Sochi, home of the 2014 Olympic Winter Games, is in a terrific neighborhood. Sochi and Makhachkala, for example, are a little less than 400 miles apart. Makhachkala, you ask?
Yep, Makhachkala, capital of Dagestan, boiling hot, humid center of crime and thuggery on the Caspian Sea.
The Unesco World Heritage site of Derbent is down the Caspian coast from Makhachkala. But you're unlikely to want to visit anytime soon because of the general state of lawlessness that prevails in Dagestan, where "Criminal activity is widespread throughout the region, often targeting the few foreign tourists that do continue to visit for kidnapping, extortion, and worse."
Dagestan is one of the roiling north Caucasus republics that, along with Chechnya, Ingushetia, North Ossetia, Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay-Cherkessia (east to west), are giving the Russian fits. And are right next to Sochi.
Stratfor has an open access report this morning called The Caucasus Emirate. It notes that so far this year there have been double the number of killings in the region than last year at this time.
Why should this specific little slice of land throw up bands of militant Islamists? Why not Azerbaijan, which is adjacent to Dagestan, and has been predominantly Muslim forever, for example?
Wojciech Jagielski has a theory. A reporter for Gazeta Wyborcza, a mass daily in Poland, he's also the author of Towers of Stone, a terrific book about his war reporting in the Caucasus. To summarize and greatly simplify, the people of the North Caucasus allowed the godless Soviet system to replace their old, moderate Islamic way of life, and once that system collapsed, they couldn't very well return to their old ways, which they had rejected just 70-odd years before. So in effect they doubled down, and embraced the much more austere version of Islam that visitors from Arab lands brought with them.
Jeffrey Tayler visited Makhachkala, and even Derbent, for his book Murderers in Mausoleums. A quote:
We climbed out of the Volga's smoke-befouled cabin into a Bengali blaze to confront a scene reminiscent of Partition and the mass flight of refugees. Throngs of heavyset scarved women and short, swaggering men surged up the steps, dragging tawdry bundles and taped-together suitcases; following them, glancing about fearfully, were boys in skullcaps and little girls with babies lashed to their backs. Up on the platform the police checked papers... troops, clad in camouflage and wielding Kalashnikovs, loitered, stone-faced, in groups of three and four.
Any idea where he's talking about? Yep, it's the Makhachkala train station. And you can be sure, as with any Jeffrey Tayler book, it only gets worse.
Remarkably, there's a Dagestan Travel Guide on the internet. It's where the quote in the third paragraph about criminal activity, kidnapping and extortion came from. It goes on, "Dagestan shares along with the rest of the North Caucasus an extravagantly corrupt official culture and bribes and harassment are business as usual."
But if you should still wish to go, the Dagestan Travel Guide ends with this good cheer: "Visitors should know that there is no real embassy or consulate in Dagestan. Your best bet would be Moscow in Russia, Tbilisi in Georgia, Baku in Azerbaijan, or Yerevan in Armenia. Good luck!"
(Read more Sochi Olympics Watch articles here. Haven't been to the North Causacus yet, but you can see photos from the South Caucasus in the Armenia Gallery, the Azerbaijan Gallery and the Georgia Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.)
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