ISLAMIC STRUGGLES SPREAD TO RUSSIAN NORTH CAUCASUS
By Georgie Anne Geyer
WASHINGTON -- Researching and reporting foreign news is a delicate business. Ideally, you are in a country, enmeshed in a society, for at least some weeks, taking the moral and intellectual temperature of regimes and peoples and ages. Such first-hand work is always, of course, enhanced by studying the history and literature of the land and culture.
But now we have something new in foreign correspondence, and I have just had a prime lesson in this new way of reporting. Not surprisingly, it depends on the endless wonders of e-mail and the Internet. In my case, it has to do with an old and accomplished friend who has become an invaluable tool for me in keeping up with the innermost -- and largely unreported, until now -- changes inside Russia.
Paul Goble has been a friend of mine for at least 20 years. He is a big, bluff, utterly brilliant scholar and reporter whose work graced the airwaves of Radio Free Europe for many years and, most recently, Voice of America. A man with an ironic sense of humor, and a way of digging out the most absurd tidbits of every people's convoluted histories and laughing about them until he cries, Paul always seems to know everything.
About a year ago, he stopped by and told me he was moving with his daughter to Estonia. That charming and advanced little state atop the Baltic Sea had long been of special interest to him, and his daughter was going to attend school there. I thought it was "'Bye, Paul" -- but thanks to the wonders of modern technology, it was not really goodbye at all.
Instead, I began finding on my e-mail the most fascinating articles by him, facilitated by the fact that he was living there and could read even the most obscure, but revealing, papers. And I was "seeing" Russia in a wholly different, and surely deeper, way.
Paul's stories, which he sends usually twice a week to me and apparently to many of his friends, began several months ago telling one crucial story: While the world was watching the spread of Islam in Europe, the violent riots in France, the disenchantment with tolerance in Holland and the nervousness about the Turks in Germany, Russia was enduring its own deadly fear of "Islamization."
One could only realize this by being there and carefully reading the press.
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."
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.
This is an important foreign news story, but one that you won't see reported much. It jibes completely with the fears of an "Islamization" of Europe that one is hearing more and more, and with the fears of inner breakdown of countries leaving room for the radicals to move in. Thanks, Paul!
WASHINGTON -- Researching and reporting foreign news is a delicate business. Ideally, you are in a country, enmeshed in a society, for at least some weeks, taking the moral and intellectual temperature of regimes and peoples and ages. Such first-hand work is always, of course, enhanced by studying the history and literature of the land and culture.
But now we have something new in foreign correspondence, and I have just had a prime lesson in this new way of reporting. Not surprisingly, it depends on the endless wonders of e-mail and the Internet. In my case, it has to do with an old and accomplished friend who has become an invaluable tool for me in keeping up with the innermost -- and largely unreported, until now -- changes inside Russia.
Paul Goble has been a friend of mine for at least 20 years. He is a big, bluff, utterly brilliant scholar and reporter whose work graced the airwaves of Radio Free Europe for many years and, most recently, Voice of America. A man with an ironic sense of humor, and a way of digging out the most absurd tidbits of every people's convoluted histories and laughing about them until he cries, Paul always seems to know everything.
About a year ago, he stopped by and told me he was moving with his daughter to Estonia. That charming and advanced little state atop the Baltic Sea had long been of special interest to him, and his daughter was going to attend school there. I thought it was "'Bye, Paul" -- but thanks to the wonders of modern technology, it was not really goodbye at all.
Instead, I began finding on my e-mail the most fascinating articles by him, facilitated by the fact that he was living there and could read even the most obscure, but revealing, papers. And I was "seeing" Russia in a wholly different, and surely deeper, way.
Paul's stories, which he sends usually twice a week to me and apparently to many of his friends, began several months ago telling one crucial story: While the world was watching the spread of Islam in Europe, the violent riots in France, the disenchantment with tolerance in Holland and the nervousness about the Turks in Germany, Russia was enduring its own deadly fear of "Islamization."
One could only realize this by being there and carefully reading the press.
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."
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.
This is an important foreign news story, but one that you won't see reported much. It jibes completely with the fears of an "Islamization" of Europe that one is hearing more and more, and with the fears of inner breakdown of countries leaving room for the radicals to move in. Thanks, Paul!
posted by Marko at 11/04/2005 12:32:00 PM
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