Paul Goble
Staunton, October 19 – Russian imperial and xenophobic nationalists, a leading Moscow human rights analysts, are conducting the kind of “political experiments” that threaten their country with “yet another ‘greatest catastrophe,’” albeit one “not of the 20th century but of the 21st,” one that would leave it in a position much like Austria found itself after 1918
In an article on Grani.ru portal today, Yevgeny Ikhlov, the head of the analytic center of the For Human Rights Movement, draws that conclusion on the basis of his reading of the meaning of the efforts by Stavropol residents to leave the North Caucasus Federal District and of Muscovites to block the construction of new mosques (grani.ru/blogs/free/entries/182759.html).
Ikhlov says that from his point of view, “the Stavropol residents are profoundly right” in what they are trying to do. While the southern part of their kray is “geo-economically” part of the North Caucasus, “’everyone understands’ that the North Caucasus Federal District is a governorship general for the control as people said the century before last of unruly natives.”
“The Slavs of Stavropol do not want to be included among the natives,” he continues, because it is obvious that in that case, Stavropol kray “will always be forgotten” compared to hotspots like Daghestan. If they can secure a place in the Southern Federal District, the residents of the kray have good reason to think they can get “more proportionate” attention.”
The people of Stavropol thus find themselves in an awkward position now that “the former larger Southern FD is historically and civilizationally split into two absolutely different segments – a citadel of the south Russian sub-ethnos and the lands of the Caucasian peoples, annexed by the tsarist empire in its centuries-long drive toward the Middle East.”
But if the Stavropol residents succeed in being shifted from the North Caucasus to the Southern FD, then, this “will make the border [one] between the imperial metropolis and imperial acquisitions, between what everyone understands as Russia and that which should be called ‘the Federation’” on the basis with the analogous division in the Roman empire of antiquity.
“The price of preserving the official illusion that the Russian Federation is not an empire but a cleverly devised in 1993 ‘United States of Northern Eurasia’ became the unification of the Stavropol residents to the North Caucasus Federal District which was set up for the struggle with the already 11-year-old North Caucasus guerilla war.”
Ikhlov suggests that “this bureaucratic solution is only a small part of the bill for the ambitions of the Russian tsars” and Soviet leaders, a bill that many Russians complain about when despite everything their ancestors did, they are forced to “pay” for it by getting visas in order to travel to Kaliningrad, the former German land.
“For the conquest and annexation of the countries of the Caucasus and Central Asia and for the Westernization of these territories with fire and sword by the communists, it is also necessary to pay,” he argues, just as France, Britain and Germany have had to pay for their past imperial ambitions by being forced to deal with “millions” of culturally distinct immigrants.”
“For its Eurasian empire, Moscow must cope with millions of Muslims in the capital and surrounding territories,” Ikhlov says. “the capital of a universal empire – and the Third Rome by definition is a universal empire – is always a cosmopolitan megalopolis, i.e., a Babylon.” Thus, “Moscow never will be ‘a Russian Orthodox’ metropolis,” whatever the nationalists think.
The huge Muslim community of Moscow “must have a sufficient number of mosques,” he argues, saying that “it is time to get rid of the illusion that if Muslims are left without a mosque, they will first become ethnically and religiously colorless [non-ethnic] Russians and then eventually become [ethnic] Russians and even Orthodox Christians.”
If the communists couldn’t achieve that goal with “two million Soviet Jews,” then the current Russian powers that be won’t be able to achieve such a transformation among “the 20 million people whose ancestors professed Islam.”
Of course, “in principle,” Ikhlov says, “it would be possible to free Moscow and all of central Russia from Muslims by setting up an Orthodox-fascist Muscovite Rus, the territory of which would be somewhat smaller than the current Russian Federation.” But those who think that would be a good idea should remember what happened to Austria after the empire.
Such a prospect for Russia, the human rights analyst argues, “ought to convince angriest Moscow chauvinists and Islamophobes that the flourishing of the capital [of their country] is worth 20 mosques.” But unfortunately, as recent developments in France and Germany with regard to the Roma suggest, they may not recognize that danger.
According to Ikhlov, “the problem is that neither the Russian nor the West European elites have been able to create a universal super-ethnic model which has been so notably established in North America.” And consequently, “our proud imperialists of the Kipplingesque type will continue their political experiments.”
That is until, the For Human Rights expert concludes, they succeed in bringing about “yet another ‘greatest catastrophe,’” a reference to Vladimir Putin’s description of the disintegration of the USSR. “Only this will not be in the 20th century” as that event was but rather sometime “in the 21st.”
