Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
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Events in the Middle East and Russia’s participation in the Syrian conflict have left the majority of Russian Muslims indifferent and have not inspired them to take any particular action, let alone protest. Even the hundreds of militants who have returned from fighting for the banned Islamic State terrorist organization in the Middle East are behaving passively.
Russia’s official Muslim establishment blames the West for the rise of the self-proclaimed Islamic State and refuses to admit that radical Islam has a real social base, ignoring the radicalization of many ordinary Muslims in Russia and Central Asia.
Despite his harsh rhetoric, Kadyrov now takes a pragmatic view of the Islamic State’s influence on the situation in Chechnya and is committing himself to “exorcise” would-be recruits or returnees from the Middle East rather than merely destroying them.
An army mutiny is the only latest of many new threats to Tajikistan's veteran president. Russia is the only country he can rely on to support him and it will take advantage of his predicament.
A life sentence handed down to Said Amirov, once the most powerful man in the largest republic in the North Caucasus, shows that almost no one in present-day Russia is untouchable
Russia’s problems with Crimea and Crimea’s problems with Russia will only continue to grow.
Putin and Kadyrov resemble Siamese twins, whose separation will result in complication for both of them, and thus for the country at large. Neither one of them stood to benefit from Boris Nemtsov’s death.
It is impossible to imagine Ramzan Kadyrov calling his subordinates and directly instructing them to commit the murder of Boris Nemtsov. However, the xenophobia and fear of the West characteristic of some segments of Russia’s Muslim community, including Muslims in the North Caucasus, creates a favorable climate for such acts.
In the wake of the murder of one of Russia’s most fervent opposition leaders, Boris Nemtsov, Russia remains less in a state of shock than in a state of confusion about what this means for the country’s future. Eurasia Outlook asked Carnegie’s experts to share their thoughts on how the event will change political life in Russia.
The ISIS cannot be defeated through military strikes only. The Islamic State is just a tip of the radical Islamist iceberg, which is firmly entrenched in the Muslim world.