Interview with Khozh-Akhmed Noukhayev

Date: November 21, 2001
Source: Russkyi Zhurnal
By By Valery Stroev

This long interview sheds more light on Noukhayev's views and ideas.

CHECHNYA

OUR FUTURE IN OUR DISTANT PAST

Russkyi Zhurnal: Many remember your recent arrival in Moscow at the conference Islamic threat or threat to a Islam?. Then the press copiously wrote that the activist of the Chechen Resistance, being searched by Federal authorities, has easily come in Moscow and stays at the President-hotel.... Was it such a risk, arriving in the capital of Russia in that moment, while there is still a war in Chechnya?

Hodj-Akhmed Nukhaev: My presence at the Conference as the representative of the Chechen Resistance should show the strength of the eurasist ideas, capable to create strong basis for peace in Northern Caucasus, to turn the enemy relationship between Chechnya and Russia into partnership and even alliance against the common enemy the Western globalism. Obviously, the members of the organising committee of the Conference and the leaders of the Movement EURASIA, having considerable influence at the Duma and in the Kremlin, succeeded to convince of this logic also the Russian government, so I did not feel especially uncomfortable in Moscow.

RZ : From the position of an active participant to the Chechen Resistance, do you consider partnership relations between Russia and Chechnya a possibility? Are there the necessary conditions to this purpose?

HAN : Not without reason they say that "no evil is without good"; though globalism also attacks in Eurasia, which is undoubtedly an evil for its peoples,on the other hand, such impetuous "offensive" has given Russia a chance to acknowledge the danger coming from the common enemy, and to foresee a common platform, to find in traditionalism and Eurasism a common language for the talk with the Chechens. All this is an indispensable conditions both for the cease of the Russian-Chechen war, and for integration of the Eurasian peoples on the basis of traditionalism, in order to gather the forces to counter globalism, bringing its non-spiritual, consumer values of modernism on our ancient continent, and for its peoples the loss of religious sacredness and national originality. Satan, disguised under a "democratic" camouflage, has shown its essence, he acts today openly, impudently and insistently. And I am glad that I could convince many people in Moscow that the solution to the Chechen problem in the spirit of traditionalism, on the basis of the Scriptures, is also simultaneously the solution to the problem of the opposition to globalism, equally threatening all Eurasian peoples.

The main result from the Moscow conference is that my idea i.e. that the basis of the solution of all acute problems of modernity lies in the belief in the one God found a concrete realisation in the decision of the leaders of the Russian Muftiat and the Russian Orthodox church to jointly appear as the pioneers and mediators of Russian-Chechen peace negotiations, which was mirrored in the final Collective resolution.

RZ : You talk about the alliance of Muslims and Orthodox Christians.. But many in Russia, and specially in a light of US acts of war in Afghanistan, conceive Islam as almost the main enemy of Christianity. On what is founded your confidence, that today Islam and Christianity can become allies?

HAN : If the Christians will take as a value, as a world-view orienting point the confession of the early, communitarian Christianity of the "Nazarenes" (this term is also in the Koran) that is Christianity in the times of Jesus Christ (peace to him) and the first Jewish-Christian community in Jerusalem headed St. Jacob, with traditionalist positions denying the attempt of St.Paul at the "update and westernisation" of the doctrines of the Messiah (peace to him) in a Greek-Roman key, agreeable to Caesar nothing will prevent Christians and Muslims to become allies, brothers in monotheism, imploring " Bismilah Rakhmani rakhim", "Hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as in heaven", "Shema Israel!", "Amen".

This union is possible, but exclusively from the initial, common origin of the union between peoples and nations. For such union it is necessary to all peoples to revive their own natural, national skeleton, and to understand, that the artificial carcass of the state is but a remedy for the containment of an atomised crowd from dissolution, but in no way the natural, harmonic habitat of man.

In such key should be rethought the inter-confessional relations among the representatives of all religions, including the Muslims, which today live in states and which still should revive in the name of Allah the early communitarian Islam existing in the times of the Prophet Muhammad (a.s.s). This is also the greatest Jihad which we must perform among Muslims, Christians and also Jews in relation to those who are mislaid. Since the essence of Jihad is not in killing the enemy, as to turn him on the "straight path"!.

