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CONFLICT, ISLAMISM, AND POLITICAL POWER IN THE

RUSSIAN FEDERATION: A FOUCAULDIAN STUDY

By

Daniel Cloney

STUDENT No. 55396450

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

FSB: Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti – Federal Security Service


KGB: Komitjet Gosudarstvjennoj Bjezopasnosti – Committee for State Security
MVD: Ministerstvo Vnutrennikh Del – Ministry of Internal Affairs
OMON: Otyrad Militsii Osobogo Naznacheniya – Special Purpose Police Squad
SOBR: Spetsial'nye Otryady Bystrogo Reagirovaniya – Special Rapid Action Unit

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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

In this central and centralised humanity…we must hear the


distant roar of battle
Foucault, 1979:308

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

packaged as a ‘counter-terrorism’ operation, has in fact seen the spread of Salafist

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,

despite successfully re-asserting sovereign control over the formerly de facto

independent Republic, a decade on the Russian security apparatus has failed to

eliminate the Salafist militancy which it created in the first place. High-intensity

conflict restricted to Chechnya has been replaced by low to mid-intensity conflict in

several North Caucasian Republics. It is my contention that this supposed failure is

not, however, without its advantages.

This paper will explore the emergence and spread of Salafist militancy in Russia’s

North Caucasus through engagement with the work of French post-structuralist

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philosopher Michel Foucault. Recent years have seen a surge in critical approaches to

the previously predominant academic, governmental and popular discourses relating

to ‘terrorism’1, particularly from perspectives informed by Critical Theory and post-

structuralism, in terms of the persistence of ‘embedded expertise’ within the academy

as a barrier to objectivity; the state-centric bias of research, and the shaky ontological

foundations of ‘terrorism’ and particularly ‘new terrorism’ as categories. Foucauldian

approaches within this school have tended to focus upon the use of such discourses to

facilitate regimes of biopower in Western societies. Aiming to compliment such

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

delinquency anomaly in Discipline and Punish (1979). According to Foucault, 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

unintended occurrence which fundamentally undermined the prison’s ability to carry

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

to dominant societal groups.

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 emergence of Salafism in the North Caucasus was an unintended consequence of

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.

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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

dominant classes, embodied by Vladimir Putin. The September 1999 apartment

bombings in Moscow, Volgodonsk and Buinansk, supposedly carried out by Chechen

‘terrorists’, were integral in securing initial support for Putin’s political programme,

which was centred upon the restoration of ‘order’ in Chechnya through further

conflict. The subsequent ‘counter-terrorist’ operation, and the discourses of

securitisation which accompanied it, greatly facilitated Putin’s political programme

through justifying the centralisation of power, encouraging media and societal self-

censorship and surveillance, and securing an increased presence in international

affairs complete with, for a time, international legitimisation of the brutal operation in

Chechnya.

II. Literary Context

‘Orthodox Terrorism Studies’ and the North Caucasus

The English-language literature considering the conflict in the North Caucasus has, by

and large, remained innocent of post-positivist analysis 2 . Rather, much of the

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

roots in Security Studies, this ‘Orthodox’ Terrorism Studies literature3 mushroomed

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

tended to take a positivist, rationalist, and ‘problem-solving’ approach to the issue of

‘terrorism’; of particular note (and indeed the source of much criticism) has been the

salience of links between researchers and policy think-tanks, governments and


2
For two notable exceptions to this, see Renz & Bacon (2006) and Moore (2006)
3
It should be noted that it is more heterogeneous than the label may imply – see Horgan and Boyle,
2008

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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

in the North Caucasus have lent it to such a ‘problem-solving’ analysis. Of particular

salience is the presence of the Islamic fundamentalist element of the conflict: thus, it

is often conceptualised as part of a larger struggle against a supposedly unified,

international, and anti-Western jihad. Working from this assumption, scholars often

attempt, through analysis of the workings of the ‘terrorist’ organisation, to draw

conclusions relevant to ‘Western’ governmental policy choice (see for example Hill et

al 2004) or, indeed, the security of the Russian Federation.

