The sense in which Islam forms a world ideological system has deepened and become more actual as the means of communication have developed.

Michael Gilsenan^[1]

One does not often hear of a state whose formation is first announced on the Internet. Even more rarely, does one hear of a state that exists almost exclusively in cyberspace. This paper will discuss one such virtual state – the “Caucasus Emirate” that was established by a group of mujahideen of the Northern Caucasus on October 31, 2007. On that day, its founders, who had waged a bloody war against the Russian federal state for almost fifteen years, declared that the Emirate would supersede the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria that itself had theretofore been almost as virtual as its newly declared successor. The abolition of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria and the creation of the Caucasus-wide Islamic state (“emirate”)^[2] were officiated by Mr. Dokku Umarov. Born in 1964 and trained as a construction engineer at the Petroleum Institute in Grozny under Soviet rule, Umarov joined the Chechen struggle for independence from Russia in 1994. In his own words, he was moved by patriotic sentiment and indignation over the winter 1994 Russian invasion of his native land on the orders of President Yeltsin.^[3] Umarov served as head of the Chechen Security Council under late President Maskhadov and, following the reoccupation of Chechnya by Russian federal forces in the fall of 1999, was appointed commander of the Southwestern Front of Chechen resistance. After the successive deaths at the hands of Russian special forces of two presidents of the unrecognized Chechen Republic of Ichkeria in 2005 and 2006, Vice-president Dokka Umarov was proclaimed its fifth president in June 2006. He held that office for a little more than a year only to announce the abolition of his state and the establishment of the Caucasus Emirate with himself as “Emir (commander in chief) of all Caucasus mujahideen.” In this new capacity, Umarov asserted himself as the only legitimate leader of the Caucasus jihad.^[4] According to the Declaration of the Caucasus Emirate, his jurisdiction now extends beyond the confines of the Caucasus proper to encompass all Muslims oppressed and occupied by “Rusnya” (a derogatory term for Russia used by the Caucasus mujahideen). According to Umarov, he plans to extend his sway to the lands of the Krasnodar and Stavropol’ regions (krais), the Volga region, and Siberia, in essence, any “Muslim” land under infidel Russian rule.^[5]

“Think, says Umarov, addressing his followers in a virtual communiqué, to what extent we have angered Allah, if He sent down upon us these people, the most despicable and the lowest even among kuffar^[6] (unbelievers). Our glorious forefathers waged Jihad against these enemies, and today Allah is testing our generation, as He tested our fathers. Everything repeats [itself]. Jihad exposes faith and infidelity. Today, as in former times, people [are] divided into Mujahideen, hypocrites and apostates.^[7] I am not talking about native kuffar,^[8] they are but exposed [i.e., blatant] falsehood and filth with a human appearance. They are dogs, dogs of Hell, whom Allah sends down upon Muslims when Muslims move away from their Religion.”^[9]

After stating who his enemies are, Umarov proceeds to outline the positive agenda to be implemented by his Emirate:

“We, the Mujahideen, went out to fight against the infidels not for the sake of fighting, but to restore the Sharia(t) of Allah in our land. … It means I, the Amir of [the] Mujahideen, reject everything associated with Taghut (idolatry). I reject all kafir laws established in the world. I reject all laws and systems established by infidels in the lands of the Caucasus. I reject and declare outlawed all names used by infidels to divide Muslims. I declare outlawed ethnic, territorial, and colonial zones carrying names of “North Caucasian republics,” “Trans-Caucasian republics” and such like.”

To replace these “infidel” geographical labels, the emir introduces a new administrative unit, vilayet, which he apparently borrowed from the administrative division of the Ottoman Empire before its dissolution in 1924. Umarov divides the lands of the Caucasus Emirate into six or seven vilayets that more or less correspond to the current division of the Northern Caucasus into the republics of Dagestan, Chechnya, Ingushetia, Karachaevo-Cherkessia, Kabardino-Balkaria, North Ossetia-Alania, and Adygeia. As mentioned, his long-term goal is to reconquer the now predominantly Slavic areas of the Krasnodar Krai and Stavropol’ Krai, the Volga region, and so on. At the same time, Umarov is reluctant to define unequivocally the borders of his nascent state, because, in his words,

“Firstly, [the] Caucasus is occupied by kuffar and apostates and is Dar al-Harb, the territory of war, and our nearest [i.e., immediate] task is to make [the] Caucasus Dar as-Salam, establishing the Sharia(t) and expelling the kuffar. Secondly, after expelling the kuffar we must reconquer all historical lands of Muslims, and these borders are beyond the boundaries of the Caucasus.”^[10]

Thus, Umarov’s ultimate goal is to create an Islamic commonwealth that transcends the borders of any one geographical locale within the Russian Federation and extends into an infinite spatial expanse that, according to Umarov, was once lost to Islam and should be returned to the Muslim community at some indefinite point in the future. This, no doubt, is an ambitious program that some skeptics are likely to dismiss as a sheer fantasy. Anticipating the objections of such skeptical individuals, whom he identifies as “educated and uneducated hypocrites,” Umarov insists that he is not establishing “an abstract, virtual state,” but rather one that “is more real than all artificial colonial zones existing today.” The “reality” of the Caucasus Emirate, according to Umarov, is assured by the methodical and relentless prosecution of an all-out jihad against the “infidel” Russian state with a view to installing the Sharia(t) as the sole law of the land.
Umarov’s “Declaration” contains a veiled threat to those who under various pretexts seek to evade and avoid taking part in the jihad, which, in his words, amounts to a grave violation of the will of God as manifested in the Qur’an and the Sunna of the Prophet. Even more important, the emir boldly redefines the goals of the Caucasus jihad. It is no longer a national struggle for independence from Russia waged by Chechens or other ethnic groups/nationalities in the region, namely Dagestanis, Ingushes, Kabardians, Balkarians, Karachais, Adyghes (Circassians), and so on. Rather, the jihad and the new state based on it are part and parcel of the universal confrontation between Islam and its enemies worldwide. Says Umarov:

“We are an inseparable part of the Islamic Ummah. I am saddened by the position of those Muslims who declare as their enemies only those kuffar who attacked them directly. And at the same time, they seek support and sympathy from other kuffar, forgetting that all infidels are one nation. Today in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia [and] Palestine our brothers are fighting. Those, who have attacked Muslims wherever they are, are our enemies, [our] common enemies. Our enemy is not Rusnya only, but also America, England, Israel and anyone who wages war against Islam and Muslims.^[11] And they are our enemies because they are the enemies of Allah.”^[12]

