A Breeding Ground of Radicalism in Southern Russia http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,382031,00.html
A Four Part Series by Walter <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Mayr The town of Nalchik in the Caucasus region has long been a vacation resort. Since the middle of October, however, it has hosted a war. But it's not alone in the region. The town is just the latest addition to a long list of hot spots in the region including Grozny, Beslan and Dagestan. It has become a breeding ground of terror. <http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,grossbild-5345 48-382031,00.html> A television image of a Russian soldier standing next to a dead body on the sreets of Nalchik. <http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,grossbild-5345 48-382031,00.html> Zoom AFP / NTV A television image of a Russian soldier standing next to a dead body on the sreets of Nalchik. The city of Nalchik in the Caucasus has been a resort city since 1928. It boasts 80 degree Celsius (176 degree Fahrenheit) hot springs, fresh mountain air, boulevards perfect for afternoon strolls, and outdoor restaurants that serve tender, grilled lamb. The snow-covered double peak of Mt. Elbrus, the tallest mountain in Europe, presents a dramatic and majestic backdrop to the city. Russians, of course, have long known about Nalchik, the capital of the Republic of Kabardino-Balkariya. And for the past two weeks, so too has the rest of the world. But for all the wrong reasons. The walls of buildings along Lenin Boulevard are now perforated by missile fire. Staff at the city's three hospitals tend to the wounded, and the morgue in the Dubki neighborhood is filled to capacity. At 9 a.m. on Oct. 13, in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Muslim rebels armed with grenade launchers and machine guns, declared war on the Russian state in Nalchik. Some 150 to 200 rebel fighters fanned out across the city to storm the bastions of law and order -- the offices of the local Russian intelligence and counterterrorism units, three police stations and the headquarters of OMON, an elite Russian security force. The result, say the authorities, was more than 100 dead -- at least three-quarters of them terrorists. They believe that, unlike earlier attacks, this one was not committed by Arab mercenaries. The attackers wore "shiny boots and snow-white socks," say eyewitnesses. The press has reported that they were locals who have turned to armed Jihad -- workers who "leave their homes in the morning, their grenade launchers in hand, then return to their wives -- or mothers -- the same evening." According to unofficial sources, many of the Nalchik attackers were only 16 or 17 years old. In other words, the armed conflict against the Russian central government in the northern Caucasus region may now have been joined by the next generation of fighters. When the Soviet Union collapsed and the call for independence from Moscow began spreading from Chechnya's mountains to the neighboring republics, today's fighters had just been born. Religion as the opiate of the people Their complaints against Russia, however, are fresh. "The Russian state does its best to incite the Muslims here against it," says Ruslan Nachushev. A large, powerful man, Nachushev has a nuanced understanding of societies extremes -- a sense he developed both as a KGB officer in the Soviet era and now as Director of the Islamic Institute in Nalchik. In Kabardino-Balkariya, Nachushev says, mosques have been closed, pregnant women wearing the Hijab beaten by militias and suspects tortured during interrogations. The authorities have also used humiliation as a tactic, goading Muslims with sentences like "Allah, here we are." According to Nachushev, the government doesn't care about what this means to the proud Muslims in the Caucasus. He says that instead of using experts to fight fundamentalism on Russian soil, the authorities prefer to use former drug enforcement agents. "They probably think this is the most effective approach, since, after all, religion is the opiate of the people," say Nachushev, bitterly. He himself is the most prominent individual on the interior ministry's black list of 430 suspected religious extremists from Kabardino-Balkariya. Nachushev's method of dealing with his classification as a dangerous fundamentalist is to light up a cigarette, raise a glass and, smiling ironically, push a slip of paper with his e-mail address across the table. It translates as "Elbrus Illegal Terror Commando," he says. Not everyone is amused. Nachushev's deputy at the Islamic Institute and regional Muslim leader Emir Musa Mukoshev has already gone into hiding. He has done so despite the fact that the so-called "Jamaat of Kabardino-Balkariya -- an organization led by Mukoshev boasting some 10,000 well-organized supporters throughout the republic -- describes itself as the home of moderate orthodox Muslims. Under no circumstances do Mukoshev