[新聞] From Moscow to Mecca
標題: From Moscow to Mecca
As this part of Russia’s empire frays, fundamentalist Islam takes a stronger
hold
ONLY the call to prayer disturbs the morning air in the small Dagestani
village of Novosasitli. Dogs do not bark here. All “unclean” animals have
been exterminated. Apart from an occasional counter-terrorist raid, life is
quiet. People leave their houses unlocked; there has not been a theft for
years. A few weeks ago two women were killed—but they were fortune-tellers,
or, according to local men, witches.
Most women wear the hijab. Alcohol is forbidden, polygamy common. Officials
rarely come by, but life in the village is more orderly than in much of the
rest of Dagestan. The locals have built a school extension for the growing
number of children. Some of the money came as a zakat—a mandatory charitable
contribution by the better-off to the poor, as required by the Koran.
Disputes are settled by imams.
The village is home to Abdurakhim Magomedov, a charismatic spiritual leader
of Islamic fundamentalists and the first translator of the Koran into the
local language. “Fifteen years ago, only half the people in Novosasitli
wanted to live by sharia law. Today everyone in the villages wants it,” he
says. To achieve this, he adds, Dagestan needs to be free.
Last summer, after a few young women were kidnapped from the village, a
community group set up a checkpoint and a night watch. But last month a
military truck with ten gunmen came and smashed the checkpoint. If this was
an attempt to draw Novosasitli into Russia’s orbit, it achieved the
opposite, increasing the tension that is tearing apart not only Dagestan but
the whole north Caucasus—and, with it, Russia.
Russian rule has always been tenuous there. The territory, which stretches
from the Black Sea to the Caspian, was colonised late and was never fully
integrated into Russia’s empire. Its Muslim peoples enjoyed considerable
autonomy, both religious and cultural, until the Bolsheviks took over—
whereupon the Caucasus was so modernised and Sovietised that when the Soviet
Union fell only Chechnya declared its independence.
Two wars later Chechnya is relatively stable under President Ramzan Kadyrov,
a former rebel whose patron is Vladimir Putin, Russia’s prime minister.
Grozny, Chechnya’s once-ruined capital, is now a surreal place boasting
several skyscrapers, the largest mosque in Europe, chandelier-lit streets and
a Putin Prospect. The president enjoys something of a personality cult:
official licence-plates carry his initials, and banners outside schools thank
him for “taking care of our future”. Yet Chechnya is virtually a separate
state, where women must wear headscarves in public and the sale of alcohol is
restricted.
Violence has spread from Chechnya to other north Caucasus republics and
beyond. Outsiders notice it only when suicide-bombers blow themselves up on
the Moscow metro or at the capital’s international airport. Yet parts of the
north Caucasus are in a state of simmering civil war. Statistics are
unreliable, but by the estimates of Memorial, a human-rights organisation, at
least 289 Russian soldiers and policemen were killed last year and 551
wounded. About the same number died in 2009—more than Britain has lost in
Afghanistan over the past ten years.
On paper, all five predominantly Muslim republics (Dagestan, Chechnya,
Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachaevo-Cherkessia) are part of a
single administrative district. On the ground, however, they are separated by
borders and checkpoints fortified by sandbags and machineguns. Crossing from
one republic to another feels like crossing a national frontier. Taxi-drivers
from Dagestan prefer not to venture into Chechnya.
Each of the republics has its own political set-up and is unhappy in its own
way, but the root of the problem, say experts, is shared: the
de-legitimisation and crumbling of the Russian state and its inability to
rule by law. In much of the north Caucasus corruption has eroded the very
basis of the state, which performs almost none of its functions and is seen
as a source of disorder and violence rather than security.
This also holds true in the rest of Russia, but the north Caucasus has a
strong alternative to Russia’s political system: Islam, which now unites all
the Muslim republics. Whereas the first Chechen war in 1994 was fired by
nationalism and separatism, the second war (which echoes still) had a strong
religious dimension. The leader of the Islamist rebels, Doku Umarov, has
proclaimed himself emir of north Caucasus.
Sufis v Salafis
The failures of the Russian state and the compensating role of Islam are
particularly noticeable in Dagestan, the most religious, populous and complex
of all the north Caucasian republics. It is double the size of Chechnya and
consists of several dozen ethnic groups, most with their own language.
