Johnson's Russia List
#6571
25 November 2002
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A CDI Project
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JRL RESEARCH AND ANALYTICAL SUPPLEMENT
Editor: Stephen D. Shenfield
[log in to unmask]
Issue No. 13
November 2002

For back issues go to the RAS archive at:
http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/jrl-ras.cfm

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CONTENTS
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From the editor

Follow-up

ECOLOGY / SECURITY

1. Buried chemical weapons

THE CRIMINAL ECONOMY

2. How big is the criminal economy in Russia?

3. Protection money: extortion or "shadow taxes"?

SOCIETY

4. The social status of military officers

RUSSIA AND ITS NEIGHBORS

5. Russia--E U: the institutional dimension

6. Rebuilding failed states: Georgia, Uganda, Tajikistan

7. Islam in the CIS

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FROM THE EDITOR

As promised, I have managed to produce a second issue of the RAS this
month. Its themes include chemical weapons, the criminal economy, the
social status of military officers, Russia's relations with the European
Union, the problem of rebuilding failed states -- and a few rather more
arcane topics.

I am planning a special issue, possibly next month, about science and
scientists in post-Soviet Russia. I invite readers, and especially
colleagues in Russia with a direct knowledge of the subject, to send me
suggestions and contributions (in Russian, English or French).

Stephen D. Shenfield

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FOLLOW-UP

The last issue of RAS (No. 12 item 4) contained a review of Vyacheslav
Likhachev's book "Nazism in Russia" that focused especially on its
treatment of the problem of the relationship between fascist movements and
the state. Alexander Verkhovsky draws attention to the fact that this
problem is the subject of his recent book "Gosudarstvo protiv radikal'nogo
natsionalizma: Chto delat' i chego ne delat'?" [The State Against Radical
Nationalism: What To Do and What Not To Do?]. The book was published by
Panorama in August 2002, and the whole text is available on the Panorama
website
<http://www.panorama.ru/works/patr/govpol/book2/index.html>

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ECOLOGY / SECURITY

1. BURIED CHEMICAL WEAPONS

SOURCE. L. A. Fyodorov, Gde v Rossii iskat' zakopannoe khimicheskoe
oruzhie? (khimicheskoe razoruzhenie po-russki) [Where in Russia to Look for
Buried Chemical Weapons? (Chemical Disarmament Russian-Style] (Moscow:
International Socio-Ecological Union, 2002)

The Western powers are urging Russia to speed up the destruction of its
stockpile of chemical and nuclear weapons, and have pledged to spend at
least $20 billion over the next 10 years in support of the destruction
program. They are concerned that nuclear and chemical materials may end up
in the hands of terrorists or rogue states.

Russia's declared stocks of chemical weapons (CWs) amount to 40,000 tons,
including two million artillery shells containing nerve gas at one facility
alone. These stocks have been gathered at seven storage sites in six
provinces. Facilities for destroying mustard gas and lewisite have been
constructed at Gorny in Saratov province. Russia has proposed extending the
deadline for eliminating the declared CW stocks from 2007 to 2012. (1)

However, it is often forgotten that DECLARED CW stocks are only one part of
the problem. The other part is the old and still UNDECLARED CWs that have
been buried in the earth, deposited underground in mines or caves,
submerged in lakes, or simply abandoned somewhere and forgotten. These old
CWs are the subject of this book by Lev Fyodorov, Doctor of Chemical
Sciences, president of the Union "For Chemical Security," and co-chair of
the council of the Social-Ecological Union.

The multilateral Convention  for destroying CWs and banning their
production, accumulation, and use was signed by Russian minister of foreign
affairs Kozyrev in Paris on January 13, 1993. It envisages not only the
destruction of CW stocks and production facilities but also "a solution of
the problem of old CWs."

In the Convention "old CWs" are defined as:

(a) CWs produced before 1925, or

(b) CWs produced between 1925 and 1946 that have deteriorated to such an
extent that they can no longer be used as CWs.

