Paul Goble
Staunton, October 4 – The leaders of Russia’s four “traditional” religions – Russian Orthodoxy, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism – today jointly pledged to work directly with law enforcement agencies to catch criminals and preserve public order, an outwardly benign commitment with potentially far-reaching and negative consequences.
Among the most serious of the latter are two. On the one hand, this represents a further tightening of links between the four “traditional” faiths and the state, a move Patriarch Kirill has long urged, and a further setting them apart from other religions, thus making repression of the latter more rather than less likely, even though Russian law nowhere defines the difference.
And on the other, the close involvement of religious leaders with the siloviki will not only discredit those leaders in the eyes of many of their followers but lead many, as such links did in Soviet times, to turn to underground religious communities, such as the “catacomb” churches and “parallel Islam,” putting them beyond legal and social control.
But these twin dangers were glossed over earlier today when, in the words of Interfax, “the leading religious organizations of Russian offered the force structures assistance in catching criminals and protecting public order” (www.interfax-religion.ru/islam/?act=news&div=37639 and www.interfax-religion.ru/islam/?act=documents&div=1047).
In the joint declaration of the Inter-Religious Council, the leaders said that they “greet the initiatives of the leadership of the country directed at the more effective defense of citizens” and thus are prepared to “offer the support of believers in the effort to guarantee legal order and the prevention of crime.”
They added that as religious communities, they can play a special role in helping to prevent young people from falling into a life of crime, and the leaders asked that television channels offer more time for programs offering both “secular and religious anti-narcotics propaganda.”
“Today,” they said in their declaration, “many know where and who is trafficking in drugs. We are ready to offer the information possibilities of our religious communities in order that people will overcome this evil, by naming the names of those guilty of being involved in it and publishing corresponding testimony.”
To achieve this end, the religious leaders said, they would seek agreements “both at the central and regional level.” And they suggested that their efforts would make a major contribution to fighting crime because criminality in their words “is not only the result of someone’s evil intentions” but rather also of “the inaction and estrangement of good people.”
Obviously, no one can be against religious leaders seeking to fight crime by promoting morality and ethics among their followers, but what this declaration suggests is that some of the “traditional” religions of Russia may now be engaging in an equally “traditional” Russian form of behavior – informing.
And unless the religious groups involved set clear rules on what they will and will not do for the powers that be, they will find themselves in a position that will recalls the one they were at the end of the Soviet period, a situation that may win them plaudits from the powers that be but only at the cost of the moral authority that they as religious leaders should seek.
Monday, October 4, 2010
Window on Eurasia: Luzhkov’s Ouster a ‘Crushing Defeat’ for Russian Opposition, Pavlova Says
Paul Goble
Staunton, October 4 – Most analysts have suggested that President Dmitry Medvedev’s ouster of longtime Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov represents a clear opening for the opposition either by reshuffling the cards, providing a new leader for that opposition, or by provoking Muscovites into demonstrating over a partial loss of their city’s unique status.
But Grani commentator Irina Pavlova argues that the Kremlin-orchestrated campaign that resulted in the ouster of Luzhkov represents “a crushing defeat” for “the coalition of democratic forces” whose leades have just united under the slogan “For a Russia without Arbitrariness and Corruption” (http://grani.ru/opinion/m.182296.html
On the one hand, she writes today, “by initiating a campaign against Luzhkov involving charges of corruption and arbitrariness, the Kremlin seized the main slogans of the opposition,” almost as if the powers that be had taken them more or less unchanged from Nemtsov and Milov’s pamphlet, “Luzhkov. Results.”
And on the other, by so doing and by thus attracting the support of the opposition for what it was doing, the Putin-Medvedev tandem not only transformed its harshest critics into co-conspirators but strengthened the powers that be far beyond what it will gain by appointing a replacement for Luzhkov.
By attacking Luzhkov, she continues, “the Kremlin concealed its own corruption and arbitrariness and showed that it can no worse than any opposition struggle with these ‘weaknesses’ of local chiefs,” thereby winning support for itself from the public and the West without necessarily changing course or liberalizing the country.
