Sufism Plays an Important Role

ECMI, "Ethnic Groups in Georgia #5 - Kists" - The Georgian Times - Tbilisi, Georgia
Tuesday, March 11, 2008

In our series on the wealth of ethnic groups in Georgia, this week features the Kists. The materials on the ethnic groups are provided by the European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI) and the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and are extracted from the book, Georgia – An Ethno-Political Handbook by Tom Trier & George Tarkhan-Mouravi.

With support from the foreign ministries of Switzerland, Norway and Denmark, the book will be published by the end of this year in a Georgian and an English edition.

Population in Georgia: 7,110 (Census 2002), and 1,150 Kist and Chechen refugees from Chechnya in Pankisi.
Total population: Approx 8,000.
Settlement: Kists are compactly settled in Pankisi Gorge, Akhmeta district; a few live in Tbilisi and other bigger cities.

Who, What, Where
Kists in Georgia (self-designation: Vainakh, Kistebi in Georgian) mostly live in villages in the Pankisi Gorge, and are descendants of Chechens and Ingush, who settled there from their native regions in the North Caucasus in the 18th-19th century.

The newcomers soon adopted the ethnic label Kist, which was used by Georgians as a generic term for Vainakh (Chechen and Ingush) people. As a result of the separation and isolation of the Kists from their ethnic kin in the north, the group in Georgia developed its own characteristics and gradually incorporated many cultural and linguistic elements from its Georgian neighbors.

Today, most Kists identify themselves as Georgians and/or as a separate group closer related to the Chechens than to the Ingush. Kists are well integrated in Georgia, and the vast majority is bilingual in Kist and Georgian.

Due to rural-urban migration in the Soviet period and after Georgian independence, there are also a few hundred Kists in Tbilisi as well as in other large cities. Some Kist and Chechen refugees initially settled in Pankisi have also found their way to Tbilisi.

A Bit of History

In Soviet times, three ethnic groups, Kists, Ossetians and Georgians peacefully coexisted in Pankisi Gorge. There were no reported cases of ethnically-based tension or violence. However, this situation changed after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Obviously, the general political and economical crisis also impacted on the situation in Pankisi Gorge, and at the same time the demographic situation has been in flux since the early 1990s. As a result of the conflict over South Ossetia (1990-92) and also fuelled by the conflict over the Prigorodniy district culminating with the North Ossetian-Ingush war in 1992, a part of the Pankisi Ossetians left the gorge for North Ossetia or other parts of Russia as refugees. The emptied houses were taken over by Kists and property conflicts arose between Kists and those Ossetians who remained. Simultaneously, relations between Kists and Georgians worsened, mainly due to Georgian discontent with the participation of Chechen voluntary fighters against Georgians in the Abkhaz War (1992-93).

The situation further deteriorated after the influx of refugees who fled the Russian-Chechen wars. Some 7,000 refugees arrived during the beginning of the second Chechen-Russian conflict in 1999-2000. There were two groups of refugees from Chechnya: native Chechens, and Kists, who had migrated to Chechnya during the Soviet or early post-Soviet periods. Some of the Kist refugees possessed houses or land in the gorge and most of them had relatives there. These factors contributed to the relatively easy integration of the Kist refugees, whereas the proper Chechen refugees faced more difficulties having no direct support base in the local Kist community.

With the refugees also came Chechen fighters (boyeviki), who used the Pankisi Gorge for training and reorganization of their units as well as a base for sporadic incursions into Chechnya for attacks against Russian military forces. Also some non-Chechen Islamist warriors (Jihadis) were reported to have taken part in military activities in Pankisi in support of the Chechen fighters. With the increasing presence of fighters and the general socio-political destabilization of the region, Pankisi also fell under the influence of criminal groups and became a transit region for drug trafficking and other illegal activities, including kidnapping. In this period, Georgian authorities failed to restore order due to lack of proper trained police forces, while at the same time corrupt officials were involved in the criminal activities.

Hence, from 2000 Pankisi Gorge earned a reputation internationally as a nest for criminal activity and terrorism. However, in 2002 the US government initiated a program to support the Georgian Army, and from 2003 the situation in Pankisi has greatly stabilized.

