This EHL essay offers the
history of the Muslim peoples of southern Russia (especially
Chechens) in their longstanding struggle and jihad against
the Russians. It is divided into several sections: their ethnocultural
and religious background, their coalescence and jihad against
Russian conquest, their experience under Communism and their
alliance with the Nazis, their mass expulsion by the Soviets
to Central Asia, and their modern wars and jihad against Russia
today. Also see our History
of the Muslim Tatars and their genocide for a parallel
history. Also read our article on the genocide
of the Volga Germans by Stalin who suffered the same fate
as the Chechens.
Ethocultural,
religious, and geographic background
The Chechen Muslims are but
one of many related tribes of the Caucasus mountains that
today straddle Russia and Georgia. Alongside the Chechen clans
reside the Muslim Ingush, Adygeans, Dagestanis, Kalbards,
Alans/Ossets, Karachai, Cherkess, Balkars, and many other
tribes who speak Circassian and Caucasian languages, with
some linguists describing the region as having the greatest
number of dialects and languages of the world based upon the
small size of the mountainous region. The vast majority of
these tribes and clans are Sunni and Muridist Sufi Muslims,
with insignificant minorities of Greeks, Armenians, and other
Christian settlements, and follow a rigidly resilient culture
of independence, ultraconservative Islam, and a tribal heritage.
After the creation of psuedo-autonomous
ethnic republics for each of the non-Russian minorities by
the Soviet Union, these Muslim Caucasus tribes became divided
into separate provinces (see maps below). Today, the tribes
are divided into the provinces of Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetiya,
Adygea, Karachai-Cherkessia, Kalbardia-Balkaria, North Ossetia
(a Christian Iranic people), and the two breakaway provinces
of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia. These obdurately
rebellious peoples have often merged and overthrown these
republics, believing them to be meaningless creations of the
occupying Christian Russians. Although many of these provinces
allied collectively in jihad against the Russians, the Chechens
have become most famous because of the fact that the Chechen
Wars primarily took place in the Chechen capital of Grozniy.
Overall location of the Caucasus region in relation to Russia
and the Caucasian states of Georgia and Azerbaijan
A rough map of the NON-independent Islamic peoples in southern
Russia, including Chechnya and Dagestan. From hrvc.net. (click
to enlarge)
The exclusive EHL map showing the ethnic and religious autonomous
republics. (CLICK TO ENLARGE)
The Chechen
and Caucasian Muslim tribes unite in an Islamic jihad against
the invading Russian Christians
The Muslim clans of the Caucasus
lived in relative isolation and independence until the early
19th century, and were not unified into any state or polity.
The independence of the region became inevitably ephemeral
due to the geographic situation of the territory as a buffer
zone between the massive conquests of the Muslim Ottoman Empire
and the Russian Empire. Catherine the Great had led several
Russo-Turkish Wars that crippled the increasingly-collapsing
Ottoman realm and faciliated the expansion of the Russians
southward into previously-Turkish possessions in the Crimea
and the Caucasus. So too, the weakening empires of the Sunni
Ottomans and the Shi'ia Safavid Persians increasingly lost
their grip over the disputed Christian states of Armenia and
Georgia. From 1817-1864, Russia initiated the Caucasian
Wars that ended in the total annexation of all the
Caucasus' Muslim tribes and eventually allowed the "liberation"
of the Christian Armenians and Georgians from the hegemony
of Muslim dominions.
The Caucasian and Circassian
tribes, especially the Dagestanis, Adygeans, Avars, and Chechens
reacted to the Russian invasion with a confederated tribal
alliance to wage jihad against the conquering Christian Slavs.
