Dagestan+-+Demographic+-+Sources

"Radicalising Russia's Caucasian Muslims". 31 August 2007. (accessed through Jane's Information Group):
 * "As a result, these are regions with moribund economies and growing gaps between rich and poor. Dagestan has an official 25 per cent unemployment rate"..
 * "In such an environment of corruption, patronage and poverty, even the most innocent issues can become politicised on ethnic and religious lines. Dagestan's education system has been especially hard hit by the republic's budgetary problems, for instance, with little money to buy teaching materials. Instead, it has had to rely on second-hand purchases from elsewhere in Russia. Consequently, Russian-language texts are over-stretched, there are very few books and teaching materials in the languages of Dagestan's 13 indigenous nationalities (Avars, Aghuls, Azerbaijanis, Chechens, Dargins, Kumyks, Laks, Lezgins, Nogais, Rutuls, Tabasarans, Tats and Tsakhurs). This is essentially the result of a funding crisis and a dependence on texts from ethnically Russian schools. However, within the context of existing ethnic tensions and suspicion about creeping Russification, and given that high-school students spend no more than four hours per week studying their native culture and language (those in Kabardino-Balkaria spend 36 hours), it inevitably became used by some militants to present the government as seeking to wipe out existing (Muslim) identities and replace it with an alien (Christian) one. This is essentially the result of a funding crisis and a dependence on texts from ethnically Russian schools. However, within the context of existing ethnic tensions and suspicion about creeping Russification, and given that high-school students spend no more than four hours per week studying their native culture and language (those in Kabardino-Balkaria spend 36 hours), it inevitably became used by some militants to present the government as seeking to wipe out existing (Muslim) identities and replace it with an alien (Christian) one."