Contextualized violence: politics and terror in Dagestan

Abstract

Despite the escalating terrorist actions, there is no polarized constellation in the Islamic politics of Dagestan. Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) officers regard the corrupt Dagestan authorities to be significantly responsible for the massive conversion of youths to terrorism, and began to contact with moderate Salafis to isolate the “forest brothers” (armed Salafis) in 2010. Exploiting the FSB's soft strategy, secular intellectuals requested to reform the Muslim Spiritual Board of Dagestan by electing a legitimate mufti. Having seen the incompetence of intra-Sufi opposition (non-Avar sheikhs) in the War on Terror, the Spiritual Board jumped on the bandwagon of dialog strategy in 2012. The secular authorities of Dagestan, indifferent to intra-Muslim politics, limit their activities to the call for dialog between the secular authorities and the forest brothers. In this way, political actors hijack the master narrative of the “War on Terror” and these narratives are imported to local politics.

Keywords:

• Dagestan
• Islam
• terrorism
• FSB RF
• moderate Salafis

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Dagestan State University which generously financed this study. This article is also a result of the projects entitled “Research on the Unrecognised States in the Post-Soviet Space” and “Comparative Studies of Eurasian Regional Powers” financed by the China Ministry of Education (No. 11JJDGJW010) and the Japan Ministry of Education, respectively.

Notes

1. According to a sociological survey conducted among youths in Dagestan in 2010, 3.4% of young believers answered affirmatively to the question “Is it possible for you to become a member of ‘Forest Brothers’ (‘Wahhabis’) under certain life circumstances?” Those who are between 18 and 25 years of age and live in rural areas gave the largest portion of affirmative answer to this question – 5.5% (Abdulagatov, 2011b, p. 179).

2. On the lack of legitimacy of the DUMD and on the intra-Sufi opposition to the DUMD, see Matsuzato and Ibragimov (2005).

3. Officially, this amnesty is termed “assistance for the adaptation of those who decided to cease terrorist and extremist activities to a peaceful life.”

4. Makarov and Mukhametshin (2003) interpreted this polarization as a dualism between “official and unofficial Islam.”

5. In fact, the overwhelming majority of Hajj pilgrims from Russia leave from Dagestan, which accounted for about 15,000 in 2008, 14,000 in 2009, 13,000 in 2010, and 12,000 in both 2011 and 2012. On 30 November 2012, M. Omarov, Press-secretary of the DUMD, told Ibragimov that the decrease in 2011–2012 was caused by government prohibition of land routes, cheaper than air routes, to Mecca because of the unsafe situation in Syria.

6. During our fieldwork conducted in Dagestan in 2003–2004, we often encountered this self-appraisal by local Muslim leaders. In 2001, Mufti Akhmed-khadzhi Abdulaev said, “We should thank the Almighty ceaselessly for giving us such a pure Islam and such religious freedom as do not exist even in many Arabic and Muslim countries” quoted in Matsuzato and Ibragimov 2005, 757.

7. This constitutional change was conducted in cooperation with Dmitry Kozak, presidential representative of the South Federal District in 2004–2007 (Dagestan belonged to this district until 2010). Kozak criticized the unsystematic characteristics, poor inter-ministerial coordination, incomplete legislation in the taking of anti-terrorist measures, and the lack of personal responsiveness (“D. Kozak raskritikoval rabotu bortsov c terrorizmom na Kavkaze.” RBK. 21 February 2005).

8. The appointment of Khloponin reminds us of the appointment of Prince M. S. Vorontsov as viceroy of the Caucasus in 1844. The coercive way to conquer the Caucasus pursued by A. P. Ermolov in the 1810s and 1820s did not work. Nicolas I requested a new Caucasian policy and personally entrusted this difficult mission to Prince M. S. Vorontsov, renowned for his successful colonization policy in Novorossia (South Ukraine) and Bessarabia (“Razgovor Safonova,” 384). Well aware of North Caucasians' yearning for material wealth (they cannot accept living more poorly than their neighbors), Prince Vorontsov combined military methods with economic policy to attract the North Caucasus into the economic orbit of the Russian Empire's Black Sea Rim. Thus, Vorontsov improved the situation in the North Caucasus, though the empire needed to continue its struggle for another 20 years until Imam Shamil's capitulation. Appointing Khloponin as his “viceroy” in the North Caucasus, President Medvedev perhaps expected the Vorontsov effect.

