Paul Goble
Staunton, September 25 – Moscow has failed to stabilize the North Caucasus or even reduce the threats to Russian sovereignty and control there, a “Segodnya” commentator says, because it has failed to stem the flight of ethnic Russians from the region, the very people who he argues provide the glue that holds the country together.
Instead, Petr Ivanchenko argues in yesterday’s paper, the central powers that be have sought to buy friends from within the local elites, either through massive spending which quickly disappears into corrupt pockets or through the offer of more or less unrestricted autonomy in exchange for declarations of loyalty. Neither tactic has worked.
And consequently, he suggests, Moscow should again rely, as the tsarist and to a lesser extent the Soviet authorities did, on ethnic Russian and Cossack communities there, protecting those that remain and encouraging others to return in order to ensure that the center will in fact control the North Caucasus (www.segodnia.ru/index.php?pgid=2&partid=10&newsid=12565).
But while Ivanchenko acknowledges in his essay that many non-Russians blame all their problems on “the Russians,” largely because of what he calls “Wahhabi propaganda,” he fails to consider whether a Moscow policy which relied on the ethnic Russians might provoke even more resistance from non-Russians in that unstable region.
Although the Russian leadership has not been shy about using force – in fact, it appears to have launched major operations in Daghestan and Chechnya this weekend – Moscow currently is placing its bets on providing more jobs for people there, self-confidently believing that “unemployment is the root of all evils” in the North Caucasus.
That is the thrust of the new Strategy of Development of the North Caucasus Federal District Up to 2025 that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Presidential Plenipotentiary Aleksandr Khloponin have been pushing, Ivanchenko continues, but there is no reason to think that such an approach will work any better than the ones Moscow has tried before.
Not only is it “unclear how such programs can be achieved under conditions of terror and general fear” – Ivanchenko notes that as far as tourism is concerned, “militants in Kabardino-Balkaria have already begun the intentional murder of vacationers” – but the enormous sums of money Moscow plans to spend will simply disappear.
(What is truly perverse, he notes, is that in the preamble to the Strategy, its authors acknowledge that the money Moscow has spent up to now has not had a positive effect.” But then, “as we see, the new strategic concept proposes practically the same thing … to be carried out by “the very same people” who up to now have not used the money as intended.)
What should be obvious to everyone, the “Segodnya” commentator says, is that the ground has not been prepared in the North Caucasus for such projects. Instead, Moscow will spend money, officials in the North Caucasus will pocket it, and the Russian Federation will still face threats to its sovereign control of that region.
Ivanchenko notes that the Americans are beginning to learn that in Afghanistan. They thought they had been able to “purchase the loyalty” of their opponents. But that hasn’t worked, just as it did not work for the Russian Federation after the Khasavyurt peace accord with Chechnya signed by then Security Council deputy head Boris Berezovsky.
“Money from the Russian budget will find its way into the pockets of the local political elite which does not have any influence on the terrorists and cannot improve the situation,” Ivanchenko says. And thus it will do nothing to dissuade “many Caucasians” from blaming Moscow and the ethnic Russians for their problems.
The continuing thievery and corruption of regional leaders whom Stalin would have called at best “’our sons of bitches’” had been pushing ever more people in Moscow to accept the idea that the only way out is to allow local leaders to do whatever they want as long as they keep the peace and constantly declare their loyalty to Moscow.
That is what Moscow has done in Chechnya, but while the declarations of loyalty continue, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has not been able to maintain order even in his home village. Moreover, the militants can attack his capital at any time, and Chechen criminals can operate far beyond “the borders of this ‘reservation.’”
Given that reality, Ivanchenko continues, it is time to look for another solution to the problem, and he offers his: increasing reliance on and the reinforcement of the ethnic Russian community still in the North Caucasus in the ways that both the tsarist regime and the Soviet authorities did in the past.
Ethnic Russians and Cossacks, he suggests, are precisely the people who can cope with the situation in the North Caucasus if they are supported. And he quotes with approval Soviet Marshal Ivan Bagramyan’s observation that “if in a military unit, there are fewer than 50 percent ethnic Russians, then it should be reformed because it would not be militarily capable.”
