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Violence and confl ict

in the Russian North Caucasus

International Aff airs 83: 4 (2007) 681–705© 2007 The Author(s). Journal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd/The Royal Institute of International Aff airs

DOMITILLA SAGRAMOSO*

Since 2006 there has been a signifi cant reduction in the level of fi ghting in the Russian republic of Chechnya between federal troops and Chechen rebels, indicating a substantial weakening of the insurgency as a result of the actions taken by Russian forces and their pro-Moscow Chechen allies. However, violence in the region has not entirely subsided; indeed, it has been spreading to neighbouring regions in the North Caucasus. Today, a loose network of formally autonomous violent groups, or Islamic jamaats, has developed throughout the region, primarily in the Muslim republics of Ingushetia, Dagestan, Karachaevo-Cherkessia and Kabardino-Balka-ria.1 Over the past three years these groups have conducted many terrorist attacks against law enforcement structures, government offi cials and also local religious fi gures. Despite regular eff orts by security forces to subdue these Islamic terrorist networks, the situation remains highly volatile. During 2005 and 2006, the vast mountainous republic of Dagestan reported over 100 terrorist incidents, including the assassination of the Minister of Nationalities and two attempts on the life of the Minister of the Interior. In October 2005, over 100 armed militants carried out a series of simultaneous attacks on police, security and military sites in Nalchik, the capital of the western North Caucasian republic of Kabardino-Balkaria—rep-licating a similar attack that had taken place the previous year in Nazran, the capital of neighbouring Ingushetia. The Republic of Ingushetia has also experienced an upsurge in terrorist attacks against law enforcement offi cers and government offi cials during the past two years, including the murder of the Deputy Interior Minister. In the ethnically mixed republic of Karachaevo-Cherkessia, the past year has seen a series of terrorist attacks targeted not only on law enforcement offi cials but also on members of the offi cial Islamic clergy. Even in Chechnya, violence has not been entirely eliminated. Although no major indiscriminate terrorist attacks have occurred since the Beslan school siege in September 2004, rebel forces continue to infl ict casualties on Russian federal troops and pro-Moscow Chechen security forces. Far from abating, the violence seems to be spreading to the neigh-bouring regions of Stavropol and North Ossetia.

* the author would like to thank Denis Corboy and the Caucasus Policy Institute, King’s College London, for their support of the project on which this article is based.

1 Their organizational structure, however, does not coincide with that of traditional Muslim societies in the region, which are also called jamaats, especially in Dagestan.

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682International Aff airs 83: 4, 2007© 2007 The Author(s). Journal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd/The Royal Institute of International Aff airs

Responsibility for most of the killings and attacks in the North Caucasian republics is regularly claimed by Islamic jamaats—or communities—calling for the withdrawal of Russia’s presence from the region and the establishment of an Islamic state. They strive for the separation of the North Caucasus from Russia, and the replacement of the existing secular and pro-Russian regimes by Islamic rule based on the Shari’a, or Islamic code of law.2 Islamic ideals thus seem to guide and inspire much of the terrorist violence, although they are intermingled with deep nationalist sentiments, especially among rebel groups in Chechnya. However, the intricacies of the violence in the North Caucasus are much more complex, and are only partially related to the spread of radical Islam and separatist aspirations. Other underlying factors, such as the perpetuation of discredited and corrupt ruling elites, the persistence of severe economic hardship, youth unemployment and social alienation, and the absence of proper and eff ective channels of political expression are also driving the violence. By looking into the region’s unsatisfactory socio-economic and political conditions and analysing the development of political Islam in the region, this article tries to elucidate the drivers of the current violence in the North Caucasus. It sets out to show that ‘environmental factors’ external to Islamism, that is to say, the socio-political milieu in which Islamist groups operate, have a strong impact on the violence.3 Moreover, it argues that Islamic groups are primarily concerned with the promotion of a national or regional agenda, rather than a single universal Islamic project, although the joining of Caucasian lands to the Muslim umma might remain their ultimate ideal objective. The ‘Islamic state’ aspired to by Islamic groups in the North Caucasus is envisaged within specifi c territorial bounds, even though its realization might involve the unifi cation of the region and its separation from Russia.

In its analysis the article draws a distinction between those factors which are considered deep-rooted or structural, and are therefore harder to relate directly to terrorism—authoritarian regimes, relative socio-economic deprivation, rapid demographic growth—but are still very relevant to the outbreak of violence, and those elements which facilitate or make the outbreak of violence possible—the availability of weapons technology, the existence of a network of training and support, and the spread of attractive ideologies.4 Importance is also given to those factors which motivate individuals to turn to violent methods: namely, the personal grievances that people feel as a result of abuses and repression, and which motivate them to act. Because of the diffi culties of personally interviewing individual fi ghters, this article draws conclusions on the basis of the existing socio-political circumstances, the region’s recent history and foreign infl uences,

2 See e.g. ‘The doors of jihad are open’, 21 Jan. 2005, Kavkazcenter, http://www.kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2005/01/21/3461.shtml, accessed 2 June 2007; ‘Jama’at Shariat: our purpose is the restoration of an Islamic state’, 31 March 2007, Kavkazcenter, http://www.kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2007/03/31/7890.shtml, accessed 25 May 2007.

3 Similar lines of argument have been put forward by Mohammed Ayoob in his article on political Islam in the Middle East, ‘The future of political Islam: the importance of external variables’, International Aff airs 81: 5, 2005, pp. 951–62.

4 For details on the various factors motivating terrorist violence, see Tore Bjorgo, ‘Introduction’, in Root causes of terrorism: myths, reality and ways forward (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), p. 3.

Violence and confl ict in the Russian North Caucasus


as well as on personal impressions from travels to the region. The article focuses on developments in Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachaevo-Cherkessia—those predominantly Muslim republics of the North Caucasus where the violence has been the most pronounced.5 It must be pointed out, however, that despite some major commonalities, the local socio-political, economic and religious conditions vary substantially across the North Caucasian republics. Therefore, the several factors driving the violence carry diff erent relative weight in each individual case. This article, however, does not focus on the diff er-ences between the republics, but instead draws a general picture of the drivers of violence in the region as a whole.

Although hardly ever reported by the western media, events in the North Caucasus have signifi cant implications for Europe and the wider world. The enlarge-ment of the European Union and the inclusion of Ukraine and the three South Caucasian states—Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan—into the EU neighbourhood policy have brought these countries and the adjacent areas of the North Caucasus closer to the EU. As a result, events in the North Caucasus are no longer the sole remit of countries in the region. There is a risk that instability and violence in the North Caucasus may spread into areas that are of growing signifi cance not only to Europe, but also to the United States and the Atlantic alliance. NATO and the US have become substantially involved in the South Caucasus, and Georgia’s member-ship of NATO is no longer being entirely ruled out. The countries in the Caspian region as a whole are also highly signifi cant to the West because of their vast energy resources, with important routes for supplies of oil and gas transiting through the South Caucasus to international markets. The readiness of the Russian leadership to accept EU assistance for the reconstruction of the North Caucasus has opened up new opportunities to western countries in the region. However, involvement in the region also creates new challenges for western policy-makers that need to be properly evaluated and assessed. This article aims to examine events in the region as a basis on which better responses to the challenges posed can be formulated.

The complexities of the Russian North Caucasus

The Russian republics of the North Caucasus—Adygeia, Karachaevo-Cherkessia, Kabardino-Balkaria, North Ossetia, Ingushetia, Chechnya and Dagestan—are located in the southernmost territory of the Russian Federation, on the borders with Georgia and Azerbaijan. They lie to the north of the Caucasus mountain range, which straddles the gap between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea. Because of their geographical location and ethnic composition they are of major strategic signifi cance to Russia, and also to the West as a whole. Not only do they provide a link between the two bodies of water, one of which, the Caspian, is land-locked, but they also hold major transport routes connecting Russia to Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. The republic of Dagestan is of particular importance as the site 5 The other North Caucasian republics are North Ossetia and Adygeia. Adygeia has so far been spared of Islamic

violence, whereas North Ossetia only witnessed a few attacks in 2006, besides the Beslan school siege in 2004, which was conducted primarily by Chechen fi ghters.

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of a pipeline which transports Azerbaijani oil from the off shore terminals in the Caspian Sea to the Russian port of Novorossiysk. Another series of pipelines transit the South Caucasus, transporting Azerbaijani oil and gas from the Caspian Sea through Georgia to Turkish and western markets. The countries of the South Caucasus, however, remain highly unstable, facing grave challenges to their terri-torial integrity in the form of de facto separatist states—the self-proclaimed repub-lics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia and the predominantly Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan.

