Paul Goble
Staunton, April 17 – Given the role of the Internet and social media in the spread of popular revolts in many countries, there has been a great deal of speculation about how these new media are developing in places like Chechnya, but most of the commentary on such issues has come from outsiders rather than direct participants.
The current issue of the Daghestani online newspaper, “Nastoyashcheye vremya,” provides a welcome exception with its publication of information supplied anonymously by a Chechen blogger about how the Internet with its blogs and social media is developing in his republic (gazeta-nv.ru/content/view/5875/109/).
The paper’s Bagdat Tumalayev who writes frequently about new media in the Caucasus but relatively seldom about developments in that sector in Chechnya reports that “a Chechen blogger who wishes to remain anonymous has decided to talk about the state of affairs with regard to the Internet in his native region.”
The Chechen blogger’s desire for anonymity, Tumalayev says, “is understandable even though today this region has become stable” because “it isn’t especially comfortable for anyone living in Chechnya itself to write about this openly.” But the Daghestani journalist continues, “judging [from his text], the Internet in Chechnya is developing in a not bad way!”
Moreover, he continues, conditions are being created for its future growth. Vaynakh-Telecon, the leading Internet provide in Grozny, has recently “significantly lowered [its] prices.” Now, Chechens who want to go online can do so at a speed of 1mb/second for only 1200 rubles (40 US dollars) a month.
Among the most popular sites in Chechnya are Chechen-republic.com, Checheninfor.ru, and Chechnyafree.ru, a project of the Golos Rossii radio station. A social network for Vaynakhs, waynahi.ru, has arisen and offers itself as “a national social network for Chechnya and Ingushetia,” although the paper says “it is difficult to speak about how well known it is.”
But social networks are growing. There are already 211,000 Chechen residents registerd on the Russian social network, Odnoklassniki.ru, and there are 26,000 Grozny residents who use the Vkontakte.ru service. Also important in this regard, the Chechen blogger relates, is the Internet forum, vchechne.ru, where there are discussions about all kinds of issues.
The Grozni.org site carries photographs of the Chechen capital today, while Grozny.vrcal.com has photos from before the first Chechen campaign. Current news about the city is available on grozny-inform.ru, the Chechen blogger says, without indicating what he thinks of the content of that outlet.
Other interesting cites the blogger refers to include moct.org, the site of the graduates of the Grozny Oil Institute, fc-terek.ru, terek-grozny.ru,and Chechen sport.com which follow sports clubs. Also important are chechenasso.ru, which features news on Chechen communities outside of Chechnya, garikish.com and gakish.livejournal.com, which discuss social issues.
Ratings of these and other Chechen sites is available at chechentop.ru. There are also “several dozen” Chechen bloggers. The most widely read of these sites are the blog of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, ya_kadyrov.livejournal.com and that of Chechen journalist Timur Aliyev, timur_aliyev.livejournal.com.
Other blogs of note include the diary of Murat Mamirgov, the editor of Islamtv.ru, at mamirgov.livejournal.com, the blog of Arslan Khasavov, a Chechen writer of Daghestani origin, ubl.livejournal.com, and the blog of Leko Gudayev, the webmaster of the Checheninfor site, leko007.livejournal.com.
According to the anonymous Chechen blogger, the Chechen government is actively supporting these bloggers by giving them gifts and prizes as part of what it calls “The Golden Site of CHENET.” He does not say whether such arrangements are intended to ensure that the government knows what is going on, but that possibility cannot be excluded.
Monday, April 18, 2011
Window on Eurasia: Russian Campaign against Muslim Moderates Strengthens Islamist Extremists, Commentators Say
Paul Goble
Staunton, April 18 – Those Russians who oppose the modernization and integration of Russia’s Muslims into the political and social life of their country are unwittingly providing support to the Islamist radicals who argue that “there is no chance for normal legal work for the development of Islam” in Russia, two Muslim commentators say.
