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Russia's Islamic Threat, Gordon M. Hahn. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007. 368 pp. $35.00
Gordon Hahn's study of the rise of radical Islam in the northern Caucasus, Russia's Islamic Threat, provides an important reference for understanding the changing political dynamics of the Caucasus since the Soviet Union's collapse. Like the valuable contributions of Matthew Evangelista, John Dunlop, and Moshe Gammer, this book significantly deepens our understanding of radical Islam's spread across the region. Hahn claims that Russia is experiencing the beginning of an Islamist jihad that has spread from Chechnya to five Russian Muslim republics-Ingushetia, Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkariya, Karachaevo- Cherkessiya, and Adygeya (with possible extensions into Tatarstan and Bashkortostan). The factors that caused combat organizations, called jamaats, to proliferate originated from several sources, including the two separatist wars in Chechnya, rising nationalism, Putin's federalist counterattack on the nationalist insurgencies, regional poverty, and the spread of radical wahhabism in the region. This book argues that this burgeoning movement poses a significant threat to Russia's territorial integrity and, given the terrorist groups' close proximity to weapons...