RZ : What on the practical plan can offer this union of the Muslims with the Christian to the solution of the Russian-Chechen conflict? Why are you not call as allies any different forces or structures?

HAN : Everyone with whom I discussed in Moscow is convinced that the Russian-Chechen war has lost any sense, and the main point is: what force will be the pioneer of its cease. It is necessary to perceive that the one who will stop the Russian-Chechen war becomes the winner, in the broadest sense of this word, - and the winner, as it is known, always imposes to the surrounding environment his own lifestyle. The cease of war on the basis of international law - the "Khazavyurt n.2" under the aegis of the OSCE as well as the last time, will be a damage both for Chechens (though many Chechens considered the Khazavyurt agreement as a victory), and Russia. It will be the victory of the Western lifestyle, that is the forces of globalism. Both Russia and Chechnya have very well tested what the victory of democracy means for them. And if as it was also decided at the June conference the pioneers of a peace founded not on cunning as on morality, the representatives of Islam and Orthodoxy will act in tight union, then in Russia as in all Eurasia, and then all over the world the winner will be true traditionalism, the winner will be the monotheist religion.

Therefore the decision on the joint peace-making initiative on behalf of the representatives of Islamic and Orthodox religions represents an unprecedented phenomenon in world history. It is that corner stone, on which will be posed the majestic building of the integration of all peoples wishing to save their originality, it is the first step on the path of the solution, in a uniform context of morality, of both the issue of the Russian-Chechen relationships and the victory above globalism. It is not only safeguarding of what the peoples have preserved from their deep, native traditions, but also rising it to a conscious level, since there is no different way to heal the ecological situation on earth and to eliminate alienation and spiritual emptiness. It is a great victory of the monotheist religions, the religion of Allah. The joint peace-making initiative of the influential representatives of Islam and Orthodoxy in the name not of political, as of especially religious values, immediately will dig the ground from under the feet of all these Western democratic institutions and organisations (such as OSCE, the United Nations etc.), who, guided by political utilitarianism, are the instruments to the realisation of globalisation policies, the agents of the Atlantic forces.

RZ : Do you consider that the Chechens do not need the assistance of international law organisations? Who then will act as a guarantor of political stability?

HAN : And what good did we Chechens get from having concluded the peace agreements with Russia under the aegis of OSCE? Firstly, all of us had a chance to supervise the depressing picture of the "democratic elections" which took place in Chechnya at the beginning of 1997 under sponsorship and straight control of the OSCE, when the very best among our people, true tribe leaders, whose names were echoed world-wide, lost their charisma in political quarrels.

Besides, where is the warranty that a conclusion of the agreement under the aegis of international mediators will become a constraining factor for the Russian authorities? Where could you find a more heavily constraining factor for them, than the influence of the Russian clergy, both Orthodox and Islamic? In these is also expressed Russia's own self-respect resting on the authority of the internal subjects of spiritual authority, who have on the Russian society a much greater influence than the status of any OSCE and other international institutions...

The art of politics is to finely entrap all the lower impulses of the anonymous mass of people and to make of these impulses the support and instrument to the achievement of one's own targets - as low as the means used for their achievement. Therefore, the man who in the world of politics, in the kingdom of mass-media, tries to be guided by principles of morality, by remedies in conformity with truth, is doomed to failure. It is difficult to overestimate the grave moral damage suffered by our people as a result of this inter- war "celebration of the principles of democracy", these political games.

RZ : Understandably, this means you reject also international organisations and generally politics as such... Then what remedies should the Chechens use to the achievement of national consensus?

HAN : Through all the post-war period (1996-1999) we have been busy just in the building of the state, strengthening the foundations of national independence - communitarian, tribal way of life, traditions and customs and that world-view that grew upon this basis of values. And you see! all this is also that "secret Chechen weapon", that "national secret", so incomprehensible for many, which provided us with force and will in our centuries-old opposition to the mighty Russian power and its "civilisation mission". Only the basis of traditionalism is a solid stronghold of our national independence, but under the influence of the "democratic fashion" we began to wreck this stronghold.

