"Chechnya: What You Need to Know"

[BainsBane]

While this would typically be a Good Read, I'm posting it in GD to encourage wider readership.

Chechnya: What You Need to Know"
By David R. Stone

"When the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, one of the chief causes was the power of local nationalists who resented rule from Moscow. But there were limits to what those nationalist sentiments could achieve. The end of Moscow’s authority meant that power and sovereignty flowed to the Soviet Union’s fifteen union republics, roughly analogous to American states. KGB veteran Nikolai Leonov once remarked that the Soviet Union was like a chocolate bar, already marked with lines that made it easy to break apart. Those fifteen pieces of the chocolate bar themselves had internal divisions, but Soviet ethnic groups which lacked their own union republic found that the breaking apart stopped short of independence for them. 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.

Under the leadership of President Dzhokhar Dudaev, Chechnya worked from 1991 to 1994 to assert its independence from Boris Yeltsin’s Russia. Both Chechen autonomy, and the breakdown of law and order that accompanied it, were more than Yeltsin’s government could accept. When efforts at a political compromise failed, Russian troops invaded Chechnya in December 1994. . . . .

Islam in the North Caucasus had generally been tolerant in its practice and not especially strict, but the pressure of war made it increasingly fundamentalist. While refugees flowed out of Chechnya, foreign Islamist fighters flowed in to aid what they saw as a Muslim fight against infidel Russians. The result was that the Chechen resistance became increasingly internationalized and radicalized. The relative importance of Chechen independence shrank. Instead, jihad became a far more important element of the Chechen cause. . . .


The result has been the death of old Chechen nationalism. The current Chechen government accepts that leaving Russia may never be an option. The activist remnant of the Chechen movement has been left with little besides radical Islamism, a vision that goes far beyond a concrete local struggle for specific, attainable goals to see instead a worldwide struggle between good and evil."


http://hnn.us/articles/chechyna-what-you-need-know

[Bonobo]

1. Read the phrasing here.

"Islam in the North Caucasus had generally been tolerant in its practice and not especially strict, but the pressure of war made it increasingly fundamentalist. "

Islam is a religion, encompassing a wide range of beliefs. It has no volition, so the phrase "Islam has been tolerant" and "made it increasing Fundamentalist" imparts an inaccurate spin and reveals something of the underlying meta-message.

Islam cannot, itself, BE anything. It cannot be tolerant or intolerant. It is the people in that country who choose how religion will inform their behavior or back up their political goals. etc.

To the extent that Chechnya has become more radically Islamic, one must lay the blame for that where it belongs. With the people who have radicalized themselves and use doctrine to rationalize their actions. Same old story.
We cannot blame war for "making Islam" more fundamentalist. It is not an issue of Islam itself, but the wrong-headed application of it in the service of political goals.

[BainsBane]

2. Would it be too much to actually read the article?

[Bonobo]

3. Too much for what?

I read what I read and commented on what I read.

People have their own POV's that sometime come out through scrutinizing the phrases they unconsciously use.

That is called, as you know, explication.

[BainsBane]

5. the point is a war of Independence and Russian

oppression that radicalized the population. It's not really that difficult of a concept. There are thousands of parallels in history.

Nat Turner was radicalized by slavery. Tupac Amaru II and Tupac Katari were radicalized by Spanish colonial rule and increased economic burdens placed on their communities by the Bourbon Reforms. Henri Christophe was radicalized by French efforts to reimpose slavery in Haiti, the Males conspirators by slavery itself and the accompanying oppression of African freedpeople, while Islam provided their ideology of empowerment, just as Christianity did for Nat Turner. People do not spontaneously take up arms. They do so in opposition to a situation they find so unbearable they are willing to risk their lives.

[FarCenter]

10. Chechens were mainly Sufis until converted by Salafists from Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries.

You are right that Islam is far from monolithic, and it has no leader comparable to the pope.

[muriel_volestrangler]

12. That's nitpicking about the style of language

It is common to use the name of a religion to refer to the attitudes of the followers. And the precise phrasing used ("Islam in the North Caucasus had generally been tolerant in its practice ... increasingly fundamentalist&quot is saying "Islam in the North Caucasus became increasingly fundamentalist in its practice". So it is 'the practice' of Islam being called 'tolerant' or 'fundamentalist'. This clearly refers to the people who practice it.

[Hekate]

4. Good article, BB

This part at the end speaks for so much of the entrenched intractable insoluble grievance-laden fighting that goes on in certain parts of the world:

... a vision that goes far beyond a concrete local struggle for specific, attainable goals to see instead a worldwide struggle between good and evil.

As Zbigniew Brzezinski has pointed out in this and other contexts, that is a Manichean worldview. It doesn't lend itself to peace or negotiation, because when you are in a battle between the great abstractions of Good and Evil, there is no compromise possible.

We certainly have a strain of it in our own culture, so it would be helpful if our internal and foreign policies could recognize it when it presents itself, but that is a conversation for another time...

[BainsBane]

7. Truthfully, I know zilch about Chechnya

but it is a war of Independence, which our own nation went through only successfully. That it no way justifies the actions of the Boston bombers. There is no justification for such acts. But in Brzezinski's concept of a Manichean worldview, it would seem that applies as much to the Russians as it does Chechen radicals. Putin chose to wield an iron fist to bring them back under Russian control.

The weirdest thing about the Boston bombings is how they held the US responsible for oppression in Chechnya. There is likely to more to US policy toward the region than I understand, but it seems that a Russian embassy would have been a more logical target.
It doesn't appear to me these boys thought through much at all.

[Hekate]

8. I think the Russian government is much more pragmatic and power-driven

Of course, the Soviets, being officially atheist, tried to stamp out religion within the USSR. As with the English trying to stamp out Roman Catholicism in Ireland, all that happened was that for marginalized groups, their religion became even more a part of their ethnic and (in their dreams) national identity. That's why when the Poles had their Solidarity movement, it was so tied up with Roman Catholicism. And why in Chechnya, the urge to break away became so tied up with Islam.

The Poles got their country back. The Irish are still split, and it embitters enough of them to keep The Troubles bubbling just beneath the surface. Chechnya, as the article states, is not going to get to be a nation of its own, not by Russia's hand, and certainly not under that old KGB hand Putin.

I don't know that much about Chechnya myself, although I do know this has been brewing poisonously for quite some time. The Chechen militants have committed some truly atrocious acts in and around Russia in the past 20 years. But as with the Irish, the problems go back centuries. There's nothing like holding on to a grudge.

The article you cite is very interesting -- I see the key in the last two paragraphs. Fundamentalist, radicalized, internationalized; and quite unlike Ireland, The relative importance of Chechen independence shrank. Instead, jihad became a far more important element of the Chechen cause. . . .

Just to clarify, Manichean is a term I hadn't thought of since I studied world religions, but in the past couple of years Brzezinski's use of the term in interviews (It tickled me that he referred to the Neocons!) caught my attention. The Neocons are like that: in their view the world is locked in a battle between pure good and pure evil. But pure good and pure evil don't exist in the real world, do they? They are abstractions.

I think I'm starting to wander a bit -- it's after 2 a.m. Must go...

[BainsBane]

9. right, I guess I meant it in the sense of inflexible

uncompromising, like the neocons and seemingly Putin as well as some of the Chechen rebels.

[whttevrr]

11. Manichean worldview

C'mon guys... I only read at 259 words per minute...

(is there a snark tag?)