To All the Denialists Here

[Hovik]

There are many questions that bother me, but no matter how many times I put them to the Armenian Genocide deniers, they keep silent.

For instance:
How many millions of North Africans: Moroccans, Algerians, Tunisians, etc. live in their country of origin?

How many millions of North Africans live in France although it's not even their country of origin?

How many millions of French live in North Africa?

Does France still occupy North Africa?

Has France gone on a frenzied rampage to wipe out any trace of North Africans in those countries and that, in this day and age?

While French presence had a lot of negative effects, they brought some kind of European civilization the North Africans have benefited from.

Does France deny what they did?
Do they accuse the North Africans of their own savagery?


Now compare:
How many Armenians live in Turkish occupied Armenia, their homeland of thousands of years?

Don't Turks still occupy 90%+ of Armenian territory and aren't they whining for more?

Doesn't Turkey as well as its satellite state, the bogus "Azerbaijan", ravage every trace of millennia old Armenian presence after they annihilated the indigenous people of that land?

The Turks brought nothing but death, destruction, subjugation, terror, rape, slavery, pillage, plunder, stealing of women and children and genocide and stopped the natural progress of the industrious Armenians.

Do Turks accept what they did?
Don't they accuse the Armenians of their own savagery?

Hellektor,

Excellent points, that I have never considered or heard. very well written. Bravo!

P.S. What I liked most is that you said it calm and cool, in a manner that nobody can accuse you of hatred or racism...

Now surely the other side cannot come up with a rebuttal...right?

They'll probably demonstrate symptom I or IV of the denialist disease...

[imported_Hellektor]

Hellektor,

Excellent points, that I have never considered or heard. very well written. Bravo!

P.S. What I liked most is that you said it calm and cool, in a manner that nobody can accuse you of hatred or racism...

Now surely the other side cannot come up with a rebuttal...right?

They'll probably demonstrate symptom I or IV of the denialist disease...

Dear Hovik,

Good diagnosis, I'll talk to the doctors to see if they have a vacant position.

I take many an abuse from these deniers.
All of them accuse me of racism, hatred, anger, etc.
None of them wants to see the cause of my reaction.
One grave deficiency they have as a result of their brainwash (?) is that they don't grasp the principle of cause and effect.

Vogel, Vizier, TurQ (to a certain degree, though he's a hypocrite ), a certain kemal and above all the good old cosmos (the original one not cosmos2), are examples of Turks that can handle a civilized discussion.

When the other wild ones come here and spew defecation at Armenians from behind their computer monitors, they must expect a similar salute from Hellektor.

[ScythianVizier]

Perhaps if these other human rights violations had as much evidence to support your conviction that they were Genocide, then Genocide scholars might also declare them to be Genocide as well. It's not easy to prove Genocide; we know. It takes thousands of documents and eyewitness accounts from divergent sources.

There is strong evidence in relation to what happened in Algeria by France, but France recognizes no genocide (or issues no sorry statement). Same applies to recent genocide executed by Russia in Caucasus on the Chechens. Whilst those christian scholars (referred as benchmark) get interested in various christian losses, they seem to utter no empathy for the losses that feel upon the muslim people for the crimes executed even after 1948.

Thus, if some decides to go through historical cronicals, then those will be able to find plenty of genocides executed on the Ottoman muslims (not to mention the ones that fell upon the people who were subject to colonial fascism by the christian Europeans). There is strong evidence about the genocides executed by the Euroopean/Christian/Westerners, which affected the Crimean Tatars, Nogays, Circassians, Karachay-Balkars, Kumyks, Chechens, Laz peoples, Pomaks, Balkan Turks, Albanians, Bosniaks, muslim Roma, and so on. However, those sort of so called scholars only seem to tackle the crimes that affected their christian world.

It is obvious that those can not be counted as some reliable benchmark since they do not point out any serious western crime if one excludes the Jewish Genocide. In that regard, it is time for those sort of western scholars to focus on the crimes of their own civilization and push for the recognition of the crimes committed by their own forefathers. In a sense, that would be a good start if they wish to be convincing and reliable.

[phantom]

There is strong evidence in relation to what happened in Algeria by France, but France recognizes no genocide (or issues no sorry statement). Same applies to recent genocide executed by Russia in Caucasus on the Chechens. Whilst those christian scholars (referred as benchmark) get interested in various christian losses, they seem to utter no empathy for the losses that feel upon the muslim people for the crimes executed even after 1948.

Thus, if some decides to go through historical cronicals, then those will be able to find plenty of genocides executed on the Ottoman muslims (not to mention the ones that fell upon the people who were subject to colonial fascism by the christian Europeans). There is strong evidence about the genocides executed by the Euroopean/Christian/Westerners, which affected the Crimean Tatars, Nogays, Circassians, Karachay-Balkars, Kumyks, Chechens, Laz peoples, Pomaks, Balkan Turks, Albanians, Bosniaks, muslim Roma, and so on. However, those sort of so called scholars only seem to tackle the crimes that affected their christian world.

