Yevkurov's jihad By Magomed Toriyev, special to Prague Watchdog
In contrast to his uninventive predecessor General Zyazikov, who was as predictable as rising inflation, Ingushetia’s new president, Yunus-bek Yevkurov, turns out to have a lively satirical mind and an uninhibited imagination. Having failed to din sense into his people by the use of traditional methods, the republic’s new leader has decided to try out a specially modified version of the human cordon. It is obvious that such a non-trivial solution to the problem of night attacks could only sprung from the head of a man whose wit has its source in the inexhaustible reserves of army humour.
From now on, the fight against the armed insurgency will be joined by civilians – government officials and religious figures. The former, in particular, will play the role of "human shields", able to protect from enemy bullets and grenades the hapless policemen whose job it is to patrol at night the roads of this very troubled republic. In compliance with Yevkurov’s orders, all the government ministries and departments, as well as the administrations of Ingushetia’s towns and villages, will assume voluntary patronage of the interior ministry’s checkpoints. The civilians have not been entrusted with weapons, of course. What would be the point – they do not even known how to use them. No, their destiny is to become a kind of bulletproof vest which will afford reliable protection to the guardians of public order.
Almost no government agency has escaped this obligation. Even the Ministry of Culture and the republic’s sanitary-epidemiological service have been enlisted. Their staffs have already experienced the whole unadulterated melancholy of the night vigil, which is as terrifying as it is heroic. It is true, however, that the civilians are not involved in the actual inspection and verification of documents – instead, they spend their nights in their own cars, huddled in a bleak semi-slumber.
There are also persistent rumours that Yevkurov’s next step in this direction will be the appointment of female officers to the traffic police. This is not something entirely new in the North Caucasus – in Kabardino-Balkaria and North Ossetia uniformed female traffic police are a common sight. But in Ingushetia, where police officers have been the object of incessant attacks, it may easily have very unpredictable results. In this connection it needs to be noted that traditional local custom stipulates that for the violent death of a woman two men must pay with their lives. Whether the jovial President will decide to continue with the exercise of his wit, only time will tell.
One thing can be said for certain: being a pragmatist, the current head of the republic prefers to "goad" reality, rather than conceal it behind inflated numbers plucked from the air, as Zyazikov did. Although it has taken him some time, Yevkurov has finally realized that the propaganda spread by the insurgents is effective and popular in Ingushetia, especially among young people. The logic that impelled him to call a gathering of religious leaders for a thorough talk in Magas on May 7 cannot be called entirely original. First to admit defeat in the ideological battle with the insurgents was the government of Dagestan, which actively began to involve the religious authorities and creative intelligentsia in the struggle for the hearts and minds of the republic’s youth. It appears that the Ingush President has also drawn inspiration from that experience. The intention is clear: the propaganda of the supporters of the Caucasus Emirate must be countered by actively preventing the introduction into society of the ideas of traditional Islam.
On this sector of the battle front there is, however, a conspicuous lack of fresh ideas and sound arguments. That is why Yevkurov demanded that the religious leaders should formulate a unified doctrine to combat Salafism, which is spreading like wildfire.
It is possible that the President was pushed towards the meeting by the recent killings of the religious leaders Kalimatov and Esmurziyev (Mussa Esmurziyev was shot and killed in his own home on by unidentified gunmen on April 19, and on May 1 Said-Ibrakhim Kalimatov met a similar fate in the settlement of Troitskaya).
The armed insurgents are conducting a non-stop campaign of violence against the republic’s muftis. During Basayev’s raid on Nazran in 2004, the insurgents stormed the home of Mufti Albogachiyev, who was, however, absent at the time. The current head of Ingushetia’s Muslims and his deputy were lucky to escape with wounds after their cars came under fire.
In the simple and easy-to-understand language of a military man, Yevkurov called on the religious leaders to unite in the face of the Salafist plague. Those present at the gathering limply nodded their heads and readily agreed with the President, but as a result the representatives of the Ingush virds offered no coherent solutions. Yevkurov outlined his demands with the utmost clarity. He told the clergy that they must create a uniform set of rules of conduct in mosques and issue fatwas condemning the insurgents and their families. In response he heard only talk about life not being easy, and complaints about the situation in the republic.
To an outside observer it might have appeared that what took place at Magas was a game of misunderstanding, something that was eagerly demonstrated by the clergy in their replies to the President’s questions. As they meditated in the darkness, a vast distance separated the religious leaders from the needs of the population. To none of those present did it even occur to point to the principal reasons for the worsening of the situation – the increasing repression by the special services and law enforcement agencies, and the militarization of Ingushetia and the North Caucasus in general.
One of the participants took considerable pains to re-channel Yevkurov’s complaints in the direction of the republic’s interior minister, Ruslan Meyriyev, who attended the meeting. How could there be any question of a new religious doctrine, he asked, if after 3 am each night members of the security forces were blown off the streets like confetti? Yevkurov deftly parried: "But during the daytime there are police on the streets." This response can only be understood if one recalls the story about the drunk man who was searching for his lost coin under a streetlamp, as it was lighter there. Apparently the hunt for militants should be conducted only during daylight hours, because at night all cats are grey – one cannot tell who is a Salafist and who is a law-abiding citizen. At the end of the meeting Yevkurov lost his temper. Once again he attempted to explain to the relaxed audience that the infatuation of the young with a hostile ideology had gone too far – young people were saying their prayers only when they had left the confines of the republic, and at home they were drinking, carousing and ignoring the local customs and norms of the Muslim faith. In response, the participants vigorously assured the President that neither they nor their students preached violence and that they did not take part in the insurgency – well, perhaps with the exception of one or two people were dead now and some who were obviously not all there. This conversation of the blind with the deaf demonstrates how diverse and profound is the intellectual baggage of Russian officialdom and the Ingush clergy, who for years have engaged in dialogue not with each other, but with unknown inner voices.
On May 9, 54-year-old Magomed Aliyev and 46-year-old Leyla Aliyeva, the parents of Zaurbek (Abdul-Malik) Aliyev, were killed in their own home by unknown gunmen in the settlement of Orzhonikidze. Their 26-year-old son is on the wanted list as an member of the insurgency. This is the first time in Ingushetia that the parents of an insurgent have been killed. And it is a truly serious matter.
In Chechnya, repression has long been practiced against the relatives of insurgents. The practice was begun by the federals, and was subsequently taken up by the Chechen security forces controlled by Ramzan Kadyrov. Shocked by the killing, Ingushetia is asking today: who is behind this crime? Did the Ingushetian government know of the killers’ plans, did it give its consent, or did the killers act independently? In fact, though, the answer is not so important. Even if the Ingush leadership was not involved in the Ordzhonikidze tragedy, it looks very much as though a new plan of action is beginning to unfold in the republic – one that is based on the strategy of arbitrary violence that was developed in Chechnya. If the devotee of witty solutions tries to go against that plan, the Kremlin will find a replacement for him tomorrow.
Photo: IslamNews.Ru. (Translation by DM) (P, DM)
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