Latest Updates: russia RSS
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thabet
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johnpi
When the US wanted to put together a phony ‘coalition of the willing’ it turned to tiny rent-a-nations like Palau. When the Russians wanted to do the same thing with the piece they carved out of Georgia, they trot out sovereign entities such as the island nation of Nauru.
Impoverished Nauru, all 21 square kilometers of it, used to make its money from selling phosphates derived from sea bird droppings. When fossilised guano ran low, it established itself as a tax haven and dabbled in money-laundering. More recently, it has earned money by acting as a detention centre for refugee ‘boat people’ making the perilous journey across the Pacific to seek asylum in Australia.
Struggling to stave off total destitution, Nauru has also developed its own special form of ‘guano diplomacy’. In 2002, it derecognised Taiwan in return for a $150 million ‘aid’ package from China. This week, it recognised both Abkhazia and South Ossetia after reportedly securing some $50 million of Russian ‘aid’.
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johnpi
Plan to unite Russia’s Muslim hierarchies collapses.
A plan to unite Russia’s Muslim spiritual directorates (DUMs) under a single mufti broke down last week after the Muslim leader who originally proposed it realized it could cost him his position.
Russian leaders were probably not pleased with the plan.
…it may have dawned on some officials in Moscow that Tajuddin’s plan would have a very unwelcome consequence by changing the center of Islamic life in Russia. Ever since tsarist times, Islam, unlike Orthodox Christianity, has had its headquarters outside the Russian capital. If Gainutdin had become the head of the united muftiate, that organization would have had its headquarters in Moscow, a development that could have made it more difficult for the Russian authorities to ignore Islam, and that would certainly have enabled the new supreme mufti to exert greater influence in Russian affairs than any of the many muftis based outside the capital.
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johnpi
The Islamic revival in Chechnya worries Russians, even though Chechnyan leadership is appointed by Moscow. Islamic policies are flouting some tenets of the Russian constitution. Polygamy, for example, is illegal in Russia but practiced in Chechnya.
The head of Chechnya’s Centre for Spiritual-Moral Education, Vakha Khashkanov, set up by Kadyrov a year ago, said Islam should take priority over laws of the Russian constitution.
“If it is allowed in Islam, it is not up for discussion,” he told Reuters near Europe’s largest mosque, which glistens in central Grozny atop the grounds where the Communist party had its headquarters before the Soviet Union fell in 1991.
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johnpi
Who needs Afghanistan (for oil pipelines)?
The leaders of China and three Central Asian nations gathered Sunday in Turkmenistan ahead of a ceremony inaugurating natural gas deliveries from the energy-rich region to China.
….The pipeline culminates Chinese efforts to secure energy supplies for its fast-growing economy. The route also will enable gas producers in the region to diversify their exports away from Russia, which has exercised a virtual stranglehold over Central Asian energy supplies since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
“This is a significant project of cooperation between two nations that will benefit all countries in the region,” Chinese leader Hu Jintao told reporters in the Turkmen capital, Ashgabat.
“All countries in the region” except Afghanistan.
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johnpi
A suspect detained as part of the authorities’ investigation into an explosion inside an Orthodox church in Vladimir is believed to be a member of a pagan group that is in conflict with traditional faiths, a spokesman for the Russian Interior Ministry’s department for the fight against extremism told Interfax on Friday.
An explosion occurred at the Sts Cyril and Methodius Church on the premises of the Vladimir State University on December 6, the spokesman said.
A pamphlet that was written on behalf of the White Storm group and contained remarks “aimed at inciting ethnic and religious hatred” was found inside the church, he said.
“A 28-year-old resident of Vladimir was detained for his suspected role in the crime. The information available to us suggests that he is an active member of a pagan group that is in conflict with traditional faiths,” the spokesman said.
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johnpi
Chechen rebels claim Russian train bombing that killed 26.
Related: A paper from a neoconservative UK think tank linked from a Russian newswire with the spooky title, “Russia’s domestic Muslim strategy – the lurking threat.”
Criticizing neocon analysts is like shooting fish in a barrel (people of the northern Caucasus have an “inherent, traditional inclination towards long wars in the region…”), but this particular paper has a lot of information about the state of Islam in Russia and the surrounding region, and is provocative in describing Russian elite thinking and doctrine on addressing the growth of Islam and Islamism.
If Russia has an overall strategy vis-à-vis Islam and the Muslim world, it is replete with contradictions and can be understood only within the framework of how Russians see their place in the world now and in the years ahead. There is the constant contradiction between a feeling of worthlessness and the sentiment of superiority, of having a mission to fulfill.
Worthlessness found its classical formulation in Chaadayev’s Philosophical Letters (1836): we had neither a Renaissance nor an Enlightenment, we have contributed nothing to world culture, we have not added a single idea, but we disfigured everything we touched. We belong neither to West nor to East…Chaadayev’s diagnosis has influenced Russian thinking to this day and is frequently quoted.
