Radicalization of Russias MuslimsAre Crimean Tatars Next?

(Part 1)
geocurrents.info/cultural-geography/religion/radicalization-russias-muslims-crimean-tatars-next

Asya Pereltsvaig
[Thanks to Iryna Novosyolova for a helpful discussion of some of the issues discussed in this post.]

A recent article in Foreign Aairs listed the use of the French language as the best predictor of a countrys rate of
Sunni radicalization and violence, and particularly of the percentage of a countrys Muslim population that joins in
the international Jihad. According to ICSR estimate, of all Western European countries France has supplied the
largest number of foreign ghters to ISIS in absolute terms, whereas Belgium leads in per capita terms (40 per
million population). The authors of the Foreign Aairs article, William McCants and Christopher Meserole, claim
that Francophone status is a better predictor of foreign ghter radicalization than wealth, education or health
levels, or even Internet access. The French language itself, the authors state, is obviously not to blame, but is
rather a mere proxy for the French political culture. Policies such as the French ban on face covering (adopted
in September 2010), which prohibits wearing niqbs, burqas, and other veils covering the face in public places,
are said to create a fertile ground for drafting recruits into the militant Islamist movement.
But France and Belgium may not be the only countries
where the assimilatory or discriminatory policies adopted by
the state encourage the radicalization of the Muslim
population. In fact, Russia has been experiencing the same
phenomena: a growth of violence perpetrated by Muslim
extremists at home and an increasing recruitment for Jihad
outside Russia. As mentioned in an earlier GeoCurrents
post by Evan Lewis, Russia has been one of the top
recruiting grounds for ISIS. According to ICSR estimate,
some 800-1,500 foreign ISIS ghters came from Russia. In
absolute numbers, this estimate surpasses the
corresponding numbers for United Kingdom (500-600),
Germany (500-600), Belgium (440), and possibly even
France (1,200). Another recent source cites Russian
Ministry of Internal Aairs ocial Vladimir Makarov as saying that 3,417 Russians have been recruited by ISIS to
ght in Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere in the Middle East, a major increase from the 1,800 Russian citizens ghting
for ISIS in September 2015. According to Makarov, some 200 of these Russian ISIS ghters are new converts to
Islam who do not come from the regions where this religion is traditional. Cases such as that of Varvara
Kraulova, a student who attempted to cross into Syria to join ISIS in the summer of 2015, are widely publicized in
the media (see, for example, here and here), but they constitute a minor fraction of Russian citizen who have
pledged themselves to the so-called Islamic State. As noted in the report on foreign ghters compiled by the
New York-based Soufan Group in December 2015, the overwhelming majority of the Russian ISIS ghters come
from traditionally Muslim areas of Russia, especially from the Northeast Caucasus (Chechnya, Ingushetia, and
Dagestan). Other areas with large and historically rooted Muslim populations, such as Tatarstan and
Bashkortostan in the Middle Volga region, have also provided substantial contingents of ISIS ghters, as did the
Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. According to Voice
of America, Russian-speaking jihadists from the former Soviet republics have formed their own community within
ISIS, located in Al-Raqqah (the de facto capital of ISIS), with schools and even prayers in Russian.
Russian authorities primarily adopt a punitive approach to the problem, conducting criminal prosecution of ISIS
ghters upon their return to Russia. According to Russias Chief Prosecutor Yury Chayka, 650 criminal cases
were open against Russian citizens ghting for ISIS in November 2015; by March 2016, this number was up to

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over 1,000. Attempts are also made to drive recruitment down by publicly humiliating those who join in the form
of shame boards that feature photos of those traitors [who] dishonor their names, their families, and their
clans by joining ISIS. The anti-terrorism forces also work with the religious authorities in the North Caucasus to
certify imams based on their attitudes towards terrorism, reports the Kavkaz-uzel.ru (Caucasian knot) website.
Yet such anti-terrorism measures seem to be less than consistent, according to the September 2015 Roundtable
Summary by Chatham House, as the Russian security services mostly appear to be looking the other way when
North Caucasian ghters travel to Syria, possibly because these potential troublemakers are at much greater
risk in the Middle East than at home.
Moreover, wittingly or unwittingly, Russian state policies also exacerbate the problem by creating a fertile ground
for radicalization and jihad recruitment, especially among the youth, as reported by Kavkaz-uzel.ru. The Soufa
Group report cited above also points out,
the North Caucasus has a long history of Islamist extremism, and the increased ow of ghters
from this region is in many ways unsurprising. Local grievances have long been drivers of
radicalization in the Caucasus, and as the strong centralized security apparatus of the Russian
government limits the scope for operations at home, the Islamic State has oered an attractive
alternative.
Russia has had a long history of exclusionary and discriminatory policies towardsand even wholesale
deportations ofits Muslim populations. As noted in the Wikipedia article on Islam in Russia,
the period from the Russian conquest of Kazan in 1552 to the ascension of Catherine the Great
in 1762 featured systematic Russian repression of Muslims [in the Middle Volga region] through
policies of exclusion and discrimination as well as the destruction of Muslim culture by the
elimination of outward manifestations of Islam such as mosques.
With the ascension of Catherine the Great in 1762, the focus
of these policies shifted to the North Caucasus. Here war
was waged by the Russian state against the indigenous
Muslim groups for a hundred years, until Chechnya was
nally incorporated into the Russian Empire in 1859, and
most of the Circassians in the Northwest Caucasus were
exiled to the Ottoman Empire in 1864. During the Soviet
period, Islam, like other religions, was suppressed. During
World War II, several Muslim ethnic groups, including
Chechens, Ingush, and Crimean Tatars were deported by
Stalins security forces from their homelands to Siberia and
Central Asia. According to Stanford historian Norman M.
Naimark, up to 40% of the Chechen nation perished in the
process; comparable numbers in other deported ethnic
groups died as well. In 1956, during Khrushchevs de-Stalinization program, members of the deported ethnic
groups who had not perished during their harsh exile were rehabilitated and some of the groups (for example,
Chechens but not Crimean Tatars) were permitted to return to their homeland. Nonetheless, the survivors of the
exile lost economic resources and civil rights, and continued to suer from discrimination, both ocial and
unocial.
At the time of the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, several Muslim-majority republics within Russia, such as
Tatarstan and Chechnya, asked for independence, yet the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation
declared such attempts to gain sovereignty to be illegal. (Crimea, which had been part of the Ukrainian Union