The leading imam and commander of the so-called Caucasian
Imamate was the Avar chieftain Imam Shamil,
who sought to unite the Muslims of the region into a theocratic
state under Sharia jurisprudence. Shamil, considered a hero
by much of the Islamic world today for his holy war against
an invading Christian force, led the Avars, Adygeans, Chechens,
Dagestanis, and Ingush using guerilla warfare in the mountains
of Dagestan and Circassia. He contributed to the greater Islamization
of the region immensely, and can be seen as the genesis of
the organized Islamist movements that have occurred in the
region for the next 150 years. He identified the Russians
as an oppressor of Muslims despite the fact that Russia was
arguably more tolerant of religious minorities than the Imam
himself, since it had adopted a tremendously autonomous and
tolerant policy towards its Muslim subjects and even subsidized
the construction of mosques and the translation of the Qur'an
into their local languages [1]. Despite polemic assertions
of an anti-Muslim Russian Empire, Catherine even subsidized
roads and detours away from persecution in Shi'a Iran for
pilgrimage to the holy cities of Arabia.
"A Muslim must obey
the Shariah, but all his giving of Zakat [the Islamic compulsory
alms tax of about 2.5% of one's worth], all his Salat [prayers]
and ablutions, all his pilgrimages to Makkah, are as nothing
if a Russian eye looks upon them. Your marriages are unlawful,
your children bastards, while there is 1 Russian in your lands!"
[2]
The war in the Caucasus was
incredibly brutal, inspiring foreign authors to document its
inordinate truculence. Russian soldiers employed scorched-earth
policies against Muslim villages, raized mosques, and shot
canon indiscriminately. At the same time, the Muslims used
brutal guerilla warfare and raided civilian and military settlements,
burnt churches to the ground, and slaughtered whole occupying
armies. Both sides committed tremendous atrocities, but the
military superiority -- coupled with internal perfidity between
Muslim tribes that failed to support Imam Shamil -- led to
a total Russian domination of the whole area. The brutal cost
of the occupation on the native inhabitants of the region
would not be forgotten, and still was referenced by revolting
Chechen Mujahidin in the 1990's as a parallel struggle against
Christian occupation [3]. Lacking adequate reinforcements
and completely overwhelmed, Imam Shamil surrendered to the
Russian authorities and was lavishly given a mansion in Kiev
before going to Makkah. Imam Shamil is lionized as a warrior
of Islam and an inspiration for many Muslims struggling against
what they perceive as "Western" occupation. The
Circassians, Chechens, and other Muslim tribes of the Caucasus
would remain under Russian rule, at least officially, ever
since. The capital of the Chechens, Grozniy, is disputed to
mean "terrible," in reference to the savage price
it took to conquer the region.
The Ottoman Empire was a massive realm that expanded into
the Caucasus but never conquered the Caucasus. Russia in the
north inevitably approached the region in its incessent wars
with the Turks. (click to enlarge)
The Russian empire at its height. The southern marches are
the result of their conquest of the Caucasian Mujahidin. (click
to enlarge)
Imam Shamil, the leader of the Islamic jihad of the Caucasian
peoples against the Christian Slavs
Russian soldiers march for war to the south.
Russian military regiments on a raid.
Muslim
Caucasian tribes under Communist rule, their alliance with
the Nazis, and their total genocide by Stalin
The Muslim peoples of the
Caucasus were a source of incessent rebellion and war for
the Russian occupiers, and obdurately resisted the continuing
rule of the Russians. Russian control over the mountainous
regions of Dagestan and Chechnya remained limited, although
the Russians built major Black Sea ports (especially Sochi)
in the lands previously occupied by Muslim tribes that still
thrive today.
In 1917, when the Bolshevik
Revolution incited the fall of the old monarchy, the Russian
Empire collapsed in entirety. Nearly every non-Russian ethnic
and religious minority in the former dominion declared independence,
including the Poles, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Latvians, Lithuanians,
Estonians, Finns, the Basmachi Muslim rebels of Central Asia,
and the Circassian and Caucasian Muslim tribes with them.
Many factions aligned with the White Army against the Bolshevik
revolutionaries. Other major tribal leaders and grandees formed
the Mountainous Republic of the North Caucasus in 1917 and
sought to join the presaged Soviet Union as a more auspicious
alternative to the previous imperial order. The proposed pan-Caucasian
state included the Chechens, Ingush, Dagestanis, and Kalbards.
