Sheikh
Mansur’s jihad came to an end, however, in the aftermath of
the Ottoman’s 1791 loss of Anapa, their Black Sea fortress,
leading to the capture of the Sheikh, who died in Russian
captivity in 1794.
In
1816, General Alexei Yermolov was appointed chief administrator
of Georgia and the Caucasus. His autocratic and deliberately
cruel rule shaped the future of Russian-Chechen relations. In
1818 he wrote to Tsar Alexander II that “he would find no
peace as long as a single Chechen remained alive” because
“by their example they could inspire a rebellious spirit and
love of freedom among even the most faithful subjects of the
Empire.”11 His advent
marked a policy of systematic extermination and expulsion in the
North Caucasus. In the process of the Russian conquest, tens of
thousands of Chechen noncombatants died, agricultural land was
denied to Chechens to starve them into submission, and more than
a million people were expelled from their homelands, settling in
Turkey and elsewhere in the Middle East.12
Yermolov’s
policies paved the way for the emergence of the three imams who
spearheaded Chechen resistance during the Caucasus War
(1817-64). The three were Kazi Mullah, Gamzat-Bek, and Shamil.
The latter was perhaps the most outstanding political and
military leader ever to emerge in the North Caucasus.13
Imam
Shamil was an exceptionally tall, strong, and athletic man, an
unrivalled horseman, highly intelligent, and well educated in
the Arabic language and Muslim religious literature.14
He repeatedly outmaneuvered the Russians in both battles and
negotiations, and determinedly pursued his goal of an Islamic
state governed by Shari`ah law.
In
1859, the Russian military contingent in the North Caucasus
numbered half a million. Prince Bariatinsky, the Russian
commander-in-chief, deployed 40,000 troops in the final assault
against Shamil and his 500 remaining partisans at Gunib in the
Daghestani mountains. Baysangur of Benoy, the Chechen lieutenant
of Shamil, managed to break through the Russian encirclement and
lead the Chechen resistance for a further three years. Of the
100 Chechens who followed him to continue fighting in Chechnya,
only 30 survived. Among them was an ancestor of Shamil Basayev.
After
the capture and execution of Baysangur, not a single legitimate
Chechen leader could be made to swear allegiance to the Russian
Empire.15 Totally decimated,
reduced to barely 50,000 souls after half a century of warfare,
Chechnya had been defeated but not pacified. In 1877-78, the
people of Chechnya and Dagestan launched another major rebellion
against the Russian authorities. It was known as the smaller Ghazawat
(battles), and ended with the mass executions of Naqshbandi
and Quadiri followers, thousands of deportations to
Siberia, and an exodus to the Ottoman Empire from the lowland of
northern Chechnya.16 Almost
60 years later, in 1940 and 1942 the Soviet Air Force bombed
Chechnya and Ingushetia to quell popular insurrections.
The
demise of communism saw the beginning of an Islamization
process. |
|
In
February 1944, the whole Chechen and Ingush nations were
deported under the pretext that they had collaborated with the
enemy during World War II – an absurd accusation, given that
the Germans had not even reached their territories.17
Some were sent to the death camps in Siberia; the majority was
moved to the frozen wastes of Kazakhstan. Half of the 618,000
deportees perished during transportation and the ensuing typhus
epidemic.
Some
atrocities in particular left deep marks: in Khaibakh, isolated
in the mountains, 700 people too old or too ill to be
transported, or simply living in villages too remote for
convenient transport, were gathered into an ancient tower and
burned alive.
Despite
the multiple genocidal measures undertaken by the Russians, the
Chechens were renowned for being the only nation who refused to
accept the psychology of submission.18
On
December 10, 1994, Russian President Boris Yeltsin called upon
the Russian armed forces to restore order in the breakaway
Chechen republic. The military deployed to the Caucasus soon
thereafter, utilizing World War II-era doctrines that emphasized
the massing of forces and aerial carpet-bombing. Despite the
overall superiority of Russian forces, the lightly-armed
Chechens managed, with the help of battle-hardened Arab mujahideen
led by the famous Commander Khattab, to repel the Russian
invasion and achieve a short-lived Chechen independence.
The
Chechen struggle in 1994-96 was the latest in a series of
anti-colonial wars. The Chechen victory was unique in the modern
history of war, in that the Chechens won, not just without the
support of a real state, but without the help of any formal
military or political organization.19
They relied solely on the strength of their society and
traditions. Nevertheless, using the pretext of a mysterious wave
of bombings in Russian cities, Russia invaded Chechnya once
again in 1999.