It is obvious that those can not be counted as some reliable benchmark since they do not point out any serious western crime if one excludes the Jewish Genocide. In that regard, it is time for those sort of western scholars to focus on the crimes of their own civilization and push for the recognition of the crimes committed by their own forefathers. In a sense, that would be a good start if they wish to be convincing and reliable.

Isn't it easy to make blanket accusations without offering up any proof, evidence, or scholarship? Shouldn't the standard of proof be the same? What evidence do you have that the Russians had the intent to destroy the Chechen people? After all, the Russians say that they are only going after the terrorists, not innocent civilians? Do you have proof that they have slaughtered thousands of innocent citizens and that they had the intent to destroy in whole or in part the Chechen people? This is, after all, the sort of proof that Turks demand when it comes to the Armenian, Pontic, and Assyrian Genocides.

[Vogelgrippe]

What do you think about Germany (Turkey's WW1) ally recognizing the Armenain Genocide?

First of all, Germany did not recognize it as a genocide, it recognized Ottoman government's attrocities and German collaboration & tolerance.

Secondly, why do you think that it took Germany soooo long to recognize the attrocities of their ex-allies and themselves? Couldn't Germany recognize it when it signed the Versailles Treaty as a defeated power? Couldn't Germany recognize it after they were utterly defeated in 1945? Couldn't they have recognized it after the reunification (to show that they are becoming a benign and conscientious giant)? You think they give a damn about Armenians, or they just wanted to use Armenians as pawns to block Turkey's EU entry?

I hope you read all my postings about Turkish and Armenian lobbying in foreign countries, and know that I categorically refuse to respect political decisions. For me, Germany's and U.S governments refusal to recognize A.G doesn't mean that A.G did not take place, and France's recognition of A.G doesn't mean that A.G took place. It is just and indication of how strong the respective ethnic lobbies are, and nothing else.

[HayerMiacek]

First of all, Germany did not recognize it as a genocide, it recognized Ottoman government's attrocities and German collaboration & tolerance.

Secondly, why do you think that it took Germany soooo long to recognize the attrocities of their ex-allies and themselves? Couldn't Germany recognize it when it signed the Versailles Treaty as a defeated power? Couldn't Germany recognize it after they were utterly defeated in 1945? Couldn't they have recognized it after the reunification (to show that they are becoming a benign and conscientious giant)? You think they give a damn about Armenians, or they just wanted to use Armenians as pawns to block Turkey's EU entry?

I hope you read all my postings about Turkish and Armenian lobbying in foreign countries, and know that I categorically refuse to respect political decisions. For me, Germany's and U.S governments refusal to recognize A.G doesn't mean that A.G did not take place, and France's recognition of A.G doesn't mean that A.G took place. It is just and indication of how strong the respective ethnic lobbies are, and nothing else.

Countries officially recognizing the Armenian genocide include Argentina, Armenia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Lebanon, Lithuania, The Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, Uruguay, Vatican City and Venezuela.

[Vogelgrippe]

Countries officially recognizing the Armenian genocide include Argentina, Armenia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Lebanon, Lithuania, The Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, Uruguay, Vatican City and Venezuela.

I do not know about the authenticity and wording of other countries' resolutions, but Germany does not recognize the events as genocide. Here is the link:

http://dip.bundestag.de/btd/15/049/1504933.pdf I have no time and desire to provide you a full translation (given that some postings here are being deleted at will), but here is a summary.

This is the resolution proposal by CDU which was accepted in the German Bundestag. It mentions the deportations and massacres, and it specifically says that it was vehemently opposed within the Ottoman& Turkish ranks, and therefore many Armenians reached safety in Syria.

It also asks the German government (by then only the SDP and Greens) to contribute to the understanding between Turkey and Armenia, and to recognize German complicity & responsibility in these events.

[ScythianVizier]

Isn't it easy to make blanket accusations without offering up any proof, evidence, or scholarship? Shouldn't the standard of proof be the same? What evidence do you have that the Russians had the intent to destroy the Chechen people? After all, the Russians say that they are only going after the terrorists, not innocent civilians? Do you have proof that they have slaughtered thousands of innocent citizens and that they had the intent to destroy in whole or in part the Chechen people? This is, after all, the sort of proof that Turks demand when it comes to the Armenian, Pontic, and Assyrian Genocides.

A starter...

