[Christian Science Monitor] The strongman Russia installed to run a pacified Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, increasingly poses a challenge to Russia's secular constitutional order. Kadyrov is imposing sharia on his population – and lately, even defying the Kremlin's foreign policy – with an apparent eye on an international Islamic stage.Alexei Malashenko, an Islam expert with the Moscow Carnegie Center says, “Kadyrov wants to be considered a leader among world Muslims. His ambitions are very high. He has introduced politicized Islam in Chechnya, and this is definitely a problem for the Kremlin. Putin clearly does not like it.”
Kadyrov has always been one of the most unusual of Russia's regional leaders. Often his antics are baffling to outsiders, as when he recently ordered almost 1,000 divorced Chechen couples to reunite “for the sake of the children,” his ongoing efforts to force Chechen women to adhere to a “Muslim dress code,” or his endorsement of polygamy in Chechnya – which is strictly against Russian law.
At other times, even Russian social conservatives look on with horror, as when scores of gay Chechen men were rounded up earlier this year, beaten, tortured and an unknown number murdered. The frustration of Russian security services with Kadyrov over his consistent refusal to permit Moscow-based police to operate in the republic, sometimes punctuated by death threats, is an open secret.
The Chechen leader launched an open challenge to the Kremlin by staging a demonstration of at least half a million people in downtown Grozny earlier this month to express solidarity with the persecuted Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar and demand the Kremlin take action to protect them.
Asked about it later, a visibly annoyed Vladimir Putin merely said that “each person is entitled to having one’s own attitude regardless of rank or position.” But subsequently, police in Moscow violently suppressed a pro-Rohingya rally by local Muslims in front of the Myanmar embassy, arresting 17 people – all reportedly Chechens.The conundrum for the Kremlin is that Kadyrov has pacified Chechnya and sidelined the internationally backed Islamist forces that in past years carried out dozens of terrorist attacks in major Russian cities. And Kadyrov seldom misses an opportunity to express his total loyalty to Putin personally.
Malashenko said, “Putin considers Kadyrov to be a pillar of Russian control in the Caucasus. Kadyrov has made so many enemies in Chechnya that, without Putin's backing, he probably would not last. So, they need each other."
But the strains are growing, he added.