As crisis after crisis grips Muslims around the world, from mayhem in the Levant and massacres in West Africa to genocidal state-backed violence in South and East Asia, it has become common to hear calls for the Muslim ummah, or community of believers, to respond. Disasters and challenges are by no means unique to our age, but rarely have Muslim governments and leaders appeared so disinterested as is the case today, with the most materially or militarily promising regimes more invested in internecine intrigue, mutual brinksmanship and self-sabotage than any sort of internationalist Islamic initiative. 2022 marks thirty years since a landmark season in 1992, when the promise of an Islamic international revival briefly fluttered and was broken, with disastrous consequences.

Background to the watershed year: the “Islamic awakening”

As now, the early 1990s were a period of transformation on the international scene, the Cold War giving over to a near-unqualified triumph for the United States and the beginning of a quarter-century’s ‘unipolar’ hegemony in world affairs, where the hegemony’s might would largely be focused on a new and poorly defined enemy to replace communism, ‘radical Islam’. The irony was that the Soviet Union’s collapse was in no small part triggered by Islamic militancy in Afghanistan, where a major Islamist-led insurgency helped bleed and oust Moscow’s occupying army after a decade’s warfare. Like the liberals in Europe and North America who dreamed about the ‘end of history’, it was a period of optimism for Muslim activists and organizations, who expected an ‘Islamic awakening’. Actors as varied as Sudanese foreign minister Hassan Turabi, Saudi preacher Muhammad Uthaimeen, Pakistani army commander Aslam Baig and Masri preacher Yusuf Qaradawi expected an international Islamic revival that would return the Muslim world to its proper place on the global stage.

This view was not without its faults, including a supposition of increased pietism compared with former generations and the many splits within the Islamic camp. What was basically true was that a generation or two after the independence of most Muslim countries, the largely politically excluded Muslim societies had more of an influence, often triggered by preachers or merchants, to which the state. Independence movements in the mid-twentieth century, from Pakistan and Malaysia to Morocco and Somalia, had often gained support by highlighting the importance of Islam, only to largely ignore Islamic principles and laws once accomplishing independence.

A case in point was Algeria, home of perhaps the most famous jihad of the twentieth century against France. Islam, Muslim identity and Muslim practice had been essential components of Algerian nationalism, yet after independence these were largely assigned to ceremonial roles as the newly independent Algerian regime opted for a state socialism in tune with the international flavour of the 1960s and 1970s. Although the Algerian state publicly claimed respect for Islam – its ruling party had a sizeable ‘Islamic wing’ – policy was focused around state convenience, occasionally in contravention of Islam. The resultant corruption and elitism, rampant by the 1980s, provoked societal opposition in specifically Islamic terms; the regime, it was claimed, had failed the cause of Islam and the Muslims, with the Islamic Salut Front emerging as the most influential opposition by the decade’s end.

Though circumstances varied, this was by no means unusual; similar cases of Muslim ‘revivalism’ emerged in countries as different as Tunisia, Turkey, Bangladesh and Somalia. And less obviously political Islamic activities, as simple as congregational prayer and pilgrimages, also revived in long-subjugated Muslim communities of the Soviet Union, China and Eastern Europe where they had hitherto been suppressed. Political activism among Muslims in this region was riskier and rarer; even as a surge of ethnic nationalism grew in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the Muslim lawyer Alija Izetbegovic, who advocated an inclusive Islamic revivalism that coexisted across ethnic lines with European non-Muslims, was incarcerated in Yugoslavia for supposed ‘Muslim nationalism’; in fact, the nationalism that would ultimately break up Yugoslavia would largely target the country’s Muslims as its enemies.