The conflict in Dagestan, however, is not between ethnic groups but between
Sufism, a traditional form of Islam which includes local customs and
recognises the state, and Salafism, which rejects secular rule and insists
that Islam should govern all spheres of life. As Alexei Malashenko, an expert
on Islam at the Carnegie Moscow Centre, puts it: “The goal of building a
pure Islamist state might be a Utopia, but the struggle for it can be
infinite.”
Salafism started to spread in Dagestan only after the Soviet collapse, partly
as a reaction to the tame, officially recognised local version of Islam.
(Raising a vodka shot to Allah used to be standard practice in the Caucasus,
says Mr Malashenko.) Tension escalated in the late 1990s when Islamist
radicals took over two villages in Dagestan, declaring sharia law and chasing
away both local government and the police.
Sufi leaders, who had exercised a virtual monopoly over religious life in
Dagestan and enjoyed official backing after the end of Soviet rule, saw the
rise of Salafism as a threat. Local officials, many of whom were Sufis,
started to put pressure on Salafis, forcing their spiritual leader out of
Dagestan. In August and September 1999 Shamil Basayev, the leader of the
Chechen fighters, and Amir Khattab, who was born in Saudi Arabia, led two
armies into Dagestan, triggering the second Chechen war.
“I told Basayev that Dagestan was not ready for jihad, but he did not listen,
” says Mr Magomedov, the Islamist leader. Indeed, most people in Dagestan
resented the intruders. They treated the Russian army as a liberating force,
and backed it with local volunteers. Sharia villages were cleared of radicals
and the parliament of Dagestan passed a law forbidding extremism and
Wahhabism, although it did not define either.
Sufi leaders used Basayev’s invasion to see off Salafis as a whole. In
effect, the state took sides in a religious war. Wahhabism became synonymous
with terrorism. Anyone who practised Salafism was outlawed by the
authorities. Torture, disappearances and killings became commonplace. Bearded
men from villages such as Novosasitli were driven to Chechnya by federal
forces, only to be found dead a few days later. In Novosasitli soldiers
publicly tore up copies of the Koran.
“The terror was conducted by the state, and in response [the insurgents]
turned to counter-terrorism,” says Mr Magomedov, who himself has been
arrested and tortured several times. His views are moderate compared with
those of radical Salafis, who blow up shops selling alcohol and plant bombs
on beaches. He does not condone the bombing at Moscow airport because it does
nothing to advance Islam. But he has nothing against attacks on the army or
security services, if they are engaged in a war against Islamist
fundamentalists.
Although the insurgents use Salafism as their ideology, not all Salafis are
rebels. The number of insurgents is estimated by experts at 500 men, plus
600-800 part-timers, across the whole north Caucasus. They draw their main
strength not from numbers or even ideology, but from the failures of the
Russian state and its injustices. Attacks on policemen and the army in
Dagestan have doubled in the past year. They are met with popular
indifference, if not approval.
Leaving Friday prayers in Grozny
Salafis have adopted the rhetoric of human rights and built up a mood of
political protest, whereas the Sufis have been tainted by their association
with a brutal and corrupt state, explains Nadira Isaeva, the 32-year-old
Salafi editor of Chernovik, an independent newspaper. “The Sufi leaders have
no active civil position,” she says, “but they control vast financial
assets, including tourist companies that sell haj tours to Mecca.”
The result of all this has been a surge in Salafism. Ten years ago only 10%
of people in Novosasitli were Salafis. Today at least 50% are, and almost all
the young embrace it. Many of them have studied in Egypt and Syria, and speak
Arabic.
A country of strongmen
A new local government appointed by the Kremlin last year tried to ease
pressure on the fundamentalists, allowing them to practise Salafism without
being arrested for it. Rizvan Kurbanov, the deputy prime minister in charge
of security, says his first step was to visit a Salafi mosque and talk to its
spiritual leaders, including Mr Magomedov. But the government is worried
about giving Salafis equal access to services or allowing them political
representation, partly for fear of a backlash from mainstream imams.
Trying to claw back some credibility, the government has cracked down on
casinos (which operated openly despite a previous ban) and set up a
commission to help former rebels adapt to a peaceful life. It has even talked
about an amnesty for those who are willing to lay down their arms. But as Mr
Magomedov argues, the people who need an amnesty are those who are accused of
extremism simply because of their faith, not their actions.