The North Caucasus is one of the most ethnically diverse regions of the Russian Federation. About 40 ethnic groups of Turkic, Iranian and Caucasian origin are currently living in the region, each of which has its own distinct national identity, language, history and culture.6 All groups hold a strong attachment to their national or ethnic identities, and thus potentially represent a challenge to Russia’s territorial integrity. Although none of the North Caucasian national groups apart from the Chechens have actually displayed a clear desire to secede from Russia, they do remain eager to run their own aff airs, thus creating a problem for Russia’s internal political and administrative organization. During the Soviet era, several North Caucasian ethnic groups were given either their own autonomous repub-lics or autonomous districts (Adygeia, North Ossetia, Ingushetia and Dagestan), or an autonomous republic or province to share with other titular nationalities (Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachaevo-Cherkessia, Dagestan). At the time of the Soviet Union’s collapse, all these ethnically based administrative units were elevated to the status of ‘sovereign’ republics within the Russian Federation. This ethno-territorial arrangement has not only created resentment among those ethnic groups that have not received their own republics—for example, the Nogai, or the Cossack Russians—but has also complicated the internal administration of each republic, as government positions have often been allocated according to the principle of nationality, rather than on the basis of merit, effi ciency or popular support. In addition, many linkages exist between ethnic groups in the North Caucasus and their ethnic kin across the borders in either Georgia (the Ossetians, and the Circassians or Cherkess who are linked to the Abkhaz) or Azerbaijan (the Lezgins). This creates an additional challenge to Russia, as the demands for seces-sion among South Ossetians and Abkhaz in Georgia are generally supported by their ethnic kin in the North Caucasus. Thus, potential outbreaks of violence in Georgia or Azerbaijan over the fate of these ethnic minorities risk involving their ethnic brethren in the North Caucasus.

Some ethnic groups in the Caucasus were deported en masse to Central Asia during the Second World War—the Chechens, Ingush, Balkars and Karachai—and this has left severe scars in their historical memories. Although they were all

6 The various peoples can be grouped into several categories according to the origins of their language. Those speaking Caucasian languages constitute a majority, and can be subdivided into western Caucasians (the Circassians or Cherkess, which also include the Adyge and the Kabardians) and eastern Caucasians (the Chechens, Ingush, Avars, Dargins, Laks and Lezgins). Those ethnic groups speaking Turkic languages include the Kumyks, Karachai, Balkar, Nogai and Azeri peoples; those speaking Iranian languages are represented by the Ossets and Tats.



allowed to return to the Caucasus during the 1950s, the process has involved severe problems of resettlement and border adjustments. This has created signifi cant tensions among some ethnic groups, and in the case of the Ingushetia and North Ossetia it has resulted in the outbreak of violent confl ict in 1992. Although no other signifi cant ethnic violence has been registered in the region so far, the poten-tial for hostilities breaking out along ethnic lines cannot be entirely ruled out.

Besides its intricate ethnic make-up, the region also hosts a complex religious confi guration. Most of the region’s ethnic groups are Sunni Muslims, adhering either to the Shafi i madhhab or school (most Dagestanis, Chechens and Ingush) or to the Hanafi madhhab (all others), with the exception of the Ossetians and Slavs, who are Orthodox Christians, and the Tats, most of whom are Jewish.7 Over the past decade all Muslim populations in the region have developed close ties with Sunni Muslims in other parts of the Islamic world, and have been infl uenced by Salafi forms of Islam which have arrived primarily from the Middle East. Such infl uences pose one of the most signifi cant challenges to Russian rule in the region, as much of the recent violence that has been experienced by the North Caucasus seems to have been inspired by radical Islamic ideals which have fl ourished in the region, to a great extent as consequence of the Chechen war.

During the 1990s, all the republics of the North Caucasus became increasingly autonomous in the handling of their own internal aff airs, and Chechnya even opted for outright independence. The republics assumed many of the features of states, adopting their own laws and constitutions, electing presidents, pursuing territorial claims, keeping their own languages, and in some cases setting up their own security and law enforcement structures. The federal centre remained a source of budgetary funding and an ultimate guarantor of their security, but the republics pursued quite independent domestic policies.8 In exchange for loyalty to the centre, local leaders were generally allowed to conduct their own aff airs with limited interference from the Kremlin. At the same time, the degree of governance and the ability of local leaders to implement laws, enforce order and provide services remained very limited. Regional elites proved totally unprepared to address the various challenges faced by the North Caucasian republics after the end of the Soviet Union—severe economic decline, rising poverty and mounting unemployment, coupled with increasingly high birth rates and signifi cant fl ows of refugees. More signifi cantly, the North Caucasian republics failed to avert violent confl ict. Besides the violence between Ingush and North Ossetians over the fate of the disputed Prigorodny district currently lying in North Ossetia, the region also witnessed the outbreak of war between the federal centre and the secessionist republic of Chechnya. The two Chechen wars had a signifi cant impact on the security and stability of the region, and are partly to blame for the current spread of violence. Although the massive Russian military intervention in Chechnya discouraged separatist aspira-

7 Madhhab is an Arabic term that refers to an Islamic school of thought or religious jurisprudence. There are four main schools today of Sunni jurisprudence: Hanafi , Maliki, Shafi i and Hanbali.

8 For details of political developments in the region, see also Anna Matveeva, The North Caucasus: Russia’s fragile borderland. Central Asian and Caucasian Prospects series (London: Royal Institute of International Aff airs, 1999).

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tions among other North Caucasian republics, it led to the militarization of the area, the fl ow of refugees and the spread of violence to neighbouring republics.

With the arrival of Vladimir Putin as Russian president in 2000, eff orts were made to reverse the countries’ decentralizing tendencies. Besides trying to restore control over Chechnya, the centre has sought to bring republican constitutions into line with federal laws and to reassert the centre’s control over all Russian regions—by streamlining legislation; by modifying the way in which members are elected to the Federation Council, the upper house of parliament; and by granting the president the right to dismiss regional leaders. In 2004 the election of gover-nors was eliminated altogether. The results of these measures have been mixed, especially in respect of the North Caucasus, where the federal centre is still forced to rely on local elites to ensure stability and loyalty to the Kremlin. Moreover, such changes have not resulted in the reduction of violence in the region; on the contrary, in many ways they have actually exacerbated the violence.

The intricacies of the current violence

Contrary to what might have been expected, given the complex ethnic and religious mix of the region, fi ghting has not occurred along ethnic or confessional lines. Instead, after the end of the Soviet Union, violence has been carried out primarily in pursuit of political or national-territorial objectives, especially as far as Chechnya is concerned. More recently, though, terrorist violence in the region seems to have been motivated by a desire to replace the existing secular and pro-Rus-sian regimes with an Islamic state based on the Shari’a. Most of the terrorist attacks in the region are generally claimed by Islamic jamaats, calling for the withdrawal of Russia’s presence from the region, and the establishment of an Islamic state throughout the North Caucasus. The popularity of such radical Islamic ideolo-gies can be explained by a general dissatisfaction with the current socio-political and economic conditions in the North Caucasus, and the ideological void which engulfed the region after the end of the Communist regime. The perpetuation of corrupt ruling elites, the absence of alternative channels of political expression, and the dire socio-economic conditions in the North Caucasus have provided a fertile ground for the emergence of radical Islamic ideologies calling for the estab-lishment of an Islamic state in the region, based on the Shari’a code of law. Such an Islamic state is seen as an ideal answer to both the socio-political demands, as well as to the moral and spiritual needs of local societies. Islamic ideologies have proven particularly attractive to many young individuals in the region, who have been extremely disappointed with the failures of the economic and political transitions that took place in the 1990s, and have proved eager to adopt new attractive ideas in order to fi ll their ideological void. Although not all those attracted to Islamic ideologies have resorted to violence to impose their views, a small group has proven ready to utilise force and military means in order to introduce an Islamic state. Such resort to violence has been facilitated by the outbreak of the Chechen war which has not only created a sense of solidarity among individual Muslims



throughout the region, it has also provided the necessary logistical and mobilising potential for the creation of Islamic violent networks.

Before dwelling into the intricacies of the Islamic ideologies and its spread throughout the region, the article will examine the negative socio-political and economic conditions that have developed in the region over the past decade, and which have provided the background for the spread of radical violent Islamic ideologies. Although not directly responsible for the outbreak of violence, such underlying factors have provided the appropriate atmosphere for the emergence of radical Islamic ideologies.

Discredited and corrupt ruling elites

The systematic abuse of power by the authorities, the widespread embezzlement of government funds and the entrenched corruption that has engulfed the ruling elites have all created a strong feeling of frustration and a deep sense of injustice among the population at large, especially among the young. Despite the exist-ence of formal democratic procedures in most republics, proper democratic insti-tutions and eff ective governance have failed to materialize. During the 1990s, all the North Caucasian republics adopted constitutions of a strongly democratic nature. These usually envisaged elections to the executive organs of power—with the exception of Dagestan, which set up a collective presidency—and to regional legislatures, and established the separation of powers between the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. They also enshrined in law the protection of human rights and individual freedoms, and guaranteed the right of free speech and free association. However, truly competitive elections hardly ever took place during the 1990s and early 2000s in the North Caucasus. Moreover, after the October 2004 federal reforms, which abolished direct gubernatorial elections in Russia, elections to the executive organs of power were cancelled altogether. They were replaced by nominations approved by the local parliaments. In addition, no proper separa-tion of powers between the executive, the legislature and the judicial branch has ever been established, and the rule of law has failed to be properly implemented and respected. Local government autonomy has remained limited, independent media outlets have been either silenced or restricted, and strong political parties and interest groups have failed to emerge. Instead, informal arrangements, such as clans, client–patronage networks and shadow economic relations, have dominated the political life of the North Caucasus republics. In most republics, the old local nomenklatura has managed to keep itself in power with the aid of administrative resources, its own personal networks and professional experience, and the support from the federal centre. This has allowed it to preserve many features of the ‘old system’ and concentrate power into its own hands.