Here I'd like to enter a caveat. Old CWs may no longer be useable as
weapons in the mode originally intended, but much of the highly toxic
material they contain might still be put to very effective use by
terrorists -- in the same way that terrorists who cannot make nuclear bombs
can release radioactive material into the environment by means of "dirty
bombs" that use conventional explosives. Imagine a kilogram or two of
arsenic dropped into a city's water supply, and bear in mind that there are
tons of the stuff strewn around Russia.

Of course, the immediate threat is to the lives and health of people and
animals living in places where CWs lie buried. Old CWs are the most
plausible explanation for the mysterious poisonings that are reported from
time to time in the Russian press.

The author traces the fruitless attempts that have been undertaken at
various times in the 1990s by Russian parliamentarians (both in the old
Supreme Soviet and in the new State Duma) and by the interdepartmental
commission of the Security Council on ecological security (chaired by the
eminent ecologist A. V. Yablokov) to obtain information on old CWs and to
persuade the government to get to serious grips with the issue. Prime
minister Yegor Gaidar gave some support to these efforts in 1992, while his
successor Viktor Chernomyrdin took the opposite tack, decreeing in March
1993 that the locations of old CWs were to be considered state secrets.

But the main obstacle has always been the Ministry of Defense, which has
steadfastly refused to provide information or otherwise cooperate.
Apparently the generals are concerned to avoid the trouble and expense of
the clean-up job that could eventually be foisted on them.

On February 5, 2001, the Russian government reconstituted the special
committee that oversees the fulfillment of Russia's obligations under the
international conventions on chemical and biological weapons. In the
process the problem of the old CWs was removed from the committee's remit.
And so the issue of buried CWs has itself been buried -- or so Putin and
his generals no doubt hope.

So where are old CWs buried? Over half the book is devoted to the results
of Dr. Fyodorov's investigation of this matter. He gathers data not only on
the burial or submersion of chemical munitions and containers full of toxic
substances, but also on the burial of effluents from CW production, the
loss of CWs at shooting ranges and test sites, and the abandonment of CWs
by units hastily retreating before the German advance in 1941. His search
focuses mainly on the regions where preparation for chemical warfare in the
interwar period was especially intensive:

-- Moscow city and province;

-- St. Petersburg (Leningrad) and Leningrad province;

-- Nizhny Novgorod province;

-- Saratov province;

-- Eastern Siberia and the Far East, where preparations were made for war
with Japan. (2)

In addition, he examines a sample of 13 other provinces in which chemical
warfare preparations were less intensive.

Detailed information is presented about burial of CWs at 38 locations:

* 6 military storage sites specifically for CWs

* 10 military storage sites for artillery

* 8 test sites for CWs and artillery

* 3 military camps

* 3 institutes and laboratories working on CWs

* 8 burial sites for effluent at CW factories

However, the author was able to gain access to only a small proportion of
the relevant army documents, such as reports on the execution of an order
concerning burial of CWs that was issued by people's commissar of defense
Voroshilov on 1/24/1938. He identifies a further 501 locations at which he
believes the burial of CWs "could not but have occurred" -- i.e., 235 large
storage sites plus 266 test sites for CWs, artillery, aviation, and tanks,
shooting ranges, and military camps. This does not include a large number
of other locations at which the burial of CWs "may have occurred."

"The chemical weaponry forgotten, lost, or buried by the Soviet military,"
Dr. Fyodorov concludes, "is just as dangerous as that which awaits
destruction at the declared seven CW arsenals."

NOTES

(1) See p. 7 of the source and Associated Press and ITAR-TASS reports
reproduced in Russian Environmental Digest, 7-13 October 2002, Vol. 4, No.
41. Ton refers to metric ton. The question of biological weapons is not
considered in this article.

(2) Specifically: Primorye [Maritime] and Khabarovsk territories, Amur and
Chita provinces, and the Jewish autonomous province [Birobijan].

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THE CRIMINAL ECONOMY

NOTE

It so happens that today's issue of the Russian Regional Report (Vol. 7,
No. 29, 25 November 2002) also contains a considerable amount of material
on transnational crime, police corruption, and other matters related to the
criminal economy.

