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Assessing Unholy Alliances in Chechnya: From Communism andNationalism to Islamism and SalafismCerwyn Moore; Paul Tumelty

To cite this Article Moore, Cerwyn and Tumelty, Paul(2009) 'Assessing Unholy Alliances in Chechnya: From Communismand Nationalism to Islamism and Salafism', Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, 25: 1, 73 94

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Assessing Unholy Alliances in Chechnya:

From Communism and Nationalism

to Islamism and Salafism

C E R W Y N M O O R E A N D P A U L T U M E L T Y

The end of the Cold War ushered in a new period of instability in the Caucasus, asgroups formerly associated with the Communist Party sought to wrest power fromnewly formed political movements, which themselves sought independence from thesuccessor to the Soviet Union, the Commonwealth of Independent States. In theimmediate post-Cold War period a number of alliances, formed by groups with radi-cally different agendas, shaped the ensuing political uncertainty across the region. InChechnya, a number of historical relationships influenced the formation of nationalistand communist coalitions, particularly in the early and latter part of the twentiethcentury. Moreover, in the post-Soviet period, a series of coalitions and alliances such as the Abkhaz Battalion melded together national and regional groups, whichthemselves had an impact on the first Russo-Chechen War of the 1990s. Followingthe end of the first war in 1996, a series of other alliances, partially influenced by reli-gion, linked members of the Chechen diaspora community with indigenous radicalfigures and foreign jihadis who espoused Salafism. This, in turn, expanded what hadostensibly been a nationalist movement into a regional conflict beyond the bordersof Chechnya, a development that sheds light on the second Russo-Chechen War.

Introduction

In October 2007 the leader of the Chechen resistance Dokku Umarov declared

an Islamic Emirate in the North Caucasus. Not for the first time in the regions

history, resistance leaders had formally appealed to pan-Caucasian Islamism

in an attempt to knit together a wider resistance movement.1 Since 2002 the

resistance, much weakened over the past five years, has increasingly relied

upon the burgeoning insurgent groups in Dagestan, Ingushetia, Kabardino-

Balkaria and Karachayevo-Cherkessia.2 Until October Umarov, ostensibly a

nationalist, had been pressured by those around him, who are predominantly

Cerwyn Moore is Lecturer in International Relations in the Department of Political Science andInternational Studies, European Research Institute, University of Birmingham.Paul Tumelty is an analyst at the Strategic Analysis Group, Defence Science and TechnologyLaboratory (DSTL), UK Ministry of Defence.

Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, Vol.25, No.1, March 2009, pp.7394ISSN 1352-3279 print/1743-9116 onlineDOI: 10.1080/13523270802655621# 2009 Taylor & Francis

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Islamists, to declare the North Caucasus Emirate, effectively dividing up the

republics into a federal system akin to the administrative units of the

Ottoman Empire and previous holy wars known as gazavats.

More than 15 years before the Declaration of a Caucasus Emirate, in

November 1991, the Former Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic of

Checheno-Ingushetia declared itself an independent state, under its elected

president General Jokhar Dudaev (as it turned out, this applied only to the

eastern, Chechen part of the republic, as the Ingush voted overwhelmingly

in a referendum at the end of November against independence and in favour

of staying within the Russian federation, RSFSR). In December of the same

year the Chechen administration refused to sign the Federation Treaty,

Moscows attempt to reorganize its relations with the former Soviet republics.

Chechnya was one of two exceptions (Tatarstan being the other) that opted outof the process of re-federalization, effectively becoming a marker of insecurity

and a thorn in the side of the Yeltsin administration.

Successive diplomatic drives to establish a working political relationship

between Moscow and Grozny failed throughout 1992 and 1993, and by 1994

the confrontation between power-brokers in Moscow and Grozny became

increasingly hostile. In December 1994 the Yeltsin administration deployed

military forces in order to compel the Chechen administration in Grozny to

abandon its self-declared status as an independent state. The wars in

Chechnya that followed provide an important case for the study of alliancesbetween communists, former communists, nationalists, and in more recent

years Islamists. The end of communist rule, the Russian attempt at re-

federalization, the first war of the 1990s and the period of de facto indepen-

dence, in which inter-generational change and external forces began to

impinge on the coherence of the nationalistseparatist movement, provide a his-

torical context which has in part shaped the current shift in policy by the Chechen

resistance.

The two Russo-Chechen wars of the 1990s (199496 and 1999present)

provide the context within which this analysis is placed. The inter-war yearsof 199699 saw a critical mass of groups from criminals, anti-Russian ideol-

ogists and religious nationalists to Salafi-jihadist volunteers combine with

regional groups, creating cleavages within the national separatist movement

born of the first war of the 1990s.3 The second Russo-Chechen war, which

broke out in 1999, appears to have acted as a catalyst, exacerbating further the

schisms in the separatist movement. While Aslan Maskhadov attempted to

paper over these differences in the early part of the second war, a subtle shift

of power in the movement became increasingly apparent throughout 2000. By

2001 this led some commentators to question which groups the Russian auth-

orities could feasibly negotiate with, given the radical standpoint and uncompro-

mising stance of some elements in the Chechen separatist movement.4

74 J O U RN A L O F CO MMU N I S T S T U D I E S A N D T RA N S I T I O N P O L I T I CS

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The fleshing out of internal tensions and contradictions within the Chechen

insurgency will be contextualized within a broader post-Soviet anti-Russian

movement in the North Caucasus. Even though we recognize that a whole

host of nationalist figures such as Aleksandr Rutskoi played a role in the

Caucasus at the end of the Cold War, we do not seek to address the relationship

between former nationalists and communists within post-Soviet Russian poli-

tics, which has received considerable attention elsewhere. Instead, we here

address the need to revisit the Chechen insurgency because accounts of nation-

alism and Islamism focus, for the most part, on the insurgency read through the

lens of Russian studies.5 This re-examination of the insurgency sheds light on

its multi-dimensional, increasingly multi-ethnic and regional character, point-

ing towards post-Soviet resistance not as separatist, nationalist or Islamist

alone, but shaped instead by a complex, changing network of affiliations.The article begins by addressing the historical backdrop of Russo-Chechen

relations, touching upon the relationship between murids (Sufi apprentices,

often used to describe holy warriors), nationalists and communists. It then

turns to examine the late 1980s. In this period, while communism was on

the wane, a form of nationalism emerged that was framed both by political

rhetoric and by the resurgence of Islamism. By 1992 this led to the mobiliz-

ation of volunteer groups who became involved in the separatist conflict in

Abkhazia, the Chechen group of which became influential at the start of the

first Russo-Chechen war in 1994. The article will then examine the periodbetween the two wars of the 1990s, focusing upon radical indigenous

figures and movements linked to different Islamic groups in sections princi-

pally devoted to the tension between Islamists and nationalists. The third

section will focus on the spread of the struggle, and include an examination

of tensions born out of hostilities between groups of Chechens, and an

assessment of foreign fighters, under Arab tutelage, in the separatist move-

ment. The final section will draw these themes together to shed some light

on contemporary anti-Russian groups linked to the Chechen insurgency.

