All Lara's Wars by Wojciech Jagielski

Author:Wojciech Jagielski
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: political science;death;cold war;family;grief;geopolitics;government;political;philosophy;war books;death and dying;relationships;health;resilience;isis;political books;relationship books;politics;grief recovery;handbook;grief books;russia;miscarriage;terrorism;afterlife;grief counseling and grief therapy;history of russia;grief and loss;books on grief;books on grief and loss;domestic terrorism;world politics;counterterrorism;political science books;terrorism and homeland security
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 2020-09-10T21:28:05+00:00

Author’s Note

Lara is not the real name of the woman at the center of this story. At her request, I have changed it, along with the names of most of the other people who feature in this book.

In October 2018, All Lara’s Wars was published in translation into Georgian and launched at Lara’s house in her home village of Jokolo.

My thanks to Marcin Zaremba.

A Time Line of Events at the Tumultuous Turn of the Twenty-first Century

1991 Economic and political decline lead to the collapse of the Soviet Union, the communist mutation of tsarist Russia. One after another, the Soviet Empire’s conquered territories declare independence. One of the first to do so, before the formal break-up of the empire, is Georgia. In revenge, and to defend its dominions to the last, Russia incites the dependent Georgian provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia to rebel against Georgia. Only days after Georgia’s declaration of independence, a ruinous, fratricidal civil war erupts. In the fall, following the example of other conquered territories, Chechnya declares independence from Russia too. Russia, which, with no alternative, has recognized the independence of the other territories that formed the Soviet Union, refuses to acknowledge Chechnya’s autonomy, claiming that it was not a Soviet Republic as Georgia, Uzbekistan, and Belarus were, but part of Russia itself. But the main reason for Russia’s objection is the Kremlin’s concern that agreeing to Chechnya’s independence will prompt an avalanche of withdrawals, and that the Tatars, Bashkirs, Buryats, Yakuts, Kalmyks, Avars, Lezgins, and Circassians will all follow the Chechen example and demand their own autonomy, which will lead to the disintegration not just of the Russian Empire (of which the Soviet Union was the final incarnation), but of Russia itself.

The fall of communism and the end of the Cold War era prompt many Western leaders to declare the ultimate victory of free-market liberalism. In response to the Iraqi army’s attack on Kuwait and its oil fields, the United States, the last world superpower, invades Iraq, landing its troops in Saudi Arabia.

1993 Civil war erupts in Afghanistan among the mujahideen, who in the 1980s caused the Soviet army heavy losses, hastening the bankruptcy of the Soviet Union and communism. Muslim volunteers, thousands of whom have arrived in Afghanistan for the holy war, are disappointed by the querulous, small-minded Afghans and leave the Hindu Kush mountains. They return to their countries of origin, where they try to incite and wage their own holy wars (in Algeria, for instance, and Sudan) or enlist for other wars involving Muslims (in the Balkans and in Kashmir). The uncrowned king of the “knights of the holy war,” the Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden, regards the presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia as a desecration of the fatherland of the Prophet and declares war on the West.

1994 In deep crisis, Russia decides to send an armed punitive expedition to the Caucasus to crush the Chechens, who have declared independence. The invasion is a fiasco and develops into a long and bloody guerrilla war that attracts Muslim volunteers from the Middle East to the Caucasus in support of the Chechens.

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