In Kabardino-Balkaria, Valery Kokov, the former First Secretary of the local executive committee (obkom) of the Soviet Communist Party and chairman of the local Supreme Soviet, succeeded in ruling the republic with an iron fi st from the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 until health problems compelled him to

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resign in September 2005. The republic of Karachaevo-Cherkessia was headed by Vladimir Khubiev from 1979 until the fi rst presidential elections were held in 1999. Khubiev was another former obkom Communist Party First Secretary who relied on administrative structures to preserve his position in power. Two subsequent elections held in 1999 and 2003 brought about changes of leadership in the republic, but they did not substantially alter the undemocratic and clientelistic nature of the regime. The rule of the current President, Mustafa Batdiyev, is characterized by corruption and ineffi ciency, and by increased eff orts to take control over all levers of power. The republic of Dagestan was led uninterruptedly from 1991 to February 2006 by Magomedali Magomedov, the former chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the republic, despite the fact that the 1994 Dagestani constitution stipulated the establishment of a rotating collective presidency. He succeeded in remaining in power as a result of his ability to keep a balance between the local clans.

In the republic of Ingushetia, the Kremlin orchestrated victory in the presiden-tial elections of April 2002 for Murat Zyazikov, a former Federal Security Services general, in a poll marred by irregularities. His rule has been characterized by incompetence and corruption, and by the spread of violence from neighbouring Chechnya. In Chechnya, the Kremlin ensured the election of Akhmet Kadyrov, the Mufti of Chechnya, in October 2003, after persuading all serious alterna-tive candidates to withdraw from the race. Moscow also engaged in a process of ‘normalization’ of political life in the republic, which entailed the introduction of a Constitution confi rming Chechnya’s status within the Russian Federation. The Kremlin also ruled out any kind of political dialogue with either opposition fi gures or rebel forces. More recently, Moscow appointed Ramzan Kadyrov, son of the previous President, and head of the Chechen security forces, to the presi-dency of this formerly rebellious republic.

In most republics, local leaderships have succeeded in ensuring that loyal individuals become elected to parliament, and that infl uential dissenting fi gures and opposition parties remain marginalized. In Kabardino-Balkaria, Kokov disbanded the old republican parliament or Supreme Soviet in 1993, and established a new parliament, composed primarily of members of the old nomenklatura.9 He also succeeded in reducing the power of opposition parties, by either banning them (as in the case of the Balkar national party Terek) or subduing them (as in the case of the Kabardian national movement, Adyge Khase). In Ingushetia, Karachaevo-Cherkessia and Chechnya, elections to the local parliaments in 2003–2004 were managed by the local authorities, and as result, most seats were won by individuals loyal to the centre. In Ingushetia, opposition parties have been prevented from holding rallies, and have been forced to abandon any kind of political ambitions. Opposition fi gures have been completely marginalized in neighbouring Chechnya, as Ramzan Kadyrov has managed to become the sole master of the republic. Moreover, in many republics, independent media outlets have been either harassed or forced to close, and all open political debate has been suppressed.

9 See Michael McFaul and Nikolai Petrov, eds, Politicheskii al’manakh Rossii 1997, vol. 2: Sotsial’no-politicheskie portrety regionov (Moscow: Carnegie Center, 1998), p. 146.



All of these conditions have limited the options for peaceful change and pluralism, and have thus encouraged some to turn to violence to express their grievances. The changes introduced at federal level in 2004, which have involved the appointment rather than the election by direct vote of the presidents of all republics, have only exacerbated the situation. As a result, the legitimacy of the current regimes has been increasingly questioned by the local population. The popularity of new leaders in the North Caucasus remains quite limited, even though they have been chosen on the basis of their competence and integrity, as in the case of Arsen Kanokov, the new leader of Kabardino-Balkaria, or Muku Aliev, the new president of Dagestan.

In all of these republics, moreover, power remains in the hands of a small elite which not only controls most government positions, but is also in posses-sion of substantial amounts of wealth. For example, in Karachaevo-Cherkessia, the current President’s son-in-law acquired control over the lucrative cement and chemical factories, whereas in Chechnya, Kadyrov is in charge of all the funds that are destined for the reconstruction of the republic. In Dagestan, the mayor of the capital city Makhachkala has been able to access the substantial profi ts generated by the city’s port activities, whereas in Kabardino-Balkaria it has been alleged that former President Kokov controlled the network of petrol stations.10 Generally, most of the wealth has been acquired through the semi-legal process of priva-tization of state property during the 1990s, or as a result of access to budgetary resources which are regularly forthcoming from the federal centre.11 This extra-legal accumulation of wealth and power, as well as the widespread corruption, is another constant source of resentment among the local populations, especially when contrasted with the limited economic possibilities off ered to the vast majority of the people. 12 Not only are regimes in the region quite authoritarian and highly corrupt, they are also incapable of ensuring the wider population’s economic well-being, thus creating widespread frustration.

As in many other regions of the Muslim world, such unsatisfactory condi-tions have left a void which has been fi lled by Islamic groups and ideologies. Such ideologies have proven particularly attractive to young and alienated individuals in the region, because they have envisage the introduction of an Islamic state which would, among others, restore social justice and equality, and put an end to the embedded corruption. The promise of Islamic jamaats in Dagestan to curb corrup-tion, reduce criminal violence and impose law and order was one of the main reasons why they became so popular among mountainous communities in the Kadar region during the 1990s. In Karachaevo-Cherkessia, Islamic jamaats gained

10 Khasen Laipanov, ‘Trouble brewing in the North’, Caucasus Reporting Service, no. 13, Institute of War and Peace Reporting, London, 7 January 2000. http://www.iwpr.net/?p=crs&s=f&o=162044&apc_state=henicrsce74bc630111401c1a0a9193d11d563a, accessed 22 May 2007; and ‘Ob obshchestvenno-politichskoi situatsii v Kabardino-Balkarii’, March 2005, http://kavkaz-uzel.ru/analyticstext/analytics/id/790662.html, accessed 22 May 2007, for the power of clans in Kabardino-Balkaria.

11 For details on the privatization of state property at regional level, see Darrell Slider, ‘Regional aspects of privatisation in Russia’, in Peter. J. Stavrakis, Joan Debardeleben and Larry Black, eds, Beyond the monolith: the emergence of regionalism in post-Soviet Russia (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997).

12 See e.g. Valery Vyzhutovich, Rossiiskaya gazeta, 7 July 2005, on corruption in Dagestan.

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support because they provided assistance and employment to those losing jobs as a result of the closure of various factories. All these elements combined explain the popularity of political Islam among certain groups of the North Caucasus. Although the illegitimacy of the current regimes, the lack of political pluralism and the widespread corruption do not in themselves account for the outbreak of violence, they do create the adequate background against which radical ideologies emerge and violence can erupt. Frustration and dissatisfaction over the political situation, moreover, is compounded by great disappointment over the lack of economic prospects.

Severe economic decline

Studies on the root causes of terrorism have generally argued that poverty and economic underdevelopment are not direct causes of violence. Having reviewed the socio-economic background and educational standards of terrorists worldwide, several analysts have concluded that economic factors and levels of education have not played a determinant role in the outbreak of violence.13 However, this article shows instead that poverty and unemployment do contribute, albeit in an indirect way, to the outbreak of political violence, especially when coupled with the absence of channels of political expression.14 The lack of economic development tends to create large masses of young unemployed people with limited opportunities for progress and self-advancement. A strong sense of marginalization and frustration at this lack of opportunity can lead young men to join rebel groups. As pointed out by Ted Gurr in his famous study on rebellions, people tend to become resentful and disposed to violent political action when they share a sense that they have been deprived of economic opportunities or political advantages enjoyed by other groups.15 All these factors—widespread poverty, high levels of unemployment among the young and signifi cant levels of income inequality—are present in the North Caucasus, and they can be held to account for the outbreak of violence.

The republics of the North Caucasus suff ered severely from the deep economic crisis which engulfed the Russian state during the 1990s. As a result of the collapse of the Soviet command system and the abrupt transition to the market, the old Soviet industrial and agricultural enterprises fell into disarray, and only very limited new economic activity emerged in their place. For example, between 1991 and 1998 the volume of industrial production in Dagestan fell by 80 per cent.16 Agricultural production, a major economic activity in the republic, also suff ered severely. In 1998 volumes of production had contracted by 65 per cent from 1991 levels.17 Kabardino-Balkaria, a predominantly industrial republic, also

13 See e.g. Alan B. Krueger and Jitka Maleckova, ‘Education, poverty and terrorism: is there a causal connec-tion?’, Journal of Economic Perspectives 17: 4, Fall 2003, pp. 119–44.

14 See on this topic Ted Robert Gurr, ‘Economic factors’, in Louise Richardson, ed., The roots of terrorism (New York: Routledge, 2006), p. 89.