The reference to the Muslims misguidedly seeking the help of one group of infidels against the other is to Bosnia’s leaders who are thus implicitly accused of accepting the military support of the United States and European powers in their struggle against the orthodox Serbs.^[13] Interestingly, the mention of the Western powers and Israel was edited out in the later renditions of the “Declaration,” which indicates that at least some leaders of the new state had realized that they may have gone too far in advertising their anti-Western sentiments. One of them, Anzor Astemirov, the commander of Islamic guerillas in the republic of Kabardino-Balkaria and more recently also head of the Sharia(t) courts of the Caucasus Emirate (aka its chief qadi), insisted that the United States has nothing to fear at this stage and even asked for American support in his fight against the “Russian aggression.”^[14] This belated caveat should be taken with a grain of salt because, in addressing the events leading up to the declaration of the Emirate, Astemirov indicated that the only reason the West would support an Islamic movement is to assert its own dominion over the world. According to Astemirov, the West has simply used various Muslim groups and states as pawns in its “dirty game.”^[15] In the case of the Muslim resistance to Russian dominion over the Caucasus, the goal of the Western powers, in Astemirov’s view, is to weaken Russia, not to empower its Muslims.
The anti-Western message of the “Declaration” was reiterated by forty-eight-year-old Movladi Udugov, the former minister of information of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, who is widely believed to be the mastermind behind the “Declaration.”^[16] It was further reaffirmed by Dokku Umarov in his May 2008 interview aimed at clarifying the political and religious positions of the Emirate’s leadership.^[17] We shall revisit this issue later.
It should be pointed out that despite the vociferous protests of the Chechen foreign minister in exile Akhmet Zaka(y)ev (who currently resides in London) and some other secular-minded Chechen advocates of Chechnya’s independence residing in the West, the Middle East and Russia, the majority of Chechen field commanders on the ground accepted Umarov’s “Declaration of the Caucasus Emirate.” Their acceptance amounts to their de facto recognition of Umarov as their commander in chief in the ongoing Islamist jihad against the Russian government and its local backers.^[18] No less, or perhaps even more important, Umarov’s claims have been recognized by the field commanders of mujahideen units in the neighboring republics of the Northern Caucasus some of whom were appointed to high positions in the governing structures of the Emirate (such as the aforementioned Kabardian field commander Anzor Astemirov, who assumed the post of the chief Islamic judge (qadi) of the Emirate).^[19] Some Chechen field commanders originally opposed to the creation of “a mythical new state in all of the Caucasus” have eventually come around, leaving Zakaev and other secular-minded Chechen leaders in the position of generals without an army.^[20]
Zakaev’s vocal protests that the abolition of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria amounts to the ultimate betrayal of the one-and-a-half-decade-old Chechen struggle for independence have fallen on deaf ears. Furthermore, the leaders of the “emiratchiks,”^[21] as they are dubbed by their secular-minded opponents, hastened to remove their detractors from their largely symbolic posts. Most notably, Zakaev himself has lost his post as foreign minister (in exile) of the now-defunct Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. Other prominent Chechen “naysayers,” such as the popular bard Timur Mutsura(y)ev, have been denounced as “sellouts” and potential collaborators with President Ramzan Kadyrov’s pro-Russian regime in Chechnya.^[22]
In the Western media, the emergence of an Islamist emirate in the Caucasus was greeted with apprehension as a potential ally of al-Qa‘ida and a magnet for global jihadists of all stripes.^[23] The same is largely true of the Russian media and analytical publications, although some Russian observers have exhibited a more nuanced understanding of the phenomenon at hand than their Western counterparts.^[24]
In his lengthy defense of the “Declaration” that appeared about a month after its first publication on the Internet (November 28, 2007), Udugov provides a detailed justification of the radical shift in the strategy and goals of the anti-Russian resistance movement in the Northern Caucasus. Being the Emirate’s most detailed manifesto so far,^[25] it merits a closer look.
Udugov begins by stridently denouncing Chechen critics of the Emirate, focusing on the figure of the “deposed” foreign minister Akhmad Zakaev, whom he dismisses as a sellout and potential collaborator with Kadyrov’s “apostate” regime.^[26] Looking on the bright side, Udugov views the rift within the Chechen rebel leadership as a timely and healthy separation between the mujahideen and “the alien elements” of the Chechen resistance movement that, in his words, “harbor hatred toward Islam and the Sharia(t)” under the guise of supporting the Chechen jihad.^[27] The loud bemoaning of the demise of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria by “the opponents of the Sharia(t)” is, according to Udugov, not only misguided but also outright erroneous. It ignores the fact that the “Declaration of the Caucasus Emirate” has simply restored the Sharia(t) states of Chechnya and the Northern Caucasus as a whole that were established in the eighteenth–early twentieth centuries under such prominent leaders of the Caucasus jihad as Shaykh Mansur Ushurma (d. 1791), Imam Shamil (d. 1871), and Shaykh Uzun Hajji (d. 1920).^[28]
To reiterate, Udugov energetically denies that there is any split within the ranks of the Chechen resistance movement. Rather, he describes the recent developments in Chechnya and the Northern Caucasus as a healthy process of the purification of the jihadist movement from alien anti-Muslim and secular elements. This process, in Udugov’s opinion, will result in the eventual liberation of the Muslims of the Caucasus from “chimeras and false fears” of the past decades. According to Udugov, the anti-Islamic elements of the Chechen resistance movement that reside in Europe (Udugov mockingly dubs them “Euro-Chechens”) are but the ideological bedfellows of the pro-Moscow “apostates,” namely, Kadyrov and his “henchmen.” In the words of Udugov,

“In London, Moscow and in occupied Johar (Grozny) these people [namely, the opponents of the Emirate] talk about the same things, that is, “Wahhabism,” “al-Qa‘ida,” and “international terrorism.” They thus use the same language, the same words. Sooner or later they will unite. It does not matter under what pretext this unification will take place, because they have a common enemy… – the muhajideen and the Islamic state.”^[29]

