ABSTRACT
President Vladimir Putin has often spoken of an “arc of instability” stretching from Kosovo to the Philippines and passing through the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Afghanistan, a vast area he describes as threatened by extremist Islam and its adherents bent on spreading their ideology and changing the political landscape of this vast territory. The inspiration and more tangible help for these extremists are seen as coming primarily from the Arab and Muslim worlds, although the extent of direct involvement of governments in these countries is subject to debate. Similarly, it is not easy to measure the nongovernmental assistance to these extremist groups because there has been a tendency on the part of Russia and other countries facing the challenge of Islamic extremism to consider any aid to Muslim populations and institutions as potentially abetting the extremists. Nevertheless, it is clear that areas with substantial Muslim populations in both the former Soviet space and the Balkans have developed networks of relations with external Arab and Muslim countries and groups, some of which have been linked to extremist movements. The growth of these networks was prompted by the fragmentation of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, which led to a crisis of identity and state and resulted in armed conflicts in Chechnya and in Bosnia and Kosovo. In these conflicts, the Islamic factor played and continues to play a role by intensifying a separate sense of identity and by serving as an instrument for achieving independence.
