Outside Influences on Volga Islamism

 
The Islamists of the North Caucasus have a particular interest in expanding their anti-Russian struggle to other parts of the country, including the VFD. Thus, in the spring of 2010, the leader of the “Caucasus Emirate,” Doku Umarov, announced his readiness to “liberate” the Astrakhan and Volga territories from the “occupation of the Russian kafirs [infidels].” 6His supporters occasion-ally publish pieces related to activities of the so-called Vilayat Idel-Ural (Islamic Emirate), and a website for the Vilayat Idel-Ural appeared in November 2010. The website’s authors promised to support those Muslims who “lift up their voices in arms” and “commit themselves to liberate their lands from the rule of the worst of creatures and to establish just Islamic Law given us by Allah, the Lord of the worlds in order to govern on the Earth.” Other materials on the site called for the Muslims of Tatarstan “not to be afraid of the infidels and their followers.” The website defines the area of the Vilayat Idel-Ural as “all the territory of today’s active removable Rusnya [a term used
to identify Russia] that is not the Caucasus Emirate and its Vilayats but claims its right to be the territory of Muslims waging the Holy war for the liberation against the invaders and infidels.” 7In sum, the possibility of the North Caucasus Islamist experience being exported to the territory of the VFD has become extremely urgent.

 

No less important is the problem of the international relations of Volga’s Islamists. Increas-ingly, their struggle is perceived in the context of “global jihad.” Like the jihadists of the North Caucasus, Volga radicals cooperate with like-minded actors in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and the Middle East (mainly Saudi Arabia). In August 2008 in Bashkortostan the terrorist Pavel Dorokhov, an ethnic Russian who converted into Islam and changed his name to Abdul Mujib, was killed in

a special operation. Mujib had previously trained in the Waziristan region of Pakistan with the Bulgar Jamaat—a group that, according to the statement of FSB director Alexander Bortnikov, was founded with the assistance of Al Qaeda.38

 

 

36. Amir Dokku Abu Usman, quoted in “My osvobodim Krasnodarskii krai, Astrakhan and Povolzhskiue Zemli” [We’ll liberate Krasnodar area, Astrakhan and the Volga lands], March 8, 2010, http:// turpal-ali.livejournal.com/290.html. The goal of the Caucasus Emirate was to establish an Islamic state based on shari’a norms on the territory of the North Caucasus as the first phase in the further Islamization of Russia and neighboring states. It was proclaimed on October 7, 2007, by the self-proclaimed president of the Chechen Republic-Ichkeria, Doku Umarov.

37. “Zayavlenie o granitsah Vilayata Idel-Ural” [Statement on the Idel-Ural Vilayat borders], http:// vilayatiu.co.cc/news/zayavlenie-o-granicax-vilayata-idel-ural/, accessed November 14, 2012.

38. Mihail Cherniak, “Ubitiy boevik Al-Qaedy byl Russkim” [The killed Al Qaeda militant was Russian], August 29, 2008, http://www.rosbalt.ru/main/2008/08/29/518690.html.

 

 

12 |the rise of radical and nonofficial islamic groups in russia’s volga region


 

 

Eurasian countries—in particular, Georgia and Azerbaijan—have also showed interest in the dynamics of the Volga region, specifically to cooperate with nationalist movements, not with

Islamist groups. In the spring of 2012, Rafis Kashapov, the head of the Naberezhnye Chelny branch of the ATPC, was invited to appear on the First Information Caucasus television channel in Geor-gia, which is specially oriented toward the Russian-speaking audience and the North Caucasus republics.39Because of decreased interest in VFD nationalism and separatism since the 1990s, however, nationalists and national separatists in the Volga today willingly and actively utilize the “Islamic factor” to draw attention to their activities. For example, Fauziya Bairamova, leader of the radical wing of the Party of Tatar National Independence Ittifaq, has tried to use Islamist rhetoric since the early 2000s to enhance the Ittifaq movement itself. She considers Islam a compulsory ele-ment of Tatar ethnic identity: “Don’t be deceived by the growing number of Mosques. They stand empty because only 1–2 percent of Tatars come to the religion; people en masse have not returned to our belief and have not started reading Namaz five times per day.” She especially criticizes the practice of mixed, or interethnic, marriages: “Nowadays about 50 percent of all Tatar maidens are married to kafirs (infidels) … In the city of Naberezhnye Chelny, 70 percent of all drug addicts are children born through mixed marriages. All the cemeteries are filled by them.” In her opinion, the head of the Republic of Tatarstan needs to garner additional Islamic legitimacy.40

 

All of these developments have raised serious concerns among the Russian authorities. During a meeting on the issue of extremism on August 8, 2011, Russia’s then–interior minister Rashid Nurgaliyev voiced concern about disturbing trends in the VFD. Noting that a neighborly atmo-sphere had characterized the Volga region for centuries, Nurgaliyev said instances of extremism based on religious and ethnic grounds had increased dramatically in recent years.41In October 2011, o_cials from the Bashkortostan branches of the FSB and Ministry of Interior issued a state-ment on the challenge posed by the transformation of this republic into a “new haven for separat-ism” owing to the increased presence of terrorist and extremist groups. They made special note of the fact that the natives of Bashkortostan have engaged with the North Caucasus Islamist under-ground in terrorist activity and noted the desire of the radicals to exercise control over criminal groups. Although representatives of the Bashkortostan republican administration and the Repub-lican Spiritual Board of Muslims were more careful and accurate in their estimates of the degree

of radicalism in the region, they noted the “unordinary character” of the current situation and an increase in the di_culty that the o_cial Muslim clergy face in their work as a result of their com-petition with the Islamists. Arthur Suleimanov, deputy head of the CSBM, said, “It’s very di_cult for our imams to oppose the radical extremism of the youth.”42Russian president Vladimir Putin, during his Tatarstan visit in August 2012, commented on Yakupov’s assassination, estimating his activity to have been a great contribution to the maintenance of ethnic and religious peace in the Volga region, and posthumously awarded the theologian the Order of Courage.43

 

39. Rais Suleimanov, “Natsional-separatizm v Tatarstane v nachele 21 veka: ideologiya, organizatsii, zarubezhnoe vliyanie” [National separatism in Tatarstan in the early 21st century: ideology, organizations and foreign influence], April 4, 2012, http://www.muslims-volga.ru/?id=3569.

40. Fauziya Bairamova, quoted in “Tak kto zhe est’ kto v Tatarstane?” [So who is who in Tatarstan?], August 9, 2012, http://www.islamrf.ru/news/analytics/politics/23381/.

41. Rashid Nurgaliev, quoted in “Privolzhie ishchet sposoby protivodeystviya extremism” [The Volga region looks for methods to oppose extremism], August 8, 2011, http://old.fedpress.ru/federal/polit/vlast/ id_243225.html.

42. Arthur Suleimanov, quoted in Anna Chelak, “Bashkitiyu postavili v ruzhie” [Bashkiria was set in the gun], Kommersant Daily, October 19, 2011, http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/1798115.

43. “President Rossii: Poezdka v Tatarstan” [The president of Russia: visiting Tatarstan], August 28, 2012, http://www.kremlin.ru/news/16311.

 

sergey markedonov | 13