Red DIME: Dissecting the Bolshevik Liquidation Campaign in the Ferghana Valley Against the Basmachi Resistance
Abstract : This monograph delves into the Bolshevik campaign to liquidate the Basmachi Resistance in the Ferghana Valley Section of Central Asia. The Bolsheviks employed a precursor to the modern day D.I.M.E construct to overcome early policy missteps. The author uses archival documents from the Ferghana Oblast State Archives that he gathered during his Fulbright Scholar research during 2002-2003. By utilizing illustrative examples of Diplomatic, Information, Military, and Economic initiatives, it is possible to learn about the evolution of policy as the Bolshevik authorities struggled to regain the initiative against the Basmachi Resistance. These lessons of the Bolshevik counterinsurgency against the native Basmachi resistance remain remarkably applicable as governments face similar challenges in the 21st Century.
Revolt in the Mountains: Fuzail Maksum and the Occupation of Garm, Spring 1929
Military operations conducted by Afghan guerrilla forces in the spring of 1987 against Soviet troops inside the Soviet Union, to include the actual penetration of Soviet territorial boundaries by insurgent tactical units, must have been viewed by Soviet authorities with a sense of deja vu.1 The 9 April 1987 attack on Soviet border-guard positions in the republic of Tadzhikistan represented the first hostile crossing of the Soviet-Afghan border in the Tadzhikistan region in over fifty-six years (hostile in the Soviet view; one must not forget the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979). While the Soviets were able to defeat this incursion, the spectre of past insurgencies in the very same region a little over a half century ago must have played upon the psyche of not only senior Soviet officials, but anyone with a knowledge of Soviet history in Central Asia. The purpose of this study is to examine certain aspects of that history, concentrating upon an outbreak of armed insurgency that took place in the mountains of Tadzhikistan during the spring of 1929. The insurgents, headed by an influential Uzbeki tribal leader named Fuzail Maksum, represented a chronological extension of a larger anti-Soviet movement collectively known as the Basmachi, which from 1918 to 1933 challenged Soviet rule in Central Asia.2 The revolt against Soviet rule in the mountains of eastern Tadzhikistan during the spring of 1929 is not well documented in English language studies of Soviet Central Asia. Indeed, no complete study of the Basmachi revolt as a whole exists in any western language at all. But the lack of published material should not detract from the significance of Fuzail Maksur's insurgency or the Basmachi movement as a whole. The events that took place in Tadzhikistan in 1929 were as complex as any in Soviet history, weaving together a myriad
Analysis: The Agenda 2007 Proposals: Evolution or Revolution?
On 10 February 2004 the Commission published its proposal for the financial perspective 2007-2013. A week later it adopted the third report on economic and social cohesion. These two documents form the basis of the so-called ‘Agenda 2007 reforms’. They will be the greatest challenge for the enlarged EU after the intergovernmental conference, since they will determine the financial basis for EU policy-making until the middle of the next decade. The Agenda 2007 proposals certainly hint at courageous reforms, because they place a previously unheard-of emphasis on performance and quality. Under the proposals, structural operations should generate value for money, and the funds should focus on projects which generate added value at a European level. Overall the Commission’s proposals point in the right direction, because they balance, on the one hand, solidarity for the new Member States and weak regions in the old Member States with, on the other hand, investments in future tasks. Moreover, they constitute a paradigm shift. For the first time, the Common Agricultural Policy will not be the dominant expenditure category. Now it is up to the Member States to examine the proposals politically and find a compromise between sometimes very divergent interests. It is to be hoped that, during the debate over expenditure limits and division of funds, national interests do not outweigh European interests.