All this has certainly worked to the benefit of Medvedev, with even the Moscow organization of the ruling United Russia Party turning to him “with a request that ‘the selected’ (not elected!) candidates for the post of mayor of Moscow” become “information for reflection” by the Russian president.
“Entirely forgotten,” Pavlova points out, “are Medvedev’s previous actions – counter-extremism centers in the interior ministry and the law broadening the powers of the FSB which are intended to strengthen political control in the country, the lengthening of the term of president, the rejection of elections of the chairman of the Constitutional Court and so on.”
Moreover, “having yet again lost to the Kremlin, the liberal opposition has clearly demonstrated that besides general calls for observing the constitution and struggling with corruption and arbitrariness, it does not have a strategy for consistent opposition to the supreme power.”
It lacks, the Grani commentator says, “a program for the defense” of small and mid-size business. It lacks “a strategy for working with other political forces.” It lacks a program for revising the privatization programs of the 1990s. And it lacks any concrete ideas for reducing the gap between the country’s rich and poor.
Pavlova says that it is “striking” that those involved do not seem to be drawing “any lessons from the past,” even though in so many ways Russia seems to be displaying in Merab Mamardashvili’s phrase, “a genius of repetition,” that would appear to suggest that a glance back at the way Russian rulers have behaved earlier would be useful.
Until the recent campaign against Luzhkov began, Pavlova says, she herself did not reflect about the show trials of 1937 against local chieftains, a process that “certain historians have also called ‘democratization’” and one that she suggests she now cannot get out of her head.
“The Stalin-Molotov tandem of that time by several classified telegrams calls for the organization ‘in each oblast by district two to three show trials over the enemies of the people” and to use the local press to mobilize the population for “the struggle with wrecking and those responsible for it.”
When these trials occurred, Pavlova continues, the population was not simply permitted but required to show up and then to declare its complete support for the guilty verdicts that the Stalinist courts handed down, thereby implicating the population in what the powers that be at that time were doing.
But far more serious, she argues, was the reality that “by such open trials, the Stalinist powers that be were covering a more massive terror” against a wide variety of opponents, a terror that also “strengthened the system still further.” And because it had made the people “co-conspirators,” it could present its crimes as reflecting “the moral-political” unity of the country.
And as far as the situation in the country after the local leaders were shot, Pavlova notes, “it did not improve.” Instead, “the participants of these trials – the judges, the witnesses and the invited public, soon themselves fell into the cycle of terror,” with victors on one day becoming the victims on the next.
Under current conditions, “the liberal opposition, which has supported with enthusiasm the campaign against the major of Moscow in the hopes that this will help shake the regime to its foundations and open the way to democratization, should remember the lessons of history,” even if this time around the victims of the process are unlikely to suffer as much.
Staunton, October 4 – Most analysts have suggested that President Dmitry Medvedev’s ouster of longtime Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov represents a clear opening for the opposition either by reshuffling the cards, providing a new leader for that opposition, or by provoking Muscovites into demonstrating over a partial loss of their city’s unique status.
But Grani commentator Irina Pavlova argues that the Kremlin-orchestrated campaign that resulted in the ouster of Luzhkov represents “a crushing defeat” for “the coalition of democratic forces” whose leades have just united under the slogan “For a Russia without Arbitrariness and Corruption” (http://grani.ru/opinion/m.182296.html
On the one hand, she writes today, “by initiating a campaign against Luzhkov involving charges of corruption and arbitrariness, the Kremlin seized the main slogans of the opposition,” almost as if the powers that be had taken them more or less unchanged from Nemtsov and Milov’s pamphlet, “Luzhkov. Results.”
And on the other, by so doing and by thus attracting the support of the opposition for what it was doing, the Putin-Medvedev tandem not only transformed its harshest critics into co-conspirators but strengthened the powers that be far beyond what it will gain by appointing a replacement for Luzhkov.
By attacking Luzhkov, she continues, “the Kremlin concealed its own corruption and arbitrariness and showed that it can no worse than any opposition struggle with these ‘weaknesses’ of local chiefs,” thereby winning support for itself from the public and the West without necessarily changing course or liberalizing the country.
All this has certainly worked to the benefit of Medvedev, with even the Moscow organization of the ruling United Russia Party turning to him “with a request that ‘the selected’ (not elected!) candidates for the post of mayor of Moscow” become “information for reflection” by the Russian president.
