Is Russia losing the North Caucasus? To answer this question, we must answer another question: What are the terrorists trying to achieve by detonating bombs in the Moscow metro?
Answer: They want Allah, not Russia, to rule the North Caucasus. They hate the West and despise both Putin’s rule and democracy. The Constitution states that the people rule, but Muslim fundamentalists insist that only Allah should rule, and they condone murder and kidnapping to achieve their goals. That they kill non-Muslim infidels is a given, but they also kill Muslims whom the fundamentalists consider infidels.
As an ideology, the Wahhabi movement is just as widespread in the 21st century as socialism was in the early 20th century. But would it be correct to say Russia and the United States are suffering from the same infectious disease?
Absolutely not. In the United States, terrorist attacks occur about once every five years, but in the North Caucasus they occur every five minutes. Under former President Boris Yeltsin, political Islam was a relatively marginal phenomenon, but after 10 years of Vladimir Putin’s power vertical, the situation has changed radically. For example, Dagestan’s Wahhabis were only a marginal force in 1999, but they have become so powerful now that Russia’s law enforcement agencies are afraid to go after them.
In the republic of Kabardino-Balkaria, business owners pay protection money to the Wahhabis. When Ruslan Aushev was president of Ingushetia, the republic did not join the war on the side of Chechnya. But during the years of Putin’s power vertical, Ingushetia was transformed into a safe haven for the mujahedin and instill more fear than the federal troops. Even the new Ingush president, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, is powerless to improve the situation. It was Putin’s autocratic rule that prompted the militant fundamentalists to grow from a marginalized group to the main power center in the North Caucasus.
If Russia were to liberalize, the situation in the North Caucasus would get even worse. Experience shows that extremists — whether they be social revolutionaries in the early 1900s, members of the Communist Internationals of the 1930s or Wahhabis in the Caucasus — view concessions as an excuse to step up their attacks.
It seems that Russia will be forced to part with the North Caucasus in the same way that France was forced to leave Algeria. This will not lead to peace and tranquility in the region. Either chaos will break out in the North Caucasus or a Taliban-type government will come to power — or both. After that, a new Islamist state will attempt to spread its radical ideology to the neighboring Krasnodar and Stavropol regions, the historical homelands of the Circassians.
Russia will experience the same problems with an independent North Caucasus that Israel now has with the Palestinians.
If Russia does not leave the North Caucasus, one of three scenarios will occur:
- A third war in the North Caucasus will break out.
- Russia will pour an endless stream of money into the North Caucasus, while extremists extort as much as half of the funds.
- Moscow will have to create regimes along the lines of that of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov. Although Kadyrov has been successful in crushing the Wahhabis, the Kremlin, by financing Kadyrov, has created a host of other problems at home and abroad.
Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.