The Eurasian Politician - October 2003
The Background of Chechen Independence Movement II:
The Sufi Resistance

Anssi Kullberg, 1 Oct. 2003

The two most significant religious schools among North Caucasian Muslims have been the two Sufi brotherhoods, Naqshbandiyya and Qadiriyya, occurring globally. Of these, the Naqshbandis have traditionally been higher educated and more aristocratic, and very often a driving force promoting national revival and ascent, reformism, and nationalism. The traditionally more pacifist Qadiris have been more folksy, but in Caucasia, they have also been more secret-societal, which has helped underground activity during the worst persecutions, for example in the Soviet period.

The Naqshbandiyya is hundreds of years older brotherhood among the Chechens, and for instance the famous Imam Shamil belonged to it. The teachings of the Qadiriyya were spread to Chechnya - especially among the Ingush - by Kunta-Haji Kishiyev from the Gudermes region, since early 1850s.

It is impossible to study the conflict in Chechnya without casting a glance at the times of the Murids. The Chechen term for holy war is gazavat, and the Russian invasion to Chechnya in late 1700s launched a full century of gazavats, in which the resistance struggle was led by Sufi religious leaders, sheikhs and imams, whose warrior troops were called the Murids.

The first significant Murid leader was Sheikh Mansur (1732-1794), who was chosen by the elders in 1785 to be the first imam of the North Caucasians. Mansur's Murids at first consisted of Chechens, Avars, Laks, and Ossetians, but later also included Kabards and Kumyks. After suffering a defeat against the Russians in Tatartub, November 1785, Mansur removed to west, to join the Circassians, who enjoyed the protection of the Turkish Sultan. Among them, Mansur put together a new resistance army. Later the Circassians, however, turned their backs to Mansur, who fled to North Circassian town of Anapa on the Black Sea coast, near the Kerch Straits of the Sea of Azoff. Mansur ruled in Anapa until June 1791, when the Russians conquered the town and captured Mansur.

After Mansur had been defeated, Russia targeted Chechnya with a wave of terror, which was led by General Aleksey Yermolov, notorious for his cruelty. His doctrine of systematic terror against civilian population aimed at "total subjugation of the Caucasians". Yermolov's "fire and sword" campaigns were raging across the country. In 1819 he ordered the mountain village of Dadi-Yurt to be completely destroyed, and the whole population, including women and children, to be slaughtered. Yermolov believed that the Chechens could be suppressed by extreme cruelty, but his theory proved most wrong, as what he actually managed to do was to unite and raise all Chechen population into punitive and revenge attacks, where several Russian forts were destroyed. Suppressing the Chechen uprising only succeeded after there appeared internal strives amongst them. Each time when the Russians have conquered Grozny, they have erected a statue for Yermolov there, while the Chechens have systematically blown up or otherwise sabotaged it.

After Sheikh Mansur, the resistance was led by two leaders, Gus Beg and Djimbulat, who are little known. After them, the most famous and best described phase of the "Great Gazavat" followed, led by the three imams of Dagestan: Gazimulla, Hamzad Beg, and Shamil. Gazimulla (1793-1832) was born in the village of Himri in Dagestan, and his original name was Muhammed son of Ismail. ("Gazi" means a hero or a warrior, while mullah is the Islamic jurist-theologian, often erratically translated into "priest".) Young Muhammed was raised by the mullah of the village of Berekkai, who noticed the boy's talents, and sent him to the court of Aslan Khan of Hunza, where Muhammed became the apprentice of a qadi (judge). When the qadi fell into disfavor of the khan, young Muhammed ended up as a wandering scribe, in which essence he traveled around the Caucasus and learned to know the region widely. Finally he became a student of a Naqshbandi sheikh, who influenced in the mosque of the village of Yarag. The sheikh supported Muhammed's opinion that a holy war should be raised against the Russian invaders.

Gazimulla started uniting an army in 1829, and soon achieved large and broad-based support among the North Caucasians. Russia's grip on the Caucasus was based on one hand on local vassals on Russian payroll, and on the other hand on the "fire and sword" campaigns, in which villages and cropfields were burn, and the properties of the Caucasians were looted. Resistance spirit prevailed everywhere, thanks to Yermolov's methods, and all that was needed was a strong and legitimate leader to unite the scattered resistance movement into an integrated armed uprising. The biggest obstacle on Gazimulla's ambitions was the Avar widow heiress of Aslan Khan, Khaness Pakhubike, who ruled her court in Hunza, the capital of Avaristan, and acted as a vassal of the Russian Empire. Most of the Avars took Gazimulla's side, but Gazimulla was himself killed when defending Himri in 1832.