Udugov pins his hopes on the new generation of devout Muslims who genuinely believe in the basic precepts of Islam and the Sharia(t) and who refuse to utilize them as simple political and rhetorical tools, which, in his view, is exactly what the “Euro-Chechens” have routinely been doing. When asked about the exact character of the new state, Udugov flatly rejects all Western forms of government, such as democracy, communism, monarchy, totalitarianism, and so on, as being contrary to Islam. He argues that every state is based on an ideology, the rest being derivative. Since there is only one true ideology – Islam – the state can be either Islamic or pagan (idolatrous). Quoting a prophetic hadith, he predicts the eventual cessation of divisions within the worldwide Muslim community followed by the rise of a rightly guided caliphate. These goals can only be achieved by a consistent and uncompromising fulfillment of divine commands as enshrined in the Qur’an and the Prophet’s Custom (sunna). Using examples from the life of the first Muslim community in Medina (this “gold standard” of Salafism of all stripes), Udugov energetically denies the legitimacy and validity of tactical concessions to Russia and/or the West, which is the course advocated by the exiled “Euro-Chechens.”
On the practical plane, Udugov’s position effectively means an outright rejection of international diplomacy, that is, having recourse to any international forums and institutions, such as the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the International Criminal Court, and so on.^[30] In line with this position, Udugov derides the alleged diplomatic achievements of the “Euro-Chechen” exiles in Europe and the United States as a dangerous self-delusion. In his words, “seeking the confirmation of our legitimacy from our enemies” is ridiculous, because “one cannot complain to one group of kafirs about [the misdeeds] of the other.”^[31] Attempts by the secular-minded “Euro-Chechen” leaders to please the Western governments and public at large by removing any mention of the Sharia(t) and Islamic state from their political programs are wrongheaded and futile. The “Euro-Chechens” themselves might view this as a clever tactical stratagem, but it is, in Udugov’s view, nothing short of a shameful betrayal of Islam. Udugov then points out the failure of similar compromises between Islamist movements and secular rulers in Nasser’s Egypt, in King Husayn’s Jordan, in Karimov’s Uzbekistan, and in Ataturk’s Turkey. Only an uncompromising, consistent faithfulness to Islamic values and the Sharia(t), can in his view, guarantee the Muslim community (umma) genuine freedom and independence from Western control. This goal, he insists emphatically, can only be achieved by a relentless prosecution of jihad and, if necessary, dying “in the path of God.” “It is,” says Udugov, “time for us to decide whether we should be praying in the direction of Strasbourg or Mecca.”^[32] For him, “Islam is indeed a religion of peace, but only when it is in power.”^[33]
The new generation of Muslims, according to Udugov, should free themselves from the empty fantasies about “the language of diplomacy” or “international law” that are still being entertained by the older generation of Chechen leaders in their naive belief in Western ideals and institutions. The events of recent decades, he argues, have proved his secularist opponents dead wrong. The West and Russia have always regarded Islam and Muslims as their enemies, and this attitude is not about to change. “We should,” concludes Udugov, “act according to the norms of the Sharia(t), and rely not on the [international] public opinion or the good will of the kafirs, but on Allah alone.”^[34] “There is no plurality of religions, there are only two faiths – Islam and paganism. Likewise, there is no plurality of types of statehood. There are only two types of states – a state that is based on the sovereignty of God, and a state that rests on the sovereignty of Taghut (namely, any pagan, idolatrous law) that can manifest itself in different forms from dictatorship to democracy.”^[35]
The principal points of Udugov’s creed are echoed in the pronouncements of the recently killed rebel amir of Kabarda, Balkaria, and Karachai Anzor Astemirov, who maintained his own Web site (http://www.islamdin.com/).^[36] Like Udugov, Astemirov rejects “democratic system of government and the pagan convictions and teachings associated with it.” Defending the establishment of the Caucasus Emirate against its secular-minded critics, Astemirov argues that

“Human rights, international law, referendum, freedom of speech and belief, the expression of the will of the people – all these notions are incompatible with our religion and have absolutely nothing to do with the mujahideen of the Caucasus.”^[37]

Astemirov then proceeds to add a moral and ethical dimension to the debate between the Islamists and their secular-minded liberal opponents, saying:

“[All] sensible people see the [detrimental] results of permissiveness and Western pop culture. Freedom of belief to which the kafirs are calling is but freedom to be an atheist. From a very early age our children are being encouraged towards lechery and shamelessness; their schools impose upon them democracy, Christianity, Darwinism and other destructive doctrines. The least they try to teach Muslims is to be tolerant of evil and unbelief.”^[38]