By 1920, the Red Army was triumphant in the region, and proceeded
to violate its promises of political autonomy by simply annexing
the country. The tribes were now reorganized as Communist
soviets under the demarkation of the Mountainous Autonomous
Soviet Socialist Republic. The Marxist maxims of
the abolition of religion and the forced dismantling of old
class and tribal obstructions to Communism were applied immediately.
Zakat (the poor-tax compulsory in Islam) was abolished, fasting
during Ramadhan was banned, and the traditional dowry was
outlawed. The Arabic language, employed as a lingua franca
among the Muslim tribes that countervailed linguistic and
dialectical barriers, was forbidden. The suppression of the
Islamic faith, so integral in the Caucasian tribes' heritage
and daily life, was a major source of anger that caused sedulous
revolt and inter-ethnic violence against Russians and atheistic
Soviets throughout the 1920's and '30s. Many Tatars and Chechens
declared jihad against the intruding Soviets as a duty for
God. [4]. The contumacy of the Chechens and Ingush would not
be forgotten by Stalin, who logically construed them as a
threat during his brutal purges and expulsions to follow.
Finally, in 1924, Vladimir
Lenin's policy of granting limited political autonomy and
national franchise to all of the Soviet Union's recognized
minority ethnic groups resulted in the total division of the
Mountainous ASSR into the autonomous territories (oblasty)
of Chechnya, Ingushetiya, Adygea, and North Ossetia. The Chechen
and Ingush minorities were lastly merged into the Chechen-Ingush
ASSR by 1925. This ethno-political demarkation would remain
until the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Like the Kazakhs, Ukrainians,
and Tatars, the Ingush and Chechens suffered immensely from
the Soviet collectivization programmes. The Tatars and Caucasian
Muslim peoples were shipped out from their homes by the tens
of thousands to work on collective farms, where as many as
a quarter died from starvation and mismanagement [5]. Widespread
man-made famines created by improvident agricultural measures
struck Kazakhstan and the Caucasus, creating some of the worst
droughts of the 20th century that killed millions. These factors
of flagrant catastrophe, combined with the suppression of
Islam among Chechens and Ingush, would fuel constant revolts
and a continuously tenuous relationship with the Russians
that endured from the moment the Caucasians were incorporated
into the Russian orbit in the 19th century until today.
On June 22, 1941, the Germans
violated the previous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of non-aggression
and swept through the Soviet Union. The invading Romanians,
Hungarians, and Germans were surprised to find large segments
of their newly-conquered minorities volunteering against the
Soviets, including Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Ukrainians,
Tatars, and the Muslim Ingush and Chechens. Although most
of the revolt by the Muslims derived from a secular opposition
to Soviet rule, many Muslim Tatars, Bosnians, Albanians, and
Caucasians framed their struggle in an Islamic character.
The Islamist Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husayni rallied
Nazi SS legions against the Jews and Communists, in part to
prevent the presaged formation of the future state of Jewish
Israel in Palestine. From 1940 to 1944, the German battle
for the Caucasus was supported by massive insurgencies
by Chechen and Ingush rebels under Khasan Israilov that
greatly stalled the Soviet retrieval of the region from German
occupation.
Bosnian Muslim and Croat units of the SS Handschar rallied
on jihad by the Islamist Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husayni.
With the triumphant Soviet
defeat of the Third Reich and the reincorporation of the Tatars,
Volga Germans, Ingush, and
Chechens by 1945, the longstanding revolt and resistance played
by these peripheral ethnic minorities implicated entire races
as being a threat to the Soviet Union. Indeed, thousands of
Caucasian Muslims had betrayed the Soviets and supported the
Fascists, but thousands more were actively involved in the
Red Army and served on the front against the Germans, with
many receiving Hero of the Soviet Union notoriety. Stalin
then proceeded to initiate several of the worst campaigns
of genocide, forced labor, and expulsion of the 20th century
all in the span of less than five years.
