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Abstract
In this article we analyse the dynamics of the insurgencies and the corresponding counter-insurgency measures in the North Caucasus over the past 25 years. By comparing three cases – Chechnya, Dagestan, and Kabardino-Balkaria – we identify similarities and differences in the way insurgencies and counter-insurgency measures influence governance in the region. Analysing different dynamics and outcomes under similar framework conditions – a federal state with a centralised government trying to govern a region with a shared history of rebellions against central rule and with similar geographic, social, and cultural features facilitating resistance and insurgencies – is a promising approach to better understanding conditions and implications of insurgency-induced governance in post-Soviet Russia.
Notes
1. Koehler, ‘Institution-Centred Conflict Research’; Koehler and Gunya, ‘Induktivnyi’.
2. Long, On ‘Other War’.
3. US Department of the Army FM3-24/MCWP 3-33.5.
4. Moyar, ‘Development’, 4.
5. Cf. Collier and Hoeffler, ‘Greed and Grievance’.
6. Myerson, ‘Foundations’.
7. Capacities, the preferences, and organisational ‘culture’ of armies and political establishments also matter (cf. Avant, Political Institutions).
8. See Gompert and Gordon, War by Other Means, 1–13 for a differentiation between GWOT and COIN; see Huérou et al., ‘Introduction’, 3–4 on Moscow’s definitions of the operations in Chechnya.
9. McChrystal, ‘Tactical Directive’; US Department of the Army FM3-24/MCWP 3-33.5.
10. Cf. Koehler, Social Order.
11. Eikenberry, ‘Limits of Counterinsurgency Doctrine’.
12. Cf. Schroeder et al., ‘Security Sector Reform’.
13. Nukhaev, Vedeno.
14. Tishkov, Obshchestvo.
15. Gakaev and Iandarov, Chechnia.
16. Politkovskaia, ‘Rasstrelian miting protiv korruptcii’.
17. Kolosov and Sebentcov, ‘Severnyi Kavkaz’.
18. Serebriannikov, Sotsiologiia voiny.
19. Malashenko, Ramzan Kadyrov.
20. Cf. Starodubrovskaya, ‘Beda Severnogo Kavkaza’.
21. Lednev et al., ‘Gobernatorov budut naznachat’.
22. Official statistics show that each year 120,000 Chechens were migrating to central Russia, Siberia, and other regions in search of work (Alkhazurov, Stanovlenie i razvitie).
23. Tishkov, Obshchestvo.
24. Zürcher, The Post-Soviet Wars, 70.
25. Alkhazurov, Stanovlenie i razvitie.
26. Tishkov, ‘Sotsialno-kulturnyi fenomen terrorizma’.
27. Cf. Sokirianskaya, ‘State and Violence’; Roshchin, ‘Kidnapping’.
28. For the concept of markets of violence developing as a possible consequence of state failures, insurgencies, and civil wars, see Elwert, ‘Markets of Violence’.
29. Interview with M., who had worked for the Ministry of Economy between 1996 and 1997, September 2014.
30. Cf. Zürcher, The Post-Soviet Wars, 87.
31. Alkhazurov, Stanovlenie i razvitie.
32. The brand of radical political Islam that spread in the North Caucasus in the second half of the 1990s and increasingly influenced the insurgency draws on a brand of Salafist doctrine. Since these ideas entered the region mostly via people who were trained at Wahhabi religious schools (i.e. Madrassas under Saudi influence) most Russian writers refer to radical political Islamist movements generally as Wahhabism. Neither Salafism nor the teachings of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab as part of the ‘purifying’ Salafi movement in Islam are per se prone to violent Islamism. Salafism did, however, produce some influential and radical thinkers that produced the ideological basis of many jihadist groups today (see Schaefer, The Insurgency in Chechnya, 150–2).
