Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
By
Daniel Cloney
CLASS: IRYA4
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CONTENTS
List of Abbreviations 3
I. Introduction 4
II. Literary Context 6
Orthodox Terrorism Studies and the North Caucasus 6
Critical and Post-Structural Approaches 9
Embedded Expertise. State Centrism, and the Elephant in the Room 9
Foucauldian Approaches 11
III. Foucault, the Dispositif, and the Production/Targeting
of Anomalies 12
The ‘Geopolitical Security Dispositif’ 13
The Constitution of Anomalies 15
The Process of Strategic Elaboration 17
IV. Conflict in the North Caucasus through a Foucauldian Prism 20
Independence, War and the Emergence of Salafism, 1991-1999 20
Chechnya under Dudayev: Ethnocracy, Instability and Secularism 21
‘Tolerated Illegalities’, Neoliberalism and the Party of War 23
A Small, Victorious War 25
The Specification of Militant Salafism, 1994-1996 27
The ‘Strategic Elaboration’ of the dispositif: the Useful Salafist ‘Other’ 30
The Salafist Threat and the Rise of Vladimir Putin 31
The Targeting/Reproduction of Salafist Militancy 33
Discourses of Securitisation, the Creation of Consent, and Censorship 36
‘Counter-Terrorism’ and Regime Consolidation 38
The ‘War on Terrorism’, International Legitimacy and Regional Dominance 39
V. Conclusions 42
Bibliography 43
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List of Abbreviations
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I. Introduction
If we used force in Chechnya, it would spark an uprising in the
Caucasus and lead to so much turmoil, so much bloodshed,
that no one would forgive us afterward
Boris Yel’tsin, August 1994
Since the first Chechen war of 1994-1996, Salafist militancy has come to plague the
North Caucasus, a region which had, until that point, been notable for its relative
secularism. Furthermore, the Second Chechen war, which began in 1999 and was
jama’ats from Chechnya to the rest of the North Caucasus, many of which are now
united under the authority of the “Caucasus Emirate” declared by rebel leader Doku
Umarov in 2007. The political rise of Vladimir Putin was from the beginning all but
explicitly tied to his dedication to defeating the ‘terrorists’ in Chechnya in the wake of
the apartment bombings in three Russian cities in September 1999; indeed, much was
also made of this effort in the international arena in the wake of September 11th 2001,
which saw Chechnya become a front in the new ‘Global War on Terrorism’. However,
eliminate the Salafist militancy which it created in the first place. High-intensity
This paper will explore the emergence and spread of Salafist militancy in Russia’s
4
philosopher Michel Foucault. Recent years have seen a surge in critical approaches to
as a barrier to objectivity; the state-centric bias of research, and the shaky ontological
approaches within this school have tended to focus upon the use of such discourses to
approaches, this paper will focus upon geopolitics moreso than biopolitics: that is, the
functioning of a ‘geopolitical’ security dispositif and the effects thereof upon society,
through engagement with Foucault’s study of the emergence and perpetuation of the
emergence of ‘delinquency’ in Western societies since the 17th century came about as
a direct result of the functioning of the penal apparatus, and while this was an
out its ostensible aim of deterring crime, the dispositif was enabled to survive to this
day by virtue of the fact that the delinquency anomaly served specific purposes useful
This paper will seek to denaturalise the functioning of the Russian geopolitical
security dispositif in the North Caucasus in similar terms: the relationship between the
dispositif and Salafist militancy, I argue, is to some extent one of symbiosis. Whilst
the functioning of said dispositif during the first Chechen war, the exact same
mechanisms were re-applied in 1999, ostensibly in order to defeat it, but in reality
1
The scare marks in this case merely signify recognition, following Herring (2008) and others, of the
essentially contested nature of ‘terrorism’ as a category, its ontological instability, and the inherent
normative values attached to the word, which remain open to challenge.
5
leading to its perpetuation and spread. It is my contention that the existence of Salafist
militancy in the North Caucasus was, in fact, directly useful to elements of Russia’s
‘terrorists’, were integral in securing initial support for Putin’s political programme,
which was centred upon the restoration of ‘order’ in Chechnya through further
through justifying the centralisation of power, encouraging media and societal self-
affairs complete with, for a time, international legitimisation of the brutal operation in
Chechnya.
The English-language literature considering the conflict in the North Caucasus has, by
literature has tended to conform to the characteristics of what Jackson (2007) and
others refer to as ‘Orthodox Terrorism Studies’. A sub-field of Policy Studies with its
in the wake of the September 11th 2001 attacks upon the United States and the
subsequent shift in foreign policy and national security discourse. This literature has
‘terrorism’; of particular note (and indeed the source of much criticism) has been the
6
militaries; thus, much research is designed to be policy-relevant, accepts the problem
as framed by the state and does not question it (Gunning, 2007; Rai, 2004).
Whilst not receiving a huge amount of attention, many characteristics of the conflict
salience is the presence of the Islamic fundamentalist element of the conflict: thus, it
international, and anti-Western jihad. Working from this assumption, scholars often
conclusions relevant to ‘Western’ governmental policy choice (see for example Hill et
other regions – or, perhaps more specifically, a relevant frontier of the Global War on
Terrorism. Kramer (2005), for example, puzzled by the Russian Army’s inability to
defeat the insurgency in an area as small as Chechnya, examines the tactics employed
by both the Russian Armed Forces and the Chechen insurgency with a view to
Thomas (2005), for his part, identifies the useful experiences gained by the Russian
Army in their engagement with the Chechen insurgency with a view to the eventual
Iraq.