Gazimulla got his successor in Hamzad Beg (1789-1834), who was the son of a high-ranking Avar warlord Iskender from Khutsali. He had studied Arabic and the Koran in the court of the Khaness of Hunza, and he had been adventuring and drinking, until he finally got impressed by Gazimulla's heroism and piety, and became one of the latter's most passionate Murids. Hamzad Beg, however, did not turn out to be a leader like his late master, but his years in leadership of the Murids were plagued by intrigues, atrocities and murders. In spite of this, he finished Gazimulla's work by conquering Hunza, and executed the then 60-year-old Khaness. Hamzad Beg was finally assassinated in a blood-feud, because he had ordered the execution of the under-aged heirs of his opponent.

The most famous of the Murid leaders was Shamil (1797-1871), who was another Avar from Himri. By the time of Hamzad's death, Shamil had gained a legendary reputation: He had been extremely disciplined and pedantically righteous from his childhood. In combat, he had shown such heroism, and more than once he had escaped from an almost certain death, that he had achieved the fame of an almost immortal hero. Since the times of his youth, he had also exercised both his physical strength and his talents in presentation and rhetorics, and he became famous for his inspiring speeches and for poems that were chanted on battlefields. The Dagestani poet Berek Beg wrote that Shamil "spoke flashes of lightning in his eyes, and flowers on his lips". When the Russians warned him that they have soldiers as many as there is sand on the beach, Shamil replied that his Murids were the waves that will wash the sand away.

For the next decades, battles followed each other, and thousands of Russian soldiers were killed in the beech forests of Chechnya, and in the mountains of Dagestan. Russians destroyed villages and towns, spreading death and horror, but the Caucasians quickly reconstructed their destroyed houses. Every now and then, the rows of the Caucasians were split, but Shamil had exceptional charisma both as a politician and as a military commander. He was the first, according to Professor Moshe Gammer, to found a national territorial state in Chechnya, while so far every town and village had been independent in practice. Shamil was skilful to employ the spreading of rumors before him, and he staged public spectacles that appealed on the sense of honor of the Caucasians, obliging them back to the united front. However, the numbers and weaponry of the Russians were overwhelmingly superior, and the aging Shamil met an increasing amount of military setbacks and defeats, having fought for a quarter of a century. An increasing number of the Caucasian tribes left his front.

Probably partly for getting his family safe, partly because of his age, Shamil finally decided to surrender after twenty-five years of continuous fighting. He was kept prisoner in quite luxurious circumstances in St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Kaluga. In 1870, the Czar finally decided to allow Shamil to travel abroad, to perform haj, pilgrimage to Mecca. On the way, he received a diplomatic mission from the Turkish Sultan in Constantinople, and he completed it in Egypt, after which he continued to Mecca. He died in Medina on 4th February, 1871. When the Wahhabis seized power in Saudi Arabia and conquered the two holy cities in 1926, their first action was to destroy Sufi shrines and monuments, among which they destroyed also Shamil's grave memorial in Medina.

The British traveler of the Caucasus, John Baddeley, described Imam Shamil's importance "as the protector of the British Empire and India" in his book, published in 1908: "And such were the people, who, without any external help, without artillery except what they could capture from the enemy, without trust in anyone but God and His Prophet, their own right hands and flashing swords, defied the Russian might for more than half a century; defeating her troops, attacking her colonies, and laughing with scorn at her wealth, pride, and numbers. And the story of their heroic struggle has its specific justification for the sympathy of its English readers. It is true that they fought for themselves alone – for their faith, freedom, and land. But they also stood, albeit not knowingly, as the protection of the British rule in India."

Although the Russians usually consider the independence of Chechnya and Dagestan to have ended in Shamil's surrender, in reality the resistance never died. Caucasians rose into rebellion every time, when there was a chance for it. During the Polish Rebellion in 1863, the Caucasian uprising was first time led by the Qadiris. According to Professor Gammer of the University of Tel Aviv, the fact that also the Qadiris, who were known as pacifists, joined open armed resistance, "was as such a statement of what the Russian rule in the Caucasus was like".

After Shamil's surrender, Russia's war campaigns concentrated in the Circassian lands of the Northwest Caucasus and the Black Sea coast. To oppress the Circassians, Russia ended up in a solution that was to have sinister historical significance: All the historical territory of the Circassians, the Kuban plains and the Black Sea coast, were to be cleansed of the original population. The Circassians were given two choices: they could move to the interior parts of the Empire, or flee to Turkey. Most Circassians chose Turkey. Mass deportations were started in 1860, and the consequences were catastrophic. A humanitarian disaster followed, and the Circassians immediately organized armed resistance, and made Sochi (Sashe) their capital, appealing for Turkey and the Western states to recognize independent Circassia. Their appeals were ignored.

In 1862, Russia again started violent deportations, and by May 1864, the Circassian resistance had been crushed. More than 400'000 Circassians as well as 200'000 Georgian Abkhazians and Ajars were compelled to flee for Turkey. The deportation did not take place without major violence, but the Russian imperial troops committed horrible massacres, and besides, thousands of people starved to death. In 1865, Russia decided to use the same methods to cleanse Chechnya, from where 5'000 extended families were deported to Turkey (the amount was huge compared with the size of the population at the time – a family is a very large unit).

