Post by peterd on Sept 6, 2013 13:20:44 GMT -8
IN THIS ISSUE
*Dagestani authorities rebuke rebellious village and promise incentives
*Police kill leader of insurgents in Kabardino-Balkaria
*Doku Umarov issues a video clarifying his position on Syria
*Kadyrov implements refugee assistance program for Syrian Chechens in Jordan
*Ethnic tensions in Dagestan rise as republican authorities back local extralegal militias
*Putin issues decree to fortify Winter Olympics host city
*Contest for Russia’s top landmarks pits Russian nationalists against Chechens
*Top official in Ingushetia assassinated as militants mount comeback
Having Lost Population’s Trust, Dagestan’s Government Finds It Hard to Make a Comeback
On August 7, the acting head of Dagestan, Ramazan Abdulatipov, and other republican officials met a group of residents of the embattled Dagestani village of Gimry. The Dagestani government proposed a deal with the villagers’ leaders that should end the settlement’s suspended status. The authorities bluntly offered a combination of “carrots and sticks” to the residents of Gimry, which has been the scene of lengthy special operations several times in the past years. In April, during the latest special operation there, the security services even resettled the entire population of the village, several thousand people, in a shantytown nearby, under the pretext of fighting the radicals in the village. The official website of the Dagestani government conveniently shifted responsibility for the hardship of Gimry’s civilian population onto the militants. “The militants were given the chance to surrender, but they did not do so, thereby endangering the civilians,” the website of the government news agency said, thinly disguising the government’s collective punishment strategy (http://riadagestan.ru/news/president/ramazan_abdulatipov_gimry_eto_obshchedagestanskoe_dostoyanie/).
The candid words of the government officials at the meeting with the Gimry residents illuminated the challenges that the government in Dagestan faces and the remedies it has for dealing with the insurgency in the embattled village. Abdulatipov rebuked the Gimry residents, along with those of other villages such as Gubden, for failing to serve in the local police. “We tell them, let us accept 20 people to work [as police officers],” he said. “We will give them a salary. Defend yourself, your families, relatives and villagers. They do not take this opportunity because they are scared. The bandits will be winning if we turn out to be cowards. Why should Russian soldiers or others be restoring order in your home and not you, yourselves? People come to you to deliver you from the bandits and you are firing shots in their backs. Then you come with complaints that you are not given proper treatment” (http://riadagestan.ru/news/president/ramazan_abdulatipov_gimry_eto_obshchedagestanskoe_dostoyanie/).
Gimry, an Avar village in Dagestan’s mountainous Untsukul district, has long been one of the hotbeds of the insurgency. In April, the security services carried out a mass punitive action in the village after killing three suspected militants. The village’s residents were moved to a shantytown for several weeks and after they were allowed to return to their homes, they found that 10 homes had been burned down and 44 others damaged. Over 450 families in the village, virtually the whole population, reported various losses (http://www.regnum.ru/news/kavkaz/dagestan/1692893.html).
Currently the government of Dagestan is apparently proposing a deal that would involve the surrender of rebels of the village, on the one hand, and government financial incentives, on the other hand. The whole discussion shows why democracies tend to be less violent than non-democracies. If elections and other democratic mechanisms worked in Dagestan, the people who have the real authority in Gimry would be in power and, therefore, be able to control the situation in the village. However, in the current situation, when political participation is severely restricted in Dagestan, the republican government does not even have a proper channel to speak to the people it should be talking to.
The passionate admonition made by the head of the Federal Security Service (FSB) branch in Dagestan, Andrei Konin, is also instructive. Konin said that 20 residents of Gimry were fighting in Syria, participating in killings and posting videos about their actions online. Attempting to hold the high moral ground, he said: “Hypocrisy and indifference has become part of the mentality of the local people [in Gimry]. The so-called Sharia court worked for a long time. And what kind of questions did it resolve? Who to kill and what for, how much money to take and how much a kidnapping costs…Where was the healthy part of the population during this time?” (http://www.regnum.ru/news/kavkaz/dagestan/1692893.html).
Offering of “carrots and sticks” to a village of several thousand residents demonstrates, apart from other things, the continuing weakness of the republican government. Broken government institutions cannot function without at least some trust from the population. Instead of promoting trust, however, what we see on the government side in Dagestan is the wielding of power and an attempt to buy people’s confidence. Instilling fear in the disillusioned population and paying them money may seem like a suitable, quick fix for Dagestan’s security issues, but in the long run it is likely to backfire, resulting in even less public trust and greater levels of violence.
On August 3–4, rumors about Ramazan Abdulatipov’s possible resignation spread on the Internet. The website that started the rumors belongs to Abdulatipov’s own son, thus many observers decided it was a public relations move aimed at pressuring Moscow to pay more attention to the acting head of Dagestan. The reports stated that President Vladimir Putin was refusing to meet Abdulatipov and that this signaled the Dagestani leader’s resignation was imminent. Abdulatipov has been in power in Dagestan as the acting head of the republic since February.
In September, the appointment procedure for the republican head is scheduled to take place in Dagestan. So far, there have been no credible indications that Moscow does not want Abdulatipov to become the republic’s full-fledged head. However, some observers perspicaciously interpreted the rumors of Abdulatipov’s resignation as possible plans in Moscow to install direct presidential rule in Dagestan. Observers said that a large terrorist attack could become a convenient excuse for such a step. They also point out that a “soft” version of direct Russian rule is already being implemented in Dagestan, as non-ethnic-Russian Dagestanis in governmental agencies are being replaced by ethnic Russians, often from the Russian security services (http://chernovik.net/content/politika/v-ozhidanii-putina).
The political situation in Dagestan appears to be highly fluid, which may result in even greater security challenges in the republic. The solutions to the challenges of the republic advanced by the authorities are evidently not radical enough to have any significant effect on the situation in Dagestan. Moscow’s virtual ban on holding proper elections in the republic in September 2013 leaves little hope for improvements in the most violent territory of the Russian Federation.
--Valery Dzutsev
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Despite Security Services’ Successes, Kabardino-Balkaria Remains One of North Caucasus’ Deadliest Regions
On August 7, the leader of the united insurgent movement of Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachaevo-Cherkessia, Khasanbi Fakov, was killed in Kabardino-Balkaria’s capital Nalchik. The 34-year-old Fakov was on Russia’s federal wanted list for allegedly staging numerous attacks on law enforcement personnel. The road police stopped a car with Fakov and three other people in Nalchik at midnight. When the suspected rebels started shooting, the police opened fire and killed all four (http://www.regnum.ru/news/kavkaz/kab-balk/1692384.html). The website of Kabardino-Balkaria’s insurgency confirmed the death of Fakov (a.k.a. Emir Abu Khasan), his wife Irina Ortanova and two other militants, Anzor Shaov and Khasan Kushkhov. The website asserted that the rebels were “ambushed” (http://islamdinbiz.blogspot.fi/2013/08/blog-post_7.html?spref=fb).