15 Ted Robert Gurr, Why men rebel (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970).16 Goskomstat (State Stastistical Bureau), Russian Federation, 1997, 1998.17 I. G. Kosikov and L. S. Kosikova, Severnyi Kavkaz: Sotsial’no-ekonomicheskii spravochik (Moscow: MIDZH Eksk-

lyusov-press, 1999), p. 79.



saw its overall production drop signifi cantly. Industrial output fell by an average of 21 per cent a year between 1993 and 1995 because of sharp falls in demand.18 Karachaevo-Cherkessia’s broad manufacturing base also experienced signifi cant decline during the 1990s.19 The sharpest falls in production and economic activity during the 1990s, however, were registered in Chechnya and neighbouring Ingush-etia. Chechnya saw its economic potential erode with the arrival at the head of the republic of nationalist leader Dzhokar Dudayev in the autumn of 1991. After the Chechen leadership declared independence from Russia, Moscow imposed a partial economic blockade on the republic and began cutting off transfers from the federal budget. The growing economic isolation of Chechnya, coupled with the anarchic nature of the Dudayev regime, plunged the economy into deep crisis. In the place of the old Soviet economy a highly criminalized economy emerged, dominated by powerful fi gures close to the Chechen leadership. With the outbreak of war in 1994, the republic’s economy was almost completely destroyed. Neigh-bouring Ingushetia suff ered severely from the war in Chechnya, over 500,000 refugees arrived in the republic during 1994–5, putting severe strains on the repub-lican budget and contributing signifi cantly to its further impoverishment. Prima-rily an agrarian region, Ingushetia experienced signifi cant declines in agricultural production during the 1990s. Its limited industrial activity also collapsed with the end of the command system. Concentrated in the energy sector, industrial output shrank by an average of 23 per cent between 1995 and 1997. By 1997 Ingushetia had joined Chechnya as one of the poorest regions of the Russian Federation.

These signifi cant declines in output throughout the region resulted in the massive impoverishment of the populations of the North Caucasus. By the mid-1990s the North Caucasian republics were among the poorest regions of the Russian Federa-tion, in terms of income, GDP growth, industrial output and unemployment.20 In 1997, over 85 per cent of the population in Ingushetia lived below the offi cial poverty line, while in Dagestan, a traditionally rich republic, levels of poverty reached almost 80 per cent of the population. In Kabardino-Balkaria over 62 per cent of the population fell below the poverty line.21 More signifi cantly, unemploy-ment soared, as companies closed down and economic activity failed to develop. Real, as opposed to offi cial, levels of unemployment were estimated in 1998 at 35 per cent of the active population in Kabardino-Balkaria, and as high as 52 per cent in Ingushetia, Karachaevo-Cherkessia and Dagestan.22 Levels of unemployment were particularly elevated among those under 30 years old, reaching almost 70

18 Goskmostat, 1991–7.19 Goskomstat, 1997.20 Bert van Selm, ‘Economic performance in Russia’s regions’, Europe-Asia Studies 50: 4, 1998, pp. 613–14.21 Goskomstat fi gures reported by the World Bank in its report, Russian Federation: reducing poverty through growth

and social policy reform, Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Unit, 8 Feb. 2005, p. 168. All these high fi gures should be treated with caution. The Russian government used to defi ne poverty in a much more inclu-sive fashion than the UN or the World Bank, thus generating much higher fi gures. Still, the levels of poverty remained quite high, and more importantly, a signifi cant share of the population living in poverty had incomes well below the subsistence level. See Rossiya Regionov: v kakom sotsial’nom prostranstve my zhivem? (Moscow: Nezavisimii Institut Sotsial’noi Politiki, Pomatur, 2005), p. 48; Stanislav Kolesnikov and Anthony Shorrocks, ‘A decomposition analysis of regional poverty in Russia’, Review of Development Economics 9: 1, 2005, p. 25.

22 Kosikov and Kosikova, Severnyi Kavkaz, p. 37.

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per cent.23 Although a very signifi cant informal economy developed in the North Caucasus, and this became a major source of income and employment for people in the region, it did not really provide a response to the region’s economic problems. Unemployment and lack of economic prospects created great strains within the population, and a strong sense of dissatisfaction especially among young individ-uals. Finding a job and improving their own economic well-being became one of the main concerns of young people in the region.

Despite notable increases in economic growth and income over the past four years—in 2006, the region registered an 8–9 per cent economic growth rate, and incomes among the population as a whole rose substantially—the overall socio-economic picture of the region has not improved signifi cantly.24 Some republics like Dagestan witnessed a signifi cant drop in poverty (from 60 per cent in 2002 to 21 per cent in 2005), however, in Ingushetia, almost 61 per cent of the population in still lived below the poverty line in 2005.25 A Vulnerability Assessment and Mapping (VAM) survey of Ingushetia and Chechnya, conducted in 2006 by World Food Programme, jointly with UNICEF and the Danish Refugee Council, noted that poverty remained endemic in the region, and that progress towards recovery had been irregular and uneven.26 Unemployment was still high in 2004—54 per cent of the active population in Ingushetia and 24 per cent in Dagestan.27 Unemploy-ment fi gures for Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachaevo-Cherkessia in 2003 ranged between 17 and 22 per cent.28 Some more recent reports mention unemployment levels as high as 70 and 80 per cent among young males in certain regions of the North Caucasus—in particular in Ingushetia and Chechnya.29 According to the UN World Food Programme, in 2006 between 50 and 80 per cent of the active population in Chechnya remained unemployed, and 60 per cent of the active population in Ingushetia did not have a job.30 The situation has been exacerbated by the strong natural growth of the population that has occurred in the North Caucasian republics over the past 15 years, in signifi cant contrast with developments elsewhere in Russia. According to offi cial data, between 1989 and 2002 the popula-tions of the region grew by 25 per cent.31 The vast pool of young unemployed men that has arisen has become an ideal breeding ground for the emergence of violent groups and the spread of extremist ideologies. The high unemployment levels 23 Ibid.24 Federal State Statistics Service, 2006.25 See World Bank, Russian Federation: Reducing poverty through growth and social policy reform, p. 168; and UNDP,

National Human Development Report, Russian Federation: Russia’s Regions: Goals, Challenges and Achievements, (Moscow: All World, 2007), p.55.

26 Vulnerability Assessment and Mapping report quoted in Inter-Agency Transitional Workplan for the North Cauca-sus, UN Offi ce for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Aff airs, Moscow, 2007, p. 7, http://www.ocha.ru/index.php?m=19&_lang=eng, accessed on 10 May 2007. In Ingushetia, severe poverty among usual residents was 34 per cent in 2005, and among refugees it reached 66 per cent.

27 Federal State Statistics Service, 2004, quoted in ‘Emergency food assistance to vulnerable households in the North Caucasus’, unpublished paper, UN World Food Programme Project no. 10128.2, 2006.

28 Rossiya Regionov, p. 48.29 ‘Vulnerability analysis and mapping in the North Caucasus’, unpublished paper, UN World Food Programme,

2006, draft report, p. 2.30 Ibid., p. 2.31 Data from the 2002 Russian census, reported by B. Kozyrev, ‘Polika: etnicheskoe litso regiona’, Gazeta sever-

naya, 22 April 2005, p. 2.



and low incomes typical of mountain villages have been part of the reason why young men have joined Islamic violent groups in Kabardino-Balkaria, Dagestan or Ingushetia. For example, the home village of Muslim Atayev, the late leader of the Kabardino-Balkarian Islamic jamaat Yarmuk, is one of the poorest villages in Kabardino-Balkaria. According to members of the local administration, 99 per cent of working-age adults, of a total population of 6,000, are considered to be unemployed, surviving mainly on subsistence farming.32

The North Caucasus has also been characterized by acute income polarization and a widening gap between the rich and the poor. As a result of the rapid and badly conducted transition to a market economy in the 1990s, traditional economic elites have been disrupted and new groups of rapidly enriched people have emerged. In turn, the vast majority of the population has become highly impoverished. During the 1990s, the inequality of wealth between the richest and poorest individuals in the region grew exponentially. In the late 1990s, on average in the region, the richest 10 per cent of the population had incomes ten times higher than the poorest 10 per cent. In Ingushetia, incomes of the richest 10 per cent were over 15 times higher than the incomes of the poorest 10 per cent.33 Such a picture of income inequality has inevitably led to frustration and social tension, and has played a signifi cant part in pushing young people to join radical groups. The radical Wahhabi ideologies preached in the region during the 1990s, and their spiritual egalitarianism, proved particularly appealing to those frustrated with the existing socio-economic condi-tions. Their condemnation of traditional forms of social organization, and of local customs (which often involved spending substantial amounts of money at funerals or weddings), struck a chord with those young individuals in search of a remedy for the socio-economic distress faced by the societies they lived in.34 Although in themselves, the dire economic conditions cannot be directly accounted for the recourse to violence, they do contribute to a climate of general dissatisfaction and lack of prospects, especially among the young.

The revival of Islam and the spread of radical Salafi ideologies

The perpetuation of corrupt ruling elites and dire socio-economic conditions resulted in great disappointment with western liberal democratic models of development. They also led to a loss of confi dence in the ability of the Russian system eff ectively to tackle the region’s needs. National ideas and nationalist movements, extremely popular during the late 1980s, also failed to provide an adequate answer to the essentially multi-ethnic societies of the North Caucasus. Such a predicament led many young Muslims to turn to Islam, fi nding in its original

32 Fatima Tlisova, ‘Islamist group destroyed in Kabadino-Balkaria’, Caucasus Reporting Service, no. 272, Institute of War and Peace Reporting, London, 3 February. 2005, http://www.iwpr.net/?p=crs&s=f&o=239889&apc_state=henicrs46702083e30611c, 5ff 7b1b5ff d8a9c05, accessed 20 May 2007.

