Paul
Goble
Staunton, December 9 – Many in the
North Caucasus and other parts of the Russian Federation who are best described
as followers of non-traditional Islam are not violent Jihadists and many violent
Jihadists are not followers of non-traditional Islam, according to a study
being conducted by the Gaydar Institute of Economic Policy.
Irina Starodubrovskaya, who is the
leader of this study, says she is presenting her findings earlier than she
intended because they are so at variance with what many people and officials
believe and because a correct understanding of the problem is absolutely essential
to dealing with it (chernovik.net/content/respublika/skazka-o-halifate-i-pravda-o-terrorizme).
Lacking a clear understanding the
nature of the relationship between non-traditional Islam and Jihadism, she
says, the Russian authorities often force as a solution and fail to see the
ways in which it is counter-productive, driving many who have no interest in
violence toward terrorism and, still worse, radicalizing the children of those
that the authorities have abused.
Starodubrovskaya and her team of
scholars, journalists and other experts interviewed people in Daghestan, Kabardino-Balkaria
and Karachayevo-Cherkesia in the North Caucasus and also but in a more limited
way in Tatarstan in the Middle Volga.
She points out that the term “non-traditional
Islam” is not entirely adequate because there are various Islamic traditions in
various regions, but she suggests that it does “reflect a very important
characteristic of the situation – the alienation of part of the youth from the
religious traditions of their ancestors.”
“The problem of fathers and sons,”
Starodubrovskaya says, “is typical of contemporary societies but it is not
legitimized and is harshly suppressed in traditional societies” of the kind
that have existed in the North Caucasus. That makes the emergence of this kind
of conflict there especially difficult and harsh.
Not all families
have been affected by this, she continues, but many have. The changes in
society over the last two decades have been enormous and many young people are
having to search for their own way, one that they often define in contrast to
the one their parents and grandparents followed.
When a young North Caucasian looks
around, what does he or she see? Chaos,
confusion, the absence of career opportunities to those without connections, corruption
and injustice, money as the goal of all activities, and a yawning gap between
Islam as his or her parents practiced it and Islam as he or she has come to
understand it.
“It is completely natural in such
conditions that a demand for a more just society with clear rules of the game
and priority given to moral values should arise among young people,” the Moscow
researcher says, especially given the sterile nature of Islam under the Soviets
who reduced it to rituals rather than belief and action.
“The denial of traditional Islam in
the overwhelming majority of cases meant the denial of official Islam,” and given
that the two were closely tied to the state, she writes, young people thus
gained “the additional opportunity to protest against the state which had not
given them clear rules of the game and moral guidance ... or ensured social
justice.”
And the Russian state’s response to
any such protests – the use of official violence – only “intensified their
alienation,” leaving them open to radicalization and recruitment by emissaries
of Jihadism in some but far from all cases.
Many young people viewed their
newly-acquired “non-traditional” Islam as something they should apply only
within their families or promote via legal means within the system. Only some followers of non-traditional Islam “have
become Jihadists and are ready by force of arms to struggle for the
establishment of their ideals.”
At the same time, many who become
Jihadists do so for non-ideological reasons – for money or because they have no
hope of a fulfilling career. And that leads to yet another important
conclusion, Starodubrovskaya says: Not only are non-traditional Muslims
necessarily Jihadists but Jihadists are not necessarily non-traditional Muslims.
This is clear if one considers the
patterns of development in Daghestani villages after 1991. First, some young people either because they
went abroad to study or to the cities came to reject the traditional rural hierarchies.
Then, a generational conflict broke out, followed by a split, followed by “the
gradual closure of the community of non-traditional Muslims,” followed by radicalization
and a willingness to use force.
Significantly, the Moscow scholar
says, “the transition of the conflict into the stage of use of force, judging from
everything, does not directly depend on the level of the radicalness of those
religious views with which young people returned after studying in Muslim
countries.” Instead, it depends far more on relations and reactions within the
village.
Once one recognizes this,
Starodubrovskaya says, one can see what needs to be done and “more important” what must not be
done. For someone with a terrible
headache, “the guillotine” may seem to be a solution, but it is one that
ultimately doesn’t work, especially in this case when non-traditional Muslims
and Jihadists don’t correspond.
When force is used against those who
only want to apply their non-traditional Islam within their families or by
legal means, members of those groups are pushed into the third and instead of
being further separated from it. And that in turn leads most probably to “the
growth of the terrorist underground.”
At the same time, assuming that all
those in the terrorist underground are animated by non-traditional Islam or
even Islam at all often leads to policies which strengthen the Jihadists
ideologically and thus make it even more difficult to split off those who may
have gone into the forests for other reasons.
“Force inevitably gives birth to force,”
Starodubrovskaya concludes. “As a result, a vicious circle arises, one from
which it is extraordinarily difficult to escape even when “one understands some
of the reasons for the conflict and successfully addresses those. And as she
shows, that pattern once in place continues from generation to generation.
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