Prior to becoming the leader of the jamaat of Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachaevo-Cherkessia, Khasanbi Fakov, better known by his nom de guerre, Abu Khasan, led the insurgent group in Kabardino-Balkaria’s Chegem district. Fakov originally came from the Baksan district, which has been one of the most deadly places in the republic in the past several years. According to the newspaper Kommersant, Abu Khasan was appointed head of the jamaat of Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachaevo-Cherkessia at the beginning of 2013, when the leadership of the jamaat was decimated by the security services. His Muslim wife, 24-year-old Irina Ortanova, had been married to Vitaly Ortanov, a police officer intern and resident of the town of Chegem. Ortanov came under suspicion for being close to the insurgents and was killed in a special operation in November 2011. Ortanova subsequently became Abu Khasan’s wife. Kommersant also noted that one of the suspected insurgents killed in the incident on August 7, Anzor Shaov, worked as a court bailiff in Kabardino-Balkaria (http://kommersant.ru/doc/2249990).
There have been multiple cases of insurgents coming from the police and other government agencies, showing that the Kabardino-Balkarian insurgency is well-positioned in the wider society of the republic, where it remains a considerable force despite significant losses and setbacks.
During the period of January to March this year, 20 people were killed in Kabardino-Balkaria, including 18 suspected rebels and two servicemen. Thus the republic shared second place with Chechnya among the deadliest republics of the North Caucasus (http://www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/224883/). Although Kabardino-Balkaria experienced more violence while Abu Khasan led the republic’s insurgency, the positive results of the security services having neutralized him may be short lived, given the next leader of the insurgents in the republic may be even more violent. Indeed, the security services’ initial success in killing Kabardino-Balkarian insurgent leader Anzor Astemirov in March 2010 eventually led to an explosion of violence in the republic in 2010–2011. Astemirov had apparently tried to avoid violence in Kabardino-Balkaria in order to shield the republic from being ravaged by the Russian security services. His successors were much more willing to flex the rebels’ muscles, attacking government offices and even large objects of infrastructure, such as the brazen attack on the Baksan hydroelectric plant in October 2010.
It must be said that the physical and temporal proximity of the Olympics in Sochi to Kabaradino-Balkaria also creates additional incentives for the jamaat to intensify its strikes. Indeed, the media attention that the region will receive in the next several months presents the leaders of the rebels with a unique opportunity to remind the world of their existence and demonstrate their influence. On the government side, the “Sochi Olympics effect” is leading to the republican security forces using harsher tactics. That is probably why Kabardino-Balkaria has repeatedly had higher ratios of slain suspected rebels to slain government forces. The republic’s militants are not more hapless than those elsewhere in the North Caucasus, but the security services in Kabardino-Balkaria are apparently allowed to kill off people more liberally than in other places (see EDM, August 7).
Meanwhile, the position of the head of Kabardino-Balkaria, Arsen Kanokov, appears to be weakening. After an incident at a market in Moscow’s Matveyevskoye district at the end of July that resulted in a public outcry and a government crackdown on “illegal migrants” that often targeted North Caucasians, it emerged that the Matveyevskoye market may have belonged to Kanokov. The leader of Kabardino-Balkaria is known to be an extremely affluent person: the Russian edition of Forbes put Kanokov’s wealth at $650 million in its latest ranking of Russian billionaires, in which Kanokov occupied the modest but still fairly significant 156th position. The Kavkazskaya Politika website published an extensive report on Kanokov’s assets that asserted the politician may be in control of a much larger financial “empire” than he publicly admits to (http://kavpolit.com/kak-ustroena-imperiya-kanokova/).
This report itself is one indicator that Kanokov’s assets have attracted the scrutiny of the Russian government, which is likely to result in an attack on his “empire.” Even though the head of Kabardino-Balkaria may indeed own many assets directly or indirectly, he is certainly far behind many other affluent people in Russia. In Moscow’s political calculus, however, a wealthy head of a North Caucasian republic may no longer be a desirable figure because his personal wealth makes him too independent a political figure.
Kanokov’s removal, however, could also further jeopardize the security situation in the republic. As Moscow demonstrates its desire to shift to greater direct rule in the North Caucasus, regional elites may be increasingly less incentivized to maintain social order in their respective republics. The Kremlin appears to be replacing more autonomous figures with outright puppets as a better way of controlling the republics. However, instead of controlling the republics, the central government may end up only controlling puppets that are, in fact, unable to control anything. At the moment, Moscow does not seem to have any other ideas about changing the situation in the North Caucasus, apart from carrying out administrative reshuffles under the pretext of fighting the corruption and sending in military and security forces—which in itself is a self-defeating policy because it creates a never-ending cycle of violence in a region that is already highly unstable.
--Valery Dzutsev
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Caucasus Emirate Leader Discusses Chechens in Syria in New Video
Six years after Doku Umarov publicly rejected the idea of Ichkerian independence in favor of the Islamic state of the Caucasus Emirate, he continues to justify this change.
In a recent video posted on August 8, Umarov responded to questions from people who reside abroad that was taped sometime in July from the militant’s base of operation somewhere in Chechnya (www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoRhgTNqjzk). First, he spoke about the numbers of his insurgency, noting that a certain number of militants bear arms while others support them in the cities and villages. According to Umarov, having large numbers of insurgents in the mountains serves no purpose at the moment. The leader of the Caucasus Emirate has a point, because challenging the Russian army in the mountains and suburbs of cities would mean self-destruction for the insurgents. It is no wonder why only the Chechen rebels stay in the mountains. In the past, the Federal Security Service (FSB), police and special forces primarily killed Chechen insurgents in the mountainous and forested areas of the republic, not in the villages and towns. In contrast to Chechnya, the Russian government fights the rebel forces in other republics of the North Caucasus, such as Dagestan, Ingushetia and Kabardino-Balkaria, mainly within the villages and cities. This is the primary operational difference between the Chechen jamaat and other jamaats in the North Caucasus.
Umarov said in his video that the flow of North Caucasian volunteers to Syria is the result of the Caucasus Emirate’s refusal to accept more youth into its ranks. However, this statement contradicts Umarov’s own earlier diatribe against the outflow of Chechens to Syria (http://nohchipress.info/2012/11/6995). At the time, Umarov could not conceal his irritation with the Chechens who resided in Europe and went to fight in Syria, while none of them expressed a willingness to join those fighting in Chechnya. In a 2012 video address, Umarov deplored the fact that nobody was helping the jihad in the North Caucasus. In fact, it is in many ways easier for Chechens to join the Syrian opposition than the rebel forces in the North Caucasus. First, relatives are not put in danger by going to Syria, while the Chechen authorities persecute the relatives of anyone suspected of merely sympathizing with the North Caucasian rebels. Second, it is much easier to travel to Syria unnoticed than to travel to Chechnya through Russian border posts.
Umarov apparently extended his support for the Chechens fighting in Syria once he realized that he cannot stop this process and that it is better to pretend that the Chechens went there on his orders. Some commanders in Syria indeed emphasize that their groups are actually the units of the Caucasus Emirate (http://hunafa.com/?p=15423). Thus, Emir Salautdin, who is fighting in Syria, poses in a video wearing a T-shirt with “Imarat Kavkaz” (Caucasus Emirate) written on it. Emir Salautdin reproaches those who travel from the Caucasus to Syria to fight. It appears that the Chechen fighters in Syria and Umarov reached a mutually acceptable agreement, one of the provisions of which may be that many of the fighters in Syria will eventually go back to the Caucasus under Umarov’s command (http://svpressa.ru/society/article/70455/?mra=1).