The Russian Regional Report is now a biweekly publication jointly produced
by the Center for Security Studies at the Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology (ETH) Zurich
(http://www.isn.ethz.ch) and the Transnational Crime and Corruption Center
(TraCCC) at American University, Washington, DC
(http://www.American.edu/traccc)

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THE CRIMINAL ECONOMY

2. HOW BIG IS THE CRIMINAL ECONOMY IN RUSSIA?

SOURCE. O. L. Voronin, "Kriminalizatsiia ekonomicheskikh otnoshenii v
Rossii i ee posledstviia (na materiale sibirskogo regiona)" [The
Criminalization of Economic Relations in Russia and its Consequences (Using
Data for the Siberian Region)], pp. 142-6 in Vostochnosibirskii
regionalizm: sotsiokul'turnyi, ekonomicheskii, politicheskii i
mezhdunarodnyi aspekty [East Siberian Regionalism: Socio-Cultural,
Economic, Political, and International Aspects] (Moscow: Moskovskii
obshchestvennyi nauchnyi fond, 2001)

The author of this paper, presented at a conference on eastern Siberia held
in Irkutsk in April 2000, tackles the difficult task of assessing the scale
of the criminal sector of the Russian economy. (1) Under this term he
includes only the supply of illegal goods and services (e.g., narcotics and
contract murders) and activity controlled directly by organized criminal
groups. (2) Thus "criminal sector" is a much narrower concept than "gray"
or "shadow sector," which covers all activity that is not fully legal,
including the supply of legal goods and services accompanied by such
trivial peccadilloes as tax evasion and operation without the required
licenses and certificates.

The author criticizes those Russian and Western analysts who dismiss the
criminal sector as a marginal phenomenon (3) as well as those who purvey
stereotypes according to which the whole Russian economy is pervaded by
criminality. He also draws attention to wide regional variations in the
degree to which the economy is criminalized.

He is reluctant to rely on statistics about the criminal economy provided
by state agencies. Little or nothing is known about how they are derived,
and they may be distorted by the interests of the agency concerned. (4)
Nevertheless he thinks that they give a rough idea of orders of magnitude.

According to the Scientific Research Institute of the Ministry of Internal
Affairs, annual turnover of narcotics in Russia is about $40bn, while the
production and sale of illegal alcohol surrogates yields over $10bn.
According to the State Customs Committee, contraband in metals and in sea
products in 1998-99 was about $4bn and over $2.5 bn respectively. These
four items alone add up to three times the annual budget of the federal
government.

No way has yet been found of estimating the total turnover of several other
highly criminalized segments of the economy, such as:

* the secondary market in living accommodation

* the market in protection services

* fraudulent "pyramid" financial investment schemes

* the control of wholesale and retail markets

However, the author gives fragmentary data pertaining to various parts of
Siberia. For instance, according to analysts at the East Siberian RUBOP (5)
in Irkutsk, local criminal gangs control:

-- more than a third of agencies for the sale of real estate in Irkutsk,
Bratsk, and Angarsk

-- several dozen notary's offices [in the same cities]

-- all the wholesale markets in Ulan-Ude, the capital of the Republic of
Buryatia

-- the whole of the illegal trade in meat and cattle hides in the Republic
of Tuva

And in Krasnoyarsk about half of those working for protection firms are or
used to be members of criminal gangs.

But what of productive industry? Organized criminal groups have made a
concerted effort in the 1990s to expand into industry. In Siberia they
targeted  above all oil extraction and refining and the production of
non-ferrous metals. They made considerable inroads in 1993-95, in
connection with the initial phase of large-scale privatization. Thereafter
the pace of criminalization slowed down.

In the aftermath of the financial crisis of August 17, 1998, the power of
criminal "authorities" declined as strong provincial governors, with the
aid of "pocket oligarchs," consolidated "regional financial-industrial
principalities." Some examples of such strong governors mentioned by the
author are:

* the late Alexander Lebed in the Krasnoyarsk territory, who acted in
alliance with the Alfa Group to expel organized crime from the aluminum
industry

* Boris Govorin in Irkutsk province, aided by the "Eastland" company of the
Yeroshchenko brothers and the "RINKO" company set up by Vitaly Moshchitsky

* Aman Tuleyev in Kemerovo province

In some regions, however, criminal groups had especially close ties with
part of the administrative elite and industrial management. Here the power
of organized crime has not declined. In Siberia this applies above all to
the Tuvan Republic and the Primorye [Maritime] territory. It is an
important reason why the economies of these regions have remained depressed.

