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Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics

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Assessing Unholy Alliances in Chechnya: From Communism and Nationalism to Islamism and Salafism
Cerwyn Moore; Paul Tumelty

To cite this Article Moore, Cerwyn and Tumelty, Paul(2009) 'Assessing Unholy Alliances in Chechnya: From Communism

and Nationalism to Islamism and Salafism', Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, 25: 1, 73 94 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/13523270802655621 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13523270802655621

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Assessing Unholy Alliances in Chechnya: From Communism and Nationalism to Islamism and Salasm

CERWYN MOORE AND PAUL TUMELTY

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The end of the Cold War ushered in a new period of instability in the Caucasus, as groups formerly associated with the Communist Party sought to wrest power from newly formed political movements, which themselves sought independence from the successor to the Soviet Union, the Commonwealth of Independent States. In the immediate post-Cold War period a number of alliances, formed by groups with radically different agendas, shaped the ensuing political uncertainty across the region. In Chechnya, a number of historical relationships inuenced the formation of nationalist and communist coalitions, particularly in the early and latter part of the twentieth century. Moreover, in the post-Soviet period, a series of coalitions and alliances such as the Abkhaz Battalion melded together national and regional groups, which themselves had an impact on the rst Russo-Chechen War of the 1990s. Following the end of the rst war in 1996, a series of other alliances, partially inuenced by religion, linked members of the Chechen diaspora community with indigenous radical gures and foreign jihadis who espoused Salasm. This, in turn, expanded what had ostensibly been a nationalist movement into a regional conict beyond the borders of 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 rst 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 ve years, has increasingly relied upon the burgeoning insurgent groups in Dagestan, Ingushetia, KabardinoBalkaria 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 and International Studies, European Research Institute, University of Birmingham. Paul Tumelty is an analyst at the Strategic Analysis Group, Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), UK Ministry of Defence. Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, Vol.25, No.1, March 2009, pp.7394 ISSN 1352-3279 print/1743-9116 online DOI: 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 out of 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 alliances between communists, former communists, nationalists, and in more recent years Islamists. The end of communist rule, the Russian attempt at refederalization, the rst war of the 1990s and the period of de facto independence, in which inter-generational change and external forces began to impinge on the coherence of the nationalistseparatist movement, provide a historical 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 years of 199699 saw a critical mass of groups from criminals, anti-Russian ideologists and religious nationalists to Sala-jihadist volunteers combine with regional groups, creating cleavages within the national separatist movement born of the rst 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 authorities could feasibly negotiate with, given the radical standpoint and uncompromising stance of some elements in the Chechen separatist movement.4

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The eshing 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 gures 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 politics, which has received considerable attention elsewhere. Instead, we here address the need to revisit the Chechen insurgency because accounts of nationalism 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, pointing towards post-Soviet resistance not as separatist, nationalist or Islamist alone, but shaped instead by a complex, changing network of afliations. The article begins by addressing the historical backdrop of Russo-Chechen relations, touching upon the relationship between murids (Su 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 mobilization of volunteer groups who became involved in the separatist conict in Abkhazia, the Chechen group of which became inuential at the start of the rst Russo-Chechen war in 1994. The article will then examine the period between the two wars of the 1990s, focusing upon radical indigenous gures and movements linked to different Islamic groups in sections principally 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 ghters, under Arab tutelage, in the separatist movement. The nal section will draw these themes together to shed some light on contemporary anti-Russian groups linked to the Chechen insurgency. A nal introductory point is required here. The idea of unholy alliances employed here refers to unnatural afliations 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 conict. The rst extended period of conict

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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 inuence of the Turks and the historical inuence 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 conict. At the same time, though, an alliance of sorts emerged between the ercely independent mountain dwellers of the North Caucasus and Su adepts encouraging strict discipline, which together framed the resistance to Russian expansionism, giving rise to the rst anti-Russian gazavat. The rst gazavat was led by Sheikh Ushurum, who has since become known as Sheikh Mansur. Sheikh Mansur plagued the Russian army from the 1780s, at rst drawing support from ghters from the north-east of the Caucasus, and introducing the local population to Su 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 indels.6 In other words, the ruthless insistence on obedience and the merger of highlander bravery with religious order created a potent force of highlander ghters capable of undertaking a drawn-out guerrilla campaign. Allen and Muratoff point out that the strength of the murids lay in their reading of war as the end in itself, as a vehicle for self-purication and self-sacrice.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 or auls 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 ocked to [Mansur] at Aldy.8 Following a series of confrontations, and some intensive ghting 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 ghters, 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 afliations and by the geographic terrain itself, overhauling 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 eld of power politics, were also intrinsic in developing an understanding 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 ght 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 ret a tank regiment named Shamil in support of the anti-Nazi communist 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 population 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 connes of the country.15 But attempts to raise and employ local militias in this period largely failed, with Chechen

