Paul Goble
Staunton, September 30 – With the Tatarstan State Council’s decision last week to make both the Day of the Acceptance of Islam and Uraza-Bayram official holidays, the number of republic holidays linked to Islam now exceeds secular ones there three to two, a measure of the growing importance of Islam in that Middle Volga republic.
In a comment on this trend, A.Yu. Khabutdinov, a professor of the Kazan branch of the Russian Academy of Jurisprudence, provides details on how this remarkable development came about and about what it means and equally doesn’t mean for the Muslims of Tatarstan and of the Russian Federation more generally (www.islamrf.ru/news/analytics/expert/13740/).
On September 23, he notes, the Tatarstan State council approved two new holidays for the republic which will be days off for most residents: the Day of the Official Adoption of Islam by Volga Bulgaria in 922 and the Muslim Uraza-Bayram holiday. Kurban Bayram had already been a state holiday since the 1990s.
But now that there are three Muslim-related republic holidays, the Kazan scholar continues, they outnumber the two “secular” ones – the Day of the Republic which is also celebrated in Kazan as the Day of the City and the Day of the Constitution of the Republic of Tatarstan.
In the 1990s, Khabutdinov recalls, Tatar leaders sought to declare the day of the Russian occupation of Kazan in October 1552 a state holiday, a holiday that would have commemorated a national defeat in much the say way that the Soviet calendar included such “black dates” as the fall of the Paris commune in 1871.
But the supporters of this idea failed. They were not even able to erect a monument to the defenders of Kazan in 1552 under that city’s Kremlin or, an equally passionate cause among Kazan Tatar nationalists at the time, a monument to the founder of the Kazan khanate, Olug Muhammad.
Thus, Khabutdinov says, in the 1990s, the Tatars focused on national symbols. But “in the first decade of the 2000s, the basic accent was shifted to the religious component,” with the opening of the Kul-Sharif mosque in the Kazan Kremlin and the celebration of Russia’s entrance into the Organization of the Islamic Conference as an observer.
The next shift came the spring of 2010 when, already under the current Tatarstan President Rustam Minnikhanov, the question was raised about how Tatarstan should respond to the new federal holiday, the Day of the Baptism of Rus, and many Tatars argued that Kazan should adopt the Day of the Adoption of Islam.
Up until that time, religious organizations like the Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD) of Tatarstan had been the chief advocates of such a move. “However,” Khabutdinov notes, “none of these institutions has the right to propose legislation.” That came from the Tatarstan State Council which on June 9 proposed that the Russian Duma take that step.
At that time, Mintimir Shaymiyev, the former president of the republic and current state advisor, said that “if the State Duma rejects the initiative of the State council then the parliament of Tatarstan can establish this day as a memorial day in the republic,” a prescient description of what in fact happened.
The problem Moscow faced in this regard was two-fold. On the one hand, many Russians objected to the idea that there should be any but an Orthodox holiday of this kind. And on the other, the Muslim communities of the country are divided as to when a holiday commemorating the adoption of Islam should take place.
Daghestani scholars and officials insisted that Islam arrived in their republic in 642, much earlier than in the arrival of Islam in the Middle Volga. Intriguingly, Khabutdinov says, the Union of Muftis of Russia (SMR) backed the Tatars, arguing that the Muslims in the Caucasus did not have a state at the time but “the Bulgars did.”
Other Muslims in the Russian Federation don’t agree with the SMR’s logic and continue to present “their own particular history” separately in contrast to what the Tatar leadership had hoped for. But that is far from the most important consequence of what the Tatarstan State Council did last week, Khabutdinov says.
“From the end of the 1980s” until last week, he writes, “the Kazan khanate was considered the symbol of the unity of the Tatar nation” -- even though many Tatar nationalists of a century ago had extremely negative views about that political institution. But now, the nation’s “golden age” is the epoch of the Volga or Volga-Kama Bulgaria and its adoption of Islam.
That change in the understanding of the past both reflects and is certain to have an impact on the nature of Tatar national identity and nationalism in the future, a fact far more important than the appearance of yet another “religious” rather than “secular” “red day” on the calendars of the people of that Middle Volga republic.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Window on Eurasia: Islamist Radicalism in Central Asia Now Threatens Europe, Experts Say
Paul Goble
Staunton, September 30 – Many in the West have watched with alarm on the growth of Islamist violence in post-Soviet Central Asia, but most of them have concluded that its horrors are far away. Now, however, three experts are warning that this violence now poses a growing threat not only to the region but to Europe as well.
The three -- Tomasz Otłowski of Poland, Aleksandr Knyazev of the Russian Federation, and Marlene Laruelle of France – approach this issue from different perspectives but reach the same disturbing conclusion: Europe and the West more generally need to view Islamist radicalism in Central Asia as a problem that can reach Europe in the near future.
In an essay posted on "Wirtualna Polska,” Otłowski, who works as an analyst at the Bureau of National Security of Poland, argues that “Islamic radicalism in Central Asia is a growing problem” and that it is directly connected with the situation in Afghanistan and a threat to European countries (www.centrasia.ru/news.php?st=1285821060).
The activity of the Islamists is especially great in Tajikistan, “the poorest and weakest state” of Central Asia, Otłowski says. The other Central Asian states have been more effective in combating this ideological group, but that is beginning to change not only because the ethnic groups are so intermixed in the Fergana valley but also because of high unemployment.
Many unemployed young men are completely “frustrated” with their chances for the future, the Polish analyst argues, and consequently, they find an explanation for their problems and a guide to future action in “the radical variant of Islam which” Al-Qaeda and its representatives offer them.
As a result, he continues, “nowhere in Central Asia does the idea of jihad have as many supporters as in the Ferghana valley,” a place that has been a focus of attention by Al-Qaeda operatives since the end of the 1990s. And it was out of them that the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) arose.
The IMU recruited its members in the Ferghana and “dispatched them for preparation in the Al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan or in the Pakistani tribal territories.” The Uzbek government’s harsh campaign drove the IMU out of much of that country, but many IMU activists resettled in Pakistan’s Northern Waziristan, “a bastion today of Uzbek Islamists.”
