Assessing Unholy Alliances in Chechnya: From Communism and Nationalism to Islamism and Salafism

Abstract

The end of the Cold War ushered in a new period of instability in the Caucasus, as groups formerly associated with the Communist Party sought to wrest power from newly formed political movements, which themselves sought independence from the successor to the Soviet Union, the Commonwealth of Independent States. In the immediate post-Cold War period a number of alliances, formed by groups with radically different agendas, shaped the ensuing political uncertainty across the region. In Chechnya, a number of historical relationships influenced the formation of nationalist and communist coalitions, particularly in the early and latter part of the twentieth century. Moreover, in the post-Soviet period, a series of coalitions and alliances – such as the Abkhaz Battalion – melded together national and regional groups, which themselves had an impact on the first Russo-Chechen War of the 1990s. Following the end of the first war in 1996, a series of other alliances, partially influenced by religion, linked members of the Chechen diaspora community with indigenous radical figures and foreign jihadis who espoused Salafism. This, in turn, expanded what had ostensibly been a nationalist movement into a regional conflict beyond the borders of Chechnya, a development that sheds light on the second Russo-Chechen War.

Notes

This work is in part linked to a continuing project run by Dr Cerwyn Moore, funded by the British Academy (SG-43942). It is based solely on open source information and does not represent the views of the UK Ministry of Defence.

We recognize the problems of labelling different actors as separatists, insurgents, terrorists, nationalists, Islamists or part of a resistance movement. But no value should be attributed to these labels, beyond the theoretical and analytical arguments in this article.

A jamaat, meaning ‘community’ in Arabic, is employed in a variety of different ways in the Caucasus. In Dagestan, for instance, jamaats have historically been used to refer to communities, but in more recent years the term has been used to describe military units, following the restructuring of the resistance movement throughout the second war.

For more on the first war, see Carlotta Gall and Tom De Waal, Chechnya: A Small Victorious War (London: Pan Books, 1997); Anatol Lieven, Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power (London: Yale University Press, 1998); John B. Dunlop, Russia Confronts Chechnya: The Roots of a Separatist Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

Anna Politkovskaya, ‘S kem vesti peregovory v Chechne’, Novaya gazeta, 1 Oct. 2001.

See, for example, the work of Matthew Evangelista, The Chechen Wars: Will Russia Go the Way of the Soviet Union? (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2002).

William Allen and Paul Muratoff, Caucasian Battlefields: A History of the Wars on the Turco-Caucasian Border 1828–1921 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953), p.48.

Ibid.

Moshe Gammer, The Lone Wolf and the Bear: Three Centuries of Chechen Defiance of Russian Rule (London: Hurst, 2006), p.23.

Ibid.

Ibid., pp.31–103.

Anna Zelkina, In Quest for God and Freedom: Sufi Responses to the Russian Advance in the North Caucasus (London: Hurst, 2000), p.235.

Moshe Gammer, Muslim Resistance to the Tsar: Shamil and the Conquest of Chechnia and Daghestan (London: Cass, 2005), p.285.

Moshe Gammer, ‘Nationalism and History: Rewriting the Chechen National Past’, in Bruno Coppieters and Michael Huysseune (eds.), Secession, History and the Social Sciences (Brussels: VUB Brussels University Press, 2002), p.126.

Bülent Gökay, ‘The Longstanding Russian Debate over Sheikh Shamil: Anti-Imperialist Hero or Counter-Revolutionary Cleric’, in Ben Fowkes (ed.), Russia and Chechnia: The Permanent Crisis: Essays on Russo-Chechen Relations (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998), pp.25–64.

This point was noted in a report by Count Mikhail Loris-Melikov, commander-in-chief of the Russian forces in the Terek province in the 1870s, cited by Gammer in The Lone Wolf and the Bear, p.73.

Gammer, The Lone Wolf and the Bear, p.71.

Marie Bennigsen Broxup, ‘The Last Ghazawat: The 1920–1921 Uprising’, in Marie Bennigsen Broxup (ed.), The North Caucasus Barrier: The Russian Advance Towards the Muslim World (London: Hurst, 1992), pp.112–45.

Galina Yemelianova, Russia and Islam: A Historical Survey (London: Routledge, 2002), pp.102–3.

Alexandre Bennigsen ‘Muslim Guerilla Warfare in the Caucasus (1918–1928)’, Central Asian Survey, Vol.2, No.1 (1983), pp.45–56 (p.48).

Gammer, The Lone Wolf and the Bear, pp.120–22.

