Post by peterd on Sept 20, 2013 12:12:58 GMT -8
Russian Movement in Stavropol Calls for Creation of Russian Republic
A political movement in Stavropol region is gearing up for the establishment of a Russian republic in this ethnic Russian–majority territory, thereby emulating the ethnically non-Russian republics of the North Caucasus. The first conference of the Slavs of Stavropol, also known as the Russian People’s Assembly, is scheduled to take place on November 4 in the city of Stavropol. An estimated 500 delegates are expected to attend the gathering.
The principal issue that concerns Russian nationalists in Stavropol is the influx of ethnically non-Russian North Caucasians and the strategic retreat of ethnic Russians from Stavropol region, especially from its eastern and the southeastern areas. “No one asked the population of Stavropol region for their consent for the region’s withdrawal from the Southern Federal District and joining it with the North Caucasian republics,” one of the organizers of the conference, Sergei Popov, asserted. The activist emphasized that ethnic Russian people should therefore follow the example of the North Caucasians by organizing on an ethnic basis. Popov claimed Moscow is treating Stavropol region “like a reserve for the development of the neighboring [North] Caucasian republics and not as a separate entity” (http://www.ng.ru/regions/2013-09-06/6_stavropolie.html).
Stavropol region is the only ethnic Russian–majority region within the North Caucasian Federal District. Soon after the new district was established in 2010, various Russian groups started to demand that Stavropol be transferred back to the Southern Federal District. Moscow was reluctant to allow such a transfer because the borders of the North Caucasus Federal District without the Stavropol region would have resembled an international border, almost perfectly aligning with the distribution of ethnic groups. Stavropol region has nearly 3 million people and is about the same size as the largest republic of the North Caucasus, Dagestan. As Russian nationalists have failed to convince Moscow to separate the region from the North Caucasus, they now appear intent on establishing a Russian republic within the North Caucasus Federal District.
The organizers of the movement for the establishment of a Russian republic in Stavropol region include a loose coalition of Cossack and Russian nationalist groups. The two primary organizations are Russian Unity of the Caucasus and Novaya Sila (New Power). Russian Unity of the Caucasus was founded in December 2010 by Cossack groups that were not approved for government financing and Russian nationalist groups from the republics and southern Russian territories (http://www.regnum.ru/news/1358572.html). The officially unregistered Novaya Sila party is another driving force behind the conference (http://novayasila.org). The party has been very active in Stavropol region in the past year, organizing protests in the city of Nevinnomysk in December 2012 following the killing of an ethnic Russian by an ethnic Chechen (http://www.kp.ru/daily/26005/2931401/). The leader of Novaya Sila, Valery Solovei, who is a professor at Moscow State Institute of International Relations (a.k.a. MGIMO), is known for his right-wing nationalist views, while MGIMO has traditionally been known for its ties to the Russian security services.
Among the main causes of the popular discontent in Stavropol region is its economic backwardness and shifts in the population’s demographic structure. Having considerable natural and population resources, Stavropol region is doing significantly worse than its wealthy neighbors to the west and north, Krasnodar and Rostov-on-Don regions. In particular, foreign investment never took off in Stavropol despite expansive initial plans and opportunities.
So, on the one hand, ethnic Russians who live in Stavropol region are incentivized to leave for other Russian regions in search of better economic opportunities (http://kavpolit.com/polnyj-stabilizec/). On the other hand, Stavropol is attractive for the North Caucasians because its economy is still better relative to the North Caucasus. Also, the Stavropol region is the closest large region with a low population density, so the inflow of North Caucasians and the outflow of ethnic Russians have economic and geographic explanations.
The continuing efforts of ethnic Russian activists in Stavropol region to affirm the region’s ethnic Russian identity suggest that ethnic Russians believe the government’s efforts to ensure the unity of the Russian Federation are failing. They evidently perceive North Caucasians not as fellow Russian citizens, but rather as ethnic “others” and hostile invaders. Even more importantly, the push for creating a Russian republic in Stavropol region may have significant implications for Russia as a whole. The possible establishment of a Russian republic in Stavropol would have a far more profound effect on the current Russian political system than the earlier movements for separation from the North Caucasus Federal District. Indeed, if Stavropol were to succeed in creating a Russian republic, other Russian regions would certainly follow suit, especially the neighboring Russian-majority regions of Krasnodar and Rostov-on-Don. A proliferation of Russian republics would in turn undermine the highly hierarchical and centralized structure of political power in Russia.