A core characteristic of the ‘problem-solving’ approach is the study of characteristics

of both the ‘terrorist’ and ‘counterterrorist’ operations in order to draw conclusions

which may then be applied to counterinsurgency and counterterrorist operations in

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

identifying implications for other counterterrorist and counterinsurgency operations;

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

application of this ‘knowledge’ by the US Armed Forces in battling the insurgency in

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

investigations often concern themselves with the psychological state of ‘suicide

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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

attempt to understand motivations of the ‘suicide terrorists’ themselves in terms of

psychological trauma caused by the conflict (2006b). Of particular interest to some

researchers has been the active involvement of female suicide bombers in the most

recent incarnation of the conflict, which is seen as noteworthy as it contradicts

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

with the heavy-handedness (or downright brutality) of Russian military operations

(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

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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

characteristics of Chechens (Russell, 2005), and the discursive couching of the

conflict in terms of the wider ‘War on Terrorism’ (Cornell, 2003).

Critical and Post-Structural Approaches

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

as Richard Jackson, Marie Breen Smyth and Jeroen Gunning--and post-structural

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,

government, and society, as I shall explore below.

‘Embedded Expertise,’ State-Centrism and the ‘Elephant in the Room’

A particularly salient feature of the field of ‘Orthodox Terrorism Studies’, as Burke

(2008:37) points out, is that it is “not dominated institutionally by universities so

much as by think tanks, policy institutes, intelligence agencies, militaries, media

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

existed between the RAND Corporation and successive US governments – are

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

to a ‘problem-solving’ literature which, according to Blakey (2007:229) “considers

the problem of terrorism within the context of…existing institutions and power

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dynamics”. Gunning (2007: 366-368) blames this orientation for many of the

shortcomings of ‘Orthodox Terrorism Studies’ such as its tendency to focus upon

‘immediate threats’ as defined by state elites, its lack of theoretical apparatus, and

uncritical acceptance of the framing of the ‘terrorism problem’ by the state.

An extremely comprehensive critique of the prevailing academic studies of terrorism,

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

‘RAND-St Andrews nexus’ in the development of the ‘new terrorism’ as an

ideological formation which is, they assert, based upon “a highly questionable

knowledge base” (2005:15). Claims to impartiality of the scholarship with which this

institutional nexus is associated can be seen to be highly debatable, and the

propagation of the supposed ‘new terrorism’ appears to serve very specific functions

advantageous to certain elite groups (2005:13-15).

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

of the ‘Global War on Terrorism’, often from a perspective informed by Critical

Theory and a commitment to ‘emancipation’ (see for example McDonald, 2009).

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,

in order to explore the biopolitical and governmental effects of the prevailing

‘terrorism’ discourse upon society, some examples of which I shall explore below.

Foucauldian Approaches

The work of Michel Foucault – in particular his conceptualisations of

power/knowledge, ‘biopower’, ‘biopolitics’ and ‘governmentality’ - have been

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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

dispositif’ in examining the ways in which states of ‘emergency’ such as those

generated by the threat of terrorism and the ‘medicalisation’ of security discourses in

recent times can be utilised in order to catalyze regimes of biopower in Western

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

‘biopolitics’ (Foucault 1984) in his analysis of the functions of terrorism ‘knowledge’

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

more controversial and neo-conservative ‘experts’, whom Debrix often refers to as

‘tabloid imperialists’ (examples given being Richard Kaplan, Victor Hansen and

Michael Ledeen) that blame is laid for the creation of a ‘tabloid discourse of

abjection’ 4 – that is, a discourse which encourages American society to embrace

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

discursive production of abjection, through the reinforcement of images of the ‘evil’

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

‘terrorist-monster’, as presented within mainstream ‘Terrorism’ Studies literature;

finally, Matthew Hannah (2006) conceptualises the use of torture by the United States

in the ‘War on Terrorism’ as a reaction to the threat posed by acts of ‘terrorism’ to

pre-existing techniques of biopower and governmentality in US society.