That “formulation,” Ivanchenko suggests, “must be applied not only in the military sphere.”
What is instructive, he continues, is that “even the authors” of the North Caucasus strategy document point out that “one of the causes of the existing problems is the outflow of the Christian population from the Caucasus,” a view that has its roots in Putin’s 1999 declarations about “the genocide of Russians” in Chechnya.
His remarks gave some Russians hope a decade ago, but then “the Kremlin decided to promote ‘the Chechenization’ of the conflict, and about the genocide none of the leaders of the country spoke anymore.” But it is time, the Russian commentator says, to remember precisely this, instead of throwing good money after bad and relying on purchased “friends.”
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Window on Eurasia: Daghestanis Outraged by Moscow’s Decision to Shift Border with Azerbaijan
Paul Goble
Staunton, September 25 – Daghestanis, who as one commentator noted angrily this week “in 1999 stood up in defense of the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation” when they opposed a Chechen invasion have now been forced to watch “the violation of this [very same] territorial integrity by the government itself.”
In an article published yesterday, Ruslan Kurbanov, a scholar who serves on the working group of the Social Chamber for the Caucasus, said he was specifically referring to the agreement between Moscow and Baku over the flow of the Samur River which forms the border of the two countries (gazeta-nv.ru/content/view/4821/109/).
That accord, which Russian President Dmitry Medvedev made the centerpiece of his visit to Baku, shifted the line from the Azerbaijani shore of the river as it had been in Soviet times to the middle of the river, thus “allowing control of the Samur hydro-system to remain in the hands of the Azerbaijani side.”
Since the signing of that accord earlier this month, Kurbanov says, Daghestani journalists and bloggers have advanced numerous arguments as to “why for the peoples of Daghestan this agreement is a misfortune and why Russia’s inability to defend the interests of its own population, even of Caucasus nationality, is a humiliation.”
What makes their arguments particularly compelling, the Makhachkala writer says, is that “this is not a unique case.” Russia has been yielding territory for some time. And this process has involved “small units” of territory “now in the South and now in the East,” inevitably raising the question as to when this might stop.
In 2005, Kurbanov continues, Moscow and Beijing reached agreement on the partial demarcation of the Sino-Russian border. As a result of this accord, Russia handed over a total of 337 square kilometers to China, something that sparked “hot discussions” in Moscow and the Russian Far East about whether this had been the right thing to do.
At that time, he recalls, “opponents of that transfer of territory pointed out that these were strategically important lands for Russia because they were rich in natural resources. But defenders of this decision of the government asserted that the loss in land was not very big for Russia and that the improvement of strategic relations with China was much more important.”
But only three years later, however, Moscow agreed to hand over still more territory to China so that it could “solemnly claim” that territorial issues between the countries, “negotiations about which had lasted more than 40 years,” had all been resolved, something many Russians had assumed had already taken place in 2005.
That is worrisome, Kurbanov says, because “if in this way Moscow will resolve all territorial problems, then nothing will remain from the Great Russia [of today] in the very near future. “ What guarantees does anyone have that Moscow won’t resolve the Kuriles dispute with Japan in Tokyo’s favor to “improve relations” with Tokyo?
Or what about Kaliningrad oblast, Kurbanov asks rhetorically, “which before World War II was [Germany’s] East Prussia and whose capital Kaliningrad was Konigsberg? Or how can one “not recall about Azerbaijani pretensions not only to the Samur but also to the [southern Daghestani] city of Derbent and the land adjoining it?
And all these things raise the larger and potentially far more fateful question, Kurbanov suggests: “Does the current Russian elite have any point at which it is prepared to stop making territorial concessions to its neighbors if the interests of simple people do not agitate anyone [among that elite]?”
The anger Daghestanis now feel is important for two reasons. On the one hand, it suggests that many of them now view Moscow as incapable of defending existing borders, a conclusion that is especially dangerous in a region where any appearance of weakness can lead people to conclude that it is time to shift allegiances.
And on the other, and more immediately, Moscow’s failure to recall the time when Daghestanis stood up and defended the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation only 11 years ago almost certainly means that fewer of them will be prepared to do so again and that more will be prepared to accept border changes that Moscow won’t like at all.