There, along with other Islamist groups, the IMU has “not only more or less formally declared its subordination to Al-Qaeda (in both the ideological and organizational-cadres sense) but also begun to declare its interests in the globalization of its goals and activities,” a hallmark of Al-Qaeda throughout its history.
The IMU and other groups have used their “close ties with Al-Qaeda” to increase their operational possibilities and to broaden “the geography of their activity,” a development that is “useful to Al-Qaeda itself since the grouping provides additional forces and means for planning and conducting broad-scale operations” around the world.
“One of the first organizations” from Central Asia which adopted Al-Qaeda’s worldwide jihadist line was the Union of Islamic Jihad (UIJ), which consists of many activists who were part of the IMU. And the UIJ is now playing a major role for Al-Qaeda not only in Central Asia but in Europe and even the United States.
For Al-Qaeda, Otłowski writes, this focus on Central Asia is entirely understandable. Central Asia for that group, he says, is “a litmus test” of what may be possible. “Countries lying in the heart of the Asian continent with a predominant Muslim population and domestic problems are the ideal starting bases for further operations especially against Russia and China.”
But the UIJ is interested in attacking Europe as well, the Polish analyst says. It has already developed a network in Turkey and in Germany, both among local Muslims, recent Muslim converts, and especially those who have had experience in the fighting in Afghanistan or elsewhere.
“Without a doubt,” Otłowski argues, “it is only a question of time when the UIJ structures will focus on Europe” and launch attacks there. Germany and Turkey are particularly at risk, and UIJ is actively recruiting people who have little interest in what is taking place in Central Asia but a great desire to attack the West in the name of jihad.
Meanwhile, in Almaaty earlier this week, Aleksandr Knyazev of Moscow and Marlene Laruelle of Paris and Washington discussed what they call “the new arc of instability” from Afghanistan through Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan and the ways in which Islamist radicals in each of those countries are linked with one another (www.ferghana.ru/article.php?id=6745).
Among other comments, they provided support for Otłowski’s argument with their discussions of the “reincarnation” of the IMU and its growing activity in the northeastern provinces of Afghanistan and renewal of activity in the countries of Central Asia from which its members had earlier been pushed out.
This activity, the two stressed, is linked to the flow of drugs and the links of these radical Islamist groups to organized crime in many countries, factors that, along with their experiences in Afghanistan and Pakistan, also prompt the members of the IMU and the UIJ to look beyond their national communities and think in radical jihadist terms of the Al-Qaeda type.
Staunton, September 30 – Many in the West have watched with alarm on the growth of Islamist violence in post-Soviet Central Asia, but most of them have concluded that its horrors are far away. Now, however, three experts are warning that this violence now poses a growing threat not only to the region but to Europe as well.
The three -- Tomasz Otłowski of Poland, Aleksandr Knyazev of the Russian Federation, and Marlene Laruelle of France – approach this issue from different perspectives but reach the same disturbing conclusion: Europe and the West more generally need to view Islamist radicalism in Central Asia as a problem that can reach Europe in the near future.
In an essay posted on "Wirtualna Polska,” Otłowski, who works as an analyst at the Bureau of National Security of Poland, argues that “Islamic radicalism in Central Asia is a growing problem” and that it is directly connected with the situation in Afghanistan and a threat to European countries (www.centrasia.ru/news.php?st=1285821060).
The activity of the Islamists is especially great in Tajikistan, “the poorest and weakest state” of Central Asia, Otłowski says. The other Central Asian states have been more effective in combating this ideological group, but that is beginning to change not only because the ethnic groups are so intermixed in the Fergana valley but also because of high unemployment.
Many unemployed young men are completely “frustrated” with their chances for the future, the Polish analyst argues, and consequently, they find an explanation for their problems and a guide to future action in “the radical variant of Islam which” Al-Qaeda and its representatives offer them.
As a result, he continues, “nowhere in Central Asia does the idea of jihad have as many supporters as in the Ferghana valley,” a place that has been a focus of attention by Al-Qaeda operatives since the end of the 1990s. And it was out of them that the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) arose.
The IMU recruited its members in the Ferghana and “dispatched them for preparation in the Al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan or in the Pakistani tribal territories.” The Uzbek government’s harsh campaign drove the IMU out of much of that country, but many IMU activists resettled in Pakistan’s Northern Waziristan, “a bastion today of Uzbek Islamists.”
There, along with other Islamist groups, the IMU has “not only more or less formally declared its subordination to Al-Qaeda (in both the ideological and organizational-cadres sense) but also begun to declare its interests in the globalization of its goals and activities,” a hallmark of Al-Qaeda throughout its history.
The IMU and other groups have used their “close ties with Al-Qaeda” to increase their operational possibilities and to broaden “the geography of their activity,” a development that is “useful to Al-Qaeda itself since the grouping provides additional forces and means for planning and conducting broad-scale operations” around the world.
“One of the first organizations” from Central Asia which adopted Al-Qaeda’s worldwide jihadist line was the Union of Islamic Jihad (UIJ), which consists of many activists who were part of the IMU. And the UIJ is now playing a major role for Al-Qaeda not only in Central Asia but in Europe and even the United States.
For Al-Qaeda, Otłowski writes, this focus on Central Asia is entirely understandable. Central Asia for that group, he says, is “a litmus test” of what may be possible. “Countries lying in the heart of the Asian continent with a predominant Muslim population and domestic problems are the ideal starting bases for further operations especially against Russia and China.”
But the UIJ is interested in attacking Europe as well, the Polish analyst says. It has already developed a network in Turkey and in Germany, both among local Muslims, recent Muslim converts, and especially those who have had experience in the fighting in Afghanistan or elsewhere.
“Without a doubt,” Otłowski argues, “it is only a question of time when the UIJ structures will focus on Europe” and launch attacks there. Germany and Turkey are particularly at risk, and UIJ is actively recruiting people who have little interest in what is taking place in Central Asia but a great desire to attack the West in the name of jihad.
Meanwhile, in Almaaty earlier this week, Aleksandr Knyazev of Moscow and Marlene Laruelle of Paris and Washington discussed what they call “the new arc of instability” from Afghanistan through Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan and the ways in which Islamist radicals in each of those countries are linked with one another (www.ferghana.ru/article.php?id=6745).
