North Caucasus Turmoil Intensifies on Europe’s Doorstep
By Aslan Doukaev
March 2012
A female suicide bomber killed herself and at least five police officers on March 6, when she blew herself upat a police checkpoint in a village in Daghestan. She acted in apparent revenge for the death of her husband last month at the hands of security forces. This has become an all too familiar story, not just in Daghestan, but across the North Caucasus, where over the past decade, the initially predominantly Chechen military resistance to Russia has morphed into a militant and highly organized Islamic insurgency.
In Chechnya itself, fierce fighting last month along the border with Daghestan left 17 government troops dead and 24 wounded, state news agencies quoted Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev as telling Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. According to the same source, the insurgents lost only seven people in the clashes, which lasted for over a week. It was a highly unusual admission from one of Russia’s top security officials, who are not generally prone to disclose the real extent of their failures, preferring instead to dress them up in euphemism and understatement.
One possible explanation for this surprising candidness is the fact that in the age of mobile telephones it is extremely difficult, if not totally impossible, to keep a lid on such events. On February 15, an insurgent commander succeeded in calling Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s (RFE/RL) North Caucasus Service to report – against a background of heavy gunfire — that on that day alone the insurgents had killed 4 police officers and wounded at least 13.
Another explanation is that developments in the North Caucasus, after more than 17 years of conflict, no longer generate serious interest in the outside world. The events described above received only scant coverage in Western media.
There are, however, three compelling reasons why the ongoing conflict in the North Caucasus merits more attention.
First, the North Caucasus insurgency is without doubt one of the world’s most ruthlessly efficient and effective jihadi groups.With a total force of no more than 1,000 — 1,500 fighters, it killed an average of two people per day last year and perpetrated a terrorist attack on average every other week, including the suicide bombing at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport in January 2011 that killed 40 people.
The insurgency is headed by Doku Umarov, whom the U.S. State Depart-ment included on the list of most-wanted terrorists in July 2010, and offering $5 million for information leading to his capture. In 2007, Umarov had announced the establishment of a Caucasus Emirate whose borders encompass the Russian republics of Chechnya, Daghestan, Ingushetia, North Ossetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachayevo-Cherkessia, and the federal region of Stavropol.
Whether, as some observers believe,1 Umarov receives funding from Al-Qaeda, and that Al-Qaeda has played a key role in "proselytizing jihadism” to the mujahidin in Chechnya and elsewhere in the Caucasus, has not been definitively proved. The fact remains, however, that in his regular video addresses, Umarov has repeatedly expressed support for Muslims worldwide engaged in jihad, and offered them what help and advice he can give. Chechen fighters already occupy prominent positions within some Taliban groups.2 They also appear to inspire emerging jihadi groups in parts of Central Asia and Russia’s Volga region. Taliban commanders, acknowledging that many of their fighters either fought or trained in Chechnya,3 seek to coordinate their activities with those of the North Caucasus insurgency.
Second, the North Caucasus militancy is arguably as great a threat to political stability in Russia — and in the longer term, to the survival of the Russian Federation — as the emerging protests against President-elect Vladimir Putin. It was, after all, the then-largely ignored fighting that erupted in 1988 in Azerbaijan’s disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region that set in motion the chain of events culminating in the collapse of the Soviet Union three years later.
Soon after the Black Sea resort town of Sochi won its bid to host the 2014 Olympic Games, the Daghestani militants vowed to "attack any of the so-called ‘Olympic participants’ who represent the country’s war against Muslims.” The North Caucasus militants have already shown they are capable of staging attacks in far-away Moscow. Surely, targeting Sochi, which is only 600 kilometers from Grozny, cannot be logistically more challenging than targeting the nation’s capital. Such an attack would not just disrupt one of the world’s main sporting events: it would irrevocably damage Putin’s personalized ruling system, which puts security and stability before democracy and human rights.
The leaders of the Emirate warn
that their planned Pan-Caucasus
Islamic state will extend beyond
the territory of the present Russian Federation.
And third, the threat posed by the insurgency does not stop at Russia’s borders. The leaders of the Emirate warn that their planned Pan-Caucasus Islamic state will extend beyond the territory of the present Russian Federation. Georgia is their stated first target. Umarov has already appointed the Emir of Georgia. But Azerbaijan too — the conduit for vital oil and gas export pipelines — is vulnerable. Azerbaijani fighters are a common sight in rebel groups in Chechnya and Daghestan.
Umarov has also threatened the West. The original video statement on the declaration of the Caucasus Emirate, which RFE/RL’s North Caucasus Service managed to obtain before it was made public, contained threats to attack the United States, the U.K., and Israel in retaliation for their reluctance to condemn or challenge Russia’s policies in Chechnya. After the service broadcast parts of declaration, Umarov publicly retracted that threat. It is not clear, however, whether that was a genuine change of heart or a tactical move intended to placate the critics. Umarov’s subsequent rhetoric suggests the latter.
For years, Russia employed a two-pronged strategy in the North Caucasus. It used brute force — often indiscriminately and whole-heartedly — and money, mostly halfheartedly and selectively. The biggest recipients of Russian funds are loyal local families and clans, which, like the Kadyrov clan in Chechnya, are granted carte blanche to conduct counterinsurgency operations, usually accompanied by campaigns of kidnapping, torture, and murder against suspected insurgents and critics, as long as the effort brings a semblance of stability to the region. It is increasingly obvious that this approach has failed to bring a lasting solution to the conflict.
Moscow has been relentlessly decimating international representation in the North Caucasus for years. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which monitored human rights in Chechnya since 1995, was compelled to close its office there as of January 1, 2003. No official explanation was given but the then Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said the OSCE was not able to "fully realize the new realities in Chechnya” meaning, apparently, that the Russian government was unhappy with OSCE questioning Moscow’s spin on the situation on the
ground.
Shortly afterwards, the Russian authorities began to harass human rights groups. Foreign NGOs and aid agencies were effectively squeezed out of Chechnya by the end of 2008.
At the same time, Western media focus on the North Caucasus, and the attention paid by policymakers to the region, have dwindled as more compelling geo-political
developments elsewhere — from the Iraq war to the Arab Spring and the Israel-Iran standoff — have captured world headlines. The resulting dearth of information has fed a vicious circle of neglect of the North Caucasus.
The West should stop ignoring the conflict in the North Caucasus and step up its pressure on Moscow to address the injustices that fuel it. In a word, these are political and economic disenfranchisement, and the denial of basic human rights, precisely what helped catalyze the Arab revolution.
Even if the Russian military succeed in locating and killing Umarov, the younger generation of commanders are equally radical, if not more so. Once they take over, the West will have even less chance of understanding, let alone trying to influence, the dynamics of Russia’s home-grown jihad.
1 http://csis.org/files/publication/110930_Hahn_GettingCaucasusEmirateRt_Web
2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU3tvYp0LNU
3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9x-TIXPdnAI
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About the Author
Aslan Doukaev is the director of the North Caucasus Service for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
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