Almost the entire Chechen
and Ingush Muslim populations were expelled from their
homelands in the Caucasus to refugee camps for compulsory
labor in the distant wastelands of the Kazakh and Uzbek SSRs
and Siberia. The chief of the Soviet secret police (NKVD),
the ruthless Levrenti Beria, ordered agents
and soldiers to raid Chechen and Ingush settlements for orderly
removal and purging. Those Chechens and Ingush deemed to be
involved in perfidity were put on cattle wagons reminiscent
of those in Auschwitz to be shipped for weeks at a time to
Central Asia without food, heating, or sanitation. Those treacherous
elements that were too infirm or ill were often shot outright,
or were sometimes even corralled into barns that were burnt
down with Muslims inside. Rapes and drunken rampages are reported
in historiography, though it is difficult to discern exaggeration
from fact. Over 500,000 Chechens, Tatars, and Ingush were
shipped on trains to the Kazakh and Uzbek SSRs, with over
a quarter of the Chechens starving to death
on the way or immediately upon arrival [6]. In these closed
refugee camps, deported Volga Germans, Koreans, Ingush, Chechens,
Tatars, Karelijan Finns, and Kalmyks all were relegated to
obligatory labor and re-education. At least 91,250 Ingush
were expelled from their homes [22].
It was only during the "de-Stalinization"
campaigns of Stalin's successor Nikita Khrushchev that race-based
restrictions were assuaged and free migration within the Soviet
orbit was legalized. However, the tremendous cost and impracticality
of leaving the booming Kazakh SSR for the desolate and impoverished
mountains of Chechnya was not met with universal appeal. Today,
there are still over 12,000 Chechen refugees in Kazakhstan,
with many being refugees who fled the next war in Chechnya
in the 1990's [7]. Many are still considered to be stateless
refugees, and are therefore blocked from access to social
services, education, and the job market. They are a source
of great concern for the semi-dictatorial regime of Kazakhstan
under Nursultan Nazarbayev, which has found the Chechens to
be highly connected to Islamist terrorist organizations [8].
Soviet chief of the secret policy Levrenti Beria, one of the
most ruthless and efficient mass murderers of the 20th century
The Chechen
Wars and the jihad against post-Communist Russia
The era between 1945 until
the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 under Boris Yeltsin --
with most of the Chechens and Ingush expelled from the Caucasus
-- was relatively uneventful for the autonomous republics
there. The tranquil interlude ended with the post-Soviet scramble
of non-Russian peoples to declare their independence. Ukraine,
Belarus, the Baltic states, Moldova, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan,
and the Central Asian Muslim states all succeeded. But when
the Chechens seized the opportunity to signal their independence,
the result was one of the bloodiest and disastrous wars of
the 1990's, the First Chechen War of 1994-6.
The reasons for the Russians'
acceptance of the independence of the former Soviet republics
but not the Chechens were manifold. If Chechnya were allowed
to break off, Yeltsin feared, every other small oblast and
province would also replicate this domino effect. So too,
the discord of a Muslim people through violent means would
proliferate throughout Russia's massive Muslim populations.
Lastly, the Muslims of the Caucasus were heavily involved
in organized crime and were actively found to be persecuting
ethnic Russians, causing a mass exodus of Slavs out of Chechnya
[9].
The First Chechen War was
far more secular than the Islamic jihad and terrorism of the
Second Chechen War of 1999. The governor of Russian Chechnya
declared independence as the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria
through violent paramilitary and political methods. Russia
retaliated with intense bombing sorties and a prolonged ground
assault that proved disastrous. More than 4,000 Russians were
killed [10]. Brutal ethnic cleansings and massacres were committed
against the Slavic minority and against the Chechen majority.
The war was an embarrassment, bringing Yeltsin to dismal popularity
ratings. The resultant armistice officially returned Chechnya
to Russian control, but its army was removed and the independence
of Chechnya was effectively completed. The brutality employed
by the Russians against the Chechens (and vice versa) would
fuel the formation of Islamist movements. Many turned to the
Qur'an and polemics from Islamists in the Gulf States as a
guarantor of social justice for Muslims against what they
perceived as Christian oppression. In this sense, the Islamist
jihad of Imam Shamil in the 19th century and the refusal of
"Christian" Russia to allow the Chechens to attain
their self-determination spawned the radical Islamism of the
Second Chechen War and today against Russian civilians. So
too, with Chechnya in reality independent, it was able to
re-establish and emphasize the values of the Chechen people
(especially Islam and their non-Slavic culture) that had so
languished during seven decades of Soviet hegemony. This further
inspired the alignment of militias and movements with an Islamist
character rather than a secular one.
