Central Asia, Chechnya, and Syria Points on a Compass

Bearing this analysis in mind it is worth examining the cooptation of Muslim religious elites and communities including non-Muslim communities in Muslim territories in three wars that from Moscow’s standpoint were and are counter-insurgencies, namely the Russian Civil War in Central Asia and its aftermath, Chechnya, and today in Syria with respect to this pattern of elite and mass cooptation.  That Moscow saw and sees these wars as counterinsurgencies is not open to doubt.  Opposition to Soviet socialism during the civil war was for Moscow clearly a manifestation of counter-revolution and this was the case throughout Stalin’s rule as well.  Thus we must understand Moscow’s approach to counterinsurgency (or to use US military vernacular COIN).  For example, we see in Chechnya after 200 a similar attempt, learned from the failure of the first Chechen war in 1994-1996, to apply this cooptative tactic and apply it to Chechen leadership and religious policy.

As Moscow quickly grasped in Chechnya, the use of force alone was not enough to overcome the catastrophic attacks leveraged by the insurgents. The Kremlin’s admission that military force was not the most auspicious way to counter the Chechen insurgency was seen in Putin’s Chechenization policy. This is one of the key points of the paradigm of hearts and minds approach in civil wars and insurgency/counterinsurgency. Generally in Russian tradition this approach comes into play when it becomes clear that a direct and more brutal policy that assaults   minorities’ institutions and values head on has failed and that something else must be tried. These concessions reflect a more sophisticated understanding and employment of the measures needed to undermine the cohesion and thus the base of support for the insurgents by splitting the movement and balancing concession and appeals to indigenous values with repression. 

It is not only a question of making concessions to their way of life, nationality, and/or religion.  It is quite consciously a strategy of imperial management, whose main component is to find those elites who are willing to work with Moscow or St. Petersburg, install them in leadership positions, co-opt them and their followers into the Russian ruling elite which always was a cosmopolitan affair, make the requisite concessions to the people, and over the long term integrate these elites into the Russian state thus depriving the population of a leadership stratum with which to lead any future revolts. Combined with overwhelming force and Moscow’s ability – a common operational thread in all its ventures – to isolate the theater from foreign eyes and support, this blending of force and cooptation has generally proven successful, most recently in Chechnya.

In Chechnya in 1999-2007 Moscow exploited the willingness of Akhmad Kadyrov and after his death his son Ramzan’s willingness to support Moscow in return for power as Moscow’s satraps in Chechnya. He was the Mufti of Chechnya so not only did his support represent another example of the fracturing of elites that has been a common strategy for imperial success since the 1460s; it also divided the Muslim religious community and deprived the insurgents of the argument that they alone represented the true Islam.  Not only have the Kadyrovs validated Moscow’s belief in their loyalty (admittedly well lubricated by massive subsidies) they also have applied the tactic of creating a seemingly loyal pro-Moscow armed force or militia, as Moscow did in the 1944-53 period of insurgencies in the Baltic, Belarus, and Ukraine to conduct operations not only to secure the Kadyrovs but also to root out the insurgents and terrorize the remaining inhabitants of Chechnya.  And in so doing they have undoubtedly attracted veterans of the first Chechen war.  All in all these tactics have induced great divisions among the Chechen insurgents.[i]

Using the Kadyrovs and the growing war weariness of those left in Chechnya, Moscow was similarly able to craft an appeal to Chechens that the insurgents, who had in fact succumbed to a Salafist, Saudi-inspired version of Islam not unlike that espoused by Osama Bin Laden and Aymen Zawahiri, were interlopers, outsiders who sought to hijack an indigenous Islamic theology for their own political purposes. Whether this development and promotion of religious schisms among the Chechens was a conscious FSB  strategy or a serendipitous exploitation of an opportunity that presented itself is irrelevant because the exploitation of this tactic fit so well with the evolving Russian strategy after the shameful defeat of 1996 [ii]

Finally as the insurgency weakened, Moscow was able to rely increasingly on the Kadyrovs and its policy of Chechenization butressed by the Kadyrovtsy’s loyal troops and  a massive infusion of  capital for reinvestment or  redevelopment of Chechnya, and the grant of enormous autonomous powers to Kadyrov who has said he is Putin’s man.[iii]  Here again we see the dividends that accrue to Moscow from its ability to split the elite, namely the ability to play what amounts to the amnesty card as many insurgents  either think revolt is hopeless or that Kadyrov is achieving as much of their former dream as is possible. In effect the increasing resort to  this militia  imparted the aspect of a civil war among Chechens rather than an anti-Russian insurgency to the conflict, a development that clearly redounded to Moscow’s advantage.[iv]

This readiness to support Kadyrov for lack of an alternative resonates among ealrier perspectives of Soviet tactics in the first decade of the revolution.  In the Soviet case, for example, as Stalin repeatedly observed, the government simply had no cadres who could make socialism intelligible and/or legitimate to native Muslims and had to recruit from whomever it could find that would support them until such time as it could create or find reliable, i.e. truly Bolshevized, leaders.[v]  As a result we see in the creation of Central Asian and the North Caucasus republics of the 1920s clear efforts to coopt modernizing elites who found Soviet socialism attractive or compelling as a political watchword for their societies and who could then lead others into discrete territorial and socio-political institutions that were loyal to Moscow.[vi]  Those policies of nativization (korenizatsiya) in the 1920s and the creation of North Caucasian autonomous political formations and of Central Asian union republics that gave elements of real political power and authority to native leaders along with seeming concessions to religious practices in the early NEP period (1921-25) clearly represented elements of his strategy and a conscious desire to coopt willing elites.[vii]

To counter the Bamachi insurgency in 1922 Stalin was prepared to institute concessionary policies towards the Wakf and other  Muslim religoius institutions (even if his intentions were duplilcitous) in the short-term in order to pacify restive populations and foster conditions for working with relgioius authorities.[viii]  And many Soviet officials were prepared to reach a modus vivendi with Islamic institiutions  well into the  1920s.[ix]  Thus Khalid writes that,

Earlier in the decade years,  Soviet authorities were willing to align with “progressive “Ulama” and Muslim reformers, whomn they saw as partners in a project of enlightenment. The height of this optimism came in August 1924, when Matvei Davydovich Berman, the deputy head of the OGPU for Central Asia,  even suggested that he future Uzbek republic have a central religious administration (Makhkama-i-sharia) with control over all religious waqfs, as long as the leadership of “progressive” Ulama could be assured.[x]

Berman believed that this  “progreessive” Ulama oculd nto comepte with other religoius leaders and wouldtherefore have to support Soviet power,  i.e be  susceptible to cooptation.  Thus under the “hidden leadership” of the Party it could begin the struggle with religoius fanaticism and Islamic custom while also helping to purge the religious establishement of enemies of Soviet power.[xi]  This gambit perfectly caputres the  utility, as seen by Soviet officials of the cooptative tactic in pacifying potentially disruptive elites to forestall insurgencies.  And it is no accident that Stalin  in creating multiple North Caucasus national territories, supporting those projects in 1921-24, and also announcing concessions to local relgious beliefs and institutions also aimed to forestall or suffocate local insurgencies agianst Soviet power.[xii]  Yet given the ingrained suspiciousness with which the regime viewed such “progressive religoius elements” in Central Asia,  it is no surprise that local leaders after 1927 came to see those forces who stood for  effecting some kind of harmony between Islamand communism as suspect if not treacherous.[xiii]