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Every book awaits its big moment. Ahmed Rashid's Taliban began life as a well-researched study on one of the most obscure and forbidding corners of the world-on a par with, say, Eritrea, Western Sahara and Myanmar-and was catapulted into the top of The New York Times bestsellers list by the events of September 11. Now, with the spectre of Islamism dominating the global agenda, this intrepid Pakistani journalist has returned with a study of an equally forbidding regime.

JIHAD: THE RISE OF MILITANT ISLAM IN CENTRAL ASIA By Ahmed Rashid Yale University Press Price: $24 Pages: 281

In the early 20th century, Central Asia captivated Lord Curzon and a handful of crotchety old Russophobes in London's clubland. Two years ago, a mainstream publisher would think many times before putting his money on a book about countries that every diplomat regarded as good places to avoid. Post September 11, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan have muscled their way back to the geopolitical centre as the new growth areas of jehad. And, like with Taliban, Rashid is riding the crest of the rediscovery.

It is a fascinating story Rashid has told with lucidity, richness of detail and fullness of understanding. The former Soviet republics were at the receiving end of the worst form of Stalinist excesses. Between their incorporation into the Soviet Union and their re-emergence as independent republics, they experienced the near-total destruction of a traditional way of life, ethnic engineering, cartographic vandalism and the outlawing of faith. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the long-suppressed energies began finding political expression despite the persistence of old-style Stalinist regimes-Turkmenistan has a president who is a living reincarnation of Albania's Enver Hoxha. With the entry into the market economy proving extremely troubled-notwithstanding the surfeit of natural resources-popular disaffection found an easy outlet in Islamic revivalism. From the rediscovery of religion to the emergence of a jehadi opposition was an instinctive step.

Uzbekis offer prayers at a Tashkent mosque

At the centre of the turmoil is Uzbekistan where President Islam Karimov has been waging a difficult war against the Wahabist Hizb-ut-Tahrir (HuT) and the pro-Taliban Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). Led by the charismatic Juma Namangani-a Mullah Omar-like figure who was killed in Mazar-e-Sharif last year-and Tohir Yuldeshev, the IMU used the safe haven of Taliban Afghanistan to harass the Karimov regime and preach jehad. And like other jehadi movements, the IMU has used the network of illegal madarsas inspired by the Deobandi ideology, newly created mosques, profits from drug trade, extortion and financial aid from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to sustain itself.

After the fall of the Taliban and the deaths of many Central Asian jehadis in the battles for Kunduz and Mazar-e-Sharif, the immediate jehadi threat has receded. However, it will take the inevitable diversion of international attention before the problem resurfaces. Rashid believes that the totalitarianism of the Central Asian rulers and their record of brutal incompetence has made jehad attractive. He argues for a greater degree of power sharing between the ex-communists and the moderate Islamists, as has happened in Tajikistan. He presses his case by suggesting an extension of the scope of jehad-from the lesser jehad of political activism to the greater jehad of moral discipline and finding God within.

It sounds appealing. But the problem is that the "greater" jehad has invariably been subsumed by the "lesser" one. Positing any jehad as a humane politico-theological solution for the Islamic world is about as ridiculous as suggesting that the Final Solution is actually something as innocuous as the answer to an algebraic riddle. Afghanistan has shown that the alternative to jehad isn't liberal angst but superior might coupled with choking supply lines. Liberal democracy in the region is a good idea that must wait another age.