A perfect umma ? How ethnicity shapes the organization and operation of Dagestan's jihadist groups

Introduction

The extant scholarship on Salafi-jihadist groups ¹ has largely taken over the formal self-representations of jihadists as a group based on the premise of umma, the community of fellow Muslim believers, and indifferent to the notions of, inter alia, ethnicity and race. Salafi-jihadists have commonly been depicted as an ideologically monolithic community of believers willing to sacrifice their lives for the sake of their common goal—the establishment of a “perfect society” modeled on that of the early Islamic era—and based on sharia, or Islamic law. Against this background, jihad has been viewed as a salient obligation anchored in jihadism that compels Muslims to wage “holy war” in the name of their religion and fellow believers. ² “Holy wars” are thus not confined to the borders of the jihadists' native areas but involve all corners of the Islamic world ruled by the perceived enemies of Islam. As volunteers from both the Islamic world and Muslim diaspora communities outside the Islamic world join the ongoing civil war in Syria, the rise of transnational jihadists is considered to be proof of the fact that jihadists are essentially driven by religion in terms of their identity, rather than by ethnic or national allegiances. This, in turn, may create an impression that ethnic identity per se among jihadist fighters is incompatible with their religious identity in that the very act of embracing the ideology of Salafi-jihadism entails disassociation from one's ethnic self-identification (Silke, 2008).

While proclamations made by jihadist leaders and ideologues infused with Salafi-jihadist rhetoric have reinforced these public perceptions, little is known about the actual self-perceptions of individual jihadists in relation to their ethnic identity. This deficiency has been traditionally attributed to the difficulty of gaining access to jihadists—types of fighters who rarely choose to capitulate or disengage. ³ Jihadists' inclination to abide by the formal tenets of their ideology rather than express their individual viewpoints while still active members of jihadist units has also contributed to this lack of insight. ⁴

That said, scholarly knowledge is close to nonexistent in terms of how ethnicity impacts jihadist organizations. Indeed, current knowledge on the subject stems from a small amount of available information regarding the ethnic makeup of some jihadist groups operating in multiethnic areas. The Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, for example, is known to be a Pashtun-dominated group. Most fighters of the Nigerian jihadist group, Boko Haram, come from the Kanuri ethnic group dominating the country's northeast. ⁵ The Islamic State (IS) based in Syria and Iraq is an interethnic group consisting of majority Arabs, as well as Turks, Pakistanis, Chechens, Dagestanis, ⁶ and members of other ethnic groups. While thousands of non-Arab volunteers have joined the ranks of the IS or other similarly minded jihadist groups in Syria, these other groups similar to IS have virtually no local Sunni Kurds or Turkmens among their ranks. ⁷ On the other hand, both Somalia's jihadist group Al-Shabaab and the Malay-led Muslim insurgency in southern Thailand are distinctly multiethnic.

This article seeks to challenge the established self-representations associated with jihadists as a homogeneous brotherhood of Salafi believers indifferent to ethnic identity. Using a unique set of interviews with former jihadists from Russia's autonomous republic of Dagestan, this article points to the salience of ethnic identity among members of jihadist groups and explores the ways in which jihadists cope with it. This article demonstrates that, in contrast to predominantly monoethnic rural areas of central Dagestan where jihadist groups tend to be monoethnic, ethnic identity has been particularly contested in the republic's multiethnic urban areas, where membership in jihadist groups has also been multiethnic. The article examines how ethnic identity shapes rural and urban jihadist groups' target selection, local support, and recruitment and leadership policies. It also illustrates that the ideology of Salafi-jihadism is more pronounced in jihadist groups based in urban areas because it is used by jihadist leadership as a means to overcome ethnic cleavages and interethnic tension both between members of respective jihadist groups and with regard to the ethnically diverse local population. It warns against sweeping generalizations and taking the self-asserted ideology of jihadist groups at face value to explain their modus operandi and modus vivendi. It rather shows that, declarative self-representations notwithstanding, a jihadist group's ideological self-demarcation is a deliberate choice made by its leadership that reflects a particular sociocultural milieu in which a jihadist group arises and by which it is shaped.

