Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 11 – North
Caucasians have long relied on informal family-based systems for resolving
disputes, but by attempting to exploit these systems to punish his enemies,
Ramzan Kadyrov is discrediting that system and thus opening the way for
Chechens to resolve disputes not on the basis of those traditions but on those of
Islam.
Konstantin Kazenin, a longtime specialist
on the North Caucasus at the Russian Presidential Academy of the National
Economy and State Administration, offers that conclusion on his Facebook page (facebook.com/konstantin.kazenin/posts/932128976873785?fref=nf).
His argument is important not only
because it shows that some of the measures that the Chechen leader has adopted will
be counterproductive but also because it provides yet another reason why those
who believe Russian interests in the North Caucasus and more generally require Kadyrov’s
ouster, despite his symbiotic closeness with Vladimir Putin.
Kadyrov’s much-quoted statement that
he plans to follow what he describes as the customary practice in Chechnya of having
family members bear responsibility for the actions of any one of them and that
he will use “all resources, law, tradition, and religion” to achieve this goal
of the state has some “really important”
byproducts, Kazenin says.
The Chechen leader puts “alongside law,
religion and tradition.” That does not mean that one is replacing the other but
rather that “each occupies a definite niche” in the lives of the peoples of the
North Caucasus. Treating them as if one can replace another or be put in its
service is simply not the case.
Traditional law is extremely
important in Chechnya and Ingushetia and somewhat less so in Daghestan, the
Moscow scholar says. Based on family and
clan ties, it imposes tight control over the behavior of all: if someone does something
that offends the family or clan, he or she must either stop doing so or risk expulsion
from these key social networks.
That is what Kadyrov is trying to
exploit, Kazenin says, but by seeking to put traditional law in the service of
the state, he is “very seriously modifying” it because “traditional law in the
Caucasus is about relations of families AMONG THEMSELVES and not with the
authorities or at the dictate of the authorities.”
“The most important element is the
freedom of decisions taken by each side,” the Moscow scholar continues. Traditional law can work “only as a result of
the independent decision of the elders of each family group without the
interference of any powers that be in these decisions.”
According to Kazenin, “in general
all relationships which traditional law regulates are profoundly ‘horizontal’ –
that is, among people, among families, among rural communities but not between
the individual and state power.” Ignoring that reality puts both traditional
law and state power at risk.
When Chechens and others see
traditional rules becoming a tool of the state, “attitudes toward it among
ordinary residents of Chechnya logically will deteriorate,” he writes; and that
will mean that “informal regulation on the basis of tradition will give way to
informal regulation on the basis of Islam.”
This carries with it “one serious
risk,” Kazenin says. There are many people
who will claim to speak in the name of Islam and “among them, conflicts will
begin.” Unfortunately, he points out, “there is practically no ability to
resolve intra-Islamic conflicts in present-day Chechnya.”
Some experience in that regard
exists in Daghestan and in Ingushetia, worked out, Kazenin continues, “sometimes
with the participation of the authorities and sometimes without,” and thus
keeps most of the potential participants in such disputes within a common legal
field – or at least, these arrangements promise to do that.
But “in Chechnya,” he concludes, “the
present-day religious policy based on the total support of only one of the branches
of local Islam has not allowed for the development of such habits at all.”
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