Such an outcome is certainly realistic. Of course, not everybody will be able to return to Chechnya and Russia, but those who did not appear in videos will try to go back home and this could result in an intensification of the armed resistance. The security situation may deteriorate not only in the North Caucasus, but also in the other parts of Russian Federation, such as the Volga region. Some ethnic groups from the Volga region, including ethnic Russians, have reportedly been fighting in Syria. It is hard to determine now where and when the Syrian bomb will explode on the territory of the Russian Federation.
In his video, the leader of the armed opposition in the North Caucasus again touched on the question of why he was forced to abandon the idea of an independent Ichkeria. Umarov cast doubt on the succession rights of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria from the Mountainous Republic that was recognized by some countries in 1918. This proposition is dubious, given that Dzhokhar Dudaev repeatedly emphasized that he considered himself the successor of the Mountainous Republic (http://lib.rus.ec/b/293805/read), even though there are no legal documents that confirm Ichkeria legally derived from the Mountainous Republic of 1918–1921. Umarov’s primary objection against Ichkeria involves the alleged betrayal by Western countries, which did not recognize and support the leadership of Ichkeria throughout its existence, pursuing their narrow interests in Russia (http://kavkazcenter.com/russ/content/2013/08/08/99752.shtml). So the Caucasus Emirate leader’s proposal to replace the idea of Ichkeria with the idea of creating an Islamic state in the Caucasus underscores the utopian character of any plans to establish a secular state in this region. Umarov remained silent about the fact that none of the Islamic states had extended even verbal support to the Caucasus Emirate, let alone recognition.
At the end of his video, Doku Umarov called on those who support Ichkeria to repent and join the ranks of those who are fighting on behalf of the Caucasus Emirate’s ideology.
The fact that Umarov returned to this issue six years after proclaiming the Caucasus Emirate is a strong indicator that there are internal disagreements appearing among Chechens. The disputes within the Chechen community must have been caused by the emergence of Chechen youth organizations among the Chechen immigrants in the West (www.chechenpress.org/news/1595-pervaya-konferentsiya-chechenskoj-molodezhi-v-evrope-projdet-v-estonii.html). It is an open secret that these organizations support the concept of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. The London-based Chechen opposition figure, Akhmed Zakaev and members of the Ichkerian parliament firmly stand on this platform. Naturally, Doku Umarov does not recognize them and considers them historical relics of the past (http://www.nr2.ru/incidents/246244.html).
Therefore, Umarov’s video address should be regarded as part of the struggle for the Chechen youth who have wound up in Europe after the mass exodus of Chechens from the North Caucasus. Who wins this struggle for the hearts and minds of the Chechen youth in Europe will affect many things, including the stability of European countries themselves. Currently more than 200,000 Chechens have fled to Western Europe, and these asylum seekers increasingly will become a new powerful voice in the Chechen opposition movement that Russia’s self-defeating policies created. It also is a voice that Umarov will find hard to ignore.
--Mairbek Vatchagaev
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Chechen Leader Takes Up the Cause of Ethnic Kin in Syria
On August 12, Chechen militants launched a bomb attack targeting the reconnaissance group of the Russian interior ministry’s Sever Battalion, which is primarily manned by residents of the Chechen Republic (www.mk.ru/incident/article/2013/08/13/898403-chechenskie-boeviki-vzorvali-chechenskiy-spetsnaz.html). One officer died and four others were injured in the blast. That same day, military exercises started in Chechnya. All three motorized rifle brigades stationed in the republic are participating in the exercises. They are the 8th Guards Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade, which is stationed in the foothills near the city of Shali, the 17th Guards Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade, which is stationed at the village of Borzoi in the mountainous part of the republic, and the 18th Guards Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade, which is stationed in the village of Kalinovskaya near the Terek River in the Chechen plains (http://ria.ru/defense_safety/20130812/955798047.html). The military exercises include marching to the area of concentration, preparing for repelling a simulated enemy attack, moving in unfamiliar terrain, disguising movements and organizing interaction between units (http://www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/228536/).
However, news of the attack on the Sever Battalion and the military exercises was overshadowed by the civil war in Syria and its effect on Chechen society. After the Syrian civil war started, the issue of helping the North Caucasian diasporas in Syria that have resided there since the end of 19th century came to the fore. It has repeatedly been reported that these diasporas have been targeted by both Syrian opposition and government forces (http://www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/215392/). For example, at the start of this year, the Chechen diaspora disseminated reports about the disastrous situation of Chechen refugees in Turkey’s Ceylanpinar refugee camp. The refugees, numbering up to 50 people, reported they had fled the Syrian province of Raqqa and were waiting anxiously in the town of Ceylanpinar on the border with Syria (http://www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/218683/). Sources report that many more Chechens have fled Syria to Jordan rather than to Turkey. The reason for this is that the Chechen diaspora is well positioned in Jordan’s political and economic circles. This allows Syrian Chechens to find temporary refuge among the Jordanian Chechens, who live in a tightly knit ethnic community.
At the end of June, there were news reports that several dozen ethnic Chechens from Syria had arrived in Grozny at the invitation of Ramzan Kadyrov (http://leko007.livejournal.com/486675.html). The Chechen authorities announced that all of them would receive housing, food and employment. This was the first indication that the Chechen authorities would start asking the Russian government for concessions to help their ethnic brethren and repatriate as many of them as possible.
On August 13, Chechen TV broadcast a detailed report on a meeting between Kadyrov and the Chechen Republic’s representative in the Russian Federation Council, Ziyad Sabsabi, who is deputy chairman of the Federation Council’s Foreign Affairs Committee. A native of Syria himself (www.rg.ru/2008/11/26/reg-kuban/sabsabi-anons.html), Sabsabi is eagerly working on the issue. During the meeting Kadyrov and Sabsabi discussed issues involving Chechen refugees from Syria who have ended up in Jordan.
It turns out that the Chechen authorities are holding talks with the Jordanian government about transferring ethnic Chechens from Jordan to Chechnya, and a decision was made to provide large-scale assistance to all Chechen refugees who end up in Jordan. A Chechen humanitarian fund sends money for food, housing and other expenses to all Chechen refugees from Syria on a monthly basis. In order to deliver the aid, the Chechen fund has subcontracted a Jordanian humanitarian organization that is supposed to implement the project specifically for the benefit of Chechen refugees from Syria (www.grozny-inform.ru/main.mhtml?Part=8&PubID=44471). Having learned of the plight of the other Chechen refugees from Syria in refugee camps, Ramzan Kadyrov ordered that they also be sent humanitarian aid. It should be noted that none of the ethnic Chechens from Syria live in refugee camps in Jordan; rather they rent private housing in Amman and Zarqa. According to Sabsabi, the Chechen authorities have assumed responsibility for all needs of the refugees, including funds for the education of refugee children. Apart from that, a new international air link was announced in Chechnya, connecting Amman and Grozny. The weekly flight is set to begin operating this fall. An estimated 500 ethnic Chechen refugees from Syria are waiting for a decision by the Russian authorities to allow them to immigrate to Russia (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/210970/)
Chechen state TV continued the Syrian theme with an unexpected story about a young Chechen’s return home. Kadyrov’s press service supplied the TV channel with a story about Muslim Magomadov from the village of Berdykel, who told Kadyrov that he had been deceived about the war in Syria and, against the wishes of his relatives, had left Chechnya in secret and arrived in Syria. The young man spent three months there, which was enough for him to ask to be returned home (http://aligrozny.livejournal.com/235503.html). The TV piece was certainly a piece of propaganda aimed at dissuading Chechens from joining the forces opposed to the Bashar al-Assad regime. In addition, the TV story aimed to show off the omnipotence of the Chechen authorities, showing they could locate and evacuate a Chechen from the rebels in Syria. In any case, Muslim Magomadov will now have to explain to the authorities where he was in Syria, and with whom, unless the story was simply made up.
