Текст книги "Implosion. The end of Russia and what it means for America"

Автор книги: Ilan Berman

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CHAPTER THREE

MUSLIM RUSSIA RISING

In the late summer of 2005, Russia’s most prominent Muslim weighed in on the national debate taking place over the country’s dismal demographics. In an address to the European Union of Muslims, Ravil Gaynutdin, Russia’s chief mufti, said, “The number of people professing Islam in Russia is constantly growing.” In fact, according to Gaynutdin, there were as many as twenty-three million Russian Muslims—nearly ten million more than the 14.5 million officially tallied by the country’s census that year. ¹

Predictably, Gaynutdin’s comments touched off a firestorm of controversy, with detractors insisting that the cleric’s figures were grossly inflated. Perhaps they were: Russia’s 2002 census had contained a much more modest official estimate, pegging the number of Muslims at approximately fifteen million, or 10 percent of the population. ²Notably, though, the Russian Orthodox Church—which has a vested interest in tracking the number of Muslims in Russia—had given its own estimate not long prior. At twenty million, it was much closer to Gaynutdin’s projections than to those of the Kremlin. ³

Regardless of which estimate is correct, the incident cast light on how quickly Islam has gained ground in Russia. While Russia’s Slavic population is constricting, Russia’s Muslims are faring a good deal better. In fact, Islam can be said to be experiencing a major—and sustained—revival there.

A POST-SOVIET RENAISSANCE

While Muslims have lived on what is now Russian territory for centuries (mostly concentrated in the Volga and North Caucasus regions), the rise of what can be called “Muslim Russia” has taken place mostly during the post-Soviet era.

At the end of the Cold War in 1989, Muslims made up 19.2 percent of the overall Soviet population of nearly 287 million. ⁴But the Soviet Union was formally atheist, which meant that Islam, like all other organized religions, was closely regulated and tightly controlled by the state. (Mass deportations and forcible relocations of Chechen, Ingush, and Crimean Muslims during Stalin’s reign contributed to the overall repression.) ⁵

With the breakup of the USSR, the number of Muslims in Russia initially fell sharply—only around ten million remained in post-Soviet Russia (accounting for 7 percent of the country’s then-148-million-person population). ⁶But relatively robust birth rates since then have swelled the ranks of Russia’s Muslims relative to their Slavic counterparts.

According to Russia’s 2002 census, the country’s overall Muslim population grew by 20 percent between 1989 and 2002. ⁷During the same period, the country’s Slavic population declined by nearly 4 percent. ⁸And this trajectory is continuing—United Nations estimates put Russia’s overall fertility rate at much lower than Russian Muslims’ fertility rate of 2.3. ⁹Other estimates have placed the fertility rate among Russia’s Muslims at higher still: between six and ten children per woman, depending on where in the Russian Federation they live. ¹⁰Whatever the actual number, it is clear—as a 2005 study commissioned by the Washington, D.C.–based Center for Strategic and International Studies put it—that “Russia’s Muslims . . . have significantly more babies, suffer less premature death, and live longer than do Russia’s Slavs.” ¹¹

The disparity is easy to explain. Studies have found that Muslim women in Russia are more likely to marry, less likely to divorce, and less likely to have abortions than non-Muslim women in Russia. ¹²Between 1991 and 2011, the number of Russian Muslims nearly tripled, and now rests at a median estimate of about twenty-one million—or roughly 15 percent of the country’s total population. ¹³

80 percent of Russia’s Muslims reside in the North Caucasus and Middle Volga regions. ¹⁴In the republic of Chechnya (in the North Caucasus), the population is expected to grow 47 percent, from 1.2 million to 1.8 million, by 2030. ¹⁵The neighboring North Caucasus republics of Dagestan and Ingushetia are also predicted to grow rapidly in the years ahead. ¹⁶Most of the rest of Russia, by contrast, will not.

