War-torn Chechnya Needs Polygamy: Acting PM

CAIRO, January 14 (IslamOnline.net) – Russia's idiosyncratic loyalist strongman in Chechnya, a largely Muslim republic that has been embroiled in a brutal on-off war with Russia since 1994, believes the country needs to legalize polygamy to replenish its war-ravaged population.

"I think that it is necessary because we are at war. It is very important for the Chechen people," Britain's The Independent reported Saturday, January 14, quoting acting Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov.

He said every Chechen man can have up to four wives if he is able to support them.

"Shari`ah law allows this, it does not run counter to it. Therefore, each man who can provide for four wives should do it."

Islam permits the Muslim to marry more than one woman, a maximum of four, in order to resolve some very pressing human problems, individual as well as social.

Outnumbered

The pro-Moscow official stressed his proposal does not mean changing the country's laws.

"Every person decides for himself how he lives. He is the master. He determines the rules. I'm sure we're not going to interfere in his personal life."

Polygamy is illegal in Russia but is reported to be informally tolerated in Muslim republics such as Ingushetia and Dagestan as well as Chechnya.

Kadyrov, the son of a former pro-Moscow president killed in a bomb attack, said the promotion of polygamy was needed to address the gender imbalance caused by war.

He said the number of women in Chechnya was between 9 and 18 per cent higher than the number of men.

Support

Kadyrov said Chechen President Alu Alkhanov and parliament had supported his idea.

"We will develop the traditions of our ancestors," he added.

Previous attempts to introduce the practice across the country have failed in parliament.

The official Chechen leader is President Alkhanov, but Kadyrov is seen as the power behind the scenes and is supported by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

His polygamy proposal also received welcoming from Russian State Duma Vice-Speaker Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

"We should welcome this initiative and apply it throughout Russia, because we have ten million single women," Zhirinovsky said.

The nationalist Russian MP who has long campaigned for the introduction of polygamy to tackle Russia's demographic crisis.

Years of fighting between independence-seekers and Russian forces, poor health care and migration have robbed Chechnya of many young men.

The small mountainous Caucasus republic has been ravaged by conflict since 1994, with just three years of relative peace after the first Russian invasion of the region ended in August 1996 and the second began in October 1999.

It was on December 11, 1994 that former Russian president Boris Yeltsin ordered Russian troops into Chechnya to subdue an increasingly powerful separatist movement.

After two years of horrific fighting, Russian troops pulled out in 1996.

In 1999, then-prime minister Putin pushed some 80,000 Russian troops into Chechnya in what Moscow called a lightning-strike “anti-terror operation” but which has since degenerated into a grinding war with Chechen fighters.

At least 100,000 Chechen civilians and 10,000 Russian troops are estimated to have been killed in both invasions, but human rights groups have said the real numbers could be much higher.

Thousands of refugees from war-torn Chechnya live in battered tent camps in neighboring Ingushetia and refuse to return home because of continuing insecurity.