True federalization of Russia would probably be the greatest revolution in the country to date, and would completely change it. This shows that Russian nationalism is one of the forces in Russia that may contribute to the country’s democratization. Even Russian liberal leaders, such as chess grandmaster and leading opposition figure Garry Kasparov, have warmed up to the Russian nationalist idea of separating the North Caucasus from Russia (http://www.kasparov.ru/material.php?id=5228308F4EA0E).
Admittedly, apart from democratization, growing Russian nationalism may also result in the separation of the North Caucasus from Russia, as Moscow may realize that it is better to part with the North Caucasus than face a proliferation of Russian republics throughout the country. Since ethnic non-Russians, particularly the North Caucasians, are seen as hostile and unwanted elements in the Russian-majority territories, the North Caucasians are increasingly likely to respond by building their own ethnic homes where they can survive with some level of comfort.
--Valery Dzutsev
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Cossacks Now Patrol Half of Stavropol Krai: Police Adjuncts or Something More?
Cossack units are now patrolling the streets in 12 of the 26 districts of Stavropol krai as well as in Moscow and other Russian regions. Their presence suggests they are simultaneously, as they claim, adjuncts to the local police—street forces the authorities can deploy in extra-legal ways with deniability for themselves—and a cradle of possibly more serious challenges to regional leaders and to Moscow itself.
The first role of the Cossacks, that of adjuncts to the police, is especially prominent in Stavropol, a majority ethnic Russian region in the North Caucasus. There, Terek Cossack Ataman Aleksandr Fal’ko last week told Stavropol Governor Valery Zerenkov that 162 Cossacks are working full time, and 80 more part time, on patrolling the streets of 12 of the krai’s districts. In making his report, Fal’ko said that the Cossacks need government financing if this is to continue because they are performing a public security role (nazaccent.ru/content/8984-kazaki-rasskazali-gubernatoru-stavropolya-kak-patruliruyut.html). While some officials appear willing to help, others oppose doing so, apparently because they fear creating a force structure they will not be able to completely control (nazaccent.ru/content/8558-vlastyam-stavropolya-ne-nravyatsya-pretenzii-kazakov.html).
That the Cossacks could get out of hand or that they could be disowned as such even if they do what the authorities want calls attention to the second possible role that Cossacks in Russia may play. Last week, in neighboring Krasnodar krai, Cossack units forced Chinese and other migrant workers to leave by blocking their access to water that the guest workers were supposedly using illegally (bigcaucasus.com/events/actual/04-09-2013/86076-china-0/).
The actions of the Cossacks in this case crossed the line as far as Russian law is concerned, but the steps they took were apparently very popular among the local population. Such illegalities by Cossacks are a reminder that these units may take action at the behest of the authorities who do not want to take such steps on their own or—even more dangerously—take actions that reflect their own interests or those of other groups in the population against the authorities (bigcaucasus.com/events/actual/04-09-2013/86076-china-0/).
As a result of such developments, there is a danger and even the possibility that the Cossacks will demand more deference and financial support from the Russian authorities, writes Anton Bredikhin, a political scientist at the Russian State Humanitarian University (gumilev-center.ru/kazachijj-separatizm-sovremennoe-sostoyanie/). He further warns that these consequences may lead to the establishment of separate Cossack districts in areas where they have long lived, but which are defined as belonging either to Russians or non-Russian groups, or even the formation of an independent Cossack state on the basis of secession from Russia or Ukraine.
The scholar says that his goal is to “consider contemporary separatist and autonomous tendencies on the territory of Russia in regions that have an autochthonous [indigenous] Cossack population and also to analyze their prospects” and to assess how realistic they are. After a brief discussion of Cossack autonomist ideas during the Russian Civil War, Bredikhin notes that in the fall of 1991, as the Soviet Union was disintegrating, there were proclaimed several Cossack “state formations”: the Don Cossack Republic, the Terek Cossack Republic, the Armavir Cossack Republic, the Upper Kuban Republic, the Zelenchuk-Urupsk Cossack Soviet Socialist Republic and the Batalpashin Cossack Republic. These came together to form a Union of Cossack Republics of the South of Russia.
