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The Eurasian Politician - October 2003
Anssi Kullberg, 1 Oct. 2003
Some geopolitical remarks can be made on the similarities between a few conflict areas of Eurasia. It is hardly a coincidence that a Eurasian belt of conflicts - "the zone of instability", as it has been called in many theories recently - is situated along such frontier zones, where "civilizations" and great Eurasian empires have historically encountered and confronted each other. Also, it is hardly a coincidence that these areas, which have served to contain imperial expansions, are situated in mountain regions, and in some cases in densely forested areas, archipelagoes and broken coastlines. All of these natural landscapes are favorable for guerrilla warfare. In such terrain, the militarily weaker has always been able to successfully defend against the stronger, even considerably powerful invader.
Against this background it is not surprising that the Eurasian mountain regions have preserved a considerably larger diversity of ethnic, linguistic and religious groups, than the plains in imperial heartlands, where it has been easier for the empires to wipe out resistant minorities. For these reasons, the mountain regions - from the Pyreneans and Switzerland, to Dagestan and Kashmir - have been characterized by ethnic multitude, small valley and city states, in practice even village-level political sovereignty, the bondage of social structures to family, village, and clan communities, and preparedness to armed resistance for "home, faith, and native land". For some reason this preparedness - as well as another characteristic feature, the desire for freedom, or "defiance" - are seen bellicose and nasty when they take place in Afghanistan or in the Caucasus, while in Switzerland these same characteristics are commonly seen as contributing to the hundreds of years of peace and liberty. Switzerland, however, is geopolitically similar with the Caucasus and Afghanistan in terms of "ethnic disunity" and being surrounded by regional hegemonic states.
Another characteristic feature of Eurasian mountainous borderland zones has been the localized manner of religion. In Christian regions this has meant for example the ability of "heretic" and Protestant churches to resist the persecutions against Huguenots and the Counterreformation. The Bogomil Christians of the Balkans, who had been condemned as heretics, turned to the protection of the Turkish Empire, and consequently, converted to Islam. They were the ancestors of the present Bosnian Muslims. The Unitarian Christians of Transylvania preserved their Protestant faith as a protectorate of the Turkish Empire, while in the areas ruled by the Habsburgs, Unitarian Christianity was mostly destroyed. The two world's oldest Christian monarchies, medieval Georgia and Armenia, were situated in the Caucasus.
In the Islamic regions, the Muslims of the mountains have strongly preserved their Sufi traditions, which include mysticism, tolerance, certain liberalism, and the localized manner of Islam. Sufi Islam has often adopted features from the pre-Islamic religions of these regions, especially Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and Buddhism. Scholastically, the Sufis are a very heterogeneous group, because Sufism is a general term used of those traditions of Islam, which emphasize mysticism and philosophy, personal search of spiritual truth. It is however typical that the Sufis avoid such scholastic dogmatism, which is characteristic for Sunni puritans, like the Wahhabis. Crucial to Sufism are the spiritual teachers, sheikhs, whose teachings define the forms that Sufi Islam gets. These forms can differ from dervish dances, aiming at transcendental experience of God, to meditation and philosophical debates.
Sunni puritans and radical Islamists usually consider the Sufis as heretics, and accuse them, among other charges, for polytheism, because Sufism is usually combined with a very strong respect for sheikhs and saints. Pilgrimages are being made to the graves of famous sheikhs all over the Sufi areas, and villages and towns usually have their own sheikhs, and sacred places of pilgrimage on their gravesites. Many feasts, for example the originally Persian nawruz, which is also celebrated by Kurds and Turkestan peoples, are pre-Islamic.
Chechnya, which is strongly Sufist, also differed from its neighboring lands. It has always been less conservative than Dagestan, where Islam is deeply rooted, and it has always been socially more liberal and democratic than the Circassian states, which were strongly hierarchic warrior principalities. In Dagestan, the neighbors of the Chechens included the mountainous Avars, who were militarily the strongest nation of Dagestan, and the Kumyk khanate in the plains of northern Dagestan. Kumykistan was a strong economic power of the region, and its Turkic language served as a regional lingua franca. Also the great Avar Imam Shamil used Kumyk in the meetings of the Murids. Among the Circassian principalities, nearest to Chechnya was Kabarda.