Chechnya was de facto independent
until 1999, when the failed Boris Yeltsin was replaced by
the hard-line nationalist Vladimir Putin. Although often portrayed
by many in the West (especially like journalists Peter Baker
and Susan Glasser in Kremlin Rising) as merely Putin's
effort to re-establish Russian military glory and propitiate
political scandals at the expense of the Chechen people, Chechnya
was rife with organized crime and terrorism against Russian
civilians in Russia proper and against their Russian minority
in their own province that conveniently allowed Putin to start
the Second Chechen War of 1999 [11]. Despite
their Islamic rhetoric, many Chechens brutally executed civilians
(including four British engineers in 1998), kidnapped and
brutally raped foreign aid and hospital workers merely seeking
to help the people of this wickedly unstable and poor region,
and were believed to be involved in drug smuggling [12]. The
war began as Chechnya again asserted its independence, merged
with neighboring Ingushetia (to become Chechnya-Ingushetia),
and became swept by Islamist terrorist groups that brought
their assaults into Russia proper.
This time, the war in Chechnya
would be one of the worst human rights and refugee crises
of the 20th century. Putin employed ruthless scorched earth
tactics that effectively reduced Chechnya to smoldering rubble
and was therefore lionized as a triumphant hero in Russia
ever since for reversing the humiliation of the nation under
Yeltsin in 1996. Entire cities were bombed almost to the ground
with hardly a building undamaged. Civilian targets were not
discerned from terrorist insurgency targets. This brutality
of this war would be prolonged by many Islamist terrorist
combatants alongside the Chechen paramilitary. Foreign Mujahidin
from Bosnia and the Middle East sought training in Afghanistan
to fight jihad in Chechnya against the intense oppression
of Russia. However, the war in Chechnya was one of truculent
human rights atrocities, murders, rapes, and kidnappings committed
by both sides. Islamists like the Mujahid Shamil Basayev
declared independent Chechnya to be an Islamic emirate based
upon Sharia jurisprudence, and fought a hard guerilla war
in the mountains of Chechnya, Ingushetiya, and neighboring
Dagestan.
Putin ordered the Russian
army to invade both Chechnya-Ingushetia and Dagestan. The
Dagestan War lasted less than two months
and was a disaster for the Mujahidin. The Second Chechen War
in Chechnya and Ingushetiya took over a year. This time, nationalist
Russia under Putin was triumphant. Chechnya was reduced to
ash, its government formally reincorporated without any de
facto independence, and most of the Islamist groups dismantled
by force. Although Dagestani and Ingush Muslim peoples were
destroyed by the Russian assault, the Chechens became by far
the most religiously militant because most of the worst pitched
battles and bombings were in the Chechen capital of Grozniy
(meaning "terrible"). The Second Chechen War cost
about 3,000 Russian soldiers [13]. The cost to the Chechens
is unknown, and estimates range from 3,000 to over 20,000.
One liberal source cites 300,000 Chechen refugees who were
forced abroad, mostly to Kazakhstan like during Stalin's genocide
of the Chechens and Ingush (see above) [14]. Human rights
groups from America actively criticized the indiscriminate
Russian bombardment of the region, and many were suspicious
when in 2009 a prominent human rights activist against the
Russian treatment of Chechnya was found murdered [15]. Russians
emphasize that they were merely suppressing the terrorism
of hard-line Islamists.
