Publication

Militant Islam is currently the greatest threat to security and stability in the Russian part of the Caucasus. However, even though the armed Islamic underground is capable of organizing terrorist attacks and carrying out actions of sabotage, it seems too weak to bring about any change in the Caucasus’s political status quo. Besides, militant Islam is merely a symptom of a much wider process, namely the widening civilizational gap between Russia and the North Caucasus, initiated by the collapse of the Soviet Union. As a result, the North Caucasus, and principally Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan, are turning into an enclave separated from the rest of the Russian Federation by a growing civilization gap, and becoming increasingly different from the rest of Russia. This situation may recall the tribal areas of Pakistan inhabited by Pashtuns along the Afghan border.