and his followers want to be confused with the "Yarmuk" fundamentalist underground organization. Yarmuk, which has been around since 2001 and which claim to be part of the Caucasus Front announced in May of this year -- declared responsibility for the Oct. 13 attacks. Russian President Vladimir Putin has called Yarmuk a "wasp's nest of Wahhabism." According to Nachushev, though, the rigid faith of the Wahhabites, spread by fanatic Arabs, finds little support in the northern Caucasus region. Islamist Theocracy in the Shadow of Mt. Elbrus By Walter Mayr <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> The town of Elbrus in the Caucasus is home to a five-star hotel housing tourists eager to climb to the highest point in Europe. Elbrus also hosts rampant corruption, radicalism, and a fundamentalist training camp. <http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,grossbild-5292 24-382032,00.html> Nalchik erupted in mid-October. The nearby town of Elbrus may be next. <http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,grossbild-5292 24-382032,00.html> Zoom DPA Nalchik erupted in mid-October. The nearby town of Elbrus may be next. It is about 120 kilometers (75 miles) from Nalchik to Mt. Elbrus. At about the half-way point, at the turn-off to Kendelen -- where eight members of Yarmuk have been buried in the cemetery in this year alone -- an invisible line intersects with the road. The line represents the border between the regions settled by the Kabardinos and the Balkars, and it's where the military and the police usually set up road blocks to close the road into the mountains during purges. The Kabardinos, together with Georgia's Abkhazians, make up the group known as the Circassians, the oldest ethnic group in the Caucasus region. They boast that they held out against Russian invaders until 1860, longer than any other group. The Balkars, who make their homes in remote mountainous areas, were, for the most part, deported to central Asia by Stalin in 1944, and have allied themselves with the neighboring Karachay people since returning to the region. The myriad ethnic fault lines in the regions have tended to fuel conflict since the collapse of the Soviet Union. "Kabardino-Balkariya is a wonderful country, all it needs is to be awakened," rebel Chechen leader Shamil Basayev once said. "And when it wakes up, the entire Caucasus will burn." This goal has since become more tangible, partially because Basayev -- Russia's most-wanted terrorist on whose head authorities have placed a $10 million bounty -- is still at large and active in the conflict. In 2003, he spent a vacation near Nalchik, under the eyes of the authorities, but ultimately escaped a raid unharmed. At the time, the Emir Mukoshev publicly accused the Russian interior minister of having allowed Basayev to buy his freedom. This is just one of the countless stories on record that have raised suspicions in the region that the government is, in fact, not interested in controlling violence and religious fanaticism. On the contrary, it is widely believed that the Russian authorities' true objective is to make work for themselves. After all, the more terrorism there is, the more jobs are created in government counterterrorism agencies. Indeed, the number of these positions has increased six-fold in Kabardino-Balkariya since 1991. Along the road that leads to the base of 5,642 meter (18,510 feet) Mr. Elbrus, the unabated decline of the republic is in full evidence. Although Kabardino-Balkariya, with its rolling hills, majestic peaks and rich soil, is often called "Little Switzerland," its unemployment rate is officially estimated at 30 percent and it would be bankrupt without assistance from Moscow. Abandoned mines line the road, beneath which lie significant deposits of tungsten and molybdenum. The mines have been idle since foreign investors left the valley, unwilling to pay the bribes demanded by local officials. Nowadays, workers with nothing to do stand guard -- beer bottles in hand -- beneath old Soviet stars and walls bearing the faded motto "slava trudu," or Glory of Work. Not until the town of Elbrus, high up on the mountain, is there any evidence of a recovery. The Oson hotel chain advertises its five-star mountain resort in Elbrus, a place where tourists can enjoy fine dining and helicopter skiing at altitudes of up to 5,300 meters (17,400 feet) at discount prices. The hotel's owner, Chissa Bekayev, is respected in the town as the "locomotive of Elbrus tourism." In return, the townsfolk leave his guests along. After all, they don't want to scare off jet set vacationers, who come to Mt. Elbrus as part of a "Seven Summits Club" package that also includes Mt. Everest and Mt. Kilimanjaro. What the tourists don't know is that the radical wing of Jamaat, which is fighting to achieve its goal of installing a caliphate, or Islamic theocracy, throughout the Caucasus region, came into being nearby in the Chegem-2 training camp. The group's