There is nothing particularly new about the ideas of Udugov and Astemirov. They can be traced back to the anti-Western, Salafi creed of the Egyptian writer Sayyid Qutb (executed in 1966) and his followers across the Muslim world, on the one hand, and the puritanical teachings of the conservative Arabian reformer Muhammad Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab (d. 1791), on the other. The influence of the former is evident in Udugov’s and Astemirov’s common rejection as “pagan” or “idolatrous” of Western social, cultural, and political values and institutions and in their unanimous condemnation of any society not governed by the Sharia(t) as being in a state of pre-Islamic “ignorance” (jahiliyya). The Wahhabi influence comes to the fore in the ubiquitous use by Udugov and Astemirov of such typical Wahhabi notions as kufr al-tawhid (“infidelity [resulting from abandonment of] the principle of monotheism”), kufr al-wala’ (“infidelity [caused by] associating with infidels”), al-wala’ wa ’l-bara’ (“association [with fellow monotheists] and dissociation [from infidels and apostates]”), shirk (“polytheism”), bid‘a (“heretical innovation [in religion]”), and so on. Both Sayyid Qutb and Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab considered jihad to be the only effective remedy for the evils of ungodly existence into which their respective societies had sunk. On this issue, Udugov and Astemirov are in full agreement with their Salafi predecessors.
What concerns us here are the ways in which these familiar Salafi ideas and the jihadist ideology of the Caucasus Emirate in particular are packaged and disseminated via the Internet media. What does the wide employment of the new interactive communication technology tell us about the semivirtual polity launched by Umarov with the stroke of a pen? How does the Emirate’s proclamation and ongoing presence in cyberspace contribute to our understanding of the recent evolution of Islamist/Salafi ideology in various local contexts? How do such movements conceive themselves and how do they want to project their image to the outside world?
To answer these questions, I would like to briefly examine the contents of the Emirate’s principal Web site kavkazcenter.com, whereupon I will submit my tentative conclusions about the geopolitical implications of the cyber-jihad waged by Umarov, Udugov, Astemirov, and their comrades in arms. One reason I have chosen to focus on this Internet forum is that some Western commentators consider it one of the earliest “overtly jihadi website[s].”^[39] It is also credited with pioneering the use of video clips portraying attacks of mujahideen as a propaganda and recruitment tool.^[40]
Established already in 1999, it is described by a major Western expert on cyber-jihad as “a regularly updated, well-designed site, which is fully searchable.”^[41] No less important, it “prominently links” to numerous other Islamic Web sites and is, in turn, featured on major Islamist Internet forums, such as the Algerian Front Islamique du Salut (FIS), Azzam.com, Islam Q@A, and various religio-political sites in South and Southeast Asia.^[42] Kavkazcenter.com has distinguished itself as a staunch supporter of the Palestinian resistance movement and received accolades from some radical Palestinian groups in the aftermath of some martyrdom operations conducted by Chechen and Ingush suicide squads.^[43] The remarkable international prominence and longevity of kavkazcenter.com make this forum worthy of a closer look.
I would like to begin by saying a few words about the layout of the Web site. On its top the visitor sees the portraits of the eleven field commanders of the Caucasus mujahideen who hail from different republics of the Northern Caucasus and represent major regional branches of the resistance movement under Umarov’s command. Some of them are no longer alive (such as, for example, the aforementioned amir Astemirov of Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachai, the Egyptian Arab amir Sayf [al-]Islam^[44] and the Dagestani amir nicknamed al-Bara’), a few others hide their faces to avoid being identified by federal security forces. The images of the fallen amirs are periodically replaced by those of their successors.
The site’s content is available in Russian, Ukrainian, Turkish, Arabic, and English – a good indication of its target audiences. The Russian version of the site is updated daily and contains information that is often missing, abbreviated, or edited out on the other language sites. Each language site is designed to cater to the cultural and religious sensitivities of the target audience without, however, compromising the Emirate’s overall ideological message. The Russian-language site is occasionally shut down by hackers who may or may not have connection to the Russian Security Service.
The site contains numerous rubrics, links, and chat rooms, such as “Opinions,” “Literature,” “Photographs,” “Interviews,” “Analysis,” “History,” and so on. On its home page one can watch video clips featuring interviews with amirs of the mujahideen, a portrait gallery of martyrs, and a running band with images of “Russian atrocities” in Chechnya and Ingushetia. There are occasional video clips deemed to critically portray or ridicule Kadyrov’s regime^[45] in Chechnya. Overall, the primary theme of the site is the global jihad that Muslims are waging against their infidel oppressors or their apostate supporters. This cardinal theme determines the site’s focus on the hotbeds of conflict between Muslim mujahideen and their adversaries, such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and Kashmir, the Philippines, Somalia, the Indonesian Archipelago, Eastern Turkestan/Xinjiang, and Palestine. Special attention is given to the jihad in Afghanistan with the Taliban depicted as the avant-garde of valiant defenders of Islam against the infidel Western aggressors and their local clients. A regular visitor to the Web site gains the impression of a permanent life-and-death struggle between the Muslim mujahideen and their enemies all over the world. The site administrators depict the former as fearless warriors fighting against great odds, yet managing to score one victory after another. Their opponents, on the other hand, are portrayed as agents of Satan bent on subjugating the Muslims to their ungodly rule and robbing Muslim countries of their wealth. Interestingly, natural and man-made disasters such as the Sayano–Shushenskaya hydroelectric power station catastrophe in August 2009 or the catastrophic explosion at the city of Ulyanovsk ammunition depot in November 2009 are attributed to either a North Caucasus suicide squad or some shadowy group of “Russian mujahideen” allegedly acting in league with their North Caucasus comrades.^[46] Despite their blatant improbability, reports such as these are deemed to accentuate the ability of the mujahideen to attack targets far outside their immediate theater of operations and thus to strike terror in the hearts of ordinary Russians. When the cause of an accident cannot be credibly attributed to a mujahid unit, the wrath of God is invoked^[47] explicitly or implicitly, in much the same way as the 2004 tsunami and Hurricane Katrina are described by some English-language jihadi Web sites as acts of God that “strike the beaches of debauchery, nudism, and prostitution.”^[48]
A permanent rubric of kavkazcenter.com is devoted to the progressive decay and perversity of the Russian state, the unscrupulousness, ruthlessness, and immorality of its rulers and the no-less-revolting depravity and moral turpitude of their subjects.^[49] The level of anti-Russian hatred is staggering, despite the occasional attempts by the Web-site administrators to separate ordinary Russians from their unscrupulous and despotic rulers. The only good Russians are those who have dared to embrace Islam. Some of them are frequent contributors to the Web site, who invariably voice their disgust at Russia’s former and current crimes against humanity and Muslims in particular. They routinely denounce Russian religion, history, and culture as ungodly, simultaneously servile and authoritarian, and cowardly to boot – in short, abominable by any human standard. The incurable meanness of the Russian people is juxtaposed with the highly moral, valiant, and altruistic ethos of the Caucasus Muslims exemplified by the Emirate’s mujahideen. Bad as it is, Russia is by no means the only anti-Muslim country. Also frequently mentioned are instances of persecution and hate crimes against Muslims in the United States, China, India, and Europe. Finally, the administrators of the site continually report the horrendous atrocities allegedly committed against “true Muslims” by the “ungodly” rulers of such “nominally Muslim” countries as Egypt, Algeria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Indonesia, Pakistan, and so on. Such reportage is designed to create the virtual culture of empathy for the suffering of Muslims the world over, while at the same time projecting “the image … of a global, and globalized, [jihadi] campaign.”^[50]
In line with the Emirate’s ideological premises outlined above, its leaders starkly divide the whole world into the faithful followers of the Sharia(t) and the adherents of man-made, “pagan” laws and customs (Taghut), who are identified as “infidels” (Arabic kafirs or kuffar). Those Muslims who live by these customs and enforce these laws are condemned as murtads,^[51] namely, “apostates,” who, under the Sharia(t) code, are subject to capital punishment. For the supporters of the Emirate, the pro-Russian president Ramzan Kadyrov of Chechnya and his officials are the prime embodiments of the most heinous type of “apostasy.” Those Muslims who continue to observe basic Islamic rites, but refuse to join the ranks of the mujahideen or dare to criticize them are labeled munafiqs^[52] or “hypocrites.”
The borderline between the murtads and the munafiqs is rather blurred. On some occasions, the munafiqs are described as “children of the Devil,” who are not only blind and stupid but also morally depraved.^[53] Their qibla (direction of prayer) is Moscow’s Kremlin; they violate every conceivable Islamic prohibition, for instance, by “sipping vodka like water” while celebrating Russia’s “pagan holidays,” then having fistfights with their drug-addict sons.^[54] Their only difference from the “apostates” appears to be that they do not actively support or participate in the “abominations” of the ruling clique of apostates. Thus, while Chechnya’s President Kadyrov is an out-and-out apostate because he believes in “the trinity of the Sharia(t), tariqa(t) and the Russian constitution” and celebrates the “pagan holiday of New Year” dressed as “Father Frost,”^[55] the secularized Euro-Chechens of the diaspora with Zakaev as their spokesman are “merely” hypocrites due to their wrongheaded faith in “international laws, the UN Charter, and all manner [of similar] aberrations” (prochie nenormal’nosti).^[56] It appears that the only distinction between Kadyrov and Zakaev is that the latter does not actively cooperate with the infidel Russian state led by Putin.^[57] Nevertheless, Zakaev’s attempts to place the secular Chechen constitution above the Qur’an effectively put him outside the pale of true Islam and into the category of “false prophets.”^[58] Nevertheless, despite a slight difference in their respective levels of delusion and perfidy, both murtads and munafiqs are consistently dissociated from the true Muslim monotheists represented by the Emirate’s mujahideen.
The ideologists of the Emirate tend to see traces of the pagan Taghut lurking everywhere: in the celebrations by Muslim families of New Year and other Russian state holidays as well as birthdays of their members. Even Muslim athletes’ participation in the Olympic Games is condemned due to the games’ pagan origins. Despite their honorable status as the “custodians of the Two [Muslim] Sanctuaries,”^[59] the rulers of Saudi Arabia do not escape the site administrators’ ire, because they allow their national team to circumambulate (tawaf) the “sacred” Olympic fire at the opening of the Olympiad.^[60] This practice is condemned as a blameworthy innovation and a conscious or unconscious concession to the pagan tradition of ancient Greece. No wonder therefore that in one of the Web site’s postings the Saudi ruling family is branded as “heads of hypocrisy.”^[61]
However, it is Sufi Islam and its local leaders (shaykhs and ustadhs) that bear the brunt of the Emirate’s righteous indignation. Its ideologists view Sufism as the most insidious manifestation of the corruptive, ungodly forces of the pagan Taghut. The Qadiri Sufi dance performed collectively by members of Chechen and Ingush Sufi communities is ridiculed as a pagan worship imitating “monkey-play.” The medieval Sufi doctrine of the unity of all being^[62] is condemned as shirk and kufr, namely, “polytheism” and “unbelief,” while Sufi masters are dismissed as manipulative and unscrupulous charlatans. This intolerant attitude toward Sufism is hardly surprising given the fact that President Kadyrov has made a concerted effort to position Sufism as an ideological alternative to the politically active Salafi interpretations of Islam that he has routinely denounced as “Wahhabism,” “terrorism,” or “extremism.” The cozy relations between the local Sufi groups and the ruling elites of Dagestan and other republics of the Northern Caucasus^[63] have not been lost on the leaders of the Emirate, rendering their vituperations against Sufi beliefs and practices ever more ferocious. The following satirical verses are typical of their deeply ingrained resentment of things Sufi:

“Watch how the Sufi disciples have grown blind and how fear has turned them into women!
They are but moral cripples, who are being led astray by blind men [who claim to possess] eyesight.
These miserable wretches dream of nothing but being pussycats of their fraudulent Sufi masters (shaykhs)!
They [Sufi disciples] spread gossip, like old women, while also being greedy, and their masters are despicable agents and commissars of Satan.
They are weaving cozy nooks for themselves from the words of God, then, like ostriches hide their heads in the sand!
Fed with a fatty broth, they are like a hoard of dirty pigs; they fawn before the [Russian] kafirs and are slaves of the butchers of Kremlin!”^[64]

In short, the Sufis are invariably portrayed as the complete antipodes of the Emirate’s mujahideen and the “pure” Islam they claim to embody. They are, in the words of a Russian contributor to the islamdin.com Web site, a pack of “dogs of Hell” in the service of the kafirs and murtads. Intolerant of any dissent, they are always eager to attack and “bite” fellow Muslims who refuse to join their tariqa(t).^[65]
Even a very cursory survey of the contents of the Emirate Web site is sufficient to demonstrate its ubiquitous and consistent use of religiously charged rhetoric and terminology. This is hardly surprising, as many of the younger amirs of this virtual state have received their religious education abroad,^[66] while others have studied Islamic theological and juridical literature and the Arabic language in Russia, either formally or informally. The interviews and statements of the mujahideen leaders are richly sprinkled with long quotations from the Qur’an and hadith. They seem to be particularly fond of uttering standard Arabic formulas that are commonly associated with piety and righteousness, such as “There is no power or might except from Allah,” “May God guide us on the straight path,” “I seek refuge in God from the accursed Satan,” “Praise be to God, the One and Only,” and so on.^[67] Public speeches of and interviews with some foreign-educated mujahideen feature a nearly macaronic mixture of Russian and Arabic words. Occasionally, they are interspersed with Chechen or other local vernaculars. Many religious hymns in praise of jihad and martyrdom posted on the Emirate’s Web sites are available in Arabic only.
The extensive use of Arabic religious terms in the poetry and prose composed by contributors to the rebel Web sites occasionally requires an annotation to explain their meaning to the initiated. When speaking before cameras, the young amirs often have to provide a running commentary on or translation of the Arabic words and phrases they employ so generously so as to make their messages intelligible to audiences not steeped in Islamic history, theology, and jurisprudence. In this way, the pronouncements of the Emirate’s leaders and the poetry and prose of its poets and writers become sacralized and endowed with a higher authority associated with Arabic, the language of the revelation. The use of Arabic religious terminology is far from superficial. One may argue that it decisively shapes the very conceptual framework and line of thinking of the speakers, as the following quotation from the Emirate’s chief qadi Anzor Astemirov finely demonstrates:

“Taqlid (that is, following the opinion of [authoritative] scholars) is not allowed when it comes to the fundamentals of the aqida^[68] (that is, usul al-din). Before one can accept somebody’s statement concerning a matter of creed, one should ask for a clear dalil (that is, a proof [derived] from a religiously sound source). As for the furu‘ (that is, branches or details) of the Sharia(t) law, in this respect we follow the opinion of those who have knowledge [of such things] and do not need to request a dalil on each issue.”