I shall add, that having a tribal consciousness, "Chechens" once have been all peoples: both the Arabs in the times of the Prophet (a.s.s.)., and Germans, and Celts, and Slavs, and Turks in the times of the natural law "an eye for an eye" in other words, all the peoples in which the sacred tradition was combined with the precepts of communitarian, tribal lifestyle, descending from it. Such lifestyle defended the land from waste and the links of natural kinship from being broken. This has been lost by the majority of the peoples and saved by the Chechen tradition incompatible to politics, with the state. It also explains that the institutions of state authority built by us do not work. All these attributes of statehood acquired by Chechnya from the outside are not inscribed in the conventional way of life of the Chechen people.

Politics is incompatible with morality, and without morality reconciled with the precepts of the Most High God it is impossible to build a saintly life. Therefore let monotheist religions become the "peace-makers" in the ongoing war, let religions "impose" its lifestyle both to Chechnya and Russia.

RZ : It seems that you call the Chechens as an almost primitive- communitarian [pervobytnoobschinnyi] system...

HAN : Well, first of all, I do not see anything bad or humiliating in a word composed of the terms "primitive" [pervobytnyi] and "communitarian" [obschinnyi]. "Primitive" means original, primordial, and as to the term "communitarian", I already told before what is contained in this sacral concept.

In the times of our Prophet (a.s.s). around Arabia were states whose history is millenary: Persia, Egypt, Syria, the Eastern Roman empire (Byzantium), Yemen, Abissinia. However neither the achievements of the "Iron Age", nor the presence in a neighbourhood of so many state models prevented the prophet (a.s.s). from establishing among the Arabs a "primitive-communitarian system" or, in other words, a tribal confederation, in Chechen - a teypi- tuhkhamni system. On the basis of this system also stands the "primitive community" the consanguineous socium ("family brotherhood"), which also denominated the most long-lasting and static period of human existence.

The ancient wise men called this blessed period as the "Golden Age" which has been broken down because of the sinfulness of the people. Sacred monotheistic religions mean this social system of life under the precepts of God.

So, the prophet Moses (peace to him), having brought his people to the "promised land", did not establish a state system - with which, having lived many a long years at a court of the Egyptian pharaoh, he was well familiar but a classic "primitive-communitarian system" - the confederation of the Israeli nations and kinds. It is needless to speak that he, being the prophet, fulfilled the will of the Most High God. Jesus Christ (peace to him) in the Sermon of the mountain clearly manifested his own mission - to reconstruct on earth those laws of God which Moses (patterns to him)had established.

Our problem that we have enclosed our thinking in a vice of false stereotypes and it is hard for us to break this vice, to free our reason from error. Being a people of believers, we nevertheless refer to past mankind from those positions that have been consolidated in science by efforts of the scientists-atheists. As a matter of fact, if after the Darwinists we were to believe that men descended from the monkeys, ancient mankind will appear as dark abyss of absurdity, and history the forward movement from the animal status to the shining heights of civilisation.

For the people sticking to a similar point of view on the past, the call to revive the communitarian, tribal form of social life will really sound as an invocation to the "feral caves", to the "Stone Age", to an "animal existence". But if we judge the ancient times through the Revelations of the prophets (peace to them) if we consider ourselves not as the "descent of the monkeys", as the children of Adam (peace to him), the call to revive the "primitive- communitarian system" sounds absolutely differently: it becomes the call to return to a that kind of rightful, fair, stable life which was given to His human creations by the Mighty Creator. So we shall return to the true theocracy the Kingdom of God on earth!

RZ : But in this case how will he Chechens provide for safety from attempts from the outside?

HAN : Russia has been waging war on Caucasus since five centuries, and today - having the most perfect weapons and a capable army - it has not changed the situation. The war is prolonged and will keep, even in spite of the fact that the Chechens, as against Russia, have neither a stable army, nor high technologies, nor military industry. All these circumstances indicate that there is no military solution of the Russian-Chechen conflict.