A final introductory point is required here. The idea of unholy alliancesemployed here refers to unnatural affiliations and irregular coalitions, and is

designed to tease out some of the complex relations and connections that have

shaped periods of violence in the Caucasus. In particular, our argument is

informed by a detailed understanding of the social, political, cultural and religious

backdrop that frames post-Soviet anti-Russian resistance in the North Caucasus.

The Age of Empires: From Murids and Nationalists, to Communists

and Separatists

Russian relations with groups in the North Caucasus have been marked by

successive periods of war and conflict. The first extended period of conflict

A S S E S S I NG U N H O L Y A L L I A N C E S I N C H E C H N Y A 75

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was shaped by the politics of empire, as Russia sought to extend its borders to

the south, and challenge the regional influence of the Turks and the historical

influence of the Persians. While the co-opting of non-Russian groups became

an important part of the empire building process, it was perhaps Russias

brutal military tactics, together with its failure to appreciate the mosaic of

different ethnic groups in the mountain regions of the North Caucasus, that

ultimately led to an extended period of conflict. At the same time, though,

an alliance of sorts emerged between the fiercely independent mountain dwell-

ers of the North Caucasus and Sufi adepts encouraging strict discipline, which

together framed the resistance to Russian expansionism, giving rise to the

first anti-Russian gazavat.

The first gazavat was led by Sheikh Ushurum, who has since become

known as Sheikh Mansur. Sheikh Mansur plagued the Russian army fromthe 1780s, at first drawing support from fighters from the north-east of the

Caucasus, and introducing the local population to Sufi Islam, proselytizing

groups in support of his murid movement. The murids were viewed as an

almost monastic military Muslim order, who were obliged to obey the

imam, or spiritual leader of the movement, and whose most sacred duty

and object in life was to die in battle against the infidels.6 In other words,

the ruthless insistence on obedience and the merger of highlander bravery

with religious order created a potent force of highlander fighters capable of

undertaking a drawn-out guerrilla campaign. Allen and Muratoff point outthat the strength of the murids lay in their reading of war as the end in

itself, as a vehicle for self-purification and self-sacrifice.7

The centre of

anti-Russian radicalism began in Dagestan, but quickly drew on support

from the Avars, Chechens and other Lesghi tribes, which coordinated their

attacks to further undermine Russian control of the mountainous Caucasus.

Interestingly, reports indicate that Russian forces tried a range of tactics

to subdue support for the uprisings, beyond simple military attacks. Thus,

coercion and intimidation were supported by other means, such as attempts

to divide and rule, in order to weaken the ability of the mountain villages orauls to resist the Russian advance. Moshe Gammer notes that, following

Russian aggression and treachery, the call to arms, to holy war or gazavat,

was answered by many Chechens and others, who flocked to [Mansur] at

Aldy.8 Following a series of confrontations, and some intensive fighting in

July and August 1785, Mansur retreated to the mountains, persuading the

majority of the population of Lesser Kabarda to follow him.9 The regional

and multi-ethnic character of the anti-Russian resistance, which included

Kumyks, Chechens and other mountaineers, and also Dagestani fighters, was

noted in reports by the Russian military at the time. And so Sheikh Mansur

had managed to blend together an alliance of different ethnic groups by

promoting Islam.


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In the years after the uprising led by Sheikh Mansur, successive waves of

resistance, culminating in a 30-year struggle between 1829 and 1859, led to

the establishment of a number of unholy alliances. In this period the three

imams, or leaders of the anti-Russian resistance, namely Ghazi Muhammad,

Hamzat Bek and Shamil, were Dagestani.10 On the one hand, the legacy of

these imams helped to unify a fragmented society divided by tribal codes,

clan and territorial affiliations and by the geographic terrain itself, over-

hauling and reforming the social and political order.11 On the other hand,

this signals the importance of Dagestani groups, shaping the spread of Islam

in the North Caucasus, and, at least in part, uniting different ethnic groups

under the banner of anti-Russian muridism.

But the connections to the centres of Ottoman power, and indeed the

broader field of power politics, were also intrinsic in developing an under-standing of the alliances in this period. As Gammer notes, clear channels of

communication operated throughout the 30-year uprising between Chechen

groups and the great powers. Reports suggest that, towards the end of that

three-decade insurrection, support was requested by Imam Shamil from

both the British and the French.12

Although channels of communication

between Imam Shamil and Ottoman donors were also clearly established,

Shamil much like Sheikh Mansur relied on a multi-national group of

local supporters, shifting his struggle from Dagestan into Chechnya before

eventually surrendering to the overwhelming power of Russian forces.While Shamil remains the keystone in the Chechen anti-Russian narrative,

his surrender in 1859 did not end the guerrilla war, with one of his naibs

(lieutenants), Baysungur from Benoy, continuing to fight for a further two

years.13

None the less the contested heritage of Shamil continued to haunt Russian

and Soviet historiographers, his legacy being variously deployed as that of

anti-imperialist hero or revolutionary cleric after the Bolshevik revolution.14

Indeed, Russian sources note that Dagestani groups raised millions of roubles

in order to refit a tank regiment named Shamil in support of the anti-Nazicommunist cause, while more recently Shamils legacy was deployed by the

mujahideen in their war against Russian forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

In the latter part of the nineteenth century, following the end of the 30-year

struggle, successive attempts were made to incorporate North Caucasian

groups into the Russian army. For instance, an irregular cavalry unit, named

terskii konnyi polk (Terek [Irregular] Cavalry Regiment) was formed in

1860, made up of enlisted Chechens, while militias from the indigenous popu-

lation were organized in an attempt to enrol the most restless elements of

Chechnya, Ichkeria, and Aukh and remove them, with their horses and

weapons, as far as possible from the confines of the country.15 But attempts

to raise and employ local militias in this period largely failed, with Chechen


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fighters often deserting or joining rebel groups still fighting the Russian

forces.16 None the less, the ever-changing allegiances in this period were

themselves consumed in the tides of historical change, as the Great War in

Europe led to the end of the Russian and Ottoman Empires.

For Soviet Power For Shariat

In the period of the Russian Civil War, from late 1917 through to mid-1920,

events in the North Caucasus were marked by ever-changing alliances on the

battlefield.17 In the admixture, mountain dwellers, Red Partisans, Cossacks,

Turks, Georgian Mensheviks and murids all played a role, as did the

varying levels of foreign intervention in the region. In particular, the confron-

tation between White Russian forces centring on Denikin, and Red Partisanfighters also shaped the events on the battlefields in the Caucasus, leading

to temporary alliances and changing coalitions.

However, in late 1917 the Bolsheviks adopted another strategy off the bat-

tlefield, designed to undermine the threat posed by a unified anti-communist

stance across differing ethnic communities by setting up the Peoples Com-

missariat of Nationalities (the Narkomnats). Located within the Commissariat

of Nationalities, the department named Muskom, or Muslim Committee,

engaged in enticing the Muslim population into the Soviet system by granting

them autonomy. This approach led to the promotion of Muslim revolutionaryleaders, including Mulla-Nur Vahitov and Mir Said Sultan-Galiev, whose

support was garnered to bolster the Bolshevik cause. These Muslim Commu-

nists became members of the Muslim Socialist Committee, seeking to amend

and transform the Bolshevik movement from within, so as to address the dire

socio-economic conditions of Muslims in the Soviet Union. Their work led to

a series of documents and the establishment of a Central Bureau of Muslim

Communists, which included a specifically Muslim unit of the Russian

Communist Party.18

The Bolshevik cause thus gained some support from

a number of Muslim clerics in the North Caucasus, who became knownas the Red Shariatists and whose slogan was For Soviet Power for

Shariat.

