Russia in the 21st Century [Superthread]

[Edward Campbell]

Russia flexes another muscle, one which the USA has (foolishly) allowed to atrophy, according to this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Financial Times:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/9338626e-dab7-11e3-8273-00144feabdc0.html?siteedition=intl#axzz31dMNOgQw

Russia moves to oust US from International Space Station

By Kathrin Hille in Moscow and Robert Wright in New York

Last updated: May 13, 2014

Russia is to deny the US use of the International Space Station beyond 2020 and will bar export of critical rocket engines to the US, in a move that has highlighted American dependence on Russian space technology.

Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s deputy prime minister, announced the measures in response to US sanctions against a series of Russian companies and officials over the Ukraine crisis.

The twin moves against the space and satellite programmes represent one high-tech niche in which Moscow believes it has leverage over the US.

Mr Rogozin pointed out that, following the US’s retirement of its space shuttle fleet amid National Aeronautics and Space Administration cuts in 2011, the US was no longer able to send astronauts to the station on its own.

“The Russian segment of the ISS can exist independently from the US one, but the US segment cannot exist independently from the Russian one,” Mr Rogozin said.

The effective ban on exports of MK-33 and RD-180 rocket motors could be of greater significance to the US. The RD-180 powers the Atlas rocket used by the United Launch Alliance joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin which puts the US’s most sensitive military satellites into orbit.

Mr Rogozin said the exports could continue if the US gave guarantees that the motors would not be used to launch military satellites. But, given ULA’s critical role in the US’s military satellite programme, such guarantees look unlikely.

“At the moment, US national security launches are heavily dependent on access to the Russian engine,” Loren Thompson, an analyst at the Virginia-based Lexington Institute, said.

As Moscow’s stand-off with Ukraine escalated in recent months into the worst falling-out with the west since the Cold War, both US and Russian diplomats had noted that the two powers continued to “do business” pragmatically in areas of global significance. “Space is obviously no longer part of that,” said one western diplomat.

Washington last month decided to revoke export licences for technology goods that can be used militarily by Russia and to refuse to extend new ones. Washington is also considering new restrictions on the export of high-tech equipment to develop Russia’s energy resources.

Moscow’s move against the ISS came in the form of a rejection of a US request to use the station beyond 2020. The ISS, jointly maintained by several countries, has been continuously manned by rotating missions for more than 13 years and is used for research, some of which is considered vital for further space exploration.

The move over the rocket motors comes after SpaceX, the space venture of Elon Musk, founder of Tesla Motors, asked a federal court to bar the ULA from buying RD-180 motors. SpaceX said the purchases breached US sanctions against Mr Rogozin, who is also head of Russia’s space programme. SpaceX, which already carries out some launches of less sensitive satellites for the US government, does not use Russian engines and would like to break into launching the most sensitive satellites.

ULA said neither it nor NPO Energomash, its Russian supplier, had been made aware of any restrictions. But, if reports of the move were accurate, they affirmed that SpaceX’s “irresponsible actions” had created “unnecessary distractions, threatened US military satellite operations, and undermined [the US’s] future relationship with the International Space Station”.

“We are hopeful that our two nations will engage in productive conversations over the coming months that will resolve the matter quickly,” ULA said.

ULA added that it could switch to a second vehicle – Boeing’s Delta rocket – which used US-built motors and could meet all its customers’ needs. It also had a two-year supply of RD-180 motors “to enable a smooth transition to our other rocket”.

Mr Thompson said the US military strongly favoured using ULA for its most sensitive launches because of its flawless record of putting satellites safely into orbit. Most other rocket systems continue to suffer regular launch failures that destroy vehicle payloads.

“The Ukraine crisis has made policy makers reflect on the wisdom of relying on Russia for any type of lift requirements, either manned or unmanned,” Mr Thompson said.

Three astronauts – one American, one Russian and one Japanese – were due to leave the ISS in the early evening on Tuesday US eastern time to return to earth. They were due to land near Dzhezkazgan in Kazakhstan. A further three astronauts – one American, one Russian and one German – are due to blast off for the space station from Kazakhstan on May 28.

Assuming Russia does not reconsider, its decision on the ISS could strengthen China, which aims to have its own space station by 2020 and is currently excluded from the ISS – chiefly because of opposition from the US.

Mr Rogozin said Moscow would not impose sanctions of its own, and would not obstruct the work of US astronauts. However, he called the US an “unreliable” technology partner and said the government was therefore seeking to intensify work with other countries.

Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, is due to present new plans for space exploration to parliament. Mr Rogozin said it was looking to redirect funds from manned space flight to other, more promising areas and had been advised to seek co-operation with Asian countries.

Russia also threatened to switch off 11 GPS ground stations on its territory unless the US agrees to its request to establish a similar station for its own satellite position system Glonass in the US. The GPS ground stations would be suspended from June 1 and switched off on September 1 if a bilateral working group failed to reach consensus on the Glonass issue, Mr Rogozin said.

GPS, on which services such as navigation and mapping apps rely, would still work as its satellites continue to operate. But it would lose accuracy because the ground stations help correct the satellite data.

The USA has starved NASA and, especially, the manned space programme - preferring to leave manned shuttle trips to the ISS to the Russians, and to allow China and India to play catch-up - while it, under both Presidents Bush and Obama, focuses spending on domestic, social targets.

 

[CougarKing]

Putin/Russia needs to be a bit cautious. China is not Europe. China will not allow Russia to turn off the gas or oil ... not even once.

And speaking of Chinese demand for Russian gas:

Putin heads to China as Ukraine sinks ties with West

By: Anna Smolchenko,

Agence France-Presse
May 18, 2014 11:14 AM

MOSCOW - Russian President Vladimir Putin heads to China on Tuesday to shore up eastern ties as relations with the West plunge to new lows over the Ukraine crisis.

During a two-day visit to Shanghai, Putin and Chinese host Xi Jinping will seek to clinch a raft of agreements including a landmark gas deal crucial for Moscow as Europe seeks to cut reliance on Russian oil and gas.

The two leaders will also take part in a regional security forum and oversee the start of joint naval exercises off Shanghai in the East China Sea.

Moscow's relations with the United States and European Union have dived to a post-Cold War low in recent months over Russia's seizure of Crimea and Western accusations the Kremlin is fomenting unrest in the east of Ukraine.

The West has slapped sanctions on some of Putin's closest allies and threatened broader punitive measures if Moscow disrupts presidential polls in Ukraine on May 25.

(...EDITED)

 

[Edward Campbell]

It is, potentially, a good deal for both countries.

The advantages to China - supplies very close at hand, etc - are obvious. For Russia the main advantage is a reliable customer - high demand - with very, very large reserves of hard currency.

I cannot see a down side for China; for Russia the only down side is that China will, possibly, become its main customer - consider Canada and the USA and oil for an example of what's wrong with that relationship.

 

[CougarKing]

NO Gas deal????  ???

Russia Fails to Sign China Gas Deal at Shanghai Meeting

quote:
The presidents of China and Russia failed to sign a $400 billion gas supply deal at a meeting yesterday in Shanghai, prolonging negotiations that started more than 10 years ago.

Talks are continuing as the two countries seek a compromise, Alexey Miller, chief executive officer of Russian gas-exporter OAO Gazprom (OGZD), said in a statement after Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping signed bilateral agreements that didn’t include the gas deal.

Russian officials said before the meeting that the two sides were very close to a deal on gas price, opening the way to building a pipeline linking the world’s largest energy producer with the biggest consumer. That has been the stumbling block throughout the past decade, though with Putin facing sanctions from the U.S. and Europe after he annexed Crimea, an agreement had been seen as more likely than at previous summits.

“It shows that Russia is not willing to cut a low-price deal just to make a political point with the west,” said Chris Weafer, founder at Macro Advisory in Moscow. “The danger is if a deal is not concluded this year China may switch its efforts to secure pipeline gas elsewhere.”

(...EDITED)


Bloomberg

 

[Edward Campbell]

NO Gas deal????  ???

The Financial Times is reporting that a lastminute deal was signed. The article says that, "State-owned China National Petroleum Corp, China’s largest oil company, said on Wednesday it had signed a 30-year deal to buy up to 38bn cubic metres of gas per year, beginning in 2018 ... The company did not give details on the pricing of the gas, the sticking point in negotiations that have stretched over a decade ... The breakthrough came just hours after PetroChina, the listed subsidiary of CNPC, told the Financial Times that the deal would not be completed during Mr Putin’s visit because of the pricing dispute."

The price will be interesting. China should be willing to pay a premium for guaranteed delivery through a pipeline and Russia should be willing to accept a price a wee, tiny bit below current market rates for a guaranteed, high volume deal. The FT article concludes, "For China, with a growing diversity of natural gas sources including from newly licensed Russian exporters, securing supply of piped gas from Gazprom no longer holds the importance it did when the two companies began negotiating a decade ago."

