‘Faced with death, even a mouse bites’: Social and religious motivations behind terrorism in Chechnya
2014; Routledge; Volume: 25; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/09592318.2014.903975
ISSN1743-9558
Autores Tópico(s)Economic Sanctions and International Relations
ResumoAbstractThis article analyzes the motivations behind individuals who chose to adopt terrorist methods in the Chechen conflicts of the late 1990s and early 2000s. While the seemingly obvious motivation in joining in a 'religious' war of jihad would be a strong belief in that religion, the reality is more complicated. The motivations behind these individuals were not only religious, but cultural, social, and political. This indicates that while the methods and ideological rhetoric adopted by Chechen terrorists prove similar to methods adopted by terrorists across the world, the fundamental causes and drive behind these terrorists are actually quite distinct and unique from others.Keywords:: IslamterrorismjihadghazawatChechnyainsurgent Notes 1.CitationTrenin and Malashenko, Russia's Restless Frontier, 2. 2.CitationHughes, Chechnya, 110. 3. Indicative of this is the language of George W. Bush regarding Putin before and after 9/11. On 16 February 2000, Bush (then governor of Texas) said on the Russian–Chechen conflict: 'This guy, Putin, who is now the temporary president, has come to power as a result of Chechnya. He kind of rode the great wave of popularity as the Russian military… [handled] the Chechnya situation in a way that's not acceptable to peaceful nations… [They need to] understand they need to resolve the dispute peacefully and not be bombing women and children and causing huge numbers of refugees to flee Chechnya.' While on 18 November 2002, President Bush said: '[The Moscow Theatre Terrorist attack] put my friend Vladimir Putin in a very difficult situation. And he handled it as best he could. He did what he had to do to save life… the people to blame are the terrorists. They need to be held to account… I believe you can hold terrorists to account, killers to account, and at the same time solve difficult situations in a peaceful way.' CitationTrenin, 'The Forgotten War'. 4.CitationMalashenko, 'Russia Does Not Have an Islam Policy'. 5. Ruslan Odizhev is the most notable. He was a Chechen captured by the US in Afghanistan and held in Guantanamo Bay for several years before being released without charge. See CitationSouleimanov and Ditrych, 'Internationalisation of the Russian-Chechen Conflict', 1216. 6.CitationVerhoeven, The Odd Man Karakozov, 4. 7.CitationMorris, 'Surprise and Terrorism', 2. 8.CitationTrenin and Malashenko, Russia's Restless Frontier, 3. Nevertheless, as a result of the continuing crisis, there has emerged a sort of millenarian, apocalyptic minority, with the means, the will, and unfortunately the opportunity to continue perpetrating acts of violence and terror for months and years to come. Like al-Qaeda's dedicated 'core', these radicals are essential beyond reconciliation, and are simply 'demonstrating their power… pursuing terror for terror's sake'. See CitationKilcullen, The Accidental Guerilla, 48–9; Citationde Waal, 'Roots of Terrorism in Russia'; CitationMalashenko, 'The Terrorism Hydra'. 9. In his article, 'A Case for Critical Terrorism Studies?', Gunning provides a primer on the discussions around 'terrorism studies' and the scholarly and epistemological debates surrounding terrorism research fields, as well as a useful list of many articles and authors which formulate the top 'terrorism' academic journals, and their contributions to the field.10.CitationGreenwald, 'The Sham "Terrorism Expert" Industry'.11.CitationGunning, 'A Case for Critical Terrorism Studies?', 371.12.CitationGeifman, Death Orders, 3.13.CitationO'Leary and Silke, 'Conclusion', 393.14. This definition is an amalgam of two common definitions, provided by Boaz Ganor, and by Rhonda Callay and Julie Harrelson-Stephens. CitationGanor's definition is given as: 'the intentional use of, or threat to use violence against civilians or against civilian targets, in order to attain political aims' ('Defining Terrorism', 294); while Callaway and Harrelson-Stephens define terrorism as 'any act of violence undertaken for the purpose of altering a government's political policies or actions that targets those who do not actually have the personal authority to alter government policy' ('Toward a Theory of Terrorism', 681).15.CitationCallaway and Harrelson-Stephens, 'Toward a Theory of Terrorism', 681.16.CitationSageman, Understanding Terror Networks; CitationSageman, Leaderless Jihad.17.CitationPape, Dying to Win; CitationPape and Feldman, Cutting the Fuse.18.CitationMerari, Driven to Death.19.CitationMoghaddam, 'The