Dagestan flourished as one of the most important centers of Islamic scholarship outside of the Arab world, until the Russian conquest of the Caucasus in the 1800s. Chechnya, on the contrary, was always on the margins of the Islamic world. There, religious life was very localized and connected to social loyalty, with priorities on the taip (clan), the Sufi brotherhood, the family, ancestry, and native village. All this meant strong emphasis on ethnic identity and tradition. During the periods of peace, Chechens never followed strict religious norms. Even wine and booze have been commonly drunk in Chechnya, although religion calls for temperance.
The position of women, too, has been traditionally strong in Chechnya, compared both with the mainstream of the Islamic world, and the neighboring Dagestan and Circassia. Both the Sufi brotherhoods accept women as members, too. Therefore it is not surprising that women have participated the resistance in Chechnya since the Chechen War I (1994-1996). In fact, already in the Murid Wars, sacrifices of fighting women were seen, especially in defence during village sieges. However, activity like the recent suicide bombings of the "black widows" is principally alien to Chechen traditions. In Chechnya, it is unusual to see women using Islamist headscarves.
The Chechens call themselves the Nokhchi (Noxçi) or the Nah. The word is commonly said to derive from the Biblical name of Noah, and the same word can be found, for example, in the country name Vainakh, referring to the common homeland of the Chechens, the Ingush, and some Dagestani peoples; as well as in the South Caucasian town and area called Nakhichevan (Naxçivan), which belongs to today's Azerbaijan. The Chechens are mentioned from the seventh century onwards in medieval Armenian sources, and hence, in medieval Georgian chronicles. The Chechen national epic, "Illi", was born in the 1500s. According to Lyoma Usmanov, the Chechens originate in the ancient kingdom of Urartu (900-600 b.C.) and later in the Georgian realm of Djurdjuketia (300 b.C.). In the Middle Ages, the Chechens participated in Caucasian monarchies such as the kingdom of Serir (600-1000 a.D.), Alania (700-900 a.D.), and Simsim (1100-1300 a.D.).
In the traditional social structure of the Chechens, typical mountainous elements are brought together: solid bondage to the home place, family tradition and honor, as well as the ideal of a free man. The primary anchor of loyalty and identity is the taip, which has been translated into clan, tribe as well as brotherhood. Its bonds are not always necessarily blood-related family ties, though usually they are. The taips form tribes (tukum). Traditionally, there have been nine tribes, and 150 taips.
The tribes have no leaders. They are rather just reference groups that indicate geographical origin and history of the family. The taips, however, have each their traditions, histories, and councils of elders, and they form the most important loyalty bond of the individual, as well as his social security network, and a system of justice that solves disputes, preferably independent on state authority. The elders are not necessarily those who are eldest by age, but primarily they are the most respected men, age being one of the bases for respect. In modern times, the respect has also been increasingly connected with education. This has not, however, meant the erosion of respect based on the traditional virtues of manliness and warrior-like heroism, especially as the new Chechen generations have again been raised into continuous state of war.
The Chechen society has usually been romanticized both for better and for worse. For the romanticists of Russian literature, the Chechens have always represented the "noble wilds" of the desolate frontier lands, or the "bloodthirsty Saracens". On the other hand, Europeans have sought to see marks of the Antiquity's "free men's democracy" in the Chechen society, because the Chechens have traditionally cultivated very large equality, and only during the periods of war, the Chechens have had strong authoritarian leaders, while in times of peace, decision-making has always taken place in the councils of elders. While tradition and honor have bound the Chechens to respect the word of their grandfathers and fathers, the youth has always been able to gain social promotion by his own virtues, heroism, or charisma, not depending on his birth.
The first of the great religions of the Middle East to reach the Chechens was Christianity, which spread to Chechnya from Georgia as early as in the eighth century, in other words, 300 years before the Eastern Slavs ("Russians") of the principality of Kiev started to become Christianized by Prince Vladimir. The Chechens thereafter converted to Islam quite slowly, only from 1300s onwards, influenced by the Sufi brotherhoods of Naqshbandiyya and Qadiriyya, which were spread from Dagestan to inland by Kumyks and Avars. The last regions of Chechnya, including Ingushetia, converted into Islam only in the 1700s. There are still Christian Chechens, too (mostly Georgian Orthodox).
The expansion of the Russian Empire reached the Chechens little by little in the 1700s, and the bitter resistance struggle continued ceaselessly for a century onwards, until 1859, when the Chechen independence is usually thought to have ended by the surrender of Imam Shamil to the troops of Prince Alexander Bariatinski. In fact, the resistance struggle did not stop there, but continued as guerrilla war, general instability, and sporadic uprisings all the way through the czarist and Soviet periods to our days.
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