#6043
[Second Issue of the Day]
#7
The Russia Journal
January 25-31, 2002
Putin’s Muslim challenge
By GORDON M. HAHN
Russia has at least 20 million Muslims, of which Chechens are far from being the most numerous. Tatars make up more than half of Russia’s Muslim population, and more than 50 percent of them live outside Tatarstan.
Historically, Tatars have produced moderate forms of Muslim nationalism, such as jadidism, which appeared in the nineteenth century. They frequently intermarried with Russians and other Slavs during the Soviet times. With the collapse of the U.S.S.R., Mintimer Shaimiev, Tatarstan’s former Communist Party head and now the republic’s moderate leader, contained national separatists. He co-opted the nationalist movement’s slogans by refusing to sign the Federation Treaty in 1992, instead negotiating a separate treaty, which gave Tatarstan special rights as "a state associated with" Russia. Bashkortostan, another Muslim republic, followed suit in establishing confederal rather than federal relations with Moscow. Other Muslim and national minorities, as well as many of the predominantly Russian regions, resented the national republics’ privileged status and demanded their own "treaty" with federal authorities, but with less privileges.
Since Vladimir Putin’s rise to presidency, the Kremlin has implemented a series of federation reforms that have changed the flow of power between Moscow and the regions. Regional governors and legislatures must bring their constitutions in line with federal law or risk being removed from power by the president under a new federal law.
A second wave of federal reforms set for next year is likely to end in the abrogation of the bilateral arrangements. Tatar nationalist organizations recently have begun to pressure Shaimiev to protect Tatartsan’s sovereignty.
On this backdrop, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States and Putin’s support for the U.S.-led war against terrorism is interjecting new and potentially explosive tension back into Russia’s inter-ethnic relations. Various Muslim leaders have emerged condemning or calling for restraint in the war against Al Qaida and the Taliban. So far they have been careful not to condemn Putin’s support for the war. Numerous volunteers plied the moderate Tatar Public Center for the Taliban’s jihad against the United States for its help in getting to Afghanistan. The TPC recently organized a 2,000-strong demonstration in Tatarstan’s capital Kazan, demanding that President Shaimiev protect the republic’s sovereignty.
Demonstrators chanted anti-Russian slogans and called for independence from Moscow. President Shaimiev and the leaders of other Muslim republics – most acutely aware of the dangers of radical Islam and Russian-Muslim conflict to the federation – have been walking a thin line between condemning and endorsing the U.S.-led war and Putin’s support for it.
This centrist position may prove untenable. Indications that radical Islam is making inroads into Russia are mounting. Sergei Kirienko, former liberal premier and now Putin’s presidential envoy to the Volga Federal District, recently said "traditional" Islam needs to be strengthened in Russia in order to pre-empt the spread of radical Islam.
He warned that over the past few years, hundreds of Muslim leaders have returned to Russia from training in Saudi Arabia and other Islamic states, and are now busy spreading Wahhabism and other radical Islamic teachings alien to Russia’s Muslims.
As in Chechnya, some Wahabbite extremists of Osama bin Laden’s network have penetrated Tatar and other Russian Muslims’ religious schools. In December, Russia’s top Muslim leader admitted that he has met with Osama bin Laden’s brother several times in Bashkortostan. Muslim extremists could find growing support for their views, as Russia offers little financial support for moderate indigenous forms of Islamic education.
In addition, the percentage of Islamic believers among the Russian population is increasing as conversion to Islam and Muslims immigration from surrounding former Soviet republics such as Azerbaijan and Kazakstan grows. This in turn is driving what even moderate Muslim leaders fear is a growing Islamophobia among Russians. Moreover, increased security measures are bound to lead to excesses by Russian law-enforcement officers who make "ethnic profiling" pale in comparison, exacerbating Muslim alienation from the Russian majority.
Helping Russia with inter-ethnic and inter-confessional conflict resolution measures should be an important part of Western political support. In addition, Muslims and non-Muslims west and east would benefit from greater familiarity with traditional Tatars’ moderate jadidism, which is wisely being pushed by Shaimiev and his top advisor Rafael Khakimov as an antidote to radical Islam everywhere. Finally, in waging the war against radical Islam and terrorism, the United States must show appreciation for Russia’s own Muslim challenge, while keeping up pressure on Putin to ensure the protection of human rights and negotiate peace in Chechnya.
(Dr. Gordon M. Hahn is The Russia Journal’s political analyst and a visiting research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.)
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