Russia’s indigenous Muslim population has been bolstered by an influx of three to four million Muslim migrants from former Soviet states such as Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan who have entered Russia in search of employment. ¹⁷

As the number of Russian Muslims has grown, so has their public presence. In 1991, there were hundreds of mosques in Russia. Today there are at least eight thousand, with much of the new construction being paid for by funds from the Middle East. ¹⁸Similarly, in 1991 just forty-one Russians made the hajjpilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia—a religious duty that must be carried out by every able-bodied Muslim who can afford to do so at least once in his or her lifetime. In 2009, an estimated forty thousand did. ¹⁹And Moscow, Russia’s capital, is now home to an estimated 2.5 million Muslims—more than any other European city except for Istanbul, Turkey. ²⁰

The implications of Islam’s ascendance in Russia are hard to overstate. “Russia is going through a religious transformation that will be of even greater consequence for the international community than the collapse of the Soviet Union,” Paul Goble, a leading expert on Russia’s Muslims, has said. ²¹

Russia’s religious transformation is still unfolding. At their current rate of growth, Muslims will make up one-fifth of Russia’s population by 2020. ²²And by the middle of this century, officials in Moscow predict that the Russian Federation might become majority Muslim. ²³

But the effects of this change could be felt much sooner. “[T]he growing number of people of Muslim background in Russia will have a profound impact on Russian foreign policy,” Goble maintains. “The assumption in Western Europe or the United States that Moscow is part of the European concert of powers is no longer valid.” ²⁴

LEFT BEHIND

Islam’s revival in Russia would be seen as a neutral—perhaps even a beneficial—development if Muslims were fully integrated into Russian culture and society. But they are not. Indeed, by most socioeconomic measures, Muslims are faring much more poorly than other Russians. As scholar Gordon Hahn has noted, “Russia’s poorest regions are most often those heavily populated with Muslims.” ²⁵

The disparities are most striking in the Muslim-dominated republics of the North Caucasus. In 2011, more than half of the population of Ingushetia was jobless, as was 42 percent of Russians in Chechnya and Dagestan, and 17 percent living in Kabardino-Balkaria. ²⁶(By way of comparison, the national unemployment rate in Russia in 2011 was approximately 7 percent.) ²⁷So, while the North Caucasus “is only home to one in fifteen inhabitants of the Russian Federation,” a 2011 study on Russian demographics by the Berlin Institute for Population and Development pointed out, “it is home to one in seven of the unemployed.” ²⁸

Crippling poverty is also pervasive among the areas of Russia dominated by Muslims. In 2005, the Russian government estimated that more than 90 percent of Chechnya’s population was living below the poverty line, earning less than seventy-two euros (approximately $100) a month. ²⁹Today, the situation is only marginally better. Despite years of aid disbursements from Moscow and financial contributions from concerned countries in Europe, Chechnya’s poverty rate still stands at 80 percent. ³⁰Ingushetia, Dagestan, and Kabardino-Balkaria post similarly bleak statistics—a symptom of a prosperity gap between the North Caucasus and the rest of Russia that is widening despite improvements to the country’s overall economy.

The economic crisis in the North Caucasus has produced a flourishing black market and underground economy there. By some estimates, 70 percent of the financial activity in Dagestan is generated in the region’s shadow economy. ³¹And it is not alone. According to official statistics, nearly a third of all economic activity in Russia’s Southern District—which encompasses Dagestan, Chechnya, and Ingushetia, as well as the republics of Adygeya, Kabardino-Balkaria, North Ossetia, and Karachaevo-Cherkessia—derives from illicit trade and informal financial transfers. ³²

The Muslim regions of Russia’s heartland have fared better—thanks largely to the area’s role as a hub for energy and trade. As of 2010, unemployment rates in the republics of Tatarstan and Bashkortostan were officially estimated at 7.7 and 9.6, respectively—roughly equal to the national average. ³³Nevertheless, problems remain. According to the United Nations Development Programme, in 2005, the Middle Volga region’s overall poverty rate was between 22 and 30 percent. ³⁴

These statistics are telling. A pronounced prosperity gap has emerged between Russia’s Muslim and Slavic populations. “Muslims are more likely to be unemployed, to have a wage below the subsistence minimum, and to have below-average-sized apartments,” a recent study dissecting statistics from Russia’s 2002 Census concluded. ³⁵The result is an expanding Muslim underclass that is seen, and that sees itself, as separate from the rest of Russia.

A BACKLASH FROM BELOW

On December 11, 2010, Moscow’s famed Manezh Square, just steps from the Kremlin, was overrun by demonstrators from Russia’s Far Right. The occasion was a rally of some five thousand soccer fans and nationalists memorializing Yegor Sviridov, a backer of Russia’s Spartak soccer club who had died a week earlier in a clash with other fans, many of them migrants from the Caucasus. The rally quickly deteriorated into a race riot, and thirty people—most of them immigrants—were injured in the violence, some at the hands of the Kremlin’s security forces.

