By Dmitry Shlapentokh

Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov believes that Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has got its math wrong.

At a recent meeting with security officials of the semi-independent Chechen Republic, Kadyrov disputed FSB figures that 400-500 Islamic insurgents were based in Chechnya, saying that the number was much lower and that a special commission needed to be appointed to get a more accurate figure.

Since his appointment in the spring of 2007, Kadyrov and other senior Chechen leaders have insisted that they have all but eliminated fighters in Chechnya. First Deputy Prime Minister Magomed Daudov recently told a seminar on counter-insurgency that the “main forces of the bandit groups and the extremist underground” had been crushed and their most dangerous leaders “neutralized”. He said 140 militants were killed in Chechnya in 2009 and 120 apprehended.
Despite the official stance, an Islamist insurgency continues to rage in the North Caucasus region, particularly in Dagestan, Ingushetia and neighboring Chechnya, site of two separatist wars with Moscow since the mid-1990s.

An indication of this was an unlikely visit that Kadyrov recently made to Israel, while several high-positioned representatives of the North Caucasian elite visited Israel or engaged in personal contacts with the Israelis.

There could be several reasons for these visits. Israel is home to a substantial number of Jewish and non-Jewish residents from the Caucasus and the visitors could be providing their ethnic and cultural kin the opportunity for business deals. The trips could also have been for recreational purposes or for medical treatment in Israel.

For some, such as Kadyrov, there are other reasons. He has become increasingly assertive, behaving as if he were, indeed, a fully independent ruler. He has visited countries as diverse as Saudi Arabia and Jordan and patronizing the Israelis provided him with a good opportunity to demonstrate that he is, in fact, his own man, although not in name, and he can engage in foreign policy without having to defer to Moscow.

There is another twist. Kadyrov, despite his dedication to Islam, is foremost a Chechen nationalist who sees the jihadis who emerged as a major force in 2007 in the Caucasus as his and his country’s mortal enemy. In this sense, he is a natural ally of Israel, which now faces a new form of anti-Semitism.

For the first decades of its existence, Israel faced anti-Israeli and openly anti-Jewish feelings, pretty much along the lines of traditional 19th-20th century European anti-Semitism. Jews were defined as a racial/ethnic category; and, in the view of anti-Semites, Jews created “problems” for the people in their immediate proximity: Palestinians, Germans, Russians, etc.

The religious/political aspect of Jews had no importance. These were the same grounds for the anti-Jewish and, consequently, anti-Israeli, feelings of those whom Israeli Jews faced in the first decades of Israel’s existence – Arabs, especially Palestinians.

For Muslims, who have engaged in a mortal struggle with Jews in Israel/Palestine since the end of Ottoman rule, any Jew has been an enemy. At the same time, this racially-founded anti-Semitism (actually anti-Jewishness, for Arabs are also Semites) implies that those Muslims of various ethnic origins who had historically positive relationships with Jews as ethnic groups had no problem with Israelis.

This was, for example, the case with most Muslims in Soviet Central Asia, the Soviet North Caucasus and other parts of the world, such as Pakistan. Indeed, in the Caucasus, Jews have usually been safe from mass violence, even in the heat of bloody inter-ethnic fights. During the unrest in Baku, Azerbaijan, in the 1990s, Muslims targeted Armenians, but not Jews.

This has now changed. Universalist jihadis downplay ethnicity, both their own and that of their enemies. Israel became evil not because it is a place of Jews as an ethnic group, but because it is the abode of Zionists – the deadly threat of the Islamic ummah (community).

This has led to anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish actions and feelings in places where it had never been before, such as the North Caucasus, Central Asia and Pakistan.

The Caucasus Emirate, a self-proclaimed virtual state entity officially announced in October 2007 by former president of Ichkeria, Dokka Umarov, has proclaimed that the North Caucasian mujahideen would not abandon their Muslim brothers in Palestine.
These anti-Israeli forces are also the enemies of Kadyrov, as well as the Kremlin. It is this that has pushed Chechnya and Israel together, despite their reservations, as was the case of Kadyrov and Moscow.

Dmitry Shlapentokh, PhD, is associate professor of history, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Indiana University South Bend. He is author of East Against West: The First Encounter – The Life of Themistocles, 2005.

(Copyright 2010 Dmitry Shlapentokh.)