Dagestan
The
smaller republic of Dagestan spreads over 50,000 square
kilometers and has a population of approximately 2 million
people, 85% of whom are Muslim. Today’s ethnic and political
situation in Dagestan is in many ways the result of Russia’s
political, economic, and financial crises. Indeed, Dagestan has
the lowest standard of living in the whole of Russia. The sharp
decline in industrial production, the collapse of the
agricultural sector, massive unemployment, the sharp
polarization of society, and an increasing gulf between the
authorities and the majority of the population, constitute the
main sources of tension. This has resulted in a sharp rise in
crime rates, the harassment of dissidents, struggles for spheres
of influence and the redistribution of property, corruption,
bribery and an ideological vacuum in the post-Soviet society.20
Despite
the widespread influence of Sufism in the small republic, there
are three main fundamentalist Islamist groups operating in
Dagestan: one is led by Ahmed Ahtayev, an activist with a long
history of clandestine work, and the second by Baghaudin
Muhammad Dagestani. The third is based in the Islamist
stronghold of Astrakhan and has no prominent individual leader.21
In
August 1999, many Dagestani fighters began training in camps run
by the late Saudi rebel commander Khattab, with the goal of
bringing about the secession of Dagestan from the Russian
Federation.
Superpower
Rivalry and the Quest for Resources
|
|
Scene
from Grozny after the Russian bombardment |
There
have been recent suggestions of a quid pro quo between the US
and Russian administrations, with the Russians providing
intelligence support to American troops in Afghanistan in
exchange for the United States turning a blind eye on Russia’s
brutal occupation in
Chechnya.
Consequently, some analysts and policymakers contended that
after September 11th, “the carnage in Chechnya now
became a front-line of the battle fought by the entire
international community against terrorism.”22
But despite similar rhetoric from the White House and the
Kremlin concerning the “war against terror,” the Caucasus
has de facto become an arena for intense contestation and
geo-strategic maneuvering between Russia and the United States.
Both
Russia and the United States are engaged in a fierce competition
over oil resources in the Caspian region. Bulent Gokay of the Turkish
Journal of International Relations (Alternatives) astutely
noted that in the post-September 11th world, “the map of terrorist
sanctuaries and targets in the Middle East and Central Asia is
also, to an extraordinary degree, a map of the world’s
principal energy sources in the 21st century.”23
In
Eurasia, the US administration sees its military might as a
trump card in its never-ending quest for unchallenged political
hegemony and resource-control. The Washington-based American
Petroleum Institute, the voice of the major US oil companies,
called the Caspian region, “the area of greatest resource
potential outside of the Middle East.”24
US Vice President Dick Cheney, speaking of the Caspian Sea basin
in 1998, when he was still employed by the oil industry,
commented, “I cannot think of a time when we have had a region
emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the
Caspian.”25
One
can also safely claim that disputes over oil were at the heart
of Russia's earlier decision to go to war against Chechnya in
December 1994. Chief amongst Russian concerns and Western
interests is the oil pipeline that runs from the oilfields of
Azerbaijan through Dagestan and Chechnya, to the Russian port of
Novorossiisk. The Baku-Novorossiisk pipeline has become crucial
due to the discovery and planned development of major oilfields
on the Azerbaijani shore on the Caspian. These fields are
estimated to contain some 3.5 billion barrels of oil, comparable
to the North Sea.26 Russia
therefore has important geo-economic reasons for establishing
firm control over the Caucasus, reasons essentially related to
Russia’s concerns over the control of the Caspian’s oil
resources.
Russia’s
concerns over Chechnya also grew as a result of the US-NATO war
against Serbia and the subsequent NATO occupation of Kosovo. In
this light, Russia’s invasion of Chechnya in 1999 was meant to
be a warning to the United States and NATO, and to any other
nations likely to rebel against Russia in the post-Soviet space,
that Russia was still a military force to be reckoned with.27
Conclusions
Islam
has unified the people of the Northern Caucasus in their
struggle against Russian influence. |
|
Despite
the multitude of ethnic and religious groups in the Northern
Caucasus and the implicit rivalry between Sufi brotherhoods and
more fundamentalist Islamists, the continued presence of Russian
forces in the region has managed, to a great extent, to unite
all Islamic forces against a common enemy.