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ghters often deserting or joining rebel groups still ghting 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 battleeld.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 confrontation between White Russian forces centring on Denikin, and Red Partisan ghters also shaped the events on the battleelds in the Caucasus, leading to temporary alliances and changing coalitions. However, in late 1917 the Bolsheviks adopted another strategy off the battleeld, designed to undermine the threat posed by a unied anti-communist stance across differing ethnic communities by setting up the Peoples Commissariat 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 revolutionary leaders, including Mulla-Nur Vahitov and Mir Said Sultan-Galiev, whose support was garnered to bolster the Bolshevik cause. These Muslim Communists 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 specically 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 known as the Red Shariatists and whose slogan was For Soviet Power for Shariat. In 1917 Russia had a signicant 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 Volga Urals region who preached a form of ultra-traditionalism formed a tactical 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 conned 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 ght against the spread of communism. Interestingly, as Alexandre Bennigsen notes, between 1917 and 1920 in the North Caucasus, the leadership of the revolutionary 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 nationalist 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 nanced 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, Chechens, Dagestanis and Ossetians and most of them conceived of the new alliance in secular democratic terms. However, the Su orders pressed for the Sharia as the governing principle as it was they who could mobilize large numbers 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 Gorskaya Respublika at the Paris Peace Conference, drew attention to the multiethnic 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 rm alliance between the Bolsheviks 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 gures 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 indels 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 early 1920s 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 Susm (Naqshbandiyya and Qadiriyya) with the Qadiriyya 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 nationalist who became First Secretary of the Communist Party in Dagestan) had been executed in the Stalinist purges. As Soviet rule solidied, its later actions under Stalinism formed the backdrop 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 unied North Caucasus governing entity was rekindled as the Soviet Union began to unravel. Its genesis was rooted in the emergent nationalist sentiment fermenting throughout the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. A reawakening of ethnic identity drew attention to not only the Soviet authorities 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 autonomous 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 established; 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 confederation rejected the stance of the incumbent authorities, with the exception of Chechnya, whose new revolutionary leadership, under General Jokhar Dudayev, was striving to full 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 ofcer on the periphery of the Soviet bureaucratic elite. However, he forfeited his career as a law enforcement ofcial, 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 gures 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 mobilize groups 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 postSoviet North Caucasus.27 Elsewhere, a group of Communist Party members watched the events in Moscow, supporting neither Gorbachev nor his challengers. Instead, this group of former Communist Party ofcials seized the opportunity to become power-brokers within Chechnya proper. Drawing largely on the Communist Party nomenklatura and the Russian-speaking population, their tribal afliations 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 and Shamil Basaev, were overtly trained and funded by elements of Russian military intelligence, the GRU, that sought to harness their fervour by displacing them from the North Caucasus and using them as proxies in a war against the newly independent Georgia. The confederation also received signicant 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 Kabardin elements and the more overtly religious Chechens who expounded an increasingly 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 juncture 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 networks that Basaev would utilize over the coming decade to take the ght to Russia and beyond during both the rst 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 afliated 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 ght 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 conict with the Russian parliament 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 unied Mountain Republic had again had its moment in history. Yeltsin now turned his attention to the rapidly deteriorating situation 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 revivalism across the North Caucasus, where the secret Su brotherhoods had survived and thrived, despite the best efforts of the Soviet authorities to quell their inuence.