The Foreign Service Journal, April 2007

by groups that included both Chechens and Dagestanis. They proclaimed as their goal the creation of an Islamic state throughout the North Caucasus. The Russian gov- ernment defeated the incursion and then used it as a pre- text to launch a new invasion of Chechnya. Nevertheless, it showed that what began as an ethno-nationalist strug- gle for Chechen independence had become a broader Islamist struggle under the influence of the international radical Islamist community, which had sent money and men to help the fight. This trend had already become prominent during the period between the two wars, when some Chechen leaders attempted to implement Islamic law in the region. The current situation in Chechnya is gradually begin- ning to normalize. The war itself has turned into isolated skirmishes, and some of the leading Chechen terrorists in recent months have been killed (including Shamil Basayev, the head of the radical Islamic wing of the nationalist movement since the mid-1990s). The Russian government has been relatively successful at turning over administration of the region to its local Chechen allies, who have even undertaken some physical reconstruction in the capital city of Grozny. The region now is controlled by Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov, who runs his own private army with a reputation for extreme brutality and who is reported to have personally participated in the torture of civilians. Kadyrov is widely expected to become the Chechen republic’s president sometime after he turns 30, the required age to hold the office, in October 2006 [Kadyrov took office on March 2. —Eds]. In the meantime, he has introduced aspects of Islamic law, including banning alcohol and requiring women to wear headscarves. He has also spoken in favor of legalizing polygamy in the republic. Kadyrov is the son of Akhmat Kadyrov, the for- mer president and chief mufti of Chechnya, who switch- ed from the rebel side to supporting Moscow and was assassinated in 2004. Although Kadyrov’s rule has been repressive, the level of violence directed at civilians in the region has declined significantly since he has been in office as the effectiveness of the separatist forces has diminished over time. While violence has been declining within Chechnya, however, it has been spreading to other parts of the Caucasus. And the violence in these regions is explicitly linked to efforts to spread radical Islam. The killing of Aslan Maskhadov, the secular nationalist president of the independent Chechen republic, in March 2005, has shift- ed the balance of forces within the armed separatist movement in the North Caucasus in favor of those who seek to establish an Islamic state throughout the region. Even more worrisome for Moscow is the spread of violent Islamist movements into the western areas of the Caucasus. As recently as three years ago, major violence was confined to Chechnya and Dagestan. Since then, it has spread throughout the region, with major attacks in Nazran, Ingushetia, in June 2004; in Beslan, North Ossetia, in September 2004; and Nalchik, Kabardino- Balkaria, in October 2005. Although Chechen terrorist attacks occurred outside the republic as early as 1995, these recent attacks have been carried out not by Chechen infiltrators mainly, but by fighters from the towns and regions where the attacks took place. This cru- cial change shows that the character of the fighting has evolved, with Chechen radicals now primarily serving a coordinating role while locals familiar with a particular location carry out the actual attacks. Revolt of the Hopeless Moscow blames the spread of violent Islamic radicals throughout the North Caucasus on foreign influences in the region. But the role of mercenaries and ideologues from the Muslim world is very much secondary to domestic factors in explaining the rise of violent Islamism. President Putin’s North Caucasus policy has, if anything, hastened the spread of Islamic radicalism in the region. Federal and local governments have increasingly come to see all religious Muslims as potential radical Islamists and have increasingly begun to suppress Islam as a whole. Youth who studied Islam in the Middle East and practice the religion peacefully, but in ways that are different from local tradition, are treated with suspicion and sometimes arrested and beaten. Such actions main- ly serve to further radicalize pious Muslims, some of whom then turn to violence. The republic of Kabardino-Balkaria is instructive in this regard. Its government has closed most local mosques. In 2004 the republic government issued an order allowing Muslims to attend services only on Fridays and then only for 40 minutes. Worshippers suspected of sympathizing with radical Islamists have been dragged out of mosques, beaten and had crosses shaved into their hair. These kinds of actions have only served to increase the popularity of radical Islamic organizations, since tra- F O C U S 44 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / A P R I L 2 0 0 7