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Republic within USSR, remained part of newly independent Ukraine.) In February 1994, Russia oered an
autonomy agreement to Tatarstan and Chechnya, promising a broad range of rights and policy-making abilities,
but stopping short of full independence. Tatarstan accepted the agreement but Chechnya did not, and the paths
of their subsequent histories took dierent directions, as discussed in detail in my earlier posts on Tatarstan and
Chechnya.
As HNNs David R. Stone summarizes,
the end of Moscows authority meant that the Chechen people, well-equipped with historical
grievances to drive their discontent, found themselves in the Russian Federation due to the
accidents of history and map, but badly wanted out.
Over the course of the First (1994-1996) and Second (1999-2000) Chechen Wars, Chechnya was increasingly
driven in the radical separatist direction. But the wars also resulted in the installation of a new puppet Chechen
administration under the cleric Akhmad Kadyrov, who broke with the anti-Russian resistance movement, in part
over its increasing religious radicalism, and began working with Russian authorities. His son, Ramzan Kadyrov,
who took over after his fathers assassination in February 2007, continued the policy of apparent cooperation
with Moscow, which pleased neither the Chechen separatists nor the Russian loyalists. But he has never been a
Kremlin puppet, as some pundits have depicted him. Some observers, such as Viktor Shenderovich, even
suggest that the younger Kadyrov may be to some extent the puppet-master, pulling the strings in Kremlin. His
recent speech on February 23, 2016 (the 72nd anniversary of the Chechen deportation), in which Kadyrov laid a
curse on Joseph Stalin and the chief of the Soviet security apparatus Lavrentiy Berya, certainly indicates that
Kadyrov has his own agenda and does not always dance to Putins tune. Some pundits claim that the speech
aimed to further fuel the popular campaign for Kadyrov to remain in power after his term ends later this year.
Still, Kadyrov has largely remained, in the words of journalist Yulia Latynina, an all-powerful barbarian warlord at
the court of a once-powerful but now rotten empire, and a peculiar symbiosis of Russian and Chechen
leadership has emerged in the wake of the two Chechen wars. The current Chechen government accepts that
full independence from Russia may never happen, while Putins administration continues to use Chechen
insurgents as the much-needed enemy gure. Since this situation does not please Chechen separatists, they
continue their struggle by resorting to violence, both at home and in other Russian regions, even in Moscow
itself. Chechen terrorists perpetrated several horric terrorist attacks, most notably the October 2002 seizure of
the Nord-Ost musical theater in Moscow, where over 800 spectatorsmany of them childrenwere taken
hostage, and the seizure of an elementary school in the town of Beslan in North Ossetia on September 1, 2004.
These terrorist attacksand the botched rescue attempts by the Russian security forcesclaimed the lives of
some 130 hostages in the Nord-Ost theater, and 385 children and teachers in Beslan. These horric terrorist
attacks ended whatever hope might have still existed of winning broad international support for the cause of
Chechen independence.
The death of the old-style Chechen nationalism during the rule of the Kadyrovs, father and son, the economic
devastation of the republic that forced many residents to ee into neighboring regions of Ingushetia and
Dagestan, and the rise of criminal gangs engaging in lucrative trade in people, weapons, oil, and drugs have all
helped push Chechnya in a more radical direction. Historically, Islam in the North Caucasus was Su-oriented,
tolerant in its practice, and not especially strict, but the pressure of war resulted in a surge of fundamentalism, as
noted in a recent report on the North Caucasus by Konstantin Kazenin and Irina Starodubrovskaya, who claim
that the Chechen wars not only gave some younger people in the region military training and battleeld
experience, but also contributed to the inclusion of the North Caucasus in the global jihadist networks. Moreover,
David R. Stone points out that the traditional family and clan links that tied Chechen society together frayed and
broke as a result of death and displacement. Chechens who ed into other areas of the Caucasus found
themselves in environments where ethnic and clan identity mattered less, and religious identity mattered more.
As a result, many Chechen refugees were turned to radical Islam, a vision that goes far beyond a concrete local
struggle for specic, attainable goals to see instead a worldwide struggle between good and evil. While