This ‘Islamic awakening’ was very much an indigenous response to sociopolitical problems in the Muslim world, but that did not preclude powerful structures from trying to ride the Islamist tiger. Several military regimes, such as Sudan and Pakistan, promoted top-down ‘Islamization’ – often, in typical military fashion, prioritizing unity under an Islamic banner and punitive aspects of justice rather than wholescale socioeconomic change. Iran’s revolutionary clerical regime enjoyed considerable influence, as did a reactive conservatism by monarchic Saudi Arabia; that neither regime was above exploiting sectarianism to their ends paradoxically dented the same internationalism that they claimed to support.

If the 1979 revolution in Iran and the ‘Islamisation’ of military regimes emboldened Muslim activists, Afghanistan – where a homegrown insurgency backed by foreign powers as varied as the United States, China, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran – was the lightning rod. The internationalization of this war, which saw by the mid-1980s many mainly Arab foreign fighters enlist to fight the Soviet occupation alongside the Afghans, was actively encouraged by such governments mainly in order to weaken their Soviet rival. The Palestinian preacher Abdullah Azzam was especially influential in encouraging recruitment for the cause.

Cross-border Muslim solidarity has been a feature of Islam for centuries, from the Murabitoun to the Ottomans and from Salahuddin to Shamil; here, however, it was encouraged by many governments, even non-Muslim governments such as Washington D.C. for whom the interests of Islam were hardly a concern. It was here that they would diverge from Azzam, who wanted Afghanistan to serve as the blueprint for an international force to protect Muslim interests.

By the dawn of the 1990s, the result of the Cold War was clear; it had been an emphatic defeat for Soviet communism, thanks in no small part to Muslims both within the Soviet borders and in the failed Afghan occupation. It was therefore ironic that the triumphalist liberal capitalism that marked the United States’ “unipolar moment” earmarked a poorly and inconsistently defined “radical Islam” as the latest threat. For their own part, Islamist activists and ideologues such as Turabi and Qaradawi saw the downfall of communism as an opportunity for an Islamic resurgence. By the end of 1991, when the Soviet collapse was complete, when Islamists seemed set to win the Algerian election and the Soviet-installed Afghan regime was on its last legs, the prospect of such an Islamic resurgence must have flickered bright. Instead, what followed was disappointment, with 1992 as a critical year.

Afghanistan – Fragmentation, Factionalism and Fratricide

Afghanistan showed the danger of factionalism, political opportunism and political maximalism. It is ironic that the Islamist factions most responsible for allying with different parts of the ancien regime and reducing Kabul to rubble were the best-funded, best-organized,and even best-educated factions from the jihad against the Soviets. The Jamiat party to which Massoud belonged, formally led by a largely powerless Burhanuddin Rabbani, had been renowned for its battlefield prowess, while Hikmatyar’s Hizb was the most disciplined and centralized faction. Both had been active since the 1970s and formally espoused the Ikhwani ideology of revolutionary state-led Islamic revivalism. Both had considerable influence in the region; the opposition in neighbouring Tajikistan was significantly influenced and supported by both parties.

Yet at the endgame both succumbed to the temptations of power, cutting deals with the communists they had been fighting for a decade. Hikmatyar cut a deal with the weaker Khalq faction and narrowly beat Massoud to Kabul; Massoud meanwhile aligned himself with the rival Parcham faction and such militia commanders as Abdul-Rashid Dostum, with whose support he drove Hikmatyar from Kabul. The nominal mujahideen coalition leader Sibghatullah Mujaddidi proved entirely incapable of resolving the dispute and was replaced by the colourless Rabbani. Hikmatyar, pointing out Massoud’s links with Dostum, attacked Kabul yet would himself subsequently, along with Mujaddidi, side with a disgruntled Dostum the next year in order to fight Massoud.

