I recently had the pleasure of interviewing former journalist and expert on Chechnya Thomas de Waal for Coffee and Markets. He made several interesting points about the region - here's an excerpt:
de Waal: This is a place where the Russian Government has poured a lot of money into and basically bought itself some time by building up this like war lord, the troops have come home casualty figures down. But in the long term basically Chechnya now, from peopleâ??s description, no longer looks like Russia any more. Most of the ethnic Russians have left.So, Russia is building itself up a long term problem by creating this place which really has not much in common with the rest of Russia. And in the meantime other places in this very complex mountainous region around Chechnya, the North Caucasus is a place of literally dozens of nationalities living in the mountains of the North Caucasus, has become more unstable. Thereâ??s been more violence. Thereâ??s a kind of low level insurgency carrying on, which is actually getting worse. So, there are on many levels, Moscow is losing this region, even though itâ??s not very much in the headlines at the moment.
Domenech: I wonder if you could outline for us how thatâ??s happening when it comes to the ethnic transition. You talked about the largest mosque. Iâ??m very fascinated to see sort of how much more Islamic itâ??s become over the past several years. What are some of the examples of the effect that thatâ??s having?
de Waal: Well, I think whatâ??s happening is that youâ??ve got a younger generation of people in these places, Chechnya, Dagistan, Ingushetia who have grown up and their whole lives have been shaped by war, by instability, and by unemployment. The State really hasnâ??t offered them much. The local leaders tend to be very corrupt. If they go work in the rest of Russia they suffer ethnic discrimination. Last December we saw basically race riots in the center of Moscow with white nationalists, skin heads, trying to beat up people with brown skins and from the caucuses in Moscow.
So, itâ??s a pretty miserable existence for this younger generation. They donâ??t feel much connection with the rest of Russia. Some of them probably want to feel more connection with the rest of Russia. But for some of them, not all of them, but thereâ??s obviously the attraction of Islam as a creed which promises purity, promises justice, promises equality, and is, you know, a way of fighting back against these corrupt regimes. Itâ??s a narrative we see all over the world and itâ??s certainly happening in the south of Russia although many people arenâ??t really seeing it.
I hope you'll listen to or read the entire interview, which touches on several additional points of interest.