In 1917 Russia had a significant Muslim population, which was divided in

its response to the Bolshevik revolution. Whilst groups including the qadimists

rejected the legitimacy of Bolshevik power, others such as the Vaisities in the

VolgaUrals region who preached a form of ultra-traditionalism formed a tac-

tical alliance with the Bolsheviks in order to counter the Islamist nationalist

movements of the Soviet south. Reformists within the Islamic community,

known as the jadids, were similarly divided in their attitudes towards the

Bolsheviks. Whilst many simply confined themselves to life under Bolshevik

rule, a number of the reformists who opposed the Bolsheviks were organized


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by Muslim leaders such as Mufti Galimzian Barudi into Islamic regiments

which joined the White Army to fight against the spread of communism.

Interestingly, as Alexandre Bennigsen notes,

between 1917 and 1920 in the North Caucasus, the leadership of therevolutionary movement belonged to Muslim radicals who had joined

the Bolshevik Party rather than Russian Communists. These native

Bolsheviks belonged to the upper levels of Muslim society and their

ancestors fought the Russians under Shamil (Makhach Dakhadaev was

married to a granddaughter of Shamil). They were certainly dedicated

communists and loyal to the Bolshevik leadership but remained nation-

alist and did not underestimate the vital role of Islam in the North

Caucasus.19

Another legacy of this period was the idea of a North Caucasus Republic,

known as Gorskaya Respublika (Mountain Republic), partly financed by the

Grozny millionaire Tapa Chermoyev. Capitalizing on the Tsars resignation,

in mid-May 1917 the mountain dwellers held a congress aimed at unifying

their peoples under a self-governing body. Headed by Russian-educated

elites, the body included representatives from the Kabardians, Balkars, Che-

chens, Dagestanis and Ossetians and most of them conceived of the new alli-

ance in seculardemocratic terms. However, the Sufi orders pressed for the

Sharia as the governing principle as it was they who could mobilize largenumbers of men.20 Yet General Denikin refused to recognize any independent

states in the region and used force to bring the Mountain Republic to an end.

The Kumyk politician Haidar Bammate who represented the short-lived Gors-

kaya Respublika at the Paris Peace Conference, drew attention to the multi-

ethnic nature of the North Caucasus Republic.21

This reality led a number of prominent Chechen leaders to favour the

Bolsheviks, particularly as they had encouraged their self-determination and

freedom of religious expression, in a peculiar precursor to Yeltsins fateful

proclamation at the centurys end. Despite a firm alliance between the Bolshe-viks and some Chechen and Dagestani religious leaders, in response to the

failure of the Mountain Republic in September 1919 the elderly Naqshbandi

Sheikh Uzen Haji al-Salty pronounced an Emirate of the North Caucasus,

centred upon the Sharia. Based in Vedeno, Uzen Haji declared jihad

against Denikins forces, uniting both secular and religious figures in this

endeavour. Furnishing himself with the title Imam, his declaration mirrored

the long-standing anti-Russian resistance in the region, particularly given

his selection of Vedeno as the emirates capital and its administrative partition

into seven naib-doms.22 The uprising was neither nationalist nor political, but

instead drew support as a religious movement that sought to expel infidels and

establish a theocratic imamate, under the suzerainty of the Ottoman caliphate,


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mirroring the earlier attempts by Shamil to organize the different groups in the

region under the banner of Islam.

Indeed, the movement garnered support from the long-standing network of

Circassians and Chechens based in Turkey. This led Imam Shamils great

grandson Said-Bek to travel from Turkey to Chechnya in support of the

guerrilla war, highlighting links between external groups in Turkey and

the anti-Russian resistance that resurfaced in the post-Soviet era. However,

the history of the emirate was short-lived, as Uzen Haji died in 1920. Although

resistance to the Bolsheviks continued, particularly through the actions of the

Avar Najmuddin of Hotso and Sayyid Amin of Ansalta, by the mid-1920s they

had largely quelled opposition in the Caucasus.23

Equally, throughout the period of early Soviet rule we can identify a number

of events that have shaped episodes of Russo-Chechen violence. In the early1920s the Bolshevik Party had devised a strategy of divide and rule, drawing

on the different ethnic groups and religious systems in the North Caucasus,

turning the Ingush against the Chechens, and exploiting cleavages between

the different forms of Sufism (Naqshbandiyya and Qadiriyya) with the Qadir-

iyya Ali Mitaev becoming a member of the Chechen Revolutionary Committee

known as Revkom ( Revolyutsionnyi komitet) another point mirrored in the

post-Soviet period as the Qadiriya Mufti Akhmed Kadyrov chose to align

himself with Putins Russian administration. By the late 1930s many of these

pro-Bolshevik leaders (including Najmuddin Samurskii, an outspoken national-ist who became First Secretary of the Communist Party in Dagestan) had been

executed in the Stalinist purges.

As Soviet rule solidified, its later actions under Stalinism formed the back-

drop to a further attempt by the mountain peoples of the region to unite in the

early 1990s, although again the organizing paradigm would be caught between

the religious and secular nationalist camps. Alliances between the small

nations were forged again but the strain inherent in their organizing principle

led to their violent divergence, with the Chechens forging their own path.

Towards the Abyss: From 1989 to 1994

The idea of a unified North Caucasus governing entity was rekindled as the

Soviet Union began to unravel. Its genesis was rooted in the emergent nation-

alist sentiment fermenting throughout the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. A

reawakening of ethnic identity drew attention to not only the Soviet auth-

orities oppression of the small nations but, more widely, also that of the

Tsars, pushing dissent steadily throughout the North Caucasuss dozens of

ethnic groups.

In August 1989 the authorities in Abkhazia administratively an auton-

omous republic within the Soviet republic of Georgia invited an array of


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personalities from across the North Caucasus to a meeting at which the

Confederation of Mountain Peoples of the North Caucasus was formally estab-

lished; the Kabardin dissident intellectual Musa Shanib was elected as its

head. The new confederations principal aim was the re-establishment of a

secular North Caucasian republic, united by common highlander culture and

shared history of Russian repression.24

Known as the KGNK, the confedera-

tion rejected the stance of the incumbent authorities, with the exception of

Chechnya, whose new revolutionary leadership, under General Jokhar

Dudayev, was striving to fulfil the nationalistic wishes and aspirations of

the majority of the populace.25 The aim of the KGNK was political

change, informed by popular nationalistic sentiments. The fragmentation of

the Soviet Union, and the attempt to re-create a federation of former Soviet

republics, provided the backdrop for the actions of the KGNK.Shanib, a native of Nalchik, the capital of Kabardino-Balkaria, had spent

much of his early years establishing a career as a junior officer on the periphery

of the Soviet bureaucratic elite. However, he forfeited his career as a law enfor-

cement official, and instead took up a position as a junior lecturer, working

towards a dissertation on the role of law and socialist self-governance. In the

late 1960s, because of his stance towards the Soviet authorities, Shanib had

become known locally as a dissident. Many years later, as the Soviet Union

collapsed, Shanibs star rose, as he attempted to mobilize and harness militant

nationalism to a common end.The movement was initially unremarkable, primarily because its leading

exponents were preoccupied with dislodging or jockeying with the existing

Soviet authorities and rival groupings in their respective republics. However,

in 1992, at the instigation of the movements leading Chechen figures

Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev and its notorious vice-president, Yusup Soslambekov,

it was galvanized into armed resistance to the Georgians perceived aggression

against the Abkhaz.

