can’t live. They are fighting to protect their religion and survival, says the book. The Taliban and the al-Qaida are disillusioned with communism, socialism, and capitalist democracy. Thus, such movements are coming up in the Islamic countries. The root cause of terrorism follows from their dogmatic religious faith of the Islamic ethnocentricity, which emanates from the Quran and the medieval concept of absolute truth. Mushroom multiplication of the outfit militant groups of terrorists (Lashkar-e-Taiba, LTTE, and many others) is at the heart of every terrorist act. Fundamentalism in dogmatic form comes forth with static religious practices (shari’ah). With this misunderstanding, the Muslim fundamentalists constitute mega mafia in the international organisations of religious jihadis as protectors of the pristine qur’anic faith. The Asian nations purchase sophisticated arms from the the West for safeguarding their security from external and internal threats. Most of them are used against nation’s dissenters (LTTE, Naxalites, and others). Arms are destroying grains of the labourers produced by the sweat of their brow, the genius of the brooding scientists and thinkers. Because of the atomic threat, humanity is in a state of suspended animation between life and death. The reviewer does not completely agree with those who make Muslims a scapegoat for the terrorist menace. The Westerners who want directly or by proxy the power and economic hegemony anchored on science and technology and lethal or atomic energy, can’t be exonerated . Let there be change of hearts allowing ‘live and let live others’.
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VIOLENCE, in the forms of
insurgency, guerrilla warfare, and terrorism, is the destructive aspect
of human nature. It is symbolic of man’s destructive capacity of
dehumanisation of humanity. It is order of the day in the global
scenario. Asian countries are in the cauldron of terrorism. The present
book is an eye-opener for the critical readers for having a proper
perspective on hunger for temporal power and economic hegemony of the US
and Britain combine with atomic energy for lording over the world
politics.