Staircase to Terrorism', 72.20. Ibid., 71.21. The delegitimization of the Chechens and their struggles has deep roots in Russian history. As far back as history allow, the Chechens have been described as thievish, troublesome, cunning, and violent, though also as proud, courageous, brilliant fighters. Russia's tendency towards historicism has found this a convenient way to create an ambiguous and emblematic 'other' of the Chechens, a double negation of history characterizing the Chechens as either anti-hero or villain, but always delegitimizing them as an ethnic group. One Russian journalist remarked to a British colleague the Chechens fight 'because they're blacks (cherniye)… violent, ignorant, savage, brutal. They're the same now as they were then, and they'll never change. They have no culture and no civilization.' Perhaps most damning was a statue of the infamous Russian general who did so much to conquer the Chechens during the nineteenth century, Aleksei Ermolov. Erected in 1949 and removed only in 1991, the statue's engraving read 'There is no people under the sun more vile and deceitful than this one.' For more, see CitationBennett, Crying Wolf, 6; CitationZiolkowski, Alien Visions, 32.22.CitationKhodarkovsky, Bitter Choices, 11.23.CitationMalashenko, 'The North Caucasus', 8.24. This can largely be seen as a reversal of Timothy Mitchell's theory of orientalism as put forth in his book, Colonising Egypt. The Western domination of the Orient depended on the creation of a singular 'Western' self-identity in contradistinction to the imposed and created oriental identity. The Orient was created, then, as the 'apparent exterior of the West… what is outside is paradoxically what makes the West what it is, the excluded yet integral part of its identity and power.' (CitationMitchell, Colonising Egypt, 166) The Chechens' perception of the invading Russian as the 'other', a foe nationally, linguistically, culturally, and religiously, allowed a heretofore nonexistent identity to both emerge and crystallize. Anatol Lieven writes that Chechnya's modern self-consciousness is largely derived from forces acting upon Russia from without, rather than the reverse, as Chechnya has developed a national identity through two factors; invasion by the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union; and the adoption of Sufi Islam, itself strongly connected to the resistance to the Russians. Still, while the Russians may have created Chechnya, they did not create the Chechens. Their common name for themselves and their language and their pre-Islamic adat ensured that their identity was crystallized and cemented, but not wholly created, by their interactions with the Russians. See CitationLieven, Chechnya, 332–3.25.CitationCallaway and Harrelson-Stephens, 'Toward a Theory of Terrorism', 680.26. Ibid., 682.27. This estimate comes from Human Rights Center 'Memorial', though much speculation still exists as to the true number. Al Jazeera's estimate, for instance, is a much higher 300,000 as of June 2005, while Russian historian Sergei Maksudov, in his 2010 book Chechentsy I Russkie alleges the true number is closer to 30,000. Memorial's estimate does not include deaths in Georgia, Dagestan, or Ingushetia which are often seen as a result of the 'spilling-over' effect of the war. For the Human Rights Center 'Memorial' estimate, see CitationKaul, 'From Chechenization to Palestinization'; for the CitationAl Jazeera estimate, see 'Official'; see also CitationMosNews, 'Over 200,000 Killed' and CitationMaksudov, Igrunov, Malashenko, and Petrov, 'Chechens and Russians'.28. See CitationSociety of the Russian-Chechen Friendship, 'Human Rights Violations in Chechnya'.29. See CitationGilligan, Terror in Chechnya, 6, 72; CitationRussell, 'Terrorists', 106; CitationSouleimanov and Ditrych, 'Internationalisation of the Russian-Chechen Conflict', 1199.30.CitationEvangelista, 'Chechnya's Russia Problem', 313–14.31.CitationGottschalk and Gottschalk, 'Authoritarianism and Pathological Hatred', 44.32.CitationMukhina, 'Islamic Terrorism'.33.CitationAbrahms, 'What Terrorists Really Want', 79.34.Zachistka, from the Russian verb zachistit', literally meaning to clean out, to scrub away, to dust off, or to sweep up/corner leaves, dust, snow, coal, trash, etc., was commonly used in both military parlance and in Moscow newspapers in relation to the Second Chechen War. From 1999 to 2005 the word appeared 787 times in major Moscow newspaper headlines, and was euphemistically linked to the idea of 'cleaning out human beings', with the mental image of 'unrestrained violence with a resonant subtext of cleansing and purging… with mechanical indifference'. See CitationGilligan, Terror in Chechnya, 51.35.CitationKalyvas, 'The Paradox of Terrorism in Civil War', 133.36. Much ink has been spilled on the forced Russification and Orthodoxification cum racial discrimination policies enacted during much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. For the treatment of the nationalization and 'homogenization' of the empire prior to and during World War I, see CitationLohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire. For more, see CitationAngelov, 'Bilingualism in a larger Slavonic Background'; CitationBreyfogle, Heretics and Colonizers; CitationBreyfogle, Schrader, and Sunderland, Peopling the Russian Periphery; CitationBrooks, 'The Russian Nation Imagined'; CitationBrower and Lazzerini, Russia's Orient; CitationCrews, For Prophet and Tsar; CitationDolbilov, 'Russification and the Bureaucratic Mind'; CitationGreen, 'Language of Lullabies'; CitationKaiser and Nikiforova, 'Borderland Spaces'; CitationKappeler, 'Ambiguities of Russification'; CitationKappeler, The Russian Empire; CitationKhodarkovsky, Russia's Steppe Frontier; CitationKohut, Russian Centralism; CitationMiller, The Ukrainian Question; CitationOye, Russian Orientalism; CitationPlokhy, Unmaking Imperial Russia; CitationRaeff, 'Patterns of Russian Imperial Policy'; CitationSeton-Watson, The Russian Empire, 1801–1917; CitationSunderland, Taming the Wild Field; CitationWeeks, Nation and State in Late Imperial Russia; CitationTolz, Russia's Own Orient. In addition, for a complication of the Soviet image of a 'friendship of peoples', see several works on the national and ethnic composition and conflicts of the non-Russian USSR: Reid, CitationThe Shaman's Coat; CitationSlezkine, Arctic Mirrors; CitationHirsch, Empire of Nations; CitationMartin, The Affirmative Action Empire. For a good view of the nationalization and fragmentation of the former Soviet Union after 1991, see CitationHagendoorn, Linssen, and TumanovIntergroup Relations, while Mark Batunsky gives a view of the racist undercurrent in Russian Islamology, in Citation'Racism in Russian Islamology'.37.CitationLieven, Chechnya, 356.38.CitationSchaefer, The Insurgency in Chechnya, 162.39. As both the inadvertent national leader and religious figurehead for the nineteenth-century Chechen resistance movement, Imam Shamil was the first person to introduce active, working state institutions to the Chechen people, couched in Islamic (sharia) and customary (adat) law. The two have never quite separated, and Shamil's primary legacy is the creation of a functioning Islamic administration which would develop into the Sufi brotherhoods, which, much like the system of laws, would merge into a tribal/Islamic system of governance. His egalitarian system, bereft of nobility, serfdom, or feudalism, was justified in large part by his extreme asceticism and 'slave-like submission' before God, and his eventual death during a pilgrimage to Medina helped created the Chechens' national myth of an existential holy opposition to imperial aggression. See CitationLieven, Chechnya, 308–9; CitationSwirszcz, 'The Role of Islam in Chechen National Identity', 60.40.CitationTrenin and Malashenko, 'Russia's Restless Frontier', 12; CitationMalashenko, 'All is Not Quiet in Russian Islam'.41.CitationKhodarkovsky, Bitter Choices, 93.42.CitationHertog, 'A Self-fulfilling Prophecy', 242.43. Ibid., 61.44. For more see CitationSouleimanov and Ditrych, 'Internationalisation of the Russian-Chechen Conflict', 1288; CitationMurphy, Allah's Angels.45.CitationSwirszcz, 'The Role of Islam in Chechen National Identity', 77.46.CitationHertog, 'A Self-fulfilling Prophecy', 245.47.CitationAkhmedova and Speckhard, 'The Making of a Martyr', 447.48.CitationMalashenko, 'The North Caucasus', 7.49.CitationAkhmedova and Speckhard, 'The Making of a Martyr', 447.50.CitationEvangelista, 'Chechnya's Russia Problem', 318.51.CitationAkhmedova and Speckhard, 'The Making of a Martyr', 451.52.CitationAkhmedova and Speckhard, 'Black Widows', 66–7.53.CitationNasr, The Garden of Truth, 10.54.CitationSchaefer, The Insurgency in Chechnya, 147.55. Perhaps the most accurate description of al-Qaeda from the moderate Islamic or Western view comes from David Kilcullen: 'The doctrine of takfir disobeys the Qur'anic injunction against compulsion in religion (Sûrah al-Baqarah: 256) and instead holds that Muslims whose beliefs differ from the takfiri's are infidels who must be killed. Takfirism is a heresy within Islam: it was outlawed in the 2005 AmmanMessage, an initiative of King Abdullah II of Jordan, which brought together more than 500 'ulema (Islamic scholars) and Muslim political leaders… [in an] unprecedented consensus agreement… Al Qa'ida is takfiri, and its members are universally so described by other Muslims, whom they routinely terrorize… I prefer [the term 'takfirism'] to the terms jihad, jihadist, jihadi, or mujahidin (literally 'holy war' or 'holy warrior'), which cede to the enemy the sacred status they crave, and to irhabi (terrorist) or hiraba (terrorism) which address AQ's violence but not its ideology.' (Accidental Guerilla, xix)56.CitationPeters, Jihad in Classical and Modem Islam, 104.57.CitationGiffen, Theory of Profane Love, 102–3.58.CitationGould, 'Understanding Jihad', 23.59.CitationFrager, 'Introduction', 20.60.Ghazawat or gazawat comes from the Arabic ghazā, to raid, or foray militarily. See CitationAboul-Enein and Zuhur, Islamic Rulings on Warfare, 6.61.CitationMeskhidze and Roshchin, 'Islam v Chechne'.62.CitationAkhmedova and Speckhard, 'Black Widows', 70.63.CitationWilhelmsen, 'Between a Rock and a Hard Place', 42.64.CitationYarlykapov, '"Folk Islam"', 29.65.CitationGilligan, Terror in Chechnya, 14.66. While al-Qaeda and similar Islamic groups have made political demands, al-Qaeda's avowed goal in its campaign against the US is for the extermination of America no matter the cost. There is no room for compromise, negotiation, or hesitation, and the audience includes God along with the rest of the world. See CitationGerwehr and Hubbard, 'What Is Terrorism?', 96.67.CitationAkhmedova and Speckhard, 'The Making of a Martyr', 440.68.CitationSchaefer, The Insurgency in Chechnya, 47.69.CitationBasaev, 'Reign of Terror'.70.CitationEvangelista, 'Chechnya's Russia Problem', 318.71.CitationBanner, 'Uncivil Wars', 234.72.CitationWilhelmsen, 'Between a Rock and a Hard Place', 71n.73.CitationTrenin, 'The Forgotten War', 2.74.CitationShlapentokh, 'The Rise of the Russian Khalifat'.75.CitationRousseva, 'Rape and Sexual Assault in Chechnya', 66.76.CitationStruckman, '"Black Widows" in the New York Times', 99.77.CitationRousseva, 'Rape and Sexual Assault in Chechnya', 65.78.CitationSnyder, Gabbard, May, and Zulcic, 'On the Battleground', 190.79.CitationRousseva, 'Rape and Sexual Assault in Chechnya', 66. For more on the use of rape as psychological warfare, and the children born as a result of rape, see CitationClifford, 'Rape as a Weapon of War'.80.CitationSnyder, Gabbard, May, & Zulcic, 'On the Battleground', 190–1. See also CitationHayden, 'Rape and Rape Avoidance'.81. In Russia, these women are also called shakhidki, essentially the Russian adaption of the Arabic jihadist, the holy warrior. The Russian media, however, has latched, not surprisingly, onto the more lurid and chilling term 'Black Widow'. These supposedly young, childless, desperate, and hopeless survivors of their husbands, brothers, and fathers have essentially no agency of their own, save that of taking lives, paradoxically negating their own femininity in the eyes of their would-be victims. The visually striking imagery as an unthinking and instinctively deadly insect masks the pain of their own experience as mother, sister, daughter, and wife, and instead draws attention to their actions as a terrorist, rather than their experiences as victim. In addition, the Russian media has displayed an attempt to distract the public from considering how bad things must be in Chechnya to drive women to suicide terrorism. See CitationSjoberg and Gentry, Mothers, Monsters, Whores, 88.82.CitationAkhmedova and Speckhard, 'Black Widows', 67.83.CitationJacques and Taylor, 'Male and Female Suicide Bombers'.84. Pedazhur, Suicide Terrorism, 146–7.85.CitationAkhmedova and Speckhard, 'The Making of a Martyr', 447.86.CitationConley, 'For the Women of Chechnya', 340.87.CitationMyers, 'Young, Female, and Carrying a Bomb', 2.88. In several well documented instances, the Russians' continued attacks on unarmed civilians and their repeated shelling of non-resisting villages, combined with their vocalized racism and hatred towards the indigenous peoples clearly point to a campaign designed to punish the nation of Chechnya, to disrupt the social and cultural framework of Chechen society. Mass rapes, large-scale arrests, reprisals, and executions were common, and allegations of genocide are common. For a brief overview, see CitationGilligan, Terror in Chechnya, and CitationHuman Rights Watch Russia/Chechnya, 'No Happiness Remains'.89.CitationKramer, 'Guerilla Warfare, Counterinsurgency, and Terrorism', 210.90. For more see Citationde Waal, ' Introduction', xxiv; CitationLentini and Bakashmar, 'Jihadist Beheading'.91.CitationRigi, 'The War in Chechnya', 37.92.CitationBhattacharji, 'Chechen Terrorism'.93.CitationVarshney, 'Nationalism, Ethnic Conflict, and Rationality'.94. I am indebted to Michael Khodarkovsky for this idea, communicated through frequent conversations and emails with the current author.95.CitationGeifman, Death Orders, 7.
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