The parliament of the KGNK, along with the International Circassian

Association and the Congress of the Kabardin People, began to mobilizegroups in support of the Abkhaz. In the weeks that followed, at least 2,000

Abaza, Adigean, Cherkess, Kabardian and Chechen volunteers joined

forces with Abkhaz army units.26 The KGNK provided the rubric under

which an array of local ethnic groups believed they could unite, drawing on

a pool of disaffected young volunteers searching for a role within the post-

Soviet North Caucasus.27 Elsewhere, a group of Communist Party members

watched the events in Moscow, supporting neither Gorbachev nor his challen-

gers. Instead, this group of former Communist Party officials seized the oppor-

tunity to become power-brokers within Chechnya proper. Drawing largely on

the Communist Party nomenklatura and the Russian-speaking population,

their tribal affiliations and support networks in the northern plains of


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Chechnya, a group of pro-Moscow Chechens gained support and challenged

the growing nationalist drive of the early 1990s. This group was composed

of a mixture of Chechens, including Doku Zavgayev and Umar Avtorkhanov

from the northern plains, together with former Dudayev loyalists such as

Bislan Gantemirov and Ruslan Labazanov.

The Abkhaz Battalion and Beyond

The paramilitary group formed by the KGNK became known as the volunteer

peace-keeping battalion of the Mountain Confederation. The battalion was

composed of Cherkess, Kabardins, Adygeans and the largest unit of some

500 Chechen volunteers.28

In a further ironic twist, these units, particularly

those under the then unknown Chechen commanders Ruslan Gelayev andShamil Basaev, were overtly trained and funded by elements of Russian

military intelligence, the GRU, that sought to harness their fervour by dis-

placing them from the North Caucasus and using them as proxies in a war

against the newly independent Georgia. The confederation also received

significant support from the Circassian diaspora and the Turkish ministry of

defence.29

The confederations unifying ideology gradually divided between the largely

ethno-nationalist aims of the Circassian Abkhaz, Cherkess, Adygei and Kabar-

din elements and the more overtly religious Chechens who expounded anincreasingly violent anti-Russian ideology. Those Sovietized confederation

leaders such as Shanib struggled to reconcile these distinctions while the

mostly pagan Abkhaz quickly tired of the Chechen presence. It was at this junc-

ture that the common cause of the confederations constituent ethnic groups

splintered under the Chechens dominance and religiosity.

The Abkhaz experience formed the basis of the local and international net-

works that Basaev would utilize over the coming decade to take the fight to

Russia and beyond during both the first and the second Russo-Chechen

wars. As an illustration, the leader of a pro-Chechen group based in Turkey,Muhammed Tockan, had participated in the Abkhaz war, where he became

affiliated with Basaev. Tockan had then returned to Turkey, but played

an active role clandestinely supporting the Chechen separatist movement

from afar. Then, in 1996, he led a group of pro-Chechen hostage-takers in

an attack on a Russian ferry near the Turkish port town of Trabzon, using

regional terrorism as a symbolic gesture to highlight the Chechens plight.

Ruslan Gelayevs early involvement in leading the volunteer units on

behalf of the Abkhaz against the Georgians serves to underline the constantly

shifting alliances within the region.30 In 2001 he was funded by the Georgian

government to fight the Russian-backed Abkhaz in the Kodori gorge. Later, in

2008 Gelayevs former deputy in Abkhazia, Dokka Umarov, in his capacity as


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leader of the North Caucasus resistance movement, unilaterally offered his

support to Mikhail Saakashvilis Georgia in order to counter continuing

Russian support to the separatist Abkhaz republic.

By late 1993, the resolution of Yeltsins conflict with the Russian parlia-

ment had stabilized the majority of the North Caucasus republics, and they

settled into regimes largely dominated by elites from the indigenous ethnic

groups. The idea of a unified Mountain Republic had again had its moment

in history. Yeltsin now turned his attention to the rapidly deteriorating situ-

ation in Chechnya under the leadership of Soviet air force General Jokhar

Dudayev. Ironically, Chechen society had initially backed Yeltins opposition

to the communist authorities, with the young Shamil Basaev himself manning

the barricades in Moscow in support.

Nationalists versus Islamists

The collapse of the Soviet Union was accompanied by intense Islamic reviv-

alism across the North Caucasus, where the secret Sufi brotherhoods had sur-

vived and thrived, despite the best efforts of the Soviet authorities to quell their

influence.31 A new key actor to emerge in the region was the All-Union Islamic

Renaissance Party (IRP). Founded in Astrakhan in 1990, the partys original

members included the Dagestani, Bagautdin Kebedov, whose brother has

taught at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the Chechen doctor Islam Khalimov,and the Chechen ideologist Movladi Udugov and his brother Isa Umarov.

These individuals formed the original core of the indigenous Salafi network

in the region. While their message was yet to be heard amid the mass mobiliz-

ation of the nationalist separatist Chechen movement in the first half of

the 1990s, their power has increased exponentially and by 2008 become the

dominant influence over the ideology of the Chechen-led North Caucasus

resistance.

Much of Chechnyas senior leadership during the first war were born in

exile in Kazakhstan. The Chechens bombastic leader Jokhar Dudayev hadbeen based in Estonia and witnessed the mass protests against the Soviet auth-

orities there. He was also fully aware that his own Islamic credentials were

weak and he thus infused much of his rhetoric with Islamic reference

points. Dudayev appointed the Salafi-connected Islam Khalimov as his

religious adviser, while his information campaign was led by Movladi

Udugov. The war naturally intensified the religious element of Chechen iden-

tity and it proved a strong tool by which the resistance distinguished itself

from the Russians. Coupled with a generational change in the resistance,

this created the propitious circumstances that eventually tipped the balance

in favour of the Salafi component of the resistance leadership during the

second war.


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The Salafis helped to facilitate an unusual alliance with a member of the

Jordanian Chechen diaspora community, Fathi Mohammed Habib (alias

Sheikh Ali Fathi al-Shishani), who arrived in Chechnya in 1993. Fathi was

an elderly veteran of the jihad against the Soviet forces in Afghanistan and

he began proselytizing among Chechnyas youth with his small band of Jorda-

nian Chechen associates, soon amassing a group of around 100 followers.

Fathi was the most influential figure in establishing the foreign fighters

community in the North Caucasus in the early days.

Following Dudayevs death in a Russian rocket attack in April 1996, the poet

and leading light of the failed Confederation of Mountain Peoples, Zelimkhan

Yandarbiev, was appointed interim president of Chechnyas ruined de facto

state. Yandarbiev, who had recently grown a beard and adopted Islamic dress,

immediately used his position to raise the prospect of a Chechnya underSharia law and quickly enacted a new criminal code modelled on that of

Sudan, signalling the beginning of the struggle between the nationalist and

Islamist camps in the resistance.