The Manezh riot was far from an isolated event. Recent years have seen a marked increase in xenophobia, racism, and violence against non-Slavs within the Russian Federation. Experts say they are a reflection of widespread anger over economic stagnation and corruption. They are also a reaction to a surge of migrant workers from Russia’s “near abroad” of the Caucasus and Central Asia. With foreign arrivals now totaling thirteen to fourteen million, Russia’s migrant labor force ranks second only to the United States. ³⁶

But whereas the United States largely assimilates its immigrants, Russia does not. According to research conducted by Mark Ustinov of Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, nearly 70 percent of Russians exhibit negative feelings toward people of other ethnicities, and one in five believes that they have no place in Russia. ³⁷Most Russians, moreover, want their government to do something about it. A November 2012 nationwide opinion poll carried out by Moscow’s Levada Analytical Center found that nearly 65 percent of respondents favor some form of restrictions on labor migration. ³⁸

Not surprisingly, race-related violence in Russia has surged in recent years, especially in Moscow and other cities. In 2012 alone, eighteen people were killed and nearly two hundred were injured in racist attacks throughout Russia, according to estimates by SOVA, a Russian human rights watchdog group. ³⁹But experts say the real number is probably much higher, since most attacks go unreported. ⁴⁰

The rise in ethnic violence in Russia has been propelled by a surge in extreme right-wing nationalism. Historically, nationalist ideas and rhetoric have pervaded Russian politics, empowering derzhavnost—the idea of Russia as a great power—and helping to define a sense of self among the country’s citizens during turbulent economic and political times. But today’s Far Right in Russia goes far beyond the nationalist rhetoric espoused by parties like Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) and Dmitry Rogozin’s now-defunct Rodina(Motherland) faction. It is made up of an assortment of small, violent neo-Nazi groups and “political nationalists,” such as the Russkiyemovement and the Novaya Silaparty, that promote an ethno-nationalist agenda in Russian politics. ⁴¹These right-wing groups are growing in influence. “Although the extreme right remains a marginal phenomenon in Russian politics up to now,” Alexander Verkhovsky of SOVA has written, “it is a widely held view in Russian society that nationalism is an ideology with a future and will gain more popularity in the years to come.” ⁴²

The Far Right’s ascendance has been aided by the Kremlin, which has sought to harness nationalist sentiment for its own ends. ⁴³While cracking down on the most violent offenders, Vladimir Putin’s government has nurtured nationalist ideas via youth groups like Nashi, Walking Together, and the Young Guard—groups whose members tend to share a common vision with Russia’s ultra-right. ⁴⁴

Russian nationalism is not only a Far Right notion, however. More and more, Russians from across the political spectrum are identifying with and organizing around a nationalism that is increasingly tinged with racism. “The level of xenophobia today is rising among various social groups,” Russia’s Civic Chamber, an official civil society oversight body created by Vladimir Putin in the early 2000s, noted in its 2012 annual report. “An especially sharp rise can be observed among the citizens of major cities and among those people with a high level of education. Their phobias relate first and foremost to migrants from the Caucasus and Central Asia, and are motivated by ‘insurmountable’ cultural differences.” ⁴⁵The result has been the creation of what one specialist has called a “fashion for xenophobia” throughout the country. ⁴⁶

Resentment among ordinary Russians over ongoing violence in the Caucasus and protectionist sentiments toward jobs taken by migrant workers have heightened tensions and made Russia’s Muslims an easy target.

ISOLATION FROM ABOVE

The Kremlin’s actions haven’t helped. Over the past dozen years, Putin’s government has carried out what amounts to an “authoritarian counter-revolution” in Russia. ⁴⁷

During Boris Yeltsin’s presidency in the 1990s, Russia’s shattered economy and uncertain political direction helped to incubate deep internal divides within the Russian government.

Putin consequently made “strengthen[ing] the unity of the state” a central focus of his administration from the time he succeeded Yeltsin in 1999. ⁴⁸Putin’s efforts resulted in a dramatic increase in central authority—what Kremlin insiders call the “power vertical.” This centralization was accomplished by:

Taking power away from Russia’ s regions. Among the first steps taken by the Putin government was the creation of seven new federal “super districts” to oversee the country’s eighty-eight (now eighty-three) regions. Each corresponded roughly with the country’s military districts and was headed by a special representative appointed by the Kremlin. In addition, a change was made in governance in Russia’s various regions and oblasts: governors and the presidents of the country’s constituent republics would henceforth be appointed by presidential decree rather than by popular election. ⁴⁹That meant that Moscow, not the Russian electorate, now possessed the power to fire regional officials, who were no longer elected but selected—reversing a trend of the Yeltsin era that saw tentative steps toward democratization and federalism.

