On Sat, 2 Nov 2002, Michael Pollak wrote:
> The reason I ask is because the native Chechen branch of Sufi Islam was
> historically famously tolerant, and Shamil Basayev is a native. . .
> wonder whether religion here isn't mainly a marker of national identity,
> like it is between Serbs and Croats.
Riding home on the train it suddenly struck me why the answer to this has to be no -- why we have to conclude Basayev really means Islamic state and not Chechen state: Dagestan. It's not only that he led that invasion, and that it was done explicitly to combine Dagestan and Chechnya into an Islamic Republic that transcended their national differences. It's that, even in the unlikely event you could explain away such a clear declaration, I don't think it's possible to come up with any conceivable motivation that would lead a Chechen nationalist, a military leader of a tiny country with whom Russia had signed a peace treaty, to attack a huge country like Russia unprovoked and attempt unilaterally to occupy its territory. (Dagestan is as much a part of Russia as San Antonio is of the US).
In retrospect, this seems like an open and shut case to me. If Basayev is the Chechen military leader in chief -- and he is -- then the Chechens are fighting for an Islamic state.
Michael