The same happens today also in Afghanistan, where all the military power of the Western countries can not and will not gain victory over the Pushtuni, who just like the Chechens live in a tribal system, according to principles of Koran. At the same time we see that other Muslim countries possessing and a developed statehood, and a developed industry - capitulated at the first scream from the US and backed the assassination of their Muslim brothers. They are already so much involved in the state system, that they put the concerns of the states above the concerns of religion.

Allah gives force and protection to those peoples that strictly follow His precepts. Here lies the secret reason why that small lease of Chechen land till now did not surrender, whatever weapon was used to this purpose. Force hides not in weapon, not in economic or state power, not in war and terrorism, but in truth, in following the path of the Most High God, according to His precepts. How and by which means Allah shows His help and protection - this is His secret. The most important thing is that we have fully realised: the conditions for security are not in the chase of new technologies, the production opening out all doors to evil: the waste of the land, the break of affinity links between the peoples, the loss of the feeling for what stands closer.

We must not mirror evil by evil, we must not use means contrary to God to the achievement of a purpose pleasing to God, as the character of the means defines the character of the purpose, and the other way round. If we shall go on a path of technological development, it will force us to kill nature, to create populous towns - megalopolises dividing, atomising people, their families, which cannot exist outside the state system. Creating cities and moving there, we shall have to reject the communitarian lifestyle, to refuse the precepts of the Most High God. And having refused life under God's precepts, we shall be deprived of His protection and safeguard. And then we shall but hope for earthly force, weapon and technique, having entrusted our safety to these items. Moreover, producing these items by means of waste of land and breaking family ties by means of urbanisation, we shall not simply lose the protection of the Most High God, as we shall also call of His anger: Would you then, if you were given the command (from Allah), work corruption in the land and sever your ties of kinship? Such are they whom Allah curseth (47:22-23).

We should create a sample of the pure society dwelling on the precepts of God, saving the land from waste and healing the spirit of man. Also there is no doubt that this it society becomes an example for many peoples, including in the West - for the simple citizens, for the "greens", the antiglobalists, all the believers, for all the sound forces, aspiring to moral, which will see salvation in it. They will see that such way of life can defend them from the ecological catastrophe, can give them quietness and keep from inevitable perdition, to which one they are pushed by globalism and progressist fury - that kills all the living both in nature and in men.

And when I call the Chechens to take a decision about the separation between a "civil" (flatland) and "communitarian" (mountain) part - I want, that in the "communitarian" part of the Chechens (it is unimportant how much we will be) might be revived in all its completeness and perfection the pure, primordial religion of Allah. Then it will be victory of Monotheism, then our example of communitarian life will become the social standard for the revived peoples. Having restored the order on the land, is strict conformity with the Koran and the Sunnah, we shall find protection on the part of Allah: Then We will save our apostles and those who believe; thus is it due from Us to save the believers. (10:103).

RZ : The plan about "Two Chechnyas" you mentioned at the conference had a broad resonance in the printed and electronic mass-media. Could you briefly tell the essence of this plan, what he promises to the Chechens and how is it related to the similar "Plan Nemtsov", about which there was so much fuss in December-January, half a year before?

HAN : I prepared the text of the "Two Chechnyas" plan even right at the beginning of the present war, but then there was no-one to publish it, since right at the beginning of the second war such "unpopular" proposals would really fall on deaf ears among the Chechens and could sound as a profession of defeatist moods. And among the Russians it would be then hardly find a correct understanding. Nevertheless, at the beginning of 2000 I passed it in Moscow to the leaders of the future movement EURASIA, who were the first to see all the consolidating logic of traditionalism and Eurasism - substantially capable to stop the war. I have reasons to consider that the plan reached also the Kremlin, which - maybe echoed it through Nemtsov to verify the public reaction. I put on this account the initiative of Nemtsov and his proposal, in which, except for common idea of separating Chechnya in two parts, very little remained of what I proposed.

The main moment here is under what slogan the war will be stopped. For the democrats and liberals it is the last chance for revenge, for stopping the rise of authoritarianism in Russia and to turn the country back on rails of democracy. To this purpose they are ready to "echo" anything convenient. By the way, even offering such alternative, Nemtsov himself does not perceive that he professes ideas essentially contradicting "democracy" and the principles of individualism. Offering to create a tribal [teypist] parliament in Chechnya, he doesn't perceive, that a teyp is union of consanguineous communities, instead of a group of individuals. From here so absurd development of this idea, spirit of individualism and liberalism.