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 Sala network in the region. While their message was yet to be heard amid the mass mobilization of the nationalist separatist Chechen movement in the rst half of the 1990s, their power has increased exponentially and by 2008 become the dominant inuence over the ideology of the Chechen-led North Caucasus resistance. Much of Chechnyas senior leadership during the rst war were born in exile in Kazakhstan. The Chechens bombastic leader Jokhar Dudayev had been based in Estonia and witnessed the mass protests against the Soviet authorities 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 Sala-connected Islam Khalimov as his religious adviser, while his information campaign was led by Movladi Udugov. The war naturally intensied the religious element of Chechen identity 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 Sala component of the resistance leadership during the second war.
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The Salas 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 Jordanian Chechen associates, soon amassing a group of around 100 followers. Fathi was the most inuential gure in establishing the foreign ghters 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 under Sharia 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 secular nationalist former Chechen chief of staff and Red Army colonel, Aslan Maskhadov. His authority was immediately challenged by the Salas who began agitating for the implementation of Sharia law in Chechnya. The Salas comprised an alliance of local ideologues, ethnic Jordanian-Chechens, and foreign ghters of Arab, Turkish and North African descent whose collective power was fuelled by the poverty and desperation of Chechnyas disintegrating and isolated society. For young North Caucasians, especially the Chechens, the appeal of the Salas, beyond their nances, lay in the simplicity of the message they preached, which trumped the combined complexities of local customary law and Su practices, particularly weddings, which were prohibitively expensive for Chechnyas young men. Between 1997 and 1999 Maskhadov struggled to contain the intensifying rivalry between the Salas and the traditional Su 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 Salasts, their views regarding the continuing struggle exposed different viewpoints. When Maskhadov moved to disarm the Chechen Salas in Gudermes in July 1998, an armed confrontation occurred, although the well-known foreign ghters based nearby and the Dagestani Islamists did not intervene in this nationalist and Islamist conagration. 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 rst 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 ghters 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 had declared 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 eld commander Salman Raduev during the rst 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 owed 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 ghting 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 Chechen The struggle between the nationalists and Salas 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 rst war, their defection laid the ground for the fundamental split in the Chechen resistance as they brought signicant segments of the dominant Qadiriyya Su brotherhood with them. Capitalizing on the dynamic between traditional Su Islam and its Sala opposition, Moscow has successfully Chechenized the conict 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 conict. Sulim Yamadaev heads the Vostok battalion, 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 northern plains of Chechnya. He and his men were one of the few pro-Moscow Chechen units that fought against Dudaevs forces during the rst war. Zapad and Vostok battalions form a key plank of the Kremlins Chechenization strategy, although their rivalry with Kadyrov, who is believed to be backed by the federal security service (FSB, successor to the KGB), regularly erupts 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 signicant reconstruction efforts in Chechnyas urban centres. Indeed, Kadyrov has arguably secured a greater degree of political and scal autonomy for the Chechen people than the separatists could hope for. As an illustration, in 2008 Akhmed Zakaev, the leading Chechen nationalist-separatist gure, thanked Kadyrov for effectively overseeing the withdrawal of Russian inuence 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 Sala camp. The Struggle Spreads The small Dagestani and Chechen Sala community had been much derided among the general population throughout the 1990s as they considered the ` contemptuous and arrogant stance of the Wahabbis vis-a-vis Susm as a foreign ideology. The perception of its leading gures as cowards was underlined when they ed 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 ghters; Islam Khalilov and Bagautdin Magomedov moved to the Middle East and promoted the Chechen cause among Gulf-based Islamist nanciers, 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 Salas status and inuence 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 Sala pressure and a State Defence Committee Majlis ul-Shura was formed to coordinate the resistance better and to bring the nationalist Su commanders together with the Salas. Despite this, the rebel movement lacked cohesion until Maskhadovs death in 2005. The lack of cohesion in the Chechen separatist movement in the second conict, the increasing inuence of a Sala doctrine and the broadening remit of the resistance led to the use of informal regional networks, including 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 beneciaries. 