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Window on Eurasia: Dushanbe Asks Muslim Countries to Return Tajiks Studying Abroad
Paul Goble
Staunton, October 19 – Earlier this year, Tajikistan President Emomali Rakhmon asked the parents of Tajiks studying in Islamic universities and medrassahs abroad to have them return to their homes. Now, underscoring Dushanbe’s nervousness the republic’s foreign minister has begun talks with the governments involved to enlist their aid in this effort.
Khamrokhon Zarifi, the foreign minister, told the Regnum.ru news agency that talks are now going on with these countries in the expectation that they will agree to return the young Tajik students so that they will not become, in Rakhmon’s words, “terrorists and extremists” (www.regnum.ru/news/fd-abroad/tajik/1337141.html).
According to the Tajik minister, the problem is a large one. At Cairo’s Al-Azhar University alone, for example, there are some700 Tajiks, all of whom are studying religious subjects like shariat law and theology rather than scientific or technical ones and 90 percent of whom are there illegally, at least from Dushanbe’s point of view (islamsng.com/tjk/news/301).
Indeed at his press conference, Zarifi said that “there is not a single one of our compatriots who is studying in the secular faculties of this higher educational institution which prepare engineers and doctors, although such people are very much needed in our country.” And consequently, Dushanbe wants them back.
According to the Tajik government, there are currently about 1400 Tajik young people studying in Islamic universities and medrassahs abroad, although the actual number is almost certainly far greater than that as many Tajiks, like students from other Muslim groups in the former Soviet space, often declare they are studying one place but then shift to another.
To date, the Tajik government, Foreign Minister Zarifi said, have been able to secure the return of “approximately 50,” an indication that Dushanbe faces an uphill battle unless foreign governments become actively involved, something that few, except for Iran – which has sent Tajiks home – appear all that interested in doing.
But Dushanbe’s efforts in this regard if they are successful may create three problems for the regime at home in addition to any difficulties it may have with its foreign interlocutors. First, because of mass unemployment in Tajikistan, many of those forced to return will be furious at the government and join militant groups seeking to overturn it.
Second, such half-trained Muslim adepts, history has shown, are far more likely to take a radical position than those who may be more fully exposed to Islamic doctrines, especially at places like Cairo’s Al-Azhar, and thus bring back with them exactly the opposite message that the Dushanbe government hopes for.
And third, if young Tajiks are precluded from getting an Islamic education abroad, then more of them are likely to demand Islamic education at home, something the authorities in Dushanbe say they favor but may be hard pressed to support, especially given that country’s economic difficulties at the present time.
But despite those difficulties, the governments of other post-Soviet states, many of whom have even more of their nationals studying at Islamic institutions abroad than does Tajikistan, are likely to follow Dushanbe’s lead. And that by itself makes what the Tajiks are doing even more important.
Staunton, October 19 – Earlier this year, Tajikistan President Emomali Rakhmon asked the parents of Tajiks studying in Islamic universities and medrassahs abroad to have them return to their homes. Now, underscoring Dushanbe’s nervousness the republic’s foreign minister has begun talks with the governments involved to enlist their aid in this effort.
Khamrokhon Zarifi, the foreign minister, told the Regnum.ru news agency that talks are now going on with these countries in the expectation that they will agree to return the young Tajik students so that they will not become, in Rakhmon’s words, “terrorists and extremists” (www.regnum.ru/news/fd-abroad/tajik/1337141.html).
According to the Tajik minister, the problem is a large one. At Cairo’s Al-Azhar University alone, for example, there are some700 Tajiks, all of whom are studying religious subjects like shariat law and theology rather than scientific or technical ones and 90 percent of whom are there illegally, at least from Dushanbe’s point of view (islamsng.com/tjk/news/301).
Indeed at his press conference, Zarifi said that “there is not a single one of our compatriots who is studying in the secular faculties of this higher educational institution which prepare engineers and doctors, although such people are very much needed in our country.” And consequently, Dushanbe wants them back.
According to the Tajik government, there are currently about 1400 Tajik young people studying in Islamic universities and medrassahs abroad, although the actual number is almost certainly far greater than that as many Tajiks, like students from other Muslim groups in the former Soviet space, often declare they are studying one place but then shift to another.
To date, the Tajik government, Foreign Minister Zarifi said, have been able to secure the return of “approximately 50,” an indication that Dushanbe faces an uphill battle unless foreign governments become actively involved, something that few, except for Iran – which has sent Tajiks home – appear all that interested in doing.