In December 1991, Cossack groups, together with a part of the Krasnodar Soviet Army garrison even tried to take power. They failed, and these various secessionist “republics” were suppressed by “local regional elites, not by the weakening federal center.” But if the republics are gone and if Russian realities have changed, Cossack interest in autonomy, either genuine or as a tactic to extract resources from the Russian authorities, has continued, Bredikhin says.
Some Cossacks, he notes, still talk about self-determination and secession, with a few even saying that they plan to appeal to the United Nations. But most Cossacks, the scholar continues, support the Russian state and its efforts to establish and maintain order. That does not mean their agendas are not a problem, however. Cossacks overwhelmingly support “the maximum integration of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan,” he says—a Russian policy, but one that at least some Cossacks see as a step toward achieving their own desire for more funding and more autonomy.
A possible reason for concern, Bredikhin admits, is that the younger generation of Cossacks is very different from its predecessors. Unlike them, it is ambitious, media saavy, and is “attempting to reanimate separatist ideas and, by using them, receive necessary preferences.” He does not discuss how these young Cossacks might behave if they make demands but are rejected. But “in the current political situation,” such demands are “not only impossible but unrealizable in the near term.” Just how long “the near term” will last, however, is not a question the researcher addresses.
--Paul Goble
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Scholar Studies Relationship Between Religiosity and Extremist Behavior Among Dagestani Youth
In a study of the evolution of the Dagestani insurgency, Dagestani social scholar Zaid Abdulagatov explores the changing social landscape among young Dagestanis in relation to Islam and the state. Among the surprising findings of Abdulagatov, who based the study on extensive polling he conducted, is that the involvement of young people in the insurgency has not increased over the past several years, but has, rather, decreased slightly. He writes, for example, that 76 percent of the insurgents killed in 2005 were between 15 and 30 years old, while the number dropped to 71.2 percent in 2008 and 70.1 percent in 2009. Also, interestingly enough, the largest number of those who identified themselves as Islamic fundamentalists were in the 20-years-old and 49-to-60-years-old age brackets (http://www.isras.ru/files/File/Socis/2012_1/Abdulagatov.pdf). Young people, of course, still comprised the bulk of the insurgent forces, as these figures suggest.
Abdulagatov blames radicalization of Dagestani youth partly on the misconceived 1999 Dagestani law “On the Ban of Wahhabism [a.k.a. Salafism] and Other Extremist Activities.” According to the author, the law mixed two very different paradigms—“inclination to violence under religious and quasi-religious slogans” and “firm adherence to certain norms and lifestyles that the individual considers correct.” The author appears inclined to believe that the roots of the conflict in Dagestan are socio-economic, but that the conflict manifests itself as a religious one. According to Abdulagatov, a highly conservative approach to Islam has a long tradition in Dagestan. “The peculiarity of this conservative view of Islam is that during the years of stability of society, it did not unite the believers into religious sects, political organizations and did not demand that social and political life be modeled on Salafi norms,” he writes. However, he asserts that when the situation changed, including the official labeling of strict believers as extremists, the conservative branches of Islam started to turn violent (http://www.isras.ru/files/File/Socis/2012_1/Abdulagatov.pdf).
The incursion by armed Chechen and Dagestani groups from Chechnya into Dagestan under Islamic slogans in 1999 provoked a strong patriotic response from Dagestanis. Militias armed and trained by the Russian army quickly emerged in the republic to defend it from the militants. Ironically, just a few years after successfully repelling the incursion, civil violence spread to Dagestan itself. The conflict of 1999 in Dagestan, which was a prologue to the second Russian-Chechen war, apparently changed the situation in the republic drastically.
Abdulagatov’s findings show, quite astonishingly, that the indicators of religiosity among Dagestani youth—defined as “up to 29 years old”—gradually decreased from 85 percent in 1996 to 79 percent in the early 2000s. However, in 2004, the religiosity indicator rose again, to 81 percent, and reached a whopping 95 percent among youth aged 18–29 in 2010. The percentage of self-identified Islamic “fundamentalists” among youth rose from 54 percent in 2000 to 78 percent in 2010. In addition, 58 percent of the “fundamentalists” said that Sharia law is superior to secular laws, while 30 percent said they were ready to protest against the state if secular laws contradicted their beliefs.