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 an ethnic 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 afliates. 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 Battalion, and members of the Ingush jamaats may have been involved in planning 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 Committee Majlis ulShura. 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 Sala 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, briey 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 Salas since he inherited Sadulaevs structures. After Basaevs death Umarov appointed Basaevs close ally Supyan Abdullaev as Chechen vice-president; Abdullaev is a key Sala ideologist from Vedeno and is related to Islam Khalilov. Umarovs other appointments underline 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 ghting under his leadership. The Middle East educated Anzor Astemirov, who heads the jamaat in Kabardino-Balkaria, appears to have heavily inuenced 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 independence project under the banner of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. Opposition came mainly from the nationalist separatist camp based in Western Europe under Akhmed Zakaev, whose vociferous criticism of Umarov, formerly his close friend, underlines the deep cleavages now existing within the movement. Yet Umanovs decision has been dictated by the requirements of the time and the generational split between those ghters who were brought up in the Soviet period and those born in the 1980s or later. Chechen society and the Su 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 1919 20.34 Although since 11 September 2001 the presence of non-indigenous combatants in Muslim conict zones has bound them up with the al-Qaida movement, it is evident that a signicant number of those who have travelled to Chechnya were motivated by notions of kinship with their brethren, particularly those from Turkey, Syria and Jordan. Even the mother of Emir Khattab, a Saudi national who led the foreign ghters 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 Sala jihadi 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 afliated groups, led by non-Chechen leaders. For example, the Nogai component of the resistance movement, in part controlled by leaders such as Ulubay Yegushiev, 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 prominence. Other groups linked into the pan-North Caucasus alliance include members of the Dagestani jamaats, and the increasingly autonomous and inuential 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 ghter movement in Chechnya, which has been predominantly led by Gulf State Arabs, but which has always drawn upon afliations with both Turkish and North African foreign ghters. Foreign Fighters and the Second Russo-Chechen Conict Even though the war of 1994 96 did much to re-establish the Islamic aspect of Chechen identity, the conict was largely nationalist in character. In contrast, the second conict has been marked by a radical shift which has shaped both the conict and the alliances between the Arab mujahideen, Su eld commanders 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 evolution of the Arab mujahideen, the Jordanian Diaspora community and volunteer combatants in Chechnya, and we here seek to supplement this work on foreign ghters by highlighting the role of foreign nanciers and ideologues, and conclude with some reections 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 signicant group of foreign ghters 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 ghters and also the foreign nanciers and ideologues who played a prominent role in the Chechen resistance movement in the second conict. 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 gure in the Arab volunteer movement, Abu Queteyba (a nancier involved in operational logistics), also of Gulf state origin, was killed in 2004, as a result of a Russian special operation. His death provided 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 ghters from Kuwait, such as Salem alAjmi (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 conict in the earlier years of the second war. However, it was the death in 2005 of Salast nancier Ahmed Nasser Eid Abudullah Al-Fajri Al-Azimi (known as Abu Zaid or Al-Kuwaiti), viewed as an important 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 participated in the second conict. In 2000, the Russian authorities arrested Abdusalom Zurka, a Yemeni, and Saken Mohammed, a man described as being of Moroccan descent. In 2004 the authorities announced that they had arrested an 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 ghters involved in the second conict 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 difculty in travelling into the region, and seems to reect 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 ghters apparently of Turkish origin, killed in Chechnya over the course of the two conicts.39 Indeed the Turkish involvement in the foreign ghter movement is an important channel of support, disseminating jihadi martyr epitaphs which eulogize the multinational character of the foreign ghter movement. For instance, in Chechen jihadi videos with Turkish voice-overs, groups of

