The Rise of Islamist Extremism in Kabardino-Balkariya

This article examines the expansion of Russia's emerging Chechen-led revolutionary Islamist terrorist network into the central-western North Caucasian republic of Kabardino-Balkariya (the Republic of Kabardino-Balkaria or KBR), which in many ways is the geopolitical and ethnopolitical gateway to the western North Caucasus. The network's expansion into the region demonstrates the ability of Chechen-based Islamism to "travel" across geography and ethnicity among Russia's Muslims. This article argues for a comprehensive, multicausal explanation of communal mobilization that includes international, institutional, and economic factors in addition to communal-political ones, especially in cases of extremist terrorist groups, such as those in Russia's growing revolutionary Islamist network. It also shows that in Russia, as elsewhere, the international jihadist movement, inspired and funded by al Qaeda, has made some progress in coopting local nationalist movements among Muslim peoples to the Islamist cause. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]