Such engagements with Foucauldian notions of power/knowledge with regard to

counter-terrorism and its discourses have, however, tended overwhelmingly to focus

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

counter-terrorism have infiltrated the governmental techniques of many States since

2001. Through exploring the functioning of the aforementioned ‘geopolitical’ security

dispositif in the Russian Federation since 1994, this paper hopes to go some small

way towards filling this space.

III. Foucault, the Dispositif, and the Production/Targeting of Anomalies

This paper will aim to explore the functioning of a geopolitical, rather than

biopolitical security dispositif through an engagement with Foucault’s studies of the

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

functioning of power/knowledge within society is that of the dispositif, or ‘apparatus’.

By ‘dispositif’, Foucault attempted to highlight “a thoroughly heterogeneous

ensemble consisting of discourses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory

decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral

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).

A dispositif emerges at a given historical moment in response to a perceived “urgent

need” (Foucault, 1980: 195) on the part of the dominant groups in society. This

ensemble of discursive and non-discursive elements, however heterogeneous and

occasionally contradictory their respective actions and effects, thus serves a

“dominant strategic function” (ibid); that is, it exists as a means to a particular end

considered desirable by the aforementioned dominant societal groups (which are in

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

focused on the latter form, which function through power/knowledge, governmental

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

which brings not order, but chaos.

As such, a ‘geopolitical’ security dispositif could be constructed of a wide variety of

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

suspects or prisoners are detained, to name but a few.

As Brigg (2002: 427) points out, this conceptualisation “allows recognition of both

positive and negative outcomes generated…whilst still providing a basis to

understand an operation of power”. Thus, through applying such a conceptualisation

to the Russian geopolitical security dispositif as it applies to conflict in the North

Caucasus, we may take account of a range of different and contradictory effects

generated by its various heterogeneous elements, and the constantly evolving

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.

The Constitution of Anomalies

Due to the varied and occasionally contradictory effects generated by the different

mechanisms of a dispositif, it can occasionally be the site of the genesis of an anomaly.

14
Foucault explores this phenomenon with respect to the effects of the development of

the imprisonment dispositif upon society in Discipline and Punish (1979).

The development of the prison, according to Foucault, is best understood as part of a

much larger context of the emergence of discipline as a regime of institutional

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);

it represented a science of motion and productivity, self-enforced through

differentiation, examination and normalisation, and facilitated by architectures of

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

qualitatively different” (ibid, 233)

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

individual: the delinquent. The mechanisms of the imprisonment dispositif imposed

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

release they remain condemned to suspicion, surveillance and unemployment, further

encouraging recidivism; finally, the prisoner’s family is abandoned, reduced to

vagabondage, begging, and eventually crime (ibid pp264-8). According to Foucault,

the emergence of delinquency and the spread of the prison as the punitive technique

par excellence should not be conceptualised as temporally sequential:

“The penitentiary technique and the delinquent are, in a sense, twin


brothers. It is not true that it was the discovery of the delinquent
through a scientific rationality that introduced into our old prisons
the refinement of penitentiary techniques. Nor is it true that the
internal elaboration of penitentiary methods has finally brought to
light the ‘objective’ existence of a delinquency that the abstraction
and rigidity of the law were unable to perceive. They appeared
together, the one extending from the other, as a technological
ensemble…And it is this delinquency, formed in the foundations of
the judicial apparatus…that now comes to haunt the untroubled
courts and the majesty of the laws.”
(Foucault, 1979:255)

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-

terrorism operation or invasion - upon society in the geography of its application, on

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

16
operations often subject populations to arbitrary murder, violence, destruction of

homes and workplaces, arrest and detention, concentration camps, disappearances,

torture, and rape; the discourse between military and society in such circumstances is

often characterised by abuses of power, corruption, exploitation, cruelty and abuse.

Naturally, such circumstances arouse feelings of intense injustice among their victims,

inspiring many to form or join an armed resistance--‘terrorist’ or otherwise--thus

introducing an element of self-perpetuating violence. Further, as implicit in the

aforementioned work of Speckhard & Akhmedova (2005), the family members of

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

context of the conflict in the North Caucasus.

The Process of Strategic Elaboration

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

realization of the corrective project as the only method of overcoming the

impossibility of implementing it” (Foucault, 1979:268).

