Jihad in the North Caucasus: is there a way out?. by Domitilla Sagramoso
If a lasting peace is to be achieved in the North Caucasus, it will be important to address the underlying causes of violence in the region
The attack at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport on 24 January 2011, which left 38 people dead and more than 180 wounded, once again brought to the heart of Russia the realities of the brutal war that is ravaging the North Caucasus – a war that has been largely ignored not only in the West but also in Russia. Attempts to depict the Domodedovo attack and the 2010 Moscow metro bombings as the product of an absolute “evil” emanating from the North Caucasus, although understandable, hardly provide an accurate explanation of the violence. Similarly, the references to the perpetrators as “beasts” needing to be destroyed, which were made after the metro attacks, offer little help in countering an insurgency that has been active in the region for over ten years.
Although efforts by Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev to address the root causes of violence in the North Caucasus can be interpreted as an encouraging sign, the Kremlin’s continued emphasis on a policy based primarily on the use of force, often employed in an indiscriminate manner, suggests that an end to the war in the North Caucasus is not in sight. But what are the dynamics of the violence in the North Caucasus and what are the factors driving the war? Among those unfamiliar with the region there is a tendency to interpret the various terrorist attacks as either random events or as desperate attempts by weakened Chechen separatist fighters to make their voices heard in Russia. Such an analysis, however, does not reflect the realities accurately.
Over the past six to seven years, the Russian North Caucasus has witnessed a surge of violence to unprecedented levels, indicating renewed strength among Chechen and North Caucasus rebel fighters and a readiness by the Islamic insurgency to move beyond the North Caucasus frontiers. Whereas, during the late 1990s and early 2000s, most of the fighting in the region occurred between Russian federal troops and Chechen separatist forces, since the mid-2000s the neighbouring Muslim North Caucasian republics of Ingushetia and Dagestan have borne the brunt of the bloodshed.
In 2010, Dagestan witnessed more than 110 attacks against high-ranking government officials, local policemen and religious figures, which resulted in over 70 people dead and more than 100 wounded. Ingushetia, for its part, has become in the past four years one of the most violent republics of the entire region, with attacks against targets similar to those in Dagestan occurring almost daily and causing hundreds of deaths. Chechnya, meanwhile, has seen a return of suicide bombers against military targets and government officials after the revival of the Riyad us-Saliheen battalion by rebel leader Dokku Umarov in the spring of 2009. Despite the declaration of an end to counter-terrorist operations in Chechnya in April 2009, violence in the republic has far from abated. More worryingly, violence has spread to the western republic of Kabardino-Balkaria, which in 2010 saw more than 40 attacks against policemen, security personnel and government officials; more recently, there have been lethal attacks against tourists and tourist infrastructure.
Most of these attacks have been conducted by Islamic jihadist fighters belonging to radical Islamic communities, or jamaats, which call for the establishment of an Islamic state in the North Caucasus to be ruled by Shariah law. Islamic jamaatsadhering to Salafi principles are not new to the region. They emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with the collapse of the Soviet system and the revival of Islamic religious practices.
Initially, most of their leaders – such as Akhmad-kadi Akhtaev, in Dagestan, and Musa Mukozhev, in Kabardino-Balkaria – espoused a peaceful agenda and focused their attention on educational and proselytising activities. However, during the late 1990s and especially after the end of the first Chechen war, many young Muslims began embracing a radical Salafi-jihadist ideology, which favoured violent methods to pursue the creation of an Islamic state in the North Caucasus. In some cases, Salafis even succeeded in establishing Islamic enclaves in the region, as epitomised by the ‘Islamic state’ set up by Djarulla Radjbaddinov in the Kadar region of Dagestan in 1998. In Chechnya, as is now well known, some Chechen and Arab fighters sought from 1996 to 1999 to create an Islamic state based on Shariahlaw. More significantly, foreign and local jihadists set up military and religious training camps in southern Chechnya to spread Islamic jihad to the rest of the Caucasus.
