The Long Way Home

One year ago Talal Haj Hassan had a diplomatic career and a stable job in the Swiss embassy in Damascus, Syria. But as violence in that country spiraled out of control, Hassan started to consider his options. It might not seem like deciding to pack up his large family and head to the Russian Caucasus was the most obvious choice for this Damascus-born Syrian, but in fact, when he boarded the last flight to Moscow on August 6, he was returning home.

"When I first came here and heard people speaking Circassian in the street, I started crying," he said, sitting with some of his family in the foyer of a retreat center in Nalchik, Kabardino-Balkaria.

In Russia, Haj Hassan is known not by the name in his Syrian passport, but by his Circassian name, Talal Stash. His great-grandfather was four years old at the end of Russia's conquest of the Caucasus in 1864. He was taken from the village of Gabukai, near Krasnodar, and exiled to Bulgaria, then Turkey, and finally, to Syria's Golan Heights, where the Ottoman Empire settled many immigrants from Russia. When, in 1967, Syria's Six-Day War with Israel once again displaced the Circassians, Hassan's family ended up in Damascus.

"We have this problem of changing where we live every 40 years," he said. "We're tired of going all over the world." This is why he has dreamed of returning to his roots, to the Caucasus. The Syrian conflict, he said, only made this decision happen sooner.

There are about 100,000 Circassians in Syria. About 2 million live in Turkey, and there are strong communities in Jordan, Israel, and even the United States (25,000), all of them descendants of the gortsy (mountain people) forced out of the West Caucasus in 1864, at the end of the Russian Empire's protracted invasion of the Caucasus to pacify its indigenous inhabitants.

This was a massive emigration from the Caucasus region of at least 400,000 people. The Circassians (who are predominantly Sunni Muslims) traveled across the Black Sea from the ports of Sochi, Anapa, and Novorossiysk, to the various corners of the Ottoman Empire. Yet conditions upon their arrival in Turkey were so abhorrent that many emigrants died of disease and starvation.

While the precise circumstances of this massive exodus are disputed – some historians have termed it genocide, and the Georgian parliament last year controversially recognized it as such – it is clear that in this extensive diaspora, the yearning for a lost homeland is so strong that even now, four generations later, some want to return.

"There have been three or four generations of Circassians in Syria, and for the most part they don't assimilate," said Akhmad Stash, head of the Perit organization in Nalchik, which is helping those who wish to come to Russia, or repatriate, 150 years later. [perit-xase.com]

"Because there are too many memories of hard labor and pain, they wanted to hold on to all of this," he said of his ancestors, who also came through Turkey and eventually on foot to the Golan Heights from Akka, Israel. "I was born in Damascus, but Arab culture is not my culture. And when you're a teenager you start asking questions about who you are, why you are different."

In 1992, Stash was 19 when he came to Nalchik for his university education. He decided to stay. "If my children grew up in Syria, they would not speak their native language any longer," he said in accented Russian, which he hardly uses in his daily life in Kabardino-Balkaria, where Circassians (also known locally as Kabardins) are the majority. Prior to the current civil war in Syria, Perit, launched in 2008, was a small affair, providing local support to Circassians arriving from abroad and resettling in Kabardino-Balkaria and Adygea. But starting one year ago, the number of Circassians that sought to emigrate from Syria skyrocketed. Caught in the middle of the protracted, seething conflict, they were scared of what could happen to their community if the opposition toppled President Bashar al-Assad.

The name Circassians (also Cherkess) is widely applied to several different tribes expelled from the Caucasus. In fact, the Circassian flag features 12 stars, representing the 12 different tribes that united against Russia and attempted to proclaim their own state towards the end of the Caucasus war. Many of them had different cultures and languages. 150 years later, the different tribes have intermarried and the lines between them have blurred – particularly in the vast Circassian diaspora; they now consider themselves one people. Circassians also call themselves Adyghe, and most understand Circassian, or Adyghabze, the native language.

"You had to be either with the opposition or with the government, and people were waiting for Circassians to make a choice," said Imad Omar, who arrived in Nalchik in May. "We didn't want to intervene, but you cannot sit around calmly when people are killing each other," he said, explaining why he finally left Syria. "The opposition thinks we are with Assad, and the government is unhappy that we are leaving, calling us traitors." His family left without telling anyone, especially at work: Omar worked as a surgeon in a state hospital.