Indeed, Ruslan Kurbanov and Rinat Mukhametov argue in a lengthy article on the “Russky zhurnal” portal, this ongoing campaign against those within the Russian umma who want to modernize Islam represents “a serious threat to the common state interests of security and development” (www.russ.ru/pole/Islamskaya-modernizaciya-i-ee-vragi).
The occasion for their article, Kurbanov and Mukhametov say, is “the unceasing media-administrative campaign against the Union of Muftis of Russia [SMR]and its leader [Ravil Gainutdin]” and the fact that this campaign is “a clear testimony to the sharpening of the situation in the social-religious life of the country.”
They say that there are now “serious concerns that influential forces would like to exclude even the potential possibility of the enlivening and even more productive activity of domestic Muslims not to speak about some sort of more serious steps such as attempts at the unification” of the Russian umma.
“No one is obligated to love Islam and Muslims,” they continue, but such efforts, “which are trying to tie down the Russian umma hand and foot represent a serious threat” to Russia, and it is not surprising, they point out that “all this is being carefully observed by the imamate ‘forest,’” a reference to the militants in the North Caucasus and elsewhere.
Unlike Talgat Tajuddin of the Central Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD), Ismail Berdiyevof the Coordinating Center of Muslims of the North Caucasus, and Mukhammad Rakhimov of the Russian Association of Islamic Accord (RAIS), Gainutdin and his SMR have attracted negative comment precisely because of their support for Muslim modernization.
The SMR, in contrast to the three other umbrella MSDs, “has been attempting to lead young people along the path of what is called ‘constructive Jihad,’ of legal Islamic social, cultural, media, intellectual and other types of activity,” Kurbanov and Mukkhametov say, “and this for various reasons does not please a large number of people.”
Much of Gainutdin’s program remains “the level of declaration,” they note, “but this positive example of the possibility of the normal peaceful development of Islam, the modernization and integration of the Muslim intelligentsia and young people” is attracting the interest “of all Muslim Russia.”
That is because Gainutdin and his SMR represent the possibility that Muslims in Russia will be able to “establish real and effective mechanisms and models of adaptation of Islam within the framework of contemporary Russian statehood,” something “without which, the solution of the problem of extremism is impossible.”
“Islamophobes” – and these are “completely definite forces with political and financial interests,” the two writers continue, “do not see a future for Islam in Russia.” Some of them believe that Islam should not be part of a Russian nation state, and others argue that Islam should be reduced in influence so that Russian can become “part of the Western world.”
But both the one and the other, Kurbanov and Mukhametov say, “however suprising this may appear, are in agreement with the so-called ‘forest brothers’ in the Caucasus and with all those who sympathize with them [because] they too do not see Islam and Muslims as an inalienable part of Russia and Russian identity.”
The attacks on Gainutdin and the SMR, the two Muslim writers say, reflects a faulty logic, one that if applied to the Russian Orthodox Church would require everyone to blame Patriarch Kirill for the actions of the skinheads and serial murders of non-Russians. “We do not think that a discussion at this level is useful for the Russian state.”
Kurbanov and Mukhametov devote most of their article to a discussion of the history of Russian attitudes toward Islam and Muslim organizations, and they demonstrate that both in the pre-1917 period and now, Islamophobes opposed any modernization of Islam and promoted both the spread of Orthodox Christianity and Russification.
But in contrast to the sophistication of the pre-revolutionary leaders of this approach, the current Islamophobes are destroying their own case by promoting discredited leaders within Islam, leader who, Kurbanov and Mukhametov says, are “not cable of influencing Muslims the muftis of which they consider themselves to be,” in the hopes of destroying the umma.
The government-assisted rise of such leaders, they say, represents “a big gift to ‘the forest,’” one that the Caucasus Emirate “could not have imagined on its own.” The propagandists of that group treat what the Islamophobes are doing in Russia as evidence of the rightness of the struggle against Moscow.
“In ‘kafir’ Russia,” the Emirate’s propagandists say, “Leaders are imposed on Muslims who have lost any authority as a result of their declarations and activity; consequently, the development of Islam is blocked; and that in turn means that ‘our task is right’ and that ‘we will win.’”
