MOSCOW The anti-Jewish unrest that flared up in the North Caucasus over the weekend seems to have taken the Russian authorities by surprise.
Russia’s North Caucasus is used to being considered an explosive region, but the Russian security apparatus did not seem to be prepared for Sunday’s events.
More than a thousand people stormed the Makhachkala airport in search of Jews who had arrived on the Tel Aviv flight. The authorities had to rescue the air passengers from the airport.
The situation is so embarrassing for the Kremlin that the president Vladimir Putin once rose to power by promising to rein in the troubled North Caucasus. Putin has also often repeated that different nationality groups and religious communities live in harmony in Russia.
The Russian leadership is now blaming foreign powers for what has happened.
– You have to understand where the core of evil is. Where is the spider that tries to entangle the whole world in its web, Putin spoke on Monday evening.
According to Putin, this spider is, of course, the ruling elite of the United States, and the unrest in Makhachkala was fomented via social media from Ukrainian soil by the forces of Western intelligence services.
On the other hand, the outbreak also came as a surprise to many residents and connoisseurs of the area.
– Yesterday (Sunday) I was still in a state of confusion. Now there is depression, says the Dagestani teacher and poet Fazir Dzaferov.
He was visiting Moscow at the time of the riots, where he gave an interview to .
– I feel that many people in Dagestan are now in such a state of confusion and depression.
Caucasian expert, sociologist Rasul Abdulhalikov also says that he was surprised.
He had guessed that there would be no radical movement.
Abdulhalikov says via video link from St. Petersburg that the targets of the attacks were not the local Jewish communities.
The North Caucasus has traditionally been inhabited by a Jewish population, mountain Jews who speak the Tat language. There are active communities in, for example, Dagestan and Kabardino-Balkaria.
– Thank God there have been no attacks against the buildings and synagogues of Jewish communities there, he says.
However, the mayhem at the Makhachkala airport was not the only incident in the North Caucasus. The movement was apparently fueled by rumors that Jewish refugees from Israel were coming to the area.
On Saturday, a rumor spread in the Dagestani city of Hasavjurt that Jewish refugees had been staying in the town’s hotel. A stone-throwing crowd gathered at the hotel to demand clarity on the matter. The hotel put a note on the door saying that Jews and Israelis are not welcome.
Demonstrators in Karachai-Cherkessia also demanded the rejection of Jewish refugees and the deportation of Jews. On Sunday morning, a Jewish cultural center under construction was burned down in Nalchik, the capital of Kabardino-Balkaria.
The unrest brought to mind the anti-Jewish pogroms of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
A representative of the Republic’s Jewish community said that the need for Jewish evacuation cannot be ruled out.
– The situation is very difficult in Dagestan. People in the community are scared, calling, and I don’t know what advice to give them, Ovadya Osakovthe representative of the Russian Chief Rabbi in the Republic, said For the Podjom publication.
The riot shocked Dagestanis
The events did not surprise only the Kremlin. Many locals are shocked by what happened.
Fazir Džaferov, who teaches English, lives in a small Dagestani village among religious Muslims. He has not noticed fierce anti-Semitism in his everyday life.
– I simply haven’t seen such moods around me, he says and emphasizes that he lives among ordinary people, not in any separate bubble.
Instead, on social media, even in teachers’ chat groups, he says to his surprise that he encountered bigotry, anti-Semitism, hurrah-patriotism.
– In real life, people seem to be good and decent, but when they start chatting on the internet, they simply become beasts, Džaferov wonders.
He does not believe that the unrest at Makhachkala airport arose by itself or that it was a large-scale movement.
– It feels like someone is organizing them, but I don’t know who.
The position of the Palestinians has an echo base in the region
Sociologist Rasul Abdulhalikov sees the background of the escalation as the inaction of those in power.
The violence that flared up in the Middle East has tightened the mood in the North Caucasus. The reason is partly the solidarity of the region’s Muslim population towards the Palestinians, partly the region’s own traumas.
In the Russian North Caucasus republics, many residents identify with the plight of the Palestinians, as the region’s history has been marked by forced population transfers, war crimes, checkpoints and inequality in the justice system.
Abdulhalikov says that at the same time as the tension was building, only in Chechnya among the republics of the North Caucasus did the political leadership seem to be responding to the situation: Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov organized a joint prayer meeting.
The leaders of other republics mostly remained silent and tried to ban public events.
– This was especially strongly felt in Dagestan, Abdulhalikov says.
According to him, the governor of Dagestan Sergei Melikov has practically dismantled all such structures of the state and those close to the state, whose population could be in contact with those in power.
The governor of Dagestan is appointed by the Russian president, so the electorate of his region is not the first concern of the head of the republic.
– When the crowd broke into the airport, it turned out that the head of Dagestan is not even in Dagestan but in Moscow, says Abdulhalikov.
The authorities created a pressure cooker
When public events were practically prevented, there was no peaceful outlet for tensions.
The discussion about the plight of Gaza moved to Telegram and Whatsapp messaging services, blogs and Instagram. There, rumors and disinformation move like crazy.
When the citizens have almost no chance to influence the choice of the leadership of the republic, political life has moved outside the official institutions, to different ethnic and religious communities.
They can mobilize effectively. Dagestan badly tried during the corona pandemic, the social of the population activism helped save people and maintain local control.
On the other hand, this kind of informal organization can also result in excesses, uncontrolled “direct democracy”.
Those in power push responsibility to external forces
Sociologist Abdulhalikov says that the regional authorities should channel the feelings of the population into peaceful public discussions and demonstrations of solidarity with the Palestinians. Jewish communities should also be consulted about whether they face any discrimination.
However, Abdulhalikov fears that all those who took part in the weekend’s events will begin to be demonized and the authorities will mainly aim for spectacular legal processes to save face in the eyes of Moscow.
The rulers of the region can try to save their position by blaming everything on Ukraine and internal traitors, the “fifth column”.
– According to the rulers, i.e. the elders of the Dagestan government, foreigners are always to blame for the bad behavior of the youth. These are either the Ukrainian intelligence services or the West or the LGBT movement or some Islamic provocateurs and so on, Abdulhalikov laughs.
– Of course, it’s just their way of avoiding responsibility.