The gist of Astemirov’s statement is that the Emirate’s mujahideen need not have extensive scholarly expertise to understand and practice the basic principles of their religion (which includes the divine command to wage jihad). However, they should turn to religious specialists when dealing with ambiguous matters pertaining to the implementation of the finer points of the Sharia(t).
Interestingly, Astemirov’s statement comes in response to those learned critics of the Emirate who argue that its leaders do not possess the requisite theological and legal credentials to declare and wage jihad. Seen from this vantage point, the theological jargon of Astemirov’s response is indispensible as he seeks to counter the theological/juridical objection to the mujahideen’s practices with an answer couched in Arabic scholastic terminology. In this way, Astemirov seeks to showcase his religious expertise, while calling into doubt the theological competence of his critics, in this case, the official religious scholars of Kabardino-Balkaria, who try to dissuade their parishioners from taking arms against the republican authorities and police force. Overall, our analysis of kavkazcenter.com postings seems to confirm Gilles Kepel’s observation that

“On websites in every European language, whether jihadist or pietist, “trendy” jargon blends in with an intense polemic founded on obscure religious reference to medieval scholars whose work was written in abstruse Arabic.”^[69]

Here is not the place to examine in detail the publications posted on kavkazcenter.com and its sister Web sites. Nor can we analyze the vast body of responses and comments of their readers found in the sites’ chat rooms. One feature that stands out and, in my opinion, deserves at least a brief mention is the wide use of fiction and poetry by the sites’ administrators to promote the Emirate’s ideology and to defend it against its detractors. While many poetic pieces published on the Web site may strike the visitor as half-baked doggerel (replete with faulty rhymes and meters, stylistic infelicities, grammatical mistakes, etc.), one must, nevertheless, admit that they can be quite effective in conveying the chief messages of the mujahideen. The murtads and munafiqs, whom the leaders of the Emirate regard as their chief enemies (alongside Russians), are lampooned in numerous satires that depict them as an immoral, revolting scum of the earth that is completely devoid of any traces of humanity. Subservient to their no-less-depraved and vile Russian masters, they are explicitly denied the right to remain on the face of the earth. In this way, their murder by the mujahideen becomes not only fully justified, but mandatory. How can one feel squeamish or guilty for squashing a poisonous snake or trampling a scorpion?
In contrast, the heroic poems posted on the Emirate’s Web sites portray the mujahideen as the prime model for all conscientious Muslims to emulate. In their everyday dealings with each other, the mujahideen are always mutually respectful, supportive, generous, humble, and brotherly. On the battlefield, they are courageous and eager to sacrifice their lives for the sake of their comrades. Unlike their cowardly and depraved opponents, they never leave their fallen or wounded brethren on the battlefield, and so on. Their deep faith renders them incapable of committing any moral transgression. The Web sites consistently encourage young Muslim men of the Caucasus to imitate the heroic and noble-minded mujahideen and to join their ranks.
In general, one gets an impression that the region’s pious and idealistic youth constitutes the principal target audience of the Emirate’s ideological outreach. The Web sites’ contents explicitly appeal to the youthful maximalism and idealism of their targeted audience. Given the clandestine nature of the guerilla warfare in the Northern Caucasus, the Web sites’ recruiting success is difficult to gauge. Statements of the Emirate’s leaders and some federal officials indicate that many disaffected young men are eager to join the ranks of the mujahideen.^[70] How many of them have made their choice to embrace the jihad under the influence of the Web sites’ propaganda is a moot issue. In the absence of reliable criteria to assess the effectiveness of recruitment via the Net, one should probably agree with those researchers who suggest that the Net is but one component in “a combination of social, cultural, economic, and religious factors”^[71] that cause young Muslims to take up arms either against their governments or forces of anti-Muslim “oppression” worldwide.
A few words about debates and exchanges in the Web sites’ chat rooms that an observer of cyberspace blog cultures has defined as “a personalized, self-referential, and self-serving use of the Internet, a medium first introduced as informational that then established a following based on the social communication avenues it provided.”^[72] Judging from the number of responses and comments found in the Web sites’ chat rooms, they are patronized by several hundred visitors, of whom only a few dozen post their comments regularly. How many of them are passive observers and how many are actually intent on joining the ranks of the mujahideen is impossible to estimate. Many are quite outspoken against the government and law-enforcement officials of their republics to the point of explicitly endorsing their assassination and praising the mujahideen for ridding the world of these “enemies of God.” There are also those who voice their discomfort at Muslims murdering Muslims and suggest, idealistically, that both Muslim parties to the conflict should join forces against their Russian oppressors. Overall, the tenor and scope of the discussions in the chat rooms depend on the good will of the moderators. In most cases, the latter suppress what they consider to be “offensive” or “anti-Muslim” postings, which probably come from non-Muslim visitors. This practice makes for what scholars of interactive communication technologies describe as a “‘nondeliberative’ public sphere, where participants [are] keen on establishing and reinforcing their religious and ideological beliefs, but [are] less apt to support civil discourse on topics that [do] not easily lend to opinion change and consensus.”^[73] While admittedly deficient from the viewpoint of constructive, civil debate, this kind of blog culture no doubt “facilitate[s] the formation of new and overlapping forms of community, trust, and association.”^[74]
Only one of the four sister Web sites of the Caucasus Emirate, namely, Dagestan’s jamaatshariat.com/ru/ allows postings that are either overtly or implicitly critical of the Emirate’s ideology and leadership. However, on the whole, such dissenting postings either by Muslim or non-Muslim visitors are drowned out by the loud and aggressive chorus of the Emirate’s supporters, confirming the widely known phenomenon of “the tyranny of the majority,” which, in the context of Internet exchanges, prevents participants from engaging in sincere and constructive deliberations over sensitive or complicated issues.^[75]
On the whole, the Web sites’ blogs finely demonstrate the oft-described situation when “the consensual spirit that dominate(s) many threads [of chat room discussions] leads to simplistic and superficial postings that express agreement with the original poster along the lines of ‘I agree with you,’ ‘God bless you for posting this,’ or ‘I admire your posting.’”^[76] Dissent or even a minor difference of opinion is rarely tolerated and outside voices are not allowed to be heard. The participants habitually rush to correct a view out of step with their own or to “educate” – often in a patronizing, condescending manner – those who pose questions about some fine points of Islamic doctrine and practice. Thus, the Emirate’s chat rooms are hardly the sphere of a mutually respectful and enriching “rational-critical” communication “outside the institutional boundaries of the authority” that was envisioned by Jürgen Habermas.^[77] The nature of the debate is either “overwhelmingly consensual” or “overwhelmingly dogmatic, assertive, and opinionated.”^[78] If anything, the postings of the Web sites’ chat room reflect the spirit of intolerance, mutual disrespect, and unshakable self-righteousness that, unfortunately, is all too common in the post-Soviet discursive space.