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:

“perhaps one should…ask oneself what is served by the failure of


the prison; what is the use of these different phenomena that are
continually being criticized; the maintenance of delinquency, the
encouragement of recidivism, the transformation of the occasional
offender into a habitual delinquent, the organisation of a closed
milieu of delinquency[?]…one would be forced to suppose that the
prison…is not intended to eliminate offences, but rather to
distinguish them; that it is not so much that they render docile
those who are liable to transgress the law, but that they tend to
assimilate the transgression of the laws in a general tactics of
subjection”
(Foucault, 1979:272, emphasis added)

That is to say that the prison dispositif, despite failing to eradicate illegalities, was

extremely successful in creating and specifying delinquency as a visible, habitual,

dependable and penetrable illegality in the midst of others (ibid pp272-9). The

production of the delinquent anomaly was, as it happened, of the utmost strategic

convenience to the dominant societal classes of the time, who lived in great fear of

the gradual emergence of a popular, somewhat politicised illegality, derived almost

exclusively from the ‘social base’ (ibid p275); in accidentally producing delinquency,

the carceral system produced a form of illegality which was open, isolated,

predictable, politically and economically less dangerous, easily supervised, and, on

occasion, useful. The emergence of delinquency replaced an embryonic yet

18
potentially threatening, widespread and popular illegality with a “small group of

individuals upon which constant surveillance may be kept” (ibid p278).

Importantly, this disarmed, marginal and predictable illegality was now directly

useful to the dominant classes. The delinquent class became an agent for the illegality

of the dominant class; it provided a source of useful criminals: through them,

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:

“the existence of a legal prohibition creates around it a field of illegal practices,

which one manages to supervise, while extracting from it an illicit profit through

elements, themselves illegal, but rendered manipulable by their organization in

delinquency” (ibid p280). Furthermore, delinquency and societal surveillance exist in

a relationship of symbiosis: delinquency both procures secret agents, thugs, and

provocateurs on the one hand, and demands generalised police surveillance of society

on the other (ibid).

Thus, through a perpetual process of constitution/targeting of the delinquent anomaly,

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

key aspect of the functioning of a dispositif: a perpetual process of strategic

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

accidentally emerge as a result of their processes:

“[w]hat did [the prison] apparatus produce? An entirely unforeseen


effect which had nothing to do with any kind of strategic ruse on the
part of some meta- or trans-historic subject conceiving and willing it.
This effect was the constitution of a delinquent milieu…From about
the 1830s onwards, one finds an immediate re-utilisation of this
unintended, negative effect within a new strategy which came in some

19
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

to the creation of Salafist militancy in Chechnya, but were enabled to continue

functioning as a result of the strategic usefulness of the Salafist anomaly.

IV Conflict in the North Caucasus through a Foucauldian Prism

Independence, War, and the Emergence of Salafism 1991-1999

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

terms thereof. Upon its declaration of independence, the Chechen Republic of

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

Salafists (often incorrectly referred to as ‘Wahhabis’ in Russia) had come to exercise

pivotal political force in the Republic.

Chechnya under Dudayev: Ethnocracy, Instability, and Secularism

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

20
August Coup in Moscow in 1991. Unlike most other such declarations, however,

Chechen independence went unrecognised by all but one country – Georgia, under

Zviad Gamsakhurdia – and was met by particularly strong condemnation in Moscow.

The declaration is perhaps best understood with an eye on Russo-Caucasian relations

of the previous two centuries: the Chechens were among many predominantly Muslim

Caucasian nationalities which resolutely rejected initial Russian annexation of the

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

wholesale deportation (along with other nationalities) to Kazakhstan during World

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

Russo-Chechen tensions: many of the leaders of the Chechen nationalist movement

were born or raised in exile in Kazakhstan, and the deportation is viewed by some as

an attempted genocide (Cornell, 2003:169).

Thus, the Chechen declaration of independence represented the culmination of almost

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

independence would be notable primarily for their severe instability, economic

decline, pandemic corruption, the salience of drug trafficking, money laundering,

ethnocratic policies, and mutinous opposition with the backing of the Yel’tsin regime.

