The Problem of Chechnya
European Islam & the Caucasian “War on Terrorism”
By GARY LEUPP

CounterPunch
Sept 14 2004

Europe (Europe proper, the geographer’s Europe) is an odd thing,
curiously shaped and conceptualized since Herodotus invented it as
the object of Persian invasion 2500 years ago. As the concept grew,
Europe came to extend from Viking-settled Iceland in the mid-Atlantic
(to the northwest); to the Iberian peninsula (abutting Africa in the
southwest); and from the Kara Sea and the upper extremity of the
Urals (in the northeast), down the mountain range to the Ural River,
which avoiding all but a small slice of (Asian) Kazakhstan, defines
Europe to the Caspian Sea. Thence the borderline straddles the
Caucasus Mountains, from Baku on the Caspian to the Black Sea coast
and onto the Crimean Peninsula, making the Caucasus the southeastern
corner of the European continent, at least the European continent of
the stickler academic. (Some place the Caucasian countries in the
Middle East as well as Europe, rather like geographers count Vietnam
alternately as an East Asian and Southeast Asian country.)

Actually, no Europe makes sense as a “continent,” if the latter term
is to claim any consistency or analytical utility. Europe is not
surrounded by oceans, as are normal continents (Africa, North
America, South America, Australia and Antarctica)—and as Asia would
be if we simply included Europe, as Nietzsche once suggested, “as a
peninsula of the greater Eurasian super-continent.” Continental
Europe is the invention of people who wanted to be as special, and
separate as oceans can make you, but lacking the eastern ocean which
ought to be there to validate continental pretensions. South Asia
(India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh), surrounded by the Indian Ocean
and Himalayas, could make an equally valid case for continent-hood.
The concept is ultimately arbitrary.

But back to the southeastern corner of this imagined Eurocontinent:
the Caucasus. “Caucasian” is of course often used as a synonym for
“white” (as in white people), and has been used in that sense since
pioneer ethnologist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, in 1775, pronounced
Caucasians (supposedly descended from Noah’s son Japeth after the Ark
landed on Mt. Ararat following the Flood) the “most beautiful race of
menthe primeval type [from which] others divergewhite in color, which
we may fairly assume to be the primitive color of mankind” But white
folks flattered by Blumenbach’s pseudo-science, and folks in general
outside the region, have little knowledge of this part of Europe. I
can think of various reasons why this unawareness is unfortunate:

(1) the Caucasus is a key site of Russian-U.S. contention concerning
the construction of oil pipelines from the Caspian oilfields (in
Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan) to Black Sea and
Mediterranean ports;

(2) it is a maze of new, weak nations with vigorous secessionist
movements;

(3) it is a region of centuries-old Muslim communities, from which
some “Islamic extremist” trends have emerged;

(4) it has, since the deployment of U.S. forces in the Pankisi Gorge
of Georgia in 2002, and the announcement of Russian President
Vladimir Putin around the same time that Chechen rebels are
al-Qaeda-like terrorists, been posited as a major theater in the “War
on Terror;” and

(5) given its record, the U.S. government might do something very
brutal and very stupid in the region. So one should pay attention. To
understand “ethnic conflict” in this area in the context of big-power
rivalry, one should brief oneself on the basics.

Compare the Balkans

The Caucasus embraces southern Russia (referring to the zone between
the Black and Caspian Seas), and the three nations of Georgia,
Armenia and Azerbaijan. This region is culturally linked to the west
and north by Orthodox Christianity (kindred Russian, Georgian and
Armenian varieties), and to the east by Islam (a legacy of past
encounters between Persians and Turks and the local peoples). In this
mix the Caucasus resembles the Balkans, where you have one more or
less Muslim nation (Albania, where religious practice was banned for
decades but which is officially now 70% Muslim); an
unusually-constructed Bosnia-Herzegovina in which about 40% of the
population (not all the Bosniaks) embrace Islam with varying degrees
of interest; and the de facto NATO protectorate of Kosovo, which is
about 90% Albanian Muslim. There are also longstanding Muslim
minorities in Macedonia (29%), Bulgaria (12%) and elsewhere in the
Balkans. The collapse of the Soviet bloc, the implosion of neutral
“socialist” Yugoslavia involving catastrophic ethno-religious strife,
and fall of the idiosyncratic Hoxhaite regime in Albania brought
Balkan Muslims onto the world stage, as recipients of religious
proselytization (by Arab “Wahhabis” in particular, backed up by Saudi
largesse) and as the beneficiaries (at least short term) of US-NATO
protection against the vilified Serbs and Croatians.