In all these instances linked to Syria, Ramzan Kadyrov was demonstrating his intense interest in the issue and his ability to influence it. The Russian foreign ministry did not seem to play an important role as Kadyrov appeared to be bypassing Russian officials. This suggests that Kadyrov may still enjoy a special relationship with President Vladimir Putin, which allows him to resolve the question of repatriating ethnic Chechens from Syria to their historical homeland and supporting Chechen refugees from Syria in Jordan and Turkey.
--Mairbek Vatchagaev
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Tensions Increase in Dagestan as Authorities Pursue Heavy-Handed Tactics
On August 18, Kumyks clashed with Laks in the Dagestani town of Karaman. An estimated 700 police officers were deployed to separate the warring factions. Fifteen civilians and four police officers were reportedly injured in the clashes and the highway connecting Makhachkala to the northern parts of the republic was blocked. The police used firearms and armored personnel carriers to disperse the protesters. The standoff finally ended after the government promised to form a commission to resolve the issue. The commission will be the fourth such entity set up by the government in the recent past.
The latest iteration of the conflict was caused by a collision of land ownership interests: the Kumyks, who have traditionally resided in the northern part of the capital city of Makhachkala, feel threatened by an influx of Lak settlers. The Laks, for their part, are resettling in the area because their land has been returned to ethnic Chechens in Dagestan’s Novolak (New Lak) district. The Chechens were deported en masse by Stalin to Central Asia in 1944 and their land was redistributed among other groups (http://www.ndelo.ru/novosti-7/1818-prava-ushchemlennykh-reshayutsya-za-schet-prav-drugikh-ushchemlennykh).
Ethnic tensions, especially, involving land interests, are not a novelty in this mountainous republic, where arable soil is scarce. The latest escalation of tensions is one of the largest in recent memory, underscoring the impotence of the government at resolving pressing issues. The problem apparently does not derive from a general lack of resources on the government’s side or its weakness. Rather, it appears to be much more nuanced and political, indicating a lack of public trust in government institutions and their ability to resolve conflicts impartially.
In the meantime, the security services appear to be expanding the scope of their special operations in Dagestan. In a large special operation on August 20, government forces killed several suspected rebels in the Dagestani town of Buinaksk. Government agencies reported that one of the highest profile leaders of the insurgency, Bammatkhan Sheikhov (a.k.a. Emir Asadulla), was killed in the operation. Moreover, four servicemen were injured. Sheikhov reportedly was a close associate of Rasul Makasharipov, the leader of the Dagestani insurgent group Sharia Jamaat. After government forces killed Makasharipov in the summer of 2005, Sheikhov set up his own insurgent group, Seifullah. According to government sources, Sheikhov aspired to become the leader of all of Dagestan’s insurgents and declared then–Dagestani Interior Minister Adelgirei Magomedtagirov, who launched the operation against the Sharia jamaat, “the number one enemy.” Sheikhov’s son Gajimurad was killed in a special operation in 2008.
Strangely, despite having been accused of numerous grave crimes, Sheikhov still surrendered to the government under the personal guarantees of Magomedtagirov in 2008 and received the extremely light sentence of three years in prison. What is more, Sheikhov was released early, in March 2010, and soon rejoined the insurgency. Government sources asserted that Sheikhov was one of the principal racketeers among the insurgents, who collected money for the “holy war” from businesses and government officials (http://kommersant.ru/doc/2259730).
The unusual twists in the fate of Bammatkhan Sheikhov suggest he may have participated in a series of shadow agreements with the security services. However, the nearly complete lack of civilian oversight of the Russian security services means the details of those agreements will not become public knowledge any time soon.
Overall, during the period of August 16 to August 20, the security services killed 16 suspected rebels in Dagestan, including in the Buinaksk operation and two others—one near Makhachkala, the other in the city of Khasavyurt (http://www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/228931/). On September 1, another suspected rebel was killed in Buinaksk after attacking police (http://riadagestan.ru/news/incidents/ubityy_v_buynakske_boevik_prichasten_k_ubiystvu_politseyskikh_sk/). On August 30, government forces launched two special operations in Dagestan’s Levashi and Tsunta districts. A suspected rebel was killed in one of the operations (http://www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/229258/). Earlier, on August 28, two suspected rebels were killed in the republic’s Tsumada district (http://www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/229182/).
Government pressure on certain categories of citizens took yet another form when the authorities appeared to pit civilians against each other. On August 27, a group of prominent Russian rights activists sent an open letter to government officials, charging that militias in the village of Khajalmakhi in Dagestan’s Levashi district had resorted to violent actions against families of suspected rebels and, more generally, against adherents of Salafi Islam. At the beginning of August, the militias burned several houses belonging to relatives of suspected insurgents. Earlier, in March, a village meeting decreed that all people who were Salafis had to leave the village. An anonymous hit list of 33 villagers subsequently circulated in Khajalmakhi. According to media reports, seven people on the hit list have been killed in the village, while the police had designated none of those killed as suspects. The rights activists assert that the conflict started over financial fraud, but the initiators of the fraud managed to turn the financial conflict into a religious one, garnering support from the government and engaging in overtly illegal activities (http://www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/229124/).
Government support for the militia in Khajalmakhi indicates the authorities’ ongoing inability to ensure what any government is expected to provide—personal safety. Previously, various informal groups appeared in Dagestan that claimed they had started waging war against the rebels, Salafis and their families. The series of violent incidents in Khajalmakhi has been the starkest signal so far that the government is prepared to incite civil war actively in order to remain in control of the situation. Even though this strategy may indeed help the government in Makhachkala by relieving it of having to perpetrate atrocious acts of violence, the same strategy is bound to increase the level of uncertainty in Dagestan and result in violence in the republic reaching higher levels.
--Valery Dzutsev
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Russians Say Government Is Turning Sochi into a Concentration Camp
On August 19, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on special security arrangements for the city of Sochi when it hosts the Winter Olympics in 2014. The decree’s provisions envisage a complete ban on incoming automobile traffic in Sochi and its surroundings from January 7 to March 21, 2014. Special registration rules will apply for visitors of the city. Restrictions will also be imposed on crossing the border from the neighboring Georgian breakaway region of Abkhazia. Apart from restrictions on movement imposed on Russian citizens and migrants, the decree bans all types of public protests. Some areas of Sochi will be open to people only after official permission is obtained, while other areas will be completely closed to the public (http://www.rg.ru/2013/08/23/bezopasnost-dok.html).