But, always, see my comments about China's expectations. Russia has, in the recent past, in Putin's era, used oil and gas as a weapon, closing the taps to punish its neighbours. The Chinese will not accept that and, unlike the rest of the world, China would have no compunction about physically punishing Russia for any such move. Xi Jinping is nothing at all like Barack Obama or Angela Merkel and he, Xi, has waaaay more balls than Putin can even dream about ... it's all in the nature of the system through which he made his way to the top.

 

[Kirkhill]

That seems about right ERC.

I think that if Putin did turn off the taps Xi, or his successors, would have few compunctions about seizing the wellheads - many of which are located east of the Urals.  That territory is only nominally Russian.  Culturally it is, if not anti-Russian, at least antipathetic towards Moscow.

And .... there have been some interesting goings on in Kazakhstan with rockets recently.

Russia moved a new Iskander battery on to Kazakhstan's border at the south end of the Urals.
Shortly there after missile debris landed just outside a Kazakhstani village.
Kazakhstan closed the Baikonur cosmodrome to Russia - apparently the debris came from a failed Russian ICBM test
Russia just launched another test ICBM from their Kasputin Yar test site near the Caspian in Astrakhan. 
That round splashed in a test range leased by Russia in Kazakhstan.

I find Kazakhstan's role in current events curious.  It is working very hard to stay neutral enough that it stays out of Moscow's orbit without offending Putin.  For instance, although it is a member of CIS and the Shanghai group, it has not supported Moscow on the Ukraine.  I believe the only CIS members that have are Belarus and Turkmenistan.

 

[Edward Campbell]

There are more details about the deal, including some gross dollar values, in an article in the Globe and Mail.

The report says that "Gazprom expects to sell the gas for about $350 per thousand tons, or $9.91 per thousand cubic feet. While that is far above prices in North America, where gas has lately traded for around $4.50, it’s well below the pricing for Pacific liquefied natural gas." Other reports say the gas should sell for $11.00 per thousand cubic feet in and around Beijing, maybe a bit less in and around Shanghai. The Financial Times reports that "Gazprom had been forced to make concessions. People in the industry in Beijing said China was able to drive a harder bargain in the light of Gazprom’s growing international isolation."

The new pipeline is interesting:

Source: The Globe and Mail

But it may be that the development of the Kovykta and Chayanda gas fields, in Eastern Siberia, mayb be the biggest long term news.

 

[CougarKing]

A parallel update at the China superthread, is of similar importance:

China, Russia sign deal to BYPASS US Dollar

 

[Kirkhill]

Our response to both Russia and China

Baluchi Separatists
Laskars

Historically the Baluchis are tied to Oman.  They controlled the access to the Persian/Arabian Gulf.

A separate Baluchistan would give the Stan Confederacy TM a salt water port and put them on the world market.

That means that Afghanistan remains a critical piece for the west to maintain relations -  The Northern Alliance of Turks etc is more "pragmatic" than the Pashtun hill tribes.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

I suspect the Chinese sees this as good business and an insurance policy. They will have yet another source of energy that will help limit their use of coal which will help with the air quality issue. It will lessen any western boycott ability and provide infrastructure in the Northwestern Provinces which seem to need it. I doubt they trust Russia very much and also knew they had them over a barrel. However Gazprom might be hoping this is another step towards linking to the Indian market as well.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here is an interesting inforgraphic provided by the Russian Ministry of Economic Development showing Sino-Rissuan trade in 2013:

Not the nature of the trade: almost all of Russia exports are natural resources; most, the overwhelming majority of China's exports are finished or processed goods. In other words Russia is, like Canada, a "hewer of wood and drawer of water" while China is adding value and providing added domestic employment.

 

[Kirkhill]

If this deal benefits Russia so greatly why:

Is it decades in the making?
Did it take Europe turning off the taps to make it happen?
Was it not concluded between Gazprom and CNPC directly but required Putin to make concessions directly to Xi?

In the balance of trade, Russia is 10 BUSD per year in the red to China?

China still has access to its own coal and world markets.
Europe has given up Global Warming and reverted to King Coal.

Russia is now officially a client state of Beijing. 