As in the field of Terrorism Studies generally, many studies of the North Caucasian
conflict take the ‘terrorist’ psyche as the site of investigation (Rai, 2004:544). Such
7
terrorists’, a phenomenon relatively new to the Chechen conflict. Speckhard and
Akhmedova (2006a), for example, explore the movement of the phenomenon to the
North Caucasus from other conflicts in terms of ‘militant Wahhabist’ ideology, and
researchers has been the active involvement of female suicide bombers in the most
prevalent stereotypical notions of the role of women within Islamic societies. Some
work has, therefore, been dedicated to investigating the motives of these women:
Kremlin officials such as Sergei Yastrzhembsky posited that women were coerced
through blackmail, rape and forced consumption of drugs into carrying out the attacks
(International Herald Tribune, August 8 2003); however, authors such as Nivat (2005)
and Speckhard & Akhmedova (2005) have been quicker to couch the phenomenon in
terms of trauma associated with conflict, oppression, and loss of family members. It is
this element of the ‘orthodox’ literature, then, which has tended to be more critical of
Russian policies in the region. The Russian Armed Forces are otherwise the subjects
of occasional praise and occasional criticism, the latter generally concerning itself
(Hill et al 2005; Lieven, 2002). Perhaps the most notable criticism of the Kremlin
from an author whom could be considered within the field of ‘Orthodox’ Terrorism
Studies has come from Pavel K. Baev (2004, 2006), whom attacks the entire military
project in the Caucasus in terms of its inherent strategic weakness and use as an
instrument for regime consolidation (as I shall explore later, within a Foucauldian
framework). Scholars analysing the conflict from outside the field of Terrorism
Studies have tended to much more openly criticise Russian human rights abuses in the
8
region (see for example Cornell, 1999) and challenge the predominant discourse
offered by the Kremlin in terms of the nature and role of Islam (Giuliano, 2005), the
In recent years, however, this ‘orthodox’ approach in general has come under severe
criticism within academic circles, both from the ‘Critical Terrorism Studies’ school--
closely related to the ‘Welsh School’ of Critical Security Studies--led by authors such
authors of various backgrounds. Both approaches have taken issue with the ‘orthodox’
school of thought in terms of the inherent bias presented by ‘embedded expertise’, the
‘new terrorism’ discourse, and their subsequent effects upon the academy,
organisations, and the ideological activity of political parties and ministers”. It is from
this fact that many of the strongest criticisms of the orthodox literature stem, as links
between governments, research institutes and think tanks – such as those which have
charged with cementing the state-centric bias of research and stunting investigation
into such issues as state terrorism (Blakely: 2007, 2008). This state-centrism has led
the problem of terrorism within the context of…existing institutions and power
9
dynamics”. Gunning (2007: 366-368) blames this orientation for many of the
‘immediate threats’ as defined by state elites, its lack of theoretical apparatus, and
particularly in terms of this ‘embedded expertise’ and the discourse surrounding ‘new
terrorism’ is provided by Burnett & Whyte (2005). The authors point to the role of a
ideological formation which is, they assert, based upon “a highly questionable
knowledge base” (2005:15). Claims to impartiality of the scholarship with which this
propagation of the supposed ‘new terrorism’ appears to serve very specific functions
Armed with such criticisms, those authors whom explicitly associate themselves with
CTS have set about deconstructing prevailing ‘terrorism knowledge’, and in particular
the shaky ontological status of ‘terrorism’ as a category, and the arguable foundations
Other authors of a similar nature have begun looking at the issue from a post-
structural perspective; many of these have engaged with the work of Michel Foucault,
‘terrorism’ discourse upon society, some examples of which I shall explore below.
Foucauldian Approaches
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tentatively engaged with in recent years by adherents to the critical and ‘post
structural’ approaches. Among the most notable such works, Michael Dillon (2007)
has engaged extensively with the Foucauldian concept of the ‘biopolitical security
society. François Debrix (2008), in one of the most forceful criticisms of the
prevailing discourse on terrorism, also engages with the concepts of ‘biopower’ and
as portrayed by the pundits, ‘intellectuals’, and ‘terrorism experts’ who have come to
dominate the subject in the western media since 2001. It is at the feet of some of the
‘tabloid imperialists’ (examples given being Richard Kaplan, Victor Hansen and
Michael Ledeen) that blame is laid for the creation of a ‘tabloid discourse of
further terror as fundamentally as they reject it, through engagement in war and terror
overseas in order to derive ‘a new triumphalist meaning’ in the post-9/11 world. This
terrorist and the heinous terrorist act (often informed by orientalism 5 ) and the
advocacy of war and agonistic struggle, according to Debrix, facilitates the state’s
engagement with the ‘war machine’ (as developed Deluze and Guattari, 1986) as a
4
Debrix engages here with the ‘Theory of Abjection’, as developed by French post-structuralist scholar
Julia Kristeva. This ‘abject’ position, according to Kristeva, does not allow one to fall on either side of
the subject/object divide. Rather, being the ‘abject’ involves both the utter repulsion of a threat, risk,
horror (etc.) from the realm of the ‘tolerable or the thinkable’ and the simultaneous embrace of this
‘elsewhere’, which is ‘as tempting as it is condemned’ (Kristeva, 1982:1-2; Debrix, 2005:1158)
5
Orientalism in this sense refers to the body of work, perhaps most famously associated with Bernard
Lewis (1990/2002) and Samuel Huntington (1993), which posits the cultural differences – particularly
those between the ‘Islamic world’ and the ‘West’ – as an explanatory variable for the emergence of
conflict. The approach has been roundly criticised, most notably by Edward Said (see, for example,
Said, 2001)
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means of assuring its ‘biopolitical’ survival (Debrix, 2008:69-121). Amit S. Rai
(2004), also engages with ‘biopower’, along with Foucault’s (1997) notion of the
radicalised and sexualised ‘Abnormals’ in exploring the genealogy of the image of the
finally, Matthew Hannah (2006) conceptualises the use of torture by the United States
upon ‘the war at home’ and the usage of these discourses in terms of normalisation,
biopower and governmentality within Western societies (and the United States in
particular). A space exists, then, for two things: firstly, to ‘bring sovereign power
back’: that is, to explore the functioning of a geopolitical security dispositif in the
geography of its application, which may in turn illuminate the effects of said
apparatus upon society ‘at home’; secondly, moving beyond explorations of the
effects of the security dispositifs in the United States alone, since the discourses of
dispositif in the Russian Federation since 1994, this paper hopes to go some small
This paper will aim to explore the functioning of a geopolitical, rather than
effects of the prison dispositif upon society, as explored in Discipline and Punish
(1979).
