'Civil War' Among Muslims Shakes Russia's South

MOSCOW (VOA) — Three recent attacks that left 30 people dead and 15 wounded have cast a spotlight on the growing religious warfare in Dagestan, Russia's southernmost republic.

First, a border guard serving near Azerbaijan killed seven colleagues before he was shot dead himself. Superior officers said they had tried twice but failed to have him discharged because he was constantly reading about Wahhabism, a conservative form of Islamic fundamentalism.

Then Georgian special forces said they intercepted a heavily armed unit of Islamic insurgents crossing over from Dagestan. A firefight near the border killed three Georgian soldiers and 12 militants.

In the most politically significant case, a female suicide bomber attacked Sheikh Said Atsayev, a leading moderate Muslim cleric in Dagestan who had been leading peace talks with militant adherents of Wahhabism, the form of Sunni Islam that is widely practiced in Saudi Arabia. The suicide bomber, the widow of another militant, killed Atsayev and six other people, as well as herself.

Mark Galeotti, a Russian security specialist at New York University, sees an increasingly violent split among the 15 percent of Russians who follow Islam.

"There is an increasing threat that we will really see a Muslim civil war - not just in Dagestan, but across the North Caucasus," Galeotti said.

Violence in Tatarstan

The latest attack in Dagestan followed an incident in Tatarstan, in northern Russia, where assailants tried to kill two moderate Muslim leaders who were seeking the expulsion of Muslim clerics trained in Saudi Arabia. Tatarstan's deputy mufti was killed. The republic's senior mufti was wounded.

President Vladimir Putin traveled to Tatarstan on Tuesday and declared on national television: "Terrorists and militants of all kinds, whatever ideological slogans they may hide behind, always act cynically, behind one's back, and have only one aim - to spread fear and mutual hatred."

The same day, the suicide bomber blew herself up near Sheikh Atsayev.

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