As might any minority in a country also ruled by a minority, Circassians in Syria had formed an alliance with the ruling Alawites. Many held senior positions in the Ba'ath party and the army during the rule of Hafez al-Assad, the current Syrian president's father and predecessor. However, their role diminished over time, and today there are few Circassians in the Syrian elite. Although international media often portray Circassians as supporters of Assad, they are not invested in his regime, Omar and others said. "All of the people want Russia to stop supporting Assad, including the Circassians," said Omar. "But if the opposition comes to power, it will be civil war for 10-15 years. There will be a lot of blood, because Arabs don't easily forgive. It is a tragedy what has happened in Syria."

Displaced by violence in his Damascus suburb, Omar has a huge advantage that most Syrian Circassians do not: he speaks Russian. In the Soviet era he received a Circassian scholarship to attend medical school and do his residency in Nalchik, but he could not stay. When asked if he knows how much doctors get paid in Russia, Omar gives a sad smile. "I was offered 4,800 rubles ($160 per month) in a polyclinic in Nalchik. I don't even know how one can survive with such a salary." He ended up taking a job an hour away, but in a hospital, so that he would not lose his surgical skills.

Perit's Akhmad Stash and other Circassian activists believe that Russia should treat Circassians differently from other immigrants, giving them legal status as "compatriots" and speeding up their citizenship processing. So far, the trickle of Syrian Circassians to the Caucasus has been relatively small, not in the least because many cannot afford the move: their savings have been wiped out by the country's war economy. The regional government of Kabardino-Balkaria was able to waive fees for the official medical exam, but Circassians must still obtain a 90-day visa ($300), not to mention the vast array of other documents, that must all be translated and notarized. Their room and board in the Soviet-era retreat center is paid for by private benefactors, mostly businessmen from Nalchik and Moscow.

Above: Talal Stash (center), Majid Indar (second from left) and their families, outside the Russian sanatorium where they have taken refuge since fleeing Syria. Below: December protest in Central Moscow, calling for Russia to help evacuate Circassians from Syria and offer them easier entry into Russia.

Meanwhile, the federal government has ignored the persistent lobbying of Moscow Circassians to make repatriation easier, even that of influential senators who traveled to Damascus last year. By last fall, when Aeroflot halted its Damascus-Moscow flights, just 500 persons had arrived in Nalchik from Syria.

Repatriation of Circassians to the Caucasus did not start with Syria, in fact. Every generation, even during the Soviet era, has petitioned the Russian government to allow them to return. The issue was one of the most powerful helping the members of the diaspora retain a sense of national identity and unity. Yet it was completely fruitless during the Soviet era, and since 1991, only 2,000 Circassians, such as Akhmad Stash, have immigrated back to their ancestral homeland.

"The majority of Circassians abroad would never decide to move back," said Arsen Khokonov, a Kabardin-born businessman living in Moscow who has been one of Perit's benefactors and who has helped several families to relocate from Syria. "Their mind is in the Arab world, where they received their education, so it is more natural for them to flee to other Arab countries, like Jordan. But in their soul they want to come here."

"I am totally non-religious, which I have never been ashamed to admit," Khokonov said, explaining his involvement in financing repatriation of people he's never met. "But I have always felt kinship in speaking with the Syrians, ever since I was a student, and now I feel that they are in a difficult situation and need help."

Khokonov said some 5,000 Circassians in Syria have requested invitations to Russia, which is required for a visa. But as Syria has plunged deeper into civil war it is becoming nearly impossible for people to find enough money to move an entire family. What is more, the cessation of Aeroflot flights from Damascus means that getting to Russia requires traversing an extremely roundabout route. Moreover, Russia applies quotas for immigrants by region, and those quotas were quickly filled in the Caucasus regions most sympathetic to the Circassians' cause.

When the Circassians were forced to leave Israel in 1967, they appealed to the Soviet government to allow them to return to the Caucasus, but their request was denied. Many, however were given asylum in the US and settled in New Jersey. Today, Circassians in New Jersey are among the most vocal opponents of the Sochi Olympic Games, staging a protest at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics and repeatedly picketing the Russian consulate in New York City.

Circassians in Kabardino-Balkaria, Adygea, Karachayevo-Cherkessia, and Moscow protested throughout last November, demanding that Moscow step in to rescue the Circassians, whose villages have now become targets in the Syrian conflict. A demonstration in December called for Russia to evacuate Circassians from Syria along with Russian citizens, and to expedite their citizenship processing.1

The Kremlin is silent about the fate of the Syrian Circassians. This is not only making Russian Circassians frustrated, it is alienating the entire Circassian diaspora, losing for Moscow a potentially large and important lobby, activists said.