But Dushanbe’s efforts in this regard if they are successful may create three problems for the regime at home in addition to any difficulties it may have with its foreign interlocutors. First, because of mass unemployment in Tajikistan, many of those forced to return will be furious at the government and join militant groups seeking to overturn it.
Second, such half-trained Muslim adepts, history has shown, are far more likely to take a radical position than those who may be more fully exposed to Islamic doctrines, especially at places like Cairo’s Al-Azhar, and thus bring back with them exactly the opposite message that the Dushanbe government hopes for.
And third, if young Tajiks are precluded from getting an Islamic education abroad, then more of them are likely to demand Islamic education at home, something the authorities in Dushanbe say they favor but may be hard pressed to support, especially given that country’s economic difficulties at the present time.
But despite those difficulties, the governments of other post-Soviet states, many of whom have even more of their nationals studying at Islamic institutions abroad than does Tajikistan, are likely to follow Dushanbe’s lead. And that by itself makes what the Tajiks are doing even more important.
Window on Eurasia: Attack on Chechen Parliament Undercuts Kadyrov's Position and Putin's Claims
Paul Goble
Staunton, October 19 – Even more than the August raid on Ramzan Kadyrov’s home village of Tsentoroy, the attack Chechen militants carried out against the republic parliament this morning shows that Chechnya has not become the island of stability in the North Caucasus Kadyrov and his Moscow patron Vladimir Putin routinely claim.
That in turn increases the likelihood that some in Moscow will begin asking pointed questions about Kadyrov’s approach as the best model for other republic leaders in the North Caucasus, a model that he and Putin have been pushing -- and even about Kadyrov’s fitness to continue in office in Grozny.
And while the difficulties Moscow would face in displacing Kadyrov are enormous – he controls a large armed force and has few obvious successors who would not pursue an even more anti-Russian approach – the likelihood that such possibilities are going to be discussed will inevitably erode Kadyrov’s power and authority.
Chechen, Russian and Western news outlets have offered somewhat contradictory accounts of what has taken place, but an examination of a variety of them suggests that at least three people were killed and more than a dozen hospitalized as a result of the attack and that after a hour-long firefight, four of “the bandits” were, in Kadyrov’s words, “liquidated.”
Initial reports that militants had taken hostages within the parliament building itself or that they had attacked other Chechen government buildings have not been confirmed. But as “Svobodnaya pressa” put it, “the seriousness of the situation” is reflected in the fact that Putin spoke with Kadyrov even as it was going on (svpressa.ru/accidents/article/32346/).
More details may become available over the coming days because investigators from the North Caucasus and Southern Federal Districts jointly have formed a special group to find out what took place, although it is entirely possible that they will throw a veil of secrecy over today’s events.
Chechen officials have already tried to play down the event, although the comments of some may have just the opposite effect. Anzor Davletuniyev, a journalist at Grozny’s “Vesti respubliki,” told “Svobodnaya pressa” that “our people have been accustomed to such things for a long time.”
And Moscow media outlets, both electronic and print, have devoted most of their comments to what they describe as “the end of a counter-terrorist operation” against the militants rather than on why the militants have taken this action now, although some have linked it to recent conflicts within the Caucasus Emirate.
But in an interview “Svobodnaya pressa” had, Geydar Dzhemal, the president of the Islamic Committee of Russia, suggested that any discussions about what had occurred should not involve a focus on this or that individual but on what he called “a much larger problem … [the use of] this operation to discredit Ramzan Kadyrov” and more generally the policies he espouses.
By this action, even more than the Tsentoroy attack, the militants of those behind them, Dzhemal argued, are seeking to prove that Kadyrov and the policy of “Chechenization” can be “a panacea for the armed resistance in the Caucasus,” a policy Putin and his allies among the siloviki have pushed for the last several years.
According to Dzhemal, someone needs the situation to develop in such a way that “Kadyrov will be discredited in order to prepare the conditions for his departure. Therefore, the action was conducted when Russian Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev was in Grozny” and when there were parliamentarians from Sverdlovsk oblast there who could serve as witnesses.
The Muslim commentator said that he “considers that this was not an ordinary action and even not one of the caliber of the attack on Tsentoroy.” Rather, he suggested, that “in this case, we are dealing with a far reaching political operation which is related to processes which are taking place in Russia at the federal level.”
Kadyrov, Dzhemal continued, is “a powerful trump card” in the hands of the Russian siloviki, and consequently and entirely naturally “someone is interested that this resource of the party of the siloviki be taken away from them and that [as a result] problems for the entire system of power sharply increase.”