In the Balkans, Washington postures as the great friend of the Muslim
Bosnians and Kosovars, although its position is fraught with
contradictions. U.S. acquiescence to Helmut Kohl’s reunited Germany,
which unlike the U.S. State Department championed an independent
Slovenia in 1990, contributed to the disastrous dismantling of the
Yugoslav state. (This produced much ethnic conflict, including what
some term the “Bosnian holocaust.”) The U.S., having labeled the
Kosovo Liberation Army “terrorists” in 1999, made common cause with
the Kosovar Albanians against a Serbian foe whose atrocities were
wantonly exaggerated to justify the bombing of Milocevic’s
Yugoslavia. The Russians meanwhile posture as friends of the Serbs
and other Slavs aggrieved by Washington policy.

Across the Black Sea from the Balkans, in the Caucasus, we find
Armenia, ethnically homogeneous but abetting an Armenian secessionist
movement within the Armenian-peopled Nagorno-Karabakh region of
neighboring Azerbaijan. Armenia has occupied 16% of Azeri territory
since 1994. 94% of the population of Azerbaijan are Azeri, a Muslim
Turkish people. (That’s seven million Muslims, double the number of
Albanian Muslims; hence if Azerbaijan is in Europe, it is the largest
European Muslim country.) Fellow Azeris live across the border with
Georgia; 5.7% of Georgia’s 4.69 million people (668,000) live in the
Adhzaria region. In Abkhazia, in the north along the Black Sea, live
an additional 85,000 to 100,000 Muslims speaking a Causasian language
distantly related to Georgian. Altogether 11% of Georgia’s population
(over half a million) is Muslim. About 4% of the population of
Armenia are Kurds, mostly adherents of the Yezidi faith, which
reveres the Prophet Mohammed but is not commonly regarded as an
Islamic sect. So within the southern Caucasus, we have Azerbaijan,
Adhzaria, and Abkhazia as Muslim zones. In the northern (Russian)
Caucasus, we have in addition, lined up westward from the Caspian
coast, Daghestan, Chechnya, and Ingushetia, three republics in the
Russian Federation with predominantly Muslim populations. Daghestan
has about two and a half million people, of whom at least 90% are
Muslim. There aren’t good current figures for Chechnya and
Ingushetia, but in 1989, when they were united in the Chechen-Ingush
Autonomous Republic, there were 735,000 Muslim Chechens and 164,000
Muslim Ingush, together 71% of the republic’s population (the rest
being mostly Russian).

Bordering Ingushetia is North Ossetia, a predominantly (80%)
Christian republic in the Russian Federation, with an Ingush
minority. (Among the ethnic Ossetians themselves, some 20% practice
Sunni Islam.) Then to the west, bordering Georgia, are the
predominantly Muslim republics of Kabardino-Balkaria (Kabardins
mostly Sunni Muslims, Balkarians mostly Orthodox Christian) and
Karachayevo-Cherkessia, whose Muslim populations together number
maybe a million. In other words, in the Caucasus you have in addition
to the seven or eight million Azeri Muslims, four or five million
other Muslims, living in historically Muslim districts in the
Christian-majority behemoth that is Russia, and in the ancient
Christian land of Georgia.

Some of these Muslims, since the breakup of the Soviet Union, have
become involved in violent secessionist movements. Moscow and Tblisi,
who have differences between themselves, have both become inclined
since 9-11 to depict their response to such movements as
counter-terrorist in character, to represent the secessionists as
ideological soul-mates of al-Qaeda, and to manipulate the “War on
Terror” paradigm to justify their repressive measures and to even
threaten “pre-emptive” actions. Putin like Bush vows to strike at
terrorists “wherever they may be” (which might mean, say, striking at
Chechens in the Pankisi Gorge in Georgia). Thus in the Caucasus, the
implosion of the USSR, like the implosion of Yugoslavia in the
Balkans, produces a welter of nationalist strivings, coupled with
long-dormant religious sensibilities, that both the hyperpuissance
U.S. and the weakened regional hegemon Russia seek to exploit. They
do so now in the context of Bush’s eternal war project, which
exploits anti-Islamic sentiment in the U.S. (drawing especially on
the most ignorant varieties of Christian fundamentalist intolerance),
even as the administration insists before the global audience that
the U.S. respects Islam as “a religion of peace.” Putin, powerless to
prevent the U.S.’s projection of power into formerly Soviet territory
from Central Asia to Georgia, applies an “If you can’t beat ’em, join
’em” policy, depicting his own measures against unruly Muslims in
Russia as part of the global Terror War.