Elections the following year were won by the secularnationalist former

Chechen chief of staff and Red Army colonel, Aslan Maskhadov. His auth-

ority was immediately challenged by the Salafis who began agitating for the

implementation of Sharia law in Chechnya. The Salafis comprised an alliance

of local ideologues, ethnic Jordanian-Chechens, and foreign fighters of Arab,

Turkish and North African descent whose collective power was fuelled by thepoverty and desperation of Chechnyas disintegrating and isolated society. For

young North Caucasians, especially the Chechens, the appeal of the Salafis,

beyond their finances, lay in the simplicity of the message they preached,

which trumped the combined complexities of local customary law and

Sufi practices, particularly weddings, which were prohibitively expensive

for Chechnyas young men.

Between 1997 and 1999 Maskhadov struggled to contain the intensifying

rivalry between the Salafis and the traditional Sufi adherents within his regime,

which led to open clashes, particularly around Gudermes in 1998. In late 1997,the Dagestani Islamist, Bagautdin Magomedov, had been forced into exile by

the Dagestani government. Both Bagautdin and his jamaat relocated in

Gudermes in Chechnya, where he forged an agreement to be hosted by

Salman Raduev and his militia. While similarities existed between the

Chechen and Dagestani Salafists, their views regarding the continuing

struggle exposed different viewpoints. When Maskhadov moved to disarm

the Chechen Salafis in Gudermes in July 1998, an armed confrontation

occurred, although the well-known foreign fighters based nearby and the

Dagestani Islamists did not intervene in this nationalist and Islamist conflagra-

tion. None the less, Maskhadov moved to expel Bagautdin Magomedov

from Chechnya, and also Abdurakhman, a young ethnic Jordanian preacher


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and successor to Sheikh Fathi. Faced with the collapse of society, in 1999

Maskhadov chose to implement Sharia law in an effort to bring unity to

Chechnyas de facto state, but this failed to bring real order.

Following the end of the first war in 1996, Emir Khattab had failed to leave

the North Caucasus, instead marrying a woman from the Dagestani village of

Karamakhi. Marriage was frequently used as a tool by foreign fighters to

legitimize their continuing presence in the region. Khattab believed that the

Chechens victory was only the beginning of the struggle to expand the

Emirate by force to other regions of the North Caucasus, and so he established

a number of training camps where young North Caucasians received military

training and Koranic instruction.

In support of this vision, in summer 1999 Khattab and Basaev led a number

of incursions across the border into Dagestan in support of three villages that haddeclared Sharia law. However, their actions failed dramatically as members of

a number of Dagestani ethnic groups took up arms against them. The failure of

the Dagestanis to rise up en masse in support of the Chechens can be linked in

part to the actions of Chechen field commander Salman Raduev during the first

war: during a failed raid against a Russian base in Dagestan, he took hundreds of

hostages in the town of Kizlyar, leading to many deaths.32

Following the onset of the Second Chechen War in September 1999, many

of the hundreds of youths trained in Khattabs camps flowed into the ranks of

the Chechen resistance and fought on their behalf in the early part of the war.However, the growing success of the Russian counter-insurgency effort led

Shamil Basaev to change tack and instead begin cultivating an underground

insurgent infrastructure across the whole North Caucasus. Making use of

alliances from his time fighting in Abkhazia in the Confederation of Mountain

Peoples, Basaev created the embryonic structure that today challenges the

peaceful future of the North Caucasus.

Chechen versus ChechenThe struggle between the nationalists and Salafis reached a critical moment in

Chechen society when the Mufti of Chechnyas Muslims, Akhmed Kadyrov,

and the powerful Yamadaev family openly opposed the Islamist forces, whom

they accused of undermining Chechen traditions. While Kadyrov and the

Yamadaevs fought against the Russians during the first war, their defection

laid the ground for the fundamental split in the Chechen resistance as they

brought significant segments of the dominant Qadiriyya Sufi brotherhood

with them. Capitalizing on the dynamic between traditional Sufi Islam and

its Salafi opposition, Moscow has successfully Chechenized the conflict

since the early 2000s. This led to the formation of pro-Moscow Chechen

militias and a historically unprecedented level of inter-Chechen violence.


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In 2004 Akhmed Kadyrov was assassinated, paving the way for the rise of

his notorious son Ramzan, who is currently the Chechen president. Although

the Kadyrovs and Yamadaevs fought on the rebel side between 1994 and

1996 and then defected together, their alliance has now unravelled and

they are engaged in a bitter conflict. Sulim Yamadaev heads the Vostok bat-

talion, one of two key GRU Chechen units currently operating against the

resistance; the other, Zapad, is led by Said Magomed Kakiev, a GRU

major and career soldier who hails from the traditionally pro-Russian north-

ern plains of Chechnya. He and his men were one of the few pro-Moscow

Chechen units that fought against Dudaevs forces during the first war.

Zapad and Vostok battalions form a key plank of the Kremlins Checheniza-

tion strategy, although their rivalry with Kadyrov, who is believed to be

backed by the federal security service (FSB, successor to the KGB), regularlyerupts in violence. By mid-2008 the balance of power between them

remained manifestly unstable.

Kadyrovs iron grip over parts of Chechnya and strong personal backing

from the former Russian president (now prime minister) Vladimir Putin has

enabled significant reconstruction efforts in Chechnyas urban centres.

Indeed, Kadyrov has arguably secured a greater degree of political and

fiscal autonomy for the Chechen people than the separatists could hope

for. As an illustration, in 2008 Akhmed Zakaev, the leading Chechen

nationalist-separatist figure, thanked Kadyrov for effectively overseeing thewithdrawal of Russian influence from the region. While technically accurate,

Zakayevs support for someone accused of grotesque crimes against his own

people appalled many of his co-nationals and buttressed the position of his

rivals in the Salafi camp.

The Struggle Spreads

The small Dagestani and Chechen Salafi community had been much derided

among the general population throughout the 1990s as they considered thecontemptuous and arrogant stance of the Wahabbis vis-a-vis Sufism as a

foreign ideology. The perception of its leading figures as cowards was

underlined when they fled to Turkey and the Middle East at the outbreak

of the war in late 1999. Movladi Udugov travelled to Turkey and played

a key role in organizing facilitation networks for foreign fighters; Islam

Khalilov and Bagautdin Magomedov moved to the Middle East and

promoted the Chechen cause among Gulf-based Islamist financiers, while

Zelimkhan Yandarbiev, acting as a roving ambassador to the Islamic world,

secured diplomatic recognition from the Taliban regime in 2000, thereby

tarnishing the resistance and perceptions of the legitimacy of the Chechen

cause.


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However, within the cadres of the resistance the Salafis status and influ-

ence spiralled following the resurgence of the Russo-Chechen War in 1999.

A parallel command existed from the wars outset in the form of the

Supreme Military Majlis ul-Shura around Basaev and Khattab standing

against a small coterie of respected Maskhadov deputies in the State

Defence Committee. This led to an uncoordinated and disparate command

structure and allowed some commanders to depart from traditional

methods. In mid-2002 Maskhadov yielded to Salafi pressure and a State

Defence CommitteeMajlis ul-Shura was formed to coordinate the resist-

ance better and to bring the nationalist Sufi commanders together with the

Salafis. Despite this, the rebel movement lacked cohesion until Maskhadovs

death in 2005.