UPDATE on September 27. The anger of Daghestanis about Moscow's concessions to Azerbaijan on the border river is now being echoed by some Russian commentators in Moscow. See, for example, www.apn.ru/publications/article23198.htm
Staunton, September 25 – Daghestanis, who as one commentator noted angrily this week “in 1999 stood up in defense of the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation” when they opposed a Chechen invasion have now been forced to watch “the violation of this [very same] territorial integrity by the government itself.”
In an article published yesterday, Ruslan Kurbanov, a scholar who serves on the working group of the Social Chamber for the Caucasus, said he was specifically referring to the agreement between Moscow and Baku over the flow of the Samur River which forms the border of the two countries (gazeta-nv.ru/content/view/4821/109/).
That accord, which Russian President Dmitry Medvedev made the centerpiece of his visit to Baku, shifted the line from the Azerbaijani shore of the river as it had been in Soviet times to the middle of the river, thus “allowing control of the Samur hydro-system to remain in the hands of the Azerbaijani side.”
Since the signing of that accord earlier this month, Kurbanov says, Daghestani journalists and bloggers have advanced numerous arguments as to “why for the peoples of Daghestan this agreement is a misfortune and why Russia’s inability to defend the interests of its own population, even of Caucasus nationality, is a humiliation.”
What makes their arguments particularly compelling, the Makhachkala writer says, is that “this is not a unique case.” Russia has been yielding territory for some time. And this process has involved “small units” of territory “now in the South and now in the East,” inevitably raising the question as to when this might stop.
In 2005, Kurbanov continues, Moscow and Beijing reached agreement on the partial demarcation of the Sino-Russian border. As a result of this accord, Russia handed over a total of 337 square kilometers to China, something that sparked “hot discussions” in Moscow and the Russian Far East about whether this had been the right thing to do.
At that time, he recalls, “opponents of that transfer of territory pointed out that these were strategically important lands for Russia because they were rich in natural resources. But defenders of this decision of the government asserted that the loss in land was not very big for Russia and that the improvement of strategic relations with China was much more important.”
But only three years later, however, Moscow agreed to hand over still more territory to China so that it could “solemnly claim” that territorial issues between the countries, “negotiations about which had lasted more than 40 years,” had all been resolved, something many Russians had assumed had already taken place in 2005.
That is worrisome, Kurbanov says, because “if in this way Moscow will resolve all territorial problems, then nothing will remain from the Great Russia [of today] in the very near future. “ What guarantees does anyone have that Moscow won’t resolve the Kuriles dispute with Japan in Tokyo’s favor to “improve relations” with Tokyo?
Or what about Kaliningrad oblast, Kurbanov asks rhetorically, “which before World War II was [Germany’s] East Prussia and whose capital Kaliningrad was Konigsberg? Or how can one “not recall about Azerbaijani pretensions not only to the Samur but also to the [southern Daghestani] city of Derbent and the land adjoining it?
And all these things raise the larger and potentially far more fateful question, Kurbanov suggests: “Does the current Russian elite have any point at which it is prepared to stop making territorial concessions to its neighbors if the interests of simple people do not agitate anyone [among that elite]?”
The anger Daghestanis now feel is important for two reasons. On the one hand, it suggests that many of them now view Moscow as incapable of defending existing borders, a conclusion that is especially dangerous in a region where any appearance of weakness can lead people to conclude that it is time to shift allegiances.
And on the other, and more immediately, Moscow’s failure to recall the time when Daghestanis stood up and defended the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation only 11 years ago almost certainly means that fewer of them will be prepared to do so again and that more will be prepared to accept border changes that Moscow won’t like at all.
UPDATE on September 27. The anger of Daghestanis about Moscow's concessions to Azerbaijan on the border river is now being echoed by some Russian commentators in Moscow. See, for example, www.apn.ru/publications/article23198.htm
Window on Eurasia: A Tajik Muslim, Trained by Turks, Arabs and Malaysians, Now Teaches Koran Recitation to Kazan Tatars
Paul Goble
Staunton, September 25 – The complex ways in which Muslims from various former Soviet republics have interacted with the Islamic world outside is reflected in the career of Ibrahim Sabirov, a Tajik trained by Turks, Yemenis and Saudis, who now heads training center for the recitation of the Koran Recitation in Tatarstan.
