Tatarstan and Salafi Propaganda
Since the 1990s Tatarstan has become the primary focus of Salafi propaganda. In 1993, Taiba, a Saudi Arabian charity organization, signed an agreement with the newly formed Yoldyz Ma-
drassa at a mosque in Naberezhnye Chelny. In 1999, this madrassa became the focus of attention because one of its graduates was among the suspects in the terrorist attacks in Moscow. It was later proven that students from Yoldyz had also been associated with the North Caucasus Islamist underground. In October 1999, Airat Vakhitov, a graduate of Yoldyz who became imam-khatib of the central mosque in Naberezhnye Chelny, was arrested for being linked to illegal armed groups.
After a special investigation provided by the Russian Council of Muftis in 1999–2000, this madras-sa was closed and then reorganized as an institution for the religious education of women. To this day, however, Naberezhnye Chelny remains one of the focal points for the Salafis in Tatarstan.
In 1999 there were an estimated 200 other Salafi groups in Kukmor and approximately 50 in Neftekamsk, as well as approximately 150 individual Salafi groups in both Vyatka Glades (Vyatskie Polyany) and Almetyevsk. In the abandoned village of Ogryzskiy District, the Salafis attempted to create a “Special Islamic Territory” similar to ones that had been set up in the villages of Karamak-hi, Chabanmakhi, and Kadar in the Buinaksk district of Dagestan in 1998. This attempt was quick-ly suppressed, but since that time, the areas in Tatarstan mentioned above have been frequently connected with Salafi activity. In March 2004, seven so-called Russian Talibs who had been seized in Afghanistan in 2002 and detained in the American prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, arrived in Russia. Among them there were three individuals from the VFD, specifically Tatarstan and Bash-khortostan.59The trial against them ended with their acquittal. A year later, Timur Ishmuratovand Ravil Gumarov, two of the former “Russian Talibs” were arrested on charges of orchestrating a gas pipeline explosion in Bugulma, Tatarstan.
The trial of this so-called Islamic Jamaat acting in Tatarstan and the neighboring regions in 2001–2004 resonated within the republic in particular and throughout Russia as a whole. This conspiratorial structure was implicated in 30 separate criminal acts, including nine murders. Some members of the group were trained in terrorist camps in the North Caucasus and maintained ties with Islamist groups of that region, including the United Caucasus Mujahideen Shura and the Congress of Ichkeria and Dagestan Peoples. According to o_cial accounts, Islamic Jamaat planned to destabilize the situation in Tatarstan on the eve of the 1000th anniversary of Kazan, with their plans including hostage taking, the murder of “infidels,” and attacks on public festival places. The investigation concluded that jamaat members were planning in 2007–2008 to organize series of explosions on some water intakes as well as against some industrial giants like KAMAZ in Naber-ezhnye Chelny, Nizhnekamskneftekhim in Nizhnekamsk, and the helicopter plant in Kazan; in
the future they intended to create an Islamic state in the Volga region with access to the borders of Central Asia and the North Caucasus.
59. The detainees included two persons from Kabardino-Balkaria, Ruslan Odizhev and Rasul Kudayev; one from Tatarstan, Ayrat Vakhitov; two from Bashkhortostan, Ravil Gumarov and Shamil’ Hajiyev; one from Chelyabinsk, Rustam Akhmyarov, and one from Tyumen’, Timur Ishmuradov. Kudayev was arrested soon after a raid on a large group of militants in Nalchik, Kabardino-Balkaria, on October 13, 2005.
18 |the rise of radical and nonofficial islamic groups in russia’s volga region
The first trial of the Islamic Jamaat took place in 2006 and the second in 2007; on January 6, 2009, the sentence was handed down. Some observers, who emphasized the disproportionate reac-tion of the FSB and law-enforcement structures, were skeptical of the ambitious goals and resourc-es of this jamaat that the o_cial investigation had claimed. Journalist Irina Borogan described the organization as more “garage and basement Islam” than politicized jihadism. Still, she does not deny that its members and leaders participate in illegal activities, including attending Caucasus training camps.60
Indeed, the cooperation between Salafis and organized criminal groups bears scrutiny. The po-litical aims and goals of these ties are not initially evident, but such ties do have a significant social impact. In January 2012, Asgat Safarov, then the minister of the interior for Tartarstan, said while speaking to his subordinates: “We are concerned about the degree of Islamization of organized criminal groups as well as the influence they have begun to wield. Government and law enforce-ment will have to take it into serious account.”61These groups interpret even their criminal activi-ties, such as the “protection racket” directed at local entrepreneurs, extortion, and the weaning of property from “infidels,” through the prism of shari’a norms. In early 2012, Salafi groups with links to organized crime were found to be active in Kazan, Naberezhnye Chelny, Nizhnekamsk, Alm-etyevsk, and Mendeleevsk.
The active “partnership” between Salafis and the criminal world emerged even in the con-text of the penal system, forcing the authorities to be more proactive. In 2011, the TSBM and the republican board of the Federal Penitentiary Service (FPS) signed a special treaty, as a result of which three full-time employees from the TSBM began cooperating with the FPS. Nevertheless, the problem remains unresolved; in March 2012, an underground network of Salafis was discov-ered in one of the prisons in the Ulyanovsk region.
In the early 2000s, Salafi ideology began to exert more influence on nationalist organizations, such as the ATPC. By this time, this nationalist movement, which had been popular in the early 1990s, had lost its former influence and, to a large degree, had become a marginal force. In 2001, ATPC representative Fanis Shaikhutdinov was arrested for distributing leaflets that contained a letter from a terrorist, Shamil Basayev, addressed to Mufti Talgat Tadzhuddin calling on him to support anti-Russian jihad. In 2010 Fauziya Bairamova, “the Grandmother of Tatar national sepa-ratism,” who was a constant, radical supporter of national independence for Tatarstan, received a suspended sentence for the publication of a text calling for the republic’s secession from Russia. Recently, in her speeches and comments, the “Islamic issue” has begun to resonate much more clearly than before.
There are also some facts that indicate partial support for the radicals by o_cials on different levels, as well as evidence of some cases of crypto-Salafi activity in which Muslim clerics refuse to perform ceremonies corresponding to “traditional” or “Tatar Islam.” In 2010 in Nizhnekamsk, a
60. Borogan I. Jamaat v dva hoda [Jamaat in two moves], http://www.agentura.ru/press/about/ jointprojects/novgaz/jamaat2hoda/. The term “garage and basement Islam” originated in France; Nicolas Sarkozy, when minister of interior, said, “What we should be afraid of is Islam gone astray, garage Islam, basement Islam, underground Islam.” See “France Creates Muslim Council,” BBC News, December 20, 2002, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2593623.stm. This term has since been applied to spontaneous nono_cial Islam having extremist expressions.
61. See “V Tatarstane budut primenyat’ zhestkie mery k banditsko-salafitskim gruppirovkam” [Strict measures will be applied to the bandit-Salafi groups in Tatarstan], Interfax News Agency, January, 25, 2012, http://www.interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=43924.
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