33 Kosikov and Kosikova, Severnyi Kavkaz, pp. 89, 106, 126. The trend of widening inequality has increased during the 2000s.

34 Dmitry Makarov, Ofi tsial’niy i neofi tsial’niyi Islam v Dagestane (Moscow: Tsentr strategicheskikh i politicheskikh issledovanii, 2000), p. 48.

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tenets the adequate socio-political and moral answer to the various problems they encountered. Many of these young Muslims have proved attracted to more radical Salafi and jihadist ideas which spread throughout the region during the 1990s and which provided an inspiration for the use of violence.35 Salafi or Wahhabi ideas emerged in some areas of the North Caucasus before the end of the Soviet Union. In Dagestan a group of young imams set up the fi rst underground Salafi communi-ties with the purpose of learning the tenets of Islam in its purest forms as early as the 1970s.36 In Chechnya, Salafi groups willing to purify the faith from local Sufi traditions developed in the late 1980s.

The wider popularity and reach of Salafi ideas in the 1990s resulted from the various contacts and exchanges between young Muslims and the broader Islamic world, and fed into the religious revival that took place in the North Caucasus after the end of the Soviet Union.37 In the early 1990s a growing number of young Muslims started regularly attending mosques, observing fasts and performing daily prayers.38 Through the hajj—the pilgrimage to the holy places of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia—these young Muslims came in contact with co-re-ligionists from other regions and participated in a universal Muslim occasion. Many travelled to other Muslim countries in the Middle East, in many cases to study Islam in their institutions and universities.39 Through these experiences, they signifi cantly increased their knowledge and understanding of Islam. More importantly, they also became acquainted with Salafi Islam and other radical Islamic views, through the works of Ibn Taimiya, Muhammad Abd al-Wahhab, Abdul Alaa Maudidi, Sayid al Kutb and al-Turabi.40 Salafi ideas also reached the North Caucasus through eff orts of the various foreign Islamic funds and organiza-tions which opened offi ces in the region, and supported the construction of new mosques, Islamic schools, and the publication of Islamic literature. Many had a clear Salafi or Wahhabi leaning, such as the fund Al Haramein, the Islamic Benevo-lence Foundation and the Islamic Salvation Organization, and provided support to local Salafi groups, especially in Chechnya and Dagestan.

The fundamental ideas of Salafi s in the North Caucasus were in line with many of the principles of Salafi thinking that had become popular in other parts of the

35 Salafi sm is an Islamic school of thought that developed in the second half of the nineteenth century as a reac-tion to European infl uence. It believes that Islam’s decline after the early generations is a result of foreign innovations (bid’a) and that an Islamic revival will result from the emulation of the three early generations of Muslims and the purging of foreign infl uences from the religion. Salafi sm is often used interchangeably with Wahhabism, another form of fundamentalist Islam which, originating in Saudi Arabia, calls for a return to the pure, unadulterated Islam of the period of the Prophet and the four righteous caliphs. In its more radical jihadist form, Salafi ideology calls for the use of armed force in order to spread Islam. In this article, the terms Wahhabism and Salafi sm are used interchangeably.

36 V. O. Bobrovnikov and A. A. Yarlykapov, ‘“Wahhabity” Severnogo Kavkaza’, in Islam na territorii byvshey Rossiiskoyu imperii, Entsiklopedicheskiy slovar, Volume 2, (Moscow: Vostochnaya Literatura,1999), p. 20.

37 Yaacov Ro’i, Islam in the CIS: a threat to stability? (London: Royal Institute of International Aff airs, 2001), pp. 12–19.

38 Akhmet Yarlykapov, ‘Sovremennye islamskie dvizheniya na Severnom Kavkaze: obshzhie tendentsii i razli-chiya’, in Irina Babich and Akhmet Yarlykapov, eds, Islamskoe vozrozhdenie v sovremennoi Kabardino-Balkarii: perspektivy i posledstviya (Moscow: RUDN, 2003), pp. 122–43.

39 Ro’i, Islam, pp. 16–17.40 Galina M. Yemelianova, ‘Kinship, ethnicity and religion in post-communist societies: Russia’s autonomous

republic of Kabardino-Balkariya’, Ethnicities 5: 1, 2003, p. 66.



Muslim world at the time. Salafi s in the North Caucasus were eager to purify the Islamic faith and rid it of all bid’a or sinful innovations.41 They wanted to restore the central principle of Islam—tawhid or monotheism. They did not consider themselves bound by any Islamic school or madhhab, and instead conformed only to those regulations of the schools of law that could be tested by reference to the Qur’an or the Sunna.42 This brought them into confrontation with the ‘traditional’ forms of Islam that were prevalent in the region, characterized by an abundance of rites of non-Islamic origin. Salafi s were particularly critical of the veneration of saints and sheikhs as intercessors between believers and Allah, which they saw as a deviation from monotheism.43 These latter practices were widespread among Sufi followers in Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia. Salafi s also opposed the archaic clan- and ethnicity-based stratifi cation of local North Caucasian societies, and were eager to replace it with a more inclusive Islamic identity. This made them popular among young Muslims disappointed with the prevailing socio-economic conditions.44

Wahhabi ideologies proved especially attractive to those young individuals who were eager to change society and introduce wider equality and social justice. They appealed to young people willing to distance themselves from the traditional structures of North Caucasian societies, which were seen as responsible for the highly unsatisfactory socio-economic situation. Salafi ideas seemed to provide the answer, if only because of their egalitarian attitude and concern for social justice.45 For many, they also fi lled the spiritual and moral void which had been created as a result of the collapse of the Communist ideology, by providing a new sense of identity and purpose in life.

During the early 1990s more moderate forms of Salafi sm, which rejected the use of violence, became widespread in the region. They were preached by highly infl uential fi gures such as Akhmed-kadi Akhtaev in Dagestan and Musa Mukozhev in Kabardino-Balkaria, both of whom advocated the gradual re-Islami-zation of society as a precondition for the subsequent Islamization of the state. Moderate Salafi s believed that local Muslim populations in the region needed to be educated fi rst in the tenets of Islam, before an Islamic state could be estab-lished. They emphasized their adherence to peaceful means of propounding Islam, and recognized the authority of secular organs of power in the republic.46 Their views became very popular among young Muslims, and their preachers gained a high number of followers. A small group, however, became attracted to more radical Salafi views, whose proponents proved eager to replace the existing regimes with Islamic structures. Radical Salafi s, such as Bagauddin Kebedov in Dagestan, considered the secular governments of the region to be kafi r (godless) and there-

41 Irina Babich, ‘Sovremennoe islamskoe dvizhenie v Kabardino-Balkarii’, in Irina Babich and Akhmet Yarlyka-pov, eds, Islamskoe vozrozhdenie v sovremennoi Kabardino-Balkarii, p. 84.

42 Makarov, Ofi tsial’niy, p. 25.43 Bobrovnikov and Yarlykapov, “Wahhabity” Severnogo Kavkaza, p. 20.44 Akhmet Yarlykapov, ‘Radikalism i esktremism sredi musulman Severnogo Kavkaza: ideologiya i praktika’,

unpublished paper, 2006, p. 7.45 Makarov, Ofi tsial’niy, p. 48.46 Bobrovnikov and Yarlykapov, ‘“Wahhabity” Severnogo Kavkaza’, p. 21.

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fore illegitimate, and thus called for the immediate introduction of Shari’a law.47 They also supported the idea of spreading Salafi ideas in the region and uniting the Caucasus under Islamic rule, as an intermediate stage on the path towards the future full unity of all Muslims in the umma.48 They took as their models of state-hood the regimes of Sudan and Afghanistan. They also believed that the highest form of jihad entailed a campaign to spread Islam all over the world, which could involve the use of weapons, rather than the spiritual development of human-kind, as the Sufi s maintained. They viewed jihad as a defensive armed struggle to overcome those obstacles which the enemies of Islam placed in the path of its peaceful proliferation.49

Inspired by these ideologies, radical Salafi s set up various military Islamic communities during the second half of the 1990s. In the Kizilyurtskii district of Dagestan, for example, Kebedov and his followers began preaching military jihad against the Dagestani government. In four mountainous villages of the Dagestani Buynakskii district, local Wahhabis proclaimed an ‘Islamic state’ and introduced Shari’a law in the summer of 1998. In Chechnya, radical Wahhabism gained increased infl uence in the mid-1990s as a result of the outbreak of the war against Russia. Salafi religious communites, or jamaats, spread throughout the republic, as Wahhabi ideologies became increasingly popular among Chechen rebel fi ghters. Wahhabi radical communities also emerged in the republics of Karachaevo-Cherkessia and Kabardino-Balkaria in the second half of the 1990s. They devel-oped closed ties with Chechen Wahhabis, and some of their members were trained in the military camps set up by Chechen Wahhabis in Serzhen-Yurt, Achkhoi-Martan and Urus-Martan.50 While generally avoiding the use of violence in their own republics, many of these Wahhabis took up arms against Russian troops in the second Chechen war. In the late 1990s, all these radical groups gained increased infl uence in the region at the expense of the more moderate forms of Salafi sm. Various factors contributed to this trend, including the growing dissatisfaction among populations with local socio-political conditions, the increased repression of Wahhabi communities by law enforcement agencies, and the outbreak of the war in neighbouring Chechnya in 1994.