Residents of Sochi have already referred to the government’s safety measures for the city as turning their city into an “Olympic concentration camp” (http://www.blogsochi.ru/content/ukaz-vladimira-putina-ot-19082013-
*Dagestani authorities rebuke rebellious village and promise incentives
*Police kill leader of insurgents in Kabardino-Balkaria
*Doku Umarov issues a video clarifying his position on Syria
*Kadyrov implements refugee assistance program for Syrian Chechens in Jordan
*Ethnic tensions in Dagestan rise as republican authorities back local extralegal militias
*Putin issues decree to fortify Winter Olympics host city
*Contest for Russia’s top landmarks pits Russian nationalists against Chechens
*Top official in Ingushetia assassinated as militants mount comeback
Having Lost Population’s Trust, Dagestan’s Government Finds It Hard to Make a Comeback
On August 7, the acting head of Dagestan, Ramazan Abdulatipov, and other republican officials met a group of residents of the embattled Dagestani village of Gimry. The Dagestani government proposed a deal with the villagers’ leaders that should end the settlement’s suspended status. The authorities bluntly offered a combination of “carrots and sticks” to the residents of Gimry, which has been the scene of lengthy special operations several times in the past years. In April, during the latest special operation there, the security services even resettled the entire population of the village, several thousand people, in a shantytown nearby, under the pretext of fighting the radicals in the village. The official website of the Dagestani government conveniently shifted responsibility for the hardship of Gimry’s civilian population onto the militants. “The militants were given the chance to surrender, but they did not do so, thereby endangering the civilians,” the website of the government news agency said, thinly disguising the government’s collective punishment strategy (http://riadagestan.ru/news/president/ramazan_abdulatipov_gimry_eto_obshchedagestanskoe_dostoyanie/).
The candid words of the government officials at the meeting with the Gimry residents illuminated the challenges that the government in Dagestan faces and the remedies it has for dealing with the insurgency in the embattled village. Abdulatipov rebuked the Gimry residents, along with those of other villages such as Gubden, for failing to serve in the local police. “We tell them, let us accept 20 people to work [as police officers],” he said. “We will give them a salary. Defend yourself, your families, relatives and villagers. They do not take this opportunity because they are scared. The bandits will be winning if we turn out to be cowards. Why should Russian soldiers or others be restoring order in your home and not you, yourselves? People come to you to deliver you from the bandits and you are firing shots in their backs. Then you come with complaints that you are not given proper treatment” (http://riadagestan.ru/news/president/ramazan_abdulatipov_gimry_eto_obshchedagestanskoe_dostoyanie/).
Gimry, an Avar village in Dagestan’s mountainous Untsukul district, has long been one of the hotbeds of the insurgency. In April, the security services carried out a mass punitive action in the village after killing three suspected militants. The village’s residents were moved to a shantytown for several weeks and after they were allowed to return to their homes, they found that 10 homes had been burned down and 44 others damaged. Over 450 families in the village, virtually the whole population, reported various losses (http://www.regnum.ru/news/kavkaz/dagestan/1692893.html).
Currently the government of Dagestan is apparently proposing a deal that would involve the surrender of rebels of the village, on the one hand, and government financial incentives, on the other hand. The whole discussion shows why democracies tend to be less violent than non-democracies. If elections and other democratic mechanisms worked in Dagestan, the people who have the real authority in Gimry would be in power and, therefore, be able to control the situation in the village. However, in the current situation, when political participation is severely restricted in Dagestan, the republican government does not even have a proper channel to speak to the people it should be talking to.
The passionate admonition made by the head of the Federal Security Service (FSB) branch in Dagestan, Andrei Konin, is also instructive. Konin said that 20 residents of Gimry were fighting in Syria, participating in killings and posting videos about their actions online. Attempting to hold the high moral ground, he said: “Hypocrisy and indifference has become part of the mentality of the local people [in Gimry]. The so-called Sharia court worked for a long time. And what kind of questions did it resolve? Who to kill and what for, how much money to take and how much a kidnapping costs…Where was the healthy part of the population during this time?” (http://www.regnum.ru/news/kavkaz/dagestan/1692893.html).
Offering of “carrots and sticks” to a village of several thousand residents demonstrates, apart from other things, the continuing weakness of the republican government. Broken government institutions cannot function without at least some trust from the population. Instead of promoting trust, however, what we see on the government side in Dagestan is the wielding of power and an attempt to buy people’s confidence. Instilling fear in the disillusioned population and paying them money may seem like a suitable, quick fix for Dagestan’s security issues, but in the long run it is likely to backfire, resulting in even less public trust and greater levels of violence.
On August 3–4, rumors about Ramazan Abdulatipov’s possible resignation spread on the Internet. The website that started the rumors belongs to Abdulatipov’s own son, thus many observers decided it was a public relations move aimed at pressuring Moscow to pay more attention to the acting head of Dagestan. The reports stated that President Vladimir Putin was refusing to meet Abdulatipov and that this signaled the Dagestani leader’s resignation was imminent. Abdulatipov has been in power in Dagestan as the acting head of the republic since February.
In September, the appointment procedure for the republican head is scheduled to take place in Dagestan. So far, there have been no credible indications that Moscow does not want Abdulatipov to become the republic’s full-fledged head. However, some observers perspicaciously interpreted the rumors of Abdulatipov’s resignation as possible plans in Moscow to install direct presidential rule in Dagestan. Observers said that a large terrorist attack could become a convenient excuse for such a step. They also point out that a “soft” version of direct Russian rule is already being implemented in Dagestan, as non-ethnic-Russian Dagestanis in governmental agencies are being replaced by ethnic Russians, often from the Russian security services (http://chernovik.net/content/politika/v-ozhidanii-putina).
The political situation in Dagestan appears to be highly fluid, which may result in even greater security challenges in the republic. The solutions to the challenges of the republic advanced by the authorities are evidently not radical enough to have any significant effect on the situation in Dagestan. Moscow’s virtual ban on holding proper elections in the republic in September 2013 leaves little hope for improvements in the most violent territory of the Russian Federation.
--Valery Dzutsev
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Despite Security Services’ Successes, Kabardino-Balkaria Remains One of North Caucasus’ Deadliest Regions
On August 7, the leader of the united insurgent movement of Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachaevo-Cherkessia, Khasanbi Fakov, was killed in Kabardino-Balkaria’s capital Nalchik. The 34-year-old Fakov was on Russia’s federal wanted list for allegedly staging numerous attacks on law enforcement personnel. The road police stopped a car with Fakov and three other people in Nalchik at midnight. When the suspected rebels started shooting, the police opened fire and killed all four (http://www.regnum.ru/news/kavkaz/kab-balk/1692384.html). The website of Kabardino-Balkaria’s insurgency confirmed the death of Fakov (a.k.a. Emir Abu Khasan), his wife Irina Ortanova and two other militants, Anzor Shaov and Khasan Kushkhov. The website asserted that the rebels were “ambushed” (http://islamdinbiz.blogspot.fi/2013/08/blog-post_7.html?spref=fb).