Turning Russia’ s parliament into a rubber-stamp body. Since Putin’s assumption of power in 2000, his political party, United Russia, has become the unquestioned power broker in Russian politics, securing and maintaining controlling interest in Russia’s lower house of parliament, the State Duma. Reforms initiated by the Putin government have fundamentally altered the character of the legislature’s upper house, the Federation Council. Representatives are now appointed by the president (rather than elected by the people) and reflect his interests (rather than representing the people’s). ⁵⁰At the same time, a 2004 law increased the barriers for political participation, raising the number of members a political party needs to legally register and thereby preserving United Russia’s near-monopoly on power. ⁵¹

Assuming greater oversight powers. The Kremlin passed the “Law on Combating Extremist Activity” in the aftermath of the September 2004 massacre carried out by Islamic extremists at a children’s school in Beslan. The law granted the Kremlin the power to ban parties from elections if any of its members were found to be engaging in “extremist activities.” ⁵²The Kremlin also enacted counter-terrorism laws that gave it greater police powers. And Putin signed into law new regulations requiring all non-governmental organizations to register with the government and comply with strict scrutiny over their activities. These measures were ostensibly meant to ensure that the organizations were meeting their objectives. But the implementation of these new policies followed a wave of “color revolutions” that had swept over the post-Soviet space (including Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution and Kyrgyzstan’s 2005 Tulip Revolution). They were therefore interpreted as a not-so-subtle expression of the Kremlin’s fears that Western-funded civil society groups would generate similar political upheaval in Russia. ⁵³

Putin’s reforms were radical, but they coincided with sudden resource-based wealth generated by Russia’s booming energy sector and a time of comparative political stability after the turbulent Yeltsin years. As a result, the public largely tolerated Putin’s attempts to consolidate power. ⁵⁴

But Putin’s reconfiguration shattered the fragile ethnic and social balance of power between Russia’s regions and the so-called “federal center.” Through centralization, the Kremlin left the country’s minorities with no recourse—and no trust in the state. “[B]y dismantling federalism and democracy,” Gordon Hahn noted in 2007, “Putin is destabilizing regional politics, providing an additional opening for ethno-nationalism, radical Islam and Islamist jihadismin Russia.” ⁵⁵

A DANGEROUS DISTANCE

Hahn’s observation turned out to be predictive. Not all of Russia’s Muslims feel alienated and isolated, of course. But overall, the Kremlin’s inattention to the country’s Muslim minority and that community’s difficult relationship with non-Muslim Russians have produced a deepening ideological distance between Russia’s Muslims and the Russian state. ⁵⁶

According to Damir-Khazrat Mukhetdinov, deputy chairman of the Muslim Spiritual Directorate of European Russia, the Russian umma(community of believers) is “becoming increasingly polarized and atomized,” and young Russian Muslims are demonstrating a “rejection of Russian society and of the Russian state.” ⁵⁷This detachment, Mukhetdinov notes, has prompted many Russian Muslims to embrace “ideological concepts that have come to us from abroad.” ⁵⁸

Chief among these foreign ideological concepts is a virulent strain of radical Islam that, two decades after its introduction into the Russian Federation, now threatens the very integrity of the Russian state.

CHAPTER FOUR

RUSSIA’S HIDDEN WAR

In the morning of January 24, 2011, a twenty-year-old Muslim from the region of Ingushetia named Magomed Yevloyev hitched a ride to Domodedovo, Russia’s busiest airport, located forty minutes south of Moscow. Yevloyev, a member of the Caucasus Emirate, Russia’s most violent Islamist group, had arrived in the Russian capital several days earlier, where he met up with at least two accomplices. In Domodedovo, Yevloyev walked past the international terminal to the facility’s luggage claim area, where he detonated a concealed explosive device containing shrapnel and as much as five pounds of TNT. The blast ripped through the bustling terminal, killing thirty-seven travelers and wounding nearly two hundred others. ¹

The suicide bombing, the second major terror incident to hit the Russian capital in less than a year, did more than murder and injure hundreds of people and temporarily bring air traffic in the Russian Federation to a standstill. It also exposed the dirty little secret the Kremlin has worked diligently to hide from the world. Some two decades into Russia’s own version of the “war on terror,” it is no longer possible to ignore the country’s rising Islamist insurgency. Nor is it possible to ignore the fact that the Russian government, which once promised a swift, decisive victory over what it calls “Wahhabism,” seems to have little idea what to do about it.