It was really the first intentional large-scale genocide of the modern times, as well as the model case of the consequent tradition of ethnic cleansing. It was also the largest single genocide of the 19th century. It preceded the wave of pogroms and deportations that Russia used against the Jews, and it also preceded the tragic consequences that the same Russian expansion wars against Turkish territories had on Armenians after the turn of the century. For some reason, the Circassian genocide has never been given proper attention or researched well. The Circassian genocide ended at about same time with the launching of the Jewish deportations in 1880s, when more than three million Circassians had been expelled from the territories occupied by Russia. The numbers of those who were killed, are not known. Anyway, it meant 90 per cent of the whole Circassian population.

The Circassian genocide was followed by a wave of anti-Russian resistance, which, according to Gammer, was the greatest of the period, although it is much less known than the Murid Wars. While the time of the Murids from Mansur to Imam Shamil is known as the "Great Gazavat", the shorter but more intensive resistance war is known as the "Little Gazavat", and it was fought during the Russo-Turkish War in 1877-1878. On the Turkish side, also Shamil's son Gazi Mahomed fought in this war. Unlike in the previous wars, this time Turkey – considering already its core areas threatened – openly supported the Caucasians, and organized for their support a cavalry division that was mainly constituted by Caucasian emigrants.

The vital strength of Sufism has always lied in its deep roots in the social structures and traditions of the mountain regions. Because of its local character, and because it developed around scholars and heroes, who were respected as individuals, rather than around hierarchic and authoritarian institutions, Sufism proved much more able to resist the Russian central power both in czarist and Soviet times, than the Sunni Islam of Hanafi school that prevailed in Central Asia. As early as in the czarist period, Russian colonial administration noticed that it served their interests to employ as their vassals the most authoritarian local regents of the Caucasus and Central Asia, as well as the conservative Muslim clergy, the ulama. Russia considered the conservative Qadimists as their allies, while the reformist Jadidists, who supported more liberal interpretation of Islam, were considered as enemies of Russia.

The Russian strategy did not, however, work equally well in the territories of the Caucasus, where the Sufi brotherhoods prevailed. The Sufi brotherhoods maintained continuous resistance spirit against the Russian occupiers. The secret-societal nature of the brotherhoods guaranteed that when Russia prohibited the functioning of madrassahs and mosques, executed mullahs and scholars, destroyed classical literature, and changed the alphabets, the practice of religion continued in private homes and underground.

The Sufi brotherhoods, especially Naqshbandiyya, have worked as the initiating and maintaining force behind almost all Muslim anti-colonial resistance and independence movements: In the 1800s, they led the resistance against the French in North Africa, against the Russians in the Caucasus, against the British in India, against the Dutch in Indonesia, and against the Turks in the Arabian Peninsula. In the same way, the Sufi brotherhoods have worked as the leading force behind the resistance against the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan, against the Indian occupation in Kashmir, against the Serbs in Bosnia and Kosovo, and against Russia in Chechnya, Dagestan, and Tajikistan.

http://www.cc.jyu.fi/~aphamala/pe/2003/tsets-2.htm

[phantom]

I do not know about the authenticity and wording of other countries' resolutions, but Germany does not recognize the events as genocide. Here is the link:

http://dip.bundestag.de/btd/15/049/1504933.pdf I have no time and desire to provide you a full translation (given that some postings here are being deleted at will), but here is a summary.

This is the resolution proposal by CDU which was accepted in the German Bundestag. It mentions the deportations and massacres, and it specifically says that it was vehemently opposed within the Ottoman& Turkish ranks, and therefore many Armenians reached safety in Syria.

It also asks the German government (by then only the SDP and Greens) to contribute to the understanding between Turkey and Armenia, and to recognize German complicity & responsibility in these events.

Hmm, is that right? Well, why don't you look at it a little more closely:

In the official explanation of the resolution, the text actually does use the word “genocide,” and describes in great detail the atrocities committed against the Armenians by the Young Turk regime. Furthermore, the resolution uses various other words that are the equivalents of genocide, such as “mass murder, extermination or annihilation, and destruction.” It states that “numerous independent historians, parliaments, and international organizations designate the expulsion and destruction of the Armenians as a genocide [Volkermord].” The resolution also estimates the number of those killed in the genocide as “more than a million,” according to “independent calculations.” It acknowledges that the German Reich, as the chief ally of the Ottoman Empire during WW1, was deeply involved in the mass murder of Armenians.