In this way, and despite the failure of many to understand what is going on, Kurbanov and Mukhametov say, “the attack on the modernization of Muslim institutions is an attack on the security” of the country as a whole, all the more so because “without modernization [of the country],” Russia will not be able to respond to the challenges of the 21st century.
Those who oppose modernization generally and in the Muslim umma “are only playing into the hands of those who want that Russian Muslims do not feel themselves masters in their own land and of those … would like to remove the ‘Muslim’ bricks from the building of the single state and thus make possible the destruction of our entire common home.”
Russia’s Islamophobes oppose the consolidation of the umma on a platform of modernization, the two writers argue, and believe that the difficulties within the Islamic community there are not “problems of growth” but systemic and that “Islam always will be a factor of destabilization and a headache” for Russia.
These opponents of Muslims “advise the bureaucrats that it is necessary to continue the course on the step by step elimination of Islam – not ‘Islamism’ and ‘Wahhabism’ but Islam as such.” And to that end, they urge that “the official Islamic institutions in Russia remain at the level of Soviet times.”
But such an approach entails some really tragic consequences, Kurbanov and Mukhametov argue. It means that those really interested in Islam will be forced to go into “semi-legal or even illegal” places, that the official leaders will remain “illiterate and reactionary,” and that Islam n Russia will again be reduced to “rituals” rather than “faith.”
“In fact,” they say, what Islamophobes like Roman Silantyev are calling for would represent “a return to the pre-Catherine policy toward Islam, the core idea of which was Christianization by any means, including the use of force,” an approach that will in the present circumstances lead to an explosion.
That is because “the formation of the umma and the Islamic awakening in Russia are an irreversible process,” the two Muslim writers say. “The point of no-return has been passed.” The modernizers understand this and want to ensure that the rebirth of Islam takes place within Russia, while “the Islamophobes and ‘the forest brothers’ want this not to happen.”
“For different reasons, the one and the other do not want to see Islam within Russia.” But “sooner or later, a normal working system of interrelationships with Muslims will have to be developed. Those who have any doubts about this should carefully study the results of the last census of the population.”
“In order to avoid problems,” Kurbanov and Mukhametov say, “it would be better to do this sooner rather than later. The state, the Russian people, the Union of Muftis and ‘the modernizers’ have an interest in doing it sooner. The Islamophobes and ‘the forest’ want it to happen as late as possible or better still not at all.”
Staunton, April 18 – Those Russians who oppose the modernization and integration of Russia’s Muslims into the political and social life of their country are unwittingly providing support to the Islamist radicals who argue that “there is no chance for normal legal work for the development of Islam” in Russia, two Muslim commentators say.
Indeed, Ruslan Kurbanov and Rinat Mukhametov argue in a lengthy article on the “Russky zhurnal” portal, this ongoing campaign against those within the Russian umma who want to modernize Islam represents “a serious threat to the common state interests of security and development” (www.russ.ru/pole/Islamskaya-modernizaciya-i-ee-vragi).
The occasion for their article, Kurbanov and Mukhametov say, is “the unceasing media-administrative campaign against the Union of Muftis of Russia [SMR]and its leader [Ravil Gainutdin]” and the fact that this campaign is “a clear testimony to the sharpening of the situation in the social-religious life of the country.”
They say that there are now “serious concerns that influential forces would like to exclude even the potential possibility of the enlivening and even more productive activity of domestic Muslims not to speak about some sort of more serious steps such as attempts at the unification” of the Russian umma.
“No one is obligated to love Islam and Muslims,” they continue, but such efforts, “which are trying to tie down the Russian umma hand and foot represent a serious threat” to Russia, and it is not surprising, they point out that “all this is being carefully observed by the imamate ‘forest,’” a reference to the militants in the North Caucasus and elsewhere.