“Entirely forgotten,” Pavlova points out, “are Medvedev’s previous actions – counter-extremism centers in the interior ministry and the law broadening the powers of the FSB which are intended to strengthen political control in the country, the lengthening of the term of president, the rejection of elections of the chairman of the Constitutional Court and so on.”
Moreover, “having yet again lost to the Kremlin, the liberal opposition has clearly demonstrated that besides general calls for observing the constitution and struggling with corruption and arbitrariness, it does not have a strategy for consistent opposition to the supreme power.”
It lacks, the Grani commentator says, “a program for the defense” of small and mid-size business. It lacks “a strategy for working with other political forces.” It lacks a program for revising the privatization programs of the 1990s. And it lacks any concrete ideas for reducing the gap between the country’s rich and poor.
Pavlova says that it is “striking” that those involved do not seem to be drawing “any lessons from the past,” even though in so many ways Russia seems to be displaying in Merab Mamardashvili’s phrase, “a genius of repetition,” that would appear to suggest that a glance back at the way Russian rulers have behaved earlier would be useful.
Until the recent campaign against Luzhkov began, Pavlova says, she herself did not reflect about the show trials of 1937 against local chieftains, a process that “certain historians have also called ‘democratization’” and one that she suggests she now cannot get out of her head.
“The Stalin-Molotov tandem of that time by several classified telegrams calls for the organization ‘in each oblast by district two to three show trials over the enemies of the people” and to use the local press to mobilize the population for “the struggle with wrecking and those responsible for it.”
When these trials occurred, Pavlova continues, the population was not simply permitted but required to show up and then to declare its complete support for the guilty verdicts that the Stalinist courts handed down, thereby implicating the population in what the powers that be at that time were doing.
But far more serious, she argues, was the reality that “by such open trials, the Stalinist powers that be were covering a more massive terror” against a wide variety of opponents, a terror that also “strengthened the system still further.” And because it had made the people “co-conspirators,” it could present its crimes as reflecting “the moral-political” unity of the country.
And as far as the situation in the country after the local leaders were shot, Pavlova notes, “it did not improve.” Instead, “the participants of these trials – the judges, the witnesses and the invited public, soon themselves fell into the cycle of terror,” with victors on one day becoming the victims on the next.
Under current conditions, “the liberal opposition, which has supported with enthusiasm the campaign against the major of Moscow in the hopes that this will help shake the regime to its foundations and open the way to democratization, should remember the lessons of history,” even if this time around the victims of the process are unlikely to suffer as much.
Window on Eurasia: Al Qaeda has Failed to Redirect Chechen Movement away from Nationalism, Moscow Expert Says
Paul Goble
Staunton, October 4 – Recent events in the North Caucasus show, a Moscow expert says, that attempts by Al Qaeda to subordinate the Chechen national movement to a radical Islamist agenda have failed but that the influence of its representatives in Daghestan and Ingushetia remains strong, suggesting that even more violent terrorist attacks will emanate from there.
Yu. B. Shcheglovin of the Moscow Near East Institute argues that the recent criticism by the Caucasus Emirate’s head Doku Umarov of the Saudi representative Moganned “in fact marks the end of attempts of the worldwide ‘green international to subordinate the national separatist movement in Chechnya” (www.iimes.ru/rus/stat/2010/01-10-10b.htm).
As many observers have pointed out, the tensions within the Caucasus Emirate have their roots in money problems, but Shcheglovin says that it is important to understand why the Emirate has these problems. If one considers that issue, he suggests, it becomes obvious that Al Qaeda and its financial backers have shifted their focus.
That requires an understanding both of events in the North Caucasus and of changes in the agenda of the “green” international. Moganned, the object of Umarov’s wrath, is Al Qaeda’s representative in the region. He replaced the late Abu Haf, one of the Arabs who came to Chechnya earlier.
Such “emissaries” of the radical Islamist group, Shcheglovin continues, first came there “with the concrete goal of ‘taking control’ of the separatist movement as a whole and giving it a religious-ideological character and not in any case a purely nationalistic one,” as had been the case with the Chechen movement since the early 1990s.