Prior to becoming the leader of the jamaat of Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachaevo-Cherkessia, Khasanbi Fakov, better known by his nom de guerre, Abu Khasan, led the insurgent group in Kabardino-Balkaria’s Chegem district. Fakov originally came from the Baksan district, which has been one of the most deadly places in the republic in the past several years. According to the newspaper Kommersant, Abu Khasan was appointed head of the jamaat of Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachaevo-Cherkessia at the beginning of 2013, when the leadership of the jamaat was decimated by the security services. His Muslim wife, 24-year-old Irina Ortanova, had been married to Vitaly Ortanov, a police officer intern and resident of the town of Chegem. Ortanov came under suspicion for being close to the insurgents and was killed in a special operation in November 2011. Ortanova subsequently became Abu Khasan’s wife. Kommersant also noted that one of the suspected insurgents killed in the incident on August 7, Anzor Shaov, worked as a court bailiff in Kabardino-Balkaria (http://kommersant.ru/doc/2249990).
There have been multiple cases of insurgents coming from the police and other government agencies, showing that the Kabardino-Balkarian insurgency is well-positioned in the wider society of the republic, where it remains a considerable force despite significant losses and setbacks.
During the period of January to March this year, 20 people were killed in Kabardino-Balkaria, including 18 suspected rebels and two servicemen. Thus the republic shared second place with Chechnya among the deadliest republics of the North Caucasus (http://www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/224883/). Although Kabardino-Balkaria experienced more violence while Abu Khasan led the republic’s insurgency, the positive results of the security services having neutralized him may be short lived, given the next leader of the insurgents in the republic may be even more violent. Indeed, the security services’ initial success in killing Kabardino-Balkarian insurgent leader Anzor Astemirov in March 2010 eventually led to an explosion of violence in the republic in 2010–2011. Astemirov had apparently tried to avoid violence in Kabardino-Balkaria in order to shield the republic from being ravaged by the Russian security services. His successors were much more willing to flex the rebels’ muscles, attacking government offices and even large objects of infrastructure, such as the brazen attack on the Baksan hydroelectric plant in October 2010.
It must be said that the physical and temporal proximity of the Olympics in Sochi to Kabaradino-Balkaria also creates additional incentives for the jamaat to intensify its strikes. Indeed, the media attention that the region will receive in the next several months presents the leaders of the rebels with a unique opportunity to remind the world of their existence and demonstrate their influence. On the government side, the “Sochi Olympics effect” is leading to the republican security forces using harsher tactics. That is probably why Kabardino-Balkaria has repeatedly had higher ratios of slain suspected rebels to slain government forces. The republic’s militants are not more hapless than those elsewhere in the North Caucasus, but the security services in Kabardino-Balkaria are apparently allowed to kill off people more liberally than in other places (see EDM, August 7).
Meanwhile, the position of the head of Kabardino-Balkaria, Arsen Kanokov, appears to be weakening. After an incident at a market in Moscow’s Matveyevskoye district at the end of July that resulted in a public outcry and a government crackdown on “illegal migrants” that often targeted North Caucasians, it emerged that the Matveyevskoye market may have belonged to Kanokov. The leader of Kabardino-Balkaria is known to be an extremely affluent person: the Russian edition of Forbes put Kanokov’s wealth at $650 million in its latest ranking of Russian billionaires, in which Kanokov occupied the modest but still fairly significant 156th position. The Kavkazskaya Politika website published an extensive report on Kanokov’s assets that asserted the politician may be in control of a much larger financial “empire” than he publicly admits to (http://kavpolit.com/kak-ustroena-imperiya-kanokova/).
This report itself is one indicator that Kanokov’s assets have attracted the scrutiny of the Russian government, which is likely to result in an attack on his “empire.” Even though the head of Kabardino-Balkaria may indeed own many assets directly or indirectly, he is certainly far behind many other affluent people in Russia. In Moscow’s political calculus, however, a wealthy head of a North Caucasian republic may no longer be a desirable figure because his personal wealth makes him too independent a political figure.
Kanokov’s removal, however, could also further jeopardize the security situation in the republic. As Moscow demonstrates its desire to shift to greater direct rule in the North Caucasus, regional elites may be increasingly less incentivized to maintain social order in their respective republics. The Kremlin appears to be replacing more autonomous figures with outright puppets as a better way of controlling the republics. However, instead of controlling the republics, the central government may end up only controlling puppets that are, in fact, unable to control anything. At the moment, Moscow does not seem to have any other ideas about changing the situation in the North Caucasus, apart from carrying out administrative reshuffles under the pretext of fighting the corruption and sending in military and security forces—which in itself is a self-defeating policy because it creates a never-ending cycle of violence in a region that is already highly unstable.
--Valery Dzutsev
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Caucasus Emirate Leader Discusses Chechens in Syria in New Video
Six years after Doku Umarov publicly rejected the idea of Ichkerian independence in favor of the Islamic state of the Caucasus Emirate, he continues to justify this change.
In a recent video posted on August 8, Umarov responded to questions from people who reside abroad that was taped sometime in July from the militant’s base of operation somewhere in Chechnya (www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoRhgTNqjzk). First, he spoke about the numbers of his insurgency, noting that a certain number of militants bear arms while others support them in the cities and villages. According to Umarov, having large numbers of insurgents in the mountains serves no purpose at the moment. The leader of the Caucasus Emirate has a point, because challenging the Russian army in the mountains and suburbs of cities would mean self-destruction for the insurgents. It is no wonder why only the Chechen rebels stay in the mountains. In the past, the Federal Security Service (FSB), police and special forces primarily killed Chechen insurgents in the mountainous and forested areas of the republic, not in the villages and towns. In contrast to Chechnya, the Russian government fights the rebel forces in other republics of the North Caucasus, such as Dagestan, Ingushetia and Kabardino-Balkaria, mainly within the villages and cities. This is the primary operational difference between the Chechen jamaat and other jamaats in the North Caucasus.
Umarov said in his video that the flow of North Caucasian volunteers to Syria is the result of the Caucasus Emirate’s refusal to accept more youth into its ranks. However, this statement contradicts Umarov’s own earlier diatribe against the outflow of Chechens to Syria (http://nohchipress.info/2012/11/6995). At the time, Umarov could not conceal his irritation with the Chechens who resided in Europe and went to fight in Syria, while none of them expressed a willingness to join those fighting in Chechnya. In a 2012 video address, Umarov deplored the fact that nobody was helping the jihad in the North Caucasus. In fact, it is in many ways easier for Chechens to join the Syrian opposition than the rebel forces in the North Caucasus. First, relatives are not put in danger by going to Syria, while the Chechen authorities persecute the relatives of anyone suspected of merely sympathizing with the North Caucasian rebels. Second, it is much easier to travel to Syria unnoticed than to travel to Chechnya through Russian border posts.
Umarov apparently extended his support for the Chechens fighting in Syria once he realized that he cannot stop this process and that it is better to pretend that the Chechens went there on his orders. Some commanders in Syria indeed emphasize that their groups are actually the units of the Caucasus Emirate (http://hunafa.com/?p=15423). Thus, Emir Salautdin, who is fighting in Syria, poses in a video wearing a T-shirt with “Imarat Kavkaz” (Caucasus Emirate) written on it. Emir Salautdin reproaches those who travel from the Caucasus to Syria to fight. It appears that the Chechen fighters in Syria and Umarov reached a mutually acceptable agreement, one of the provisions of which may be that many of the fighters in Syria will eventually go back to the Caucasus under Umarov’s command (http://svpressa.ru/society/article/70455/?mra=1).