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The ‘Geopolitical Security Dispositif’
One of the most useful tools developed by Foucault in order to understand the
and philanthropic propositions – in short, the said as much as the unsaid”, as well as
“the system of relations that can be established between these elements” and the
“nature of the connection that can exist between [them]” (Foucault, 1980: 194-195).
need” (Foucault, 1980: 195) on the part of the dominant groups in society. This
“dominant strategic function” (ibid); that is, it exists as a means to a particular end
themselves heterogeneous).
As regards the issue of security, it is important at this point that we clarify the type of
security dispositif which we are about to study; as Michael Dillon (2007:4) points out,
there are at least “two great dispositifs for the problematisations of security”: the
geopolitical and the biopolitical. Whilst related, they are distinguished from one
another in that they take different referent objects: the former is concerned with
sovereign territoriality; the latter, the ordering of life itself. As noted above, much of
the recent academic work engaging with Foucauldian concepts regarding security has
technologies and institutions, “beyond traditional politics and the state” (ibid p5). This
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paper, by contrast, will primarily explore the functioning of a geopolitical security
dispositif, which concerns itself less with power over life but rather sovereign
juridical power over death, and geopolitical mechanisms of war (ibid); a form of
power which is neither invisible nor inaudible, but rather blinding and deafening; one
elements, such as the governmental discourses which emerge in order to justify its
functioning (in the context of an armed conflict); the administrative institutions set up
in order to organise it; the legislative decisions or emergency measures taken in order
to facilitate its application; the academic and quasi-academic discourses which may
emerge in order to study and gauge its relative success or failure, all the way down to
the individual orders given by officers to privates; the military strategies deployed; the
dialogue between military and community, and the architectural forms within which
As Brigg (2002: 427) points out, this conceptualisation “allows recognition of both
relationship between these elements. This leads me to explore the ways in which the
functioning of such an apparatus may itself impact the realm of the biopolitical.
Due to the varied and occasionally contradictory effects generated by the different
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Foucault explores this phenomenon with respect to the effects of the development of
functionality and a new, silent and pervasive form of power in Western European
society in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. This discipline, facilitated and enforced by
architectures and spaces of panoptical surveillance, was not just to be found in prisons
but also in hospitals, schools, and workshops, etc. By contrast to sovereign power,
enforced through violence and brutality, discipline rendered individuals docile, useful,
and productive, “ by means of precise work upon their bodies” (Foucault, 1979:231);
panopticism (ibid, 135-230). The prison merely reproduced a form of power which
was becoming present throughout society, but with more emphasis: “[t]he prison is
like a rather disciplined barracks, a strict school, a dark workshop, but not
Despite its self-evidence in this respect, as the epitome of the emergent zeitgeist, the
penal apparatus was (and is) subject to criticism on various grounds: very early on in
its existence, it was noted by many critics that the prison failed in its rather
fundamental task of reducing crime rates. Furthermore, whilst crime rates remained
roughly the same or even increased, recidivism was also on the rise. In fact, Foucault
argues that, rather than correcting and releasing its inmates back into society as docile,
disciplined bodies, the imprisonment dispositif led to the creation of a new class of
upon the prisoner a series of violent constraints; made him subject to corruption,
15
arbitrary abuse of power, and exploitation--thus, feelings of fear and injustice within
him were nurtured; the prison created a social sphere within which this prisoner and
others may organise themselves within a hierarchised milieu, loyal to one another, and
“ready to aid and abet any future criminal act” (Foucault, 1979:267); upon their
the emergence of delinquency and the spread of the prison as the punitive technique
Without too much intellectual acrobatics one may draw lines of comparison between
the processes and effects of the imprisonment dispositif upon the prisoner, on the one
hand, and those of a geopolitical security dispositif – such as, for example, a counter-
the other. Like the prison, such a dispositif is characterised by the severely negative
experiences it imposes upon its subjects: war, counter-terrorism, and other such
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operations often subject populations to arbitrary murder, violence, destruction of
torture, and rape; the discourse between military and society in such circumstances is
Naturally, such circumstances arouse feelings of intense injustice among their victims,
those murdered may also find themselves joining the conflict due to the life which the
conflict itself has imposed upon them. All of the above will be explored later, in the
As noted above, many of the most fundamental criticisms of the functioning of the
penitentiary apparatus emerged very early on in its existence, yet these criticisms can
still be heard to this very day. The prison has been subjected to centuries of iterative
reform, yet modern society still finds itself confronted by the delinquency which it
has simultaneously created and targeted since it was first implemented; as Foucault
asserts, the main reason that so little about the carceral system has changed is that
“the prison has always been offered as its own remedy: the reactivation of the
penitentiary techniques as the only means of overcoming their perpetual failure; the
If the prison, then, has failed in its ostensible role of reducing offences as defined by
the law (ibid, p271), we are left with an important question: how, considering the
effect of the prison dispositif has been the constitution of an anomaly which continues
17
to haunt societies to this day, has this dispositif survived? How, indeed, has it come to
be that there is such a reluctance to dispose of it, or even to seriously alter its
character, given its failure on such a fundamental ground? One would be forced to
deduct, as Foucault does, that whilst the prison has failed to achieve its ostensible
aims, its functioning must, regardless, achieve some other specific ends:
That is to say that the prison dispositif, despite failing to eradicate illegalities, was
dependable and penetrable illegality in the midst of others (ibid pp272-9). The
convenience to the dominant societal classes of the time, who lived in great fear of
exclusively from the ‘social base’ (ibid p275); in accidentally producing delinquency,
the carceral system produced a form of illegality which was open, isolated,
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potentially threatening, widespread and popular illegality with a “small group of
Importantly, this disarmed, marginal and predictable illegality was now directly
useful to the dominant classes. The delinquent class became an agent for the illegality
elements of the dominant class were and are able to create a profit from a whole
series of illegal practices such as prostitution, arms trafficking, drugs trafficking, etc:
which one manages to supervise, while extracting from it an illicit profit through
provocateurs on the one hand, and demands generalised police surveillance of society
the prison dispositif was enabled to survive insofar as the existence of the anomaly
served a useful purpose to the dominant groups in society. This process represents a
elaboration: that is to say, the alteration of various elements of the dispositif in order
to re-utilise a certain anomaly (such as, in this case, delinquency) which may
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sense to occupy this empty space, or transform the negative into a
positive. The delinquent milieu came to be re-utilised for diverse
political and economic ends…this is what I call the strategic
completion of the apparatus.”
