Security through Sociology: The North caucasus and the global counterinsurgency Paradigm

Studies in Conflict and Terrorism

Volumn 32, Issue 9, 2009, Pages 831-851

  Gerber, Theodore P ^a   Mendelson, Sarah E ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MADISON   (United States)

^b CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 70350287510     PISSN: 1057610X     EISSN: 15210731     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/10576100903116656     Document Type: Article

References (62)

1. Quote from David Kilcullen, Countering Global Insurgency, The Journal of Strategic Studies 28(4) (August 2005), p. 597.
2. See also David Kilcullen, Counter-Insurgency Redux, Survival 48(4) (Winter 2006-07), pp. 111-130;
3. U.S. Army, Counterinsurgency Field Manual, December 2006 (FM 3-24)
4. Bruce Hoffman, From the War on Terror to Global Coun-terinsurgency, Current History, December 2006, available at http://cpass.georgetown.edu/Articles/Hoffman%20Current%20History%20Dec%2 02006.pdf;
5. George Packer, Knowing the Enemy: Can Social Scientists Redefine the 'War on Terror'?, The New Yorker, 18 December 2006.
6. In an encouraging sign, the U.S. Army field manual on counterinsurgency highlights the motto, "learn and adapt," directing soldiers to focus "on efforts to secure the safety and support of the local populace" (p. x). For research on the link of development and security, see for example, Karin von Hippel, "Counter Radicalization Development Assistance," DIIS Working Paper, no. 2006/9
7. Kim Cragin and Peter Chalk, Terrorism and Development: Using Social and Economic Development to Inhibit a Resurgence of Terrorism (RAND, Santa Monica, CA 2003)
8. and The Human Security Report, available at http://www.humansecurityreport.info/component/option,com frontpage/Itemid,1/
9. The State Department's reorganization of foreign assistance during the last few years of the Bush administration under the so-called F Process typifies the top-down nature of priority-setting. See Randall Tobias presentation, CSIS, 5 February 2007, available at http://pcrproject.com/blog/2007/02/05/usaid-administrator-tobias-to-spea k-at-csis/
10. David C. Gompert, Heads We Win: The Cognitive Side of Counterinsurgency, Rand Counterinsurgency Study, Paper 1, 2007.
11. Shawn Teresa Flanigan, Nonprofit Service Provision by Insurgent Organizations: The Cases of Hizballah and the Tamil Tigers, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 31(6) (June 2008), pp. 499-519.
12. Alexus G. Grynkewich, Welfare as Warfare: How Violent Non-State Groups Use Social Services to Attack the State, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 31(4) (April 2008), pp. 350-370.
13. Shawn Teresa Flanigan, Charity as Resistance: Connections between Charity, Contentious Politics and Terror, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 29(7) (October 2006), pp. 641-655.
14. Karin Von Hippel, The Role of Poverty in Radicalization and Terrorism, in Stuart Gottlieb, ed., Debating Terrorism & Counterterrorism (forthcoming 2009, CQ Press, Washington, DC).
15. Kilcullen, Countering Global Insurgency, pp. 5-6.
16. Dennis A. Pluchinsky, Terrorism in the Former Soviet Union: A Primer, a Puzzle, a Prognosis, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 21(2) (March 1998), pp. 119-147.
17. See, for example, Dmitri Medvedev, Speech at the Meeting with Russian Ambassadors and Permanent Representatives to International Organizations, Russian Foreign Ministry, Moscow, 15 July 2008, available at Kremlin.Ru.
18. For details on the spate of terrorist attacks in Russia, see Mark Kramer, "The Perils of Coun-terinsurgency: Russia's War in Chechnya," International Security 29(3) (Winter 2004/05), pp. 5-63.
19. Gordon M. Hahn, Russia's Islamic Threat (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007)
20. John B. Dunlop and Rajan Menon, Chaos in the North Caucasus and Russia's Future, Survival 48(2) (Summer 2006), pp. 97-114.
21. Second author's e-mail correspondence, Natasha Cohen and Reid L. Sawyer, Combating Terrorism Center, West Point, N.Y., 15 August 2008.
22. See also Transcript: Bin Laden Accuses West, 23 April 2006, available at http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/F9694745-060C-419C-8523-2E093B7B8 07D.htm.
23. FBI officials have elicited "sworn statements" from alleged jihadistson support for Chechnya. See Tim Golden, Jihadist or Victim: Ex-Detainee Makes a Case, New York Times, 15 June 2006.
24. Four Russian diplomats were killed in Iraq in June 2006 allegedly because the Russian government failed to respond to the Al Qaeda-related terrorist requests to withdraw from Chechnya. (Reported on 26 June 2006, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle east/5115768.stm)
25. Dunlop and Menon, Chaos in the North Caucasus, p. 100.
26. Dunlop and Menon make several sweeping claims for which this study finds no evidence, including: "local leaders are widely seen as crooked toadies of Moscow"; and "ethnic tensions suppressed by the Soviet system have surfaced"; "together, these conditions in substantial measure, explain radical Islam's appeal" (p. 101).
27. John B. Dunlop and Rajan Menon, Chaos in the North Caucasus and Russia's Future, Survival 48(2) (Summer 2006), p. 102.
28. The fieldwork was conducted between 2 May and 5 June 2006. The initial target sample size was 1,200, but because the plan was over-fulfilled in North Ossetia, the actual sample included 1,238 respondents. The first author will provide details regarding survey procedures upon request.
29. A Russian sociologist reports that it is very hard to interview women in Dagestan without at least one male present, a practice that violates the principle of confidentiality in surveys.
30. See V. Iu. Remmler, Razmyshleniia posle issledovaniia-kommentariy k metodicheskomu otchetu oprosa: Dagestan, Vestnik Obshchestvennogo Mneniia 1(81) (Ianvar'-Fevral' 2006), pp. 72-75.