Dagestan is selected as a special case for two main, interconnected reasons. First, it is a multiethnic republic, with ethnicity and ethnic nationalism forming an important part of the local people's identities. In Dagestan, both ethnic and religious identity pervade the daily lives of its inhabitants. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Dagestan has witnessed a spectacular religious revival, with Islamic identity and practices successfully competing with local ethnic identities. The interplay of strong ethnic and religious identities thus renders Dagestan—and the local jihadist groups that come from this mixed environment—a particularly valuable case to study. Second, my long-standing scholarly engagement with Dagestan's jihadist underground has enabled me to establish valuable contacts with gatekeepers to the community of (former) jihadists. This made it possible for me to access this category of interviewees that is notoriously reluctant to release information about their identities, whereabouts, and life stories. ⁸

The article proceeds as follows: in the following section, the concept of ethnicity and race in Islam is briefly introduced, followed by an explanation of the causes behind the lack of scholarship on ethnicity in jihadist groups. Dagestani society is then introduced, with particular emphasis on the importance of ethnic and religious identities. The following section offers insight into the Dagestani insurgency, briefly analyzing its evolution, main causes, and the organization of local jihadist groups. Following a section on data and methods, two empirical sections shed light on how (the perception of) ethnic identity has shaped target selection, local support, and the recruitment and leadership policies of Dagestani jihadist groups in the republic's urban areas, and explains how jihadist groups have dealt with it. The penultimate section explains the causes of a stronger Salafi-jihadi indoctrination in urban jamaats compared to rural jamaats. Finally, the conclusion summarizes the article's findings.

Islam, ethnicity, and jihadist groups

The Quran itself only makes cursory references to ethnicity and race. These categories were largely unknown in the early medieval world and were insignificant for the ethnically rather homogenous Arab communities of the early Muslim period prior to the post-Muhammad era of Islamic conquest. A frequently quoted passage in the Quran (Ali, 2002: Sura 49, verse 13) highlights the primacy of piety over tribal or racial distinctions: “O mankind, we have created you male and female, and appointed you races and tribes, so that you may know one another. Surely the noblest among you in the sight of God is the most godfearing of you.” The Quran (Ali, 2002: Sura 3, verse 106) therefore outlines a single dichotomy: that of being a Muslim or a non-Muslim, with the latter category including infidels, apostates, and hypocrites. Umma, the community of fellow Muslim believers, is considered “the best community ever brought forth to men.”

While notions of ethnicity and race were not yet developed in the Arab society of the early seventh century, early Muslims were eager to advance the idea of a uniform Muslim community at the expense of the tribal loyalties that pervaded the Arab world. The latter were considered an eminent challenge to the unity of umma that should be cast aside. Later Muslim theologists have thus likened nationalism to asabiyya—clan solidarity or tribalism—a phenomenon typical for many Muslim-majority ethnic groups of North Africa, the Middle East, and beyond. Against this background, Muhammad's saying that “those who follow asabiyya do not belong to our community [umma]” is often quoted as refuting the idea of nationalism as structurally non-Islamic or even anti-Islamic. Asabiyya is thus found to be contrary to aqeeda, or belief in God, which every Muslim should seek to strengthen.

The religious writings of famous Islamic scholars in the centuries that followed have reinforced the primacy of piety over racial, tribal, or ethnic divisions. Abdallah Baydawi (Levy, 1962: 55), a reputed Islamic theologist of the 13th century, summarized the dominant Muslim perspective on race and ethnicity in that “we have created every one of you by means of a father and mother. All are equal in this and there is no reason therefore for boasting of one's lineage.… [L]et him who desires honour seek it in piety.” Importantly, Islamic law also makes no legal distinction between various ethnicities and races, treating them equally. This approach was practiced in the medieval period, when Muslims—irrespective of ethnic or racial background—were not allowed to be enslaved, and enslaved non-Muslims had to be set free upon converting to Islam. ⁹ The contemporary ideologues of Salafi-jihadism have also reinforced the supra-ethnic, supra-tribal, and supra-racial essence of umma, underscoring that “Muslims share a bond that is far more important than ethnic or national identity” (Ayman Al-Zawahiri quoted in Habeck (2010)). ¹⁰ Essentially non-Islamic differences have been downplayed for the sake of emphasizing the need for pious Muslims of all backgrounds to unite in order to face their common enemy. It is against this backdrop that Dagestani jihadist groups have on multiple occasions stressed their devotion to umma, while rejecting ethnic identities seen as divisive. ¹¹

To the best of my knowledge, no single study has thus far sought to examine the impact of ethnicity on the modi operandi and modi vivendi of jihadist groups. This is the direct result of the lack of access by outsiders, including researchers, to jihadist units as heavily militarized and introverted groups that often resemble religious cults. The unwillingness of current jihadists to challenge the established self-representations of their groups and ideologues, as well as former jihadists' reluctance to talk to researchers due to security concerns, may also play a role. Knowledge of how jihadist groups operate is thus limited, with the research on terrorism—both secular and religious—dominated by secondary sources (Schmid and Jongman, 1988: 179; Silke, 2001). As Bart Schuurman and Quirine Eijkman (2013) have pointed out, “unfortunately for scholars in the field of (counter-)terrorism studies, getting access to reliable primary sources, such as government archives and interviews with (former) terrorists, has been a long-standing challenge.” This observation applies twice for jihadist groups, which tend to be even more clandestine and secretive than their secular counterparts.