On Thursday, the new Islamsng.com portal published an interview with him conducted by Dzhannat Sergey Markus, an ethnic Russian convert to Islam who is active in both the print and electronic media as a commentator on developments in the Muslim community in the Russian Federation and the former Soviet republics (islamsng.com/tjk/tradition/171).
And while Sabirov’s career is certainly not typical, it is instructive both in highlighting the role Central Asian and especially foreign Muslims have played in the restoration of Islam in Russia and in showing the way very conservative forms of Islam, such as memorization of the Koran (“hafiz”), are gaining ground even in Kazan, a center of Jadidist reforms.
In 2003, Sabirov founded the Center for the Preparation of Hafizes of the Koran at the Russian Islamic University in the Tatarstan capital. Asked why such a center was set up only then and not immediately after “freedom of conscience became a reality in Russia with the start of perestroika” in the late 1980s, Sabirov blamed it on “the tragic history of our country.”
“More precisely,” he said, it happened because of those repressive acts which seriously undermined Islamic traditions in the Russian Empire and especially in the Middle Volga region and then almost completely destroyed them during the period of the Soviet regime” with its anti-religious program.
Given that, he continued, “restoring such a precise art as the reading of the Koran and in particular the experience of the hafiz, who know the Koranic text by heart and are masters of repeating it is extraordinarily difficult because in this case what is especially important are living people” who have that skill and can pass it on directly to their pupils.
Such people represent a chain extending back to Mohammed who learned the Koran by heart from the Archangel Gabriel and then passed it on to others. Consequently, “when listening to the Koran today from a real reader, we approach this chain.” And that is why the oppressors of Islam always try not only to destroy mosques and burn books but to break this chain.”
Markus said that helped to explain why a Tajik would have to come to Tatarstan from Central Asia where there are many more such schools to restore this tie. Sabirov agreed, noting that “being further from the imperial and soviet centers, our traditions were preserved in a more vital way. Now,” he said, “we are called to help other brothers.”
As for himself, Sabirov said, he began to learn the Koran at home in Tajikistan but only fully mastered it and became a hafiz when he “received the tradition from Aduljalil Kasim from Yemen,” a scholar who now also works at his center. Others acquired that skill abroad or from those who had been abroad.
When Islam was reborn in Russia in the 1990s, Sabirov continued, it happened when “the first hafizes appeared from abroad, and certain young people studied the Koran in Turkey and Saudi Arabia. The first Tatarstan hafizes were students of Karaers Muqerrem from Turkey.” Sabirov said he was among their number but noted that he also studied in Malaysia.
Like other traditional Muslims, Sabirov argued that “every letter of the Koran, read in the Arabic languages at times even without an understanding of its meaning, enriches the spirit of an individual and is counted for him as a good deed,” a view that many Jadid modernists have challenged, arguing instead that gaining knowledge rather than rote learning is key.
But if he is a traditionalist in some respects, Sabirov has proved a modernizer in others, albeit explaining his innovation, the training of young women as hafizes as a restoration of “a most ancient tradition.” And he has taken the lead in training young people in camps and in using the Internet for distance learning with Muslim experts in Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
. Moreover, Sabirov said that he ensures that the students at his Center not only memorize the Koran but also gain knowledge in the Arabic language, calligraphy, Islamic law and traditions, and even physical fitness.
When asked about the impact of Tatar language and culture on what he is doing, Sabirov pointed out that “the culture of Islam presupposes diversity and does not reject national uniqueness,” adding that “Tatar musicality (and this literally is in the sub-consciousness even of babes) is based on the five tone scale.”
“The child begins to think (including musically) in the spirit of his ancestors,” Sabirov said. “Our task is to develop his abilities in general, then to teach him to teach in Arabic (that is, according to the Koran) in order that he will then return to his roots,” ones deeper than the nationality that he may already have come to know.