Among other comments, they provided support for Otłowski’s argument with their discussions of the “reincarnation” of the IMU and its growing activity in the northeastern provinces of Afghanistan and renewal of activity in the countries of Central Asia from which its members had earlier been pushed out.
This activity, the two stressed, is linked to the flow of drugs and the links of these radical Islamist groups to organized crime in many countries, factors that, along with their experiences in Afghanistan and Pakistan, also prompt the members of the IMU and the UIJ to look beyond their national communities and think in radical jihadist terms of the Al-Qaeda type.
Window on Eurasia: Moscow Underfunds Budget for Compatriots Program by More than 75 Percent
Paul Goble
Staunton, September 30 – Moscow spent less than a quarter of the amount it had budgeted to attract compatriots living abroad to come back to Russia, some 1.8 billion rubles (60 million US dollars) instead of eight billion rubles (260 million US dollars), a cutback that reflects Russia’s economic problems but reduces the chance that Moscow will attract many to return.
That has two major consequences. On the one hand, it means that an increasing share of the growing influx of migrant workers to the Russian Federation this year and in the future will consist of non-Russians culturally dissimilar from the titular nationality, a trend certain to exacerbate inter-ethnic and inter-religious tensions there.
And on the other, this cutback means that Moscow will likely be playing a smaller role in the lives of the ethnic Russian communities of the former Soviet republics and Baltic states, despite the claims of ethnic Russian activists in those countries and the desire of some Russian nationalists to use ethnic Russian communities there to promote closer ties.
In reporting this development, Aleksandr Raskin, the deputy chief editor of “Expert Online,” argues that these cutbacks put the entire program at risk, even though officials like Federal Migration Service chief Konstantin Poltoranin insist that this reduction “does not mean the liquidation of the program” (www.expert.ru/articles/2010/09/29/krizisn_sootechestvenniki/).
According to FMS officials, Raskin continues, their institution asked for the reductions because its analysts concluded that no more than 20,000 people would move to the Russian Federation, far fewer than many Moscow officials and politicians had been projecting only a few years ago.
When the program was designed for the period 2007 to 2012, officials projected that 132,400 people would return – others suggested that as many as 300,000 would do so, Raskin notes -- but in fact only 8800 have done so thus far despite budgetary allocations totally 18.3 billion rubles (600 million US dollars).
Over the last several years, Russian officials have sought to promote in-migration of compatriots to economically weak regions rather than to Moscow or other major cities by offering more money to those prepared to move to the former and much less to those who want to go to the latter.
While FMS officials continue to be upbeat, many other parts of the bureaucracy are not. Igor Lyakin-Frolov, the deputy director of the Foreign Ministry’s information department, for example, told Raskin that “the program is really ineffective.” He added that various ministries, including his own, are discussing how to transform it.
FMS officials acknowledge that there are problems, including their inability to guarantee those who return that they will have appropriate housing. Doing that depends on the regions, and some of them are not very helpful. Moscow’s role is limited, they say, to ensuring that those who return obtain Russian Federation citizenship on an expedited basis.
Independent analysts, Raskin continues, are very skeptical about the program, with some arguing that Moscow hasn’t supported it adequately and others saying it is poorly designed. Dmitry Oreshkin, a political scientist, says that Moscow should have addressed this issue 15 or more years ago when many more ethnic Russians were interested in moving.
During the early 1990s, he points out, Russia absorbed up to a million compatriots each year because “people were fleeing from real threats” in Central Asia and the Caucasus. Russia did not treat these people especially well with regards to housing and employment, but at the same time, it did not ignore them either.
The situation changed in the mid-1990s. Local and regional officials were less interested in taking in the large number of professionals for whom there were no obvious jobs. And many in Moscow “began to think that a return to the USSR was possible” and that the continued presence of ethnic Russians in the former republics would help promote that.
Guram Sanikidze, former deputy director of the Russian bureau of the International Migration Organization, is more skeptical than most of the Russian analysts. He suggests that people are not going to move to Russia -- “they do not have money for that” – and that as a result, “the program is condemned to failure.”
The amount of money, now reduced still further, is not enough to meet the nearly one million rubles (33,000 US dollars) a family needs to make the move, Sanikidze says. The amount Moscow is offering is thus “a drop in the bucket” and won’t convince all but the most frightened to move.
Instead, he concludes, “this is a propaganda program, used by the administration of Vladimir Putin as one of the aspects of the pre-election presidential race which is beginning now in Russia.” It may make for good public relations, but it is not something likely to have the consequences Moscow says it hopes for on the ground.
Staunton, September 30 – Moscow spent less than a quarter of the amount it had budgeted to attract compatriots living abroad to come back to Russia, some 1.8 billion rubles (60 million US dollars) instead of eight billion rubles (260 million US dollars), a cutback that reflects Russia’s economic problems but reduces the chance that Moscow will attract many to return.
That has two major consequences. On the one hand, it means that an increasing share of the growing influx of migrant workers to the Russian Federation this year and in the future will consist of non-Russians culturally dissimilar from the titular nationality, a trend certain to exacerbate inter-ethnic and inter-religious tensions there.
And on the other, this cutback means that Moscow will likely be playing a smaller role in the lives of the ethnic Russian communities of the former Soviet republics and Baltic states, despite the claims of ethnic Russian activists in those countries and the desire of some Russian nationalists to use ethnic Russian communities there to promote closer ties.
In reporting this development, Aleksandr Raskin, the deputy chief editor of “Expert Online,” argues that these cutbacks put the entire program at risk, even though officials like Federal Migration Service chief Konstantin Poltoranin insist that this reduction “does not mean the liquidation of the program” (www.expert.ru/articles/2010/09/29/krizisn_sootechestvenniki/).
According to FMS officials, Raskin continues, their institution asked for the reductions because its analysts concluded that no more than 20,000 people would move to the Russian Federation, far fewer than many Moscow officials and politicians had been projecting only a few years ago.