Unlike Talgat Tajuddin of the Central Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD), Ismail Berdiyevof the Coordinating Center of Muslims of the North Caucasus, and Mukhammad Rakhimov of the Russian Association of Islamic Accord (RAIS), Gainutdin and his SMR have attracted negative comment precisely because of their support for Muslim modernization.
The SMR, in contrast to the three other umbrella MSDs, “has been attempting to lead young people along the path of what is called ‘constructive Jihad,’ of legal Islamic social, cultural, media, intellectual and other types of activity,” Kurbanov and Mukkhametov say, “and this for various reasons does not please a large number of people.”
Much of Gainutdin’s program remains “the level of declaration,” they note, “but this positive example of the possibility of the normal peaceful development of Islam, the modernization and integration of the Muslim intelligentsia and young people” is attracting the interest “of all Muslim Russia.”
That is because Gainutdin and his SMR represent the possibility that Muslims in Russia will be able to “establish real and effective mechanisms and models of adaptation of Islam within the framework of contemporary Russian statehood,” something “without which, the solution of the problem of extremism is impossible.”
“Islamophobes” – and these are “completely definite forces with political and financial interests,” the two writers continue, “do not see a future for Islam in Russia.” Some of them believe that Islam should not be part of a Russian nation state, and others argue that Islam should be reduced in influence so that Russian can become “part of the Western world.”
But both the one and the other, Kurbanov and Mukhametov say, “however suprising this may appear, are in agreement with the so-called ‘forest brothers’ in the Caucasus and with all those who sympathize with them [because] they too do not see Islam and Muslims as an inalienable part of Russia and Russian identity.”
The attacks on Gainutdin and the SMR, the two Muslim writers say, reflects a faulty logic, one that if applied to the Russian Orthodox Church would require everyone to blame Patriarch Kirill for the actions of the skinheads and serial murders of non-Russians. “We do not think that a discussion at this level is useful for the Russian state.”
Kurbanov and Mukhametov devote most of their article to a discussion of the history of Russian attitudes toward Islam and Muslim organizations, and they demonstrate that both in the pre-1917 period and now, Islamophobes opposed any modernization of Islam and promoted both the spread of Orthodox Christianity and Russification.
But in contrast to the sophistication of the pre-revolutionary leaders of this approach, the current Islamophobes are destroying their own case by promoting discredited leaders within Islam, leader who, Kurbanov and Mukhametov says, are “not cable of influencing Muslims the muftis of which they consider themselves to be,” in the hopes of destroying the umma.
The government-assisted rise of such leaders, they say, represents “a big gift to ‘the forest,’” one that the Caucasus Emirate “could not have imagined on its own.” The propagandists of that group treat what the Islamophobes are doing in Russia as evidence of the rightness of the struggle against Moscow.
“In ‘kafir’ Russia,” the Emirate’s propagandists say, “Leaders are imposed on Muslims who have lost any authority as a result of their declarations and activity; consequently, the development of Islam is blocked; and that in turn means that ‘our task is right’ and that ‘we will win.’”
In this way, and despite the failure of many to understand what is going on, Kurbanov and Mukhametov say, “the attack on the modernization of Muslim institutions is an attack on the security” of the country as a whole, all the more so because “without modernization [of the country],” Russia will not be able to respond to the challenges of the 21st century.
Those who oppose modernization generally and in the Muslim umma “are only playing into the hands of those who want that Russian Muslims do not feel themselves masters in their own land and of those … would like to remove the ‘Muslim’ bricks from the building of the single state and thus make possible the destruction of our entire common home.”
Russia’s Islamophobes oppose the consolidation of the umma on a platform of modernization, the two writers argue, and believe that the difficulties within the Islamic community there are not “problems of growth” but systemic and that “Islam always will be a factor of destabilization and a headache” for Russia.
These opponents of Muslims “advise the bureaucrats that it is necessary to continue the course on the step by step elimination of Islam – not ‘Islamism’ and ‘Wahhabism’ but Islam as such.” And to that end, they urge that “the official Islamic institutions in Russia remain at the level of Soviet times.”