Also, if it wasn't such a big deal, then why did the Turkish government make such a big deal out of it when the resolution was passed? Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul described the resolution as “irresponsible, dismaying, and wounding.” Prime Minister Erdogan referred to it as “wrong and ugly.” He said that history would put the German leaders to shame. This undiplomatic name-calling further antagonized the Germans. A spokesman for the German government said he disagreed with Erdogan’s characterization, saying that the resolution was “balanced.” The Turkish and German exchange of words following the passage of the resolution generated more articles on this issue. Thanks to Turkish demonstrations and protests in both Ankara and Berlin, the international media continued to provide extensive coverage of the fall-out from the resolution on the Armenian Genocide.

As prominent Turkish commentator Mehmet Ali Birand wrote in the Turkish Daily News: “The Armenian genocide allegations are being approved by a new parliament every passing day. The trap we are in is closing on us. One day we will see, we are left alone by ourselves. All Western parliaments will accept the genocide and will be applying pressure on their governments. The recent development in the German parliament is just a typical example of this. Let’s not see this as a stab in the back. Armenians have dominated the international arena to such an extent that the governments no longer feel the need to resist them.”

Sounds like a Genocide resolution to me!

[phantom]

A starter...

The Eurasian Politician - October 2003
The Background of Chechen Independence Movement II:
The Sufi Resistance

Anssi Kullberg, 1 Oct. 2003

The two most significant religious schools among North Caucasian Muslims have been the two Sufi brotherhoods, Naqshbandiyya and Qadiriyya, occurring globally. Of these, the Naqshbandis have traditionally been higher educated and more aristocratic, and very often a driving force promoting national revival and ascent, reformism, and nationalism. The traditionally more pacifist Qadiris have been more folksy, but in Caucasia, they have also been more secret-societal, which has helped underground activity during the worst persecutions, for example in the Soviet period.

The Naqshbandiyya is hundreds of years older brotherhood among the Chechens, and for instance the famous Imam Shamil belonged to it. The teachings of the Qadiriyya were spread to Chechnya - especially among the Ingush - by Kunta-Haji Kishiyev from the Gudermes region, since early 1850s.

It is impossible to study the conflict in Chechnya without casting a glance at the times of the Murids. The Chechen term for holy war is gazavat, and the Russian invasion to Chechnya in late 1700s launched a full century of gazavats, in which the resistance struggle was led by Sufi religious leaders, sheikhs and imams, whose warrior troops were called the Murids.

The first significant Murid leader was Sheikh Mansur (1732-1794), who was chosen by the elders in 1785 to be the first imam of the North Caucasians. Mansur's Murids at first consisted of Chechens, Avars, Laks, and Ossetians, but later also included Kabards and Kumyks. After suffering a defeat against the Russians in Tatartub, November 1785, Mansur removed to west, to join the Circassians, who enjoyed the protection of the Turkish Sultan. Among them, Mansur put together a new resistance army. Later the Circassians, however, turned their backs to Mansur, who fled to North Circassian town of Anapa on the Black Sea coast, near the Kerch Straits of the Sea of Azoff. Mansur ruled in Anapa until June 1791, when the Russians conquered the town and captured Mansur.

After Mansur had been defeated, Russia targeted Chechnya with a wave of terror, which was led by General Aleksey Yermolov, notorious for his cruelty. His doctrine of systematic terror against civilian population aimed at "total subjugation of the Caucasians". Yermolov's "fire and sword" campaigns were raging across the country. In 1819 he ordered the mountain village of Dadi-Yurt to be completely destroyed, and the whole population, including women and children, to be slaughtered. Yermolov believed that the Chechens could be suppressed by extreme cruelty, but his theory proved most wrong, as what he actually managed to do was to unite and raise all Chechen population into punitive and revenge attacks, where several Russian forts were destroyed. Suppressing the Chechen uprising only succeeded after there appeared internal strives amongst them. Each time when the Russians have conquered Grozny, they have erected a statue for Yermolov there, while the Chechens have systematically blown up or otherwise sabotaged it.

After Sheikh Mansur, the resistance was led by two leaders, Gus Beg and Djimbulat, who are little known. After them, the most famous and best described phase of the "Great Gazavat" followed, led by the three imams of Dagestan: Gazimulla, Hamzad Beg, and Shamil. Gazimulla (1793-1832) was born in the village of Himri in Dagestan, and his original name was Muhammed son of Ismail. ("Gazi" means a hero or a warrior, while mullah is the Islamic jurist-theologian, often erratically translated into "priest".) Young Muhammed was raised by the mullah of the village of Berekkai, who noticed the boy's talents, and sent him to the court of Aslan Khan of Hunza, where Muhammed became the apprentice of a qadi (judge). When the qadi fell into disfavor of the khan, young Muhammed ended up as a wandering scribe, in which essence he traveled around the Caucasus and learned to know the region widely. Finally he became a student of a Naqshbandi sheikh, who influenced in the mosque of the village of Yarag. The sheikh supported Muhammed's opinion that a holy war should be raised against the Russian invaders.