Introducing Dagestani society

Dagestan, a Sunni Muslim-majority autonomous republic of around three million in the North Caucasus, has historically been referred to as a Babylon of tongues. It is home to dozens of indigenous (sub)ethnic groups and is considered Russia's most heterogeneous region in ethnic terms. Avars are the largest ethnic group in Dagestan; they number around 800,000, making up slightly less than 30% of the entire population. The Avars are followed by Dargins (17%), Kumyks (14.9%), Lezgins (13.3%), and Laks (5.6%). The smallest indigenous ethnic group in Dagestan is Tsakhurs, who number around 10,000 people (0.3%).

With the exception of Turcophone Kumyks and Noghays inhabiting the lowlands of the Caspian Sea coastline and the foothills of the Greater Caucasian mountain range, most Dagestani ethnic groups ¹² have historically been based in mountainous areas. ¹³ Since the acceleration of urbanization and industrialization in the post-Second World War period, hundreds of thousands of members of the republic's mountainous ethnic groups—commonly referred to as highlanders (gortsy in Russian)—have traveled to the cities on the Caspian coastline and in the central-northern lowlands. For instance, in the republic's capital, Makhachkala, Avars are the largest ethnic group (26.5%), followed by Laks (13.6%), Kumyks (13.9%), Dargins (13.7%), Lezgins (13.6%), Russians (9.1%), Tabasarns (2.2%), Azerbaijanis (1.4%), Rutuls (1.2%) (Federal Service for State Statistics of Dagestan, 2010). Other Dagestani cities have a similar ethnic makeup, with no particular city dominated by the members of one particular ethnic group.

As a result, Dagestan's cities are strikingly multiethnic, both in the lowlands and to an extent also in the mountainous areas. At the same time, however, most rural areas have remained largely monoethnic. The highlanders' large-scale immigration to the coastal areas and flatlands has led to increased tension between the Kumyks and the newcomers on the one hand, and between the highlanders themselves on the other hand. Most conflict has centered on the idea of land ownership (Dzutsati, 2015: 2–5; International Crisis Group, 2008). Periodically, coastline areas in particular witness mass fist fights, often accompanied by firearms, between members of various ethnic groups from neighboring villages competing for control over their area's economic resources. According to Akhmet Yarlykapov (2012: 3), a prominent Dagestani-Russian anthropologist, “the republic is probably one of the leaders by the number of interethnic conflicts [in the Russian Federation], both open and smoldering, ready to flare up at any moment.” This tension has further exacerbated strong ethnic nationalisms already present in Dagestan.

Indeed, ethnic identity is salient in Dagestan, which is considered a legacy of early Soviet social engineering (Tishkov, 1997). An ironic Dagestani saying has it that “what's your ethnicity?” is the second line after “hello” when two strangers meet in the republic. Individuals are rarely treated without regard to their ethnic identity; as a rule, they are identified as members of a particular ethnic group and treated accordingly. ¹⁴ Symptomatically, despite substantial cultural affinity, many Dagestanis consider intermarriage with a member of another ethnic group, even one indigenous to Dagestan, to be inappropriate. ¹⁵ While intermarriages have gained momentum in Dagestani cities since the 1970s and 1980s, the strongly conservative inhabitants of rural areas have retained a largely negative attitude toward the idea of “blood-mixing.” ¹⁶

Ethnic solidarity is strong in the republic, with members of various ethnic communities either supporting each other or providing preferential treatment to their ethnic kin. ¹⁷ For example, around 40% of Dagestanis rejected the presidency of one of the republic's former presidents, Mukhu Aliyev, on the grounds of him being Avar and a champion of the republic's Avars to the detriment of the republic's other ethnic groups (Yarlykapov, 2012: 3). An example of ethnic consociationalism, ethnodemographic dominance in Dagestan overlaps with politics, as areas dominated by one ethnic group are governed by representatives of the dominant ethnic group (Ware and Kisriev, 2001). Consequently, once the administration of a district comes under the control of a member of one ethnic community, the new leader appoints his relatives and ethnic kin to key posts. At the same time, members of other ethnic groups are gradually sidelined politically and economically, which engenders a sense of ethnic discrimination, instigates interethnic tensions, and entrenches ethnic identity. In this regard, Yarlykapov (2012: 3) observes that:

the variety of ethnicities in Dagestan, combined with the absence of an obviously dominant ethnic group, creates a situation where ethnic elites must reach compromises with each other, and relative minorities unite against a relative majority, in order to prevent domination. The representative of the ethnic group which has reached the top of the power structure must take account of the interest of the representatives of other ethnic groups, in keeping with the ethnic quota system in government.

