‘Directed’ Jihad: Berlin, Washington and the Sword of Islam

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There is a noticeable general aversion in the western media to discuss the past experience of bug powers trying to dominate today’s ‘Af-Pak’ region, which is President Obama’s short-hand for Afganistan-Pakistan. The West, and especially its leader, the USA, could immensely benefit from the British, German and Russian experience in the region. If the US military and political leaders, or for that matter, other ‘experts’ have indeed done some reading in its history, they have hidden it well.

This book represents a refreshing approach to the study of ‘jihad’. Its uniqueness lies in its investigation into the past. The focus moves on to how that past history of jihad relates to the present, literally burning topic. The present research reveals starting parallels between the present and the past.

‘Directed Jihad’ delves deep into the role of Berlin and Washington in ‘directing’ jihad against specific targets. Besides the German secret services and the omnipresent CIA, it also examines the role of that tricky agency, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence or ISI as well as the Saudi secret service.

By coining the term ‘directed’, the author wishes to demonstrate that the uproar and violence associated today with Islamic extremism was often the result of cynical political manipulations in the past by other, non-Islamic entities to serve their own end. So, if jihad in its violent form is real today, part of the ‘credit’ goes to the West and to Pakistan for actively encouraging it.

Much of the materials researched on the German role over the decades are in the German original, consulted in Berlin’s infinite scholarly resources, including those of the German Society for Foreign Relations (DGAP, since 1998 in Berlin), the Free University of Berlin (FU) and German government archives located at Finkensteinallee – former compound of Hitler’s elite ‘black shirts’ or SS guards, the much vaunted Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler – the Foreign Office library near Leipzigerstrasse, the Topographie des Terrors library off Potsdamerplatz and many other institutions besides.

On the CIA, Saudi spy agency and Pakistani ISI, an enormous number of materials, both electronic and printed, have been consulted, besides the high profile news channels.

The book draws on investigative journalism. Their amount of printed and multimedia materials are simply overwhelming.

‘Directed Jihad’ is a tropical work, based firmly on historical evidence and those of personalities in action, generating analogies with the highly relevant to the scenario of US/Western dilemma today.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jyotirmoy Banerjee

Dr. Jyotormoy Banerjee has been teaching in the Department of International Relations, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India, since nearly four decades. Currently Professor, he has authored a dozen books and monographs and about fifty articles in various scholarly journals in India, Europe and the USA. A prolific winner of internationally reputed research Fellowships, he has been Fulbright Scholar and Alexander von Humbolt Fellow, each several times, as well as Rockefeller/SSRC Fellow and UGC Research Associate at the Shimla Institute Scholarship more than once for advanced study of the German language in Bavaria and the Black Forest. Professor Banerjee has presented papers in the World Congress of Salvic Studies in Washington DC and Honolulu and lectured at the University of California-Berkeley, University of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts at Amherst, St. Francis College in Fort Wayne, Indiana and at the Toenissteiner Kreis in Cologne. He participated in the German Foreign Office conference in Bonn in 1979, made a sponsored study tour of all Germany in 1980 and was invited by Inter Nationes to take a tour of Germany following its unification. He is widely seen in the seminar circuits in India and is a consultant to various central and state government academic and appointment bodies. He also served as the President of India’s Nominee, ‘Visitor’. Beyond English and his mother-tongue Bengali, the professor is fluent in German and has working knowledge of Hindi, Russian and Dutch. Besides, in his student days he had made his mark as an Elvis Presley rocker and occasionally, musically backed by his students, he puts up intra-mural performances.