The lack of cohesion in the Chechen separatist movement in the secondconflict, the increasing influence of a Salafi doctrine and the broadening

remit of the resistance led to the use of informal regional networks, includ-

ing the Riad us-Saliheyn, harking back to Basaevs experience as part of a

multi-ethnic radical movement in the Abkhaz War. The Riyad us-Saliheyn

appears to have operated as a regional franchise, with Basaev claiming

responsibility for a series of attacks, often to garner support from donors

and beneficiaries. One such suicide attack on a bus in the town of Mozdak

was allegedly sanctioned and funded by Basaev, but conducted by a

member of the Nogai community. Court documents point to the role of anethnic Kist Chechen, as a key facilitator who organized the attack. Thus a

network of linked cells provided support for the planning and execution

of terror attacks, often drawing on regional affiliates. It appears that a

second attack on the Mozdok army hospital on 1 August 2003, this time

using a truck bomb, was a joint operation by the Stavropol and Ingush

Wahhabi jamaat. Some reports indicate that an alliance of groups from

the Kabardino-Balkaria jamaat based in Nalchik, along with the Nogai Bat-

talion, and members of the Ingush jamaats may have been involved in plan-

ning the attack, although these reports may refer to the attack of June 2003.33

None the less, this demonstrates the multi-ethnic and yet indigenous and

regional character of this network.

Maskhadovs successor was named as Shaykh Abdul Khalim Sadulaev, the

head of the Sharia Committee of the State Defence CommitteeMajlis ul-

Shura. In mid-May 2005 he formally announced a historic shift in Chechen

rebel strategy away from Maskhadovs restriction of the war to Chechnya,

when he issued a series of decrees creating a Caucasus Front comprising

Ingushetia, North Ossetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachaevo-Cherkessia,

Stavropol, Adygea, Krasnodar and Dagestan. Through his religious authority

and youthful, charismatic approach, Sadulayev was able to bridge the

secular and the Salafi divide by appealing to both factions, as well as appealing


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directly to the increasingly prominent jamaat structures created by Basaev

throughout the North Caucasus. The jamaats pledged their support to Sadulaev,

briefly evoking memories of past gazovats (holy wars).

However, Sadulaev was killed in 2006 and replaced by Dokka Umarov, a

more traditional Chechen military commander. Umarov has increasingly

come under pressure from the Salafis since he inherited Sadulaevs structures.

After Basaevs death Umarov appointed Basaevs close ally Supyan Abdul-

laev as Chechen vice-president; Abdullaev is a key Salafi ideologist from

Vedeno and is related to Islam Khalilov. Umarovs other appointments under-

line the increasingly multi-ethnic nature of the North Caucasus resistance.

These elements have encouraged Umarov to change the character of the

North Caucasus Front to resonate more closely with those jamaats now fight-

ing under his leadership. The Middle East educated Anzor Astemirov, whoheads the jamaat in Kabardino-Balkaria, appears to have heavily influenced

Umarovs decision in October 2007 to declare an Islamic emirate in the

North Caucasus. Umarovs declaration caused a furore within the wider

Chechen resistance movement, effectively signalling the end of the indepen-

dence project under the banner of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. Opposi-

tion came mainly from the nationalist separatist camp based in Western

Europe under Akhmed Zakaev, whose vociferous criticism of Umarov, for-

merly his close friend, underlines the deep cleavages now existing within

the movement. Yet Umanovs decision has been dictated by the requirementsof the time and the generational split between those fighters who were brought

up in the Soviet period and those born in the 1980s or later. Chechen society

and the Sufi brotherhoods have long struggled to reconcile aspirations for

Sharia law with local customary law, known as adat. Yet Umarov knows

that the only factor that has historically been able to unite the Mountain

Peoples of the Caucasus is the common bond of the Sharia. One Chechen

historian has drawn parallels between Umarovs emirate, and the efforts of

Shaykh Uzun Haji al-Salty during 191920.34

Although since 11 September 2001 the presence of non-indigenous com-batants in Muslim conflict zones has bound them up with the al-Qaida move-

ment, it is evident that a significant number of those who have travelled to

Chechnya were motivated by notions of kinship with their brethren, parti-

cularly those from Turkey, Syria and Jordan. Even the mother of Emir

Khattab, a Saudi national who led the foreign fighters in Chechnya from

1994 to 2002, was possibly of Circassian descent and had migrated to the

Ottoman Empire in the 1860s. Khattab was invited to the region by Shaykh

Fathi, and in order to operate unhindered among the resistance the most

important of his early exploits was to win the acceptance of Shamil Basaev,

who symbolically claimed Khattab as a brother, a gesture that signalled to

fellow Chechens that he was free to operate in the region as Basaevs guest.


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Khattab drew upon Fathis Islamic jamaat and rapidly became a focal point for

the international Salafijihadi network.

This shift has manifested itself in a number of ways. First, the insurgency

in the North Caucasus currently draws on a number of prominent affiliated

groups, led by non-Chechen leaders. For example, the Nogai component of

the resistance movement, in part controlled by leaders such as Ulubay Yegush-

iev, works closely with the Ingush jamaat group led by Emir Magas. Indeed,

Magas himself at present holds a key role in the hierarchy of the resistance.

Furthermore, the resistance continues to draw on a continuing Gulf state

Arab group, led by Muhannad, numbering fewer than half a dozen volunteers,

while the Turkish component of the resistance has risen in stature and promi-

nence. Other groups linked into the pan-North Caucasus alliance include

members of the Dagestani jamaats, and the increasingly autonomous andinfluential Kabardin jamaat led by Anzor Astemirov.

Finally, we turn here to one other component of the insurgency in the North

Caucasus, building on our earlier work on the role of the Arab mujahideen in the

Chechen resistance.35 This is interesting, in so far as it allows us to demonstrate

the role of alliances within the foreign fighter movement in Chechnya, which

has been predominantly led by Gulf State Arabs, but which has always drawn

upon affiliations with both Turkish and North African foreign fighters.

Foreign Fighters and the Second Russo-Chechen Conflict

Even though the war of 1994 96 did much to re-establish the Islamic aspect of

Chechen identity, the conflict was largely nationalist in character. In contrast,

the second conflict has been marked by a radical shift which has shaped both

the conflict and the alliances between the Arab mujahideen, Sufi field com-

manders and foreign volunteers within a regional and increasingly Islamist

narrative.36 Perhaps the most marked example of this has resulted in a

complex network of alliances linking the Arab mujahideen with indigenous

elements of the Chechen insurgency. We have elsewhere traced the evolutionof the Arab mujahideen, the Jordanian Diaspora community and volunteer

combatants in Chechnya, and we here seek to supplement this work on

foreign fighters by highlighting the role of foreign financiers and ideologues,

and conclude with some reflections on Kuwaiti, North African and Turkish

jihadis who have played a role in the second Russo-Chechen war of the

1990s.37

Beyond the well-known leadership of Arab mujahideen volunteers in

Chechnya, which included Ibn Khattab, Abu Aqeedah, Abu Walid, Yasaqub

al-Ghamidi, al-Saif and Abu Hafs, a significant group of foreign fighters

have maintained links with the Middle East. In more recent years both

Russian forces and pro-Kremlin Chechen groups have sought to isolate and


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kill these fighters and also the foreign financiers and ideologues who played a

prominent role in the Chechen resistance movement in the second conflict.