Some observers have pointed out that the socio-economic and political situation in Dagestan is the major factor affecting the radicalization of society, especially among young people (http://www.regnum.ru/news/1376383.html). Abdulagatov writes that a significant number of disaffected young people join the insurgents not necessarily on the basis of religious issues, but based on other predilections. A survey of Dagestani youth in 2010 asked whether they could join the insurgency under certain circumstances. Seventy-four percent of the believers responded “never,” and only 67 percent of the non-believers gave the same response. Twelve percent of the believers and 22 percent of the non-believers said they might join the insurgency under life’s pressures (http://www.isras.ru/files/File/Socis/2012_1/Abdulagatov.pdf). The believers may have been withholding the truth out of fear for being persecuted by the government, but the willingness of non-believer youth to fight the state is quite telling.
The Dagestani scholar’s findings paint a complex picture of the republic’s social evolution. The research suggests that political and socio-economic factors may indeed be among the most important driving the violent trends in Dagestan. Rising adherence to Islam is also well-documented, although the relationship between Islam and violence is more nuanced than usually suggested. On the one hand, there is a long-held tradition of mobilization of Dagestanis under Islamic slogans when the political and socio-economic situation is unstable. On the other hand, there is also a long tradition of de-mobilization of conservative Islam in the republic when stability returns. The conclusions that can be drawn from Abdulagatov’s work may be that political and economic reforms in Dagestan are needed to stabilize the situation in the republic, while suppressing certain branches of Islam is not the way forward. Officials in the Russian government, however, believe that combatting “unwanted” forms of Islam is a cheaper way to solve the problem than implementing reforms, thereby exacerbating and perpetuating the problem of violence but ensuring that the Kremlin maintains a firm grip on power.
--Valery Dzutsev
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Ramazan Abdulatipov Confirmed as Dagestan’s President
While opposition candidates are allowed to run for office in Russian cities like Moscow and Yekaterinburg—and, in the case of the mayoral race in the latter, possibly even win—the situation in the North Caucasus remains quite different. Indeed, opposition candidates are completely excluded from running for the office of the governor of a North Caucasian republic (http://moidagestan.ru/blogs/41037/32176). The mechanism of exclusion primarily rests on the indirect vote. When the current leader of Dagestan, Ramazan Abdulatipov, was announced as the candidate for leadership in Dagestan at the beginning of 2013, he thought the republic was ready for direct elections for governor (http://kavpolit.com/dagestan-edinstvennyj-gotov-k-pryamym-vyboram-prezidenta/l). Abdulatipov’s opinion quickly changed after he became the acting governor of Dagestan. After he was appointed, Moscow soon decided not to take any risks and to leave the old system of appointing governors in Dagestan intact, even though the rest of Russia will elect their governors through a popular vote.
According to the rules, parties and movements are supposed to present their nominations to the Russian presidential administration, which then selects three candidates based upon the principles known only to the Kremlin and then offers them to the regional parliament (http://ria.ru/politics/20130819/957185269.html). The leadership of the Dagestani parliament literally indulged in twisting the arms of the deputies to force them to pass the Kremlin’s proposal for the procedure for appointing governors on April 18. The proposal failed to pass the Dagestani parliament three times in secret voting. Only after the speaker of the parliament, Khizri Shikhsaidov, decreed that the deputies should cast their ballots openly by raising their IDs did the deputies decide not to contradict the Kremlin: they voted to support the proposal that the head of Dagestan be appointed by the Russian president and confirmed by the republican parliament (http://www.gazeta.ru/politics/2013/04/18_a_5260641.shtml). Seventy-four deputies voted in favor of the proposal, nine voted against and three abstained (http://nsrd.ru/pub/sessii/prezidenta_vibiraet_parlament_dagestanskaya_p_19_04_2013).
Interestingly, even though the presidential party United Russia holds 60 of the Dagestani parliament’s 90 seats, it failed to pass the Kremlin-sponsored legislation during the secret voting. When the vote became open, however, few dared to show their opposition: even deputies from the parties formally opposed to the government voted for the Kremlin’s project.
There were no surprises in President Vladimir Putin’s nominations for the position of president of Dagestan—Ramazan Abdulatipov; the chairman of the Accounting Chamber of the Dagestani parliament, Malik Bagliev; and Dagestani human rights ombudsman Ummupazil Omarova (http://ria.ru/politics/20130819/957185269.html). Bagliev and Omarova were almost certainly put on the ballot just to give the impression of having contested elections and thereby to legitimize the Kremlin’s appointee, Abdulatipov.