To that end, the Arab representatives pushed for terrorist attacks outside of the region and the organization of suicide bomber units, but they also served as “political commissars” of the movement, seeking to direct the anti-Moscow movements in an Islamist direction, as those in Saudi Arabia providing the money wanted.
Shcheglovin says that the same thing is happening in Afghanistan and Iraq, an indication that the world has to do with “a system set up by far from poor or stupid people,” one that operates on its own without the need so many Russian and other commentators feel to refer to the CIA and Wall Street.
In the early 2000s, this system focused on the North Caucasus because Al Qaeda and its backers thought that was a place for a breakthrough in their conflict with the non-Muslim world. “But with the rise of rise of Iraq and Afghanistan,” Shcheglovin continues, “the situation changed in a cardinal way.”
Al Qaeda and the Saudis “redirected their financial flows and recruits,” and that in turn “immediately had an impact on the situation in the North Caucasus,” a region that in the view of these people was now of only “peripheral” importance.” Given the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, “weakening Russia” was no longer a task of first importance.
That shift in the views of the Islamists, the Moscow analyst says, was first highlighted in the statements of the Saudis about “a multi-polar world” and the end of fetwas like the ones that its religious scholars had issued. Indeed, the more recent fetwas from there became “acceptable for Moscow in tone and meaning.”
Not surprisingly, Umarov continued to hope for getting such funding back, and his recent statements and actions, including his brief “resignation” and his attacks on Moganned, are all about that. But they reflect the deeper division between the Chechens who have nationalist goals and the Arab emissaries who reject such projects.
Arab influence among the Chechens began to fall and “the purely national began to win” with the deaths of Yandarbiyev and Basayev, on the one hand, and the appearance of Kadyrov and Maskhadov on the other. And that trend was reinforced by Chechen antagonism to the Arab “outsiders” who viewed the Chechens in many cases as little more than “pagans.”
As Arab financing declined, the Chechen militants sought to organize their own financing just as they had done earlier, not only compelling “contributions” domestically but also seeking money from abroad. Neither of these sources included many who backed the ideas of jihad and universal war.
But if that is the situation in Chechnya and among the Chechen militants now, Shcheglovin argues, “unfortunately, one cannot say the same about Ingushetia and Daghestan.” There, the influence of the Islamists remains strong as shown by the terrorist attack on the Moscow metro which Daghestanis conducted without the knowledge of Umarov.
And in Chechnya itself, “in our opinion,” Shcheglovin says, “the recent suicidal raid on Tsentoroy [Kadyrov’s home village] also was carried out by supporters of Moganned or under his direct influence” rather than by the Chechen militants. That is because, the Moscow analyst suggest, “he needs actions” in order to get financing.
This shift within the anti-Moscow forces, he says, is important because, unlike what many analysts argue, it points to a change in the kind of attacks the militants are likely to launch. Moganned is certain to push for even “bloodier” attacks, something he may increasingly organize from Daghestan or Ingushetia rather than Chechnya itself.
What Shcheglovin doesn’t say but what many of his readers in Moscow may conclude is that this shift in the pattern of Al Qaeda funding and influence may have more to do with the relative stability in Chechnya compared to other North Caucasus republics than the actions of Ramzan Kadyrov.
And if officials in Moscow reach that conclusion, one of the major reasons why the powers that be in the Russian Federation have felt that they cannot dispense with him, however many problems he causes, will disappear or at least decline in significance, something that could lead some at the center to consider more actively his replacement.
Staunton, October 4 – Recent events in the North Caucasus show, a Moscow expert says, that attempts by Al Qaeda to subordinate the Chechen national movement to a radical Islamist agenda have failed but that the influence of its representatives in Daghestan and Ingushetia remains strong, suggesting that even more violent terrorist attacks will emanate from there.
Yu. B. Shcheglovin of the Moscow Near East Institute argues that the recent criticism by the Caucasus Emirate’s head Doku Umarov of the Saudi representative Moganned “in fact marks the end of attempts of the worldwide ‘green international to subordinate the national separatist movement in Chechnya” (www.iimes.ru/rus/stat/2010/01-10-10b.htm).