(Foucault, 1980:195-6)
In the example below, I will argue that the emergence and spread of Salafist militancy
in the North Caucasus is best understood with reference to the processes outlined
above: the mechanisms Russian geopolitical security dispositif were not only central
Informed by the above interpretative framework, I will now explore the emergence of
Salafist militancy in the North Caucasus over the course of the past two decades in
Ichkeria was a largely secular society, albeit one plagued by instability and corruption;
radical Islamist doctrine was all but absent from society at the time. The first war of
1994-1996, however, and the effects of some of the processes of the Russian
geopolitical security dispositif upon Chechen society, led to the steady emergence and
growth of Salafist militancy throughout this period. By the end of the first war, the
The Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, much like many other republics of the USSR,
unilaterally declared independence from the Soviet Union not long after the failed
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August Coup in Moscow in 1991. Unlike most other such declarations, however,
Chechen independence went unrecognised by all but one country – Georgia, under
of the previous two centuries: the Chechens were among many predominantly Muslim
region, and took part in an unsuccessful violent uprising in the mid-19th century,
under the leadership of the legendary Dagestani chieftain Imam Shamil, in order to
escape Russian rule and found a Transcaucasian Islamic State. Under Soviet rule, the
Chechens were punished harshly, particularly during the Stalinist era which saw their
War II, following accusations of collaboration with Nazi Germany. Although they
were allowed to move back in 1957, this event is critical to understanding modern
were born or raised in exile in Kazakhstan, and the deportation is viewed by some as
two centuries of fighting Russian occupation. Under the leadership of Gen. Dzhokar
Dudayev, formerly of the Soviet Air Force, the early years of Chechnya’s
ethnocratic policies, and mutinous opposition with the backing of the Yel’tsin regime.
largely secular society, although the cultural and spiritual vacuum left in the wake of
the fall of the Soviet Union did lead to something of an Islamic revival. Thus, despite
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having instituted a secular constitution in 1992, for Dudayev, reference to Islam as a
specifically, had a vital role to play in emphasising the differences between Chechens
and Russians, and legitimising their claim to independence. Dudayev himself was
largely ignorant of the specifics and even fundamentals of Islamic spiritual practice;
in fact, perhaps the extent of his lack of interest in Islam is demonstrated by his
such as the Chechen Council of Elders, which came to replace certain institutions of
state authority in regulating social life, in order to draw on its traditional prestige for
support (ibid, p147). Sufism was by far the dominant Islamic tradition in Chechnya
and much of the North Caucasus. A mystical form of Islam, distinguishable from
other forms for its relative liberalism in terms of the worship of icons, and an
patriarchal clan system in the North Caucasus, which re-emerged in the Post-Soviet
era. Adherents to the more fundamentalist, Salafist form of Islam (‘Wahhabis’) were
largely absent from Chechen society, although a small community thereof did exist in
neighbouring Dagestan since the mid-1980s; their relationship with the Sufi
Dudayev in 1994, most notably in the coup attempt of November, and the subsequent
‘Yel’tsin ultimatum’ was the creation of a national leader in Dudayev, behind whom
practically the entire Chechen community united itself, regardless of their religious
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Tolerated Illegalities, Neoliberalism, and the Party of War
As noted above, the Yeltsin regime in Moscow outright refused to recognise the
election of Dudayev and his declaration of independence; the elections were decried
as being illegal and a state of emergency was declared in the area (although it could
not be carried out, since Russia did not have de facto control of Chechnya). The
subsequent economic blockade imposed by Moscow and the exodus of much of the
Slavic population from the Republic, whom had been the backbone of the oil industry,
resulted in the strangling of the Chechen economy as legal sources of income dried up
however, unlawful sources were heavily exploited: Chechnya became “the largest
center of counterfeit money and false financial documents [in]…the former USSR”;
lassaiz-faire attitudes in Grozny airport meant that the narcotics industry thrived; oil
Novorossiisk pipeline, were pilfered of their resources which were sold on the black
The Kremlin at the time was characterised by infighting between rival factions, all of
whom were looking after their own specific interests. Despite the Kremlin’s
ostensibly hostile posture towards the Dudayev regime and their support for attempted
coups and arming of opposition groups against him, the emergence of this de facto
free economic zone represented a highly profitable illegality which did not go
elements of the Russian military and government, up to ministerial level, were heavily
involved in the illegal trading of arms, drugs, and petroleum through Chechnya to the
point where the Chechens, in the view of some, were merely junior partners in “a
massive wave of…criminality emanating from the Russian capital” (ibid p130). Some
23
have gone so far as to contest that Dudayev’s demands, in late 1994, for a higher
share of the profits from their dealings were central to the decision to have him
overthrown; indeed, the fact that such zealous supporters of the corrupt petroproduct
export system such as Gen. Aleksandr Korzhakov and Oleg Soskovets later went on
to become key figures in the ‘party of war’6 is unlikely to be coincidental (ibid p131).
Although Yel’tsin had initially ruled out military action against Chechnya, elements
of his own supporters within the dominant classes did also begin to come around to
the idea. At this time, Yel’tsin and his ‘Chicago boys’7 such as Yegor Gaidar had
economy in Russia, which had at some points seen Yel’tsin resorting to ruling by
decree, an issue which eventually led to much resistance from parliamentarians and
the public alike, when the results were found to be less than satisfactory. Confronted
by plummeting popularity and public anger in the face of economic shock therapy,
Yel’tsin’s national security chief confided to another legislator that “we need a small,
victorious war to raise the president’s ratings”. With such doctrine infiltrating his own
matter of weeks (Klein, 2007:232)), and under pressure from the ‘party of war’, it
power over life and death. Unlike a biopolitical security apparatus which breeds,
maintains, and orders life, the sovereign security apparatus is the site of sheer
destructive force, with territory as its referent object (Dillon, 2007:4). The Interior
6
The ‘party of war’ is the name given to a group of influential parliamentarians notable for their strong
support for the idea of a military solution to Chechen independence during this period
7
This term was used to refer to the ‘new generation’ of proponents of Friedman-style neo-liberal
economics who came to play a major role in Russian politics in the early post-communist era.