The cost of this factionalism was enormous; not only did Afghanistan fail to launch the expected Islamic revival in the region, but the country itself was torn into rival fiefdoms. The bloodshed included a sectarian element – as Massoud sided with Salafi factions and Hikmatyar with Shia factions – as well as an increasing ethnic polarization. Much of this fragmentation admittedly dated to the counterinsurgency policy of the Soviets and their regime, but the mujahideen groups did little to address it until the emergence of the more united, but largely provincial and internationally isolated, Taliban emirate. Underscoring just how farcical the inter-Ikhwani power struggle had been, it took the threat of the Taliban movement for Massoud and Hikmatyar to paper over their differences just before Kabul fell to the new movement.

“Who is killing who?” – Algeria’s bloodshed between the deep state and extremists

Algeria’s conflict, by contrast, was the disastrous result of deep state intrigue and bonafide extremism. On the cusp of their victory, the Salut Front were not only robbed of power but subjected to brutal persecution by the military junta. In effect the Salut umbrella buckled and fragmented under the pressure. Many of its leaders, such as founder Abbasi Madani and electoral candidate Abdelkader Hachani, were imprisoned; others, such as Abderrazzak Redjam and Mohamed Said, went underground to organize resistance; still others, like Rabah Kebir and Anouar Haddam, tried to direct resistance from abroad; and finally militant leaders emerged in the ensuing war. The net result was that Salut lost control of the insurgency, to the benefit of both genuine extremists and the security establishment.

The Salut Front’s political maximalism, tapping into widespread frustration with the status quo, had alarmed not only the deep state but also other opposition parties. However, it had clearly struck a chord with the Algerian electorate and when the election was annulled this frustration spilled out of their control. There were several different groups in the insurgency, but by 1994 it was the Groupe Armee – a murky but definitely extremist conglomeration of militias, whose bloodthirst liberal use of takfir mirrored the classic Khawarij – who had come to the fore. Their day in the sun was characterized by abductions, murders, brutal purges and mass atrocities.

Some Salut veterans, such as Said and Redjam, tried to infiltrate and coopt them to a more amenable course but were themselves murdered. In many cases militants were simply criminal militias using religious rhetoric. And there were widespread accusations that the Algerian deep state had itself infiltrated and manipulated the Groupe Armee against its Islamist rivals. The extent and confusion in the brutality was epitomized by a common Algerian question – Qui tue qui, “Who is killing who?”

In these circumstances, it was impossible for any resolution that did not favour the regime, whatever else its crimes, as a hegemon with some prospect for restoring order. Eventually the Salut military commander Madani Mezrag cut a ceasefire in 1997, ensuring that the future trajectory of conflict would be exclusively between the regime and the extremists. This was a contest that the regime was poised to win, ensuring that the military establishment emerged with its lack of accountability intact. The establishment itself was split between reconcilable “concilateurs” and maximalist “eradicateurs”; the brutality of the war at its height was conducted by the latter, but eventually a more amenable “concilateur”, Liamine Zeroual, was promoted to lead and steered the government to some form of resolution. Zeroual was not a vindictive leader – non-Salut Islamists came runners-up, in the 1995 and 1999 elections – and this ensured some level of reconciliation. The election of Abdelkader Bouteflika, a veteran of the early Algerian regime, in 1999 and the fact that he would rule for twenty years into his dotage, however, epitomized the failure of the Algerian Islamists. The only winner of a decade’s horrific bloodshed was a ruthlessly cynical Algerian military.

Bosnia: Ultranationalism, genocide and the failure of a “Muslim Bloc”

The Bosnian war, perhaps the most tragic episode of the 1990s, was perhaps the only one where Muslim movements or governments did not take a share of the blame. Bosnia was founded amid the disintegration of the former, multiethnic but autocratically ruled, Yugoslavia. The 1980s saw a major uptick of nationalism in this very diverse region; ironically given the propensity to scaremonger about Islam in Bosnia, such Bosniak leaders as Izetbegovic were the only ones who did not resort to exclusivist or sectarian nationalism. This did not prevent other nationalists from giving special attention to Islam, whether in the southern Albanian-ethnic Kosovo or in the western Bosnia region, as a threat to Yugoslavia.