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refugees owed out of Chechnya, foreign Islamist ghters owed in to aid what they saw as a Muslim ght
against the indels, be they Russians, Americans, or even relatively secular Chechens. In the words of an
Islamist militant leader Said Buryatsky, an ethnic Buryat and an ex-Buddhist convert to Islam,
gone are the times when we fought for the freedom of Chechnya, for this pagan notion. Now we
ght for Allah. Gone are the times when every Chechen was our brother. Now a Russian is our
brother if he is a mujahideen, and a Chechen if hes a kar is our bitter enemy.
Framed now mostly as an international radical Islamist movement, Chechen terrorism continues to hold its grip
on Russia, perpetrating attacks such as the Domodedovo International Airport bombing in 2011, which killed 37
people, and supplying numerous foreign ghters for ISIS.
Tatarstan, which accepted the autonomy agreement with
Russia in 1994, has been given many of the institutions of a
full-edged sovereign state, including a constitution, a
legislature, a tax code, a national bank, and a citizenship
system. At least in theory, it can conduct its own relations
with foreign states and can set its own foreign economic
policy and trade relations. But when push came to shove in
the wake of Russias current confrontation with Turkey,
which began in November 2015, central Russian
government began to dictate to Tatarstan what it can do in
relation to Turkey. For example, the Russian Ministry of
Culture circulated a recommendation to all republics with
Turkic titular populations, including Tatarstan, to break o
relations with the International Organization of Turkic Culture
(TRKSOY). It remains to be seen how long Tatarstan can manage to maintain its current run with the hare and
hunt with the hounds position in relation to Russia and Turkey. Because of its ambivalent situation, Tatarstan
has also experienced some radicalization of its Muslim population, similar to what has been happening in
Chechnya, albeit in a milder form. According to various sources, including the FSB, a substantial number of ISIS
recruitsperhaps as many as 200 or morecame from Tatarstan and the other Middle Volga republics.
Ironically, ISIS recruitment for the war in Iraq and Syria resulted in a sharp decrease in terrorist attacks within
Tatarstan since the early 2014.
Also as in Chechnya, the focus of the militant movement shifted from ethnic to religious identity. Historically,
Volga Tatars have been fairly moderate Muslims, yet they have succeeded in retaining their ethno-linguistic
identity despite almost half a millennium of Russian rule: according to the 2002 population census, 96.3% of
Tatars still speak their ancestral language, compared to only less than half of the Khanty people, a quarter of the
Mansi, and 12% of the Itelmen. But in recent decades this situation has been changing, as more extreme forms
of Islam have been gradually gaining ground in Tatarstan. The internationalization of Tatarstans Muslim culture
has been studied in detail by Rais Suleimanov, an expert on inuences of foreign Muslim groups within Russia,
particularly in the Middle Volga region; his multi-part article on how Turkish emissaries for decades inuenced
the minds and hearts of our [Tatar] compatriots can be read here and a shorter version of it is found here.
According to Suleimanov, religious ties between Tatarstan and Turkey, which began on the basis of the ethnolinguistic and cultural connections between the two peoples, have allowed a more internationalist form of Islamist
ideology to penetrate Tatarstan.
Several factors, however, mitigate Islamist radicalization in Tatarstan. Compared to Chechnya, Tatarstan has
both more de jure and de facto rights (for instance, only Tatarstan retained the right to call its head a President;
Kadyrov is known simply as the head of Chechnya, not its president). Also, in sharp contrast to the war-torn
Chechnya, whose economic and social development has been stunted by the armed conict, Tatarstan ranks
relatively high in terms of economic and social development indicators. For example, Tatarstans GDP per capita

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is more than 4.5 times higher than that of Chechnya. According to Rosstat data, average per capita income in
Tatarstan in 2013 was 26,161 rubles per month, whereas in Chechnya it was only 17,188 rubles per month;
moreover, nearly half of Tatarstans residents personal income comes from salary and business prots, whereas
in Chechnya only about a third of personal income comes from those sources, with a bigger chunk (38.1%)
deriving from other sources of income, including currency operations and hidden money streams. In Tatarstan
more than three quarters of the population live in towns and cities, whereas in Chechnya only about a third do.
Unemployment is nearly 7 times lower in Tatarstan than in Chechnya (4% vs. 26.9%). An average Tatarstan
resident enjoys 6 extra square feet of living space compared to Chechnya. The availability of physicians and
nurses per capita is 1.5 times greater in Tatarstan than in Chechnya, and the percentage of students in higher
education institutions in Tatarstan is twice that in Chechnya. It may be for those reasons that Tatarstan has
supplied 5 times less foreign ghters for ISIS in absolute terms, and 15 times less in per capita terms than
Chechnya.
(To be continued)

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