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Iran and Afghanistan is a key factor in encouraging Russian fears. Given the attempts of Iran and Turkey to extend their cultural and political influence into the Caucasus and Central Asia, and the ongoing conflict with radical Islamic militias on the Tajikistan-Afghanistan border, the Muslim peoples of Russia are now seen as a potential fifth column for disruptive foreign influence. Islam calls on Russia’s Muslims to look to Mecca and the Arab, Persian and Turkish world and away from Moscow and the Russian world. It is thus a major threat to Russian interests at a time when the demise of Communism has left the former Soviet Union with no ideological basis for regional integration, and the only elements keeping it together are rapidly eroding economic ties and Russian political dominance. As an organized religion in the North Caucasus, Islam came late to the region, carried by Sufi missionaries from the Sunni Muslim Ottoman Empire, rather than from the Shi’ite Iranian Empire. It did not take hold in the mountainous regions of Dagestan until the 16th century, and came even later to Chechnya, Ingushetia and the northwestern reaches of the North Caucasus in the 19th century—coinciding with the expansion of the Russian Empire in the region. In the Caucasian Wars, however, Islam played a unifying role for the disparate peoples of the North Caucasus against the Orthodox Christian Russian Empire. As a result of the Russian invasion, the spread of Islam to the northwestern regions of the North Caucasus was interrupted and its practice was thus consolidated only in the north east. Here Dagestan became a focus for ‘enlightened Islam’ centered on a cult of books and scholars. Dagestan and Chechnya also became centers of “Sufism,” which was practiced by individual brotherhoods under two main tariqats or orders, the Naqshubandiya and Qadiriya, headed by a religious leader. The orders demanded spiritual perfection from their members, but the brotherhoods, of which there were more than 50, operated largely according to their own rules and were often in conflict with each other over religious practice. Imam Shamil, the celebrated religious leader of Dagestan and Chechnya who led the resistance to Russian in the Caucasian Wars of the 19th century, was part of a Sufi brotherhood. By virtue of its late arrival in the region, Islam also did not have a great impact on the social structure of the North Caucasus. The region’s pre-Islamic features were retained, although religious ritual came to regulate the general conduct of public and private life. The Islamic law code, the Shari’a, was also not imposed on the region, but was assimilated into local customary law, or what the Russian invaders called “Mountain Law.” In Dagestan this customary law was the Adat which was compiled in a law code for each khanate, or independent principality, in the 17th Century. The Adat codes often contradicted the Shari’a, and the religious leaders of the region were engaged in a constant struggle to assert the primacy of religious law. Discussions of the differences between the Shari’a and Adat law codes were a frequent occurrence in scholarly and public circles in Dagestan, contradicting any claims of “Islamic Fundamentalism” or the strict observance of Islamic law in the region prior to the Russian invasion. In addition to these clear differences between religious practice and customary law, and the autonomy of the Sufi orders, the long co-existence of the North Caucasians with neighboring groups of different religions, including Mountain Jews and Georgian and Armenian Christians, prior to the advent of Islam, encouraged tolerance toward other confessional practices. Islam merely enhanced this tolerance by reserving a special place for Christians and Jews as kindred peoples and 92
incorporating their principle figures as the holy men who preceded Mohammed—the last prophet. Prior to the Russian-Caucasian wars, there was no campaign of forced conversion to Islam and no record of inter-group conflict on a religious basis. Dagestani leaders, for example, were in the habit of currying favor with their multi-ethnic and multi-confessional subjects by attending services at the local mosque, church and synagogue on the respective holy days. As a major religion in the Russian Federation and North Caucasus, Islam declined precipitously after the Russian Revolution as a direct result of the Bolshevik drive against religion and the establishment of a secular Soviet state. Prior to the Russian Revolution, there were, for example, 2,060 mosques and 1,000 religious schools in Dagestan alone. By 1941, there was not a single mosque or religious school left in Dagestan. The Arabic language and script, on which Islamic teaching and Muslim culture were based, was also outlawed in favor of the local vernacular and the development of local literary languages using the Cyrillic script. By 1991, the majority of Muslim clerics in the Russian Federation were poorly educated and could not read Arabic. As it was intended to, this policy severed the links between North Caucasian Muslims, their traditional manuscripts, including the Koran, and the broader Muslim world. Of 30,000 religious manuscripts existing in Dagestan before the Revolution, only 10,000 survived the Revolution, the rest having been burned by the Bolsheviks. The process of secularization and increasing contacts and intermarriage with ethnic Russians also encouraged entire North Caucasian ethnic groups to move away from Islam, including the Adygei, Cherkess, Nogais, Laks, Lezgins and Tabassarans. Since 1991, Muslims in the