24
Ministry and Defence Ministry troops, Air Force and other such military elements of
December 11th, 1994, in order to ‘disarm illegal bandit formations’ and ‘restore
The violence and destruction which the War would unleash, however, would result in
40,000 Russian troops converged upon Chechnya from three different directions, with
the aim of over-running the Dudayev regime, taming the population and reinstalling
force. From the beginning, however, the heaving, arrogant and undisciplined Russian
communications, poor weapons, chronic alcohol abuse among officers and men, and
encountered disastrous results in their attempts to take the capital, Groznyy. A change
of plan was called for, and the deficit in discipline was met by a surplus in violence; if
not successful, therefore, the operation was certainly notable for its brutality. The
rocket launchers, missiles, mortars, tanks and aerial firepower, resulting in a degree of
devastation and destruction not seen since the battles and operations of the Great
Patriotic War” (Blandy, 2000:12). The city was bombarded at a rate of up to 4,000
blasts per hour, taking a massive toll primarily upon the ethnic Russian population
January 19th, but did not clear the city of Chechen fighters for another month (Blandy,
25
2000:18). The levelling of Grozny was such that OSCE observers compared it to the
The Chechen resistance, notably better organised than their Russian counterparts,
began to resort to guerrilla warfare tactics as the Russian military now attempted to
‘pacify’ the mountainous south. Because the tactics employed by the Chechen forces
this sense, came to mean the vicious collective punishment of the population and an
bombing and strafing of entire villages, arbitrary arrest, extrajudicial killings, torture,
which allegedly came complete with physicians whom observed the effect of torture
were reportedly separated from the rest of the population and sent to Mozdok, from
where many never returned; this practice later became commonplace in the clearing of
villages (ibid). Others were not so lucky: on occasion, arbitrary massacres took place
in villages such as Samashki, wherein 3,000 troops entered the village, shooting and
disregard of the Russian military for civilian life was such that the use of civilian
Further, and perhaps most shocking, is that aid workers in 1995 found evidence of the
For all its brutal violence, however, the Russian war machine was unsuccessful in
achieving its stated aims in Chechnya. By August 1996, Chechen forces had retaken
the now-destroyed Groznyy, which had been the subject of conquest and re-conquest
26
by both sides. Militarily outmanoeuvred and under intense domestic pressure to
withdraw, the Russian military was forced into retreat and de facto independence and
which were seen by many as a humiliation for Russia. As we shall explore below,
however, whilst the Russian geopolitical security dispositif was unsuccessful in its
ostensible aim of the conquest of sovereign territory and the military defeat of the
enemy, its processes did fundamentally alter the socio-political nature of Chechnya,
namely through the production and growth of the radicalised Salafist militant anomaly.
At best, some of those at the helm of the 1994-1996 operation may have naively
believed that through bringing such violence into the lives of Chechens, they may
extinguish their desire for independence and inspire some loyalty to the Russian
brutal, indiscriminate use of the military apparatus. On both counts, failure was to be
admitted: the first phase of the war did not inspire a sudden reversal of nationalist
sentiment among Chechens, and was an emphatic failure in terms of territorial gains.
As noted above, Chechen society in general along with its military and warlords was
largely secular in nature. The 1994-1996 war, however, would have a vital role to
play in the transformation of a large portion of the latter and a certain amount of the
former, particularly those located in the mountainous south of the Republic (ibid). The
first, and perhaps most important step in this process was the conversion to Radical
27
and Political Islam of a number of key Chechen warlords during this period, among
them Shamil’ Basayev, Salman Raduev, Arbi and Mosvar Baraev, Movaldi Udugov,
points out, a number of reasons can be identified for their apparent conversion to the
idea of religious jihad: on a basic level, the warlords – just like their soldiers –
directly experienced the violence and destruction brought by the Russian security
dispositif to the region (a noteworthy example being Basayev’s loss of a wife and six
children during a Russian attack on their village), and a well-known process came into
play: when in trouble, people turn to God. Furthermore, their decisions may well have
been influenced by the presence in Chechnya, from 1995, of foreign Islamist fighters
whom had been drawn to the conflict, led by Saudi-born Emir Al-Khattab, who
possessed significant links to foreign sources of funding from the Middle East and
Central Asia. Khattab was himself a veteran of other conflicts such as Afghanistan
and Tajikistan, and brought approximately 300 soldiers with him in order to fight for
their fellow Muslims. Small numbers of foreign jihadis were also observed fighting
All of the above had a significant impact upon elements of Chechen society, most
notably males of recruitment age. Having been subjected to the destruction brought by
the Russian military, the loss of family members, friends, places of work, and entire
villages, and under threat of torture and execution in filtration camps, joining the
ranks of the now radicalised guerrillas was a rather attractive option: Islamist doctrine
emphasising violent struggle against the infidels emerged as highly relevant in the
wake of such severe Russian oppression. Radical Salafist doctrine provided a new
between Islam and its enemies (Reynolds, 2005:47). Further, the willingness of
28
foreign fighters to die for the cause of Chechen independence out of Islamic solidarity
lent a strong sense of authenticity to their doctrine; the Salafist emphasis upon unity
also meant that latent clan divisions could be overcome, and those troops whom
joined the ranks of Khattab’s brigade were duly provided with instruction in the
‘correct’ practice of Islam, as opposed to the Sufism to which they were accustomed.