But such an approach entails some really tragic consequences, Kurbanov and Mukhametov argue. It means that those really interested in Islam will be forced to go into “semi-legal or even illegal” places, that the official leaders will remain “illiterate and reactionary,” and that Islam n Russia will again be reduced to “rituals” rather than “faith.”
“In fact,” they say, what Islamophobes like Roman Silantyev are calling for would represent “a return to the pre-Catherine policy toward Islam, the core idea of which was Christianization by any means, including the use of force,” an approach that will in the present circumstances lead to an explosion.
That is because “the formation of the umma and the Islamic awakening in Russia are an irreversible process,” the two Muslim writers say. “The point of no-return has been passed.” The modernizers understand this and want to ensure that the rebirth of Islam takes place within Russia, while “the Islamophobes and ‘the forest brothers’ want this not to happen.”
“For different reasons, the one and the other do not want to see Islam within Russia.” But “sooner or later, a normal working system of interrelationships with Muslims will have to be developed. Those who have any doubts about this should carefully study the results of the last census of the population.”
“In order to avoid problems,” Kurbanov and Mukhametov say, “it would be better to do this sooner rather than later. The state, the Russian people, the Union of Muftis and ‘the modernizers’ have an interest in doing it sooner. The Islamophobes and ‘the forest’ want it to happen as late as possible or better still not at all.”
Window on Eurasia: Moscow Seeks to Reduce Concentrations of Muslim Soldiers in Military Units
Paul Goble
Staunton, April 18 – Concerned about the impact on draft resistance and military readiness of clashes between ethnic Russians and soldiers from the North Caucasus, the Russian defense ministry has cut the size of the draft quota for at least some North Caucasus republics and is working to prevent the concentration of North Caucasian soldiers in any military unit.
A meeting of the defense ministry’s public council last Thursday concluded that problems between soldiers from the North Caucasus and those from elsewhere reflect broader problems in the society, including the failure of the educational system to promote tolerance (www.trud.ru/article/15-04-2011/261742_prizyvnikam_iz_dagestana_objavili_dembel.html).
And as a long term solution, participants at that session, “Trud” reported, believe that the solution to such problems in the military will be the creation of a cadre of professional sergeants. But because the Russian military needs approximately 100,000 of them and is producing only about 500 a year, that solution will not be available anytime soon.
Consequently, as the Moscow paper reported, “the generals without advertising this have already found a solution to the problems by reducing the size of the draft from the Caucasus by an order of magnitude” and by working to ensure that draftees from that region will not be concentrated in particular units.
At the meeting, Nikita Mikhalkov, the well-known film director, sharply critized “not the defense ministry but the education ministry for the fact that it was not involved in the moral training of the younger generation and even, in his words had eliminated the use of the term moral training.”
He and other participants agreed that the military thus must rely on its own resources to address inter-ethnic and inter-religious tensions and that “the main figure in the harmonization of inter-ethnic relations must be the sergeant who will spend all the time in the barracks and will know all the nuances in the behavior of his subordinates.”
But as Anatoly Tsyganok, the head of the Moscow Center of Military Prognostication, pointed out, the Russian military is producing too few sergeants to make a difference. At the current rate, he told the paper, it will be more than 200 years before there will be the number needed to make a difference.
Consequently, Russian commanders are seeking to reduce the presence of North Caucasians in the ranks. As Andrey Doroniin, the former deputy commander of the Moscow Military District noted, there exist “simpler means” of preventing such conflicts: North Caucasian soldiers “must not be concentrated in one place.”
And yet another means, “Trud” reported, is to reduce draft calls in the North Caucasus. “According to the information of the military commissariat of Daghetan, this year only 400 people will be called to service, compared to 4,000” who were drafted from the republic in the recent past.
This short-term “solution” entails at least two serious problems, however. On the one hand, it will make it more difficult for the military to fill the ranks because an ever-growing share of the draft-age cohort consists of people from the Muslim republics in general and the North Caucasus in particular.
