An Emirate lost between the unbelievers By Mansur Muratov, special to Prague Watchdog
The unexpected war in Georgia has muddled the cards of the Chechen separatist leaders. While from the outset Ichkerian prime minister Akhmed Zakayev and his supporters had not a moment’s doubt that they were strictly on the side of Tbilisi, the Caucasus Emirate supporters fell into a catalepsy for some period of time.
For Zakayev and his comrades at arms it was all more simple. During a number of years before his exile in London, the former actor from the Chechen Drama Theatre and subsequently minister in the governments of Dudayev, Yandarbiyev and Maskhadov enjoyed the hospitality of his Georgian colleagues, thus maintaining links and spiritual attachment to the country that had once given him his first asylum abroad. But the crucial factor was something else. Zakayev knows that whatever events may occur in the world, his views on major issues must always coincide with the consolidated position of the West. And if no position has been worked out on a particular issue, the London exile is assisted by his knowledge that Russia will not be right on any of them.
The situation with the Caucasus Emirate is a bit more complicated. The state that has been proclaimed on the territory of a single battle trench sees itself not as a mere geographic community, but primarily as a religious one that rejects the world of the unbelievers – the kufr – whose principal representatives are the United States, Russia and Israel. Therefore, in a war between the unbelievers – the Americans and the Russians – jihadists cannot and must not have any preferences or sympathies.
A couple of articles on the web sites of the Chechen jihadists and a statement from the leaders of the Ingush Front appealed for a purely Islamist approach, in which the U.S. (which the Emirate’s political analysts said had pushed Georgia into war) and Russia were deemed to be equal representatives of a civilization hostile to Muslims. One of the statements held that it was necessary “to distinguish between the people and the puppet rulers. In the case of the Georgian people we thank them for the benefits we and our ancestors have received from them. At the same time the Georgian people today, like all the other peoples of the Caucasus, are simply being used in the struggle between the U.S. and Rusnya [Russia]."
In the middle of August, after a meeting with the Emirs [“amirs”] of the Emirate, the Kavkaz-Center web site published an appeal by Dokka Umarov in connection with the war in Georgia. Apparently without any co-ordination with the ideologists and propagandists abroad, the commander-in-chief of the Caucasus guerrillas overturned at a single stroke the whole of the ideological edifice that was being so carefully constructed by Movladi Udugov, Isa Umarov, and others of that ilk.
Dokka Umarov’s anti-Salafist démarche could hardly be viewed as a deliberate act of sabotage. The likelihood was that the Emir had simply not been able to resist the temptation of commenting on the unfolding global confrontation. True, in order to do this he had to abandon the positions of “pure Islam” and appeal once again to the ideals of the national liberation struggle in the Caucasus. Writing off the accursed, avowedly obsolete and pernicious ideology as scrap had proved to be a little premature, since it and not jihad had provided the language and terminology that gave Umarov the chance to formulate some approaches to Russia which could be shared with Georgia.
Those who follow with hope the birth and growth in the North Caucasus of a jamaat of intransigent fighters for the enacting of God's designs upon earth must have experienced a sense of acute disappointment. Once again the leadership of the Chechen underground fell into the temptation of extreme pragmatism, consigning the path of Allah to oblivion. The ethno-geographical approach in Umarov’s appeal left not the slightest room for that favourite tenet of Salafist ideology: “a plague on both your houses!”
The Emirate’s head recalled the brotherhood of the peoples of the Caucasus, whose duty was to drive Russia from the common Caucasian home. At the same time, with an ease remarkable for a neophyte, he slipped beneath the counter the imperatives of war with the world’s unbelievers.
Accusing Russia of aggression, the underground leadership more or less offered Georgia a political-military alliance. By combining forces, the various Caucasian peoples would gain the chance of "throwing the occupiers out of the Caucasus." "Occupiers", because the Islamic classification of enemies as kufr, murtad, and munafik is for internal use only.
The calculation is obvious. If the armed North Caucasus underground really does succeed in establishing one or two contacts with the Georgian authorities, it may obtain an additional source of aid − military, financial and political.
However, this plan has one serious shortcoming. It is fundamentally unworkable. By no stretch of the imagination do Georgians and their American patrons need "allies" of this sort, with their anti-Western rhetoric and militant Islamism.
Mikheil Saakashvili has on many occasions made highly negative remarks on the activities of the Chechen underground. Not burdening himself too much with the search for considered, differentiated approaches, back in the days of Aslan Maskhadov he bundled all the Chechen guerrillas together under the category of “terrorist organizations”. When Maskhadov in one of his video speeches wished Georgia success in the fight against Russia, Saakashvili issued a stern rebuke: "Most of the Chechen field commanders have the blood of Abkhazia’s Georgian population on their hands. So these people are not our friends. From friends like those may God deliver us, and as for our enemies, we shall do the delivering ourselves.”
It is doubtful that after the proclamation of an Islamic state in the North Caucasus much will have changed to soften the judgments of Saakashvili and his Western allies. Rather the reverse.
It should therefore be recognized that North Caucasus jihadism, with whose bestial grin the Kremlin is so fond of frightening Western leaders, in fact remains a paper tiger, a cardboard sword with the inscription "Fear me!" Being deprived of cultural and religious roots and a social base, Salafist ideology serves the militant Muslims of the Caucasus as a temporary and easily abandoned refuge. The value of sectarian doctrinalism lies in its use as a mobilizing force, in its ability to divide up the map into squares with directions that indicate who the enemy is, and why. And also – in its charting of a detailed route to salvation through death on the field of battle with the infidel.
Source of photo: Kavkaz-center.
(Translation by DM) (T) RELATED ARTICLES:
· An empire on the verge of collapse (PW, 27.8.2008)
· The underground gets its second wind (PW, 18.6.2008)
· Euro-Ichkeria against the Emirate (PW/CT, 25.11.2007)
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