Paul
Goble
Staunton, September 8 – Content with
declarations of unquestioned loyalty by North Caucasian leaders, the Kremlin
has failed to address developments in that restive region over the last 15
years that have led to its rapid re-Islamization and increasing integration
into the Muslim world as a whole, Sergey Markedonov says.
Thus, many were surprised by the
outspoken reaction of Ramzan Kadyrov and other North Caucasians to the events
in Myanmar, the Moscow specialist on the region says; but they should not have
been and should not simply explain this development away by pointing to Kadyrov’s
special status in the Putin system (carnegie.ru/commentary/72983).
Instead, and despite both the
improved security situation in the region over the last decade and Moscow’s
focus on the Crimea, the Donbass and Syria, they should have recognized that
this was going to happen and that Moscow, by failing to address several
critical developments, was unintentionally contributing to this outcome.
Indeed, since the end of the Soviet
Union, the North Caucasus has been involved in foreign policy and over time, “despite
not having its own representation in the United Nations, nonetheless has
acquired a definite status as a foreign policy actor,” speaking out against
anti-Muslim developments elsewhere and even helping Moscow to do so.
But there are other factors at work
as well, Markedonov says. On the one
hand, Ramzan Kadyrov has gained experience in public policy and is quite
prepared to articulate positions that not only reflect his own interests as a
republic leader but “also the position of that part of Russian society which
insists on a consistent anti-Western position.”
That is something that many in
Moscow may be quite pleased by and it is certainly one of the reasons Grozny
has a far more independent status than any other non-Russian republic in Russia
today. But on the other, the North Caucasus as a whole is changing, becoming more
Islamic and more integrated into the Muslim world.
Those developments, the Moscow
analyst says, were highlighted by the fact that it wasn’t just Kadyrov and the
Chechens who spoke out against the developments in Myanmar. Representatives
from nations across the North Caucasus did as well, an indication of the growing
sense there of being Muslim and part of the Islamic world.
The importance of the religious
identity of the peoples of the region is dramatically greater than it was two
decades ago. There were various national
movements at that time, “but almost nowhere did the religious factor play a
significant role. The situation changed closer to the beginning of the 2000s,”
and Moscow had a role by omission in that shift.
Markedonov cites with approval the
words of another Moscow specialist on the region, Akhmet Yarlykapov, who says that what has been taking place is “the ‘re-Islamization’”
of the region, including parts of it – Kabardino-Balkaria,
Karachayevo-Cherkesia, Adygeya, and Stavropol kray – in which the role of
religion “traditionally was less.”
“Islam,” Yarlypakov continues, “which
is the most politicized world religion rapidly began to penetrate into the
power structures” of the North Caucasus. “The most effective means of spreading
influence on government structures became the establishment of informal
contacts with the local elite.” This was most noticeable in Daghestan but it
happened elsewhere as well.
According to Markedonov, the rooting
of religious identities “beginning with loyalty to the authorities and ending
in extremist forms, took place not by itself but in the context of the decline
of secular institutions – law enforcement organs and the court system – and the
crisis of the state ideology.”
As he notes, “having proclaimed many
times the idea of ‘a non-ethnic political nation,’ in practice Moscow has done
little for its realization. On the contrary, the center has placed its bets
above all on loyalty and not devoted itself to the working out of a sensible
relationship of secular and religious principles.”
“As a result of such an approach,”
he says, “there began a rapid reduction in the amount of secular discourse in
the social-political, information and educational spheres. And this occurred at
a time of a reduction of horizontal ties among those working in the humanities,
the regionalization of historiography and the absence of a clear vision by the
center of all-Russian historical-political priorities.”
As a result, Markedonov says, “we
have a new generation, integrated to a much greater degree in the Islamic world
than its fathers and grandfathers were and reacting to events in it as its own.” This process takes many forms and contains
contradictory elements, but it nonetheless sets the weather.
The growing Islamic influence in the
North Caucasus was reflected in the recent demonstrations that started out
about Myanmar but quickly focused on other things. At the protest in front of the
Myanmar embassy in Moscow, some participants shouted that “Buddhists are
terrorists.”
More worrisome, however, the Russian
analyst suggests, is that some protesters in the North Caucasus put out
messages on social networks suggesting that the Muslims of the region should
take revenge on the Buddhists in Kalmykia, a republic that borders Daghestan
and in which many Muslims live as well.
Thus, he continues, “the situation
in Myanmar and its reflection in the North Caucasus is not a problem confined
to a single region of Russia. The North Caucasus republics are not a ghetto and
not an ethnographic museum: they are a territory where problems which the
entire country is experiencing are especially manifest.”
“The awakening of Russia’s Muslims
is a serious signal for Moscow,” Markedonov says. Unless the center becomes “an
effective arbiter and mediator among various peoples and regions and clearly
defines the rules of the game and the limits of the permissible,” it will not
be in a position “to build a strong state.”
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