When the program was designed for the period 2007 to 2012, officials projected that 132,400 people would return – others suggested that as many as 300,000 would do so, Raskin notes -- but in fact only 8800 have done so thus far despite budgetary allocations totally 18.3 billion rubles (600 million US dollars).
Over the last several years, Russian officials have sought to promote in-migration of compatriots to economically weak regions rather than to Moscow or other major cities by offering more money to those prepared to move to the former and much less to those who want to go to the latter.
While FMS officials continue to be upbeat, many other parts of the bureaucracy are not. Igor Lyakin-Frolov, the deputy director of the Foreign Ministry’s information department, for example, told Raskin that “the program is really ineffective.” He added that various ministries, including his own, are discussing how to transform it.
FMS officials acknowledge that there are problems, including their inability to guarantee those who return that they will have appropriate housing. Doing that depends on the regions, and some of them are not very helpful. Moscow’s role is limited, they say, to ensuring that those who return obtain Russian Federation citizenship on an expedited basis.
Independent analysts, Raskin continues, are very skeptical about the program, with some arguing that Moscow hasn’t supported it adequately and others saying it is poorly designed. Dmitry Oreshkin, a political scientist, says that Moscow should have addressed this issue 15 or more years ago when many more ethnic Russians were interested in moving.
During the early 1990s, he points out, Russia absorbed up to a million compatriots each year because “people were fleeing from real threats” in Central Asia and the Caucasus. Russia did not treat these people especially well with regards to housing and employment, but at the same time, it did not ignore them either.
The situation changed in the mid-1990s. Local and regional officials were less interested in taking in the large number of professionals for whom there were no obvious jobs. And many in Moscow “began to think that a return to the USSR was possible” and that the continued presence of ethnic Russians in the former republics would help promote that.
Guram Sanikidze, former deputy director of the Russian bureau of the International Migration Organization, is more skeptical than most of the Russian analysts. He suggests that people are not going to move to Russia -- “they do not have money for that” – and that as a result, “the program is condemned to failure.”
The amount of money, now reduced still further, is not enough to meet the nearly one million rubles (33,000 US dollars) a family needs to make the move, Sanikidze says. The amount Moscow is offering is thus “a drop in the bucket” and won’t convince all but the most frightened to move.
Instead, he concludes, “this is a propaganda program, used by the administration of Vladimir Putin as one of the aspects of the pre-election presidential race which is beginning now in Russia.” It may make for good public relations, but it is not something likely to have the consequences Moscow says it hopes for on the ground.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Window on Eurasia: Tashkent Mistakenly and Dangerously Conflates Muslim Religiosity with Islamist Extremism, Experts Says
Paul Goble
Staunton, September 29 – Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov and his government are confusing the high level of religiosity among Muslims in their country with Islamist extremism, according to a group of independent analysts, and as a result, they are fighting the former and unintentionally fostering the latter even as they discredit the idea of a secular state.
The Expert Working Group of Uzbekistan, an independent group of Uzbek intellectuals there and abroad, draws that conclusion in a detailed 7,000-word study released this week about the state of Islam in Uzbekistan and the complicated relationship between Muslims and the Uzbekistan government (news.ferghana.ru/archive/2010/politikaislama.doc).
Prepared by Kamoliddin Rabbimov, an Uzbek specialist who worked at the USA Institute in Tashkent 2003-2005) but who now lives in exile in France, the report argues that Uzbekistan is a place where given “the decline of other value systems such as liberal democracy and national independence, Islam has preserved its position” in the mass consciousness of Uzbeks.
And while it is “incorrect to consider Islam in Uzbekistan as an opponent of the secular and liberal path of development of the country” – “Islam [there] still does not have its own political program” – “in the post-Karimov epoch, the social-political status of Islam will be reconsidered” over the course of time.
Surveys conducted over the last 15 years show, the report continues, that far more people in Uzbekistan consider themselves Muslims first rather than Uzbeks first and that if one adds to the former the number who say that the two cannot be divided, there are now more than four times as many whose primary identity is Islamic rather than secular.
Given the centrality of Islam for most Uzbeks, the Karimov regime has “not fought with Islam as such.” Instead, Tashkent today “has set itself a task of a different character, namely to lower the level of the religiosity of society and hold it at a level that is comfortable for the powers that be.”
“The current leaders of Uzbekistan see in Islam,” the report says, “a generator of protest attitudes among the population. That is, they view it as ‘a source of instability and a system that forms threats” to themselves. Thus, “the government sets as its task to control as much as possible all processes connected with Islam.”
That represents “a strategic mistake” on the part of the Uzbek leaders, who have “decided to struggle with the level of religiosity” of the population when in fact it is “necessary to struggle with the character of the religiosity of the population,” something which is by its very nature is “enormously” different.
“When one speaks about ‘the character of religiosity,’” the report says, “one has in mind the situation when Muslims begin to use Islam as ‘an ideology of resistance’ against those whom they consider their opponents or with whom they do not agree.” Such people may in fact – indeed, typically are – less religious than those who do not do that.
“In other words,” the report goes one, “the powers that be must clearly distinguish the high level of religiosity [among Uzbeks as a population] from religiously motivated extremism and the terrorism connected with it and not in any case combine them into a single thing and str4uggle against them with equal pitilessness.”
Unfortunately, that is exactly what Tashkent has done, something that has led most observers to conclude one of two things. On the one hand, some argue that what Tashkent is doing is a proper struggle against religious extremism. And on the other hand, others suggest that the Uzbek powers that be are fighting the wrong battle.
In the view of the latter, the regime should be fighting those who make use of Islamist slogans rather than those who are committed to Islam. The report positions itself closer to the latter, arguing that while attachment to Islamic ideas is great in Uzbekistan, Islamism and Jihadism “have not had and do not have” serious influence there.
But the powers that be in Tashkent “think that between religious extremism and a high level of religiosity is a direct interdependence” when in fact the relationship between the two is more complicated and can be reduced to what the Uzbek government believes only if the Uzbek government continues to act as it does.
If the Uzbek government accepted the principles of religious freedom, then it could understand the nature of Islamic criticisms of public policy, something that is very much part of Islamic life but that in and of itself is not a threat to the regime unless the powers that be unintentionally makes it one.
The report gives the following example of this relationship: Uzbek “society uses alcohol and the government is interested in its sale. If the mosques want to criticize the use of alcoholic beverages, they understand that they may clash with the interests of the state. But if they make peace with the situation, then, according to Islamic law, they are committing a serious sin.”
Still worse, the Muslim leaders recognize that they will “lose legitimacy in the eyes of believers who have a high level of religiosity,” something that can “lead to the growth in the popularity of alternative religious organizations and groups” if the state forces “official” mullahs and imams to toe the state’s line.
Indeed, the report suggests, the construction of a system of Muslim leaders who always go along with the state will not establish control over religious Muslims but rather ensure that the government will lose control over precisely that part of the population, one very large in Uzbekistan, and that at least some of those believers will turn elsewhere for leadership.
Staunton, September 29 – Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov and his government are confusing the high level of religiosity among Muslims in their country with Islamist extremism, according to a group of independent analysts, and as a result, they are fighting the former and unintentionally fostering the latter even as they discredit the idea of a secular state.
The Expert Working Group of Uzbekistan, an independent group of Uzbek intellectuals there and abroad, draws that conclusion in a detailed 7,000-word study released this week about the state of Islam in Uzbekistan and the complicated relationship between Muslims and the Uzbekistan government (news.ferghana.ru/archive/2010/politikaislama.doc).
Prepared by Kamoliddin Rabbimov, an Uzbek specialist who worked at the USA Institute in Tashkent 2003-2005) but who now lives in exile in France, the report argues that Uzbekistan is a place where given “the decline of other value systems such as liberal democracy and national independence, Islam has preserved its position” in the mass consciousness of Uzbeks.
And while it is “incorrect to consider Islam in Uzbekistan as an opponent of the secular and liberal path of development of the country” – “Islam [there] still does not have its own political program” – “in the post-Karimov epoch, the social-political status of Islam will be reconsidered” over the course of time.
Surveys conducted over the last 15 years show, the report continues, that far more people in Uzbekistan consider themselves Muslims first rather than Uzbeks first and that if one adds to the former the number who say that the two cannot be divided, there are now more than four times as many whose primary identity is Islamic rather than secular.
Given the centrality of Islam for most Uzbeks, the Karimov regime has “not fought with Islam as such.” Instead, Tashkent today “has set itself a task of a different character, namely to lower the level of the religiosity of society and hold it at a level that is comfortable for the powers that be.”
“The current leaders of Uzbekistan see in Islam,” the report says, “a generator of protest attitudes among the population. That is, they view it as ‘a source of instability and a system that forms threats” to themselves. Thus, “the government sets as its task to control as much as possible all processes connected with Islam.”
That represents “a strategic mistake” on the part of the Uzbek leaders, who have “decided to struggle with the level of religiosity” of the population when in fact it is “necessary to struggle with the character of the religiosity of the population,” something which is by its very nature is “enormously” different.
“When one speaks about ‘the character of religiosity,’” the report says, “one has in mind the situation when Muslims begin to use Islam as ‘an ideology of resistance’ against those whom they consider their opponents or with whom they do not agree.” Such people may in fact – indeed, typically are – less religious than those who do not do that.
“In other words,” the report goes one, “the powers that be must clearly distinguish the high level of religiosity [among Uzbeks as a population] from religiously motivated extremism and the terrorism connected with it and not in any case combine them into a single thing and str4uggle against them with equal pitilessness.”
Unfortunately, that is exactly what Tashkent has done, something that has led most observers to conclude one of two things. On the one hand, some argue that what Tashkent is doing is a proper struggle against religious extremism. And on the other hand, others suggest that the Uzbek powers that be are fighting the wrong battle.
In the view of the latter, the regime should be fighting those who make use of Islamist slogans rather than those who are committed to Islam. The report positions itself closer to the latter, arguing that while attachment to Islamic ideas is great in Uzbekistan, Islamism and Jihadism “have not had and do not have” serious influence there.
But the powers that be in Tashkent “think that between religious extremism and a high level of religiosity is a direct interdependence” when in fact the relationship between the two is more complicated and can be reduced to what the Uzbek government believes only if the Uzbek government continues to act as it does.
If the Uzbek government accepted the principles of religious freedom, then it could understand the nature of Islamic criticisms of public policy, something that is very much part of Islamic life but that in and of itself is not a threat to the regime unless the powers that be unintentionally makes it one.
The report gives the following example of this relationship: Uzbek “society uses alcohol and the government is interested in its sale. If the mosques want to criticize the use of alcoholic beverages, they understand that they may clash with the interests of the state. But if they make peace with the situation, then, according to Islamic law, they are committing a serious sin.”
Still worse, the Muslim leaders recognize that they will “lose legitimacy in the eyes of believers who have a high level of religiosity,” something that can “lead to the growth in the popularity of alternative religious organizations and groups” if the state forces “official” mullahs and imams to toe the state’s line.
Indeed, the report suggests, the construction of a system of Muslim leaders who always go along with the state will not establish control over religious Muslims but rather ensure that the government will lose control over precisely that part of the population, one very large in Uzbekistan, and that at least some of those believers will turn elsewhere for leadership.
Window on Eurasia: Moscow’s Introduction of Chechnya-Style Force Structures in Daghestan Worries Many There and Elsewhere
Paul Goble
Staunton, September 29 – As violence in Daghestan mounts and the death toll in that North Caucasus republic mounts, Moscow’s decision to create new military units in that North Caucasus republic made up primarily of members of local nationalities, a system that resembles the one Ramzan Kadyrov has in Chechnya, is proving to be increasingly controversial.
Two days ago, Vasily Panchenkov, press spokesman for the internal troops of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, announced that a special battalion was being formed in Daghestan whose personnel, both draftees and professionals, are drawn primarily from the nationalities of that republic (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/174871/).
The spokesman added that “the decision on the creation of [this] military unit” which has been discussed in the Moscow and Makhachkala media over the last month, “was taken by Russian Federation President [Dmitry] Medvedev who was reacting to a request by Daghestan President Magomedsalam Magomedov.”
But despite such backing from the highest levels, the creation of this new 750-man unit has not been universally popular. Islamagomed Nabiyev, the head of the independent drivers and entrepreneurs union of Daghestan, said that the new unit could easily be misused and duplicates existing institutions.
“On the one hand,” he told Kavkaz-uzel.ru, most senior officials in various parts of Daghestan already have “their own guard force which not infrequently solves the problems of the boss.” This new unit, he suggests, simply extends that pattern upward, giving the republic president his own political hit squad with all the problems that entails.
And on the other, Nabiyev continued, there is a very real question as to why it is necessary to create “such special units when there is the militia, the FSB and the Army. The example of Chechnya already shows that such structures become cruel and pitiless attack squads,” and one provision of the Daghestani unit makes that even more likely.
According to his information, the trade union leader said, the interior ministry plans to recruit “relatives of those who have suffered from the actions of the militants.” Given the mentality of the people there, he continued, “such people in their work will be led not by the laws of Russia but by the laws of the mountains regarding blood feuds.”
Denga Khalidov, vice president of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems of Russia and the head of the Center for Strategic and Ethno-Political Research, agrees. “I do not know who took this decision,” he said. But in his view, there are already enough units and, if not, new ones should be created only within existing structures, not according to new rules.
But the plan has its supporters, especially among those close to the top leaders in Makhachkala. Zubayru Zubayruev, a press spokesman for the Daghestani president, says he does not see any “violation of the law in the formation of the special division.” The state, he continued, “must defend itself from those who want to overthrow the existing order by force.”
To do that it needs people who know the lay of the land. At present, Russian “people in the force structures do not know the local areas, do not have contacts with the population and so on,” whereas those from the local population who will be in this special unit know the area and are part of the people they are protecting.
And in this, the presidential press spokesman continued, there is nothing wrong “with having relatives of those who have suffered from the arbitrariness of the militants,” given that “nowhere is it written that one must ignore such people” in forming units to fight those in the forests.
But Vyacheslav Gasanov, a spokesman for the Daghestani Ministry of Internal Affairs, while supporting the idea, had a slightly different view. He said that members of the unit will be recruited “on a voluntary basis as professionals.” And therefore, it will be essential to exclude any possibility of such people acting on the basis of blood feud principles.
According to Kavkaz-Uzel.ru, the unit once it is fully formed will be a motorized battalion and will be dressed in the uniforms of the interior ministry. Its 700 to 750 members will be based near the Daghestani capital of Makhachkala but will be deployed as needed throughout the republic.
Staunton, September 29 – As violence in Daghestan mounts and the death toll in that North Caucasus republic mounts, Moscow’s decision to create new military units in that North Caucasus republic made up primarily of members of local nationalities, a system that resembles the one Ramzan Kadyrov has in Chechnya, is proving to be increasingly controversial.
Two days ago, Vasily Panchenkov, press spokesman for the internal troops of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, announced that a special battalion was being formed in Daghestan whose personnel, both draftees and professionals, are drawn primarily from the nationalities of that republic (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/174871/).
The spokesman added that “the decision on the creation of [this] military unit” which has been discussed in the Moscow and Makhachkala media over the last month, “was taken by Russian Federation President [Dmitry] Medvedev who was reacting to a request by Daghestan President Magomedsalam Magomedov.”
But despite such backing from the highest levels, the creation of this new 750-man unit has not been universally popular. Islamagomed Nabiyev, the head of the independent drivers and entrepreneurs union of Daghestan, said that the new unit could easily be misused and duplicates existing institutions.
“On the one hand,” he told Kavkaz-uzel.ru, most senior officials in various parts of Daghestan already have “their own guard force which not infrequently solves the problems of the boss.” This new unit, he suggests, simply extends that pattern upward, giving the republic president his own political hit squad with all the problems that entails.
And on the other, Nabiyev continued, there is a very real question as to why it is necessary to create “such special units when there is the militia, the FSB and the Army. The example of Chechnya already shows that such structures become cruel and pitiless attack squads,” and one provision of the Daghestani unit makes that even more likely.
According to his information, the trade union leader said, the interior ministry plans to recruit “relatives of those who have suffered from the actions of the militants.” Given the mentality of the people there, he continued, “such people in their work will be led not by the laws of Russia but by the laws of the mountains regarding blood feuds.”
Denga Khalidov, vice president of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems of Russia and the head of the Center for Strategic and Ethno-Political Research, agrees. “I do not know who took this decision,” he said. But in his view, there are already enough units and, if not, new ones should be created only within existing structures, not according to new rules.
But the plan has its supporters, especially among those close to the top leaders in Makhachkala. Zubayru Zubayruev, a press spokesman for the Daghestani president, says he does not see any “violation of the law in the formation of the special division.” The state, he continued, “must defend itself from those who want to overthrow the existing order by force.”
To do that it needs people who know the lay of the land. At present, Russian “people in the force structures do not know the local areas, do not have contacts with the population and so on,” whereas those from the local population who will be in this special unit know the area and are part of the people they are protecting.
And in this, the presidential press spokesman continued, there is nothing wrong “with having relatives of those who have suffered from the arbitrariness of the militants,” given that “nowhere is it written that one must ignore such people” in forming units to fight those in the forests.
But Vyacheslav Gasanov, a spokesman for the Daghestani Ministry of Internal Affairs, while supporting the idea, had a slightly different view. He said that members of the unit will be recruited “on a voluntary basis as professionals.” And therefore, it will be essential to exclude any possibility of such people acting on the basis of blood feud principles.
According to Kavkaz-Uzel.ru, the unit once it is fully formed will be a motorized battalion and will be dressed in the uniforms of the interior ministry. Its 700 to 750 members will be based near the Daghestani capital of Makhachkala but will be deployed as needed throughout the republic.
Window on Eurasia: Kazan Seeks to Use Teachers from Across Russia to Boost Tatar Numbers in Upcoming Census
Paul Goble
Staunton, September 29 – Fearful Moscow will succeed in reducing their numbers either by counting as separate nationalities many of the 120 variants of “Tatar” on the list the Russian authorities have approved, the Tatarstan government is appealing to teachers of Tatars across the Russian Federation to urge students and their parents to declare themselves Tatars.