In fact, ethnic favoritism plays strongly in the sphere of nepotism and clientelism, two age-old diseases present in local society that have rendered Dagestan one of the most corrupt republics of the Russian Federation (Petrunin, 2014; Souleimanov, 2013b; Zalasky, 2010).

Religious identity is also very strong among Dagestanis, with some 95% of the local population self-identifying as religious (De Carbonnel, 2012). According to a recent survey (Dzutsati, 2011), around 20% of the republic's youth consider themselves to be “moderate Salafis,” ¹⁸ with only 10% of the republic's urban youth self-identifying as “sufi Muslims.” ¹⁹ Traditionally, Dagestan has been considered the cradle of Islamic thought and education in the North Caucasus, with hundreds of elementary Islamic schools and seminaries (madrasas), thousands of mosques, and several universities (Hunter et al., 2004: 72).With around 3.5 l of pure alcohol per capita annually, the republic has one of the lowest indicators of alcohol consumption in Russia's Muslim-majority areas. ²⁰ Since the early 2000s, Islamic dietary and fashion norms have become increasingly widespread in the republic.

Dagestan is a conservative society. Although recent decades have witnessed a gradual erosion of traditional values, Dagestani society still has a number of semiarchaic patterns of social organization and norms of behavior that shape the everyday lives of ordinary Dagestanis. These evolve particularly around gender-based perceptions, with men expected to be courageous, generous, and ready to defend their honor in conflicts. ²¹ With the partial exception of mountainous areas of central Dagestan, the custom of blood revenge largely faded away during the previous century, but a man who has (or whose relatives have) experienced humiliation, injury, or death is nevertheless expected to retaliate, most often against the direct culprit of the offense. Otherwise, he may “lose face” as a weakling and coward in the eyes of his fellow men and risk his relatives losing social status. In a similar vein, the remnants of the local customary law, adat, stipulate that a man, his family or clan, or (ethnic) community keep their internal affairs concealed from outsiders. Like the southern Italian code of omertà, the code of silence has deterred many Dagestanis from reporting injustices within their communities to the authorities, with locals instead preferring to solve their problems internally. In-group solidarity is also an important element of the local social practices in a society dominated by village communities, clans, and families. Dagestanis are thus expected to provide support to their relatives, ethnic kin, and fellow Dagestanis, respectively, all based on the level of personal proximity.

Dagestani insurgency

The roots of the insurgency in Dagestan run back to the early 2000s. ²² Although hostilities between the adherents of the Salafi and Sufi rites of Islam commenced in the late 1990s, it was only after the failed Chechen–Dagestani jihadist intrusion into Dagestan in August 1999 and the subsequent apartment bombings in Russian cities that the federal and local authorities launched a massive hunt against the (alleged) jihadists, their supporters, and sympathizers (Ware, 2013: 62–67). Individuals with a “Salafi” appearance, such as long beards, shaved mustaches, and long shirts were jailed. Pious Muslims—those regularly attending mosques—were also jailed (International Crisis Group, 2008: 8; Ratelle, 2013). Members of the poorly paid, trained, and equipped republican police often abducted fellow Dagestanis whose relatives were forced to pay ransom money (Souleimanov, 2013b, 2015d). Detainees were usually tortured and humiliated in order to obtain forced convictions, ²³ and the indiscriminate violence perpetrated predominantly by republican police led to the spread of insurgency (Ratelle and Souleimanov, 2017; Souleimanov and Aliyev, 2016). While the core of locally operating insurgent groups was initially formed by radicalized Salafis (Sagramoso, 2012), over time, young Dagestanis who were subjected to torture also joined the ranks of jamaats as they were driven by the need to retaliate according to the local code of honor. Others joined jamaats to protest the erosion of traditionalist values or to challenge the unpopular and corrupt local regime (Ratelle and Souleimanov, 2017). Over time, most recruits embraced Salafi-jihadism which, in turn, became the prevailing ideology of these groups (Souleimanov and Aliyev, 2014: 60–85). As a result, by the late 2000s, Dagestan had become the leader of the North Caucasian insurgency, eclipsing Chechnya (Balmforth, 2012).