SOME TENTATIVE OBSERVATIONS

The establishment of the Caucasus Emirate is a direct outcome of the decade-and-a-half-long post-Soviet turmoil in a region that enjoyed neither social stability nor economic prosperity even in the better times, under the heavy but relatively benevolent hand of the Soviet regime. During the Soviet period, the subsidized economies of the North Caucasus republics managed to provide for the basic needs of their populations. Then came Gorbachev’s perestroika and the fall of the Soviet Union, bringing in their wake social and political upheavals on an unprecedented scale. Several armed conflicts flared up in the Caucasus, the Russo-Chechen War of 1994–1996 being the most devastating one.^[79] It destroyed thousands of human lives, much of the republic’s Soviet-period infrastructure, displaced hundreds of thousands of people, and all but ruined its economy. Furthermore, it also triggered the rise of anti-Russian resistance movements in the name of Islam in the neighboring republics of the Northern Caucasus.
As we can see from the evidence adduced earlier in this article, the deadly struggle between the Russian federal troops and the Chechen separatists has led to the progressive marginalization of Chechen nationalist ideology espoused by its founders in favor of a pan-Islamist one. This development was a logical outcome of the lack of international recognition of the Chechens’ right to secede from Russia and, later on, the failure of the leadership of the first independent Chechen state (1996–1999) to deliver law and order and economic prosperity to its war-weary population.
Seen from a historical perspective, the recent declaration of the Caucasus Emirate by Umarov, one of the founding fathers of the Chechen national resistance and state, was not only logical, but, in fact, inevitable. Faced with the military defeat of 1999 and goaded by Russia’s efforts to localize the conflict by co-opting some members of the Chechen national elite in return for generous financial infusions from the Federal Center (as well as promises of broad autonomy), the irredentist wing of the Chechen liberation movement had no choice but to appeal to the “jihadist international.” While the creators of the Caucasus Emirate may have hoped that their new strategy would give them better access to the resources of rich Islamic states and charities worldwide, their immediate goal seems to have been primarily local. They wanted to unify the theretofore isolated regional pockets of national liberation movements under the transnational and transethnic umbrella of an Islamic state. The role of the ideological scaffolding of this new military-political formation was assigned to the Sharia(t) and anti-Russian jihad.
The founders of the new Islamist/jihadist polity had good reasons to believe that they would achieve at least some level of success in their bold undertaking. First, the long conflict in Chechnya had spilled over into neighboring republics via young Muslim volunteers who at one point or another joined Chechen resistance; after undergoing “baptism by fire” in Chechnya, they returned home ready to take on their own ruling regimes (which were and still are uniformly secular and pro-Russian) under the banners of international jihad. Second, the preaching of the returning veterans of the Russo-Chechen wars and the rebel Web sites fell on fertile soil due to numerous popular grievances and discontents in these republics that had been engendered by the local corruption and misrule. Islamist appeals to justice and equity under the aegis of the Sharia(t) found an eager hearing among the Caucasus Muslims, especially younger ones, who were marginalized by the social and economic status quo and who did not have much hope of making their voices heard under the heavy-handed, corrupt, and nepotistic governance of their pro-Russian regimes.
The claim of the late Kabardian guerilla leader Anzor Astemirov that he had been advocating for the creation of a supraethnic Islamic polity in the Northern Caucasus already in 2005 rings true.^[80] He seems to have persuaded the fourth president of Chechnya Abdulkhalim Sadulayev to lay the ground for the declaration of a Sharia(t) state throughout the entire Northern Caucasus. Sadulayev’s untimely death in June 2006 at the hands of Russian special forces interfered with this grand plan.^[81] It was, therefore, only a matter of time for an Islamic state to be declared outside Chechnya by an ambitious mujahid leader such as Astemirov. Faced with this eventuality, it was only natural for Umarov, Udugov, and their close circle of followers to seize the initiative and declare a Chechnya-based Emirate before it was announced elsewhere.
Ideologically, the creation of the Caucasus Emirate may be seen as an attempt by its leaders to bridge, if only on the symbolic and rhetorical level, the vast disparity between their opponents – the still strong and assertive Russian state with its modern armed forces, bureaucracy, and relatively large economy flush with oil wealth, on the one hand, and the small bands of poorly equipped and underfunded guerilla fighters, no matter how highly motivated and courageous, on the other. The scarcity and near-invisibility of the mujahideen’s physical presence on the ground are at least partially compensated by their vigorous virtual presence in cyberspace projected via several jihadist Web sites. Furthermore, one can argue that this virtual presence has given the Caucasus Emirate an aura of invincibility and permanence – while individual mujahideen and their tiny fighting units are being chased and destroyed by Russian federal forces, Kadyrov’s militia, and republican police units, the Internet sites we have analyzed continue to be updated regularly and to provide a pro-rebel spin on events in the region, Russia, and internationally. The strident jihadist rhetoric and quick reaction to the events on the ground by the sites’ administrators project an image of self-confidence to the outside world: “We are still very much there, alive, and have no intension of quitting.” This virtual stratagem seems to be consciously designed to facilitate recruitment of young fighters for the Islamist cause.
Another ideological benefit of the transformation of the movement for Chechen national liberation into as an Islamist one is to endow the fighters with a feeling of belonging to a global imagined community of the faithful, the umma.^[82] In this way, “the global nature of the online community” has complemented and reinforced “the local nature of the off-line community.”^[83] In the apt observation of experts on virtual cyberspace communities,

“Operating via the Net, virtual communities are glocalized. They are simultaneously more global and local, as worldwide connectivity and domestic matters intersect. Global connectivity de-emphasizes the importance of locality for community; online relationships may be more stimulating than suburban neighborhoods. At the same time, people are usually based at their home, the most local environment imaginable, when they connect with their virtual communities.”^[84]