Such an outcome is certainly realistic. Of course, not everybody will be able to return to Chechnya and Russia, but those who did not appear in videos will try to go back home and this could result in an intensification of the armed resistance. The security situation may deteriorate not only in the North Caucasus, but also in the other parts of Russian Federation, such as the Volga region. Some ethnic groups from the Volga region, including ethnic Russians, have reportedly been fighting in Syria. It is hard to determine now where and when the Syrian bomb will explode on the territory of the Russian Federation.
In his video, the leader of the armed opposition in the North Caucasus again touched on the question of why he was forced to abandon the idea of an independent Ichkeria. Umarov cast doubt on the succession rights of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria from the Mountainous Republic that was recognized by some countries in 1918. This proposition is dubious, given that Dzhokhar Dudaev repeatedly emphasized that he considered himself the successor of the Mountainous Republic (http://lib.rus.ec/b/293805/read), even though there are no legal documents that confirm Ichkeria legally derived from the Mountainous Republic of 1918–1921. Umarov’s primary objection against Ichkeria involves the alleged betrayal by Western countries, which did not recognize and support the leadership of Ichkeria throughout its existence, pursuing their narrow interests in Russia (http://kavkazcenter.com/russ/content/2013/08/08/99752.shtml). So the Caucasus Emirate leader’s proposal to replace the idea of Ichkeria with the idea of creating an Islamic state in the Caucasus underscores the utopian character of any plans to establish a secular state in this region. Umarov remained silent about the fact that none of the Islamic states had extended even verbal support to the Caucasus Emirate, let alone recognition.
At the end of his video, Doku Umarov called on those who support Ichkeria to repent and join the ranks of those who are fighting on behalf of the Caucasus Emirate’s ideology.
The fact that Umarov returned to this issue six years after proclaiming the Caucasus Emirate is a strong indicator that there are internal disagreements appearing among Chechens. The disputes within the Chechen community must have been caused by the emergence of Chechen youth organizations among the Chechen immigrants in the West (www.chechenpress.org/news/1595-pervaya-konferentsiya-chechenskoj-molodezhi-v-evrope-projdet-v-estonii.html). It is an open secret that these organizations support the concept of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. The London-based Chechen opposition figure, Akhmed Zakaev and members of the Ichkerian parliament firmly stand on this platform. Naturally, Doku Umarov does not recognize them and considers them historical relics of the past (http://www.nr2.ru/incidents/246244.html).
Therefore, Umarov’s video address should be regarded as part of the struggle for the Chechen youth who have wound up in Europe after the mass exodus of Chechens from the North Caucasus. Who wins this struggle for the hearts and minds of the Chechen youth in Europe will affect many things, including the stability of European countries themselves. Currently more than 200,000 Chechens have fled to Western Europe, and these asylum seekers increasingly will become a new powerful voice in the Chechen opposition movement that Russia’s self-defeating policies created. It also is a voice that Umarov will find hard to ignore.
--Mairbek Vatchagaev
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Chechen Leader Takes Up the Cause of Ethnic Kin in Syria
On August 12, Chechen militants launched a bomb attack targeting the reconnaissance group of the Russian interior ministry’s Sever Battalion, which is primarily manned by residents of the Chechen Republic (www.mk.ru/incident/article/2013/08/13/898403-chechenskie-boeviki-vzorvali-chechenskiy-spetsnaz.html). One officer died and four others were injured in the blast. That same day, military exercises started in Chechnya. All three motorized rifle brigades stationed in the republic are participating in the exercises. They are the 8th Guards Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade, which is stationed in the foothills near the city of Shali, the 17th Guards Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade, which is stationed at the village of Borzoi in the mountainous part of the republic, and the 18th Guards Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade, which is stationed in the village of Kalinovskaya near the Terek River in the Chechen plains (http://ria.ru/defense_safety/20130812/955798047.html). The military exercises include marching to the area of concentration, preparing for repelling a simulated enemy attack, moving in unfamiliar terrain, disguising movements and organizing interaction between units (http://www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/228536/).
However, news of the attack on the Sever Battalion and the military exercises was overshadowed by the civil war in Syria and its effect on Chechen society. After the Syrian civil war started, the issue of helping the North Caucasian diasporas in Syria that have resided there since the end of 19th century came to the fore. It has repeatedly been reported that these diasporas have been targeted by both Syrian opposition and government forces (http://www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/215392/). For example, at the start of this year, the Chechen diaspora disseminated reports about the disastrous situation of Chechen refugees in Turkey’s Ceylanpinar refugee camp. The refugees, numbering up to 50 people, reported they had fled the Syrian province of Raqqa and were waiting anxiously in the town of Ceylanpinar on the border with Syria (http://www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/218683/). Sources report that many more Chechens have fled Syria to Jordan rather than to Turkey. The reason for this is that the Chechen diaspora is well positioned in Jordan’s political and economic circles. This allows Syrian Chechens to find temporary refuge among the Jordanian Chechens, who live in a tightly knit ethnic community.
At the end of June, there were news reports that several dozen ethnic Chechens from Syria had arrived in Grozny at the invitation of Ramzan Kadyrov (http://leko007.livejournal.com/486675.html). The Chechen authorities announced that all of them would receive housing, food and employment. This was the first indication that the Chechen authorities would start asking the Russian government for concessions to help their ethnic brethren and repatriate as many of them as possible.
On August 13, Chechen TV broadcast a detailed report on a meeting between Kadyrov and the Chechen Republic’s representative in the Russian Federation Council, Ziyad Sabsabi, who is deputy chairman of the Federation Council’s Foreign Affairs Committee. A native of Syria himself (www.rg.ru/2008/11/26/reg-kuban/sabsabi-anons.html), Sabsabi is eagerly working on the issue. During the meeting Kadyrov and Sabsabi discussed issues involving Chechen refugees from Syria who have ended up in Jordan.
It turns out that the Chechen authorities are holding talks with the Jordanian government about transferring ethnic Chechens from Jordan to Chechnya, and a decision was made to provide large-scale assistance to all Chechen refugees who end up in Jordan. A Chechen humanitarian fund sends money for food, housing and other expenses to all Chechen refugees from Syria on a monthly basis. In order to deliver the aid, the Chechen fund has subcontracted a Jordanian humanitarian organization that is supposed to implement the project specifically for the benefit of Chechen refugees from Syria (www.grozny-inform.ru/main.mhtml?Part=8&PubID=44471). Having learned of the plight of the other Chechen refugees from Syria in refugee camps, Ramzan Kadyrov ordered that they also be sent humanitarian aid. It should be noted that none of the ethnic Chechens from Syria live in refugee camps in Jordan; rather they rent private housing in Amman and Zarqa. According to Sabsabi, the Chechen authorities have assumed responsibility for all needs of the refugees, including funds for the education of refugee children. Apart from that, a new international air link was announced in Chechnya, connecting Amman and Grozny. The weekly flight is set to begin operating this fall. An estimated 500 ethnic Chechen refugees from Syria are waiting for a decision by the Russian authorities to allow them to immigrate to Russia (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/210970/)
Chechen state TV continued the Syrian theme with an unexpected story about a young Chechen’s return home. Kadyrov’s press service supplied the TV channel with a story about Muslim Magomadov from the village of Berdykel, who told Kadyrov that he had been deceived about the war in Syria and, against the wishes of his relatives, had left Chechnya in secret and arrived in Syria. The young man spent three months there, which was enough for him to ask to be returned home (http://aligrozny.livejournal.com/235503.html). The TV piece was certainly a piece of propaganda aimed at dissuading Chechens from joining the forces opposed to the Bashar al-Assad regime. In addition, the TV story aimed to show off the omnipotence of the Chechen authorities, showing they could locate and evacuate a Chechen from the rebels in Syria. In any case, Muslim Magomadov will now have to explain to the authorities where he was in Syria, and with whom, unless the story was simply made up.