The uptick of nationalism saw Yugoslavia collapse in the early 1990s; Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and North Macedonia had already broken away with varying extents of violence before Bosnia’s independence in spring 1992. Because Bosnia was a particularly diverse area, with a large Serbian minority in particular, its independence was fiercely contested by Serbian irredentists led by Radovan Karadzhic, who were themselves supported from Serbia by Slobodan Milosevic’s regime. No sooner had Bosnia won independence than Serbian irredentists both within and outside its borders attacked, laying a four-year siege to the capital Sarajevo.

The United Nations only compounded matters with a weapons embargo that heavily punished Bosnia, the most unprepared side. Throughout the war Bosnia and Bosniaks, were subjected to genocidal ethnic cleansing, rape and massacres – most infamously the Srebrenica massacre of July 1995. Though certain Muslim countries – including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran – partially bypassed the embargo by sending resources or fighters, Bosnia remained on the back foot throughout the war. An early alliance with the more militarily formidable Croatia stumbled by 1993, when Croat forces themselves attacked the Bosniaks; it took the United States to bring Sarajevo and Zagreb back together in 1994-95.

The American role drew in part from its eagerness to set a foothold in Eastern Europe after the Cold War, alarming Russia in the process. In December 1995 the United States brokered the Dayton Accord, whose overarching achievement was to keep a weak and ethnically divided balance in Bosnia that would render it dependent on Western largesse – a situation that continues to threaten Bosnia today, as Serbian revanchism again raises its head. By the decade’s end the United States intervened militarily against the Serbs in Kosovo, ultimately paving the way for the independence of a vassal state there. The end result was that the Muslims of former Yugoslavia did survive, whether in Bosnia or Kosovo, but largely at the fickle behest of a United States that aimed at balancing the region’s nationalities off each other.

But Washington’s stance in the Balkans, self-serving though it may have been, was yet preferable to both Russia, which was openly pro-Belgrade on Slavic sympathies and European governments such as England, France and Holland, who tacitly or openly preferred the annihilation of Bosnia, a Muslim country in Christian Europe, who only grudgingly accepted American pressure on Belgrade and whose peacekeepers and diplomats both proved outstandingly incapable and unwilling to honour their lofty promises of protection as the genocide proceeded.

It is hard to see what more Bosnia’s government could have done under such trying, multipronged pressures. The role of Muslim governments was limited; though several Muslim countries tried to provide direct or indirect support, they were both geographically, politically and militarily limited and entirely reactive to the policy of the United States or the toothless but inexplicably venerated United Nations. No Muslim country, that is, let alone a Muslim bloc, was willing or able to take an initiative itself to stop the genocide.

Lessons for today

This impotence and complacency among the governments of the Muslim world, such a contrast to the pan-Islamic fervour of the 1980s, has been doubly evident since September 2001, when crisis spots from Palestine and Kashmir to Arakan/Rakhine and Xinjiang/Turkestan have been left unattended. The result of this “Bosnia” scenario has been the wholescale privatization of obligations traditionally carried out by Muslim states – whether politically, militarily, or financially, most Islamic revivalism in the twenty-first century has been carried out by non-state actors. This “Afghanistan”-style privatization to non-state actors has brought its own risks, including fragmentation, violence because of a lack of accountability and extremism. In turn, an “Algeria”-type situation has emerged whereby governments criminalize Muslim activism or curtail it severely. This poisonous cycle is one that Muslims cannot afford as the configuration of global politics changes again.

Thirty years ago, 1992 seemed to herald a promising future for Muslim and pan-Islamic politics in the post-Cold War world: a celebrated jihad found itself on the threshold of triumph in Afghanistan; a populist party prepared to take over Algeria by the ballot; and a Muslim state far more inclusive and enlightened than its nationalist neighbours prepared to set itself in Bosnia. The tragic failure to live up to these promises carries lessons for both Muslim states and society that we cannot afford to ignore today.