The strength of the initial Russian military offensive also had the effect of changing
the nature of Chechen military operations, inspiring militants into more rash and
brutal actions such as the hostage takings at Budennovsk and Pervomaskoye which in
In the wake of the Chechen success in the first conflict, to which the Salafis made no
small contribution, a significant portion of the population had been radicalised and
converted to their cause. A product of the conflict, this Salafist anomaly would now
come to haunt the political development of the newly independent Republic, exerting
of the conflict and the imposition of Shari’a law, as opposed to the secular system
under the democratically-elected Aslan Maskhadov, and opposing the peace process
in which he was involved. Taking advantage of the divided nature of Chechen politics,
the Salafist opposition were able to force several concessions from Maskhadov, up to
the dissolution of the parliament and the imposition of Shari’a in February 1999, all
the while stepping up a campaign of attacks upon Russian targets from a stronghold in
neighbouring Daghestan, and making plans for the beginning of a new conflict. As we
shall see below, however, the Salafis were not the only ones who saw the possible
29
The ‘Strategic Elaboration’ of the dispositif: The Useful Salafist ‘Other’
is this exact practice which was precipitated by the political rise of Vladimir Putin to
the post of Prime Minister in autumn of 1999. The existence of Salafist groups and
their supposed actions such as the September 1999 apartment bombings were vital to
the creation of public consent for Putin’s political programme, promising to defeat the
‘terrorists’ in the North Caucasus through further military action, despite the
seemingly clear observation that the violence and brutality brought by the first war
was instrumental in the creation and strengthening thereof in the first place. The net
result of the operation, however, was not the destruction of the Salafist groups but
rather the strengthening and spread of jama’ats and the violence they wreak
throughout the North Caucasus region. It is my contention that, just as the prison and
security dispositif and the Salafist anomaly. And, just as was the case with the prison,
said dispositif was enabled to continue functioning as such because the Salafist
anomaly was in fact extremely useful to certain elements of the dominant class in
Russia--embodied by Putin--in that it facilitated not only his rise to power but his
through the politics of fear, and an increased role in the international arena.
30
The Salafist Threat and the Rise of Vladimir Putin
While the Russian geopolitical security dispositif embarrassingly failed in terms of its
stated aims, such as the disarmament of ‘illegal’ armed bands and the conquest of
territory, its great success was to specify one such ‘illegality’ in the midst of many
others: Salafist militancy. As we shall explore below, this militant Salafism, by now
becoming the dominant force in Chechen politics, had an integral role to play in the
rise to power of Vladimir Putin and the subsequent pursuit of his political programme.
Actions attributed to the Salafist militants were intrinsically linked to the political rise
Khattab and Basayev in August 1999 was a key point thereof, as Putin - previously
immediately following the invasion. While the invasion of Dagestan had relatively
little impact on public opinion, Putin’s popularity was given a huge hand by the
which saw 300 civilians brutally murdered. The ‘terrorist problem’ was
boost his popularity prior to his Presidential campaign, promising that the Chechens
would be ‘wasted in the shithouse’, and extending blame to Aslan Maskhadov’s shaky
2001:36-37), despite the latter’s condemnation of the attacks. Russian public opinion
was on Putin’s side: after the bombings, a poll suggested that “64% of Russians
wanted all Chechens expelled from the country and a similar percentage wanted
Chechen towns and settlements to be bombed” (Russel, 2005:108). From this point
onwards, we see that Putin’s political agenda was inherently connected to the issue of
31
connection incidental. However, the uncomfortable fact remains that the
conjunction with their pivotal role in Putin’s rise to power, may lead one to draw
disturbing conclusions.
Much suspicion surrounds the involvement of the oligarch and Kremlin emissary
Boris Berezovskiy in funding not only reconstruction works in Chechnya between the
wars, but also directly funding the August 1999 invasion of Daghestan led by Khattab
September of the same year to giving Shamil’ Basayev $2 million in order to fund
Makhashev and Udugov added intrigue, as they did uncannily resemble collusion
Svante E. Cornell has also pointed to the possibility that an FSB disinformation
campaign was utilised in order to fool Khattab and Basayev into believing the
otherwise highly illogical invasion would be met by popular support from the
have been the source of even further accusations of FSB involvement. Putin was
quick to blame the bombings on the Islamist “rabid animals” from the North Caucasus,
but in a peculiar move for ‘terrorists’, both Khattab and Basayev denied involvement
in the attacks. Furthermore, early on after the attacks, certain Russian media outlets
and lawmakers pointed the finger at the Kremlin and, more specifically, the FSB (The
8
Komsol’skaya Pravda, 23 September 1999, quoted in Blandy (2000:29)
32
Moscow Times Sept 14 1999). In a rare act of concurrence, high-ranking Dagestani
order “to solve internal political problems connected with the unprecedented power
struggle in Moscow” (ibid). A rather unusual event which occurred mere days after
the Moscow attacks adds unprecedented weight to such arguments: the discovery of
bags packed with Hexagen, the same explosive used in the other bombings, under an
apartment block in the city of Ryazan, after local residents alerted police to the
presence of a suspicious vehicle outside the building. The police immediately arrested
three persons present at the site, all of whom were FSB members (Cornell, 2003:176).
Two days later, the FSB responded to the event with the unlikely claim that the
incident had been a “drill to test the alertness of Russian citizens” (ibid). Naturally, as
Cornell points out, this explanation raised such obvious questions as “[if] it was a drill,
why was a live bomb with a detonator and timer placed inside the building? Why was
such a drill instigated at all, considering that no similar exercise had ever been
Despite all this, Putin, still riding on the wave of popularity generated by the attacks
and his forceful rhetoric on the issue, appeared to still have consent for a resumption
In October 1999, war once again came to Chechnya. Putin declared his aim “was to
Thus, the Russian geopolitical security dispositif was once again manifested in an
33
similarities to the first war. The operation was notable at first for its horrendous
and Scud surface-to-surface ballistic missiles all but levelling Groznyy to its very
ground invasion not dissimilar to that of the previous war, if slightly more successful,
and apparently with an even further emphasis upon punishment of the general
population: as Blandy (2001:2) points out, “the methods and extent of the operation at
times seemed directed more against the civilian population (perhaps leading even to
its possible extermination) than towards the eradication of terrorism”. Over 200,000
refugees reportedly fled the Republic (Blandy, 2000:6); those who remained at the
mercy of the Russian military would face even worse abuses than those of the first
war. Aside from the bombing and invasion, the use of concentration camps was
increased, the most famous of which was Chernokozovo prison, located 25 miles
south-east of Groznyy. Human Rights organisations have reported that this prison –
which is still in operation, albeit no longer under the authority of the federal forces –
was the scene of abhorrent human rights abuses such as the routine torture of inmates
and the subjection of both male and female inmates to gang rape (Amnesty
secure their release, while many other inmates were ‘disappeared’ (Blandy, 2001:6).