As many observers have pointed out, the tensions within the Caucasus Emirate have their roots in money problems, but Shcheglovin says that it is important to understand why the Emirate has these problems. If one considers that issue, he suggests, it becomes obvious that Al Qaeda and its financial backers have shifted their focus.
That requires an understanding both of events in the North Caucasus and of changes in the agenda of the “green” international. Moganned, the object of Umarov’s wrath, is Al Qaeda’s representative in the region. He replaced the late Abu Haf, one of the Arabs who came to Chechnya earlier.
Such “emissaries” of the radical Islamist group, Shcheglovin continues, first came there “with the concrete goal of ‘taking control’ of the separatist movement as a whole and giving it a religious-ideological character and not in any case a purely nationalistic one,” as had been the case with the Chechen movement since the early 1990s.
To that end, the Arab representatives pushed for terrorist attacks outside of the region and the organization of suicide bomber units, but they also served as “political commissars” of the movement, seeking to direct the anti-Moscow movements in an Islamist direction, as those in Saudi Arabia providing the money wanted.
Shcheglovin says that the same thing is happening in Afghanistan and Iraq, an indication that the world has to do with “a system set up by far from poor or stupid people,” one that operates on its own without the need so many Russian and other commentators feel to refer to the CIA and Wall Street.
In the early 2000s, this system focused on the North Caucasus because Al Qaeda and its backers thought that was a place for a breakthrough in their conflict with the non-Muslim world. “But with the rise of rise of Iraq and Afghanistan,” Shcheglovin continues, “the situation changed in a cardinal way.”
Al Qaeda and the Saudis “redirected their financial flows and recruits,” and that in turn “immediately had an impact on the situation in the North Caucasus,” a region that in the view of these people was now of only “peripheral” importance.” Given the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, “weakening Russia” was no longer a task of first importance.
That shift in the views of the Islamists, the Moscow analyst says, was first highlighted in the statements of the Saudis about “a multi-polar world” and the end of fetwas like the ones that its religious scholars had issued. Indeed, the more recent fetwas from there became “acceptable for Moscow in tone and meaning.”
Not surprisingly, Umarov continued to hope for getting such funding back, and his recent statements and actions, including his brief “resignation” and his attacks on Moganned, are all about that. But they reflect the deeper division between the Chechens who have nationalist goals and the Arab emissaries who reject such projects.
Arab influence among the Chechens began to fall and “the purely national began to win” with the deaths of Yandarbiyev and Basayev, on the one hand, and the appearance of Kadyrov and Maskhadov on the other. And that trend was reinforced by Chechen antagonism to the Arab “outsiders” who viewed the Chechens in many cases as little more than “pagans.”
As Arab financing declined, the Chechen militants sought to organize their own financing just as they had done earlier, not only compelling “contributions” domestically but also seeking money from abroad. Neither of these sources included many who backed the ideas of jihad and universal war.
But if that is the situation in Chechnya and among the Chechen militants now, Shcheglovin argues, “unfortunately, one cannot say the same about Ingushetia and Daghestan.” There, the influence of the Islamists remains strong as shown by the terrorist attack on the Moscow metro which Daghestanis conducted without the knowledge of Umarov.
And in Chechnya itself, “in our opinion,” Shcheglovin says, “the recent suicidal raid on Tsentoroy [Kadyrov’s home village] also was carried out by supporters of Moganned or under his direct influence” rather than by the Chechen militants. That is because, the Moscow analyst suggest, “he needs actions” in order to get financing.
This shift within the anti-Moscow forces, he says, is important because, unlike what many analysts argue, it points to a change in the kind of attacks the militants are likely to launch. Moganned is certain to push for even “bloodier” attacks, something he may increasingly organize from Daghestan or Ingushetia rather than Chechnya itself.
What Shcheglovin doesn’t say but what many of his readers in Moscow may conclude is that this shift in the pattern of Al Qaeda funding and influence may have more to do with the relative stability in Chechnya compared to other North Caucasus republics than the actions of Ramzan Kadyrov.
And if officials in Moscow reach that conclusion, one of the major reasons why the powers that be in the Russian Federation have felt that they cannot dispense with him, however many problems he causes, will disappear or at least decline in significance, something that could lead some at the center to consider more actively his replacement.
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