31. There is a vast literature on this topic and much debate as to which variables are necessary or sufficient drivers of radicalization. See, for example, Marc Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004)
32. Anne Speckhard and Khapta Akhmedova, The Making of a Martyr: Chechen Suicide Terrorism, Journal of Studies in Conflict and Terrorism (2005, Volume 29, No. 5, pp. 429-49).
33. Mia Bloom, Dying to Kill: The Allure of Suicide Terror (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005).
34. The 2004 survey was funded by a grant from the Ford Foundation and included probability samples of the adult population 16 to 64 years old. The present article considers only the 431 males under 40 in the sample. The 2005 survey was funded by grants from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation and the Glaser Progress Foundation and included 16 to 29 year olds. The manuscript considers the 991 male respondents from that sample.
35. See Sergei Markedonov, head of the interethnic relations department of Moscow's Institute of Political and Military Analysis, interviewed by RFE/RL, Analyst Warns of Rising Radical Islam, 5 May 2006, available at http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/05/3a1dac8b-4d1d-488a-bbe0-367 49afa816a.html.
36. See also Dunlop and Menon, Chaos in the North Caucasus.
37. "Kabardino-Balkaria's Young Want to Immigrate to Avoid Harassment," 31 August 2005, RFE/RL, available at http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/08/322ab34b-c4c9-4797-97bb-5f1 f8d17199a.html
38. Paul Goble, "500,000 Russian Muslims are Wahhabis, Moscow Official Says," Window on Eurasia, 8 August 2005.
39. Hahn, Russia's Islamic Threat, p. 1.
40. The authors ran a series of bivariate and multivariate analyses to see if support for a greater political role for Islam correlates with other variables that might be associated with Islamic extremists: anti-American and anti-Russian sentiment, support for the withdrawal of federal forces from Chechnya, and various anti-Western attitudes. In no case was a clear-cut relationship found. Thus, the authors do not think the data provide much evidence of surging support for radical Islam in these republics.
41. One human rights activist in Nalchik claims young people are angry at the "Spiritual Directorate for siding with a government they describe as illegitimate, corrupt, and criminal, and not protecting the interests of Muslims." "Kabardino-Balkaria's Young Want to Immigrate to Avoid Harassment."
42. See Theodore P. Gerber and Sarah E. Mendelson, Casualty Sensitivity in a Post-Soviet Context: Russian Views of the Second Chechen War, 2001-2004, Political Science Quarterly 123(1) (Spring 2008), pp. 39-68.
43. A World Bank survey used this question to indirectly gauge support for radical Islam in Central Asia. The authors thank Johannes Linn for sharing the 2004 "Perceptions of Central Asia" survey instrument.
44. We also coded 22 of the 36 "other" responses to this question as reflecting a view that jihad refers to a struggle against non-Muslims ("war in the name of Allah," "war against infidels," and so on).
45. There are only 16 ethnic Russians in the Dagestan sample, so these figures should not be given too much credence. There are 110 in Kabardino-Balkaria and 79 in North Ossetia.
46. For similar findings, see Gloria La Cava and Sarah Michael, Youth in the Northern Caucasus: From Risk to Opportunity, World Bank Report, November 2006.
47. In August 2006, the Kremlin paid off all the Soviet-era debt to the Paris Club and set aside over $80 billion in a stabilization fund. Peter Finn, "Oil Profits Help Pay Off Soviet-Era Debt," Washington Post, 22 August 2006. By December 2008, oil prices had fallen to $40 a barrel, from a July 2008 high of $147.
48. See Associated Press, Ahead of the Bell: Analyst Says Buy Oil Stocks Now, 9 December 2009, available at http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2008/12/09/ap5797936.html
49. Figure 1 omits three categories that fewer than 2% identified as a top concern: conflict among leaders, limits on civil rights and democratic freedoms, and "other."
50. Theodore P. Gerber and Sarah E. Mendelson. "Police Violence and Corruption in Russia: A Case of Predatory Policing?" Law and Society Review 42(1) (2008), pp. 1-44.
51. Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, Kremlin Rising: Vladimir Putin's Russia and the End of Revolution (New York: Scribner, 2005), p. 190.
52. UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Russian Federation, Inter-Agency Transitional Workplan for the North Caucasus, 2007, p. 5.
53. Flanigan, Nonprofit Service Provision.
54. Robert Bruce Ware, Enver Kisriev, Werner J. Patzelt, and Ute Roericht, Stability in the Caucasus: The Perspective from Dagestan, Problems of Post-Communism50(2) (March-April 2003), pp. 12-23.
55. Bruce Hoffman, "Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq," Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 29(2) (March 2006), pp. 103-121.
56. La Cava and Michael, Youth in the North Caucasus.
57. Andrei Smirnov, "Russia Seeks U.S., Iranian Help To Settle North Caucasus Conflicts," Eurasia Daily Monitor 3(229) (12 December 2006).
58. speculates that the Russian government is trying to get Shi'ite investment in the region to counter radical Sunni tendencies.
59. U.S. Interested in Russian Antiterrorism Experience, RIA Novesti, 19 March 2007.
60. CSIS Meeting, Social Conditions and Instability in the North Caucasus, Co-sponsored with the Robert Bosch Stiftung, Berlin, 27-29 October 2006.
61. United Nations Office in the Russian Federation, "Note for the File" on the Launch of the 2007 Inter-Agency Workplan, 7 December 2006.
62. Statement of Chairman Tom Lantos at Full Committee Hearing, Foreign Assistance Reform, 8 March 2007, available at http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/press display.asp?id=315