--- Colin Brace <cb at lim.nl> wrote:
> On 8/16/06, Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
>
> Insofar as Islamic fundamentalism is a threat, it
> might be more
> accurate to say that it is various governments in
> that region which
> are at risk.
The 35,000 Dagestani IDPs that resulted from the Jihadi invasion of 1999, the hundreds of thousands of people who fled Chechnya and bordering regions (more than fled during the First Chechen War -- it boggles the mind!), and the mothers of several hundred dead children in Beslan might disagree.
As for the respective populations,
> presumably they have
> some influence in the course of events -- or do you
> view them as
> entirely passive in this regard?
>
> --
It varies from place to place. In Dagestan, the local population repelled the invasion by force of arms.
In the North Caucasus specifically, which is the area I know most about by far, Islamism has its appeal in the impoverished, bereft of education villages in the mountains. Saudi oil money will buy a lot of support in a village economy based on subsistence farming. It is part of a countryside-city conflict, in its specifically local inflection of the wider jihadi project.
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