The Saudi ideologue, Abdullah al-Saif al-Jaber al-Buaynayn al-Tamimi,

from the Bani Tamim tribal group (also known as Abu Omar al-Sayf), was

killed in 2005. Another key figure in the Arab volunteer movement, Abu Que-

teyba (a financier involved in operational logistics), also of Gulf state origin,

was killed in 2004, as a result of a Russian special operation. His death pro-

vided Russian security forces with invaluable information about the existing

make-up of the remaining Arab contingent in the North Caucasus. In addition,

according to news reports, a number of fighters from Kuwait, such as Salem al-

Ajmi (killed in February 2001) and Mokhled al-Utaibi (killed in September

2000), indicate that the Arab mujahideen provided active manpower at the

front line of the conflict in the earlier years of the second war. However, itwas the death in 2005 of Salafist financier Ahmed Nasser Eid Abudullah

Al-Fajri Al-Azimi (known as Abu Zaid or Al-Kuwaiti), viewed as an import-

ant source of foreign funds, that signalled the demise of the Kuwaiti-led role in

the continuing Chechen resistance.38

Equally, a series of arrests have been made that point to a network of

foreign volunteers with North African backgrounds, who may have partici-

pated in the second conflict. In 2000, the Russian authorities arrested Abdusa-

lom Zurka, a Yemeni, and Saken Mohammed, a man described as being of

Moroccan descent. In 2004 the authorities announced that they had arrestedan Algerian, Abu Muskhab, while others such as Osman Larussi, Yacine

Benalia and Abu-Tarik, all Algerians, were allegedly killed in the second

war. Albeit small in number, it appears that the North African contingent of

volunteers had an important, if largely ignored, function aligned to particular

warlords, but under the guidance of the Arab mujahideen. Indeed, it appears

that the small number of the North African fighters involved in the second con-

flict quickly became linked to active units based in the neighbouring regions

to the south of Chechnya, particularly around the Pankisi gorge. The reliance

on this geographical location was due, perhaps, to the difficulty in travellinginto the region, and seems to reflect the tapering logistical capacity of the

Chechen mujahideen, and the refusal of some Chechen units to accept

foreign volunteer combatants, as Russian and pro-Kremlin Chechen forces

took control of large parts of Chechnya proper.

As if to emphasize the multi-national character of the volunteer combatant

movement in Chechnya, newspaper reports and epitaphs list dead fighters

apparently of Turkish origin, killed in Chechnya over the course of the two

conflicts.39

Indeed the Turkish involvement in the foreign fighter movement

is an important channel of support, disseminating jihadi martyr epitaphs

which eulogize the multinational character of the foreign fighter movement.

For instance, in Chechen jihadi videos with Turkish voice-overs, groups of


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martyred fighters from southern Russian republics and post-Soviet states and

republics, including Dagestanis, Tartars and Uzbeks, are mentioned; however,

the most prominent group featured are those purportedly from Turkey.40

Each

has the prefix Turkiye next to his name, and those mentioned, including pro-

minent Salafi volunteers, number seven; namely Bilal, Zinnar, Abdulkadir,

Mucahit, Abdusselam, Huseyin and Selami.41

Indeed, the Turkish contingent

of the foreign fighter movement has drawn on pre-existing kinship networks

between groups with Caucasian ancestry, from the Greater Middle East,

who formed part of a unit named Osmanli Cemaat.42

While a number of

Turkish fighters had been subordinated to the Arab mujahideen, in contrast

to the small number of Gulf State Arabs and foreign fighters from North

Africa, these volunteers, currently under the command of Abdullah

al-Turki, have retained a measure of autonomy and provided an increasinglyinfluential bridge between the disparate elements of the foreign and indigen-

ous Salafi movement in the region.

Reports indicate that throughout the 1994 96 conflict the Chechens

undertook active recruitment campaigns in order to garner support from

the diaspora community in Kazakhstan and other regions in Central Asia.

Evidently, a considerable portion of the field commanders and Chechen

rebel leaders had been born and raised in Kazakhstan, from Jokhar Dudaev

through to his chief of staff and eventual successor Aslan Maskhadov. Further-

more, testimony from Chechen fighters involved in the first conflict revealsthat the existing Kazakh diaspora provided an important function assisting

with fund raising, and with providing training facilities and medical services

to enable fighters to rest and recuperate. This broader network, partly formed

through kinship ties and through the diaspora community, was used to support

combat operations in the first conflict. This was assisted by the large

migrations of Chechen itinerant labour which eased the provision of support

to the separatists; this also extended to the Chechen diaspora in the Middle

East, particularly in Jordan and Syria.

Indeed, it is this alliance between indigenous multi-ethnic groups in thenorth Caucasus, the small number of foreign jihadis within the Arab mujahid-

een, foreign fighters tied to the Chechen diaspora communities in the greater

Middle East, and the Chechen resistance itself that is of interest. For the pur-

poses of this article, we have demonstrated here that a small handful of North

African fighters and Kuwaitis participated in the second Russo-Chechen war,

providing ideological support. However, in both the first and the second con-

flicts, a slightly more substantial group of volunteers linked to the diaspora com-

munities became entwined in the separatist movement, which, as we have

argued in the first sections of the article, has a multi-ethnic and long-standing

historical provenance. While the account provided in the last section of

this article has shed light on this composite group, it is important not to


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over-emphasize the role of foreign fighters, or misread the diversity of opinions

within this ever-changing coalition. Rather, the tension which often becomes

pronounced between the foreign volunteers and indigenous fighters offers a

glimpse into the complexity of unholy alliances in the North Caucasus.43

Conclusion

This article has highlighted regional affiliations involved in different iterations

of anti-Russian resistance in the North Caucasus. The arguments outlined

above sought to point towards the internal turmoil in the post-Soviet separatist

movement and the fragmentation, mutation and reconstitution of the Chechen

insurgency through a range of unholy alliances. More generally, former

communists, nationalists and Islamists have formed a range of temporary,and at times unnatural, alliances. Our reading of multi-ethnic groups such

as the Abkhaz Battalion, the Nationalist versus Islamist rivalry, Chechen

versus Chechen conflict, and the spread of anti-Russian resistance highlights

the complexity of coalitions that have shaped the period of transformation

from the Cold War through to the post-Soviet period of re-federalization.

Finally, we have argued that the increasing influence of Salafism has had a

profound effect on the region since the outbreak of first Russo-Chechen war;

however, the motivations for this are more complicated than the simple ascrip-

tion of a religious label would suggest. Equally, complementing our reading offoreign fighters and of kinship and diaspora communities, financiers and ideo-

logues have formed an important bridgehead as volunteers, further compound-

ing the complex mosaic of external forces that shape insurgencies.

NOTES

This work is in part linked to a continuing project run by Dr Cerwyn Moore, funded by the BritishAcademy (SG-43942). It is based solely on open source information and does not represent the

views of the UK Ministry of Defence.

1. We recognize the problems of labelling different actors as separatists, insurgents, terrorists,nationalists, Islamists or part of a resistance movement. But no value should be attributedto these labels, beyond the theoretical and analytical arguments in this article.