Military commissariats in predominantly ethnic Russian regions will have to use ever more force to meet their quotas, and Russian parents and potential draftees will see themselves as paying a higher “tax” than those in non-Russian areas, exacerbating Russian nationalist attitudes toward non-Russians in Russian cities and toward non-Russian regions as a whole.
And on the other, any reduction in draft quotas in the North Caucasus will increase the rate of unemployment there, complicating Moscow’s efforts to overcome the problems that have contributed to a seemingly unending flow of young men into the forests to fight against the Russian regime.
Moreover, and this may be the most serious consequence of this unannounced policy, the decision to draft fewer non-Russians because of the problems they supposedly cause will lead ever more of them to view both the Russian military and Russia itself as being just as much an alien occupier as the Islamist militants insist that the two are.
Staunton, April 18 – Concerned about the impact on draft resistance and military readiness of clashes between ethnic Russians and soldiers from the North Caucasus, the Russian defense ministry has cut the size of the draft quota for at least some North Caucasus republics and is working to prevent the concentration of North Caucasian soldiers in any military unit.
A meeting of the defense ministry’s public council last Thursday concluded that problems between soldiers from the North Caucasus and those from elsewhere reflect broader problems in the society, including the failure of the educational system to promote tolerance (www.trud.ru/article/15-04-2011/261742_prizyvnikam_iz_dagestana_objavili_dembel.html).
And as a long term solution, participants at that session, “Trud” reported, believe that the solution to such problems in the military will be the creation of a cadre of professional sergeants. But because the Russian military needs approximately 100,000 of them and is producing only about 500 a year, that solution will not be available anytime soon.
Consequently, as the Moscow paper reported, “the generals without advertising this have already found a solution to the problems by reducing the size of the draft from the Caucasus by an order of magnitude” and by working to ensure that draftees from that region will not be concentrated in particular units.
At the meeting, Nikita Mikhalkov, the well-known film director, sharply critized “not the defense ministry but the education ministry for the fact that it was not involved in the moral training of the younger generation and even, in his words had eliminated the use of the term moral training.”
He and other participants agreed that the military thus must rely on its own resources to address inter-ethnic and inter-religious tensions and that “the main figure in the harmonization of inter-ethnic relations must be the sergeant who will spend all the time in the barracks and will know all the nuances in the behavior of his subordinates.”
But as Anatoly Tsyganok, the head of the Moscow Center of Military Prognostication, pointed out, the Russian military is producing too few sergeants to make a difference. At the current rate, he told the paper, it will be more than 200 years before there will be the number needed to make a difference.
Consequently, Russian commanders are seeking to reduce the presence of North Caucasians in the ranks. As Andrey Doroniin, the former deputy commander of the Moscow Military District noted, there exist “simpler means” of preventing such conflicts: North Caucasian soldiers “must not be concentrated in one place.”
And yet another means, “Trud” reported, is to reduce draft calls in the North Caucasus. “According to the information of the military commissariat of Daghetan, this year only 400 people will be called to service, compared to 4,000” who were drafted from the republic in the recent past.
This short-term “solution” entails at least two serious problems, however. On the one hand, it will make it more difficult for the military to fill the ranks because an ever-growing share of the draft-age cohort consists of people from the Muslim republics in general and the North Caucasus in particular.
Military commissariats in predominantly ethnic Russian regions will have to use ever more force to meet their quotas, and Russian parents and potential draftees will see themselves as paying a higher “tax” than those in non-Russian areas, exacerbating Russian nationalist attitudes toward non-Russians in Russian cities and toward non-Russian regions as a whole.
And on the other, any reduction in draft quotas in the North Caucasus will increase the rate of unemployment there, complicating Moscow’s efforts to overcome the problems that have contributed to a seemingly unending flow of young men into the forests to fight against the Russian regime.
Moreover, and this may be the most serious consequence of this unannounced policy, the decision to draft fewer non-Russians because of the problems they supposedly cause will lead ever more of them to view both the Russian military and Russia itself as being just as much an alien occupier as the Islamist militants insist that the two are.
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