Paul
Goble
Staunton, June 26 – The police in
Daghestan have been ordered to carry out a census of Islamist extremists in
that republic, but the numbers they report are likely to be much exaggerated
given that officers have been told that they will lose their jobs if they
report lower figures than their bosses expect, according to Elena Masyuk.
The “Novaya gazeta” journalist says
that this enumeration, which Daghestanis call “the Wahhabi count,” is dangerously
counterproductive because the count itself is being used to limit the rights of
Daghestanis and mosques is radicalizing society and leading more people to join
the Islamists in the hills of the republic or in the Middle East (novayagazeta.ru/society/73606.html).
There is no legal
basis for this census except from some Soviet rulings of the 1970s, she adds,
although officials say that it has been authorized by Moscow officials. And
there is no agreement among officials as to how many people are on it, with one
senior Makhachkala official saying there are 9,000 on the list, while other
says there are 16,000.
But once someone is put on the list,
it is in almost every case for life. (There have been a few cases in which the
courts have removed an individual but only a very few, Masyuk says.) Once on
the list, an individual cannot leave his village or city without permission,
can be stopped at all guard posts and taken to the police station, can be
forced to share his telephone contacts, declare his income and mosque
attendance, be fingerprinted, and so on, all without any court finding of
involvement in extremist groups.
This census alone, she says, is
creating “great nervousness in society and eliciting distrust among the population
toward the authorities,” especially because the police are including in the
list not only Wahhabis but Sufis, the traditional and dominant trend of Islam
in that North Caucasus republic.
The list is creating particular
problems for two groups: young people who facing massive unemployment in the
republic are denied the right to move outside the republic to find work and
thus may be inclined to turn to the Islamists, and the country’s Muslim leaders
who are being increasingly harassed by officials.
Idris Yusupov, a journalist at
Makhachkala’s “Novoye delo,” told Masyuk that “now, the authorities are not
simply detaining parishioners” of mosques but opening cases “regarding imams
and heads of mosque councils.” Using “fabricated
cases,” the authorities deprive the mosques of leaders and then close the
mosques because they don’t have leaders.
At the same time, the “Novaya gazeta”
journalist continues, Daghestani police are trying to hide what they are doing.
In the past, they detained people coming from prayers right outside the mosque;
but now, the militiamen wait until the parishioners have gone a street or two
away and then arrest them.
In recent months, the Daghestani
authorities have closed “at a minimum” 13 mosques, including some Salafi one.
For Makhachkala’s silovikis, all Salafis are “potential terrotirsts and
Wahhabis.” But they are doing much the
same to many Sufis, who had earlier been left untouched because of their “traditional”
role in Daghestani society.
Masyuk concludes with words that
should lead Moscow and Makhachkala to rethink what they are doing. “Yes, it is
true that in Daghestan as in almost the entire North Caucasus, there is an
underground and there are Wahhabis for whom fighting for the faith against ‘the
unbelievers’ and ‘bad’ Muslims has become a holy task.”
And “there are young people who have
been subject to influence of Islamist radicals who do not have work or
prospects for securing their lives. But to put all these without distinction on
a prophylactic list is not only not rational but illegal and
anti-constitutional. It will generate nothing except anger, flight into the
forests, or departure to fight in the Middle East.”
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