North Caucasus have focused on restoring their links with the past. The Islamic revival has not been confined to specifically confessional issues, and the exploration of the region’s cultural legacy has perhaps been the most important feature. Indeed, Islam for the North Caucasus is a way of life rather than a religion, shaping value systems and customs. The Islamic revival has been greatest in the eastern North Caucasus, in Dagestan and Chechnya where it was traditionally the most ingrained. Here efforts have concentrated on producing books on the basic tenets of Islam, including “How to Pray” manuals for the majority who have lost their religious connections. In 1994, Dr. Magomedkhanov noted that there were approximately 400 religious publications in Dagestan in the various languages of the republic’s ethnic groups, which was equivalent to the total number of religious publications produced in Dagestan in these languages from the 1920s to 1991. New mosques have been built and religious schools have also been established in Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria and Chechnya to prepare a new generation of Islamic clergy. The largest of these, the Grozny State Islamic Institute, was founded in Chechnya in 1991, with places for 420 would-be clerics, and a number of religious instructors from Middle Eastern countries. 178 In addition, pilgrimages to Mecca have been encouraged, with approximately 6,000 Dagestanis making the trip every year. 179 178 See Paul Goble, “How Islamic is the War in Chechnya?” Prism (The Jamestown Foundation), Vol. 1. No.6, Part 2, June 2, 1995. 179 This information was obtained from an interview conducted by Nicholas and Ruth Daniloff in August 1995 with Dibir Magomedov, the Head of the Shamil Fund of Dagestan and the Chair of the Department of History and Theory of Culture at Dagestan University. 93
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“RUSSIA’S TINDERBOX” Conflict
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PREFACE Background to the Report In
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“RUSSIA’S TINDERBOX” Conflict
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and dependent on subsidies from the
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• Cleavages between Orthodoxy and
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1. The Administra
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3. The failure of Russian policy: S
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SECTION I The Structural Legacy of
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Supreme Soviet and a Presidium of t
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Tenglik went so as far as to blocka
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The Soviet government of the Russia
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From 1991, the question of whether
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Russia, announced the formation of
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as a mediator in inter-ethnic confl
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After 1991, Abkhazia’s role as th
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members of the KNK all have a diffe
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SECTION III The Failure of Russia
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absolving the Ministry for National
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This activity has raised expectatio
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1. Yeltsin’s March 1991 Visit to
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The first report recommended that,
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In response to the refusal of the K
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SECTION IV Territorial Disputes in
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inflammatory rhetoric, others have
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government, the expectation was tha
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2. The secession of Chechnya from R
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epeated ultimatums to the Ingush to
Page 55 and 56: The refugee issue and the status of
Page 57 and 58: Government interventions have been
Page 59 and 60: Another territorial dispute in Dage
Page 61 and 62: To protect their group rights in th
Page 63 and 64: 1991 the referendum on statehood wa
Page 65 and 66: a dual Cherkess-Abazin federal repu
Page 67 and 68: The Krai’s ethnic composition is,
Page 69 and 70: Other Circassian peoples and the KN
Page 71 and 72: The Revival of the Cossacks in the
Page 73 and 74: the region. These meetings and of i
Page 75 and 76: The Cossacks are now perceived by t
Page 77 and 78: in Kazakhstan. The 1991 Law on the
Page 79 and 80: Chechnya was operating; 122 and a h
Page 81 and 82: As modern civil society ceased to f
Page 83 and 84: emergency session of the Checheno-I
Page 85 and 86: Soviet weaponry, including tanks an
Page 87 and 88: consisted of the most radical facti
Page 89 and 90: In 1992-1993, the opposition’s re
Page 91 and 92: In the North Caucasian republics, t
Page 93 and 94: Moscow. Since Budennovsk, the knowl
Page 95 and 96: The War in Chechnya and Implication
Page 97 and 98: Conclusion As the discussion in the
Page 99 and 100: APPENDIX 1 The Refugee crisis in th
Page 101 and 102: was reversed in the late 1980s. 162
Page 103 and 104: and the already high levels of unem
Page 105: APPENDIX 2 The Islamic Factor in th
Page 109 and 110: Since the war in Chechnya, and give
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