NOTES

(1) He works at Irkutsk State University and also for the "Azia-in"
investment fund.

(2) What it means for a business to be "under the control of organized
crime" requires precise definition. If a gang collects tribute from a
company but otherwise leaves it alone, does that suffice to include the
company? Assessments of the role of organized crime in the economy will
depend crucially on which definition is used.

(3) Thus he states (without citation) that Anders Aslund, the Swedish
economist who was a principal adviser behind Gaidar's shock therapy,
calculates that only 3 percent of the "shadow economy" is connected to the
activity of organized criminal groups.

(4) But in what direction would one expect state agencies to distort these
figures? Downward, to show what a good job they are doing in combating
organized crime? Or upward, to prove that they need more resources?
Arguably their interests are best served by demonstrating downward trends
from exaggerated initial levels.

(5) Sorry, I don't know what RUBOP stands for. Perhaps someone will be so
kind as to tell me.

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THE CRIMINAL ECONOMY

3. PROTECTION MONEY: EXTORTION OR "SHADOW TAXES"?

SOURCE. Galina Gradosel'skaia, "Tenevoe nalogooblozhenie v legal'noi
ekonomike (po materialam issledovaniia v Moskve i Volgograde)" [Shadow
Taxation in the Legal Economy (Using Survey Data from Moscow and
Volgograd], pp. 49-58 in Konkurentsiia za nalogoplatel'shchika:
Issledovaniia po fiskal'noi sotsiologii [Competition for the Taxpayer:
Researches in Fiscal Sociology] (Moscow: Moskovskii obshchestvennyi
nauchnyi fond, 2000)

AUTHOR. The author is at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. She
provides contact information: tel. (095) 928-504; e-mail [log in to unmask]

The author interviewed six entrepreneurs engaged in legal activity in
Moscow and Volgograd about their relations with criminal organizations,
known as "roofs" [kryshi] or "power [silovye] partners," that provide them
with protection and other services. If her sample is small, she explains,
that is because it was so difficult to find businesspeople willing to take
the risk of divulging information on such a dangerous subject.

The market in criminal services arose during perestroika as a
straightforward protection racket, spreading in a random fashion as gangs
gathered information about prospective victims. Although a certain amount
of simple racketeering still exists, the typical relationship between
"protector" and "protected" has undergone considerable evolution. It has
become a less coercive "deal with uncertain outcome" by which the "roof"
provides real services in exchange for tribute. The entrepreneur now
perceives himself as a purchaser of valued services rather than a victim of
extortion.

One sign of the changing relationship is that it has become less dangerous
(if still far from safe) to reject an offer from a gang. One informant
tells the author how he said to a visiting gang representative: "OK, you
can become our roof if you retrieve a KAMAZ truck we had stolen recently."
When the man came again he was told the same thing. The gang did not find
the truck and did not become the firm's roof.

Besides providing physical protection and recovering debts and stolen
property, a "roof" may offer to serve as an intermediary in putting the
firm's business relationships on a more satisfactory footing. This can
include dealing on behalf of the client firm not only with suppliers but
even with the tax inspector! Such a feat is within the reach only of a
"serious" power partner -- that is, a criminal group that is well-organized
and has close links with the state authorities.  Nowadays connections and
expertise are more important than muscle in the "roof" business.

The author makes the bold claim that criminal organizations enjoy greater
legitimacy than the state in business circles. When you pay tribute or
"shadow taxes" you know what you're paying for, while the state demands
exorbitant taxes without ensuring your physical security or defending your
property rights. Which of them is the greater extortionist?

This argument legitimizes tax evasion. Moreover, an entrepreneur who pays
both tribute and tax in full will go bankrupt. This conclusion follows from
these figures, provided to the author by her informants:

* Tribute (shadow tax) varies between 10 and 30-35 percent of profits. (1)

* Government taxes may go up to 70-75 percent of profits, which firms try
by various means to bring down to 30-50 percent.