There are currently around a dozen medium or large jamaats in Dagestan, with a similar number of small jamaats. ²⁴ Average Dagestani jamaats usually consist of 8–15 active and passive members, in some cases 20 members, while small jamaats may only have up to five members. ²⁵ They operate in geographically determined “sectors,” with each jihadist group in charge of a particular area, usually a small town and a group of neighboring villages. Most terrorist and insurgent activity is concentrated in the capital city of Makhachkala as well as in the large coastal cities and the cities of north-central Dagestan, although the towns of southern Dagestan have also been increasingly hit by insurgent and counterinsurgent violence. In addition, rural areas of central Dagestan, such as Gimry, have also been regarded as hotbeds of insurgent activity (Souleimanov, 2013a). Although formally subordinated to the leadership of the Caucasus Emirate, a virtual theocracy that has since its establishment in 2007 laid claim to the last lands of the North Caucasus, ²⁶ local jamaats are highly autonomous. ²⁷ They are self-sufficient in terms of command, recruitment, financing, and local support.

With no external funding available to jamaats, their existence hinges upon popular support. Organized along territorial lines, jamaats reflect the demographic makeup of the areas in which they operate. As a result, while urban jamaats are multiethnic, rural jamaats that draw members from several neighboring villages tend to be monoethnic. The rural Gimry jamaat, for example, is almost exclusively Avar, and the jamaats of southern Dagestan are dominated by Lezgins or Lezginophone ethnic groups, such as Rutuls, Tsakhurs, etc. The jamaats of Kizlyar, Khasavyurt, Kaspiisk, and Makhachkala, on the other hand, are strikingly multiethnic.

Data and methods

This article draws on a unique set of three semistructured interviews with former Dagestani jihadists. They were organized along the lines of the central themes of ethnicity and kinship bonds and their impact on the methods of organization and operation of the Dagestani jamaats, with most interviews lasting two to three hours. Notes were taken during the interviews as interviewees refused to be audio- or video-taped and consented to be interviewed solely on the ground of strict confidentiality. Due to security considerations, the interviewees' names were changed to protect their true identities. Nevertheless, their identities are known to the author.

Referral and snowballing techniques were used to gain access to the interviewees, and the author's long-standing contacts with some former Dagestani insurgents were particularly helpful in the process of gaining access to, and trust of, the interviewees. Interviews were conducted in a “neutral” location, mostly in Turkey, where the majority of jihadists were based either temporarily or permanently, as well as in some European countries. Numerous discussions with ordinary Dagestanis since the early 2000s, as well as consultations with Dagestani experts and journalists provided further insight into the social background of the ongoing insurgency. The interviews and discussions took place during the period 2009–2015, and the events described by the interviewees spanned the period 2004–2010.

Although the sample of individuals interviewed for this article is by no means representative, this article is one of few in the extant literature on Dagestan and the North Caucasus to draw on firsthand data (Souleimanov, 2015b; Souleimanov and Aliyev, 2014, 2015; Souleimanov and Siroky, 2016). In fact, as the insurgency in Dagestan is still under way, most jihadists—both former and current—have avoided contact with researchers due to security concerns. The risk of being identified by the Russian authorities and facing imprisonment has been the main deterrent, followed by ex-jihadists' concern of being penalized by former colleagues for having abandoned jihadist groups or revealing sensitive facts about their former involvement in these groups. Moreover, in the North Caucasus in general and in Dagestan in particular, the number of disengaged jihadists is low which, in turn, reduces the number of potentially accessible former jihadists (Souleimanov and Aliyev, 2014: 60–85). Nevertheless, in related fields where access to interviewees is sparse, such as those researching terrorist, insurgent, or organized crime groups, even small samples of respondents have been considered of eminent value (Baker and Edwards, 2012: 8).

This article follows in the footsteps of the recent shift in the scholarship on irregular warfare and violent conflict to the micro-level of analysis. ²⁸ Concomitant difficulties notwithstanding, insight into the micro-dynamics of irregular warfare and violent conflict which, in the present case, pertains to the micro-dynamics of notoriously difficult to access illegal clandestine groups, has the ability to produce valuable knowledge based on primary sources. Ethnographic methods are applied to generate such insight, and while ethnographic research is necessarily contextual, findings produced by it may be used to generate hypotheses to be tested across cases (Wilson and Chaddha, 2010).