On the other hand, there is the feeling of superiority, the view of Russia as the Third Rome possessed of a unique mission in the world….Yuri Petukhov, recently deceased, was a widely read science fiction writer. Shortly before his demise he formulated his political views and prophecies in Russkii mirovoi poryadok (The Russian World Order). According to him, all foreigners are Nean-derthals and degenerates (the term appears a thousand times in his book), Europe and America were created by Russians and should be repossessed, all Russian leaders including Lenin and Khrushchev (a weakling who did not dare to go to war over Cuba) were traitors. Only the great Stalin is an exception.
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johnpi
Russia has banned the video game Modern Warfare II until the “airport” mission is removed from the program.
The airport mission, you may recall, shows four Russian terrorists moving through an airport terminal massacring unarmed civilians.
A reader at Game Politics had a cutting comment:
I wonder what the Russians would say if someone made a movie about the way the Russians REALLY fought the war in Afghanistan. You know, killing livestock and children and women from their helicopters, setting boobytraps aimed specifically at children, raping the locals.
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johnpi
Kadyrov, 33, was once a separatist but switched sides, recasting himself as an Islamic leader who is also loyal to Moscow.
At first, his injection of national pride along with lots of money from the central government in Moscow soothed war-weary Chechens.
And at first, the process of Islamization was voluntary. Any female student who wore a headscarf initially earned a prize of $1,000. Now all females, regardless of their religious convictions, must cover their heads in schools and government offices.
Kadyrov has banned the sale of European-style wedding dresses in the republic’s bridal salons. Polygamy is increasing. Members of the team around Kadyrov openly have several wives. Kadyrov has also supported honor killings.
Lipkhan Bazaeva, who runs a nongovernmental organization promoting women’s rights, says Chechnya is going back to the Middle Ages.
“Yes, we are a traditional, conservative society, with our own values, but the government has gone overboard, declaring unacceptable limits on women — that they should sit at home, they should obey their husbands,” she says. “As an individual, she has no rights even if her husband beats her, despite Russian laws to the contrary.”
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johnpi
Earlier, I linked a press release from the Russian Interfax News that asserted that 90 percent of the Crimean Tatars are members of an extremist Islamic organization” (Hizb ut Tahrir). This recent article from the NY Times about the struggle to build a large mosque in the Crimean capital puts that piece of propaganda in perspective.
The Crimean Tatars were deported en masse by Stalin to work camps and gulags in other areas of the Soviet Union, where many died. Since the USSR collapse the Tatars have been immigrating back to Crimea in large numbers.
The mosque was supposed to signify the revival of those expelled, the Crimean Tatars, a Turkic ethnic group that suffered as wretched a fate as any under Communism. But with work held up by local authorities, the plan has instead stirred up a dispute involving politics, communal grievances, international tensions and historic traumas.
….The Tatars’ return has repeatedly touched off legal clashes over restitution of land and property, much of which is now owned by ethnic Russians. Some have turned violent.
The situation is complicated by the political status of Crimea, which would generally prefer to secede from Ukraine and rejoin Russia. Crimea was transferred by Nikita S. Khrushchev, then the Soviet leader, to Ukraine in 1954, a move then thought to be a formality, since it remained in the Soviet Union and was populated mostly by ethnic Russians.
Tatars have better ties with the Ukrainian government, and are often seen by ethnic Russian nationalists in Crimea as Kiev’s proxies. The three sides jockey for power on the peninsula, and the mosque has been one focal point.
Tatar leaders maintain that the mosque is being blocked in part to stoke anti-Muslim and anti-Ukrainian sentiment, especially in advance of presidential elections in Ukraine, scheduled for January.
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johnpi
Same planet, different world.
Russian press release: ‘11 members of Hizb ut-Tahrir extremist organization convicted in Tatarstan.’
The Supreme Court of Tatarstan found 12 activists of the Kazan division of the international terrorist organization Islamic Liberation Party (Hizb ut-Tahrir) guilty of extremism.
“Seven men, including Tajik citizen Dzhurayev and six Russians, have received four to eight years in a penal colony,” court press secretary Natalya Loseva told Interfax.
Four other Kazan residents have received suspended sentences of three years and six months to five years in prison.
“The accomplice Gimaliyev was found insane and is exempt from criminal liability. He will be forcibly treated,” Loseva said.
“Forcibly treated.” Horrible.
In another press release about extremist influence, the Russians claim that the number of followers of the Hizb ut-Tahrir movement among Crimean Muslims has jumped from 800-900 to 30,000, “including 90 percent of Tatars from Alushta.”
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thabet
Ingushetia’s president sacks his entire cabinet:
Yunus-Bek Yevkurov sacked the cabinet “for its unsatisfactory work in resolving the republic’s social and economic problems”, a spokesman said.
