While the crisis between Russia and
Ukraine has been the focus of much of the world’s attention, there
are simmering brushfires in other areas of the former Soviet Union.
In the North Caucasus, still part of
the Russian Federation, five Muslim-majority ethnic republics, with a
combined area of 97,200 square kilometres and a population of more
than six million, remain restive and a worry for Moscow. All but
Ingushetia border Russia proper.
One of them, Chechnya, has been the
scene of two major wars since 1994, leaving tens of thousands dead,
and resulting in the displacement to southern Russia of
400,000-600,000 people, predominantly from Chechnya and neighbouring
Dagestan.
Despite the official claims of peace,
both republics remain major centres of violence. Ingushetia,
Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay-Cherkessia have also experienced
jihadi-inspired turmoil.
The revival of traditional Sufi groups
and the rise of radical Salafi (or Wahhabi) Islam, especially in
Dagestan and Chechnya, was brought about by “the perpetuation of
corrupt ruling elites, the absence of political pluralism, severe
economic hardship, youth unemployment and high levels of income
inequality,” according to Domitilla Sagramoso and Akhmet
Yarlykapov, two scholars specializing in the study of the region.
Indeed, they argue, the impact of
“growing Islamization of the region’s political life and the
increased religiosity” has created a “significant cultural and
political cleavage between the North Caucasus and the rest of
Russia.”
The
works of radical ideologues, the presence of militants from the Arab
world, and travels to Muslim countries by young Caucasians, have
inspired many to embrace imported jihadi creeds. A
network of extremists continues to advocate the establishment of an
Islamic state governed by sharia law in all of the North Caucasian
republics.
Much
of this radicalization is fueled from outside the country. French
scholar Giles Kepel has used the term “petrodollar Islam” for the
vast infusion of wealth from Saudi Arabia. The long-term strategy is
proselytism of Islam -- especially Salafi Islam.
In
Dagestan the Salafi ideologue Akhmed-hadji Akhtaev founded
Al-Islamiyyah and by the late 1990s the organization controlled
numerous mosques and religious schools; it also sent students to
study in Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries.
The percentage of ethnic Russians in
the republics has dropped from 26 per cent in 1989 to about nine per
cent today; in Chechnya, it went from under 25 per cent to less than
two per cent.
In 2011, two nationalist Russian
groups, the Russian Public Movement and the Russian Civic Union,
launched a campaign to have the entire region cut off financially.
Under the slogan “Stop Feeding the
Caucasus,” they demanded that the Kremlin cease supporting the
economies of the region, which have suffered greatly due to the
political instability. (Each republic receives more than 50 per cent
of its budget from Moscow.)
Russia may have beaten back Chechen
attempts at independence or its takeover by Islamists, but at a
price.
As British academic Richard Sakwa has
pointed out, Russian president Vladimir Putin has allowed the
republic to be governed by “strongmen” such as Chechen President
Ramzan Kadyrov, in power since 2007.
In effect, he writes, Chechnya has
achieved “secession without independence.” Dagestan and
Ingushetia also, in the words of Anna Matveeva, an expert on the
region, are “drifting away by default.” There are now even border
guards between southern Russia and the North Caucasus.
Kadyrov is a strict Muslim who urges
Chechen women to wear headscarves. He also encourages polygamy and
has imposed restrictions on the sale of alcohol. He even supports
so-called “honour” killings.
Kadyrov has also overseen the
construction of hundreds of mosques, including one in the centre of
Grozny capable of hosting 10,000 worshipers.
The president denounced the cartoons of
the Prophet Muhammad in the Parisian magazine Charlie Hebdo, at a
mass rally Jan. 19 in Grozny, the capital of the republic.
“We resolutely announce that we will
never let anybody insult the name of the Prophet without punishment,”
Kadyrov told the crowds.
Thanks to the ongoing unrest in the
republics, and the periodic terrorist acts by Chechens in Russian
cities, including Moscow itself, there has been a concomitant rise of
anti-Caucasian sentiments among ethnic Russians, occasionally boiling
over into attacks on Caucasians living in Russia proper by
ultra-nationalist Russian gangs.
But Kadyrov has proved useful to Putin.
By his adherence to Islam, he undermines the ideological attraction
of Islamism. He also supported Russia in its war with Georgia in
2008, and delivered an astounding (and of course unbelievable) 99.76
per cent of the vote in Chechnya for Putin in the 2012 Russian
presidential election!
So Putin continues to support Kadyrov
and other Russian-installed rulers in the Caucasus, knowing that the
alternative would be worse.
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