The statement just quoted is of course more relevant to the “sedentary” visitors and administrators of the sites in question than to the Northern Caucasus fighters per se, who are constantly in hiding or on the move to avoid detection. However, by being able to occasionally access the sites’ postings via their laptop computers or smartphones, they no longer feel alone in their unequal battle against perceived or real injustices of the social and political order they seek to abolish. Rather, they can now conceive of themselves as yet another detachment in the global legion of Muslim sisters and brothers united in their cosmic battle for a noble, divinely sanctioned cause. This perception imbues the Caucasus mujahideen with the self-confidence and sense of purpose that localized, ethnic-based secessionist movements simply cannot supply.
On the negative side, the pursuit of a global agenda by these newly minted “transnationalist jihadists”^[85] inevitably alienates them from the secular-minded nationalists whose goal is much more local, namely, to secure their republics’ independence from Russia. Hence, the oft-cited “fundamental split between abstract, universal instrumentalism, and historically rooted, particularistic identities.”^[86] Inevitably, acerbic mutual recriminations ensue, resulting in a fateful split in the ranks of the former comrades in arms. Lines of loyalty and ideological underpinnings are now being sharply redrawn, values and principles polarized, and the parting of ways becomes inevitable. This polarization is accentuated by the use of diametrically opposed idioms and concepts (Arabic/Islamic versus Russian/Western), by appeals to different sources of authority (the Qur’an, Sunna, and Sharia(t) versus Western secular laws and institutions), and even by outward means of self-expression, such as a distinct dress code and physical appearance (military fatigues or free-flowing “Islamic” dresses versus well-tailored “secular” suits; Islamic skullcaps versus Western-style hats; unkempt beards versus trimmed ones or no beards at all, etc.). In this way, mutual dissociation is rendered complete and irreversible.
The extensive deployment of Islamic religious terminology by the Emirate’s spokesmen is meant to accentuate their drastic departure from the secular Russocentric culture that continues to be predominant in their societies. We witness, in essence, a concerted attempt by the Caucasus mujahideen to create a new, “Islamic” way to talk about things and conceptualize them. Arabic is deployed as an alternative symbolic capital aimed at setting its users apart from the Russophone ruling elites of the Northern Caucasus republics as well as the local ethnic nationalists anxious to revive their local vernaculars in order to reassert their newly discovered and reimagined national identities. A new, Islamic (Arabophone) linguistic community is thus being consciously or subconsciously forged. Its participants consciously seek to transcend both Russocentric and ethnocentric nationalist idioms that have been predominant in their societies over the past one hundred years or so, with a view to reaching out to, and identifying with, the imagined transnational umma based on a single-minded allegiance to the Islamic revelation and the linguistic vehicle in which it was originally expressed.
This remarkable transition from the heady ethnic nationalism of the late Soviet and early post-Soviet period to transnational Islamism, understood as political, social, and cultural action in the name of Islam, is not new of course. It is familiar to us from the recent history of many Muslim countries and regions, such as Iran, Iraq, Egypt, the Maghreb, Jordan, and Palestine. In each of these countries this transition had its own logic and driving forces. For instance, in Egypt and Algeria, we observe the Islamist mobilization of the urban poor, university students, and recent migrants from the countryside followed by their spontaneous alignment with the petty bourgeoisie, low-ranking army officers, and state officials in a shared aspiration to establish a just and equitable social order based on the Sharia(t).^[87] In the Northern Caucasus, the declaration of the establishment of the Sharia(t) as the ultimate goal of Islamist resistance movements has become an effective means of overcoming the ethnic and clannish fragmentation of local societies that heretofore prevented them from forming a unified front against Russian domination.
In this respect, there is a semblance between the ideological agenda of the Caucasus Emirate and the Sharia(t)-enforcing strategy adopted by the leaders of the Caucasus resistance movements of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As with Shamil’s and Uzun Hajji’s mountaineer Imamates (1832–1859 and 1919–1920, respectively),^[88] Umarov’s claims to be an implementer and enforcer of the will of God as enshrined in the Sharia(t) has become a means not only of legitimizing his new state but also of overcoming ethnic divisions among the local communities as well as divergent political and economic aspirations of their elites. Time will show how effective or otherwise this new strategy will turn out to be.
Having just mentioned the historical antecedents to building Islamic states in the region, one cannot avoid pursuing them a step further. When, in the wake of the 1917 collapse of the Russian Empire, the region’s independence from an unstable and weak Bolshevik state became a strong possibility, the mountaineers of the Northern Caucasus found themselves split over the place and scope of the Sharia(t) legislation in the life of their societies.^[89] One group, “the supporters of the Sharia(t)” (Russian shariatisty), demanded a full and unconditional implementation of Sharia(t) norms in all spheres of public life and politics of the newly created mountaineer state. Their opponents among the left-leaning liberal intelligentsia, on the other hand, sought to restrict Islam to the realm of personal faith and worship and to implement secular codes to regulate public relations, legal transactions, and political decision making of the newly created federation of “mountaineer peoples” (gorskie narody). This latter group eventually triumphed (in 1922) thanks in large part to the support of Russia’s Bolshevik government.^[90] In retrospect, it can be argued that the pro-Sharia(t) faction probably stood a better chance of resisting the imposition of Bolshevik rule on the Muslim populations of the Northern Caucasus due to the strong support it enjoyed among the masses.^[91] This may indeed have been the case then. However, now, after seventy years of Soviet atheist rule and in the face of Russia’s current determination to keep the region under its control at all costs, the viability of the Islamic state in the Northern Caucasus is far from obvious. What cannot be disputed is that both armed and ideological struggle against Russian domination and its local backers is likely to continue under Islamic/Islamist slogans for years, if not decades to come.
Finally, I would like to make brief mention of an important international implication of the “Declaration of the Caucasus Emirate.” It was no doubt welcomed by “professional mujahideen” worldwide who must have seen it as a much-needed opportunity to open yet another front of international jihad.^[92] Should it survive Russia’s military repression, Umarov’s Emirate is likely to remain a rallying cry for the new generation of mujahideen who have missed action in Afghanistan, Kashmir, Bosnia, and Iraq and are now on the lookout for a new battlefield. Again, time will show how realistic or otherwise their expectations will turn out to be.