It would be interesting to receive comments from JRL readers familiar with
Russian business practices.

NOTE

(1) The expense is recorded in firms' books under such headings as
insurance or payment to consultants.

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SOCIETY

4. THE SOCIAL STATUS OF MILITARY OFFICERS

SOURCE. Sergei S. Solovyov, "The Russian Officer Today: A Sociological
Portrait," Insight Vol. 2 issue 8 at http://www.psan.org

AUTHOR. The author is a chief consultant of the General Directorate of
Education of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, where he heads a
unit within the Department of Research in Military Sociology that monitors
the socio-economic and legal situation of army personnel, persons retired
from military service and their families. He is co-author (with I. V.
Obraztsov) of Rossiiskaia armiia ot Afganistana do Chechni:
Sotsiologicheskii analiz [The Russian Army from Afghanistan to Chechnya: A
Sociological Analysis] (Moscow, 1997). His e-mail address is
[log in to unmask]

The author discusses whether officers belong to the middle class of
contemporary Russian society. It is widely assumed that they do, and indeed
in the Soviet period they were a highly educated, well-paid, and
prestigious social group.

However, survey data collected by the Ministry of Defense since 1991 reveal
that the average officer's family lives on an income 1.5--2 times greater
than the minimum per capita income. Most experts set the lower limit of a
middle class income at 3--4 times the minimum per capita income. By this
criterion officers belong to the lower class.

Moreover, the profession of officer has lost its prestige. In 1975 high
school graduates rated army officer as a moderately prestigious occupation
(with 57 points out of 100). By 1996 it had fallen to the bottom of the
list (with 36 points). This loss of prestige is reflected in the kinds of
jobs open to officers on leaving the armed forces. Diplomas from military
academies are not highly valued in the civilian world. A former commander
will at best be offered the position of personnel manager in a company, and
more likely that of security guard.

Nevertheless there is a certain sense in which officers do still belong to
the middle class. Their rank gives them social power and responsibility
that hardly correspond to lower class status. This is a striking
discrepancy, and one that merits further exploration. Is it not dangerous
to entrust a group of people with real power while paying and respecting
them so little?

Next the author asks whether officers represent a special caste of Russian
society. He replies that they do not constitute a closed caste. On the
contrary, the army is the most accessible route to upward social mobility
in Russia today. That may well be so, and I have the impression that the
same is true of the United States. But the author answers a question
different from the one he asks. He asks whether officers are a SPECIAL
caste, and replies that they are not a CLOSED caste. They are not a caste
at all in the strict sense, but do they really not see themselves as a
special group or "corporate body"?

This brings us to the author's last question. Do officers have a specific
mentality? Here he makes some careful distinctions.

Most officers have preserved an attachment to the values of the army as a
corporate and professional body. However, military service has become less
attractive as a route to technical specialization. The romantic image of
the officer has waned, and military service is now viewed in a more
pragmatic light. This is connected to the "de-politicization" of the armed
forces that took place in the early 1990s. Between 1989 and 1992, the
proportion of officers who advocated an ideology or a specific political
program decreased from 70% to 7--8%. Nevertheless, Russian officers do take
an interest in politics, and tend to support "patriotic" stances. So the
answer to the question seems to be yes.

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RUSSIA AND ITS NEIGHBORS

5. RUSSIA--EU: THE INSTITUTIONAL DIMENSION

SOURCE. Timofei Bordachev, Rossiia i Evropeiskii Soiuz: trebuetsia
departament [Russia and the European Union: A Department Is Needed].
Brifing Moskovskogo tsentra Karnegi [Briefing of the Moscow Carnegie
Center], Tom 4, Vypusk 3, March 2002

The recent friction between Russia and the European Union (EU) over the
issue of land access to the Kaliningrad exclave, argues the author,
highlights the generally  inept way in which Moscow handles its relations
with the EU.

Why is Moscow so inept? His answer is twofold:

* The immediate problem is that foreign policy makers lack adequate
knowledge and understanding of the EU -- both of its policies and of its
inner workings.

* The underlying problem is that government structures are not adapted to
the task of dealing with the EU.