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard - Telegraph

The China prize has given Russia a dramatic means of fighting back, though it is far from clear what the Memorandum of Understanding between the two sides actually means. Most analysts say it is highly unlikely that China would wish to become too dependent on Russian supplies after witnessing the skirmishes in Europe.
The reason why Europe's imports of LNG have fallen so low is because Japanese demand since the Fukushima nuclear disaster has pushed up the price. Germany, Spain and the UK have been turning to coal instead to produce electricity.

Russia is having to refinance its banks.  Its army is reduced to guerilla warfare in Ukraine.....

In words in common currency in my youth: It's in a worst state than China.

And with Obama still banging the drum FOR Global Warming I can't make up my mind whether the fair, fond, fool is venial, gullible or daft.

Edit to add one last point.  2018 is when the gas could potentially start to flow.  Four years from now. That is an eternity in this man's calendar:

 

[Kirkhill]

Here's a surprise... as far as I'm concerned anyway.

Lord Mandelsson and I agree.  I am sure he IS pleased.

 

[Edward Campbell]

I was reading something else, quite unrelated to Russia, about why America needed to increase defence spending and it got me to thinking about the enemy that is required to support such an analysis. The article I was reading suggested, without coming right out and saying so, that China was the “peer” enemy against which America would be required to match itself unilaterally.

I have a problem with that analysis. First: I cannot see a strategic rationale for either America or China to wish to provoke such a war. Second: I think an accidental war, drifting into war, is very unlikely because of the “elephant vs whale” or “tiger vs shark' analogies that many analysts present. Third: history suggests, to me, anyway, that neither America nor China is overly expansionist. Both did extend their boundaries in the 19th and 20th centuries, but one might argue that China has still not succeeded in 'digesting' its gains; in fact some doubt that Tibet and Xinjiang were, really, gains at all.

But I do see a threat ... one that has solid historical roots: a Russo-German axis or a Mitteleuropean power.

Imagine this, please: It is 35 years from now, around 2050, in the past decades Eurasia has seen some upheavals. The first was that Russian Far Eastern region, basically Region 4 on this map ...

... including Amur, Chukotka, Eastern Siberia (Sahka), Kamchatka, Khabarovsk, Magadan, Primosky and Sakhalin, separate from Russia. They are not absorbed by China but, rather, they become (an) independent state(s), UN members, in fact, rather like Mongolia. This would not have been a pretty process ... China would have been a provocateur but the main problem would have been Russians simply abandoning the Far East and returning to Europe, and Asians, some Chinese, some Mongolians, but, mainly,indigenous people taking over the management and finding that North <-> South links, with China, are much more natural (and profitable) than East <-> West links with Russia.

Being 'reduced' to a more modest (but still) Eurasian power will have caused the Russians to look West.

In Europe two major things will have happened by, say, 2040:

    1. NATO will have disbanded itself, being replaced by a separate series of bilateral and some multilateral arrangement involving America, Britain, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Ireland,
        Netherlands, Norway and Sweden – almost a Nordic Alliance; and

    2. The EU will have been reorganized into a tiered organization with varying levels of engagement – so 'loose' that even Norway and Switzerland will have joined the 'bottom' tier, along with
        Britain and Denmark and few others.

France will have tried, but failed, to organize first a EU military alliance and,,later, a Central European and then Southern European alliance. None will have lasted more than a few years.

Germany, having finally thrown off its collective, national guilt over World War II, will assert its leadership role and the notion of MittelEuropa will be front and centre, again.

Russia will have no place to go: the East and South are less and less friendly – Muslim Stans and Chinese client predominate. They will make common cause with the Germans, creating a new League of Europe stretching from Atlantic (France and Portugal) to the Yenisey which divides Central from (the now independent) Eastern Siberia.

The Nordics and the Brits want to stay aloof, but it's very, very hard and through the still existent EU they have free trade and strong economic links with it ... this new leviathan is rich and powerful. China is modestly friendly towards the new League because it has no further border issues, it shares some important trade ties and there is a 'common enemy' in the shape of Militant Islam in Central and West Asia and the Middle East.

Japan has slipped, further and further into the Chinese sphere of influence and trade and cultural ties grow stronger and stronger. There is a South-East Asian union of sorts – India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka having joined ASEAN. But the Asians, even including India, want friendly relations with China and do not feel overly threatened by it.

America is isolated – along with Australia and Canada. There is a bit of an Anglosphere, America, Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand have a formal military alliance – with which Denmark the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden all cooperate to varying degrees, but it has political divisions, the Brits and Nordics have strong ties to Europe and Australia and New Zealand have equally strong economic ties to China.