Gazimulla started uniting an army in 1829, and soon achieved large and broad-based support among the North Caucasians. Russia's grip on the Caucasus was based on one hand on local vassals on Russian payroll, and on the other hand on the "fire and sword" campaigns, in which villages and cropfields were burn, and the properties of the Caucasians were looted. Resistance spirit prevailed everywhere, thanks to Yermolov's methods, and all that was needed was a strong and legitimate leader to unite the scattered resistance movement into an integrated armed uprising. The biggest obstacle on Gazimulla's ambitions was the Avar widow heiress of Aslan Khan, Khaness Pakhubike, who ruled her court in Hunza, the capital of Avaristan, and acted as a vassal of the Russian Empire. Most of the Avars took Gazimulla's side, but Gazimulla was himself killed when defending Himri in 1832.

Gazimulla got his successor in Hamzad Beg (1789-1834), who was the son of a high-ranking Avar warlord Iskender from Khutsali. He had studied Arabic and the Koran in the court of the Khaness of Hunza, and he had been adventuring and drinking, until he finally got impressed by Gazimulla's heroism and piety, and became one of the latter's most passionate Murids. Hamzad Beg, however, did not turn out to be a leader like his late master, but his years in leadership of the Murids were plagued by intrigues, atrocities and murders. In spite of this, he finished Gazimulla's work by conquering Hunza, and executed the then 60-year-old Khaness. Hamzad Beg was finally assassinated in a blood-feud, because he had ordered the execution of the under-aged heirs of his opponent.

The most famous of the Murid leaders was Shamil (1797-1871), who was another Avar from Himri. By the time of Hamzad's death, Shamil had gained a legendary reputation: He had been extremely disciplined and pedantically righteous from his childhood. In combat, he had shown such heroism, and more than once he had escaped from an almost certain death, that he had achieved the fame of an almost immortal hero. Since the times of his youth, he had also exercised both his physical strength and his talents in presentation and rhetorics, and he became famous for his inspiring speeches and for poems that were chanted on battlefields. The Dagestani poet Berek Beg wrote that Shamil "spoke flashes of lightning in his eyes, and flowers on his lips". When the Russians warned him that they have soldiers as many as there is sand on the beach, Shamil replied that his Murids were the waves that will wash the sand away.

For the next decades, battles followed each other, and thousands of Russian soldiers were killed in the beech forests of Chechnya, and in the mountains of Dagestan. Russians destroyed villages and towns, spreading death and horror, but the Caucasians quickly reconstructed their destroyed houses. Every now and then, the rows of the Caucasians were split, but Shamil had exceptional charisma both as a politician and as a military commander. He was the first, according to Professor Moshe Gammer, to found a national territorial state in Chechnya, while so far every town and village had been independent in practice. Shamil was skilful to employ the spreading of rumors before him, and he staged public spectacles that appealed on the sense of honor of the Caucasians, obliging them back to the united front. However, the numbers and weaponry of the Russians were overwhelmingly superior, and the aging Shamil met an increasing amount of military setbacks and defeats, having fought for a quarter of a century. An increasing number of the Caucasian tribes left his front.

Probably partly for getting his family safe, partly because of his age, Shamil finally decided to surrender after twenty-five years of continuous fighting. He was kept prisoner in quite luxurious circumstances in St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Kaluga. In 1870, the Czar finally decided to allow Shamil to travel abroad, to perform haj, pilgrimage to Mecca. On the way, he received a diplomatic mission from the Turkish Sultan in Constantinople, and he completed it in Egypt, after which he continued to Mecca. He died in Medina on 4th February, 1871. When the Wahhabis seized power in Saudi Arabia and conquered the two holy cities in 1926, their first action was to destroy Sufi shrines and monuments, among which they destroyed also Shamil's grave memorial in Medina.

The British traveler of the Caucasus, John Baddeley, described Imam Shamil's importance "as the protector of the British Empire and India" in his book, published in 1908: "And such were the people, who, without any external help, without artillery except what they could capture from the enemy, without trust in anyone but God and His Prophet, their own right hands and flashing swords, defied the Russian might for more than half a century; defeating her troops, attacking her colonies, and laughing with scorn at her wealth, pride, and numbers. And the story of their heroic struggle has its specific justification for the sympathy of its English readers. It is true that they fought for themselves alone – for their faith, freedom, and land. But they also stood, albeit not knowingly, as the protection of the British rule in India."