Chechnya

Of Muslims seeking independence from Russia, the Chechens receive the
most attention. Their secessionist movement has been the bloodiest in
the region, and exacted a most grotesque toll on Russians, in
particular, from the Caucasus to Moscow. The small Chechen homeland
has had a very bad press, internationally, and most Americans who’ve
heard of Chechnya no doubt by this point associate its people with
Islamic terrorism. The recent school hostage episode in Beslan, in
Russia’s North Ossetia, presented the world with the most nightmarish
spectacle: a school commandeered, children specifically targeted,
seized, terrified, shot in the back as they attempted to escape.
About 330 Christians, half of them kids, killed by Muslims from
Chechya, and the adjoining Muslim republic of Ingushetia, and (if one
believes an early Russian report uncorroborated by reporters) Muslim
Arabs. (I seriously doubt any Arab participation, simply because it
too obviously serves Putin’s wish to depict his repression of the
Chechen independence movement as part of the global Bush-war project
targeting Arabs.) Anyway, a horrible, unforgivable scenario, which
some may see as Russia’s 9-11.

One might suppose that, as Putin seeks to link Chechen rebels to
al-Qaeda, the U.S. would support the Russian leader in his moves
against Chechen separatism, rather as it endorses every single move
the Likud regime in Israel takes against the cause of the
Palestinians (a “terrorist” cause to the Likudists in the Bush
administration), or that President Arroyo in the Philippines takes
against the Moro. But no, not quite. Just as Washington found it
useful to validate Bosnian and Kosovar nationalism in the Balkans
(entrenching its expanding NATO-self into what was once proudly
non-aligned European territory), so it has (under the Clinton and
Bush administrations alike) found it useful to promote Muslim
separatisms in southern Russia, to better destabilize the Russian
Federation. Why? Because Russia seeks to thwart U.S. oil pipeline
ambitions and the U.S.’s general pursuit of geopolitical advantage in
the Caucasus. Ruling circles in both the U.S. and Russia are acting
rationally in pursuit of their ends. Those anti-people ends are the
problem.

As the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, Chechens, having resented
Russian domination for a century and a half, under the leadership of
air force general Dzhokar Dudayev declared independence.
Russian President
Boris Yeltsin refused to grant this, and Russian forces invaded in
1994 to reestablish central government authority. The invasion met
with fierce resistance, prompting a withdrawal in 1996 and a peace
agreement in 1997. A new Chechen government, headed by Aslan
Maskhadov, failed to acquire international recognition, or to contain
rampant crime, corruption, and warlordism. “Islamic extremism”
flourished and spread into neighboring Ingushetia and elsewhere. In
October 1992, Ingush militias clashed with Russian-backed North
Ossetian security forces, paramilitaries and army troops in the
disputed region of Prigorodnyi. This is 978 square kilometers of
once-Ingush land given North Ossetia during the Stalin years. This
land dispute is at the heart of Christian Ossetian-Muslim Ingush
animosity, and the Ingush and Chechens, whose languages are mutually
comprehensible, identify with one anothers’ struggles. (The Beslan
school seizure was a joint operation involving Chechens and Ingush
militants.)

Thousands of Ingush homes were destroyed in 1992, and the bulk of the
Ingush population in North Ossetia (46,000 by official Russian count)
displaced. Complicating matters, South Ossetia, in the Republic of
Georgia, attempted to succeed from Georgia and unite with North
Ossetia. In response, the new Georgian government sent in troops,
leveling 100 Ossetian villages and producing 100,000 refugees, many
of whom wound up in Prigordnyi, seizing Ingush homes. (Tit for tat,
Moscow tilted towards Abkhazia as fighting there killed 16,000 and
drove 300,000 ethnic Georgians from their homes.)