The Tatars, the second largest nationality in the country according to all recent censuses, face particular difficulties in this regard because a majority of the members of their nationality live outside Tatarstan and many of them are inclined to identify themselves other than Kazan Tatars, something that reduces the power and influence of Tatarstan.
That reality, Yan Gordeyev, the Tatarstan correspondent of Moscow’s “Nezavisimaya gazeta,” says, lies behind what happened yesterday at the Fifth Congress of Tatar Pedagogues,” a session where he suggests the most important developments had little to do with the theme of education (www.ng.ru/columnist/2010-09-29/6_tatary.html).
The most important speeches at the meeting of some 500 teachers from those regions “where there are Tatar diasporas – and this is about half of the subjects of the [Russian] Federation” -- were delivered by Zil Valeyev, Tatarstan’s first vice prime minister, and its parliamentary speaker Farid Mukhametshin, who oversees “the nationality question” there.
Gordeyev noted that the teachers, after first meeting in sections, assembled in Kazan’s Kamal Theater, “the traditional place where the government of the republic holds congresses and forums one way or another devoted to the nationality question.” By shifting the meeting there, the Kazan authorities were underscoring the messages of Valeyev and Mukhametshin.
As their speeches showed, “the government of Tatarstan is seriously concerned with the problem of the artificial split of the Tatar people, something which could be reflected in the upcoming census of the Russian Federation,” given the “liberal” approach Moscow has adopted to national identity.
In earlier censuses, and especially in 2002, the Tatars were concerned by Moscow’s open campaign to reduce the number of their nation by playing up the distinctiveness of the Kryashens, people who Russian experts sometimes suggest are a separate nationality but who the Tatars believe are simply Orthodox Christian Tatars.
This time around, however, Kazan faces a different challenge. Rosstat has come up with a list of 120 different identities people who Kazan would view as Tatars may declare. In the view of many specialists in Kazan and some elsewhere, this arrangement while ostensibly neutral “threatens” to seriously reduce the number of people listed as Tatars in the census returns.
In recent weeks, Tatarstan officials have called upon “all Tatars to describe themselves only as Tatars and in no other way, thereby preserving their identity and strengthening their unity. Until about a month ago, this campaign was focused on the Tatars of Tatarstan, but now Kazan is looking beyond that republic’s borders.
Last month, it convened an all-Russian Congress of Tatar Youth and an all-Russian Congress of Religious Leaders. At both, Gordeyev says, the leaders of Tatarstan delivered the message that the members of those groups should try to convince all Tatars to declare themselves as such.
Now, Gordeyev says, Kazan is delivering “this simple but important thought” to teachers – and for what he suggests is a very good reason. “In many regions of Russia, the teacher of one’s native language is also ‘a national activist’ and has a great deal of authority among members of his or her community.”
Consequently, the “Nezavisimaya gazeta” journalist says, “the government of Tatarstan is now making use of the activity and authority of these teachers for the solution of pressing political tasks,” just one of the ways in which political, ethnic and regional leaders are behaving in the run-up to the October census.
Staunton, September 29 – Fearful Moscow will succeed in reducing their numbers either by counting as separate nationalities many of the 120 variants of “Tatar” on the list the Russian authorities have approved, the Tatarstan government is appealing to teachers of Tatars across the Russian Federation to urge students and their parents to declare themselves Tatars.
The Tatars, the second largest nationality in the country according to all recent censuses, face particular difficulties in this regard because a majority of the members of their nationality live outside Tatarstan and many of them are inclined to identify themselves other than Kazan Tatars, something that reduces the power and influence of Tatarstan.
That reality, Yan Gordeyev, the Tatarstan correspondent of Moscow’s “Nezavisimaya gazeta,” says, lies behind what happened yesterday at the Fifth Congress of Tatar Pedagogues,” a session where he suggests the most important developments had little to do with the theme of education (www.ng.ru/columnist/2010-09-29/6_tatary.html).
The most important speeches at the meeting of some 500 teachers from those regions “where there are Tatar diasporas – and this is about half of the subjects of the [Russian] Federation” -- were delivered by Zil Valeyev, Tatarstan’s first vice prime minister, and its parliamentary speaker Farid Mukhametshin, who oversees “the nationality question” there.
Gordeyev noted that the teachers, after first meeting in sections, assembled in Kazan’s Kamal Theater, “the traditional place where the government of the republic holds congresses and forums one way or another devoted to the nationality question.” By shifting the meeting there, the Kazan authorities were underscoring the messages of Valeyev and Mukhametshin.
As their speeches showed, “the government of Tatarstan is seriously concerned with the problem of the artificial split of the Tatar people, something which could be reflected in the upcoming census of the Russian Federation,” given the “liberal” approach Moscow has adopted to national identity.
In earlier censuses, and especially in 2002, the Tatars were concerned by Moscow’s open campaign to reduce the number of their nation by playing up the distinctiveness of the Kryashens, people who Russian experts sometimes suggest are a separate nationality but who the Tatars believe are simply Orthodox Christian Tatars.
This time around, however, Kazan faces a different challenge. Rosstat has come up with a list of 120 different identities people who Kazan would view as Tatars may declare. In the view of many specialists in Kazan and some elsewhere, this arrangement while ostensibly neutral “threatens” to seriously reduce the number of people listed as Tatars in the census returns.
In recent weeks, Tatarstan officials have called upon “all Tatars to describe themselves only as Tatars and in no other way, thereby preserving their identity and strengthening their unity. Until about a month ago, this campaign was focused on the Tatars of Tatarstan, but now Kazan is looking beyond that republic’s borders.
Last month, it convened an all-Russian Congress of Tatar Youth and an all-Russian Congress of Religious Leaders. At both, Gordeyev says, the leaders of Tatarstan delivered the message that the members of those groups should try to convince all Tatars to declare themselves as such.
Now, Gordeyev says, Kazan is delivering “this simple but important thought” to teachers – and for what he suggests is a very good reason. “In many regions of Russia, the teacher of one’s native language is also ‘a national activist’ and has a great deal of authority among members of his or her community.”