communities and zachistki or ‘mopping up’ raids--that is, where they were not
The operation forced the moderate regime under Maskhadov into exile and eliminated
the previous de facto independence of the republic, perhaps the last nail in the coffin
34
of moderate Chechen separatism. Islamism, on the other hand, would now spread
throughout the North Caucasus. Bolder, and more vicious than ever, Salafist martyr
brigades began to carry out shocking attacks such as the hostage takings in Moscow’s
Dubrovka theatre in 2000, led by Movsar Barayev; School Numer One in Beslan,
North Ossetia in 2002, led by Shamil’ Basayev, and the attack upon Nalchik,
Kabardino Balkaria in 2005. The brutality of Russian military and police oppression
in the region ensured that there was no shortage of embittered young male and female
volunteers for such actions, a point which was even admitted by the president of
Kabardino Balkaria, Arsen Kanokov, follwing the Nalchik attack (The Moscow Times,
October 12, 2007). Inspired by the suffering of ‘fellow believers’, a new wave of
foreign fighters also joined the effort, predominantly under Emir Al Khattab. As
medium-intensity conflict could now be found throughout the North Caucasus, most
notably Ingushetia and Dagestan, as new Salafist jama’ats and splinter groups were
established, some of which later unified under the authority of the “Caucasus
administration put its support behind the Kadyrov dynasty, (firstly former Chief Mufti
Akhmed Kadyrov, and then his son, Razvan, following the former’s assassination in
2005), whose militant supporters – known as kadyrovtsy – were responsible for some
of the most brutal human rights abuses of the conflict. The kadyrovtsy have since
changed their name to the “Chechen MVD”. However despite the ‘normalisation’
which has been so emphasised by the Putin administration from an early stage,
Salafism has now become a regional problem and Russian soldiers, policemen,
35
officials or even ethnic Russian civilians (Human Rights Watch, 2007) continue to
Despite the seemingly clear deduction that the processes of the 1994-1996 Russian
invasion were hugely – if not exclusively – responsible for the creation and spread of
Salafism in Chechnya, one would surely have to question what logic lay behind the
re-imposition of the exact same mechanisms in late 1999. Considering once again its
failure in terms of its stated aims, demonstrated by the spread of Salafist jama’ats,
that this supposed failure is, in fact, an integral part of the functioning of the dispositif.
It is my contention that this is, indeed, the case: the reproduction of the ‘Wahhabist’
threat by the ‘counter-terrorist’ operations since 1999 has served further political uses
If one considers the gains in popularity made by Putin, whose political fate was, from
the beginning, intrinsically tied to his playing of the ‘Chechen card’, in the wake of
these events and the subsequent beginning of the Second Chechen War – Putin’s
approval ratings ranged between an unprecedented 60 and 75% (The Moscow Times,
December 1 1999) - the logic for carrying out such heinous inside jobs as the
generated by the hurt caused to the Russian people, Putin now employed a discourse
Muslims generally which was useful in the generation of consent for the renewal and
9
‘Securitization’ in this sense refers to the framework developed by Buzan, Waever, and de Wilde
(1998), which highlights the processes whereby “normal’ politics is pushed into the security realm by
a political actor displaying the rhetoric of an existential threat against a referent object…in order to
justify the adoption of emergency measures outside the formal norms and procedures of politics” (Renz
& Bacon, 2006:1)
36
continuation of war in Chechnya (Renz & Bacon, 2006) and facilitated censorship of
the media.
A poll taken shortly after the September bombings found that 64% of Russians
favoured the expulsion of all Chechens from the country, and a similar percentage
wanted Chechen towns and settlements bombed; further, certain politicians and media
outlets were accused of equating all Muslims with “extremists and bandits” (Russel,
2005:108). Thus, clear consent existed for the renewal of war with Chechnya.
Eager to take advantage of such sentiment, Putin ordered all Russian news media to
refer to the Chechen opposition as ‘terrorists’ – although this did not take immediate
effect (ibid). Horror stories about the ‘Wahhabis’ did, all the same, heavily infiltrate
the print media, and the phenomenon of ‘Caucasophobia’ emerged, which was in
Russia is faced with today’ (ibid p111). No doubt, the continuing ‘failure’ of the war
to eliminate the threat of Salafist attacks against civilians, and the subsequent
spectacular and horrific events such as the aforementioned attacks in Moscow, Beslan,
Control of the media has been a vital aspect of Putin’s wider political agenda, and the
war against ‘terrorism’ has provided the perfect pretext for it. Media controls were
tightened strongly under the guise of intensifying the use of media warfare against
questioned the wisdom of continuing the war were “put on notice that such dissent
Those media outlets which did not heed such warnings were punished or simply shut
down, opening the way for the official propaganda offensive, which through heavy
37
emphasis upon the global Islamist threat to the Russian people has encouraged people
to “inform the FSB on every suspicious character” (ibid). Thus, the anomaly which
societal biopolitical security dispositif. What’s more, as we shall explore below, the
Aside from the role played by the Kremin’s discourse in creating consent for the war,
popular support and media self-censorship, the existence of the Salafist militant
anomaly and the security dispositif which it justifies have also had a central role to
play in the Putin regime’s restructuring of power within the Kremlin. As Pavel Baev
(2004:340) points out, under Yel’tsin, the Russian state system had come under threat
from numerous sources, such as regional ‘barons’ pursuing their own agendas; unruly
‘oligarchs’ who were busy “plundering Russia’s riches, not bothering to share with
and, further, a free media which was extremely critical of Kremlin policy, particularly
during the first Chechen war. Putin, perceiving the situation as such, came to power
with the intention of challenging the oligarchs, and keeping the regions and ministries
All of these actions could be justified under the pretext of the war against
‘Wahhabism’.