2. A jamaat, meaning community in Arabic, is employed in a variety of different ways in theCaucasus. In Dagestan, for instance, jamaats have historically been used to refer to commu-nities, but in more recent years the term has been used to describe military units, following therestructuring of the resistance movement throughout the second war.

3. For more on the first war, see Carlotta Gall and Tom De Waal, Chechnya: A Small VictoriousWar (London: Pan Books, 1997); Anatol Lieven, Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power(London: Yale University Press, 1998); John B. Dunlop, Russia Confronts Chechnya: TheRoots of a Separatist Conflict(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

4. Anna Politkovskaya, S kem vesti peregovory v Chechne, Novaya gazeta, 1 Oct. 2001.5. See, for example, the work of Matthew Evangelista, The Chechen Wars: Will Russia Go the

Way of the Soviet Union? (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2002).


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6. William Allen and Paul Muratoff, Caucasian Battlefields: A History of the Wars on theTurco-Caucasian Border 1828 1921 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953),p.48.

7. Ibid.8. Moshe Gammer, The Lone Wolf and the Bear: Three Centuries of Chechen Defiance of

Russian Rule (London: Hurst, 2006), p.23.9. Ibid.

10. Ibid., pp.31 103.11. Anna Zelkina, In Quest for God and Freedom: Sufi Responses to the Russian Advance in the

North Caucasus (London: Hurst, 2000), p.235.12. Moshe Gammer, Muslim Resistance to the Tsar: Shamil and the Conquest of Chechnia and

Daghestan (London: Cass, 2005), p.285.13. Moshe Gammer, Nationalism and History: Rewriting the Chechen National Past, in Bruno

Coppieters and Michael Huysseune (eds.), Secession, History and the Social Sciences(Brussels: VUB Brussels University Press, 2002), p.126.

14. Bulent Gokay, The Longstanding Russian Debate over Sheikh Shamil: Anti-ImperialistHero or Counter-Revolutionary Cleric, in Ben Fowkes (ed.), Russia and Chechnia:The Permanent Crisis: Essays on Russo-Chechen Relations (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998),pp.2564.

15. This point was noted in a report by Count Mikhail Loris-Melikov, commander-in-chief of theRussian forces in the Terek province in the 1870s, cited by Gammer in The Lone Wolf and theBear, p.73.

16. Gammer, The Lone Wolf and the Bear, p.71.17. Marie Bennigsen Broxup, The Last Ghazawat: The 1920 1921 Uprising, in Marie Bennig-

sen Broxup (ed.), The North Caucasus Barrier: The Russian Advance Towards the MuslimWorld (London: Hurst, 1992), pp.11245.

18. Galina Yemelianova, Russia and Islam: A Historical Survey (London: Routledge, 2002),pp.1023.

19. Alexandre Bennigsen Muslim Guerilla Warfare in the Caucasus (1918 1928), Central Asian Survey, Vol.2, No.1 (1983), pp.4556 (p.48).

20. Gammer, The Lone Wolf and the Bear, pp.12022.21. Bammates speech was republished in English in the early 1990s: see Haidar Bammate, The

Caucasus and the Russian Revolution (from a Political Viewpoint), Central Asian Survey,Vol.10, No.4 (1991), pp.129.

22. Gammer, The Lone Wolf and the Bear, pp.13031.23. Bennigsen, Muslim Guerilla Warfare, pp.45 56.24. Georgi M. Derluguian, Bourdieus Secret Admirer in the Caucasus: A World-System Biogra-

phy (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005), p.237.25. Amjad Jaimoukha, The Circassians: A Handbook(London: Routledge-Curzon, 2001), p.85.26. Ibid.

27. Derluguian, Bourdieus Secret Admirer, p.9.28. Thomas de Waal, Basaev: Legendary Rebel Heroics, The Moscow Times, 20 June 1995.29. Carlotta Gall, Fighters Fall Back to Mountain Fortress, The Independent, 14 Jan. 2005; see

also Derluguian, Bourdieus Secret Admirer, pp.60, 237.30. Cerwyn Moore, The Tale of Ruslan Gelayev: Understanding the International Dimensions of

the Chechen Wars, Central Asia Caucasus Analyst, Vol.10, No.10, available at: ,http://www.cacianalyst.org/files/080430Analyst.pdf., accessed 26 Nov. 2008.

31. For a useful overview of the complex relations between the Chechens and Russians, and thedifferences within each respective group, see Ben Fowkes, Introduction, in Fowkes (ed.), Russia and Chechnia, pp.124.

32. Derluguian, Bourdieus Secret Admirer, pp.5051, 259.

33. The Moscow Times, 10 Aug. 2004, p.3.34. See Chechnya Weekly, Vol.9, No.1 (13 March 2008).35. Cerwyn Moore and Paul Tumelty, Foreign Fighters and the Case of Chechnya: A Critical

Assessment, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Vol.31, No.5 (2008), pp.41233.


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36. Shamil Beno, a Jordanian Chechen and former representative of the Maskhadov adminis-tration, reflected on the growing Islamist dimension of the resistance, its multi-ethnic charac-ter and the role of foreign jihadis in a newspaper interview in 2004: see Saudi ZealotInfluences Rebels, The Moscow Times, 11 Feb. 2004.

37. Moore and Tumelty, Foreign Fighters and the Case of Chechnya.

38. Interestingly, some reports suggest that Kuwaiti groups, including Jamaat Ikhia at Turas al-Islami, were among a host of foreign sponsors who had financed radical Salafis in Dagestanthroughout the 1990s.

39. See Brian Glyn Williams, Turkish Volunteers in Chechnya, Jamestown Foundation TerrorismMonitor (6 April 2005), available at: ,http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache1&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D30233..

40. Detailed analysis of the martyr video, accessed and translated from Arabic and Turkish inDecember 2007, is available from the authors on request.

41. For example, radical websites eulogizing the heroic deeds of Turkish volunteers inChechnya includes information on Bilal, who had allegedly fought as a transnational jihadiin Bosnia and Kashmir before going to fight in the first Russo-Chechen war. These websitesindicate that he was injured in the second conflict, and then recovered from his injuries inTurkey, before returning to Chechnya accompanied by a younger Turkish fighter (perhapsas a naib), where both were killed in a Russian attack in 2007. Similar information fromradical Turkish websites glorifies the heroic deeds of Abdusselam, a Turkish volunteer mar-tyred in Chechnya. This information was extracted and translated from Turkish websites inJanuary 2008, and is available on request from the authors.

42. Brian Glyn Williams, Allahs Foot Soldiers: An Assessment of the Role of Foreign Fightersand Al-Qaida in the Chechen Insurgency, in Moshe Gammer (ed.), Ethno-Nationalism, Islam and the State in the Caucasus: Post-Soviet Disorder (London: Routledge, 2007),pp.15678 (p.172).

43. The continuing tension between former separatists and foreign fighters, and indeed the declineof the Arab mujahideen in Chechnya, led to a video statement by Dokku Umarov, the current

leader of the Chechen insurgency, and Muhannad, the leader of the Arab mujahideen, whichappeared rather staged. In the video statement, both Muhannad and Umarov sought to dismissreports of differences between the two groups.


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