The question is why Moscow retracted its initial proposal to hold direct elections for governors in the North Caucasus and specifically in Dagestan (http://www.ng.ru/politics/2013-04-22/1_vybory.html). Most likely, Moscow wanted to avoid inter-ethnic clashes in Dagestan that could accompany the election campaign. The resignation of the previous president of Dagestan, Magomedsalam Magomedov, an ethnic Dargin, and rise to power of Abdulatipov, an ethnic Avar, may have intensified the conflict between the Avars and the Dargins. Smaller ethnic groups would have supported the Dargins to oppose the Avars, who are the largest ethnic group in the republic. This was the main reason for the quick removal of the prominent Dargin politician, Said Amirov, as Makhachkala the mayor in July. The public’s hopes that Dagestan’s clan system would be dismantled, however, were not realized (http://expert.ru/expert/2013/23/kto-zdes-vlast/). While some Dargins were fired from their positions, other Dargins took over, so Abdulatipov’s promise to “break the system” has not yet materialized.
Abdulatipov was formally “elected” as Dagestan’s president by its parliament on September 8. Now he will have to prove to Moscow that even if he is not another Ramzan Kadyrov, he is at least very similar to the Chechen leader. Certain actions by Abdulatipov so strikingly resemble those of Kadyrov that it has become obvious both republics are supervised by the same person in the Kremlin (http://www.obzor-smi.ru/?com=articles&page=article&id=9997). The image of the new Dagestani leader was crafted the same way as that of the Chechen leader. For example, a week before the elections, relics of the Prophet Muhammad were brought to Dagestan (http://www.rg.ru/2013/08/26/reg-skfo/relikvia-anons.html). Earlier in the run-up to the elections, government forces killed a leader of the jamaat in Buinaksk, Bammatkhan Sheikhov (http://kavkaz-antiterror.ru/?p=news&id=436). This was presented as an achievement of Abdulatipov. Moreover, at a meeting with the Dagestani police force on September 6, two days before the elections, Abdulatipov announced that a purge of the republican police was necessary, as some of the police officers were “flirting with the militants” (http://u-f.ru/News/u20/2013/09/06/660994). At a meeting with the Federal Security Service (FSB) branch in Dagestan, Abdulatipov expressed concern about Dagestani ex-officials who had fled to the city of Yalova in Turkey and allegedly protected the family of the militant leader Ibragim Gajidadaev, who was reportedly killed in March (http://regnum.ru/news/polit/1703825.html). The day before the elections, the police carried out a security sweep on several streets in Makhachkala that were under suspicion (http://pravozashita05.ru/dorushev/).
The new Dagestani president is bound to hear about the armed resistance in the republic for a long time to come, since the resistance’s influence in the republic has grown stronger in recent years. Dagestan has become the base for the entire armed resistance movement of the North Caucasus. It is not surprising that even Russian converts to Islam who want to participate in the war against Russia move to Dagestan (http://ttolk.ru/?p=16963).
Thus, while Ramazan Abdulatipov has been officially confirmed as the new president of Dagestan, the old problems persist, such as the armed underground, the clan system, the division of the republic into spheres of influence by Dagestani millionaire, among others. Moscow is most concerned about the armed resistance movement, but Abdulatipov has no chance of improving the situation in this particular sphere in the next few years.
--Mairbek Vatchagaev
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North Caucasus Residents Increasingly Feel the Heat of the Approaching Olympics
Six months prior to the Winter Olympics in Sochi, which will be the most expensive games in the history of the Olympics, Russia has started to make arrangements to prevent terrorist attacks. It is estimated that the Sochi Olympics will cost over $54 billion (http://ria.ru/sport/20130904/960603898.html) and will take place in the subtropical climate zone of southern Russia from February 7 to February 28, 2014. On September 1, a decree signed by President Vladimir Putin came into effect, titled “On the Specifics of the Application of Heightened Security Measures During the Period of the 22nd Olympic Winter Games of 2014 in Sochi” (http://stadium.ru/News/Region/70?Alias=24-08-2013-prezident-rossii-vladimir-putin-podpisal-ukaz-o-merakh-bezopasnosti-v-sochi).
