An Intifada Smoldering in Russia?
We’re hearing an awful lot about l’Intifada brewing in Western Europe. But what about Russia? The distinguished international journalist Georgie Anne Geyer has a friend, former Radio Free Europe reporter Paul Goble, who is living now in Estonia and who has access to “the most obscure, but revealing” newspapers from the region. In a recent column, Ms. Geyer was able to relay concerns from her friend that the recent silence from Russia as regards domestic terrorism belies a serious and growing struggle against Islamofascism.
There are now probably 24 million Muslims among 143 million people in the Russian Federation alone. Between 500,000 and 1 million are radicals, “followers of sects of Islamic origin who call for the physical destruction of all who disagree and the overthrow of the existing system by force.” The government’s “lack of a clearly defined and agreed-upon policy on how best to deal with the Muslims” has seriously exacerbated inter-ethnic relations.
Then in mid-October came an actual battle in Nalchik, the capital of the Russian republic of Kabardino-Balkaria. The uprising left 92 Islamist militants and 24 police and civilians dead. The battle was wholly unexpected because this republic is next door to Chechnya, where a brutal war has been waged by Moscow against the Chechens since the late 1980s. It was the first time that the wars of the Caucasus peoples against Moscow’s iron fist had moved outside of Chechnya.
Analysts quoted by Paul and others noted that the militants were “local clandestine groups” and no longer “rebel incursions” from Chechnya. Alexey Malashenko, a Caucasus expert at the Moscow Carnegie Center, was quoted in the Financial Times: “This attack wasn’t connected with Chechnya. It was to demonstrate that there is a big problem in the north Caucasus that includes all the republics.”
We knew about Chechnya. But should we not have predicted that this islamist militant movement, handled with mixed success by Russian authorities, was only the beginning of trouble for the gargantuan Russian Federation? Does Ms. Geyer’s friend have additional information as to the root causes?
Paul Goble, again. This time, his column was headlined, “Moscow Losing in North Caucasus Because of ‘Soviet’ Approach.” In short, Paul wrote that Moscow was persisting in striking brutally with the Russian military, but such hoary Soviet tactics were succeeding only in driving more of the historically rebellious Caucasus peoples against them. Moscow has “almost a third of the forces of its army there,” he wrote, “and this disposition means that this region as a whole now has more soldiers per square kilometer than any other place in Europe.”
In addition, he writes, today’s Russia — the sickman of the Steppes — is going through a “serious systemic failure.” And amidst this gradual, but serious, dissolution within the Russian Federation’s failure of modernization suddenly come radical Muslims, spreading out of the “old war” in Chechnya and into hitherto more-or-less peaceful parts of the Caucasus, and bringing the wars ever closer to Moscow.
Islamist militant flames swirling from the Middle East and into Africa, Southeast Asia, Europe, and now Russia. Whiffs of the putrid smoke from 9/11 still linger in the Americas. I fear that we’re fast running out of Earth safe from this wildfire.
Cross-posted at TMH’s Bacon Bits
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Posted by The MaryHunter on November 10, 2005 11:04 am
» Filed Under News, War On Terror
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