Russian officials are so ignorant of EU affairs that they often discover
what EU positions are only in the course of negotiations. For example,
negotiators from the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade were not
expecting the EU to expand the list of steel products subject to import
quotas in late 1991, although such measures had been stipulated in advance
in an EU Act to protect the interests of home producers. "It is not
surprising that in January 2002 the negotiations collapsed."

To take another example, the Russian side in its "Energy Dialogue" with the
EU (1) stated that Russia aimed to become the main supplier of oil and gas
to Europe. They did not realize that this statement ran directly counter to
the EU Conception of Energy Security, approved last year by the European
Commission, which gives priority to diversifying the geographical sources
of the EU's energy imports.

By force of inertia, most Russian policymakers "perceive the EU of 2001 in
the categories of the Common Market of 1979" -- that is, they still think
of the EU as a rather loose association of independent countries with which
it is possible to deal separately. In fact, all issues of economic
relations with non-member states must now be settled with the European
Commission in Brussels, which has acquired many of the functions of an EU
government.

The author points out that unlike Russia the countries of Central-Eastern
Europe have within their government structure strong sections and
departments specializing in European integration. Moreover, it is not only
countries aiming to join the EU that need such departments. Thus
Switzerland has long had a special Ministry of European Integration
Affairs. It has no wish to join the EU, but it must adopt EU norms if it is
to be a successful trading partner of the EU. So must Russia.

This is not to say that Russia's government structure makes no provision at
all for relations with the EU:

* Negotiations with the EU fall into the sphere of responsibility of one of
the deputy prime ministers (currently Viktor Khristenko). But the official
list of his responsibilities contains 17 points, and negotiations with the
EU come 16th!

* The Ministry of Economic Development and Trade has an EU Section within
its Department of European Countries, but its staff is too small to provide
the necessary level of analysis. Other ministries have no section or
department specializing in the EU.

* There is an interdepartmental government commission on relations with the
EU, but it gathers only sporadically and does not have high status.

* EU programs for aid to Russia, such as TACIS, provide some consultative
services, but only on a temporary basis (up to a year). Financing tends to
depend on the personal attitudes of officials in the Moscow representative
office of the European Commission.

Thus the burden of dealing with the EU falls mostly on officials whose main
concerns lie elsewhere.

The author proposes the creation of a special government agency or
"Coordinating Center for Ties with the EU." He suggests various ways in
which close working relationships can be facilitated between such an agency
and EU officialdom. Thus the agency could be organized into departments
that correspond to the subdivisions of the European Commission, and young
Russian officials could be sent to study at EU institutions such as the
European University at Florence, (2) the European Institute of State
Administration at Maastricht, and the College of Europe at Bruges. [That is
all very well, but it is no less important to ensure close ties between the
new agency and the old ministries. Otherwise it will prove of very little
practical benefit. --SDS]

NOTES

(1) A collection of documents pertaining to the Energy Dialogue has been
published  by the Ministry of Energy of the RF as a supplement to the
journal Energeticheskaia politika [Energy Policy] under the title:
Energeticheskii dialog "Rossiia--Evropeiskii Souz" [Energy Dialogue
"Russia--European Union"] (Moscow, 2001).

(2) I myself had the opportunity of spending a month at the European
University. It is a very relaxed place in beautiful surroundings just
outside Florence. Though funded by the EU, its links with EU officials and
their work are tenuous. (I hope to receive some indignant messages proving
the contrary, and will be glad to summarize them in the next issue of RAS.)
My own modest suggestion is that instead of sending young officials there
to learn about the EU the Russian government send harassed older officials
there for a rest cure.

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RUSSIA AND ITS NEIGHBORS

6. REBUILDING FAILED STATES: GEORGIA, UGANDA, TAJIKISTAN

SOURCES. (A) Mark R. Beissinger and Crawford Young, eds. Beyond State
Crisis? Postcolonial Africa and Post-Soviet Eurasia in Comparative
Perspective (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2002), Chapters
16 and 17. (B) Shirin Akiner, Tajikistan: Disintegration or Reconciliation?
(London: The Royal Institute of International Affairs, 2001)

The weakness or outright collapse of the state is a problem that besets
both Africa and the post-Soviet region. Two professors at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison -- Mark Beissinger, a post-Soviet area specialist, and
Crawford Young, a specialist on Africa -- have collaborated with other
authors (including from African and post-Soviet countries) to produce a
large volume (source A) in which this problem is analyzed in cross-regional
comparative perspective.