Where is there a potential flashpoint? Africa.

Why? Resources

It is, in fact, a three way competition, between the American led Anglosphere, the Chinese and other Asians, and the new German led League of Europe.

If the Europeans have made a decision to become a global military power then, with access to African oil and minerals, it has the potential to be a real “peer” of the Americans – able to fight as both an elephant and a whale.

:2c:  Just thinking out loud ...

 

[tomahawk6]

A German Russia axis isn't realistic as the Russians still remember WW2 vividly.What is more likely is a resumption of the Russian-Sino partnership.

 

[Edward Campbell]

A German Russia axis isn't realistic as the Russians still remember WW2 vividly.What is more likely is a resumption of the Russian-Sino partnership.

Disagree ... First: there never was a Sino-Russian partnership, initially, in the 1930s, the CCP was a client of the Comintern but, by the 1960s, the traditional animosity which both countries have felt towards the other for 800 years had firmly reasserted itself; it, the animosity, remains strong today, in my own experience. Second: I think Putin's Russia fears China because my Far Eastern scenario is all too plausible; it does not fear Europe, Russia may remember Nazi Germany, now, but I am not convinced that can last another generation. Third: Russia is failing by almost every social, political, demographic and economic measure. It is, also, hemmed in: by Islam in the South, by China in the East and by Europe in the West - of the three Europe is the least unpleasant.

 

[tomahawk6]

I would hope at some point that Putin realizes that he has more in common with the west than standing alone or joining with China to carve out a new hegamon.Forbes take on a Russia-Sino alliance.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/markadomanis/2014/05/20/a-russia-china-alliance-is-emerging-and-it-will-be-a-disaster-for-the-west/

 

[Kirkhill]

I'm going to throw in a nickle's worth and highlight two points.

I don't think we can call what Russia and China are arranging an alliance.  Usually an alliance is based on equality.  I agree with ERC on China and don't think that China perceives Russia as an equal - not culturally, politically, militarily or economically.  I think China perceives Russia exactly the same way they perceive any of their other resource suppliers: a vendor and an inferior one at that.

The other point that I would make is about Islam.  I think we are starting to drift back into the mistake we were making in the early days of Iraq and assuming all muslims are Twelvers or Wahhabis.

Beyond the big divisions between Sunnis (the original Arab strain) and the Shia (the Persian strain) there is another grand tradition in Islam and that is Sufism.  Sufism is a variant of Sunni Islam but is differently focused and is particularly popular amongst the Turkic peoples of the Stans.  It is decried by both the Wahhabis and the Twelvers as anathema because it is influenced by Buddhism, Zoroastrianism and the even more ancient Tengrism - the shamanism of the Mongols and the Gokturks.

Those that were there will know better than I but I was under the impression that a good part of the problem in Afghanistan was the antipathy between the Turkic dominated Northern Alliance and the Pashtun hill tribes with their Arab influenced Taliban.  Karzai was supposed to be a Pashtun that could work with the Turks.

Here's an article on Sufism in the Stans:

Chechen Sufi revival —between Russian occupation and Wahhabis
Submitted by Bill Weinberg on Wed, 05/24/2006 - 21:57 Caucasus Theater

How interesting. In an implicit acknowledgement that their hardcore Islamophobe policies are backfiring in Chechya, the Russian authorities are embracing the indigenous peace-loving Sufi tradition as an alternative to the violently intransigent Wahhabism imported from the Arab world. But this could also backfire—as the Sufis themselves also seek independence from Russia, even if they aren't willing to blow up civilians to acheive it. The implications are "unclear" indeed. And while it is good to see the Kunta-Haji Sufis on page 4 of the New York Times, we're not sure they would appreciate the writer's depiction of their chanting as "grunts."

A Whirling Sufi Revival With Unclear Implications

GROZNY, Russia — Three circles of barefoot men, one ring inside another, sway to the cadence of chant.

The men stamp in time as they sway, and grunt from the abdomen and throat, filling the room with a primal sound. One voice rises over the rest, singing variants of the names of God.

The men stop, face right and walk counterclockwise, slowly at first, then fast. As they gain speed they begin to hop on their outside feet and draw closer. The three circles merge into a spinning ball.

The ball stops. It opens back up. The stamping resumes, softly at first, then louder. Many of the men are entranced. The air around them hums. The wooden floor shakes. The men turn left and accelerate the other way.