In my proposal, indeed, the partition of the Chechen territory as such plays a secondary role, and the speech goes about the separation of the Chechen people according to the sign of their attitude to values, according to world-view paradigms - believers and atheists. Acknowledging that the separation of the Chechens according to these signs substantially coincides with the landscape features of Chechnya, I also defined in the elaboration two geographical regions: an independent southern mountain part, where basically the supporters of independence are centred, and a pro-Russian northern flatland part, where predominate the supporters of entering Chechnya in the composition of the Russian Federation.

Let's begin from that the Chechens were de facto divided into two irreconcilable camps - supporters of independence and supporters of Russia. Really, there is and there cannot be no "common platform" on which it would be possible to find a compromise reasonable for both sides: independence will annihilate the sovereignty of the Russian Federation, and the sovereignty of the Russian Federation will annihilate independence. The representatives of each of the Chechen sides, thus, adhere not simply to different, but as to polar opposite views concerning the status of Chechnya.

In this situation the cease (under any excuse) of the Russian-Chechen military opposition does not mean at all the cease of war - then some Chechens will fire against others Chechens, and, allowing our national mentality, the ideological "watershed" step-by-step will pass on a second plan, and the primary significance will be gained by a blood feud, remaining the main dominant of our life.

In practice it will mean, that the Resistance fighter who killed a betrayer, may as well be killed by a comrade in the fight who has blood links to the killed betrayer. Such events took place in the course of the first war and after its end, and now before the total involvement of the Chechens in this or that enemy camp, before the sharply increased thrust on violent methods to the solution of ideological contradictions, before the presence of a generation being grown in conditions of constant bloodshed, when the war has become a lifestyle and world-view the hopes to create a unified Chechen society within the framework of all Chechnya are more than illusory - they are disastrous for the people, fraught as they are with the status of a "war of all against all".

And a sober acknowledgement of this cruel reality also caused me, assuming full liability for my ideas and actions, to put forward the "Two Chechnyas" plan, which as a matter of fact opens out a uniquely substantial path for integrating the Chechens; whereas the opposition to this plan no matter how good the intent behind this - means for a long time, maybe irreversibly, splitting the people into mutually hostile segments.

RZ : And if we consider the outcome of this separation from a pragmatic point of view, from the point of view of political feasibility - that criterion, according to which the Russian military and officials think?

HAN : From a pragmatic point of view it is evident that neither Russia has no forces and means to establish its authority over Chechnya, nor the Chechen Resistance has forces and means to decisively, once and for all win Russia. The war draws to the third year and it more and more distinctly acquires the character of "special operations" on the part of the Russian army and of partisan- subversive actions on the part of the forces of the Resistance.

Therefore the existing division among Chechens, about which I spoke, ceases to express itself by only ideological opposition, as under our eyes turns to military opposition, in inter-Chechen intestine war which is evolving on the background and in the context of the Russian-Chechen war.

And the sizes of our fortress, that is Southern Chechnya, will correspond to the number of Chechens ready to refuse the enticements of urban life, from the graven images of progress and the swindle of "international law" to the benefit of simple and explicit communitarian life under the simple and explicit precepts of Allah. If we, the believers, will be the overwhelming majority of the Chechen people, this means all the territory of Chechnya will become ours. If we will be a minority, we will have the mountains and the hills around them. But in any case, however small our number, the mountains will remain to us.

After the division, we should create in mountain Chechnya a zone in which one the laws of Allah undividedly prevail, to create a sample of social life reconciled on all canons to the Koran and the Sunnah. It will be that bridgehead, - the only one all over the world - from which will start the propagation of great creative ideas on sanitation of the land and healing the spirit.

Only so, having established valid premises, we can come to a valid conclusion. Only so we can advance on the "straight path" from the beginning to the end in eternity. Only so we can turn the people's vagaries along the winding paths of history and politics into the environmental sanitation of the land and the healing of the spirit, into the union in the path of Allah.