In their introduction, the editors acknowledge that Africa and the former
USSR are very different in certain respects, such as cultural background
and educational levels, but insist that the similarities are sufficiently
important to justify a comparative approach. On the whole, the book
confirms this claim. Of course, other cross-regional comparisons are also
possible and have their own merits. In particular, Russian/Soviet
specialists on Latin America have long striven to draw parallels between
that region and the (ex-)USSR, especially with regard to problems of regime
transition and economic development. But if one is looking at the problem
of state breakdown then the comparison with Africa is more relevant.

Here I would like to focus on an aspect of the general problem of state
crisis that has special practical significance. Is it possible to rebuild a
state that has collapsed? That can be answered straight away: Yes, it has
been done. But what are the conditions that make this difficult task
feasible?

Two chapters of the book are devoted to case studies of modestly successful
state reconstruction: Ghia Nodia of Tbilisi State University and the
Caucasian Institute for Peace, Democracy, and Development examines the case
of post-Soviet Georgia, while Professor Young considers the parallel case
of post-colonial Uganda. In both countries withdrawal from the imperial
system brought to power capricious autocratic politicians (Milton Obote and
later Idi Amin in Uganda, Zviad Gamsakhurdia in Georgia) who polarized the
polity, leading to civil war. And in both countries significant progress
has been achieved in overcoming the legacies of the past.

Both Nodia and Young criticize the sharp dichotomy that some scholars make
between effective or "normal" states , which fulfill all the functions
ideally expected of a state, and other states that do not meet these
standards and are therefore regarded not as "states in the full sense of
the word" but merely as "quasi-states." They point out that many states are
inefficient and pervaded by corruption and do not guarantee their citizens
a high level of security, but nonetheless do meet certain basic criteria of
statehood: a manageable state bureaucracy, rudimentary social order, a
near-monopoly on the means of organized violence. Indeed, most states in
both regions fall into this intermediate category. Thus instead of the
dichotomy between "normal states" and "quasi-states" they use the threefold
classification of strong states, weak states, and failed states.

One defect of the "normal/quasi-state" dichotomy is that it creates the
impression that state collapse is irreversible, as direct transition from
quasi-state to normal state is scarcely conceivable.  The threefold
classification allows us to focus on the crucial transition from failed to
weak state.

Nodia and Young argue that a major factor in accomplishing this transition
in Georgia and Uganda has been the skilled leadership of a single talented
and charismatic figure. Eduard Shevardnadze, who returned to Georgia in
early 1992, and Yoweri Museveni, who became president of Uganda in 1986,
have been adept at making use of the "traditional technology of power."
They have maneuvered carefully, building up public support to encompass
different regional interest groups, forming and re-forming coalitions to
isolate dangerous opponents -- above all the "warlords" who still command
paramilitary forces independent of the state -- and destroy them one by one
when the time is ripe. Thereby the state recovers its monopoly on the means
of organized violence, while the citizenry gains a measure of physical
security.

In Uganda Museveni has aimed to turn his National Resistance Movement (NRM)
into an inclusive national political movement by widening its social,
ethnic, and regional base. Political parties are allowed to exist but not
to campaign publicly or contest elections. In Georgia a multiparty
electoral system does operate, though Shevardnadze's Party of Citizens of
Georgia lays claim to a role similar to that of the NRM in Uganda.

However, it is doubtful whether the state could have been rebuilt in either
Georgia or Uganda without the political, economic, and military support of
stronger outside powers. Both Shevardnadze and Museveni have been fortunate
in this regard. At a crucial juncture in late 1993 and early 1994,
Shevardnadze was able to rely on an intervention by Russian troops to
suppress an uprising in western Georgia of Zviadistas (supporters of the
former president Gamsakhurdia). In exchange he was prepared to sacrifice --
temporarily, he hoped -- part of the country's sovereignty. Uganda's own
"big brother" neighbor, Tanzania, played a similar "tutelary role" for
Museveni, intervening militarily to oust Idi Amin in 1979 and then
"mediating the regional, ideological, and personal disputes that divided
the fractious exiled opposition who returned with the Tanzanian army" (p.
456). In recent years both Georgia and Uganda have received large volumes
of Western aid, which has helped them stabilize their currencies.