There have been a series of attacks in the troubled southern Russian republic, including one on Yevkurov himself, in recent months.
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johnpi
A state-approved Muslim cleric was assassinated in Russia’s North Caucasus Republic of Karachayevo-Circassia, the Coordination Center of North Caucasus Muslims said on Sunday.
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thabet
No surprises that the US remains the biggest supplier and spender of arms to other governments. With the Chinese and Russians closing the spending gap on the US, global military spending reached a record in 2008, despite the financial and economic crises (though, at this stage, this is probably due to a lag in record keeping and the completion of pre-existing agreements). Interestingly, three Arab countries, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and (oddly) Morocco were some of the biggest spenders on arms outside the OECD. Saudi Arabia and the UAE make sense given the geopolitical significance of the area and the stand off with Iran. Morocco seems harder to contextualise. As far as I can see, its main military efforts are in its ongoing occupation of Western Sahara, or combatting the emergence of the North African version of al-Qaida. Anyone have any ideas?
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thabet
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thabet
Russia turns to Muslim scholars to combat ‘radicalism’ in the Caucasus:
The integration of Muslim ulama into Russian state to combat resistance and violence to its control over its Muslim-populated areas is not new. Catherine II did something similar:
“The regime sought religious support for its policies,” Crews says. “In other words, it tried to co-opt local Muslim authorities who might be in a position to confer some kind of religious legitimacy upon state policies in order to reduce the chance of resistance.”
Having studied the Ottoman Empire, Catherine and her advisers wanted to create a hierarchical Muslim structure that would work in tandem with the Russian state.
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thabet
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thabet
Suicide bombing in Ingushetia:
The suicide attack in Nazran, Ingushetia’s main city, injured more than 138 people, including children.
The republic borders Chechnya and has seen a spate of shootings, bombings and other attacks on police and government.This follows the killing of a minister, and an attack on Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, the republic’s president.
Yevkurov is blaming the US, Britain and Israel for the series of attacks:
“The West will keep seeking to prevent Russia from reviving the former Soviet might,” he added.
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thabet
Normal in Russia, not normal in Abu Dhabi:
IK, the woman involved in the kiss, pleaded guilty at the Criminal Court of First Instance to consensual dishonour, while ZV, the Russian man involved, is facing the more serious charge of adultery.
IK was asked by Judge Syed Abdul Baseer whether they had kissed.
She replied through the court translator: “It’s a normal greeting.”
“Maybe it’s normal in Russia,” Judge Abdul Baseer said.
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thabet
Dodgy election results in a Central Asian state.
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thabet
Geopolitics meets energy demands meets engineering challenges:
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thabet
Ahmadinejad is a popular name amongst Russia’s Muslims.
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johnpi
Iranians chant “Death to Russia” at Friday prayers.
Traditionally at Friday Prayer, people are encouraged to chant “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” but today, they defiantly shouted “Death to Russia”, in referring to opposition accusations that Russia has been involved in training repression forces of the regime.
In the following video, recorded from a short distance of the outdoor gathering, you can hear a male voice over the loudspeaker screaming “Death to America”, “Death to the hypocrites” and “Death to England”, while the crowd roars “Death to Russia!” in response EVERY time.
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johnpi
Russian billionaire and possible heir to the leadership of Uzbekistan Alisher Burkhanovich Usmanov is a major player in a recent deal to purchase a 2 percent stake in Facebook, which has some observers worried since Usmanov is no friend of free speech. He attempted to shut down Craig Murray’s blog in the UK (Thabet quotes the offending Craig Murray post here), and when he was aligning himself with Putin, Usmanov bought a major Russian financial paper and installed a Putin hack. Subsequently, one of the correspondents died under mysterious circumstances. Murray also passed along allegations that Usmanov was involved in a particularly atrocious rape.
…all the bloggers out there covering this Facebook transaction would be wise to leave him out of it, considering what has happened to others.
That’s probably a little melodramatic, but I couldn’t resist getting Talk Islam on the s—list.
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thabet
BBC news report on Russia’s formal end to its war against the Chechens.
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plimfix
Russian Supreme Court bans Tablighi Jamaat – but only according a website previously unknown to me (and reposted on Islam in Europe). Can anyone confirm?
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Kawthar
Gaurav Misha asks, “Is the debate on Internet and human rights nothing more than American propaganda against China, Russia and Iran?”
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thabet
Russian prison guards burn copies of the Qur’an and assault Muslim inmates of Uzbek, Kyrgyz and Tajik origin.
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abunoor
With their Stalinist agent Ramzan Kadyrov firmly in place, Russia says it is pulling troops out of Chechnya.
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Kawthar
An Azeri immigrant in Russia was charged with hiring hitmen to murder his daughter for wearing a miniskirt. [Over 90% of the population of Azerbaijan is Muslim]