However, not all Salafi jamaats in the Russian North Caucasus supported jihad. Indeed, leading Salafi preachers, such as Mukhozhev and Anzor Astemirov in Kabardino-Balkaria, remained peaceful throughout the late 1990s while violence raged in neighbouring Chechnya. It was only in 2004-2005 that many young Muslims, including previously peaceful Salafis, started to engage in a violent insurgency campaign, or jihad, against the secular regimes of Ingushetia, Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachaevo-Cherkessia – thus providing the insurgency with a clear jihadist-Islamic agenda.
A variety of factors account for such a development. The systematic abuse of power by the authorities, the widespread embezzlement of government funds and the entrenched corruption that has engulfed the ruling elites have all created a strong feeling of frustration and a deep sense of injustice among the population, especially the young. Despite the existence of formal democratic procedures in most republics, proper democratic institutions and effective governance have failed to materialise. Instead, informal arrangements such as clans, client-patronage networks and shadow-economic relations have dominated the political life of the North Caucasus republics. The region has been also characterised by acute income differences and a widening gap between the rich and the poor. High levels of unemployment, especially among the young, and a lack of economic prospects have placed great strains on the population. Moreover, the indiscriminate and heavy-handed tactics used by the security forces against suspected terrorists and Islamic believers throughout the entire North Caucasus have encouraged many young victims to join radical groups in order to avenge their suffering or the loss of their relatives.
More recently, these fighting jamaats have been further radicalised and have become closer in their aims and strategies to the global Islamic jihadist movement. There is now a growing tendency among most, if not all, Islamic fighters in the North Caucasus to view themselves as part of the broader Islamic global jihad and to adhere strictly to key Salafiprinciples upheld by radical Islamic groups worldwide. As a new generation of fighters emerges, national aspirations are slowly giving way to more transnational Islamic dreams of participating in the global jihad.
More significantly, there is an increasing trend among the various North Caucasus movements to be less ethnically-based and more pan-Caucasian in terms of their objectives and organisation. Testimony to this was the declaration of the Caucasus Emirate by Chechen rebel leader Umarov in November 2007 and the appointment of non-Chechen fighters to key positions in the resistance movement – such as the Ingush Akhmet Yevlovev (alias Emir Magas), as top military commander, and the Kabardian, Anzor Astemirov, as chairman, or Supreme Qadi, of the Shariah Court. After the latter’s death in March 2010, a Dagestani, Ali Abu Muhammad al-Dagestani, took his position. Although now the North Caucasus jamaats are not closely connected to al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups and did not obtain direct funding or training from Osama bin Laden, they share a similar Salafi-jihadist ideology and, in broad terms, the same objective – the establishment of an Islamic state in the Caucasus, to be ruled by Islamic Shariah law. In this way, they fit well into the structure of the current global jihadist movement, which is composed of very loosely connected groups or communities united by similar goals and ideals.
So, what is to be done? Despite the extreme radicalisation of the North Caucasus fighters a policy based on military methods alone will not bring the conflict to an end. On the contrary, the indiscriminate use of force by the local authorities has only emboldened the North Caucasus insurgency. Instead, efforts to address the underlying causes of violence must be undertaken if lasting peace is to be achieved. These efforts should include, first and foremost, the establishment of robust, transparent and inclusive institutions of governance, which would allow for alternate elites in power and would put an end to abuses and corruption. Also, professional security forces, mindful of human rights and the rule of law, need to be established.
More significantly, the Kremlin will have to engage eventually in some sort of dialogue with the insurgents, however difficult that might seem at this stage. Only a negotiated peace, which, among other things, recognises the role of Islam as a key pillar of North Caucasus societies, can provide a lasting resolution to a war that has plagued the region for the past decade. Unfortunately, the lack of transparency and democratic processes in Russia itself makes such undertakings extremely difficult to envisage. That is why the war in the Caucasus will rage for a long while.
Dr Domitilla Sagramoso is Lecturer in Security and Development at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London.
Source: IISS