The infl uence of the Chechen war

The military confrontation of Chechnya with Russia during 1994 and 1996 resulted in the growing Islamization of the republic and the increased allegiance among members of the Chechen rebel movement to Wahhabi ideologies. The arrival in Chechnya after the outbreak of the war of Wahhabi religious fi gures 47 In Karachaevo-Cherkessia, the radical Islamic leader Muhammad Bidzhi Ulu united all local Salafi s into the

Party of Islamic Revival and proclaimed a separate Islamic Karachai republic as early as November 1991. But his attempts failed, and he left the republic and settled in Moscow.

48 Makarov, Ofi tsial’niy, p. 26.49 Akhmet Yarlykapov, ‘Kredo Wahhabita’, in Evraziya: lyudi i mify (Moscow: Natalis, 2003), pp. 589–90.50 Yemelianova, ‘Kinship, ethnicity and religion’, p. 68; Brian Glynn Williams, ‘Jihad and ethnicity in post-

communist Eurasia’, Global Review of Ethnopolitics 2: 3–4, March–June 2003, p. 20; Simon Saradzhyan, ‘Karachai “Wahhabis” re-emerge as a threat’, ISN Security Watch, 7 October 2004, http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?ID=9884, accessed, 14 June 2007.



such as Sheikh Fathi, and Arab fi ghters such as ibn al-Khattab, a veteran of the Afghan war, signifi cantly contributed to such developments. Individuals like Fathi proved inspirational in terms of spreading Wahhabi and jihadist ideologies, although Salafi ideas had developed in Chechnya in the early 1990s within the Islamic Rebirth Party. A veteran of the Afghan civil war, Fathi set up the fi rst Wahhabi jamaats in the republic and became very popular among young fi ghters. Arab mujahedin fi ghters, in turn, provided valuable fi nancial, logistic and military support to the Chechen war eff ort. More importantly, they set up training camps in various mountainous area of Chechnya, where they taught Wahhabi Islam, and trained Islamic fi ghters from all over the North Caucasian region. The various training camps set up by Arab and Chechen Wahhabis in the republic provided a valuable network of assistance and support which facilitated the emergence of radical jamaats in other North Caucasian republics during the late 1990s. Chechnya also became a land of refuge for many Wahhabis fl eeing repression in their own republics of the North Caucasus, such as Bagauddin Kebedov. Thus, Chechnya provided much of the logistical and mobilization capability which facilitated the spread of radical jamaats throughout the region. In the early 2000s it still remained a hub of support and mobilization, although by this time many jamaats had set up camps and bases in their own republics.

In addition, Chechnya became the source of radical Wahhabi ideas calling for military jihad and the establishment of an Islamic state in the North Caucasus. In March 1996 Shamil Basayev made clear his ambitions in an interview to a Russian journalist: ‘After the liberation of Chechnya, some of the other North Caucasian republics will follow its example. We … shall naturally be showing full solidarity with them and try[ing] to put pressure on the Kremlin. I am sure that in the end, a North Caucasian confederation will be established as a united bloc confronting the Russian Empire.’51 In 1998 Movladi Udugov, a radical Chechen Wahhabi, created the ‘Islamic Nation’ movement with the aim of uniting Chechnya and Dagestan as a single Islamic state, and set up the ‘Congress of Peoples of Ichkeria and Dagestan’, under the leadership of Shamil Basayev, to fulfi l this end.52 The invasion of the Botlikh region of Dagestan in 1999 by a group of Chechen and Dagestani Wahhabis led by ibn al-Khattab and Basayev can be seen as a real attempt to realize such an idea. As noted by Basayev himself, ‘What is going on in Dagestan is a mighty “jihad”, a holy war to expel the infi dels from an Islamic land, which has been in the Islamic fold for thirteen centuries … We are fi ghting for the proclamation of an Islamic republic and the establishment of a greater Chechen empire in Chechnya, Dagestan and later also Ingushetia.’53

More radical Wahhabis such as Udugov saw the attack as part of a global jihad aimed at liberating all Muslim lands. After the invasion Udugov declared that Dagestanis and Chechens were not fi ghting only Russians, but also world

51 See Igor Rotar’s interview with Basayev in 1996, quoted in Igor Rotar, ‘Under the green banner: Islamic radicals in Russia and the former Soviet Union’, Religion, State and Society 30: 2, 2002, p. 109.

52 Makarov, Ofi tsia’lniy, p. 30.53 Al-Aman, 17 September 1999.

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Zionism. The fi nal aim of the war, in his view, was the ‘liberation of Jerusalem’.54 Udugov also regularly expressed his support for the introduction of Shari’a law in Chechnya, and in 2005 he even called for the establishment of an Islamic state in Chechnya, which should function as a territorial basis for the spread of jihad worldwide.55

Such radical ideals were not only espoused by many young Chechen fi ghters, they also inspired many jamaats that emerged in the North Caucasus region during the early 2000s. The Kabardino-Balkarian jamaat Yarmuk called in 2005 for armed jihad against the ‘Russian invaders and their puppets’, until ‘Sharia law is restored as the law and guidance of life’.56 In Ingushetia, the radical Islamic Shura of Ingushetia called in 2004 ‘for the liberation of all territories seized by the “occupiers”, including the foothill districts [of Prigorodny]’, and for the establish-ment of an Islamic state.57 In Dagestan, the intellectual Islamist Yasin Rasulov made an apology of the war against law enforcement structures in 2004. In his work Jihad in the North Caucasus, published on the internet in 2005, he glorifi ed the resistance movement of Imam Shamil, the religious fi gure who united Dagestan and Chechnya against Russian rule during the nineteenth-century, and called on Islamic movements to emulate Shamil’s deeds.58 He tried to build a historical link between the current jihadists and the movement of Imam Shamil, and stressed the proximity of the religious and political ideology of the fi rst Dagestani imams to the ideas of contemporary radical Islamists.59 His views provided an inspiration for many young Muslims ready to resort to violence in Dagestan.

It should be stressed however, that not all fi ghters and Salafi s in the region adopted radical jihadist views. The Islamic Jamaat of Kabardino-Balkaria, led by Musa Mukozhev, rejected the use of violence, and only a splinter group, Yarmuk, decided to turn to violence in the mid-2000s. Many Salafi communities currently live under cover, in a peaceful manner, in Ingushetia, Chechnya, Dagestan and Karachaevo-Cherkessia. Moreover, not all those who do take up arms follow a strictly Wahhabi and global jihadist line of thinking. In Chechnya, for example, the late rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov proved ready on many occasions to negotiate with Russia and come to some kind of political agreement on the future status of Chechnya. He focused primarily on the liberation of Chechnya, rather than the entire North Caucasus, although he supported the spread of the fi ghting against Russia beyond Chechen borders. The current leader of the Chechen resistance movement, Dokku Umarov, is also a relatively ‘secular’ fi gure, despite his calls for jihad and his recent appointment of Supyan Abdullaev, a leading radical Wahhabi,

54 Rotar, ‘Under the green banner’, p. 110.55 ‘Razmyshleniya modzhakheda’, KavkazCenter, 11 August 2005, http://www.kavkazcenter.com/russ/anali-

tik/refl ections_of_mujahid/, accessed 24 May 2007.56 ‘The doors of jihad are open’, KavkazCenter, 21 January 2005, http://www.kavkazcenter.com/eng/

content/2005/01/21/3461.shtml, accessed on 2 June 1007.57 ‘Voeviki Insughetii ob’yavili dzhikhad po vsei respublike’, 8 July 2004, http://www.newsru.com/arch/

russia/08jul2004/djihad.html, accessed 24 May 200758 Yasin Rasulov, ‘Dzhikhad na Severnom Kavkaze’, KavkazCenter, 2005, http://www.kavkazcenter.com/russ/

islam/jihad_in_ncaucasus/PDF_version.pdf , accessed 22 May, 2007.59 Dmitry Makarov, ‘Nesstoyavsheeesya vozrozhdenie umerennogo islamisma v Dagestane’, unpublished paper

(Moscow, 2007), p. 3–4.



as vice-president. Nor was the former leader of the Chechen resistance movement, the late Sheikh Abdul-Khalim Sadulaev, an ‘international jihadist’, although he was a leading religious fi gure. In his last interview he mentioned the need to adopt a constitution in Chechnya, following the lines of the one adopted in 1992, but ‘refl ecting the Islamic essence of the Chechen people’.60 He made no reference to the need to emulate other Middle Eastern Salafi or Wahhabi regimes. He did, however, call for the establishment of an Islamic state in the entire North Caucasus, and tried to portray himself as the religious and political leader of the entire North Caucasian insurgency, following on the lines of Imam Shamil. Under his leader-ship, steps were taken to establish a more unifi ed organizational structure encom-passing all Caucasian rebels groups, and several North Caucasian fronts were set up which swore political and religious allegiance to him, as Emir of the Caucasus.