Instability notwithstanding, Chechnya in the early years of its independence was a

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

21
having instituted a secular constitution in 1992, for Dudayev, reference to Islam as a

defining cultural characteristic of the North Caucasus generally, and Chechnya

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

involvement in the Soviet bombing of Islamists in Afghanistan while based in

Turkmenistan. However, he did foster the growing influence of clan-based bodies

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

internally-focused interpretation of jihad, Sufism is inherently connected to the

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

population was often characterised by conflict, as adherents to the fundamentalist

approach consider Sufi practice to be heretical (Yemelianova, 2001: 675-679).

The result of growing and rather obvious Russian involvement in opposition to

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

affiliation (Blandy, 2000:12).

22
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

(Hughes, 2001:30; Dunlop 1998:126). Where lawful sources of revenue failed,

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

pipelines running through Chechnya, such as the extremely important Baku-

Novorossiisk pipeline, were pilfered of their resources which were sold on the black

market (Dunlop, 1998:127-8).

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

unnoticed by elements of this heterogeneous dominant class: on the contrary, large

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

been leading a Pinochet-style charge towards the imposition of a neo-liberal capitalist

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

supporters (further encouraged by the defence minister predicting an easy victory in a

matter of weeks (Klein, 2007:232)), and under pressure from the ‘party of war’, it

seems that Yel’tsin heeded such advice.

A Small, Victorious War

As noted above, the geopolitical dispositif de securité deals in sovereign juridical

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

the Russian geopolitical security dispositif were launched into Chechnya on

December 11th, 1994, in order to ‘disarm illegal bandit formations’ and ‘restore

constitutional order’, along with appropriate subservience to Moscow, in the Republic.

The violence and destruction which the War would unleash, however, would result in

a subsequent drastic alteration of the socio-political landscape in the Republic and,

eventually, throughout the North Caucasus.

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

constitutional order within three weeks, through a massive demonstration of brutal

force. From the beginning, however, the heaving, arrogant and undisciplined Russian

forces would be plagued by problems and encountered serious difficulties. A lack of

planning, the inexperience and nonchalance of conscripted troops, poor

communications, poor weapons, chronic alcohol abuse among officers and men, and

opposition from civilians in neighbouring republics, meant that the troops

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

troops were supported by “a massive concentration of tube artillery, multi-barrelled

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

(Cornell, 1999:88). Russian troops eventually took Groznyy’s Presidential Palace on

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

condition of Stalingrad after the Great Patriotic War (Cornell, 1999:88).

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

largely led to a lack of distinction between civilians and militants, ‘pacification’, in

this sense, came to mean the vicious collective punishment of the population and an

abhorrent assault upon human dignity, characterised by further indiscriminate

bombing and strafing of entire villages, arbitrary arrest, extrajudicial killings, torture,

massacres, and disappearances. According to Human Rights Watch, ‘filtration’ (read

concentration) camps were established, most notably at Mozdok, North Ossetia,

which allegedly came complete with physicians whom observed the effect of torture

techniques upon detainees (Cornell, 1999:90). In Grozny, men of between 15 and 60

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

throwing grenades indiscriminately, executing and torturing residents (ibid). The

disregard of the Russian military for civilian life was such that the use of civilian

human shields by Chechen fighters had to be stopped, as it was entirely useless.

Further, and perhaps most shocking, is that aid workers in 1995 found evidence of the

use of chemical weapons against the Chechen population (ibid).

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

electoral democracy was established in Chechnya under the Khasav-Yurt accords,

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.

The Specification of the Militant Salafism, 1994-1996

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

Federation. At worst, it was an attempt to forcibly re-acquire territory deemed

strategically important by battering the population thereof into submission through

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.

However, the violence, inhumanity and destruction brought by this dispositif,

nonetheless, had a pivotal role to play in the radicalisation of Chechen society in

terms of Salafist Islamism (Hughes, 2001:34).

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,

and Zelimkhan Yandarbiev (Wilhelmsen, 2005:37). As Julie Wilhelmsen (ibid, 37-41)

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

under Raduev and Arbi Barayev (ibid p42).