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martyred ghters 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 prex Turkiye next to his name, and those mentioned, including prominent Sala volunteers, number seven; namely Bilal, Zinnar, Abdulkadir, Mucahit, Abdusselam, Huseyin and Selami.41 Indeed, the Turkish contingent of the foreign ghter 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 ghters had been subordinated to the Arab mujahideen, in contrast to the small number of Gulf State Arabs and foreign ghters from North Africa, these volunteers, currently under the command of Abdullah al-Turki, have retained a measure of autonomy and provided an increasingly inuential bridge between the disparate elements of the foreign and indigenous Sala movement in the region. Reports indicate that throughout the 1994 96 conict 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 eld 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. Furthermore, testimony from Chechen ghters involved in the rst conict reveals that the existing Kazakh diaspora provided an important function assisting with fund raising, and with providing training facilities and medical services to enable ghters 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 rst conict. 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 the north Caucasus, the small number of foreign jihadis within the Arab mujahideen, foreign ghters tied to the Chechen diaspora communities in the greater Middle East, and the Chechen resistance itself that is of interest. For the purposes of this article, we have demonstrated here that a small handful of North African ghters and Kuwaitis participated in the second Russo-Chechen war, providing ideological support. However, in both the rst and the second conicts, a slightly more substantial group of volunteers linked to the diaspora communities became entwined in the separatist movement, which, as we have argued in the rst 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 ghters, or misread the diversity of opinions within this ever-changing coalition. Rather, the tension which often becomes pronounced between the foreign volunteers and indigenous ghters offers a glimpse into the complexity of unholy alliances in the North Caucasus.43 Conclusion This article has highlighted regional afliations 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 conict, 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 inuence of Salasm has had a profound effect on the region since the outbreak of rst Russo-Chechen war; however, the motivations for this are more complicated than the simple ascription of a religious label would suggest. Equally, complementing our reading of foreign ghters and of kinship and diaspora communities, nanciers and ideologues have formed an important bridgehead as volunteers, further compounding 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 British Academy (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 attributed to 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 the Caucasus. In Dagestan, for instance, jamaats have historically been used to refer to communities, but in more recent years the term has been used to describe military units, following the restructuring of the resistance movement throughout the second war. 3. For more on the rst war, see Carlotta Gall and Tom De Waal, Chechnya: A Small Victorious War (London: Pan Books, 1997); Anatol Lieven, Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power (London: Yale University Press, 1998); John B. Dunlop, Russia Confronts Chechnya: The Roots of a Separatist Conict (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 Battleelds: A History of the Wars on the Turco-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 Deance of Russian Rule (London: Hurst, 2006), p.23. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid., pp.31103. 11. Anna Zelkina, In Quest for God and Freedom: Su 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-Imperialist Hero 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 the Russian forces in the Terek province in the 1870s, cited by Gammer in The Lone Wolf and the Bear, 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 Bennigsen Broxup (ed.), The North Caucasus Barrier: The Russian Advance Towards the Muslim World (London: Hurst, 1992), pp.112 45. 18. Galina Yemelianova, Russia and Islam: A Historical Survey (London: Routledge, 2002), pp.102 3. 19. Alexandre Bennigsen Muslim Guerilla Warfare in the Caucasus (19181928), Central Asian Survey, Vol.2, No.1 (1983), pp.45 56 (p.48). 20. Gammer, The Lone Wolf and the Bear, pp.120 22. 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.130 31. 23. Bennigsen, Muslim Guerilla Warfare, pp.45 56. 24. Georgi M. Derluguian, Bourdieus Secret Admirer in the Caucasus: A World-System Biography (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/les/080430Analyst.pdf., accessed 26 Nov. 2008. 31. For a useful overview of the complex relations between the Chechens and Russians, and the differences within each respective group, see Ben Fowkes, Introduction, in Fowkes (ed.), Russia and Chechnia, pp.1 24. 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 Conict 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 administration, reected on the growing Islamist dimension of the resistance, its multi-ethnic character and the role of foreign jihadis in a newspaper interview in 2004: see Saudi Zealot Inuences 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 alIslami, were among a host of foreign sponsors who had nanced radical Salas in Dagestan throughout the 1990s. 39. See Brian Glyn Williams, Turkish Volunteers in Chechnya, Jamestown Foundation Terrorism Monitor (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 in December 2007, is available from the authors on request. 41. For example, radical websites eulogizing the heroic deeds of Turkish volunteers in Chechnya includes information on Bilal, who had allegedly fought as a transnational jihadi in Bosnia and Kashmir before going to ght in the rst Russo-Chechen war. These websites indicate that he was injured in the second conict, and then recovered from his injuries in Turkey, before returning to Chechnya accompanied by a younger Turkish ghter (perhaps as a naib), where both were killed in a Russian attack in 2007. Similar information from radical Turkish websites glories the heroic deeds of Abdusselam, a Turkish volunteer martyred in Chechnya. This information was extracted and translated from Turkish websites in January 2008, and is available on request from the authors. 42. Brian Glyn Williams, Allahs Foot Soldiers: An Assessment of the Role of Foreign Fighters and 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 ghters, and indeed the decline of 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, which appeared rather staged. In the video statement, both Muhannad and Umarov sought to dismiss reports of differences between the two groups.