Flimsy Evidence, False Analogies Behind Western Claims Islamic Radicalism on the Rise in Middle Volga, Experts in Russia Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, January 29 – A recent article in a Norwegian newspaper that extrapolates from the fact that a man arrested there on suspicion of terrorism got his passport in Russia’s Bashkortostan to the notion that Middle Volga republic is becoming a hotbed of Islamist radicalism displays all of the defects typical of such articles in the Western media.

            Indeed, the article in question is not important except as an example of a serious problem found in many:  All too often articles on this topic rely on facts that are not evidence of what they claim, draw false analogies between Muslims in one part of Russia with those in another, and treat Muslim republics as exotic places that allow for judgments without close study.

            Ramazan Alpaut of Radio Liberty’s IdelReal portal uses this article to make all of these points, points that are so common that the claims made on the basis of them are accepted by many without question.   He does this in the best journalistic tradition by turning to experts who have actually studied Bashkortostan for their reactions (idelreal.org/a/29728693.html).

            Azat Berdin, head of a research project at the Russian Foundation for Fundamental Scholarly Research on Muslim communities in Bashkortostan and the KBR, says that he doesn’t see any connection between “the strange attack of one individual” and the thesis that Bashkortostan is now a hotbed of Islamic radicalism.

           

            The one doesn’t lead to the other, and the article even fails to specify what the nationality of the man accused of terrorism is, he continues.  Moreover, the individual in question has changed his story, something terrorists who act in order to make a point generally don’t do.  All this casts doubt on the notion that this is a committed radical terrorist.

            Still worse, he says, the newspaper article treats Bashkortostan according to “the stereotype” that it is “an exotic ‘Muslim’ republic in Russia will a history of militance,” an assumption that is far from the case but that the authors have to make in order to justify the story they offer.

               

                That there are problems in the Muslim sector in Bashkortostan is beyond question, Berdin says. It could not be otherwise in a multi-ethnic and poly-confessional region. But they are not those the article suggests and “in the main” are being addressed more or less successfully. To suggest otherwise is to mislead.

.           A second specialist on Bashkortostan, Aysylu Yunusova, agrees. In an article she published several years ago which Alpaut consulted she says that some of the radicalism that people report there comes from Central Asian immigrants but that this group has not been successful in spreading their ideas to the Bashkirs.
            And Akhmet Yaryukapov, a senior scholar at MGMO who is widely known for his research on Islam in Russia, says bluntly: “in Bashkortostan now, everything is more or less in good order, and there are no trends toward radicalization. If one speaks in general about Russia, there is great potential for that. But one must consider regional differences.”
            Alpaut was able to speak with the Norwegian expert the article quoted.  She acknowledged that she had not done her own research on this issue but relied on the data of Russian scholars and that she relied “above all” on work having to do not with Bashkortostan but with the North Caucasus – exactly the problem Yarlykarpov and others point to.

‘The Bell’ Traces Russia’s ‘Private Army for the President’ Back to 2004

Paul Goble

Staunton, January 29 – Three journalists for The Bell trace the murky history of Russia’s private military companies, their relations with the Kremlin and the Russian military, and their various deployments and costs back to events in 2004 when tree Russian soldiers were caught in the course of liquidating a Chechen militant in Qatar.

            Because the men were uniformed soldiers of the Russian Federation, their capture triggered an international scandal and their release was secured only after the very public intervention of Vladimir Putin, something he clearly did not want to have to do again and thus set in train the creation and rise of the private military companies.

            Irina Malkova, Anton Bayev and Anastasiya Yakoreva pull together what is known about this nearly two decades-long history and the role of Yevgeny Prigozhin, known as “the cook” for his role as a supplier of food to schools, the military and the elite, in the rise of the Vagner private military company (thebell.io/41889-2/).

            After 2004 when Putin was embarrassed the idea of creating such forces to allow Russia to act abroad in deniable ways was discussed in military circles, and th e use of military retirees in such “private” units received support from General Nikolay Makarov, then chief of the Russian General Staff.

            But the breakthrough appears to have come in June 2010 when Eben Barlow, a retired South African general, made a presentation on the growing role of private military formations in Africa to a military roundtable in St. Petersburg.  In addition to speaking about such groups in Africa, he made specific proposals on how Russia could create its own.