Although the Russians usually consider the independence of Chechnya and Dagestan to have ended in Shamil's surrender, in reality the resistance never died. Caucasians rose into rebellion every time, when there was a chance for it. During the Polish Rebellion in 1863, the Caucasian uprising was first time led by the Qadiris. According to Professor Gammer of the University of Tel Aviv, the fact that also the Qadiris, who were known as pacifists, joined open armed resistance, "was as such a statement of what the Russian rule in the Caucasus was like".

After Shamil's surrender, Russia's war campaigns concentrated in the Circassian lands of the Northwest Caucasus and the Black Sea coast. To oppress the Circassians, Russia ended up in a solution that was to have sinister historical significance: All the historical territory of the Circassians, the Kuban plains and the Black Sea coast, were to be cleansed of the original population. The Circassians were given two choices: they could move to the interior parts of the Empire, or flee to Turkey. Most Circassians chose Turkey. Mass deportations were started in 1860, and the consequences were catastrophic. A humanitarian disaster followed, and the Circassians immediately organized armed resistance, and made Sochi (Sashe) their capital, appealing for Turkey and the Western states to recognize independent Circassia. Their appeals were ignored.

In 1862, Russia again started violent deportations, and by May 1864, the Circassian resistance had been crushed. More than 400'000 Circassians as well as 200'000 Georgian Abkhazians and Ajars were compelled to flee for Turkey. The deportation did not take place without major violence, but the Russian imperial troops committed horrible massacres, and besides, thousands of people starved to death. In 1865, Russia decided to use the same methods to cleanse Chechnya, from where 5'000 extended families were deported to Turkey (the amount was huge compared with the size of the population at the time – a family is a very large unit).

It was really the first intentional large-scale genocide of the modern times, as well as the model case of the consequent tradition of ethnic cleansing. It was also the largest single genocide of the 19th century. It preceded the wave of pogroms and deportations that Russia used against the Jews, and it also preceded the tragic consequences that the same Russian expansion wars against Turkish territories had on Armenians after the turn of the century. For some reason, the Circassian genocide has never been given proper attention or researched well. The Circassian genocide ended at about same time with the launching of the Jewish deportations in 1880s, when more than three million Circassians had been expelled from the territories occupied by Russia. The numbers of those who were killed, are not known. Anyway, it meant 90 per cent of the whole Circassian population.

The Circassian genocide was followed by a wave of anti-Russian resistance, which, according to Gammer, was the greatest of the period, although it is much less known than the Murid Wars. While the time of the Murids from Mansur to Imam Shamil is known as the "Great Gazavat", the shorter but more intensive resistance war is known as the "Little Gazavat", and it was fought during the Russo-Turkish War in 1877-1878. On the Turkish side, also Shamil's son Gazi Mahomed fought in this war. Unlike in the previous wars, this time Turkey – considering already its core areas threatened – openly supported the Caucasians, and organized for their support a cavalry division that was mainly constituted by Caucasian emigrants.

The vital strength of Sufism has always lied in its deep roots in the social structures and traditions of the mountain regions. Because of its local character, and because it developed around scholars and heroes, who were respected as individuals, rather than around hierarchic and authoritarian institutions, Sufism proved much more able to resist the Russian central power both in czarist and Soviet times, than the Sunni Islam of Hanafi school that prevailed in Central Asia. As early as in the czarist period, Russian colonial administration noticed that it served their interests to employ as their vassals the most authoritarian local regents of the Caucasus and Central Asia, as well as the conservative Muslim clergy, the ulama. Russia considered the conservative Qadimists as their allies, while the reformist Jadidists, who supported more liberal interpretation of Islam, were considered as enemies of Russia.

The Russian strategy did not, however, work equally well in the territories of the Caucasus, where the Sufi brotherhoods prevailed. The Sufi brotherhoods maintained continuous resistance spirit against the Russian occupiers. The secret-societal nature of the brotherhoods guaranteed that when Russia prohibited the functioning of madrassahs and mosques, executed mullahs and scholars, destroyed classical literature, and changed the alphabets, the practice of religion continued in private homes and underground.

The Sufi brotherhoods, especially Naqshbandiyya, have worked as the initiating and maintaining force behind almost all Muslim anti-colonial resistance and independence movements: In the 1800s, they led the resistance against the French in North Africa, against the Russians in the Caucasus, against the British in India, against the Dutch in Indonesia, and against the Turks in the Arabian Peninsula. In the same way, the Sufi brotherhoods have worked as the leading force behind the resistance against the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan, against the Indian occupation in Kashmir, against the Serbs in Bosnia and Kosovo, and against Russia in Chechnya, Dagestan, and Tajikistan.

http://www.cc.jyu.fi/~aphamala/pe/2003/tsets-2.htm

Well, what do our Turkish members think about this article? Does it show that there was a Genocide committed against Circassians or Chechens by the Russians?