Is Tajikistan, the other clear case besides Georgia of a failed post-Soviet
state, likewise on the way to reconstruction? The Chatham House Paper
(source B) by Dr. Shirin Akiner, who lectures in Central Asian Studies at
the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies, gives
some grounds for such a hope, although the situation remains ambiguous.
Thus government control remains shaky in large areas of the country: the
phenomenon of local warlords, which has its origins in the civil war, still
exists, although some warlords have been disposed of. (1)

Nevertheless, the Tajik case provides an impressive example of the (albeit
imperfect) fusion of formerly  warring sides into a single power structure.
In accordance with the terms of the 1997 peace agreement, the parties of
the United Tajik Opposition (UTO) were allocated a substantial share of
government positions at all levels. (2) Thus the largest party of the UTO,
the Islamic Revival Party (IRP), was handed control of local government in
its stronghold of Karategin-Darvaz. UTO fighting units were incorporated
into the national army.

But what makes a return to full-fledged civil war highly unlikely is the
disintegration of the UTO and the weakening of its component parties:

-- The opposition coalition of Islamists and secular nationalists, an
opportunistic alliance from the start, fell apart irretrievably after 1997.

-- The Democratic Party of Tajikistan has split into two hostile factions,
one of which supports the ruling regime of President Imomali Rakhmonov's
People's Democratic Party of Tajikistan (PDPT).

-- There are also deep divisions among the Islamists inside and outside the
IRP, with some prominent Islamists (notably the former qasi Akbar
Turajonzade)  also now supporting the PDPT regime.

-- The IRP has lost much of its electoral base, as a result (in the
author's view) of its disappointing performance in the areas where it
acquired control of local government.

Attempts to form a new opposition coalition have failed. Currently the
strongest opposition force is the Communist Party.

NOTES

(1) For instance, the criminal gang of Rizvon Sodirov was crushed, and he
himself shot, in 1997.

(2) The share was set in the agreement at 30 percent. In practice UTO
participation in government has not reached this level.

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RUSSIA AND ITS NEIGHBORS

7. ISLAM IN THE CIS

SOURCE. Yaacov Ro'i, Islam in the CIS: A Threat to Stability? London: The
Royal Institute of International Affairs, 2001.

In this paper, one of the "Central Asian and Caucasian Prospects" series
of Chatham House's Russia and Eurasia Programme, Professor Ro'i (Tel Aviv
University) provides a succinct overview of the Islamic revival in the
former USSR and the various forms taken by the politicization of Islam in
the post-Soviet region.  He surveys Islamic activism in Tajikistan,
Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Dagestan, Chechnya, and Tatarstan, and discusses
the incursions of armed Islamists into Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan in 1999
and 2000.

The author's assessments are careful and restrained. He argues that there
is less to the Islamic revival than meets the eye: it has NOT brought about
"far-reaching changes in the lifestyle and worldview of society at large
beyond general declarations of identification with Islam." Thus the
religious observance of most nominal Moslems is perfunctory; and sharia
courts function only in a few villages in the North Caucasus (and even
there without official approval).

Is there an Islamic threat to stability? Professor Ro'i replies that
existing governments ARE threatened, not by Islam as such but by popular
discontent that often expresses itself by means of political Islam. If a
civil society were created and Islamic parties allowed a place within it,
"the chances of a radical Islamization of [post-Soviet] societies would
seem to be slight." Nevertheless, a real Islamic threat may be in process
of formation. The repression of Islamists enhances their popularity and
also drives them to more extreme stances and methods. The endless warnings
of government leaders about the dangers of Islamic subversion, initially
issued for the ulterior purpose of de-legitimizing all political
opposition, have been a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you want a threat
badly enough, your wish will eventually come true.

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