Many literally sickening
cases of atrocities committed by Russians have been widely
reported outside of Russia to the dismay of human rights groups
and arguably buried inside Russia. One tragic case was that
of Elza Kungaeva, an 18-year-old Chechen Muslim girl who was
kidnapped from her home Russian Colonel Yuri Budanov. Carrying
her away from her family in a blanket, kept her in his trailer
alone for several hours, repeatedly raped, strangled,
and beat her to death with a blunt object before
burying her in the woods [23]. He was later jailed with a
shortened sentence of only 8 years, believed by some to have
been lessened through the mediation of the Putin government.
Russian nationalists and racialists rallied outside to counter
the protests of Chechens hoping to see the war criminal Budanov
hanged. Russia became a battleground of vociferous inter-ethnic
hatred between the Slavs and the Muslims as it retains today.
A rough map of the NON-independent Islamic peoples in southern
Russia, including Chechnya and Dagestan. From hrvc.net. (click
to enlarge)
Flag of the Islamic Republic of Içkeria.
The jihad
comes to Russia itself
Chechnya, Ingushetia, and
Dagestan were once again formally within the Russian orbit
once again as they remain still today. Like with Imam Shamil
(see above) -- who was lionized as an inspiration for the
Chechen Mujahidin -- the struggle for independence failed
miserably. However, the Islamist movements survived and exploded
in support from radicals in the Middle East who extolled their
jihad against a "Christian" oppressor against self-determination.
Shamil Basayev led an ongoing terrorist insurgency
in Chechnya, Dagestan, and in Russia proper from the end of
the Chechen War of 1999 until his death in 2006. The Islamists
espoused that they would bring terror and brutality into Russia's
homeland just as the Russians had decimated the Chechens'
homeland. Supported by foreign fidayin (holy fighters) from
Afghanistan and the Middle East, the terrorist attacks contributed
to the Islamization of the Chechen struggle for independence.
Chechen Islamist groups remained highly connected to international
terrorism abroad. Ayman al-Zawahiri, deputy of Usama bin Laden,
is believed to have traveled to Dagestan to encourage the
jihad during the Second Chechen War. Chechen Muslims have
been cited as being connected to terrorist groups abroad,
including the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), a group
against the dictatorial government of Islam Karimov seeking
to establish Sharia that the US considers a terrorist organization
[16]. Murders of foreign journalists, hospital workers and
engineers, and Russian nationalists are commonplace.
The Chechen Mujahidin under
Shamil Basayev committed many of the worst Islamist terrorist
attacks of the 20th and 21st centuries, and often in flagrant
contradiction to the Qur'an. Civilians were the primary target.
Hospital bombings of the sick, elderly, and infirm occurred
(although some have fancifully blamed the Russian government).
Hundreds of children were murdered in a primary school gym.
All of these are directly eschewed in the holy Hadith (words
of the Prophet) as unacceptable targets for jihad [18]. Many
Islamists insist that no Russian is a civilian because all
are forced to serve in the army, as in Israel. Others aver
that it is merely a reprisal for the indiscriminate Russian
slaughter of civilians during the war. Others note, correctly,
that far more Chechens were killed by the Russian invasion
than by Chechen terrorist attacks in Russia.
Just after the 1999 war in
Chechnya, Mujahidin blew up a series of apartment complexes
all across Russia that left almost 300 people and families
slain. There is tremendous controversy over this event, and
many believe Vladimir Putin caused or allowed it in order
to rouse the population for a full counter-offensive. In 2004
in the city of Stavropol, a commuter train was blown up by
a suicide bomber, killing 46 civilians. In 2004 the Moscow
metro was bombed, leaving 40 dead. In 2002, Chechen Mujahidin
with AK-47s, assisted by female suicide bombers with niqaba
(Saudi-style veils), held over 800 civilians hostage. A disastrously
improvident Russian plan of pumping anesthesia through the
ventilation system (regardless of any weight-quantity ratio
for small children and adults) exacerbated murders committed
by the Chechens and ultimately left over 170 civilians and
children dead. In 2004, two female Mujahidaat bribed airline
officials for a mere thousand rubles ($34) and immolated two
jets mid-flight, killing everyoe on board both (90 total)
[17].