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

means of interpreting the conflict, in larger-than-life terms of a long-term war

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

turn precipitated harsh responses from the federal forces.

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

pivotal political influence as the primary opposition group; favouring a continuation

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

benefits to be gained from such a new conflict.

29
The ‘Strategic Elaboration’ of the dispositif: The Useful Salafist ‘Other’

Russia’s war against terrorism is not about winning.


It is about having it.
Baev, 2004:338
According to Foucault, the process of ‘strategic elaboration’ is the means by which a

dispositif is enabled to continue in existence, through the re-working of its various

elements, in order to perpetuate the existence of a category of anomaly deemed to be

useful to dominant societal groups (Foucault, 1980:195-6). It is my contention that it

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

the delinquent, a relationship of symbiosis exists between the Russian geopolitical

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

centralisation thereof; censorship of the media; societal self-surveillance enforced

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

to power of Vladimir Putin. The invasion of Dagestan by Salafist insurgents led by Al

Khattab and Basayev in August 1999 was a key point thereof, as Putin - previously

considered a political nobody - was chosen by Boris Yel’tsin as Prime Minister

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

apartment bombings in Moscow, Volgodonsk and Buinansk in September 1999,

which saw 300 civilians brutally murdered. The ‘terrorist problem’ was

instrumentalised extremely well by Putin in the aftermath of these attacks in order to

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

moderate regime, which he tarred as a front for international terrorism (Hughes,

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

‘terrorism’ in Chechnya. One could, in normal circumstances, consider such a

31
connection incidental. However, the uncomfortable fact remains that the

circumstances surrounding the Islamists’ invasion of Daghestan and the September

apartment bombings appear to be far from normal, and when considered in

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

and Basayev. According to Komsol’skaya Pravda 8 , Berezovskiy admitted in

September of the same year to giving Shamil’ Basayev $2 million in order to fund

reconstruction in the Republic; however, the emergence of transcripts of telephone

conversations between Berezovskiy and Basayev’s fellow Chechen leaders

Makhashev and Udugov added intrigue, as they did uncannily resemble collusion

between a Kremlin associate and high-ranking Chechens in organising the invasion.

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

Daghestani public (Cornell, 2003:175).

The September 1999 apartment bombings in Moscow, Buinansk and Volgodonsk

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

Islamist Sirazhdin Ramazanov claimed that the attacks would be instrumentalised in

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

reported in Russia previously?” (ibid)

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

of military conflict in Chechnya.

The Targeting/Reproduction of Salafist Militancy

In October 1999, war once again came to Chechnya. Putin declared his aim “was to

destroy Chechnya as a ‘terrorist state’, ‘an outpost of international terrorism’ and a

‘bandit enclave’ for foreign-funded ‘Islamic fundamentalists’” (Hughes, 2001:36).

Thus, the Russian geopolitical security dispositif was once again manifested in an

invasion of Chechnya, and discursive elements thereof were re-worked in order to

frame the operation as ‘counter-terrorist’ in nature, despite at first bearing clear

33
similarities to the first war. The operation was notable at first for its horrendous

bombing campaign - the thermobaric aerial bombardments, aerosol artillery shelling,

and Scud surface-to-surface ballistic missiles all but levelling Groznyy to its very

foundations (Williams, 2004:198). The aerial bombardment was supported by a

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

International, 2000). Inmates’ families have been subjected to extortion in order to

secure their release, while many other inmates were ‘disappeared’ (Blandy, 2001:6).

Far from being a complex procedure informed by counter-intelligence, inmates at

such camps were routinely sourced from checkpoints, targeted sweeps of

communities and zachistki or ‘mopping up’ raids--that is, where they were not

subjected to arbitrary murder (ibid; Cornell, 2003:172).

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

opposed to the previously high-intensity conflict restricted to Chechnya, low to

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

Emirates”, declared by Doku Umarov, in 2007.

Having gained control of Chechnya’s formal administrative structures, the Putin

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

find themselves under attack on a regular basis.

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,

under the authority of a Caucasus-wide “Emirate”, one would be forced to assume

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

to the Putin regime.