33. Cf. Vatchagaev, ‘Sufism in Chechnya’.
34. Sufism rather than Salafism or Wahhabism, see Ibid.
35. Malashenko, Ramzan Kadyrov.
36. Lyall, ‘Ethnicity and Insurgent Violence’.
37. Cf. Russell, ‘Ramzan Kadyrov’s ‘Illiberal’ Peace’.
38. Anikanov et al., Titulnye etnosy Rossiiskoi Federatcii.
39. Cf. Kisriev, Islam v Dagestane, 12; Kapustina, ‘Municipal Elections’, 60.
40. Cf. Ratelle, ‘The North Caucasus Insurgency’.
41. See note 32.
42. Khanbabaev, Etapy rasprostraneniia vakhkhabizma; Kisriev, Islam v Dagestane.
43. Bobrovnikov, ‘Islam’.
44. Cf. Kisriev, Islam v Dagestane, 47.
45. Ibid., 80.
46. Lukin, ‘Iz tcikla ‘Noveishaia istoriia’’.
47. Markedonov, ‘Terrorizm’.
48. Sokolov, ‘Islam protiv globalnogo rynka?’
49. Demoskop Weekly, ‘Vserossiiskaia perepis naseleniia’.
50. Shogenov and Menshikova, ‘Konkurenzia’.
51. Cf. Rakhaev, ‘Konets ‘bab’ego leta’ v KBR’.
52. Cf. Ratelle, ‘The North Caucasus Insurgency’.
53. According to Ratelle (Ibid., 189) one important difference was that young people from Kabardino-Balkaria and Dagestan but less so from Chechnya (because of the wars) travelled to Arabian countries and studied in Salafi madrassas. There contacts with the international Salafi movements intensified. According to Zhukov (‘Kabardino-Balkariia’) about 100 students left Kabardino-Balkaria in the early 1990s to study in foreign madrasas.
54. According to Vatchagaev (‘Sufism in Chechnya’, 223), unlike in Chechnya and Dagestan, traditional Islam in Kabardino-Balkaria was not institutionalised around Sufism and brotherhoods but was more mainstream Sunni.
55. Gaunova, ‘Effekt leiblinga’.
56. Zhukov, ‘Kabardino-Balkariia’.
57. Ratelle, ‘The North Caucasus Insurgency’.
58. Zhukov, ‘Kabardino-Balkariia’.
59. Malashenko, Ramzan Kadyrov.
60. Cf. Russell, ‘Ramzan Kadyrov’s “Illiberal” Peace’.
61. Interview with a representative of the Botlih district administration, Botlih, June 2014.
62. Zhukov, ‘Kabardino-Balkariia’.
63. Interview with representative of the local administration of the village of Elbrus, Summer 2013.
64. Ivanov, ‘Partiia voiny’.
65. Alkhazurov, Stanovlenie i razvitie.
66. Interview with M., see above.
67. Interview with Isa Bautdinov, former member of Dudaev’s and then Akhmat Kadyrov’s government, February 2015, Grozny.
68. Chechnya has received enormous financial transfers and seen the creation of special economic zones. The volume of subsidies received compared to taxes collected in 2007 was 433% for Chechnya, compared to 173% in Dagestan and 10% in Krasnodar territory (Malashenko, Ramzan Kadyrov).
69. Interview with Isa Bautdinov, February, 2015.
70. Interview with S.M., university teacher, Mai 2013, Makhachkala.
71. Akkieva, Islam v Kabardino-Balkarskoi respublike.
72. E.g. the scandal about the municipal mosque in Nalchik, see Zhukov, ‘Kabardino-Balkariia’.
73. According to Memorial, there was widespread belief in 2010–2011 that ‘the escalation of terror benefits and might even be organised by the authorities in order to clear the territory to make way for a tourist cluster involving huge investments’ (p. 21; http://www.memo.ru/uploads/files/562.pdf). According to some authors, the insurgency was dragged into the struggle for power between elites (Shtokolov, ‘Kavkayskie voiny’).
74. Alkhazurov, Stanovlenie i razvitie.
75. Interview with Isa Bautdinov, Deputy Minister of Economy in Dudayev’s Government, February 2015.
76. Kaliszewska, ‘Dagestani Experiences of the State’, 113.
77. Zürcher, The Post-Soviet Wars; Ware et al., ‘Democratization in Dagestan’.
78. Kisriev, Islam v Dagestane.
79. GOS is a widely used abbreviation for state in Russian.