In the coming days and weeks, the Moscow analyst continued, Kadyrov is going to find himself under “growing political pressure” because “the attack on the parliament demonstrated that he is not in control of the situation in his own home” and that “the system of security which he has organized” isn’t working.
Dzhemal’s comments likely overstate the threat to Kadyrov – again, Moscow has few good options – but they are suggestive of a shift in attitudes toward him in the Russian capital, a shift that the militants are likely to exploit and that the Chechen leader will now have to try to do something to reverse.
Staunton, October 19 – Even more than the August raid on Ramzan Kadyrov’s home village of Tsentoroy, the attack Chechen militants carried out against the republic parliament this morning shows that Chechnya has not become the island of stability in the North Caucasus Kadyrov and his Moscow patron Vladimir Putin routinely claim.
That in turn increases the likelihood that some in Moscow will begin asking pointed questions about Kadyrov’s approach as the best model for other republic leaders in the North Caucasus, a model that he and Putin have been pushing -- and even about Kadyrov’s fitness to continue in office in Grozny.
And while the difficulties Moscow would face in displacing Kadyrov are enormous – he controls a large armed force and has few obvious successors who would not pursue an even more anti-Russian approach – the likelihood that such possibilities are going to be discussed will inevitably erode Kadyrov’s power and authority.
Chechen, Russian and Western news outlets have offered somewhat contradictory accounts of what has taken place, but an examination of a variety of them suggests that at least three people were killed and more than a dozen hospitalized as a result of the attack and that after a hour-long firefight, four of “the bandits” were, in Kadyrov’s words, “liquidated.”
Initial reports that militants had taken hostages within the parliament building itself or that they had attacked other Chechen government buildings have not been confirmed. But as “Svobodnaya pressa” put it, “the seriousness of the situation” is reflected in the fact that Putin spoke with Kadyrov even as it was going on (svpressa.ru/accidents/article/32346/).
More details may become available over the coming days because investigators from the North Caucasus and Southern Federal Districts jointly have formed a special group to find out what took place, although it is entirely possible that they will throw a veil of secrecy over today’s events.
Chechen officials have already tried to play down the event, although the comments of some may have just the opposite effect. Anzor Davletuniyev, a journalist at Grozny’s “Vesti respubliki,” told “Svobodnaya pressa” that “our people have been accustomed to such things for a long time.”
And Moscow media outlets, both electronic and print, have devoted most of their comments to what they describe as “the end of a counter-terrorist operation” against the militants rather than on why the militants have taken this action now, although some have linked it to recent conflicts within the Caucasus Emirate.
But in an interview “Svobodnaya pressa” had, Geydar Dzhemal, the president of the Islamic Committee of Russia, suggested that any discussions about what had occurred should not involve a focus on this or that individual but on what he called “a much larger problem … [the use of] this operation to discredit Ramzan Kadyrov” and more generally the policies he espouses.
By this action, even more than the Tsentoroy attack, the militants of those behind them, Dzhemal argued, are seeking to prove that Kadyrov and the policy of “Chechenization” can be “a panacea for the armed resistance in the Caucasus,” a policy Putin and his allies among the siloviki have pushed for the last several years.
According to Dzhemal, someone needs the situation to develop in such a way that “Kadyrov will be discredited in order to prepare the conditions for his departure. Therefore, the action was conducted when Russian Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev was in Grozny” and when there were parliamentarians from Sverdlovsk oblast there who could serve as witnesses.
The Muslim commentator said that he “considers that this was not an ordinary action and even not one of the caliber of the attack on Tsentoroy.” Rather, he suggested, that “in this case, we are dealing with a far reaching political operation which is related to processes which are taking place in Russia at the federal level.”
Kadyrov, Dzhemal continued, is “a powerful trump card” in the hands of the Russian siloviki, and consequently and entirely naturally “someone is interested that this resource of the party of the siloviki be taken away from them and that [as a result] problems for the entire system of power sharply increase.”
In the coming days and weeks, the Moscow analyst continued, Kadyrov is going to find himself under “growing political pressure” because “the attack on the parliament demonstrated that he is not in control of the situation in his own home” and that “the system of security which he has organized” isn’t working.
Dzhemal’s comments likely overstate the threat to Kadyrov – again, Moscow has few good options – but they are suggestive of a shift in attitudes toward him in the Russian capital, a shift that the militants are likely to exploit and that the Chechen leader will now have to try to do something to reverse.
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