Discourses of Securitisation, the Creation of Consent, and Censorship

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

September bombings becomes chillingly clear. Riding the wave of popularity

generated by the hurt caused to the Russian people, Putin now employed a discourse

of securitisation 9 and the demonisation of Salafists (‘Wahhabis’), Chechens, and

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

2005 identified by a Helsinki group representative as ‘the most serious problem

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,

and Nalchik did much to exacerbate these fears.

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

‘terrorism’; outlets which were openly critical of Russian policies in Chechnya or

questioned the wisdom of continuing the war were “put on notice that such dissent

contradicts the state policy of combating terrorism” (Baev, 2004:343), thus

encouraging a regime of self-censorship, which smacks distinctly of biopolitics.

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

was created by the geopolitical security dispositif serves the implementation of a

societal biopolitical security dispositif. What’s more, as we shall explore below, the

existence of the Salafist threat has justified several politically advantageous

manoeuvres for Putin.

‘Counter-terrorism’ and Regime Consolidation

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

tax authorities”, ministries which operated seemingly independent of central control,

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

in line through a centralisation of power and the ‘securitisation’ of the bureaucracy.

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

were then sent on rotational tours of duty in Chechnya.

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

targeted and forced into exile (ibid).

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

the goal of defeating ‘terrorism’ necessitated a reshuffling and reorientation of the

bureaucracy; furthermore, Putin’s affinity for the special services from whence he

came meant that the ‘import’ of personnel from these structures was encouraged,

prompting many to refer to the process as the creation of a ‘militocracy’ (ibid).

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,

as demonstrated by their enthusiastic attack upon hydrocarbon oligarch Mikhail

Khodorkovsky. However, an interesting aspect of the repeated ‘failures’ of the

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

a high-ranking FSB official (ibid p343).

The ‘War on Terrorism’, International Legitimacy and Regional Dominance

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 Putin’s regime, agenda, and actions.

Of huge benefit to Putin was the fact that he had already ‘warned’ the international

community of the danger posed by international ‘terrorism’, and indeed this

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

their ‘common enemy’ of Islamic terrorism (Williams, 2004:200) and granting

previously unimaginable military concessions. Having generated some good will as

such, the Putin administration then began a steady discursive conflation of all

Chechen separatists (including the secular Maskhadov) with the Taliban and Al-

Qaeda, through the employment of the aforementioned discourse of securitisation, in

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

discourse appeared to be successful, notably in Washington, prompting condemnation

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

condemnation from Amnesty international (ibid).

The US invasion of Afghanistan was accompanied by a significant dissemination of

information further reiterating the supposed links between Chechen separatism and

global jihadists in order to justify the continuing Russian abuses in Chechnya. Reports

began to surface in the Western media of ‘hundreds’ of Chechens being present in

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

rather obvious geographical and mathematical questions posed by how ‘hundreds’ or

‘thousands’ of members of the 2,000-strong Chechen insurgency (apparently led by

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

extent, legitimising such actions.

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

of foreign policy towards Euro-Atlantic structures in recent years – on occasion to the

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

have been politically advantageous to the Putin regime. A Foucauldian

conceptualisation such as the above, however, provides a framework through which

all of these dimensions can be understood in terms of the functioning of a dispositif.

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

‘counter-terrorist’ character, justified by the existence of the Salafist militant anomaly

which the same dispositif created. Just like delinquency, this unintended and negative

effect was almost immediately re-utilised for diverse political ends: the ‘counter-

terrorism’ discourse which it precipitated created consent for Putin’s political

programme; facilitated the centralisation of power in a political system which had

previously been characterised by disarray and power-struggles; justified censorship of

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

repeatedly failing counter-terrorist dispositifs from Colombia to Palestine. However,

the case explored in this paper does appear to be particularly amenable to this form of

analysis. To be sure, it is characterised by an alarmingly and unusually strong

possibility of government involvement in carrying out supposed ‘terrorist’ attacks

upon its own population. Bearing this in mind, the extent to which such a model of

interpretation can be applied to other such dispositifs may be limited.

Although recent years have witnessed a reduction in violence, government oppression

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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47

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