Following bombings in North Ossetia that killed 53, an attack on a
Russian military barracks in Daghestan, and the bombing of two Moscow
apartment buildings in1999 that killed over 300, the government of
President Putin resumed the war with Chechnya, forcing Maskhadov
underground. Moscow blamed Chechens for the Moscow attacks, although
rebel leader Shamil Basayev disclaimed responsibility, and skeptics
claim the attacks were staged to justify renewed Russian
intervention. When Putin succeeded Yeltsin as Russian president on
December 31, 1999, his military was bogged down in an unwinnable
guerrilla war in Chechnya, and cutting its losses, the Putin
administration simply proclaimed victory, turning over power to a
Chechen puppet (recently assassinated) in 2002. Russian troops
remain, harassed by forces loyal to Basayev, whom Moscow says it
knows “for certain” was behind the Beslan school attack. (A Russian
daily has claimed that in a message signed by Basayev, he demanded an
end to the war in Chechnya, the withdrawal of Russian troops,
autonomy for Chechnya within the Commonwealth of Independent States,
Chechnya’s continued inclusion in the ruble zone, and CIS
peacekeepers for the region.) Some of Basayev’s forces, Moscow
claims, operate out of bases in Georgia, and since 2002 Russia has
threatened to take action against Chechen militants in that country.
Washington warns against this.

The Neocons’ Role

For over a decade, U.S. policy has been to criticize Russian actions
against Chechen and Ingush rebels, while discouraging Russian support
for all three separatist movements in Georgia. In 1999, many key
players in the current administration formed an “American Committee
for Peace in Chechnya” (ACPC), whose membership roster includes
omnipresent neocon operator Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, Kenneth
Adelman, Elliot Cohen, Midge Decter, Frank Gaffney, Glen Howard,
Robert Kagan, William Kristol, Michael Ledeen, Bruce Jackson, James
Woolsey, and Caspar Weinberger. Since 9-11, while insisting on
al-Qaeda links to Muslim terrorism everywhere else (from the
Philippines to Palestine), they have pronounced any Chechen-al-Qaeda
link “overstated.” ACPC has successfully campaigned for the U.S. to
provide political asylum to Ilyas Akhmadov, foreign minister in
Maskhadov’s toppled regime and considered a terrorist by Moscow. Bush
policy was expressed by Steven Pifer, deputy assistant secretary of
state for European and Eurasian affairs, in an appearance before the
Congressional Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe in
2003: “[We] do not share the Russian assessment that the Chechen
conflict is simply and solely a counterterrorism effort. . . . While
there are terrorist elements fighting in Chechnya, we do not agree
that all separatists can be equated as terrorists.” According to John
Laughland in the Guardian (Sept. 8), “US pressure will now increase
on Moscow to achieve a political, rather than military, solution – in
other words to negotiate with terrorists, a policy the US resolutely
rejects elsewhere.” Putin’s Chechnya war, that is to say, is not, as
the Russian leader wants to paint it, part and parcel of the global
War on Terrorism initially focused on al-Qaeda. It is an ongoing
statement of Russia’s still-brutal, dictatorial character, and hence
an encouragement for the Caucasian nations to strengthen ties with
the U.S.

While seeking regime change throughout the Muslim Middle East,
inventing facts to achieve that end, the Bush administration (pleased
with the new U.S.-educated president Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia,
which it helped place in power; pleased to have military forces
training troops in Azerbaijan; grateful to Armenia for its 50 troops
in Iraq; planning on bringing these all into NATO) wants the status
quo in the southern Caucasus (except for the remaining Russian bases
in Georgia, which it wants to replace with its own). It also desires
the advance of Muslim separatism in the northern (Russian) Caucasus.
Should southern Russia decompose into a series of small, weak nations
(from Daghestan to Karachayevo-Cherkessia), this part of Muslim
Europe will fall firmly into the U.S. lap, terrorizing nobody and
happily cooperating with U.S. energy corporations. This, at least, is
the neocon hope, which is why they so embrace, even after the Beslan
attack, what they imagine to be the Chechen cause. Meanwhile Moscow,
repressing Muslim separatism at home, courts Muslim separatists in
Georgia’s Adzharia and Abhkazia. Thus the main issue in the Caucasus
is not Islam, or Chechen terrorism, but geopolitical control, with
the U.S. and Russia competing to depict their competition as a War on
Terror.

To this the world should simply say, with Bertolt Brecht, “The valley
to the waterers, that it yield fruit.” (Caucasian Chalk Circle, Act
V)

Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct
Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants,
Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male
Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and
Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women,
1543-1900. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch’s merciless
chronicle of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial
Crusades.

He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu