Two events propelled Russia back into open conflict with its unruly hinterlands. The first was the August 1999 invasion of neighboring Dagestan by an Islamist militia led by Basayev and Jordanian-born jihadicommander Omar Ibn al Khattab. The second was the September 1999 bombing of four apartment blocks in the Russian cities of Moscow, Buynansk, and Volgodonsk, allegedly by Chechen rebels. (Considerable controversy surrounds the terrorist attacks, with some claiming that the blasts were orchestrated by Russia’s domestic intelligence service, the FSB, to provide a pretext for renewed war in the Caucasus.) 8
But the nature of the conflict had changed fundamentally. The First Chechen War, at least in its opening stages, was mostly a struggle for self-determination. The war’s second iteration had an overtly Islamist, missionary character. Instead of being localized to Chechnya, it increasingly implicated the republic’s Caucasian neighbors (most directly Dagestan and Ingushetia). And while the First Chechen War took on the form of a fast-moving, asymmetric conflict, the second became a war of attrition, complete with a grinding, bloody ground campaign.
The Kremlin won a few victories in this effort. In April 2002, Russia’s security services assassinated Khattab, the Jordanian-born jihadistrumored to be bin Laden’s man in the Caucasus. 9Four years later, in July 2006, warlord Shamil Basayev, the mastermind behind the 1999 Dagestan raid, was similarly dispatched. 10
On the surface, these successes appeared to shift the momentum of the conflict in Moscow’s favor, and the Kremlin was quick to declare victory. In April 2009, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, in a Russian throwback to President George W. Bush’s ill-considered May 2003 “mission accomplished” speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, proudly declared victory in Russia’s counterterrorism campaign. 11
But that declaration of triumph turned out to be premature. By the end of 2009, extreme violence returned to the region. That year alone, the Caucasus Emirate carried out 511 terrorist attacks. By the end of the following year, the number had risen to 583. 12
Today, despite regular public pronouncements to the contrary from officials in Moscow, whatever fleeting stability existed in the aftermath of the Russian military’s onslaught has long since disappeared. The Caucasus remains a political quagmire for the Kremlin—and a locus of resilient Islamic radicalism. Indeed, over the past three years, Islamic militants in the region have staged a savage comeback, carrying out numerous atrocities, among them the brazen 2010 suicide raid on the Chechen parliament and the summer 2012 assassination of the spiritual leader of Dagestan’s Sufi community. 13
As violence has surged, Russian confidence has withered. A July 2010 exposé by Germany’s influential news magazine Der Spiegelfound that some high-ranking Russian officials have become convinced that it will take years to defeat extremist groups in the restive region—if such a feat can be accomplished at all. 14Indeed, although the Russian government has vowed that the area will be safe for the 2014 Winter Olympics in nearby Sochi, local security has deteriorated to an unprecedented degree. Armored vehicles and helicopters are now de rigueurfor all visiting Kremlin officials, and traffic policemen in the republic require the protection of Interior Ministry units. “It will take years to change the situation here,” one Russian general told Der Spiegel. “For every dead terrorist, two new ones rise up to take his place.” 15
Islamism’s resilience—indeed, its growing appeal—has a lot to do with a hardening of local attitudes. A poll conducted in early 2011 by the regional journal Nations of Dagestanfound that 30 percent of Dagestani youth, including members of Dagestan’s universities and police schools, said they would choose to live under a Muslim-run religious regime. More than a third of those polled indicated they would not turn in a friend or family member responsible for terrorism to authorities. 16These findings mirror those of human rights groups and NGOs active in the Caucasus, which have documented an upsurge in support for Islamic extremism and adherence to radical religious ideas there. 17
In other words, despite official claims that the region has been pacified, the North Caucasus is more and more a place where the Kremlin’s authority is ignored, and even challenged, as well as where religious identity trumps nationalist sentiment. Worst of all, these problems are no longer isolated in Russia’s periphery.
TROUBLE IN THE HEARTLAND
In Kazan, the capital of the Russian republic of Tatarstan, lies a bustling side street known as Gazovaya Ulitsa. There, you will find the Russian Islamic University, the region’s premier Islamic school of higher learning. Founded in 1998, the university plays an important quasi-official role, promulgating the moderate Tatar version of Islam that is officially sanctioned by the Russian state. For its efforts, the university has been recognized by the Kremlin; the walls of its main hall are adorned with pictures of a 2009 official visit by then President Dmitry Medvedev.
But the Islamic University is not alone. Directly across the street sits the squat, imposing structure of the Eniler mosque. Built in the early 2000s thanks to funding from the Middle East, it has become one of the largest Wahhabi places of worship in the republic. 18
The battle lines drawn along Gazovaya Ulitsa are emblematic of the ideological competition taking shape within Tatarstan—and across Russia’s heartland as a whole. There, traditional, assimilationist Tatar Islam has increasingly found itself under siege from an insurgent and extreme Islamic fundamentalism.
To be sure, there are still many Muslims who follow the moderate Tatar interpretation of Islam. Of these, perhaps the most well known (albeit not the most mainstream) is Rafael Khakimov of the Tatarstan Academy of Sciences, who has written extensively about the idea of “Euro-Islam” and its compatibility with modernity. 19Tatar Islam likewise remains the branch of the religion officially endorsed and embraced by the Russian state. But, as regional religious experts point out, the movement as a whole lacks a compelling overarching narrative that appeals to the region’s Muslim youth.
Islamists, by contrast, do appeal to Russia’s Muslim youth—a fact evident in the growth of Wahhabi grassroots activism in the form of social organizations, spiritual retreats, and informal youth gatherings, and in the growing number of local religious figures in the Volga region who espouse an extreme interpretation of Islam.
Russia’s most virulent jihadistgroup, the Caucasus Emirate, does not yet appear to have much of an organized presence in the Volga region. But Doku Umarov, the group’s leader, has talked publicly about the eventual expansion of jihadistactivity along the Volga, and radical Islam’s growth in Russia’s heartland has become a topic of discussion among Russian Islamists. 20Some early signs of militancy have emerged as a result. In February 2011, for example, security forces in the Bashkortostan region arrested four suspected Islamists from the western town of Oktyabrsky, including the purported leader of the local affiliate of Umarov’s group. 21
In addition, several small Tatar organizations—among them Ittifak, Milli Mejlis, and elements within the All-Tatar Public Center—have Islamist tendencies. 22But the Islamist group with the most organized presence in Russia is the grassroots missionary organization known as Hizb-ut Tahrir (HuT). While formally eschewing religious violence, HuT pursues a phased agenda whose long-term goal is the creation of a caliphate and the imposition of Islamic law in the numerous countries and regions where it is active. 23There is a strong correlation between membership in HuT and the eventual embrace of religiously motivated violence—so much so that experts have likened the group to a “conveyor belt of extremism.” 24