Control over the regions was established through a re-assertion of control over law-
enforcement on a regional level. Interior Ministry units such as SOBR and OMON
were firmly subjected to centralised control under the pretext of the struggle against
‘terrorism’ in Chechnya and, thus, removed from the control of regional leaders
38
whom had “grown to perceive [them] as their ‘praetorians’” (ibid p341). These units
The war was also used as a key pretext in reducing the political profile of elements of
the business elite in Russia. A divide-and-conquer strategy was employed, with media
moguls such as the aforementioned Berezovskiy, (who had fallen out with Putin not
long after the beginning of the war) and Vladimir Gusinsky among the first to be
Control over the state bureaucracy also found its justification in the context of the new
war against ‘terrorism’: the need to coordinate the efforts of state agencies towards
bureaucracy; furthermore, Putin’s affinity for the special services from whence he
came meant that the ‘import’ of personnel from these structures was encouraged,
A vastly expanded role for the FSB has ensured their loyalty to the regime. However,
Baev has pointed out that an over-zealous ‘armed bureaucracy’ such as this in pursuit
of its own agenda can indeed pose a threat to Putin’s cherished centralisation of power,
security dispositif to eliminate the Salafist anomaly is that this, in turn, keeps the FSB
in check, as each new attack or suicide bombing can be succeeded by a ritual firing of
The attacks in New York and Washington of September 11th 2001 ensured that there
were not only domestic advantages to be found in ‘fighting’ Salafism in the North
Caucasus. While much of the international community was at first ambiguous or,
39
particularly in the West, hostile towards the re-launching of war in Chechnya, this
would all change in the wake of the September 11th Al-Qaeda attacks. The subsequent
seismic shift in the foreign policies of many Western countries and the discursive
emphasis placed upon the presence of a seemingly unified, ‘global’ anti-Western jihad
meant that Putin’s Russia was suddenly on the front line of a new war, against
‘terrorism’. This new discourse initially had a huge role to play in the legitimisation
Of huge benefit to Putin was the fact that he had already ‘warned’ the international
dimension of the issue with regard to Chechnya was the subject of much of his
dialogue with Russian society – however, his warnings fell largely upon deaf ears.
That is, until September 11th, 2001. Putin was quick to seize the opportunity to gain
common ground with the United States, pledging his unequivocal support in fighting
such, the Putin administration then began a steady discursive conflation of all
Chechen separatists (including the secular Maskhadov) with the Taliban and Al-
order to “rationalise the necessity of military means and the impossibility of resolving
the situation by way of political negotiations” (Renz & Bacon, 2006:6). This
of even the moderate Chechen separatists (for their supposed links to Osama bin
Laden) from Ari Fleischer, and declarations of support for the Russian fight against
‘terrorism’ from George W. Bush and Colin Powell (Williams, 2004:202). Secure in
the knowledge of such support, Putin was free to step up the campaign of mass arrests,
40
search-and-destroy sweeps, and nightmare raids in Chechnya, prompting
information further reiterating the supposed links between Chechen separatism and
global jihadists in order to justify the continuing Russian abuses in Chechnya. Reports
Afghanistan, fighting on the side of the Taliban, often denoted as ‘die-hard Al Qaeda
suicide fighters’ and apparently constituting the largest foreign group of foreign Al-
Qaeda fighters. Although such information was based upon rumours, it soon made its
way into official US policy towards the Chechen insurgency (ibid p203), despite the
Khattab) might make their way out of the mountainous republic and across Central
Asia into Afghanistan to fight for the Taliban (ibid pp203-4). Questionable logic
notwithstanding, the Kremlin gleefully encouraged such ideas, which in the first place,
according to Brian Glyn Williams, can perhaps be traced back to Tajik members of
the Northern Alliance, whom had been operating with Russian support in Afghanistan
since before the US invasion (ibid p205). This highly successful discursive conflation
of Chechen separatists with Al-Qaeda jihadis played a significant role in diverting the
attention of the Western media from Russian atrocities in Chechnya and, to some
Finally, the presence of Salafist militants in the North Caucasus has provided Russia
with a pretext for assertions of regional hegemony. The guise of training for battles
with terrorists ‘on land or at sea’ has been utilised to justify military exercises in the
Caspian sea, such as those in 2002, which as Pavel Baev asserts were more likely an
41
operation designed to make Russia’s case to its littoral neighbours regarding the
division of the Caspian into national sectors (Baev, 2004:347). More recently, the
speculated presence of Islamist militants in Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge has been used as
a justification for at times severe hostilities between the Russian Federation and
Georgia – whose relations have been strained due to Georgia’s steady re-orientation
extent where Russian planes have bombed Georgian villages in the vicinity.
V. Conclusions
There is certainly nothing new about the assertion that Salafist militancy in the North
Caucasus came about as a result of the first Chechen war; nor, indeed, the assertion
that the existence thereof and the military operation apparently designed to counter it
The ‘strategic completion’ of the Russian security dispositif was achieved through the
re-working of discursive and, later, military elements thereof in order to emphasise its
which the same dispositif created. Just like delinquency, this unintended and negative
effect was almost immediately re-utilised for diverse political ends: the ‘counter-
the media in terms of ‘information warfare’, and enabled Putin to pursue international
legitimisation for his actions and adopt a more aggressive regional foreign policy.
42
This Foucauldian framework may provide a useful means of interpreting various other
the case explored in this paper does appear to be particularly amenable to this form of
upon its own population. Bearing this in mind, the extent to which such a model of
and Salafist jama’ats continue to feed one another in Russia. As long as the latter
exists, however, the ruling class will always have recourse to a politically useful
tactics of securitisation; thus, one can surmise that Russians and North Caucasians
alike will continue to live under the threat of terrorisation, be it from the Salafists or
their own government, at least until it becomes less politically useful to the Russian
ruling elite.
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