            At that time, The Bell journalists say, the main debate was whether such sgtructures should be legal given that some siloviki were “categorically against” the appearance of such groups given the difficulties Moscow could expect to have in controlling their operations and ensuring security.

            This was four years before Moscow moved into Ukraine, and so most of the focus in the discussions at that time was aabout how to use “’illegals’” for operations where maintaining deniability was essential, the journalists continue. In 2012, Valery Gerasimov, who replaced Makarov as chief of the general staff, supported the idea and discussed it with Putin.

            Putin’s friend, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was brought into these discussions early on. He was close to Putin but not so close that that could present a problem, The Bell says.  He began to be involved at least as early as 2011 and was certainly part of the general operation of Vagner and other groups, despite his denials, in the years after that.

            In 2013, a year before the Ukrainian moves, the private military companies in Russia took shape, and Prigozhin was heavily involved, although most of this activity took place out of public view. Indeed, the Vagner group was mentioned in the Russian and international media only in the fall of 2015.

            The role of private military companies was quite restricted in the Crimean operation but rather larger in the Donbass. Even there, however, these units took a back seat to other groups that the Russian military organized thereor brought in from Russia itself. When the initial phase of that operation wound down, Vagner and other private military companies were sent to Syria.

            There, these groups achieved their greatest successes and their greatest failues. They were the land forces in Syria Moscow said it didn’t have; and they were responsible for many of the victories ascribed to the Asad government. But they had their greatest failure when they were attacked by US forces and Moscow was unable to come to their defense as some had hoped.

            Prigozhin faced real problems in convincing Putin that what had happened was an accident and that measures had been taken to ensure it would not happen again.  He must have succeeded because Russian private military companies connected to Prigozhin have since been used throughout Africa and now apparently in Venezuela.

            All these operations beginning with Syria have been very expensive and have involved as many as 10,000 mercenaries. The Bell article provides details that give credence to its history of these units; it will certainly be the basis for all future studies of what have become Vladimir Putin’s “personal private army.”

With Kremlin Backing, a New Journal ‘Questions of Ethnopolitics’ Launched in Russia

Paul Goble

            Staunton, January 29 – The first number of Voprosy Ethnopolitiki (“Questions of Ethnopolitics”) has appeared in Moscow. It has the backing of the Presidential Administration which wants it to be directed at both theoreticians and practical workers in this area and is edited by Magomed Omarov of the Russian State Humanities University.

            According to Nazaccent, the formal presentation of the journal will take place on February 1 (nazaccent.ru/content/29137-novyj-etnopoliticheskij-zhurnal-poyavilsya-v-rossii.html), but the 128-page first issue has already been posted online (ethnopolitics.ru/wp-content/uploads/ethnopolitics_magazin_1.pdf).

           

            Some idea of the focus of the journal can be gleaned from the table of contents for the first issue, and in the coming weeks, many of these articles will be the subject of Windows. But for those who read Russian, there is a rich offering of essays to be considered even before that happens:

V.A. Achkasov, “Problems of Interpretation of the Basic Terms in Russian Ethnopolitical Science and Ethno-Politics”

M..A. Omarov, “The Institutions of Civil Society and Their Role in the Maintenance of Inter-Ethnic Peace”

L.M. Drobizheva, “Dynamics of Non-Ethnic Russian Identity”

Yu.P Shabayev, “Historical Roots of Contemporary Finno-Ugric Pan-Nationalism”

V.A. Avksentyev, “Ethnopolitical Processes in the North Caucasus: Stabilization, Factors and Risks”

D.S. Dzhanteyeva, “Communication Strategies of Ethno-National Policy in the North Caucasus”

A.G. Bolshakov, “The Language Problem in Tatarstan: Tension without Conflict”

N.M. Mukharyamov, “Language Policy and Nation Building in Changing Circumstances”

O.B. Yanush, “The Official Status of Languages of Minorities: The Experience of Finno-Ugri c Regions of Russia”

V.K. Shabelnikov, “Psychological Problems of the Reformation of the Non-Ethnic Russian Nation”

A.K. Magomedov, “The Russian North Faces Real and Deferred Ethnic Problems”

UPDATE: At the official presentation of the new journal on February 1, the editors said that Voprosy etnopolitiki will soon be issued in an English-language edition (nazaccent.ru/content/29152-voprosy-etnopolitiki-budut-vyhodit-na-anglijskom.html).