original leaders were Ruslan Bekayev, the former mayor of Elbrus, and Aslan Bekayev. Arrest warrants have been issued for the two brothers of hotel owner Chissa Bekayev, and both have vanished without a trace. A Normal Day of Death in Grozny By Walter Mayr <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Grozny used to be the pearl of the northern Caucasus. Now, it is little more than crumbling apartment buildings amid fields of rubble. Death is a daily occurance in the city and Islamism is rife. But the main problem may be the province's Putin-appointed governor. <http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,grossbild-3037 48-382033,00.html> A Russian soldier patrols Grozny in 2003. <http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,grossbild-3037 48-382033,00.html> Zoom DPA A Russian soldier patrols Grozny in 2003. Nalchik and Grozny are 205 kilometers (127 miles) apart on the highway that leads to the Caspian Sea and passes through Northern Ossetia. The ruins of School Number 1 in Beslan, the most recent testament to the human cost of the conflict in southern Russia, stand before a panoramic view of Mt. Kazbek, whose cliffs gave rise to the myth of Prometheus. Alexander Pushkin once wrote that, in the Caucasus, "homicide is nothing but a gesture." Hardly a village and not a single city along this stretch of highway M 29 is without the faces and stories that tell of destroyed houses, of a lost homeland and of killed, abducted and tortured sons, of murdered police officers and of widows, orphans and mothers who mourn their adolescent sons who died for Russia. The M 29 is a road of death. The sense of danger becomes increasingly palpable as the road passes eastward through Ingushetia. At the "Kavkas" border crossing into Chechnya, the Russian state is little more than an idea barricaded behind a wall of concrete blocks, barbed wire and automatic weapons. Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, was once considered the pearl of the northern Caucasus -- until 1994, when Moscow declared its first war against the Chechen separatists. The local residents breathed a sigh of relief after the 1996 peace treaty, but then experienced the rise of radical, self-declared saviors and fanatical terrorists acting under the protection of the cease-fire, followed by a hail of bombs and rocket attacks brought on by the outbreak of the second Chechen war in 1999 -- instigated by then Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Today Grozny is little more than a settlement that looks as though an angry giant had beaten it with his fist. Entire rows of houses and squares have been erased from the face of the devastated city. Grozny's inhabitants live, without water or hope, in the ruins of collapsed buildings, their rafters protruding into space. Official death count: 160,000 There are splashes of color here and there -- the bronze-and-gold monument that stands on the abandoned grounds of the former presidential palace, and the freshly painted, pink university building a few steps down the street. In a recently constructed building on Oil Worker Square, three-room apartments are available for the equivalent of 25 annual salaries of the average white-collar worker in Grozny. The men who sit at the head table on this Sunday in the garden of Baudi Bachmadov, the dean of the law department at the university in Grozny, are, by local standards, neither winners nor losers. They are considered the elite of the republic, or at least what's left of it after 11 years, two wars and an official death count of 160,000. The mood around the table, which is decked out with roast chickens, kiwis, bananas, vodka and cognac, is festive. The dean's eldest son is getting married. Professors, prosecutors and high-ranking government officials are there, while a bodyguard shouldering a Kalashnikov stands watch. At the head of the table sits Professor Sharani Jambekov, a member of the Russian Authors' Society. He is one of those who has publicly warned against the social devastation caused by a war that has claimed victims in every family in Chechnya. "Our young people want to avenge their dead relatives, which is probably why many are now joining the Wahhabites," he says. The celebration ends a short time later. The family next door is mourning their daughter, who was shot the day before by the militia. It's a normal Sunday in Grozny, and reports are coming in at the OMON special unit's headquarters building. Twenty-two members from various arms of the elite unit lost their lives in the previous week. On this Sunday, a member of OMON is murdered, and seven militia fighters are killed by a land mine. But even here the men find reason to celebrate. Sergeant Najud Gudigov, who killed three terrorists with other members of his team on the outskirts of Grozny the day before, has arrived. He keeps replaying a video recorded on a cell phone he took from one of the men killed, the "Emir of Sernovodsk." It shows