#3 Need a military solution?
"Storm from the East" by Robert Marshall:
The Mongols' prime objective was the Caliph of Baghdad, but before confronting him they meant to eliminate the other major power in the region, The Ismailis or Assassins. They had emerged because of a schism in the Shia Muslim sect and established themselves in northern and eastern Persia by taking and controlling a series of mountain fortifications. Behind their walls they lived a contemplative life, producing beautifully wrought paintings and metalworks, buy beyond their retreats they terrorized those civilizations they deemed heretical and so earned the enmity not just of the rest of the Islamic world but eventually of Europe. Rather than confronting his enemies in open combat he preferred to sponsor a campaign of political murder, usually executed with a dagger in the back, as the means to his ends.
The Mongols has their own reasons for launching a campaign against the Assassins. First, they had received a plea of help from an Islamic judge in Qaswin, a town near the Assassins' stronghold at Alamut, who had complained that his fellow citizens were forced to wear armour all the time as protection from the Assassins' daggers. According to Rubruck, another reason that determined Mongol attitudes was the discovery of a plot to send no fewer than 400 dagger-wielding Assassins in disguise to Qaraqorum with the instructions to murder the Great Khan. The Assassins had encountered the Mongols once before, during Chormaghun's terror raid through northern Persia 1237-8, which led them to send an envoy to Europe to beg help.
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On 1 January 1256 Hulegu's army crossed the Oxus River and brought into Persia the most formidable war machine ever seen. It possessed the very latest in siege engineering, gunpowder from China, catapults that would send balls of flaming naphtha into their enemy's cities, and divisions of rigorously trained mounted archers led by generals who had learnt their skills at the feet of Genghis Khan and Subedei. As news of Hulegu's army spread he was soon presented with a succession of sultans, emirs, and atabaks from as far apart as Asia Minor and Herat, all come to pay homage. Its sheer presence brought to an end nearly forty years of rebellion and unrest in the old lands of Khwarazmia, but to the inhabitants of Persia and Syria it was the dawn of a new world order.
The Mongols made first for the Elburz Mountains where the Assassins lay in wait behind what they believed to be their impregnable fortresses. With extraordinary ingenuity the Mongol generals and their Chinese engineers manoeuvred their artillery up the mountain slopes and set them up around the walls of the fortress of Alamut. But before the order was given to commence firing the Assassins' Grand Master, Rukn ad_Din signaled that he wanted to negotiate. Hulegu countered that he must immediately order the destruction of his own fortifications; when Rukn ad_Din prevaricated; the bombardment commenced. Under the most devastatingly accurate fire, the walls quickly tumbled and Rukn ad_Din surrendered. Hulegu took him prisoner, transported him to every Assassin castle they confronted, and paraded him before each garrison with the demand for an immediate surrender. Some obliged, as at Alamut; while others, like Gerdkuh, had to be taken by force. Today the spherical stone missiles fired by the artillery teams at the walls still litter the perimeter of the ruins. Whether each 'eagle's nest' surrendered or taken, the Mongols put all the inhabitants to the swords - even the women in their homes and the babies in their cradles.
As the slaughter continued, Rukn ad_Din begged Hulegu to allow him to go to Qaraqorum where he would pay homage to the great Khan and plead for clemency. Hulegu agreed, but when he got to Qaraqorum Mongke Khan refused to see him. It was effectively a sentence of death. On the journey back his Mongol escorts turned on the Grand Master and his attendants, who were 'kicked to a pulp'. The Persian historian Juvaini commented that 'the world had been cleansed'. Five hundred years later Edward Gibbon echoed those sentiments, claiming that the Mongols' campaign 'may be considered as a service to mankind'. It took two years for the Mongols to dislodge over 200 'eagle's nests', but in the process they virtually expunged the Assassins from Persia. |
President General Pervez Musharraf has said that there is no quick fix or military solution to the problem of extremism in Pakistan. âWhile we have to confront terrorism with force, the malaise of extremism has to be handled with care, as change cannot be imposed and pertains to the hearts and minds of people,â Gen Musharraf said at a seminar on global terrorism here on Monday. âIt will take years before it (extremism) is completely curbed,â he said. The government was changing to the school syllabus âto project the true values of Islamâ as part of long-term efforts to tackle extremism.