9. As an example of Magomedali Magomedov's interethnic arrangement, see Ibragimov and Matsuzato 2005, 227–228.

10. According to this discourse, the very rise of Wahhabism in Arabia in the eighteenth century was a result of British agents' conspiracy to split the Ottoman Empire.

11. Komissiya po okazaniyu sodeistviya v adaptatsii k mirnoi zhizni litsam, reshivshim prekratit’ terroristicheskuyu i ekstremistskuyu deyatel'nost’.

12. Bekmurzaev's offensive behavior is understandable. Only two months before the congress, he escaped death by a hair's breadth in a bomb attack (his driver, less lucky, died on the spot). Moreover, his two predecessors as minister of nationalities policy were killed by terrorist attacks in the short period of 2003–2005.

13. Following Dagestan's precedent, similar commissions were established in other national republics of the North Caucasus, such as Ingushetiya and Kabardino-Balkariya. In July 2012, the RF Presidential Council for Human Rights suggested the possibility of introducing the same commission at the federal level, though Andrei Przezdomskii criticized this idea as creating an additional link lacking sufficient information. He thinks that the work for adaptation, by nature, should be conducted at the regional level (“Prezidentskii sovet”). In an interview with Matsuzato held in April 2012, Z. Zubairuev, chief of the Press Service of the Dagestan President, and lawyer Rasul Kadiev insisted on the urgent necessity of the Commission for Adaptation at the federal level.

14. In Tatarstan, the Spiritual Board of Muslims (muftiate) was split between those who support Talgat Tadzhuddin, Supreme Mufti of Russia, and those who support the Tatarstan secular authorities in the early 1990s. Under the strong pressure of the Tatarstan secular authorities, Muslim leaders convened a joint congress and created a single muftiate in February 1998.

15. The resolution adopted at the first meeting was uploaded on Internet by Rasul Kadiev (Kadiev 2011).

16. Suleiman Uladiev, who organized the Civic Dialogue in April 2011, supposed that those who opposed the rapprochement process between Salafis and Sufis stood behind the murder of Maksuda Sadikov (“Eksperty ob ubiiistve”). Caucasian Knot (Kavkazskii uzel) reported Ruslan Kurbanov's opinion that the murder of Sadikov was targeted at disrupting the rapprochement of various religious groups in Dagestan. On 9 June 2011, Ansar republished this article (“Ekspert ob ubiistve”). The same issue of Ansar reported that RF Social Chamber identified the murder of Sadikova as an attempt to disrupt the peace process in the Caucasus (“Ubiistvo M. Sadikova”)

17. The attempt to convene an international conference of Islamic theologians failed in Dagestan, but a similar conference was held in Moscow on 25–26 May 2012. Ali Polosin (leader of the scientific enlightenment center al’-Vasatyiya – Umerennost’), in cooperation with Ravil’ Gainutdin, leader of the Council of Muftis of Russia, initiated this event. The conference adopted a document entitled “Moscow Theological Declaration of Muslim Scholars on the Questions of Jihad, Adoption of Sharia Norms, and the Caliphate.” It is difficult to regard this document as a fatwa. See Gadzhiev (2012); for a more positive summary of this conference, see “Islamskaya doktorina.”

18. On 28 February 2011, imam of the Central Mosque of Makhachkala, Magomedrasul Saaduev, told Matsuzato that they make contact with the RF presidential administration oftener than with the Dagestan government.

19. According to KavkazCenter, Riyad-us Saliheen, the self-declared killer of Said-afandi, requested that the Muslim organizations of Dagestan, conducting dialogue with “apostates (murtady),” stop spreading unjust and false accusations against jihad fighters (“Poyavilos’”).