Examples abound. Last year a group of young bearded Salafi men drove to the
mountains for a picnic, stopping on the way in a small town where they were
attacked by local Sufists. The police, many of whom are Sufis, joined in,
beating them up so brutally that one of them died. “While the authorities
are trying to entice former rebels back to normal life, their own
subordinates are pushing another 100 into the hands of the rebels,” says Ms
Isaeva.
Police violence is not restricted to the fight with the Islamists, either. A
14-year-old boy was tortured and crippled by the police after being wrongly
accused of stealing a drill. Sapiat Mag Omedova, a petite female lawyer who
was thrown out of a police station and ended up with concussion, has been
accused of attacking four burly policemen. None of these cases led to police
bosses being punished. The police force, which is 20,000 strong, is barely
controlled by the Dagestani government.
Mr Kurbanov says it is not in his power to fire a police chief, since both
the police and security services answer to Moscow. That is not the only
reason. Unlike Chechnya, Dagestan is a state of semi-autonomous districts
controlled by local strongmen who are backed by a local police chief and
often by an imam. Said Amirov, the wheelchair-bound mayor of Makhachkala, who
has survived at least 15 assassination attempts, is considered to be as
powerful as the president of the republic. An attempt by the president or his
team to cleanse a particular police department is seen as a declaration of
war against a powerful vassal.
The balance between regions and clans is fragile. Saigidpasha Umakhanov, the
mayor of Khasaviurt, a town close to the Chechen border, is a charismatic
strongman who led local armed resistance to Basayev in 1999. “There is no
one in the republic who could dislodge me,” he boasts. “Only the president
of Russia.” If he himself were to die, “at least I would die like a real man
—not like some bastard with a bowed head.” The prospect of death is real
enough: a vast computer screen on his desk displays input from multiple CCTV
cameras.
As a powerful regional leader, Mr Umakhanov sneers at Magomedsalam Magomedov,
who was appointed Dagestan’s president without consultation with local
strongmen. “He is not an independent player. The oligarchs in Moscow
interfere in his decisions.” The scrapping of regional elections by Mr Putin
in 2004 has eliminated peaceful channels for political competition, only
making places like Dagestan more explosive. Mr Umakhanov says the only way
out of this paralysis is direct elections. He is not alone in feeling that
way. Most Russians want to elect their regional governors. This is precisely
what the Kremlin fears, as it would mean the loss of guaranteed political
support from puppets in the regions.
Unable to offer any unifying idea or the rule of law, the Kremlin tries to
compensate with injections of money. Corruption is so rampant that, at best,
the funds get siphoned off; at worst, they are used for terrorism. The
Dagestani economy is 80% subsidised by the Russian government, but there is
little to show for it apart from a few seaside villas and lavish weddings for
the rich—at which guests may sport gold-plated revolvers bulging in their
jeans.
As for the rest of the Dagestanis, they are left with potholed roads,
derelict farms and factories, a polluted sea and a grim landscape dotted with
houses half-built or half-ruined. Free education and health care are myths.
The rate of TB is one of the highest in Russia. Jobs, exam grades and
university diplomas are all for sale.
In this region, Russian identity has been hollowed out. As one young man puts
it, “The only thing that makes me Russian is a note in my passport. I can’t
get a job in Moscow or even a mortgage, because I come from Dagestan.”
Radicalisation of young people is increasing, both in the north Caucasus and
in Moscow. The main slogan of the ultra-nationalists who rioted in Moscow
recently was “Fuck the Caucasus”. Radicals in the Caucasus feel the same
way about the Russian state.
Mr Putin came to power pledging to fight the centrifugal forces in Russia.
After more than a decade of his rule, the risk of disintegration is greater
than ever. The Kremlin has no strategy to prevent it. And the biggest threat
to Russia’s territorial integrity comes not from Dagestan or any other part
of the north Caucasus, but from the Russian state itself. As a young man in
Novosasitli remarks: “There is no future for Dagestan inside Russia now
because Russia itself is fraying at the seams.”
新聞來源: http://www.economist.com/node/18527550?story_id=18527550
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