BEYOND PANKISI

 

The BBC’s Azerbaijan Service recently published my piece on radicalisation in the South Caucasus following commentaries written earlier for EurasiaNetand the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR). Below is the English version of the BBC Azeri article.

Text and photographs by Onnik James Krikorian

Children jump over puddles on the pock-marked street outside the mosque in Duisi, a small village situated in Georgia’s scenic Pankisi Valley. Inhabited by 8,000 ethnic Kists, a minority group related to the Chechens of the North Caucasus, Pankisi is also home to refugees from Chechnya who fled during the wars of the 1990s and 2000s.

Women dressed in in colourful chadors circumvent the water-filled holes caused by years of neglect while others have their heads uncovered or simply obscured by traditional Kist head scarves. Young men are also diverse with some clean shaven and others sporting long, but religiously-symbolic beards indicative of an increasing divide between local culture and imported Salafist ideology.

The situation has become one of particular concern in recent years because of the recruitment of local youth by extremist groups, notably the Islamic State. Pankisi’s most notorious emigre among those fighting in Syria is Tarkhan Batirishvili, aka Abu Omar al-Shishani, a senior military commander in the group also known as Daesh, ISIS, or ISIL.

“I support ISIS because they are saving Muslim lives in Syria,” says one local teenage boy while an alarmed Pankisi Council of Elders explains that some young Kists are easily persuaded by ISIS propaganda videos downloaded from the Internet and shared from phone to phone. They also say that there are no measures being taken to counter such messages.

Estimates cited by the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Counterterrorism put the number of Georgians fighting in Iraq and Syria at 50–100. Thirteen residents from Pankisi are known to have died. Neighbouring Azerbaijan also faces a problem with radicalisation as well, with most foreign fighters attracted to the Islamic State, as is the case in Georgia.

At least 272 Azerbaijanis have been involved in the conflict since 2012 and there are likely at least 100 more so I’d estimate between 400 and 500,” says a prominent Washington D.C-based analyst who writes on Azerbaijanis fighting in Syria for Jihadology.net and is quoted by media such as The Economist and Radio Free Europe under his blogging handle, North Caucasus Caucus.

“In terms of motivations, the Azeri cases are not that much different than the vast majority who go to Syria,” he told BBC Azeri. “Often they have connections to those who already went or they are young people looking for purpose.”

And those reasons might be very similar to why some Muslims in Georgia are prone to radicalisation according to a new study by Wake Forest University researcher Bennett Clifford through the Georgian Foundation of Strategic and International Studies (GFSIS). “The economy’s role in this process is often overestimated or misplaced,” Clifford told BBC Azeri.

“Economics are a necessary but insufficient factor to explain radicalisation,” he continues, adding that the problem is evident not only in Pankisi, but also in less isolated and more economically viable Adjara and ethnic Azeri villages in the Kakheti, Samtskhe-Javakheti, and Kvemo Kartli regions of Georgia.

“Younger Georgian Muslims are on balance more open to conservative interpretations of Islam than their elders,” Clifford explains. “In addition, the role of mass media should not be underestimated. Younger Muslims have access to more material via the Internet and social media than do older members of their communities.”

 Conflict and divisions within society can also play a role.

“In Ajara, while Muslim institutions are more well-established than in Pankisi, they face threats of closure by local authorities and discrimination from Georgian Christians,” he says. “If unchecked, tensions between Christians and Muslims can contribute to the perception among Georgian Muslims that it is impossible for them to maintain their way of life in a Christian-dominant society.”

Several fighters and jihadi brides from ethnic Azeri villages are also believed to have left for Syria.

“There have definitely been non-Sunni converts in Azerbaijan becoming radicalised,” explains North Caucasus Caucus. “One issue is that Syria has activated a more sectarian understanding of Islam in Azerbaijan. Usually, many Azerbaijanis just say “we are Muslims” but do not actually have a good concept of what that means. Now, some who were ostensibly Shi’a became Salafis.”

A June 2015 report, Secularism in Azerbaijan and the Threat of Radicalisation in the Region by the European Foundation for Democracy, also supports this notion.

Moreover, North Caucasus Caucus says that radicalisation is occurring outside the region as well. “Azerbaijanis, especially those without lots of prior connections to terrorism networks, can very easily get to Turkey or already live in Istanbul or Moscow where they can relatively easily get hooked into the facilitation networks.”

With Georgians also able to enter Turkey visa-free, both the Azerbaijani and Georgian authorities are tightening border control. The U.S. State Department, Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the Russian Foreign Ministry, and the International Crisis Group (ICG) also consider both countries as transit routes for foreign fighters to Syria.

This is also a main requirement of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2178 passed in September last year. What is also mentioned in the resolution, but still lacking in the South Caucasus, is the need to engage communities, youth, women, and religious leaders in Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) efforts to prevent radicalisation from occurring in the first place.

North Caucasus Caucus says that some initiatives already exist in Azerbaijan, but mostly to restrict and control religious practice.

“The Azerbaijani government recognised relatively early that they had issue on their hands,” he told BBC Azeri. “In terms of government efforts, one thing that is interesting is that if all of a sudden Sheik Pashazade or the Caucasus Muslim Board holds an event in a town like Sheki or Tartar it’s likely that something is going on there once you dig deeper.”

“Specifically, authorities sought to bring mosques under greater control by installing cameras inside, replacing Salafi clerics with moderate leaders, forbidding Salafis from taking leadership roles in mosques, banning books promoting extremist views, and increasing control over public television,” wrote the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Counterterrorism in its annual report.

Nevertheless, it warned, “these methods failed to distinguish between persons who incited violence and persons who rejected violence but sympathised with some of the philosophical goals of various political movements.”

Increasingly CVE practitioners repeat such concerns in other countries, including in the U.K. where there is the growing need to empower local communities as well as the victims of terrorism and disillusioned former radicals to tackle the problem instead of solely interdictive and punitive measures implemented by the government.

“We must all rise to the challenge of responding to the corrosive appeal of violent extremism by promoting tolerance, mutual respect, pluralism, inclusion, and cohesion,” declared the OSCE at the launch of United in Countering Violent Extremism, a new campaign among the organisation’s 57 participating states.

At the OSCE-wide Counter-Terrorism Expert Conference held in Vienna earlier this summer, however, while Azerbaijan was present, Georgia was noticeably absent. Although the need to strengthen border controls further was mentioned, the meeting again focused on the need to prevent radicalisation by working with those individuals and communities most at risk.

“A lack of opportunities for formal Islamic education, fragmented Muslim institutions, and a lack of local civil society measures have created strong inroads for more conservative iterations of Islam, including Salafi Islam, to create a substantial ideological presence,” Clifford says. “Local community-driven, bottom-up programs are preferable to large, organised governmental CVE strategies.”

“But, if counter-radicalisation programs are intended only for Muslims, a perception of being “singled out” and receiving unfair treatment can arise.”

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