Consequently, the “Nezavisimaya gazeta” journalist says, “the government of Tatarstan is now making use of the activity and authority of these teachers for the solution of pressing political tasks,” just one of the ways in which political, ethnic and regional leaders are behaving in the run-up to the October census.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Window on Eurasia: Unlike EU, Russia is Transforming Regionalists into Separatists, Shtepa Says
Paul Goble
Staunton, September 28 – Unlike the European Union which has successfully transformed most separatist movements into regionalist ones, Moscow is transforming the regionalist movements in the Russian Federation into separatist ones, according to a leading Russian theorist on regionalism.
In a speech earlier this month in St. Petersburg on the future of northwest Russia, Vadim Shtepa argued, drawing on the work of Britain’s Roland Robertson, that “globalization, however paradoxical it may seen is connected with the growth of regionalism” in a “dialectical” process known as “glocalization” (www.ingria.info/?biblio&news_action=show_news&news_id=5059).
That places new challenges on governments and on larger political unions. In both the European Union and in the Pacific region, regions within one country are establishing direct contact with regions in others, a process that some have said will lead to “the end of the nation state” but that in fact may help keep regionalism from becoming separatism.
Unfortunately, Shtepa says, “in Russia, the world ‘regionalism’ is taboo because it is conflated with separatism. But regionalism is transformed into separatism only when this or that region is deprived of political and economic self-administration.” Europe understands this and gives regions self-government; Russia doesn’t, and the result is separatist movements.
Indeed, he continues, “Russia today is evolving not according to a federal model like that of the European Union as a whole but is trying to build a centralized ‘national state’ with ‘a titular nation.” That requires depriving the regions of any control over their affairs, and that in turn helps to promote what Moscow most opposes.
In short, Shtepa argues, the powers that be at the center are breeding their own nemesis by their approach to the regions, both predominantly ethnic Russian and non-Russian.
Regionalism movements in the Russian Federation today, he continues, combine within themselves another dialectic, that between the right and left of the political system. Therefore it is impossible to consider them” one or the other, and it is a measure of Moscow’s problems that its analysts are struggling to define regionalism or combat it.
Shtepa focuses on one interesting detail of the regionalist agenda in the Russian Federation today: hostility to the existing metropolitan centers of control so strong that many regionalists want some other center established for their regions. Thus, some Ingermanlanders want another city to be the capital, like Ottawa in Canada, and St. Petersburg to be a Montreal.
That most Moscow commentators and Moscow officials have little or no understanding of the dialectical nature of regionalism and hence are behaving in ways that undermine their own goals is shown in two other analyses published this week, one concerning Moscow’s anger about regional identities and the other containing the latest Russian attack on national republics.
In an article on “Svobodnaya pressa” yesterday, Dmitry Treshchanin details both the increasing proclivity of people Moscow considers ethnic Russian to identify as something else, including Siberians, and the angry response of most Muscovites to such declarations and their presumed meaning (svpressa.ru/society/article/31063/).
And in the other, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the LDPR head who is vice speaker of the Duma, called, as he has before, for redrawing the borders of the federal subjects and ignoring ethnicity as a factor in the formation of such units, a call that is infuriating not only non-Russians but increasingly Russian regionalists as well (116.ru/news/323188.html).
Staunton, September 28 – Unlike the European Union which has successfully transformed most separatist movements into regionalist ones, Moscow is transforming the regionalist movements in the Russian Federation into separatist ones, according to a leading Russian theorist on regionalism.
In a speech earlier this month in St. Petersburg on the future of northwest Russia, Vadim Shtepa argued, drawing on the work of Britain’s Roland Robertson, that “globalization, however paradoxical it may seen is connected with the growth of regionalism” in a “dialectical” process known as “glocalization” (www.ingria.info/?biblio&news_action=show_news&news_id=5059).
That places new challenges on governments and on larger political unions. In both the European Union and in the Pacific region, regions within one country are establishing direct contact with regions in others, a process that some have said will lead to “the end of the nation state” but that in fact may help keep regionalism from becoming separatism.
Unfortunately, Shtepa says, “in Russia, the world ‘regionalism’ is taboo because it is conflated with separatism. But regionalism is transformed into separatism only when this or that region is deprived of political and economic self-administration.” Europe understands this and gives regions self-government; Russia doesn’t, and the result is separatist movements.
Indeed, he continues, “Russia today is evolving not according to a federal model like that of the European Union as a whole but is trying to build a centralized ‘national state’ with ‘a titular nation.” That requires depriving the regions of any control over their affairs, and that in turn helps to promote what Moscow most opposes.
In short, Shtepa argues, the powers that be at the center are breeding their own nemesis by their approach to the regions, both predominantly ethnic Russian and non-Russian.
Regionalism movements in the Russian Federation today, he continues, combine within themselves another dialectic, that between the right and left of the political system. Therefore it is impossible to consider them” one or the other, and it is a measure of Moscow’s problems that its analysts are struggling to define regionalism or combat it.
Shtepa focuses on one interesting detail of the regionalist agenda in the Russian Federation today: hostility to the existing metropolitan centers of control so strong that many regionalists want some other center established for their regions. Thus, some Ingermanlanders want another city to be the capital, like Ottawa in Canada, and St. Petersburg to be a Montreal.
That most Moscow commentators and Moscow officials have little or no understanding of the dialectical nature of regionalism and hence are behaving in ways that undermine their own goals is shown in two other analyses published this week, one concerning Moscow’s anger about regional identities and the other containing the latest Russian attack on national republics.
In an article on “Svobodnaya pressa” yesterday, Dmitry Treshchanin details both the increasing proclivity of people Moscow considers ethnic Russian to identify as something else, including Siberians, and the angry response of most Muscovites to such declarations and their presumed meaning (svpressa.ru/society/article/31063/).
And in the other, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the LDPR head who is vice speaker of the Duma, called, as he has before, for redrawing the borders of the federal subjects and ignoring ethnicity as a factor in the formation of such units, a call that is infuriating not only non-Russians but increasingly Russian regionalists as well (116.ru/news/323188.html).
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