Thus, it is clear that divergent views and ideologies inspire the various groups and individuals taking up arms in the North Caucasus. Moreover, many of those who take up violence do not really follow a strict ideology, and do so partly to avenge their own suff ering and distress. However, an underlying theme can be discerned among all radical Islamic jamaats in the North Caucasus. It involves an emphasis on the liberation of Caucasian lands from the Russian ‘infi del’, the intro-duction of Islamic law, the rejection of democratic models, and, as an ideal and distant goal, the creation of a single global Islamic entity.

Violence and repression

The indiscriminate and heavy-handed tactics used by the security forces against suspected terrorists and Islamic believers has also encouraged many young victims to join radical groups in order to avenge their suff ering or the loss of their relatives. This in turn, has led to an increase in abuses and repressions by the security structures, which has signifi cantly contributed to the cycle of violence throughout the region. Much of the current violence in the North Caucasus is a legacy of the brutality that characterized the last two Chechen wars. Military operations during both campaigns saw an excessive and non-selective use of force by Russian forces, as well as the adoption of guerrilla tactics and indiscriminate terrorist attacks by Chechen rebel fi ghters. During the fi rst stages of the second war, federal troops resorted to massive aerial bombardment and shell attacks, causing the deaths of thousands of unprotected civilians. When conducting counter-insurgency opera-tions, Russian armed forces showed little regard for the lives of innocent civil-ians trapped in the line of fi re. Russian forces also resorted to large-scale mop-up operations—usually referred to as zachistkas—which were characterized by signifi -cant abuses and massive human rights violations.61 During these operations, young men were detained arbitrarily and taken to temporary fi ltration camps where they

60 ‘Exclusive interview with former Chechen President Sadulaev’, Chechnya Weekly 7: 27, 6 July 2006, p. 3, quot-ing a videotape submitted to the Jamestown Foundation.

61 Human Rights Watch, Swept under: torture, forced disappearances, and extra-judicial killings during sweep operations in Chechnya 14: 2, Feb. 2002, pp. 13–18, 26–41, http://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/russchech/, accessed on 17 May 2007.

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were badly tortured and heavily beaten. In many instances, those detained died as a result of torture, while others simply disappeared, with no trace or record of their whereabouts.62 Chechen rebels, in turn, resorted to guerrilla tactics which often involved the killing of many innocent civilians as well as unarmed offi cials working in the republic’s administration. The most notorious attack involved the seizure of a school in Beslan, North Ossetia, in September 2004, as a result of which a high number of individuals, including many children, were killed. All these indiscriminate actions signifi cantly fuelled the cycle of violence and brought forth yet more severe repression from the Russian side.

In 2003 Russian forces began to rely increasingly on pro-Russian Chechen security forces, led by Ramzan Kadyrov, to subdue the rebellion. Over the following two years Kadyrov’s troops conducted a high number of smaller and better-tar-geted mop-up operations, which proved eff ective in suppressing the insurgency. However, they too were marred by high levels of brutality, with suspects taken to temporary detention centres where they were subjected to torture, threats and beatings.63 In many cases, those detained were killed or simply ‘disappeared’.64 These operations contributed signifi cantly to the emergence of an atmosphere of lawlessness and intimidation in Chechnya, which helped to perpetuate the cycle of violence. Abuses and losses have encouraged young people either to join the rebels, in order either to avenge themselves and their relatives, or seek protection from the pro-Russian Chechen security forces.65 In turn, the killing of members of the pro-Russian Chechen armed units and of the offi cial Chechen administration by insurgents has impelled other young men to enlist in the offi cial law enforce-ment and security forces to take revenge for their losses.66 The cycle of violence and revenge has also been also fuelled by the failure to hold the perpetrators of atrocities and abuses to account. Hardly any criminal investigation initiated against a potential suspect has ever resulted in a conviction. Most criminal cases against kidnappings or tortures were suspended by the republic’s public prosecutor ‘due to lack of evidence’ or ‘because of the impossibility to identify the individuals to be held liable as the accused’.67

Repressive measures against refugees from Chechnya became one of the main factors behind the upsurge of terrorist violence in neighbouring Ingushetia, during the early 2000s. Ingushetia proved particularly vulnerable to the spread of

62 Human Rights Centre Memorial and Centre Demos, ‘Counter-terrorism operations by the Russian Federa-tion in the Northern Caucasus throughout 1999–2006,’ January 2007, p. 12, http://www.memo.ru/hr/hotpoints/N-Caucas/dkeng.htm accessed 25 May 2007.

63 Human Rights Centre Memorial and Centre Demos, In a climate of fear: ‘political process’ and parliamentary elections in Chechnya (Moscow: Zven’ya, Nov. 2006), pp. 57–65.

64 Human Rights Watch, ‘Worse than a war: “disappearances” in Chechnya—a crime against humanity’, Human Rights Watch Briefi ng Paper, March 2005, http://hrw.org/backgrounder/eca/chechnya0305/, accessed 17 May 2007.

65 In their study on the motivations of suicide terrorists in Chechnya, Anne Speckhard and Khapta Akhmedova demonstrated that all those who became involved in suicide operations in Chechnya during 2002–2005 had suff ered torture or the loss of loved ones. See Anne Speckhard and Khapta Akhmedova, ‘The new Chechen jihad: militant Wahhabism as a radical movement and a source of suicide terrorism in post-war Chechen soci-ety’, Democracy and Security 2: 1, Jan.–June 2006, p. 129.

66 Memorial and Demos, In a climate of fear, p. 41.67 Memorial and Demos, ‘Counter-terrorism operations’, p. 24.



violence from Chechnya because of the high number of Chechen refugees who arrived in the republic soon after the outbreak of the war in 1999—estimated at over 300,000 in the autumn of that year. When Murat Zyazikov became presi-dent of the republic in 2002, ‘mop-up operations’ started being conducted against presumed rebels hiding in refugee camps and private homes.68 These operations followed the same pattern of sweeps conducted in neighbouring Chechnya, with arbitrary arrests, ill-treatment of prisoners and lootings.69 Those detained were often sent to illegal custody centres in Chechnya, where they were subjected to abusive treatment and torture.70 Once more, many of those abducted simply ‘disappeared’. Local authorities failed to investigate the abuses and abductions and to hold the perpetrators to account. These abuses and the lack of accountability of the perpetrators of atrocities led to an upsurge of violence in the republic. Starting in 2003, Ingushetia witnessed an unprecedented number of attacks on local police offi cers, Ingush government offi cials and Russian troops based in the republic.71 The security situation deteriorated signifi cantly over the following years, with abductions no longer targeting only presumed Chechen and Ingush fi ghters, but also innocent Ingush civilians.72 The large-scale attack by Chechen and Ingush insurgents against law enforcement buildings in the capital, Nazran, in June 2004 only worsened the situation, as relatives of the victims called for revenge against rebel fi ghters.73 As a result, abusive ‘mop-up’ operations against Chechens living in refugee camps surged. Although the number of abductions and abuses declined signifi cantly in 2006, Ingushetia has become another battleground for Chechen and Ingush insurgents, with terrorist attacks occurring with almost the same inten-sity and regularity as in neighbouring Chechnya. Hardly reported in the media, repressive measures have also been applied against anyone displaying religious dress or symbols, speaking Arabic or having studied abroad in Middle Eastern Muslim countries.

In Kabardino-Balkaria and Dagestan, the brutal suppression of ‘unoffi cial’ Islamic organizations has also become one of the main causes of the increase in terrorist violence. Repression of Islamic militants became particularly intense in the autumn of 1999, immediately after the invasion of Dagestan by Chechen rebels. In Kabardino-Balkaria, the Islamic Centre run by Musa Mukozhev was closed down, along with all the Islamic schools attached to it.74 The activities of foreign Islamic funds and organizations were also discontinued, and most foreign 68 Memorial, A conveyer of violence: human rights violations during anti-terrorist operations in the Republic of Ingushetia

(Moscow: Zven’ya, 2006), p. 9.69 Human Rights Watch, Spreading despair: Russian abuses in Ingushetia, September 2003, 15: 8, pp. 9–20, http://

hrw.org/reports/2003/russia0903/ accessed 19 May 2007.70 Memorial, A conveyor of violence, pp. 8–9.71 ‘Blast kills fi ve soldiers in Ingushetia’, Associated Press, 30 July 2003; ‘Six soldiers die in convoy ambush’,

Associated Press, 8 August 2003.72 ‘Ingushetia: enforced disappearances, extra-judicial killings and unlawful detentions, December 2003–June

2004’, International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, 4 August 2004, pp. 8–11, http://www.ihf-hr.org/viewbinary/viewdocument.php?doc_id=6070, accessed 19 May 2007.

73 Yuri Matsarsky, Viktor Paukov and Konstantin Filatov, ‘Zastignuty vrasplokh’, Vremya novostei, 23 June 2004, pp. 1–2.

74 Akhmet Yarlykapov, ‘Novoe islamskoe dvizhenie na Severnom Kavkaze: vzgliad etnografa’, in Sergei Aruty-unov, ed., Rasy i narody: sovremennye etnicheskie i rasovye problem (Moscow: Nauka, 2006), p. 218.