2004 saw one of the most
tragic terrorist attacks in history in the tiny town
of Beslan in North Ossetia. Chechen fighters under
the authority of Shamil Basayev joined female suicide bombers
(often called "black widows") and besieged a school
with explosives and firearms. Over 1,200 hostages were taken
hostage, including over 300 children, and were packed in a
scorching-hot gymnasium for days [17]. The principal of the
school Lydia Tsaliyeva struggled to protect the welfare of
the children after the bodies of teachers and staff were dragged
in front of screaming children. Niqab-wearing women with bombs
strapped to their chests threatened to kill everyone in the
room if Russia did not withdraw from Chechnya. Children were
so overheated that many died of heatstroke, and most stripped
to their underwear or were naked to avoid overheating. Dehydrated,
many even drank their own urine to survive [21]. A horribly
botched Russian infiltration failed to minimize casualties,
and 300 people plus 186 children were killed [17].
Despite the brutal terrorism
against civilians, children, and the elderly by Chechen Mujahidin
under Shamil Basayev, it must be acknowledged that brutal
atrocities were committed by both sides. Liberal human rights
groups in America emphasize the Russian barbarism in Ingushetiya
and Chechnya, whilst Russian nationalists aver a motive of
mere self-defense against terrorism. Shamil Basayev, who is
believed by many (with some dispute) to have styled himself
after Imam Shamil the Mujahid since both resisted Russian
intrusion and sought to establish an independent Islamist
state, was believed to be killed by a Russian raid in 2006.
He is portrayed as a lion of Islam by many radical Muslims
today, and eschewed by others for his un-Islamic murder of
civilians. See the videos supporting the Chechen jihad
and "Shahid" (martyr) Shamil Basayev below for examples.
Youtube comments are filled with supportive praise such as
"Shahid insha-Allah" (a martyr/witness, God willing)
and masha'Allah (God approves). Keep in mind that most moderate
Muslims bitterly reject such an interpretation of Islam.
The future of the war and
the jihad remains uncertain. Chechnya remains very precariously
under Russian control. Its governor Ramzan Kadyrov has been
targeted for assassination multiple times, and has been known
to employ brutal torture and murder to keep control in the
region. Islamist militias and Mujahidin still prosper in the
Caucasus and Russia. After Basayev's death in 2006, other
Mujahidin declared the state of Chechnya (as part of Russia)
to be illusory. Dokka Umarov, a leading rebel, declared the
Emirate of Chechnya (or the Caucasian Emirate) that called
for an Islamist state and the castigation of non-Chechen,
non-Islamic social and political characteristics from daily
life. The tension will endure indefatiguably, and vey soon
Russia and Chechnya may be embroiled in even more brutal terrorist
attacks and perhaps another invasion into Chechnya. Many postulate
that the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008 to protect South
Ossetia and Abkhazia was, in reality, an excuse to massively
increase troop levels in southern Russia, i.e. just outside
of Chechnya. Georgia was one of the only countries to recognize
Chechnya when it broke off during the First Chechen War under
Gamsakhurdia. This has proved a major source of diplomatic
and cultural hatred between the two countries ever since.
When Lenin's multi-ethnic
dream failed: Russia swept by racism against Muslims
As a result of Chechen murders
of civilians in Russian theatres, schools, and hospitals,
Russian society has rapidly become one of the most ethnic
nationalist and anti-Muslim societies of Europe. It is believed
to have the largest proportion of racialists and far-right
skinheads on the continent, and many have entered parliament
(the Duma) [19]. Vladimir Putin's hard-line nationalist stance
against the perfidity and danger of Islam has greatly strengthened
a dominant social interpretation in Russian society of ethnic
Russian Slavs defending themselves from a highly problematic
Muslim culture (the largest in Russia) and the natives. Russia
has the fastest-growing Muslim population in Europe (quickly
becoming the largest religion), and with ethnic white Russians
having one of the lowest birthrates
in the world (1.41 children per woman) [20] and Muslims having
3-6 children on average, Russia is quickly heading towards
a cataclysmic inter-racial and inter-religious crisis. As
I experienced throughout Russia and in one of the former territories
of Imam Shamil's old Islamist emirate (the port city of Sochi),
more than a dozen Russians I interviewed blatantly expressed
great anger for a Muslim population that brings (in their
words) no benefit to Russia but tremendous danger and violence
via terrorism and separatism. Graffiti everywhere includes
Swastikas, Celtic crosses, and the phrases "F*CK MUSLIMS,"
"F*CK CHECHNYA," "F*CK JEWS," and "F*CK
ISLAM" are absolutely ubiquitous. So too, the huge non-Slavic
(Caucasian) population that I saw in Sochi and its environs
of southern Russia were victims of great discrimination and
discomfort by the Russians, and reacted to this burgeoning
Russian racism with constant counter-graffiti, including "F*CK
RUSSIA," "F*CK EUROPE," and "F*CK PUTIN."