This is a zikr, the mystical Sufi dance of the Caucasus and a ritual near the center of Chechen Islam.

Here inside Chechnya, where Russia has spent six years trying to contain the second Chechen war since the Soviet Union collapsed, traditional forms of religious expression are returning to public life. It is a revival laden with meaning, and with implications that are unclear.

The Kremlin has worried for generations about Islam's influence in the Caucasus, long attacking local Sufi traditions and, in the 1990's, attacking the role of small numbers of foreign Wahhabis, proponents of an austere Arabian interpretation of Islam whom Moscow often accuses of encouraging terrorist attacks.

But Chechnya's Sufi brotherhoods have never been vanquished — not by repression, bans or exile by the czars or Stalin, and not by the Kremlin of late.

Now they are reclaiming a place in public life. What makes the resurgence so unusual is that Sufi practices have become an element of policy for pro-Russian Chechens. Zikr ceremonies are embraced by the kadyrovsky, the Kremlin-backed Chechen force that is assuming much of the administration of this shattered land.

Post-Soviet Russia tried to make zikr celebrations a symbol of Chechen aggression, portraying zikr as the dance and trance of the rebels, the ritual of the untamed. Now zikr is performed by the men the Kremlin is counting on to keep Chechnya in check.

The occasion for ceremony on this day was the blessing of the foundation of a mosque that will be named for Akhmad Kadyrov, the Russian-backed Chechen president who was assassinated in 2004.

The mosque, whose foundation rests on the grounds of the former headquarters of the Communist Party's regional committee, is meant to replace older associations. Not only is it an implicit rebuke of Communism, it is situated beside the ruins of another, much smaller mosque that was being constructed by the separatists in the 1990's.

Its scale and grandeur are intended as public statement. At a cost of $20 million, it will be a sprawling complex, with room for a religious school and a residence for the mufti, said Amradin Adilgeriyev, an adviser to Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya's pro-Kremlin premier and son of the slain president.

The mosque will hold 10,000 worshipers, making it the largest in the republic. Its minarets will rise 179 feet in the air. It will speak not just of faith, but of power.

And so on this day the men dance. And dance. Tassels on their skullcaps bounce and swing. Sweat darkens their shirts. They are perhaps 90 in men in all, mostly young. They look strong. But zikr is demanding. As some of them tire, they step aside. Others take their place.

Their stamping can be heard two blocks away.

The entrance to the construction site is controlled by gunmen who make sure that none of the separatists enters with a bomb. Other young men boil brick-sized chunks of beef in caldrons of garlic broth, stirring the meat with a wooden slab.

Zikr has several forms. This form traces its origins to Kunta-Haji Kishiyev, a shepherd who traveled the Middle East in the 19th century, then returned to Chechnya and found converts to Sufism. Initially his followers pledged peace, but in time many joined the resistance to Russia, and their leader was exiled. They fought on, becoming a reservoir of Chechen traditionalism and rebellious spirit.

In 1991, when Chechnya declared independence from Russia, the Kunta-Haji brotherhoods, long underground, fought again. Sebastian Smith, who covered the Chechen wars and wrote "Allah's Mountains: Politics and War in the Russian Caucasus," noted that they became a source of rebel resolve.

At one zikr ceremony he observed, the men were dancing, he wrote, until a Russian bomber screamed low overhead, buzzing the village. Mr. Smith watched their reaction. "No one even looks up," he wrote. "The whooping grows louder."

The Sufis resisted the influx of Wahhabis who came to fight Russia beside them, but whose version of Islam aligned more closely with that of the Afghan Taliban.

Mr. Kadyrov said in an interview that he hoped to help restore Chechen Sufi traditions as part of an effort to preserve Chechen culture. He has reopened the roads to Ertan, a village in the mountains, where Kunta-Haji Kishiyev's mother is buried. Her grave is a shrine and a place for pilgrimages, which for years were not made. This spring the roads to Ertan are crowded with walkers, who visit the grave to circle it and pray.

Still, efforts to incorporate Sufi brotherhoods into a government closely identified with the Kremlin contain contradictions. Some see manipulation on Mr. Kadyrov's part, noting that Chechen self-identity has never been suppressed, even by some of the most repressive forces the world has ever known.

Whether Mr. Kadyrov can control the forces he taps into is unknown. The zikrists dance on this day with state approval. But for whom?