Staunton, September 25 – The complex ways in which Muslims from various former Soviet republics have interacted with the Islamic world outside is reflected in the career of Ibrahim Sabirov, a Tajik trained by Turks, Yemenis and Saudis, who now heads training center for the recitation of the Koran Recitation in Tatarstan.
On Thursday, the new Islamsng.com portal published an interview with him conducted by Dzhannat Sergey Markus, an ethnic Russian convert to Islam who is active in both the print and electronic media as a commentator on developments in the Muslim community in the Russian Federation and the former Soviet republics (islamsng.com/tjk/tradition/171).
And while Sabirov’s career is certainly not typical, it is instructive both in highlighting the role Central Asian and especially foreign Muslims have played in the restoration of Islam in Russia and in showing the way very conservative forms of Islam, such as memorization of the Koran (“hafiz”), are gaining ground even in Kazan, a center of Jadidist reforms.
In 2003, Sabirov founded the Center for the Preparation of Hafizes of the Koran at the Russian Islamic University in the Tatarstan capital. Asked why such a center was set up only then and not immediately after “freedom of conscience became a reality in Russia with the start of perestroika” in the late 1980s, Sabirov blamed it on “the tragic history of our country.”
“More precisely,” he said, it happened because of those repressive acts which seriously undermined Islamic traditions in the Russian Empire and especially in the Middle Volga region and then almost completely destroyed them during the period of the Soviet regime” with its anti-religious program.
Given that, he continued, “restoring such a precise art as the reading of the Koran and in particular the experience of the hafiz, who know the Koranic text by heart and are masters of repeating it is extraordinarily difficult because in this case what is especially important are living people” who have that skill and can pass it on directly to their pupils.
Such people represent a chain extending back to Mohammed who learned the Koran by heart from the Archangel Gabriel and then passed it on to others. Consequently, “when listening to the Koran today from a real reader, we approach this chain.” And that is why the oppressors of Islam always try not only to destroy mosques and burn books but to break this chain.”
Markus said that helped to explain why a Tajik would have to come to Tatarstan from Central Asia where there are many more such schools to restore this tie. Sabirov agreed, noting that “being further from the imperial and soviet centers, our traditions were preserved in a more vital way. Now,” he said, “we are called to help other brothers.”
As for himself, Sabirov said, he began to learn the Koran at home in Tajikistan but only fully mastered it and became a hafiz when he “received the tradition from Aduljalil Kasim from Yemen,” a scholar who now also works at his center. Others acquired that skill abroad or from those who had been abroad.
When Islam was reborn in Russia in the 1990s, Sabirov continued, it happened when “the first hafizes appeared from abroad, and certain young people studied the Koran in Turkey and Saudi Arabia. The first Tatarstan hafizes were students of Karaers Muqerrem from Turkey.” Sabirov said he was among their number but noted that he also studied in Malaysia.
Like other traditional Muslims, Sabirov argued that “every letter of the Koran, read in the Arabic languages at times even without an understanding of its meaning, enriches the spirit of an individual and is counted for him as a good deed,” a view that many Jadid modernists have challenged, arguing instead that gaining knowledge rather than rote learning is key.
But if he is a traditionalist in some respects, Sabirov has proved a modernizer in others, albeit explaining his innovation, the training of young women as hafizes as a restoration of “a most ancient tradition.” And he has taken the lead in training young people in camps and in using the Internet for distance learning with Muslim experts in Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
. Moreover, Sabirov said that he ensures that the students at his Center not only memorize the Koran but also gain knowledge in the Arabic language, calligraphy, Islamic law and traditions, and even physical fitness.
When asked about the impact of Tatar language and culture on what he is doing, Sabirov pointed out that “the culture of Islam presupposes diversity and does not reject national uniqueness,” adding that “Tatar musicality (and this literally is in the sub-consciousness even of babes) is based on the five tone scale.”
“The child begins to think (including musically) in the spirit of his ancestors,” Sabirov said. “Our task is to develop his abilities in general, then to teach him to teach in Arabic (that is, according to the Koran) in order that he will then return to his roots,” ones deeper than the nationality that he may already have come to know.
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