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2 Russia's hudna with the
Muslim world By Spengler
Janus-like, Russian President Vladimir
Putin showed two faces toward Islam last week. In
a historic and widely reported visit to Riyadh on
February 11, Putin announced that "Russia is
determined to enhance cooperation with the Islamic
world". As a multi-ethnic and multi-religious
country, he added, Russia has long experience in
fostering cooperation between faiths and
ethnicities, adding, "Russia is bent on pursuing
this approach in all regions, including the Middle
East and the Gulf."
In an equally historic
but little-reported action, on Thursday
Putin
installed as acting president
of Chechnya the strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, whose
private army allegedly murders and abducts enemies
of the regime with impunity. The son of a Muslim
rebel, the bete noire of human-rights
advocates, Kadyrov embodies internal policy toward
its Muslim population. It is the same policy that
Russia pursued these three centuries past.
Russia does not propose to ally with the
Muslim world against the United States. Putin's
initiative should be thought of as a hudna,
a brief truce in a long war. With justification,
Putin cites Russia's experience with the Islamic
world. It has been enmeshed in imperial ventures
on its southern border for 300 years and now
stands at the frontier between Islam and the
Western world. The new Chechnya offers a likelier
model for the new Middle East than the Bush
administration's delusional pursuit of democracy.
Russian troops killed between 35,000 and 100,000
civilians in the first Chechen war of 1994-96, and
half a million were driven from their homes. Dead
and displaced Chechens, that is, comprised roughly
half the population. Another 5,000 or so died in
the second Chechen war of 1999-2000, when Russian
forces leveled the capital city, Grozny.
In Kadyrov Russia has found a local
overlord who actually will do what the late
Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin vainly hoped
that Yasser Arafat would do: deal swiftly of the
local hotheads who get out of line. Putin and his
colleagues have bested Israel's death toll during
the Palestinian intifadas by two orders of
magnitude. Putting Kadyrov, 30, in charge of what
remains of Chechnya adds insult to injury.
Putin's pragmatism with respect to the
human rights of Russian Muslims detracted not a
whit from the festivities in Riyadh, because
issues of principle have no place whatever in
Middle Eastern politics. "I see in Putin a
statesman and a man of peace and fairness," said
King Abdullah to the official Saudi Press Agency
before the visit. "That's why the Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia extends a hand of friendship to Russia."
Loyalties do not extend beyond clan and
family, and the rest is a matter of opportunity,
guile and maneuver. That is how business is done
in that part of the world. You embrace your worst
enemy when you are too weak to fight him, and you
annihilate him when opportunity presents itself.
When you have winnowed his ranks sufficiently to
convince him that he is too weak to fight you, you
embrace him once again. It is the sort of dirty
work to which Americans are unaccustomed, but for
which the Russians have had centuries of practice.
For the moment, Russia and Saudi Arabia
have a pressing interest in common, namely
avoiding a US (or Israeli) military strike against
Iran. Neither is prepared to deal with the
consequences. Saudi Arabia fears for the loyalties
of its own Shi'ites, and Russia fears for the
stability of its southern borders. It might seem
that Russia would benefit from hostilities in the
Persian Gulf, which would increase the oil price
as well as Russia's own leverage in the
international oil market. But the strategic issues
override this apparent economic advantage. A
nuclear-armed Iran is the last thing Russia wants,
but Moscow is not prepared - yet - to confront the
consequences of a general destabilization of its
soft, Muslim-majority underbelly.
Russia's
position in the world differs in fundamentals from
that of the United States and Western Europe.
United Nations projections show its population
declining from about 150 million in 1989, when
communism collapsed, to about 90 million at
mid-century, and the median age will rise from 25
to 50 years. Russian women have 13 abortions for
every 10 live births, and life expectancy has
fallen to 65 years from 70 years in 1985. But
Russia's Muslim majorities continue to grow and
will exceed the non-Muslim European population in
as little as three to four decades.
Linear
projections are one thing, and the will to live is
another. On paper, Russia's position appears
hopeless; whereas current trends show a Muslim
majority in Europe a century hence, Russia may
have a Muslim majority in less than two
generations.
Perhaps it is inevitable that
Washington should misunderstand Moscow at this
juncture in history. Putin has embarked on a
monstrous enterprise, next to which Fyodor
Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor seems like a
country parson. European Russia is dying, and
Muslims will compose a majority of citizens of the
Russian Federation by as early as 2040. But the
successors of Imperial Russia, the Third Rome
after the fall of Constantinople to Islam in 1453,
refuse to slide without a struggle into the
digestive tract of the House of Islam. Western
Europe may go with a whimper rather than a bang as
Muslim immigrants replace the shrinking
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