THE CHECHEN QUAGMIRE

It was not always this way. Two decades ago, the threat posed by Islamic radicalism was still distant to most Russians. True, the collapse of the USSR had unleashed a wave of ethnic separatism on the territory of the former Soviet Union. Over thirteen months, fifteen new countries, six of them majority-Muslim, emerged from the wreckage of the “Evil Empire.” But the number of Muslims within Russia itself decreased as a result, and many of those who remained lacked a clear religious direction or sense of spiritual identity.

If the growth of Islamic radicalism was not an immediate concern, a further breakup of the Russian state was. The successful independence movements in the countries of the Caucasus and Central Asia ignited dreams of similar revolutions in many corners of the Russian Federation. This was particularly true in Russia’s Caucasus republics—the majority-Muslim regions that abutted the newly independent nations of Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia. These stirrings culminated in the November 1991 declaration of independence by Chechnya’s nationalist leader, Dzhokhar Dudayev.

Dudayev did not initially embrace Islam as the foundation for an independent Chechnya. ²Slowly, however, the Chechen self-determination struggle transformed into an Islamist jihad. This was due in large part to an influx of “Afghan alumni”—foreign (mostly Arab) mujahideenwho previously fought the Soviets in Afghanistan—into the breakaway republic in the early 1990s. ³These forces helped bolster the ranks of the Chechen resistance against Russian troops, but they also served to progressively alter its character. Experts estimate that, soon after, some three hundred “Afghan” Arabs were active in Chechnya and engaged in hostilities there. ⁴So was an array of other Islamist forces, from Saudi charities to al Qaeda, all of which had an interest in promoting a religious alternative to the Russian state. ⁵By the time of the signing of the Khasavyurt agreement, which formally ended the First Chechen War in August 1996, Chechen politics had become both Islamized and internationalized—laying the groundwork for future conflict.

Instability followed, as the republic deteriorated into rampant criminality and lawlessness, often caused by local warlords such as Shamil Basayev, who strengthened the Chechen Islamist movement’s ties to international terror and engaged in increasingly brazen acts of domestic terrorism. ⁶This disorder, in turn, soon spread to neighboring Russian republics. ⁷

Two events propelled Russia back into open conflict with its unruly hinterlands. The first was the August 1999 invasion of neighboring Dagestan by an Islamist militia led by Basayev and Jordanian-born jihadicommander Omar Ibn al Khattab. The second was the September 1999 bombing of four apartment blocks in the Russian cities of Moscow, Buynansk, and Volgodonsk, allegedly by Chechen rebels. (Considerable controversy surrounds the terrorist attacks, with some claiming that the blasts were orchestrated by Russia’s domestic intelligence service, the FSB, to provide a pretext for renewed war in the Caucasus.) ⁸

But the nature of the conflict had changed fundamentally. The First Chechen War, at least in its opening stages, was mostly a struggle for self-determination. The war’s second iteration had an overtly Islamist, missionary character. Instead of being localized to Chechnya, it increasingly implicated the republic’s Caucasian neighbors (most directly Dagestan and Ingushetia). And while the First Chechen War took on the form of a fast-moving, asymmetric conflict, the second became a war of attrition, complete with a grinding, bloody ground campaign.

The Kremlin won a few victories in this effort. In April 2002, Russia’s security services assassinated Khattab, the Jordanian-born jihadistrumored to be bin Laden’s man in the Caucasus. ⁹Four years later, in July 2006, warlord Shamil Basayev, the mastermind behind the 1999 Dagestan raid, was similarly dispatched. ¹⁰

On the surface, these successes appeared to shift the momentum of the conflict in Moscow’s favor, and the Kremlin was quick to declare victory. In April 2009, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, in a Russian throwback to President George W. Bush’s ill-considered May 2003 “mission accomplished” speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, proudly declared victory in Russia’s counterterrorism campaign. ¹¹

But that declaration of triumph turned out to be premature. By the end of 2009, extreme violence returned to the region. That year alone, the Caucasus Emirate carried out 511 terrorist attacks. By the end of the following year, the number had risen to 583. ¹²