"There is a discourse among the Circassians that is nearly the same as the Zionist one, basically, that all Circassians should return home," said Andzor Kabard. "Since 1989, there was the hope that descendants of Circassians would see their legacy of banishment lifted by Russia, through allowing repatriation to those who wanted it, but that has not happened."

A symbolic move, even making visas cheaper for Syrians, or waiving some other fees involved in their arrival, would cost very little, yet the Circassian community would see the move as a sign of reconciliation after 150 years, Kabard said, while an understanding, even if only theoretical, that they were welcome to return to the Caucasus, would make them allies of Russia for years to come.

The estimated 4 million Circassians worldwide are paying attention, Khokonov said, and they are becoming angry. Instead of winning millions of allies in the Middle East, Russia is making enemies, he said.

Thus, when in 2011 a German nonprofit group wanted to honor then-premier Vladimir Putin with the prestigious Quadriga Prize, Green Party leader Cem Ozdemir, a Circassian European MP from Germany, stepped down from its board of trustees in protest. The ensuing uproar led to cancellation of the event. And when Putin visited Istanbul this past December to help mediate the Syrian crisis, green, 12-starred Circassian flags fluttered prominently among protesting crowds. May 21 has become a date filled with massive protests, especially in Turkey and Jordan, now directed against Russian embassies.2

What is more, since there are far more Circassians abroad than in Russia (just over 700,000), "it would be easy to make Russophobia the core of the Circassian theme, Khokonov said sadly. "I would hate for that to happen. We don't like the term genocide, we believe the tragic pages of history should be turned."

But Moscow is doing the opposite, infuriating Circassians by erecting a monument to Russian commander Alexei Yermolov in Sochi, or naming an FSB-affiliated cadets school in Stavropol after him.

As Russia continues its decade-long search for a National Idea, local officials often take the easy path, pandering to nationalism and past military victories. Krasnodar Governor Alexander Tkachev has excelled in this, allying with local Cossack groups and alienating most non-Russians by announcing that Cossacks would patrol the region to "cleanse it" of Caucasians. He later tried to rephrase his initiative, saying the Cossacks would be keeping an eye on out-of-country migrants, rather than Russian citizens.

"The ideological machine right now is wound up in the wrong direction," said Andzor Kabard. "Instead of alleviating and overcoming these tensions, it is locking people into the trap of nationalism."

Back at the Nalchik retreat center, another repatriated Syrian, Madjid Indar, looks stressed out and disoriented, but said that he loves his new home. "The stories my grandmother told me about the Caucasus correspond to what I have found here," he said.

As his Damascus suburb became enveloped by violence, he said his three children barely went outside at all over the past year: "We were too afraid to send our oldest daughter to school, because we didn't think she would come back."

Now Indar's children are learning Russian and playing outside. As we drink Arab-style tea from small cups, next door a woman teaches a group of girls a Circassian dance. Indar, a fourth generation Syrian, speaks in Arabic. He is more comfortable with English than he is with the native language of his ancestors. But even though he was born in Damascus, he said he feels like he belongs here.

"We did not belong in Syria, it's a foreign country," he said. "We are not refugees, we are back in our country. I feel at home here, it's important that Russia understands that we don't hate the Russian people," he said. "I wish to forget the stories about the Caucasus war, it's time to move on." RL

1. Russia actually evacuated Circassians from a conflict zone before: in 1998 it established a new aul (village) in Adygea – called Mafekhabl (happy village) – for some 200 Circassians from war-torn Kosovo.

2. The official date marking the end of the Caucasus war is May 21, 1864, so the diaspora uses this date as that signifying its exile and genocide.

Legendary Beauty

Since the late Middle Ages, when Italian traders began to ply the northern coast of the Black Sea, writers and travelers have waxed poetical about the legendary beauty and elegance of Circassian women. One of the most famous images of a Circassian woman is that reputed to be of Nedaxe Seteney, a Circassian princess kidnapped and sold into slavery in 1865, to the harem of Sultan Abdülaziz I. The painting, made by the Orientalist Jean-Leon Gerome on a trip to the Istanbul Ottoman court in 1875-1876, is titled Veiled Circassian Beauty. In 2008, it was put up for auction with an anticipated sale price of $800,000 to $1 million. It sold for $4.1 million.