Asia-Pacific
Russia
Caspian Incursion
Whether Russian troops succeed fully in expelling the Islamic guerrillas who invaded the republic of Dagestan from neighboring Chechnya, the power struggle between competing adherents of Islam promises to keep the region boiling. The invasion was led by militant Chechen commander Shamil Basayev, and his supporters-many of them adherents of Islam's Wahhabi sect-already control a large part of Chechnya, writes Yevgeny Krutikov in Moscow's liberal Izvestia.
While the moderate Islamic leaders of Chechnya and Dagestan have cooperated with Moscow-Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov disassociated himself from the incursion into Dagestan Basayev has been intent on turning the two republics into independent Islamic states. A statement by Wahhabi supporters of Basayev inside Dagestan called for "total expulsion of the infidels from sacred Dagestani soil."
At least one Russian daily injected a little Western-style hype. A headline in Moscow's liberal Sevodnya referred to the invasion as "a Dagestani Pearl Harbor." And Oleg Odnokolenko commented in the same daily, "What is occurring is the export to Dagestan of an Islamic revolution, in which Basayev has been given the role of a kind of Muslim Che Guevara."
The Wahhabis have an uphill battle. They make up no more than 10 percent of Dagestan's population, according to Ilya Maksakov in Moscow's liberal daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta, and tensions have been mounting between Wahhabi and secular Muslims. Maksakov and Milrad Fatullayev report in Nezavisi-maya Gazeta that about 300 inhabitants of an eastern Dagestani village forcibly expelled a group of radicals.
