ABSTRACT
Like locating fault lines to determine where earthquakes are apt to develop, examining the history of the affected peoples, particularly who did what to whom, helps explain the advent of terrorism perpetrated by extreme Muslim fundamentalist groups against the West and against the United States in particular. When Russian, American, or European leaders condemn Muslim terrorism and terrorists, they rarely, if ever, mention the behavior of Russia and European countries towards Muslim ones1 in the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. For example, in 1830, France invaded, and in 1834 annexed, Algeria. Only after a bitterly fought and bloody nineyear war of independence in which the rebels killed French civilians and targeted French bars and restaurants and the French engaged in ruthless counterterrorist methods, including torture, did General Charles de Gaulle finally accede to Algerian independence in 1962. In the 1600s, the Dutch, following the Portuguese, began the conquest and colonization of the Indonesian islands, today the most populous Muslim nation, only to give them up under intense internal and international pressure in 1949. In the late 1700s and in the 1800s, Russia annexed Tatar Crimea, the Caucasus, including Chechnya and other Central Asian Muslim nations like Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. These latter six countries only achieved independence with the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. Chechnya, which Russia did not consider an independent state, remains under Russian rule.