Target selection and local support

Interviewees asserted that target selection was a particularly sensitive matter for multiethnic urban jamaats and that some leaders of multiethnic jamaats initially hesitated to target their ethnic kin, preferring instead to target members of a different ethnic community. The interviewees explained this through the salience of ethnicity in the jihadists' mind-set. ²⁹ According to a former jihadist, the ability “to always differentiate between ourselves and themselves is typical for us [Dagestanis] since we learn to speak […] You cannot get over it overnight. It sits deep in your consciousness.” ³⁰ Others pointed to the fact that, particularly among the less populous Dagestani ethnic groups that consist of only several thousand members, “everyone knows everyone,” and people are often either blood related to each other or are neighbors. As one interviewee noted, for an Agul—a member of a less populous Dagestani ethnic group—“to kill an Agul” means to “almost certainly kill a distant relative.” ³¹ This assertion is echoed by Yarlykapov, according to whom:

given the fact that virtually everyone is someone's relative in the rural areas, those who ‘went to the woods’ [joined jamaats] are not eager to kill their relatives in the local administration and police. Instances of killing one's relatives […] become famous just because they are so rare. ³²

Individuals serving in jihadist groups considered the targeting of their ethnic kin as offensive and a form of ethnic discrimination. Former jihadists are in general agreement that “jealousy” and a sense of “unfairness” are the principal source of this ethnic-imbued resentment. As one interviewee concluded, “highlanders take such things personally […] They are oversensitive about this [ethnically defined ours vs. them].” ³³ This sometimes led to conflicts among the members of various ethnic communities within the jamaats. A former jihadist recalled how a line of attacks of that killed four of his ethnic kin nearly caused the group to split, with members of the “offended” ethnic group revoking their pledge to the former leadership on the grounds that the latter violated the principles of Islam. In other cases, such targeting led to the weakening of mutual trust among the ethnically diverse jihadists, reduced the sense of belonging, and raised questions about the true motivations of fellow jihadist fighters.

Insurgent groups depend on local support to the point that it is crucial to their existence. This holds particularly true for the Dagestan-based jihadist groups, which face a considerably superior adversary. Lacking external funding and support (Falkowski, 2015), jihadists have to find a common language with the local population to obtain shelter, material support, and sometimes intelligence. The enduring codes of hospitality and silence in Dagestani society ensure that apolitical support is often provided to jihadists by ordinary locals. ³⁴ Even those not sympathizing with the jihadists usually choose not report on them in order to avoid “losing face” in the eyes of their fellow countrymen. For the same reason, it is common for many Dagestanis to refuse collaboration with the authorities, even when under enormous pressure to do so.

In the face of increasing reprisals against jihadists' local supporters (Fuller, 2015b), kinship and ethnic solidarity may become particularly salient sources of popular support for jihadists. ³⁵ Jihadist groups may therefore increasingly rely on those segments of the local population that are related to them by means of kinship and ethnicity ties. In urban areas, however, jihadist groups' targeting of a particular ethnic group may lead to the alienation of this group's members. This could prompt the members of an “offended” ethnic group to withdraw support for the jihadists. Disowning the insurgents as their enemies, the members of that group may well be willing to break the code of silence to collaborate with the authorities against their common enemy. The threat to uniform support from the local population may consequently endanger the jihadist group's standing in the area, which could also reduce the number of potential recruits from an affected ethnic group. Although the interviewees did not witness this sort of clash in practice, they nevertheless pointed out that jihadists were aware of the possible backlash should their targeting be interpreted as aimed primarily against the members of a particular ethnic group.

To avoid such developments, urban jamaats have grown cautious in their selection of targets, paying particular attention to their ethnicity. Targets were often alternated to ensure members of neither ethnic group were attacked excessively. In some occasions, jihadists with a particularly developed religious orientation sought to intentionally target their ethnic kin in order to distance themselves from the ties of ethnicity. ³⁶ Other jihadists conducted nonlethal attacks on “soft” targets, in particular entities associated with haram, that is, non-Islamic impurity or sin, such as liquor stores, brothels, and casinos, and thus avoid the potentially disastrous deaths of members of any ethnicity (Souleimanov, 2015a, 2015c). On the other hand, however, these considerations played no major role in the case of the largely monoethnic jihadist groups operating in rural areas. ³⁷

Recruitment and leadership policy

Ethnicity was also considered a sensitive subject with regard to recruitment into urban jihadist groups. According to the interviewees, the organization and operation of jihadist groups very much mirrored Dagestani society, with its omnipresent nepotism, clientelism, and ethnic favoritism. Once an amir, or leader, of a jamaat was selected, he usually sought to appoint to key positions either his relatives or coethnics. Ethnic or kinship ties would enable the amir to firmly rely on these trusted individuals because, as summarized by an interviewee, “you can always count on those who share your blood […] This is the best safety measure.” ³⁸ Interviewees asserted that this worked particularly well in those jihadist groups specializing in lucrative criminal activities such as racketeering, kidnapping, and so on. According to former jihadists, jihadist groups dominated by familial or ethnic ties were far more likely to form nonaggression pacts or to cooperate with the authorities for the sake of enrichment than ethnically heterogeneous jihadist groups with more diverse agendas. ³⁹ In addition, leaders of jihadist groups often sought to recruit their ethnic kin in disproportionately high numbers to ensure personal loyalty and support within their jamaat.