the men he shot, laughing at a camp in the mountains. $10,000 ransoms "This was my fourth mission of this type in four weeks," says Sergeant Gudigov of OMON's "Special Marksmen Unit." Gudigov is 38, gaunt, gray-haired and hasn't been promoted in five years. His commanding office, OMON Deputy Commander Buwadi Dachiyev, looks up briefly from his data base, where the movements of rebels in the neighboring republics are stored, and says, "There are now more armed Wahhabites in Dagestan and Kabardino-Balkariya than there are here." Moscow still maintains an armed force of 80,000 in Chechnya. But the Chechen rebels, who have expanded the war to the neighboring republics and in the spring declared the opening of a "Caucasus Front," want that to change. This would play into the hands of the de facto ruler of Chechnya, Ramsan Kadyrov, the son of pro-Russian President Ackmad Kadyrov, who was murdered in 2004. Ramsan, the deputy prime minister of the republic, commands a small army of at least a thousand bodyguards, as well as a several thousand member-strong death squad that terrorizes Chechnya. Humans rights organizations hold Kadyrov responsible for three out of four crimes committed in the republic. His fighters, clad in black uniforms, control a lucrative business in kidnappings and abductions, demanding ransoms ranging from $40 to more than $10,000. Chechnya's president says that 2,500 people are currently listed as "missing" in his country. An enormous poster of President Putin naming Ramsan Kadyrov a "Hero of Russia" graces one of the bullet-pocked walls of what remains of the House of the Book in Grozny. Under his knit cap, the honoree beams with the face of a suburban criminal. It's an image that epitomizes the fatal errors of the Putin system. Spinning out of Control in Dagestan By Walter Mayr <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> In 1999, the Islamic Republic of Dagestan was declared. Nowadays, the capital of the province is under a virtual state of siege. Torture is rampant and fundamentalists are gaining ever more control. Meanwhile, the Russian government is collapsing under a mountain of corruption. <http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,grossbild-1827 1-382034,00.html> Like neighboring Chechnya, Dagestan has seen its fair share of violence in recent years. <http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,grossbild-1827 1-382034,00.html> Zoom REUTERS Like neighboring Chechnya, Dagestan has seen its fair share of violence in recent years. It is 169 kilometers (105 miles) along highway M 29 from Grozny to Makhachkala on the Caspian Sea. In the past, the drive from Chechnya to Dagestan, the "Land of Mountains," promised a return to safer ground. That has changed. Dagestan, Russia's largest Caucasus republic and, with its 30 ethnic groups, a Eurasian Babylon, threatens to "spin out of control and fall apart." This is the conclusion reached in a report Dmitry Kozak, the presidential envoy to the south federal district, submitted to President Putin in June. The report clearly specifies the reasons for the catastrophic scenario: rampant corruption, a widening gap between the elites and the impoverished people and the fact that militant Islamists are taking advantage of the resulting vacuum to expand their influence over the religious and political life of the republic. The report is especially relevant to a man who lives on Gagarin Street in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan. Siradjin Ramazanov was once officially Dagestan's highest-ranking Islamist. A thick steel door opens slightly, revealing a small man in shorts, his hands as big as shovels, his three children standing behind him. He serves tea with honey. In 1999, Shamil Basayev proclaimed the foundation of the "Islamic Republic of Dagestan" and installed Ramazanov as its prime minister. At the time, entire villages lived by Sharia law, the aim being to establish an Islamic caliphate. When Basayev invaded Dagestan with his supporters, he encountered strong resistance among the population. His move also triggered the second Russian campaign against Chechnya and the enactment of an anti-Wahhabism law for Dagestan. The republic's religious fanatics have been living in hiding ever since. In 2004, Ramazanov returned from five years in exile and called upon Dagestanis fighting the Russian army to lay down their arms. In return, a Dagestani court, in an uncharacteristic display of leniency, freed Ramezanov but barred him from leaving the region. A state of siege Since then, Dagestan's former top separatist reports to work each morning in his position as a construction engineer for a natural gas company. Although he claims to have no knowledge of their activities, Ramezanov's former fellow separatists are busily destroying the republic. Since the beginning of the year, at least one police officer is shot or blown up each week. In early September, the radical underground organization Sharia Jamaat