Today, despite regular public pronouncements to the contrary from officials in Moscow, whatever fleeting stability existed in the aftermath of the Russian military’s onslaught has long since disappeared. The Caucasus remains a political quagmire for the Kremlin—and a locus of resilient Islamic radicalism. Indeed, over the past three years, Islamic militants in the region have staged a savage comeback, carrying out numerous atrocities, among them the brazen 2010 suicide raid on the Chechen parliament and the summer 2012 assassination of the spiritual leader of Dagestan’s Sufi community. ¹³

As violence has surged, Russian confidence has withered. A July 2010 exposé by Germany’s influential news magazine Der Spiegelfound that some high-ranking Russian officials have become convinced that it will take years to defeat extremist groups in the restive region—if such a feat can be accomplished at all. ¹⁴Indeed, although the Russian government has vowed that the area will be safe for the 2014 Winter Olympics in nearby Sochi, local security has deteriorated to an unprecedented degree. Armored vehicles and helicopters are now de rigueurfor all visiting Kremlin officials, and traffic policemen in the republic require the protection of Interior Ministry units. “It will take years to change the situation here,” one Russian general told Der Spiegel. “For every dead terrorist, two new ones rise up to take his place.” ¹⁵

Islamism’s resilience—indeed, its growing appeal—has a lot to do with a hardening of local attitudes. A poll conducted in early 2011 by the regional journal Nations of Dagestanfound that 30 percent of Dagestani youth, including members of Dagestan’s universities and police schools, said they would choose to live under a Muslim-run religious regime. More than a third of those polled indicated they would not turn in a friend or family member responsible for terrorism to authorities. ¹⁶These findings mirror those of human rights groups and NGOs active in the Caucasus, which have documented an upsurge in support for Islamic extremism and adherence to radical religious ideas there. ¹⁷

In other words, despite official claims that the region has been pacified, the North Caucasus is more and more a place where the Kremlin’s authority is ignored, and even challenged, as well as where religious identity trumps nationalist sentiment. Worst of all, these problems are no longer isolated in Russia’s periphery.

TROUBLE IN THE HEARTLAND

In Kazan, the capital of the Russian republic of Tatarstan, lies a bustling side street known as Gazovaya Ulitsa. There, you will find the Russian Islamic University, the region’s premier Islamic school of higher learning. Founded in 1998, the university plays an important quasi-official role, promulgating the moderate Tatar version of Islam that is officially sanctioned by the Russian state. For its efforts, the university has been recognized by the Kremlin; the walls of its main hall are adorned with pictures of a 2009 official visit by then President Dmitry Medvedev.

But the Islamic University is not alone. Directly across the street sits the squat, imposing structure of the Eniler mosque. Built in the early 2000s thanks to funding from the Middle East, it has become one of the largest Wahhabi places of worship in the republic. ¹⁸

The battle lines drawn along Gazovaya Ulitsa are emblematic of the ideological competition taking shape within Tatarstan—and across Russia’s heartland as a whole. There, traditional, assimilationist Tatar Islam has increasingly found itself under siege from an insurgent and extreme Islamic fundamentalism.

To be sure, there are still many Muslims who follow the moderate Tatar interpretation of Islam. Of these, perhaps the most well known (albeit not the most mainstream) is Rafael Khakimov of the Tatarstan Academy of Sciences, who has written extensively about the idea of “Euro-Islam” and its compatibility with modernity. ¹⁹Tatar Islam likewise remains the branch of the religion officially endorsed and embraced by the Russian state. But, as regional religious experts point out, the movement as a whole lacks a compelling overarching narrative that appeals to the region’s Muslim youth.

Islamists, by contrast, do appeal to Russia’s Muslim youth—a fact evident in the growth of Wahhabi grassroots activism in the form of social organizations, spiritual retreats, and informal youth gatherings, and in the growing number of local religious figures in the Volga region who espouse an extreme interpretation of Islam.

Russia’s most virulent jihadistgroup, the Caucasus Emirate, does not yet appear to have much of an organized presence in the Volga region. But Doku Umarov, the group’s leader, has talked publicly about the eventual expansion of jihadistactivity along the Volga, and radical Islam’s growth in Russia’s heartland has become a topic of discussion among Russian Islamists. ²⁰Some early signs of militancy have emerged as a result. In February 2011, for example, security forces in the Bashkortostan region arrested four suspected Islamists from the western town of Oktyabrsky, including the purported leader of the local affiliate of Umarov’s group. ²¹