This predictably led to clashes within the affected jihadist groups, as some felt their spiritual and physical integrity to be threatened. Personal conflicts inevitably arose, with members of “offended” ethnic communities threatening to leave such groups or overthrow their leadership. Leaders of such jihadist groups were frequently accused of non-Islamic behavior. According to a former jihadist, a qadi—or judge—of the Dagestani jamaat (Shariat) issued an internal statement in 2010 addressed to a leader of an insurgent group operating in the Khasavyurt area instructing him to either abandon the practice of ethnic favoritism or leave the path of jihad.

To avoid interethnic conflict, jamaats soon adopted the principle of proportionate ethnic representation so that members of diverse ethnic communities indigenous to the area would have more equitable representation in jihadist groups. Interviewees attested to the fact that this move led to the decrease of ethnic tension within jihadist groups. On the other hand, most urban jamaats have rather adopted the principle of ethnic rotation of their leadership. According to this principle, following the death or injury of an amir, a member of a different ethnic group would be selected to take his place. In multiethnic jamaats, diversity has also been encouraged through the appointment of members of various ethnic groups to key positions in the group. On the contrary, rural jihadist groups were far less concerned about recruitment policies, with most recruits and the group's leadership originating from a single ethnic group.

Differences between the extent of jihadization in multiethnic and monoethnic jamaats

The presence of the ethnic factor in multiethnic urban jamaats and its absence in rural monoethnic jamaats has had varying impact on the ways in which these groups define themselves ideologically. As explained in “Dagestani insurgency” section, many individuals joining locally operating jihadist groups have done so not because of religious fervor or fascination with Salafi-jihadism, although such motivations have also played a role. Their principal motivations are rather to retaliate against wrongdoings inflicted on them, such as torture, injury, and humiliation; to protest the erosion of traditional values; or to challenge the republic's corrupt, nonelective, and unpopular regime; to protest the lack of space for political participation, and so on. It was only in insurgent groups with jihadism as the dominant ideology of protest that most individual recruits—usually youth in their late teens and early 20s—embraced this ideology (Souleimanov and Aliyev, 2014: 60–85).

To rally popular support and foster a strong sense of supra-ethnic identity pivotal to their integrity, leadership of multiethnic jihadist groups in urban areas utilized the ideology of Salafi-jihadism in a much more prominent way than rural jihadist groups. Testimonies offered by former urban jihadists attest to the high level of Salafi-jihadist indoctrination in urban jamaats. For example, urban jihadists were periodically instructed by allied Salafi imams and religious authorities, a practice referred to by a former jihadist as brainwashing (vymyvanie mozgov in Russian). The interviewee further likened the practice to the Soviet-era practice of political commissars (politruk in Russian), who were in charge of ideologically educating the servicemen in the Soviet Army. ⁴⁰ The jihadists—fresh recruits in particular—often conducted collective prayers and spent substantial time together studying the writings of various Salafi scholars. Indoctrination placed great emphasis on the notion of umma as a community of fellow Muslims, while at the same time jihadists were taught that ethnicity, race, and kinship were essentially non-Islamic and thus contemptible categories.

On the other hand, former jihadists from rural areas were usually subjected to a weaker Salafi-jihadist indoctrination. They were only rarely instructed by Salafi imams, and they were not compelled to study the writings of Salafi scholars. Unlike urban jihadist groups, ethnicity was never an issue in rural jamaats. ⁴¹ As a result, rural jihadists interviewed for this study exhibited a rather superficial attachment to Salafi ideology. In contrast to urban jihadists, some were still sympathetic to the Sufism native to their home areas. While some partially admitted to being Salafi, others expressed consent to some of the Salafi principles, self-identifying at the same time as devout members of their local Sufi tariqas or brotherhoods. Paradoxically, many former rural jihadists self-identified as proud members of their ethnic communities while simultaneously considering themselves to be adherents of Salafism.