Even in distant St. Petersburg over a thousand miles away,
the Russians I interviewed there actively demonstrated the
same blatant racism towards what they portrayed as a deluge
or flood of "dangerous" Muslims. The Crimea in Ukraine
has been struck by inter-racial violence between Ukrainians
and the Crimean Tatars who have returned after 50 years of
genocide and exile by Stalin (see
article).
As this essay illustrates,
Lenin's dream of a multi-ethnic and tolerant society with
ethnic Russian Slavs standing side-by-side with Chechens and
Ingush has failed miserably, resulting in a recurring cycle
of horrendous genocide, mass expulsion, murder, and truculent
wars for 200 years. Russia is rapidly embracing a culture
of intense chasm between ethnic Russians and "foreign"
Muslims that will spell inevitable conflict in the coming
years.
See videos praising Shamil Basayev
and the jihad against the Russians in Chechnya below.
(NOTE: some of these youtube videos
may not work occasionally because they are removed from youtube
for promoting terrorism)
A Chechen Muslim at prayer during bombing.
Shamil Basayev. The text in Arabic reads, "la-illa Il-Allah
Muhammad Rasullallah." (There is no God but Allah, Muhammad
is the Messenger of Allah).
Another photo of terrorist jihad leader Shamil Basayev making
a jihad video for world distribution to "the faithful".
A photo of demolished Grozny, from hrvc.net. Human rights
abuses were committed by both sides vociferously.
Another photo of Grozniy destroyed. From hrvc.net.
The jihad continued. This is the flag of the Chechen jihad
for many soldiers.
The jihad hits Beslan school. From voltairenet.
Russians carry their children to safety from the jihad.
Beslan in chaos after the Mujahidin assault.
My photo of a Lenin mural in Sochi. Lenin's dream of a multi-cultural
empire failed miserably. Russia, especially in its south,
is intensely split by increasing inter-ethnic and inter-religious
conflict against "Muslim immigrants" (in reality,
native Muslims who were conquered by Russians 200 years ago).
________________________________________
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR:
James Mayfield is a historian
and the Chairman of the European Heritage Library. I have
a Cum Laude BA in History with a Minor in Germanic Studies
(language and history), am presently working for my Masters
in History, and plan to immediately progress to my PhD Doctorate.
I have a special academic interest in Europe's diverse ethnic
identities, languages, and cultures, and the political struggles
of native European and immigrant minority identities. See
my staff entry for more information.
BIBLIOGRAPHY/SOURCES
USED:
-Images that lack an EHL
watermark are not our property. If no link is provided, we
were unable to locate the original owner. If you find that
your property has been used, feel free to notify us.
[1] Ostler, Nicholas. Empires
of the Word: A Language History of the World. New York:
Harper Collins, 2005. Page 435.
[17] Baker, Peter and Susan
Glasser. Kremlin Rising: Vladimir Putin's Russia and the
End of Revolution. Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2005.
Page 19.
[19] Investigation Discovery
(I.D.) Channel's series "Gang Nation," episode "Russia"
[20] CIA World Factbook
[21] Baker and Glasser 2005,
26.
[22] Baker and Glasser 2005,
103.
[23] Baker and Glasser 2005,
101.
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