In all these instances linked to Syria, Ramzan Kadyrov was demonstrating his intense interest in the issue and his ability to influence it. The Russian foreign ministry did not seem to play an important role as Kadyrov appeared to be bypassing Russian officials. This suggests that Kadyrov may still enjoy a special relationship with President Vladimir Putin, which allows him to resolve the question of repatriating ethnic Chechens from Syria to their historical homeland and supporting Chechen refugees from Syria in Jordan and Turkey.
--Mairbek Vatchagaev
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Tensions Increase in Dagestan as Authorities Pursue Heavy-Handed Tactics
On August 18, Kumyks clashed with Laks in the Dagestani town of Karaman. An estimated 700 police officers were deployed to separate the warring factions. Fifteen civilians and four police officers were reportedly injured in the clashes and the highway connecting Makhachkala to the northern parts of the republic was blocked. The police used firearms and armored personnel carriers to disperse the protesters. The standoff finally ended after the government promised to form a commission to resolve the issue. The commission will be the fourth such entity set up by the government in the recent past.
The latest iteration of the conflict was caused by a collision of land ownership interests: the Kumyks, who have traditionally resided in the northern part of the capital city of Makhachkala, feel threatened by an influx of Lak settlers. The Laks, for their part, are resettling in the area because their land has been returned to ethnic Chechens in Dagestan’s Novolak (New Lak) district. The Chechens were deported en masse by Stalin to Central Asia in 1944 and their land was redistributed among other groups (http://www.ndelo.ru/novosti-7/1818-prava-ushchemlennykh-reshayutsya-za-schet-prav-drugikh-ushchemlennykh).
Ethnic tensions, especially, involving land interests, are not a novelty in this mountainous republic, where arable soil is scarce. The latest escalation of tensions is one of the largest in recent memory, underscoring the impotence of the government at resolving pressing issues. The problem apparently does not derive from a general lack of resources on the government’s side or its weakness. Rather, it appears to be much more nuanced and political, indicating a lack of public trust in government institutions and their ability to resolve conflicts impartially.
In the meantime, the security services appear to be expanding the scope of their special operations in Dagestan. In a large special operation on August 20, government forces killed several suspected rebels in the Dagestani town of Buinaksk. Government agencies reported that one of the highest profile leaders of the insurgency, Bammatkhan Sheikhov (a.k.a. Emir Asadulla), was killed in the operation. Moreover, four servicemen were injured. Sheikhov reportedly was a close associate of Rasul Makasharipov, the leader of the Dagestani insurgent group Sharia Jamaat. After government forces killed Makasharipov in the summer of 2005, Sheikhov set up his own insurgent group, Seifullah. According to government sources, Sheikhov aspired to become the leader of all of Dagestan’s insurgents and declared then–Dagestani Interior Minister Adelgirei Magomedtagirov, who launched the operation against the Sharia jamaat, “the number one enemy.” Sheikhov’s son Gajimurad was killed in a special operation in 2008.
Strangely, despite having been accused of numerous grave crimes, Sheikhov still surrendered to the government under the personal guarantees of Magomedtagirov in 2008 and received the extremely light sentence of three years in prison. What is more, Sheikhov was released early, in March 2010, and soon rejoined the insurgency. Government sources asserted that Sheikhov was one of the principal racketeers among the insurgents, who collected money for the “holy war” from businesses and government officials (http://kommersant.ru/doc/2259730).
The unusual twists in the fate of Bammatkhan Sheikhov suggest he may have participated in a series of shadow agreements with the security services. However, the nearly complete lack of civilian oversight of the Russian security services means the details of those agreements will not become public knowledge any time soon.
Overall, during the period of August 16 to August 20, the security services killed 16 suspected rebels in Dagestan, including in the Buinaksk operation and two others—one near Makhachkala, the other in the city of Khasavyurt (http://www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/228931/). On September 1, another suspected rebel was killed in Buinaksk after attacking police (http://riadagestan.ru/news/incidents/ubityy_v_buynakske_boevik_prichasten_k_ubiystvu_politseyskikh_sk/). On August 30, government forces launched two special operations in Dagestan’s Levashi and Tsunta districts. A suspected rebel was killed in one of the operations (http://www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/229258/). Earlier, on August 28, two suspected rebels were killed in the republic’s Tsumada district (http://www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/229182/).
Government pressure on certain categories of citizens took yet another form when the authorities appeared to pit civilians against each other. On August 27, a group of prominent Russian rights activists sent an open letter to government officials, charging that militias in the village of Khajalmakhi in Dagestan’s Levashi district had resorted to violent actions against families of suspected rebels and, more generally, against adherents of Salafi Islam. At the beginning of August, the militias burned several houses belonging to relatives of suspected insurgents. Earlier, in March, a village meeting decreed that all people who were Salafis had to leave the village. An anonymous hit list of 33 villagers subsequently circulated in Khajalmakhi. According to media reports, seven people on the hit list have been killed in the village, while the police had designated none of those killed as suspects. The rights activists assert that the conflict started over financial fraud, but the initiators of the fraud managed to turn the financial conflict into a religious one, garnering support from the government and engaging in overtly illegal activities (http://www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/229124/).
Government support for the militia in Khajalmakhi indicates the authorities’ ongoing inability to ensure what any government is expected to provide—personal safety. Previously, various informal groups appeared in Dagestan that claimed they had started waging war against the rebels, Salafis and their families. The series of violent incidents in Khajalmakhi has been the starkest signal so far that the government is prepared to incite civil war actively in order to remain in control of the situation. Even though this strategy may indeed help the government in Makhachkala by relieving it of having to perpetrate atrocious acts of violence, the same strategy is bound to increase the level of uncertainty in Dagestan and result in violence in the republic reaching higher levels.
--Valery Dzutsev
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Russians Say Government Is Turning Sochi into a Concentration Camp
On August 19, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on special security arrangements for the city of Sochi when it hosts the Winter Olympics in 2014. The decree’s provisions envisage a complete ban on incoming automobile traffic in Sochi and its surroundings from January 7 to March 21, 2014. Special registration rules will apply for visitors of the city. Restrictions will also be imposed on crossing the border from the neighboring Georgian breakaway region of Abkhazia. Apart from restrictions on movement imposed on Russian citizens and migrants, the decree bans all types of public protests. Some areas of Sochi will be open to people only after official permission is obtained, while other areas will be completely closed to the public (http://www.rg.ru/2013/08/23/bezopasnost-dok.html).
Residents of Sochi have already referred to the government’s safety measures for the city as turning their city into an “Olympic concentration camp” (http://www.blogsochi.ru/content/ukaz-vladimira-putina-ot-19082013-