"Kadyrov wants to show that he is a supporter of Chechen traditional Islam," said Aslan Doukaev, a native of Chechnya who is director of the North Caucasus service of Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty. "But Sufis always wanted Chechen independence, and that signal is being sent here too."

We hope history is not about to repeat itself. "The Religious Roots of Conflict: Russia and Chechnya" by David Damrel (originally published in Religious Studies News, September 1995, now online at the Belfast Islamic Center) outlines the long historical cycle of tolerance and repression the Sufis have faced in the Caucasus:

The history of Russian expansion into Caucasia - the remote, rugged, mountainous territory between the Black and Caspian Seas that is home to over 30 different ethnic groups--began in the late eighteenth century with Catherine the Great’s attempts to forcibly annex the region. But the Russian invaders inspired fierce, unexpected resistance from a broad ethnic coalition of Caucasian Muslims who had united in loyalty to one spiritual leader - a Chechen Muslim mystic warrior named Shaykh Mansur Ushurma. Declaring the struggle a jihad, Shaykh Mansur and his Muslim mountaineers inflicted a crushing defeat on Czarist forces at the Sunzha River in 1785 and were briefly able to unite much of what is modern Daghestan and Chechnya under their rule.

Shaykh Mansur headed a branch of the Naqshbandi Sufi order, an Islamic mystical brotherhood that originated in fourteenth century Central Asia. Islamic mysticism - known as Sufism - spread quickly among both Muslims and non-Muslims in the Caucasus and Central Asia, largely through the missionary activities of itinerant Sufi scholars and mystics. These popular shaykhs (saints, literally "friends of God") often acquired reputations as miracle workers, and their tombs frequently became shrines (mazars) and pilgrimage sites. As recently as the late 1970s, Soviet authorities testified to the abiding attraction of these shrines, listing more than 70 active mazars in Daghestan and over 30 more in Chechnya. More traditional Muslim religious leaders often attacked the Sufi "cult of saints" for un-Islamic practices, but from early on in the Caucasus, Sufism helped attract converts to Islam at a popular level and offered a powerful source of spiritual guidance and social identity.

These Sufi shaykhs usually directed a tight, clannish organization of disciples (murids) bound to them with oaths of absolute obedience. Senior disciples were allowed to initiate new devotees into the brotherhood, and these deputies were often dispatched to spread the order in villages deep in the mountains. Frequently, charismatic and ambitious murids formed their own branches and subbranches within an order. Certain Sufi orders and suborders became closely associated with specific ethnic groups and with particular notable families.

Zikr (remembrance [of God]) is the central ritual practice of most Caucasian Sufi orders. This mystical ceremony, designed to lead participants into an ecstatic union with God, involves the group repetition of a special prayer or various divine names of God. The Naqshbandis favor a silent form of zikr that is closed to outsiders, but other orders sometimes permit vocal and public zikr assemblies.

Reliable membership figures are impossible to establish, but a 1975 Soviet survey in Chechnya claimed that half of the Muslim population there belonged to local Sufi orders--a stunning total of over 300,000 murids. The Naqshbandis, joined later by the Qadiri Sufi brotherhood, have dominated north Caucasian Muslim spiritual life from the late eighteenth century to the present day. Naturally secretive and disciplined, with broad-based social support and foreboding mountainous terrain for cover, these orders have proven formidable adversaries for whoever has tried to rule the Caucasus.

Shaykh Mansur’s disciples continued their low-key resistance against the Russians even after his death in prison in 1793. Full-scale armed revolt against the Russian occupation of Daghestan and Chechnya resumed in 1824, when a series of Naqshbandi Sufi leaders called Imams began a bitter guerrilla war that would last for over 30 more years. The most famous of these Sufi warriors, the Naqshbandi Shaykh Imam Shamil, actually established a short-lived Islamic state in Chechnya and Daghestan before his capitulation in 1859. With Shamil safely imprisoned, the Russians moved to crush the remaining "Muridists" and pacify the region. Many of Shamil’s

The Qadiri order, with its origins in twelfth-century Baghdad, first appeared in the Caucasus in 1861 headed by a Daghestani shepherd named Kunta Haji Kishiev. Based in Chechnya, Kunta Haji taught a mystical practice that, unlike the Naqshbandis, allowed vocal zikr, ecstatic music and dancing. And, at first, he counseled peace with the Russians. His popularity surged but soon his following, swelled by many murid fighters from Shamil’s former army, so alarmed the Russians that he was arrested and exiled in 1864. That same year at Shali in Chechnya, Russian troops fired on over 4,000 Qadiri murids, killing scores and igniting a fresh wave of violence. The brotherhood--whose remaining leaders all claimed spiritual descent from Kunta Haji--became implacable Russian foes and struck deep roots in the Chechen countryside. Together with the rejuvenated Naqshbandis, the Qadiris rose up against the Romanovs in 1865, 1877, 1879 and the 1890s and plagued Czarist rule in the Caucasus through the Bolshevik Revolution.