Bammate's speech was republished in English in the early 1990s: see Haidar Bammate, ‘The Caucasus and the Russian Revolution (from a Political Viewpoint)’, Central Asian Survey, Vol.10, No.4 (1991), pp.1–29.

Gammer, The Lone Wolf and the Bear, pp.130–31.

Bennigsen, ‘Muslim Guerilla Warfare’, pp.45–56.

Georgi M. Derluguian, Bourdieu's Secret Admirer in the Caucasus: A World-System Biography (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005), p.237.

Amjad Jaimoukha, The Circassians: A Handbook (London: Routledge-Curzon, 2001), p.85.

Ibid.

Derluguian, Bourdieu's Secret Admirer, p.9.

Thomas de Waal, ‘Basaev: Legendary Rebel Heroics’, The Moscow Times, 20 June 1995.

Carlotta Gall, ‘Fighters Fall Back to Mountain Fortress’, The Independent, 14 Jan. 2005; see also Derluguian, Bourdieu's Secret Admirer, pp.60, 237.

Cerwyn Moore, ‘The Tale of Ruslan Gelayev: Understanding the International Dimensions of the Chechen Wars’, Central Asia Caucasus Analyst, Vol.10, No.10, available at: <http://www.cacianalyst.org/files/080430Analyst.pdf>, accessed 26 Nov. 2008.

For a useful overview of the complex relations between the Chechens and Russians, and the differences within each respective group, see Ben Fowkes, ‘Introduction’, in Fowkes (ed.), Russia and Chechnia, pp.1–24.

Derluguian, Bourdieu's Secret Admirer, pp.50–51, 259.

The Moscow Times, 10 Aug. 2004, p.3.

See Chechnya Weekly, Vol.9, No.1 (13 March 2008).

Cerwyn Moore and Paul Tumelty, ‘Foreign Fighters and the Case of Chechnya: A Critical Assessment’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Vol.31, No.5 (2008), pp.412–33.

Shamil Beno, a Jordanian Chechen and former representative of the Maskhadov administration, reflected on the growing Islamist dimension of the resistance, its multi-ethnic character and the role of foreign jihadis in a newspaper interview in 2004: see ‘Saudi Zealot Influences Rebels’, The Moscow Times, 11 Feb. 2004.

Moore and Tumelty, ‘Foreign Fighters and the Case of Chechnya’.

Interestingly, some reports suggest that Kuwaiti groups, including Jamaat Ikhia at Turas al-Islami, were among a host of foreign sponsors who had financed radical Salafis in Dagestan throughout the 1990s.

See Brian Glyn Williams, ‘Turkish Volunteers in Chechnya’, Jamestown Foundation Terrorism Monitor (6 April 2005), available at: <http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=30233>.

Detailed analysis of the martyr video, accessed and translated from Arabic and Turkish in December 2007, is available from the authors on request.

For example, radical websites eulogizing the ‘heroic’ deeds of Turkish volunteers in Chechnya includes information on Bilal, who had allegedly fought as a transnational jihadi in Bosnia and Kashmir before going to fight in the first Russo-Chechen war. These websites indicate that he was injured in the second conflict, and then recovered from his injuries in Turkey, before returning to Chechnya accompanied by a younger Turkish fighter (perhaps as a naib), where both were killed in a Russian attack in 2007. Similar information from radical Turkish websites glorifies the heroic deeds of Abdusselam, a Turkish volunteer martyred in Chechnya. This information was extracted and translated from Turkish websites in January 2008, and is available on request from the authors.

Brian Glyn Williams, ‘Allah's Foot Soldiers: An Assessment of the Role of Foreign Fighters and Al-Qa'ida in the Chechen Insurgency’, in Moshe Gammer (ed.), Ethno-Nationalism, Islam and the State in the Caucasus: Post-Soviet Disorder (London: Routledge, 2007), pp.156–78 (p.172).

The continuing tension between former separatists and foreign fighters, and indeed the decline of the Arab mujahideen in Chechnya, led to a video statement by Dokku Umarov, the current leader of the Chechen insurgency, and Muhannad, the leader of the Arab mujahideen, which appeared rather staged. In the video statement, both Muhannad and Umarov sought to dismiss reports of differences between the two groups.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Cerwyn Moore

Cerwyn Moore is Lecturer in International Relations in the Department of Political Science and International Studies, European Research Institute, University of Birmingham.

Paul Tumelty

Paul Tumelty is an analyst at the Strategic Analysis Group, Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), UK Ministry of Defence.