The decree outlines the list of security zones and maps the boundaries of the no-go zones. These zones are supposed to prevent the appearance of unwanted individuals near the Olympics sites–meaning adherents of the Caucasus Emirate. It is unclear, however, how the security services will find out who the radicals are. Those individuals on the wanted list will not travel to Sochi. The jamaats will dispatch people who will not raise the suspicions of the Federal Security Service (FSB). This is especially doable now, given that the time when only North Caucasians belonged to the Caucasus Emirate have passed: nowadays, ethnic Russians are fairly often found among the radicals (http://kavpolit.com/podryvnik-russkogo-dzhamaata/), which makes the Russian security services’ job far more difficult than it was two or three years ago.
At the same time, in order to fend off public protests by foreign visitors against rights abuses targeting certain categories of Russia’s population, all public gatherings and marches are banned under presidential decree. So, in the best traditions of the Soviet regime, any form of dissent will be suppressed.
Undoubtedly, this decree is just the tip of the iceberg. In practice, the interior ministry and the FSB will take drastic measures to limit the access all non-locals have to the security zones.
The organizers of the Olympics in Sochi face multiple hurdles (http://www.echo.msk.ru/blog/nemtsov_boris/1029646-echo/), but the threat from the militants is the primary irritation for the Russian government. Even when somebody simply writes about it, it annoys top Russian officials. On September 9, President Putin presided over a Russian Security Council meeting in Moscow. The situation in the North Caucasus was one of the topics publicly discussed at the meeting. Putin touched on the issue of regional elections in the North Caucasus, but he especially emphatically addressed information policies. The Russian president stated that the government should not overlook “biased accusations” of human rights breaches in the North Caucasus made by foreign media and organizations against the Russian authorities (http://www.kp.ru/daily/26130.5/3022093/).
Thus, Russia is likely to bar individuals who have made “biased accusations” against the Russian government from entering the country. Such people will include all individuals who break the information blockade about human rights abuses in the Russian Federation. This is a warning to all people who write about Russia. Since the government has deprived of foreign funding all domestic non-governmental organizations (NGO) working on human rights, the time has come to prevent even writing about human rights in Russia. All those who continue to do so will be accused of fueling separatism in the country.
The Russian government’s actions will reduce the flow of independent information from the North Caucasus, but in the era of the Internet, a complete ban will not be feasible. These moves will only cause people in the North Caucasus to lose trust in the authorities and their local puppets. Foreign journalists who reside in Moscow on a permanent basis will feel the consequences of both the presidential decree and the Security Council meeting.
In order to share responsibility for possible holes in the security net, at least to some degree, the FSB reached an agreement with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and European security services on joint efforts to thwart terrorist acts during the Olympics in Sochi (http://fedpress.ru/news/polit_vlast/news_polit/1378279656-putin-spetssluzhby-smogut-obespechit-bezopasnost-igr-v-sochi).
Arguably, the best news for Putin in this regard would be the killing of Caucasus Emirate leader Doku Umarov, who earlier this year threatened to disrupt the Sochi Olympics (http://www.svoboda.org/content/article/25035050.html). Ramzan Kadyrov, the president of Chechnya, hastily responded, stating that he would kill Umarov prior to the Sochi games (http://www.kommersant.ru/news/2225675). It is unclear what is stopping Kadyrov and the Russian security services from neutralizing Umarov now, prior to the Olympics.
There is also another concern for the Russian government. Having fueled anti-Caucasian sentiment in Moscow, the authorities are now encountering a new situation, in which the slogan “Stop Feeding the Caucasus!” is spinning out of control (http://mapax.ru/question/116). Many Russians increasingly think that ridding Russia of the North Caucasus is the solution to the country’s problems. For the first time since the occupation of the North Caucasus in the 19th century, Russians are indicating a desire to part with this region, viewing it as too heavy a burden on Russia’s resources, even though the region’s financial dependence differs somewhat from that described by Russian nationalists (http://businessmsk.livejournal.com/286270.html).
Therefore, the September 9 Security Council meeting was also a message to the nationalists, encouraging them to change their discourse. The authorities probably did not suspect that the confrontation between ethnic Russians and non-Russians would ensue so quickly. According to polls, one-third of Russians see Ukraine as part of Russia, while only 7 percent consider Chechens to be Russian citizens (Rossiyane) (http://podrobnosti.ua/society/2013/09/10/929258.html).
Thus, the Russian authorities are gearing up for a crackdown on rights activists under the pretext of preparing for the Olympics. The move against human rights activists who annoy the Russian government is going to be disguised as a step against terrorism, which will force Washington and European countries not to make an issue of it in their relations with Moscow.