The revolutionary years were especially bloody in Daghestan and Chechnya. The Qadiris, and a Naqshbandi movement led by Shaykh Uzun Haji battled for eight years against the White and the Red armies to create a "North Caucasian Emirate." The pious, uncompromising Uzun Haji - whose tomb remains a major pilgrimage site for Chechen Muslims - saw little difference between the Czarist Russians and the atheist communists. "I am weaving a rope," he was quoted by his enemies, "to hang engineers, students and in general all those who write from left to right."

His uprising in Daghestan was suppressed in 1925, but the Soviets, branding the Sufis "bandits," "criminals" and "counter-revolutionaries," continued to arrest, execute and deport the "zikrists" almost up to the outbreak of WWII. The brotherhoods braved the crackdown as they always had: the shaykhs disappeared deep into the mountains, the murids organized their zikr assemblies in private homes, and the orders ensured their secrecy through the double bond of spiritual initiation and tight-knit clan loyalty.

During WWII, when disturbances occurred in Chechnya in 1940 and again in 1943, Stalin responded with astonishing brutality that bordered on genocide. Accusing them of still unproven collaboration with Nazi Germany, in 1944 he forcibly relocated six entire Caucasian nationalities, including the whole Chechen and Ingush populations, to special camps in Central Asia. All told, more than a million Muslims from the Caucasus were deported, with tremendous loss of life. By some estimates one third to one-half of the population of Chechen-Ingushetia alone - well over 250,000 people - disappeared after the republic was liquidated in February 1944.

The Chechens and other groups spent more than a decade in isolated work camps in Kazakhstan. But by all accounts, the forced resettlement failed to break either the Sufi brotherhoods or Chechen national spirit. Describing the fearsome "psychology of submission" that prevailed in Soviet relocation camps, Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn observed that only one people refused to be broken by the ordeal: "the nation as a whole - the Chechens." And in later sociological surveys Soviet academics euphemistically noted that "the special postwar conditions" had actually strengthened religious beliefs within the exiled Caucasian peoples.

In 1957, when the Chechens and other exiled Caucasian groups were proclaimed "rehabilitated" and returned to their republics, they found that their land had been "Russified." Hundreds of thousands of Russian farmers brought in to work the land during their absence had become permanent residents and now comprised a quarter of the region’s population.

The Chechens, Ingush and Daghestanis also discovered a land scoured of Islam. Soviet authorities had experimented with the near total suppression of Islam in the region, closing over 800 mosques and 400 religious colleges. Mazars were demolished, converted into state museums, or made inaccessible. Only after more than 30 years, in 1978, Soviet authorities in the Caucasus allowed under 40 mosques to reopen and staffed them with less than 300 registered ulema.

We have also noted that Sufis face harsh persecution in Iraq, Iran and Pakistan.

Here are links to a few Zikrs


http://vimeo.com/65859098
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ih395-JcvQo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5goISKPSH8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtPu-EAJf6s

Tengrism is also being promoted by the governments of the Stans - as in Tengri News of Kazakhstan

 

[Infanteer]

It is, in fact, a three way competition, between the American led Anglosphere, the Chinese and other Asians, and the new German led League of Europe.

If the Europeans have made a decision to become a global military power then, with access to African oil and minerals, it has the potential to be a real “peer” of the Americans – able to fight as both an elephant and a whale.

:2c:  Just thinking out loud ...

Where does South America sit in your (interesting) estimate of long-term geopolitical trends?

 

[Edward Campbell]

Where does South America sit in your (interesting) estimate of long-term geopolitical trends?

I honestly don't know ... it is resource rich and China is already moving in down there. The politics are always weak, ripe, it seems to me, for corruption and, therefore, for external influence. It has been, for generations, America's preserve; the Europeans have or, at least, have had had important interests; but the Chinese are making inroads, too.

I suppose it could be another point of contention.

I also wonder about Indonesia and Philippines ...