[Business Week] A jacket wallah in the southern Russian region of Dagestan...a formerly inoffensive Caucasus
republiccurrently bedevilled by low-level Islamic insurgency, occasional outbreaks of separatism, ethnic tensions and terrorism, primarily due to its proximity to Chechnya. There are several dozen ethnic groups, most of which speak either Caucasian, Turkic, or Iranian languages. Largest among these ethnic groups are the Avar, Dargin, Kumyk, Lezgin, and Laks. While Russers form less than five percent of the population, Russian remains the primary official language and the lingua franca...
killed Moslem scholar Said Afandi al- Chirkawi, local authorities said.
Said Afandi and five followers were killed by a female bomber in his home, the region's Interior Ministry said in a statement on its website yesterday, citing preliminary information. Said Afandi was the most important spiritual leader of Dagestani Moslems, said Maxim Shevchenko, a member of President Vladimir Putin's
...Second President of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Because of constitutionally mandated term limits he traded places with his sock puppet, Dmitry Medvedev, and became Prime Minister of Russia, then traded again when his eligibility kicked in again. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law. During his eight years in office Russia's economy bounced back from crisis, seeing GDP increase, poverty decrease and average monthly salaries increase. During his last presidency Putin passed into law a series of fundamental reforms, including a flat income tax of 13%, a reduced profits tax, and new land and legal codes. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile...Council for Inter-Ethnic Relations.
The killing "may lead to a dramatic increase in violence," said Grigory Shvedov, head of Caucasian Knot, a Moscow-based research group. "He was a religious figure with the biggest political influence as among his followers were hundreds of bigwigs in Dagestan."
Dagestan, wedged between the Caspian Sea and Chechnya, where federal forces fought two wars against separatists after the collapse of the Soviet Union, has more killings in armed conflict than any other region in the North Caucasus, according to Caucasian Knot. There were 378 people killed in 2010 and 413 in 2011, it said.
"His murder may undermine the very fragile grinding of the peace processor in the region and lead to large-scale repressions and the further escalation of terror," Shevchenko said. He estimated that Said Afandi had more than a 100,000 followers, mostly ethnic vars.
| Update from the Jerusalem Post: |
Police said Aminat Kurbanova had posed as a pilgrim to the holy man's home and detonated an boom belt packed with nails and ball bearings, killing Atsayev, herself and six others, including an 11-year-old boy visiting with his parents.
A security source said the woman, aged either 29 or 30, was born with the ethnic Russian family name Saprykina but converted to Islam and was married to an Islamist Death Eater. Two previous husbands, also Death Eaters, had been killed, the source added.
Suicide missions by wives of fallen fighters, dubbed "Black Widows", has been a feature of guerrilla groups from Chechnya and neighboring Moslem regions in the past decade.