You're reading: Caucasus suicide bomber named as Russian widow

MOSCOW - An ethnic Russian woman, who was both wife and widow of Islamist militants, was named on Wednesday, Aug. 29, as the suicide bomber who killed a moderate Muslim cleric in the North Caucasus just as President Vladimir Putin was pleading for national unity.

Tuesday’s assassination of Said Atsayev, 74, a prominent
Sufi sheikh in the troubled province of Dagestan who had spoken
out against violent Islam, heightened tensions which Putin,
visiting another Muslim region, had been trying to calm.

Police said Aminat Kurbanova had posed as a pilgrim to the
cleric’s home and detonated an explosive belt packed with nails
and ball bearings, killing Atsayev, herself and six others,
including an 11-year-old boy visiting with his parents.

A security source said the woman, aged either 29 or 30, was
born with the ethnic Russian family name Saprykina but converted
to Islam and was married to an Islamist militant. Two previous
husbands, also militants, had been killed, the source added.

Suicide missions by wives of fallen fighters, dubbed “Black
Widows”, has been a feature of guerrilla groups from Chechnya
and neighbouring Muslim regions in the past decade.

The bombing came as Putin was visiting Tatarstan, a Muslim
region in central Russia. While there, he made a rousing call
for religious and ethnic concord to counter extremism that has
raised new concerns about the integrity of a vast nation which
is home to a wide mix of faiths and cultures.

“In Dagestan, sheikh and peace blown up,” read the
front-page headline on Moscow newspaper Kommersant, which said
80,000 people attended the cleric’s funeral after dark in his
village. Widely respected, Atsayev had helped broker a pact this
year to reconcile some radical Salafist Muslims with the
mainstream.

His death increased tension in Dagestan in particular,
prompting an official day of mourning locally, though attacks
occur almost daily. They are linked to an Islamist insurgency
across the North Caucasus following two post-Soviet wars pitting
the Kremlin against separatists in neighbouring Chechnya.

The province also saw a bloody incident on Tuesday, in which
a border guard killed seven fellow soldiers at a frontier post
before being shot dead. Some Russian media suggested the killer
may have been recruited by Islamist militants, but officials
said the matter was still under investigation.

PUTIN PLEDGE

Though some ethnic Russians have fought alongside the
Islamists in the North Caucasus, the killing of Atsayev, also
known as Sheikh Said Afandi al-Chirkavi, appeared to be the
first such case of an ethnic Russian suicide bomber.

Insurgents in Dagestan frequently attack government and
security officials and have also increasingly targeted
traditional mainstream Muslim leaders who are backed by the
authorities. Atsayev was among the most prominent of these.

Putin owed some of his initial popularity to his launching,
when prime minister, of a second war against Chechen separatists
in 1999. He then swiftly succeeded Boris Yeltsin as president.

Now, the 59-year-old leader, who started another six-year
presidential term in May, is eager to prevent the militant Islam
that has flourished during the insurgency in the Caucasus from
gaining ground in other regions with large Muslim populations.

“We will not allow anyone to tear our country apart by
exploiting ethnic and religious differences,” Putin said on
Tuesday in Tatarstan, a long-peaceful region with substantial
oil reserves, where the senior officially backed Muslim cleric
was wounded last month and one of his deputies killed.