Can We Not Give the Forced Marriage Lobby Any Ideas?
By 
Trump’s buddy in Chechnya has some ideas I expect will be on the Republican platform by 2024.
Authorities in Russia’s Chechnya Republic are claiming success in an unconventional, sweeping campaign to compel people who have divorced to reunite, for the sake of the children — and, they say, to help in the fight against terrorism.
Through the summer, local television has been reporting on the lives of divorced couples now living together again under the watchful eye of members of a government commission. It’s reality television, Chechen style.
The commission, known as the Council for Harmonizing Marriage and Family Relations, says it has over the past two months brought back together 948 couples, some after years of separation. Under the program, the council can ask the police to visit divorced people to encourage them to patch up their differences.
The broadcasts show formerly divorced people going about their lives in a now common home, mostly avoiding one another but also spending time with the children. One mother helped with homework; another was shown putting a hat on a child’s head as he played in the sun.
“This happy reunion became possible because of a program of the region’s leader,” a television reporter said, referring to Ramzan A. Kadyrov. “Despite mutual antagonism, hundreds of divorced couples are responding to the call.”
However farcical on the surface, the program, as with all social policy in Chechnya, is lethally serious. Failure to comply with demands of the regional leadership can have severe consequences, far worse than living with a despised former partner.
The predominantly Muslim region fought and lost two wars for independence from Russia after the Soviet collapse, and a small Islamist insurgency still simmers.
In a bargain to hold onto the region, the Kremlin has given Mr. Kadyrov, the son of a Sufi imam, or preacher, who switched sides during the second war, a free hand to rule as he likes at home in exchange for loyalty to Moscow.
Mr. Kadyrov has co-opted the strict Islamic social norms advocated by the insurgency, to sap it of support. He has required, for example, that female university students wear head scarves.
The forced family reunions, begun last month, followed a brutal repression of gay men in Chechnya last winter. In that campaign, the police posted to online chats under the guise of men looking for dates, only to arrest and torture those who responded.
In other words, the Republican dream lives in Chechnya.