The
brutality of Russia’s campaign in the Northern Caucasus,
coupled with the region’s endless socio-economic dilemmas, has
reinvigorated the spirit of rebellion and resistance among many
Muslims in the region. While Chechnya remains the locus of
regional politics, the smaller republics of Dagestan, North
Ossetia, and Ingushetia are facing similar problems –
marginalization, popular dissatisfaction, ethnic hostilities,
poverty, corrupt local leaders, and the heavy hand of Russian
hegemony.
Conflict
in the Caucasus is exacerbated by great power rivalry and
geopolitical contestation over oil resources. The Northern
Caucasus is seen by Russia as its strategic backyard and by the
United States as a critical staging area for the containment of
any potential Russian expansion. Indeed, the presence of US
military bases in Central Asia and US advisors in nearby Georgia
is telling of America’s interest in not only fighting
Islamism, but in containing Russia. As a result of both this
intricate security complex and the absence of any serious
attempts at dialogue, the Northern Caucasus will remain a hotbed
of simmering hostilities and violence. In that light, the Beslan
school siege, bombing of Russian airliners, and suicide bombings
in Moscow, promise to be only a horrific foretaste of what is to
come.
Kareem
M. Kamel is an Egyptian analyst based in Cairo,
Egypt. He has an MA in International Relations and is
specialized in security studies, decision- making, nuclear
politics, Middle East politics and the politics of Islam. He is
currently a teaching assistant to the Political Science
Department at the American University in Cairo.
1-Thomas
De Waal, “The
North Caucasus: Politics or War?” Open Democracy September 7th, 2004
2-“Chechen
Warlord Admits He Set Up The Beslan School Siege,” The
Independent September 18th, 2004
3-Thomas
De Waal, “The North Caucasus: Politics or War?” Open
Democracy September
7th, 2004
4-Charles
King, “Putin’s Putsch,” Foreign
Affairs September
22nd, 2004
5-Yavus
Akhmadov, et al. “Islam in the Northern Caucasus,” Journal of
Social, Political, and Economic Studies 26 (Fall 2001)
6-Ibid.
7-James
Ferguson, “Afghanistan
and the New Arc of Instability : Security Dilemmas of Uzbekistan,
Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Chechnya,” Lecture
: Department of International Relations – Bond University
8-Rajan
Menon, “Russia’s Ruinous Chechen War,” Foreign Affairs 79
(March/April 2000)
9-Marie
Bennigsen, “Chechnya : Political Development and Strategic
Implications for the North Caucasus,” Central Asian Survey 18
(December 1999)
10-John
B. Dunlop, Russia Confronts Chechnya: Roots of a Separatist
Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) : 12.
11-Marie
Bennigsen, “Chechnya: Political Development and Strategic
Implications for the North Caucasus,” Central Asian Survey 18
(December 1999)
12-Rajan
Menon, “Russia’s Ruinous Chechen War,” Foreign Affairs 79
(March/April 2000)
13-John
B. Dunlop, Russia Confronts Chechnya : Roots of a Separatist
Conflict (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1998) : 24
14-Ibid.
15-Marie
Bennigsen, “Chechnya : Political Development and Strategic
Implications for the North Caucasus,” Central Asian Survey 18
(December 1999).
16-Ibid.
17-Ibid.
18-Ibid.
19-Anatol
Lieven, Chechnya : Tombstone of Russian Power (New Haven
& London : Yale University Press, 1998) : 301.
20-Amri
Shikhsaidov, “Islam
in Daghestan,” Center for Social and
Political Studies: Central Asia and the Caucasus
21-Yavus
Akhmadov, et al. “Islam in the Northern Caucasus,” Journal of
Social, Political, and Economic Studies 26 (Fall 2001)
22-Georgi
Derluguian, “Recasting Russia,” New Left Review (November/December
2001)
23-Bulent
Gokay, “The Most Dangerous Game in the World: Oil, War, and US
Global Hegemony,” Alternatives : Turkish Journal of
International Affairs Summer 2002 http://www.alternativesjournal.net/volume1/number2/gokay.htm
24-Bulent
Gokay, “Oil, War, Geopolitics and Hegemony,” Conflict &
Peace in Mountain Society: Case Study March 7th, 2002.
25-Ibid.
26-Anatol
Lieven, Chechnya : Tombstone of Russian Power (New Haven
& London : Yale University Press, 1998) : 85.
27-Ibid.