proclaimed itself the "legitimate power" in Dagestan and called upon the country's Muslims to renounce the "laws of the infidels." The interior minister has spoken of a list of 30 terrorists who, should they be captured, he doesn't want to see alive. Fear has taken hold in Makhachkala. Militia guards are stationed on practically every street corner, and checkpoints have been set up on all roads leading into the city. Makhachkala is under a state of siege, and yet the enemy remains invisible. But the target of the attacks is made abundantly clear. Civilians have become terrified of the police and when driving, have developed the habit of passing police cars at breakneck speed. The torture chambers maintained by Dagestan's police force are well-known throughout Russia. Attorneys say that they include the application of electroshocks to the tongue, the raping of young men and a method known as "little elephant," in which a gas mask is placed over a prisoner's face and the flow of air cut off periodically. When things get a little out of hand at the headquarters of the militia's 6th division on Aliyev Street in Makhachkala, and the screams of the tortured can be heard outside, the neighbors complain. Sayid Amirov, known as "the bloody Roosevelt," sits in his office in the Makhachkala city hall. After 15 attempts on his life, the mayor now governs the city from a wheelchair. Amirov is an elegant, silver-haired gentleman who readily concedes that the screams of the tortured on Aliyev Street did present a problem, but then adds that it has since been resolved. A Côte d'Azur in Dagestan? Amirov prefers to talk about something else, namely his goal of creating a "Dagestani Côte d'Azur." He shows brochures that describe how 300 hectares (750 acres) of barren land on the waterfront could become a banner project, drawing tourists instead of fundamentalists to the Caspian Sea. Whether the mayor will be around to realize his dream remains open. Despite his alleged corruption affairs, recently summarized in a full-page article in Novaya gaseta, Amirov plans to campaign to succeed the republic's aging leader, Magomedali Magomedov. The possibility that Russia could break apart, because corruption is consuming the government, opening gaps that are quickly filled by traveling clerics from Arab Koran schools inciting their followers to violence, is even felt in Russia's southernmost city, Derbent. The city, 52 kilometers (32 miles) from the border with Azerbaijan, was long considered a shining example of tolerance and respectful coexistence on Russian soil. The first Christian missionaries passed through Derbent, the "Iron Gate" on the Caspian Sea between Europe and Asia, only 10 years after the death of Jesus. Jews have lived here and in the nearby mountains since time immemorial and, numbering 8,500 believers, they still represent Russia's third-largest Jewish community today. The city's Muslims, for their part, proudly point out that their mosque was built in 773 and, as a Friday mosque, to this day remains the spiritual focal point in the home of the northern Caucasian Sufis. This history makes it all the more unpleasant for Sheikh Hurikski that in April 200 of his followers, using stones, sticks and their bare hands, had to destroy the oldest mosque on Russian soil, allegedly to fight Wahhabites. But the spiritual leader of southern Dagestan swears, squatting on the ground and surrounded by his pupils, that destroying the mosque was necessary to preserve peace. "Wahhabism is a social plague. Without sheikhs like myself, we would have descended into war long ago." Putin's short visit Meanwhile, Dagestan's political elite are requesting audiences with leading sheikhs, and Sheikh Hurikski's admirers stand in line for the privilege of washing his feet. The warnings of Putin's envoy, Kozak -- that Dagestan and, along with it, the Russian Federation, is on the brink of collapse -- could hardly be illustrated more symbolically. Putin, for his part, decided to pay the Caspian Sea region a surprise visit in July. He visited the domestic security agency's new fortress north of Makhachkala, the well-fortified barracks housing border guards at the border with Azerbaijan and, finally, the fortress of the city of Derbent, whose original structure dates to pre-Roman times. Putin's helicopter landed directly on the UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the president stayed all of 45 minutes. FAIR USE NOTICE: All original content and/or articles and graphics in this message are copyrighted, unless specifically noted otherwise. All rights to these copyrighted items are reserved. Articles and graphics have been placed within for educational and discussion purposes only, in compliance with "Fair Use" criteria established in Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976. The principle of "Fair Use" was established as law by Section 107 of The Copyright Act of 1976. 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