Stomach Full of Stones My Life as a Fanatic
by Ruslan Mahmedov November 18, 2001
THE FIRST THING PEOPLE asked was "How could this happen?" At the root of that question is an impossibility. How could people love their countries, their families or their God enough to kill thousands of people on the edge of a razor? I can only shake my head. I know the 19 or more men who hijacked four airplanes. I grew up around them. And once I was one of them.
I am a Muslim from a place in the world which is not that different from Afghanistan, in mentality and in terrain. Dagestan is a lovely country. It is also a very confused country. The people are unsure if they want to be Russians (which they will never be, though they rule the country) or... what exactly? A Dagestani could be one of hundreds of ethnic groups, most who practice Islam. We don't have a common language outside of Russian.
Our sense of ourselves as a people was formed in the wars of the Russian Tsar and his brutal generals. Our leader, Imam Shamil, declared a jihad. This was in the 19th century, and nothing really has happened since then. We get along well among each other. But as elsewhere, so many poor people living together in such a small place is not good. Leaders would prefer to have a religious war than a class war.
It is important to stress that the extremism on Russia's edges, which is in the North Caucasus and Afghanistan too, did not originate there. We are Sunni Muslims, with much Dervish or Sufi influence on our religious leaders. But it exists, there is no question about it. Bearded Arabs no longer need to "instruct" us, as their Dagestani and Afghan pupils have learned.
How foreigners became so influential in a place with a legendary rudeness to missionaries is not so difficult to understand. At first they were scorned, these men in long robes and a strange language (no one in the Caucasus knows Arabic as it was illegal to speak or write in it until recently). The villages the Arab missionaries went to first would often drive them out in medieval fashion. But those who did stay made quite an impression. More than the local leaders, they seemed to care for the people. They had money, and spent it freely on both religious instruction and food for people who could come close to starving in bad times.
http://www.diacritica.com/sobaka/archive/stomach.html
Prisoner of the Mountains The Last Refuge of Scoundrels Claims Another
by Ruslan Mahmedov August 5, 2003
Strong moods bring thoughts of home. When things are going good, like all dutiful sons I consider how my parents will receive the news. In times of crisis, Dagestan is all that is on my mind - a retreat to home, like our ancestors that survived the thousands of invasions by moving their bodies, then building a new homeland, up in the mountains where no one could reach them.
Visiting for the first time in six years, I was full of apprehensions. There is a new war in Chechnya now, and I don't know how my people will have changed by having a war just over the hills. Sometimes too it has come home, such as in the bombing of Kapiisk, in which 36 people were killed during a Victory Day parade.
http://www.diacritica.com/sobaka/2003/dagestan.html
After Beslan Slow Days in Dagestan
by Ruslan Mahmedov October 23, 2004
"They say that most of them came from here," the old woman vegetable-seller said. - "Who says that?"
- "The mayor said that. We will have to billet soldiers this December."
Rumors were rife in Dagestan after the events in Beslan. The identity of the men who took the hostages is not being released by the official bodies but there were some Dagestanis in there according to the press.
http://www.diacritica.com/sobaka/2004/beslan.html
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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