Thinking Aloud: Insurgency in the North Caucasus

Oct. 17, 2012 by Darius

This afternoon I attended a talk by Jean-François Ratelle on “Insurgent Violence in the North Caucasus:  Pathways and Trajectories Explaining Insurgent Participation.”

First, a little geography.  The Caucasus region is a mountainous area between Turkey and Russia. It includes the independent countries of Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan as well as a number of Russian republics, like Dagestan, Chechnya, and Kabardino-Bolkaria, and peoples without a distinct republic (like the Circassians, Abkhazians, and lots of others).  There’s a map below.  Most of the area has been majority Muslim since the Middle Ages.  However, the Muslim majority has been officially and unofficially oppressed by Russia for almost as long.

Chechnya is the Caucasus hotspot that’s usually in the news, but this talk was mostly about Dagestan.  Dr. Ratelle chose this area in which to do fieldwork for his doctoral dissertation.  A Canadian citizen, he grew a beard and tried to pass as a conservative Muslim Dagestani.  He spent time living with a small insurgent cell and was subject to the same daily indignities at the hands of officials as other young local Muslim men.

• Violence in the North Caucasus has increased markedly since 2008, especially in Dagestan.  More young people are joining the insurgency.  They generally join the insurgency not because they are filled with Islamist zeal but because they see the insurgency as a solution to immediate, local problems.  For starters, there is very little chance in Dagestan for social mobility.  Life is dominated by clan connections, and if you don’t know the right people or don’t have the money for bribes, you have almost no prospects for improving your life.  You even have to pay large bribes to get into the military, which is in turn needed to get a good job later.
• In the North Caucasus, ideology plays a limited role even in the overtly Islamist groups.  For starters, there is very little communication between the local groups, so all insurgents deal with problems local in nature.  Many insurgents are simply using radical Islam to mask their real business:  organized crime and drug trafficking.  An estimated 25% of violence in the North Caucasus is due to organized crime.
• Moreover, since the insurgency began, security forces have engaged in a brutal crackdown, targeting many innocent people in the process.  This crackdown has only fed the cycle of insurgency.  Many people join the insurgency when they or a relative are the victims of the security forces.
• Finally, for many young men, joining the insurgency provides them with a sense of community.
• The West, however, does not understand the insurgency in the North Caucasus.  The West tends to view terrorists and insurgencies in an over-generalized way, focusing on “triggering events” of physical violence that lead to the growth of the group, rather than understanding the local microdynamics fueling the insurgency.
• The insurgency is best understood in terms of three sets of factors:  preconditions, triggering factors, and facilitating factors.  Preconditions are the factors that lead to public dissatisfaction with the status quo.  In the North Caucasus, preconditions include the limits clan structure puts on social mobility, the lack of educational opportunities, the lack of a fair and affordable judicial system, and the need to pay massive bribes to get a job.  Triggering factors are events that directly cause someone to join the insurgency.  Some triggering factors are religious repression, including religious profiling (with his Islamist-style beard, Dr. Ratelle was repeatedly harassed and arrested by Dagestani police just because he looked like he might be Islamist), and the desire for revenge for violence inflicted on a relative.  Finally, facilitating factors are those that sustain the insurgency.  Some facilitating factors are kinship links—if relatives are in the insurgency, one is more likely to remain—as well as the sense of community and the radicalization that comes from being in close contact with fellow radicals.
• Russia’s response to the insurgency is typically ham-handed.  Instead of understanding the complex reasons behind the insurgency, Russia’s policy has been to consider radical Islam as the only cause behind the insurgency, and to regard all Salafists as insurgents.  This has led to further religious repression, only fueling the insurgency.

Conflict in the North Caucasus might sound obscure and uninteresting, but the 2014 Winter Olympics are to take place in Sochi, just a short distance away.  Can’t wait.