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missionaries were sent back to their countries of origin.75 Moreover, a campaign of anti-Wahhabi propaganda was launched in the media and eff orts were conducted by the local administrations to distribute information about radical Islamic groups in the republic. In the summer of 2003, after a failed attempt to detain Shamil Basayev in the town of Baksan in Kabardino-Balkaria, the authorities began a wide-scale campaign of repression directed against suspected Islamic militants. Anyone looking somehow religious—a young man with a beard, a young woman wearing a headscarf, anyone attending mosque regularly—fell under suspicion. Those arrested were held in detention for several days, where they were beaten, tortured and humiliated.76 Moreover, several mosques in the capital, Nalchik, and in various rural districts were closed down. The police behaved brutally, punishing and beating innocent people, and thus alienating the population at large. After the attack of 13 October 2005 by rebel fi ghters in Nalchik against law enforcement struc-tures and military sites, the authorities launched a general crackdown on anyone suspected of Islamic militancy. Many innocent Muslims as well as the families of the fi ghters were targeted. Detainees were severely tortured until they confessed to crimes or pointed to other suspects, and some died as a result.77 Arbitrary police brutality reached astounding proportions, leading to a sharp increase in tensions between the authorities and religious communities and encouraging many to turn to violence in pursuit of vengeance.

In Dagestan, the authorities also began a widespread campaign against all Wahhabi activity, after the invasion of Khattab and Basayev in the summer of 1999. Wahhabi organizations were outlawed and many Wahhabi leaders were arrested. On 16 December 1999 a law prohibiting Wahhabi and other extremist activities in Dagestan was adopted by the Dagestani parliament. The law proved to be highly fl awed, and lent itself to very broad interpretation, since it failed either to provide any legal content to the concept of Wahhabism or to set out any criteria by which to identify a Wahhabi.78 Thus the Spiritual Board of Muslims of Dagestan (DUMD), along with the police, took part in searches and expert assess-ments of religious writings.79 Policemen often planted weapons, ammunition and drugs on suspected Wahhabis, in order to justify their arrest.80 Those detained in this way were usually tortured, beaten up and subjected to other forms of violence in order to obtain confessions.81 The fabricated confessions obtained under torture often formed the basis of accusations and subsequent convictions. No proper legal protection and advice was provided to the detainees. Once again, the cruelty and

75 Yemelianova, ‘Kinship, ethnicity and religion’, p. 68.76 Memorial, ‘Confl ict spill-over outside the Chechen Republic in 2004–2005, Ingushetia and Kabardino-Balka-

riya’, 2 March 2006, http://www.memo.ru/hr/hotpoints/caucas1/msg/2006/03/m53212.htm, accessed 20 May 2007.

77 ‘V Nal’chike “zachistili” deputata “Edinoi Rossii”, Gazeta, 26 October 2005, p. 1.78 Akhmet Yarlykapov, Problema vahhabisma na Severnom Kavkaze (Moscow: Rossiiskaya Akademiya Nauk, Insti-

tut Etnologii i Antropologii, 2000), p. 5.79 Ruslan Kurbanov, ‘Interaction between power and religion in Daghestan: experience, errors and lessons’,

Central Asia and the Caucasus 33: 3, 2005, pp. 79–80.80 Nabi Abdullaev, ‘A murderous cycle of revenge’, Moscow Times, 15 March 1005, p. 1.81 For details see Nabi Abdullaev, ‘Bad investigators will surely fi nd us all guilty’, Moscow Times, 4 July 2001, p.

11.



arbitrariness of the police and law enforcement structures impelled many young men into the arms of the extremists as those who had been subjected to torture or violence tried to avenge these crimes. As a result, the republic was shaken by a signifi cantly high number of terrorist attacks and targeted killings of police and law enforcement offi cers between 2004 and 2006, including various attempts on the life of the interior minister, Adilgerei Magomedtagirov. In response to the cruelty visited on their adherents, the Wahhabis set up a clandestine network of semi-independent jamaats, and began an unprecedented large-scale and systemic hunt for those responsible for anti-Salafi repressions.

Conclusion

The violence in the North Caucasus has undergone a signifi cant evolution over the past decade, as a separatist and nationalist movement based in the republic of Chechnya has turned into a network of extremist Islamic jihadists, which has taken root in many of the other Muslim republics of the region. Although Chechnya provided an ideological and logistic basis for the development of such networks in the early 2000s, today local jihadist jamaats are not always part of the Chechen rebel movement. They respond to local grievances and circumstances, and are able to operate more autonomously, although they all remain interconnected and linked to Chechen fi ghters. The drivers behind the violence are hard to elucidate, and result from a complex mix of factors, all of which play a part in radicalizing young individuals in the region. The poor prevailing socio-economic and political conditions create the necessary framework for radical groups to emerge. Although these conditions do not themselves produce violence, they remain relevant as they provide the negative background against which people in the region rebel. The authoritarian and clientelistic nature of the regimes in place in the North Caucasus region, as well as the limited economic prospects of the vast majority of the population, have encouraged individuals to turn to violence in an attempt to modify the existing structures of governance, and in some cases to introduce an Islamic state. In the absence of any legal, peaceful alternative, violence is seen by some as the only option left available in order to modify the existing socio-political circumstances.82

The illegitimacy of many of the North Caucasian regimes, and their inability to respond to the demands of society, have created a signifi cant void which has been fi lled by Islamic groups and organizations. The disorientation that was experi-enced by societies in the region after the collapse of the communist system, and the search for new identities which accompanied that process, led many in the region to turn to Islam as an answer to their queries. The spread of radical Islamic ideals was facilitated not only by various exchanges with the Muslim world, but also by the limited knowledge that existed about Islam in the region, which provided fertile ground for the spread of Salafi ideas. These ideas proved attractive not only 82 Similar factors also account for the rise of violence in some Middle Eastern authoritarian regimes. See the

accounts of Ayoob, ‘The future of political Islam’, pp. 956–7, and Abdullah Yousef Sahar Mohammad, ‘Roots of terrorism in the Middle East’, in Bjorgo, Root causes of terrorism, p. 110.

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because of their egalitarian nature, but also because they went against the existing traditional structures of society. The radicalization of Islam and the recourse to violence, however, were not just the product of the indoctrination of young individuals in the North Caucasus with Salafi radical ideologies. These develop-ments were facilitated by the Chechen war, and the radicalization of the Chechen separatist movement. Chechnya provided an initial network of support for the emergence of radical jamaats, especially in Ingushetia and Kabardino-Balkaria. On a more individual basis, however, the repressive measures taken against individuals by law enforcement structures provoked young men and women into joining these violent groups in order to avenge themselves.

Despite a signifi cant improvement in the economic situation in the most recent years, living conditions in the North Caucasus remain dire. Unemployment remains rife and opportunities to escape poverty remain few. The new leader-ships in Dagestan and Kabardino-Balkaria have tried to reduce the infl uence and power of former clans, and have actively tried to attract investment in order to speed up the economic recovery of the region. In the case of Kabardino-Balkaria, the political climate of the republic has been improved, with more room given to open criticism and political debate. In Dagestan, the economy has been growing at a signifi cantly high rate. However, the regimes still fail to gain legitimacy because of their lack of popular support. This is particularly the case in Karach-aevo-Cherkessia, where the leadership of Batdiyev has managed to survive major corruption scandals which also involved the killing of several local businessmen. There has been a growing tendency, in parallel to events elsewhere in Russia, to strengthen the ‘vertical of line of authority’. As a result, most citizens in the North Caucasus feel increasingly disfranchised and alienated from the political system. The republics of Chechnya and Ingushetia have not seen a major improvement of their economic and political situation. Despite a signifi cant advance in the recon-struction of Chechnya, and a reduction in the overall level of violence, the regime of Ramzan Kadyrov remains highly corrupt and increasingly authoritarian. Moreover, violence is increasingly spreading to neighbouring Ingushetia, creating great concern among the local elites that the Chechen leadership, in an eff ort to subdue the violence, might call for the reunifi cation of the Ingush republic with Chechnya.

The international community can no longer ignore the instabilities in the North Caucasus. Both human rights and security concerns should prompt western actors such as the European Union to take an interest in these problems. There is a risk that violence in the North Caucasus may spread to neighbouring areas in the South Caucasus, thus creating further instabilities across the wider region. The South Caucasian region occupies a key strategic location, situated at the crossroads between the Caspian and the Black Seas on routes linking the Middle East, Turkey and Iran. Endowed with substantial energy resources, it is of great economic and strategic relevance to the West. The proximity of the region to the Middle East has resulted in an increased involvement of the United States and NATO, and this has brought the West closer to the North Caucasus. Moreover, the plight of



Muslims in the North Caucasus has become an issue of concern for radical Islamic groups worldwide, and thus any eff ort to address the grievances of the Muslim world cannot avoid the Chechen question and the troubles of the entire North Caucasian region. The international community, in particular the EU, has become involved in supporting the physical reconstruction of Chechnya. Such eff orts are to be commended and supported. They should be conducted in partnership with Russia, but they should also take into account local sensibilities. However, it should remain clear that unless the underlying challenges faced by the region are tackled, by establishing the rule of law, allowing for political pluralism and improving the effi ciency of governance, little long-term success will ever be achieved.

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