The region no longer provides shelter for Chechen fighters and rule of law has returned to Pankisi Gorge although the gorge’s reputation internationally as a hotbed for crime and guerilla warfare lingers on.

Since the early phase of the war in Chechnya, the number of refugees has now considerably decreased and today there are only around 1,150 refugees in Pankisi, as some have been resettled in third countries, others have returned and yet others have become Georgian citizens.

Language, Religion and Traditions

The Kist vernacular belongs to the Vainakh language group, which is part of the larger North East Caucasian (or Nakh-Dagestanian) language family. The Vainakh languages consist of Chechen, Ingush and Bats (Tsova-Tush), while Kist is not considered a separate language but merely a Chechen dialect with strong influences from the Georgian language.

Vainakh is the historical self-designation of the speakers of the languages and means “Our People”.

As Kists gradually moved to Pankisi in the 19th century, as there was a parallel process of settlement of Georgians to the gorge, resulting in close interaction between Kists and Georgians. Already in the late 19th century, Kists and Georgians culturally featured many similarities. Kists readily embraced Georgian traditions, such as the Supra (traditional Georgian feast), wedding ceremonies, funeral rituals etc, but at the same time, they preserved many elements of their original Vainakh traditions. In spite of the significant linguistic integration of the Kists, the group preserved their native language and traditional Vainakh toponymical names. With the establishment of schools in Pankisi Gorge in the early Soviet period, the language of education was Georgian, not Chechen, and this has been the case ever since.

As a result of Russification policies, the majority of Kists became Christians in the late 19th/early 20th centuries, but today practically all Kists are Sunni Muslims. Kists belong to the Sunni branch of the Islamic faith, but the religious practices of the Kists (like those of the Chechens and Ingushs) are often not in harmony with Sunni dogmas.

The Kists’ practice of Sunni Islam can be considered syncretic, fused with pagan and Christian elements.

At the same time, Sufism, a mystical, psycho-spiritual tradition practiced also in Chechnya, Ingushetia and among other North Caucasian people based on religious brotherhoods (Naqshbandiya and Qadiriya), plays an important role in the religious life of many Kists.

It is also true that while most Kists consider themselves to be Muslim, at least until recently many were largely indifferent to Islamic teachings, having been significantly influenced by Soviet secular policies or before to Georgian Christian practices and the Pagan traditions of neighboring Georgian Khevsurs and Pshavi mountaineers.

Many would eat pork, drink alcohol or sacrifice animals near the ruins of Christian churches, give their children Christian names, marry non-Kists, and profess other traditionally non-Muslim practices.

Since 2000, Wahhabism - a puritan and fundamentalist Sunni Muslim reformist movement originating from Saudi Arabia – had gained some support among Kists, mostly among the youth, although to a much lesser extent than in Chechnya.

Wahhabism mostly appeals to the male youth in Chechnya and has gained considerable popularity in pace with the wars and political radicalization in Chechnya. Today, there are four mosques of modern Sunni Islam in the gorge built in 1996-2001 and also one Wahhabi mosque in Duisi.

Economy

Traditionally, the population of Pankisi gorge has lived by means of agriculture and animal breeding. In the past, trade was an important activity, as the gorge provided a geographical link between Kakheti and Tusheti. After the introduction of the Soviet regime, kolkhozes (collective farms) were introduced in all settlements of Pankisi. Agriculture and animal breeding remained the main basis for the local economy in the Soviet period, but after introducing market economy and the abolishment of collective farms, neither agriculture nor animal breeding are sufficiently profitable for the local population to sustain themselves, and these traditional fields of work have been complemented by petty-trade activities.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the deprivation of the primary means of income as elsewhere in Georgia contributed to a process of migration to urban centres or to other countries. Kists generally migrated and settled in Grozny in Chechnya or Nazran in Ingushetia in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, where they often established their own small business, although many later returned as refugees. Today, the traditional subsistence farming can no longer fulfill the household’s needs in Pankisi. Hence, the major economic activities in the region are now based on petty trade.