Urban jihadists, on the other hand, displayed a rather ambiguous and, at times, conflicting attitude toward ethnicity. All of the interviewees downplayed ethnicity as an unimportant or less important source of identity compared to religious identity, and most regarded ethnicity as essentially non-Islamic. When asked specific questions, however, the same interviewees nevertheless highlighted the virtues of their ethnic group compared to other ethnic groups. For example, interviewees pointed to their ethnic group as being the most courageous, loyal, and hospitable, reiterating the central themes of masculinity and prestige in Dagestan's patriarchal society. Some even expressed unwillingness to allow their daughters and sisters to marry members of different, particularly non-Dagestani, ethnic groups, even if a potential suitor was a devout Muslim.

A possible consequence of these circumstances is that urban jihadists, who are on average more influenced by Salafi-jihadist ideology than their comrades-in-arms in rural areas, have been less reluctant to deploy indiscriminate violence—particularly outside of Dagestan—than rural jihadists. In fact, Russian authorities attribute the most brazen terrorist attacks carried out in Russian cities since the late 2000s and aimed predominantly at civilian targets to Dagestani jamaats, nearly all of which stem from urban areas. This may be explained by the fact that rural jihadists usually aim to selectively target individuals associated with the regime or previously inflicted personal offenses. Salafi-jihadist indoctrination plays a relatively minor role in influencing rural jihadists' perception of their enemy. On the contrary, urban jihadists' perception of their enemy, shaped by religious indoctrination, is significantly broader which, in turn, legitimizes urban jihadists' indiscriminate violence toward non-Muslims on the whole.

Conclusion

This article sought to examine the impact of ethnicity on the methods of organization and operation of Dagestani jihadist groups. It points to differences in attitudes toward ethnicity in predominantly monoethnic rural jamaats and multiethnic urban jamaats, with ethnicity remaining a contested factor in the case of urban jamaats. The article shows that, in contrast to ideologically influenced self-representations of jihadist fighters as a monolithic group of devout Salafi fighters indifferent, inter alia, to ethnicity as an essentially non-Islamic concept, ethnic identity continues to remain a salient social force shaping urban jamaats' target selection, sources of local support, as well as recruitment and leadership policies. More specifically, in order to preempt internal conflict and avoid alienating the local population, leaders of urban jihadist groups have tended to select ethnic targets in a balanced way. They have also sought to ensure that the recruitment into jamaats reflects the demographic makeup of the local areas in which they operate. Dagestani jamaats have also adopted the principle of ethnic rotation of their leadership in order to ensure that no representative of a single ethnic group constantly dominates a particular group. Urban jamaats have therefore put in motion effective mechanisms that discourage ethnic favoritism in order to cement in-group trust and solidarity and garner support from the local and ethnically diverse population of the cities in which these jamaats operate.

For the same reason, urban jamaats operating in multiethnic areas have, on average, been more prone to fostering a strong sense of Salafi-jihadist identity to overcome ethnic cleavages and preempt interethnic tension than rural jamaats operating in predominantly monoethnic areas. Ethnicity has nevertheless remained an important issue even for urban jihadists who have undergone such ideological indoctrination. This article also hypothesized that a stronger sense of Salafi identity and self-attachment to the Salafi-jihadist doctrine has rendered urban jamaats more indiscriminate in their use of violence against civilian targets, particularly in the cities of Russia proper. On a more general note, this article posited that the inclination to ethnic or religious identity does not derive automatically from a jihadist group's ideological base. This article shows that it is rather a matter of deliberate choice by the leadership of these groups, which depends on a particular sociocultural milieu that shapes the formation and operation of jihadist groups.

This ethnographic study does not explicitly claim generalizability of its findings. Always contextual, ethnicity and religious identity may manifest themselves distinctly in various settings. Nevertheless, what applies to Dagestan may also be relevant for other multiethnic areas prone to jihadist violence. With its intricate ethnic makeup, tense interethnic relations, and social organization similar to the North Caucasus, Afghanistan, Iraq, or Syria may serve as similar examples. This study calls for further research into the phenomena of ethnicity, race, and kinship in jihadist groups.

Ethnographic methods relating to the research of violent conflict and militarized religious sects such as Salafi-jihadists are notoriously time consuming. They require an exceptional level of effort and are often conducted with security risks for both researchers and participants. In spite of these difficulties, the insight into the microcosm of insurgent or terrorist groups, including jihadist groups, that ethnographic methods provide is indispensable to understanding the visceral mechanisms pertinent to the organization and operation of clandestine illegal groups that are otherwise shielded from public view. A better understanding of the underlying mechanisms of these illegal groups may substantially improve our ability to combat them.