--Mairbek Vatchagaev
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Syrian Circassian Refugees in Turkey Ask to Be Repatriated to Russia
The chairman of the Solidarity Committee of World Circassians, Nusret Bas, recently handed over a petition of Circassian refugees from Syria to the Russian consul in Istanbul, Alexei Yerkhov. The appeal was prepared on behalf of 146 Circassian refugees residing in the southern Turkish city of Nizip, which is close to the Syrian border. The refugees said in the petition that their ancestors were displaced from their homeland in 1864 and resettled in Syria. Despite the fact that they have not participated in the civil war in Syria, they have still lost their relatives, homes and property, and were given shelter in Nizip with the assistance of the Solidarity Committee of World Circassians. At his meeting with the Russian Consul, Bas outlined what the Circassians want from Russia. “From Russia we expect two things: first, the recognition of the genocide in the period of 1763–1864; second, preparing conditions for the unconditional, unequivocal return of the Circassians to their historical homeland.”
Bas further reassured Yerkhov that Circassians were not Russia’s enemies. “Radical religious movements do not correspond with the traditions and views of the Circassians,” he told the Russian consul. “Our opposition to the [2014] Olympic Games in Sochi is tied to Russia’s unhelpful policies toward the Circassians. If the policies are amended, there is no doubt that all Circassians will be side by side with Russia.” Yerkhov reportedly promised to give serious consideration to the Circassian activists’ proposals and hand over the petition to Moscow (http://aheku.org/page-id-3657.html).
A meeting of Circassian activists at the Russian Consulate in Istanbul indicates that Moscow may be willing to consider some limited friendly gestures toward the Circassians in the run-up to the Olympics in Sochi. The Syrian crisis and the plight of Circassian refugees present Russia with a convenient opportunity to display that it can accommodate the interests of Circassians. Few Circassians, however, believe that Russia will make actual moves to help refugees from Syria in a meaningful way. Only about 22 percent of the respondents in an Internet poll indicated that they believed Russia would help Circassian refugees from Syria, while almost 68 percent believed Russia would not help and the remaining 10 percent indicated they were not sure (http://aheku.org/polls-id-101.html).
Disbelief in Russia’s good intentions ensures that many Circassians will oppose the Olympics in Sochi. In the meantime, an internal conflict among Circassian civil organizations is intensifying. In July, the Coordination Council of Circassians in Russia called on Circassian organizations worldwide, especially those based in Turkey, to hold a world conference of Circassians dedicated to the situation in Syria. In September, the International Circassian Association (ICA) came out against the proposed conference. The Russian branch of the International Circassian Association is known for its ties to the Russian government and was created by the Russian security services following the Soviet demise in order to regulate contacts with Circassian diaspora groups in the West. The ICA probably influenced its opposition to the conference. One of the proponents of the conference in Turkey, Adam Bogus, who heads the Adygean organization Adyge-Khase/Circassian Parliament, told the Kavkazsky Uzel (Caucasian Knot) website that the Circassians in Syria were facing deadly danger. “There will be reprisals and bloodshed, it is obvious,” he said. “Essentially, our whole diaspora has been sentenced and is now awaiting execution. Whatever we have tried to do, we could not help them. We sent dozens of petitions to various state institutions, regional as well as federal ones, but we could not elicit any positive reaction.” The director of the Center for Ethno-Religious Problems of the Russian Union of Journalists, Sulieta Chukho-Kusova, stated that the feeble reaction of the Circassian organizations in Russia to the Syrian crisis showed they had no unity, robustness or strong leaders. In addition, he said that “the political leaders of the [Circassian] republics displayed complete national indifference” (http://www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/229687/).
It must be said that regional authorities have hijacked many of the Circassian organizations in the North Caucasus, while Moscow has put pressure on the regional authorities to suppress any genuine Circassian movement. In a way, this situation can be seen as a “soft” version of Ramzan Kadyrov’s rule in Chechnya. Moscow offers “sticks and carrots” to the regional authorities and they implement the policies that Moscow wants them to implement. Corruption and dependence on Moscow ensure that regional governments have no social support base among their respective populations and that the central government can thus easily manipulate them.
Circassian activists in Adygea have provided assistance to the families of Circassian refugees from Syria with little or no help from the Russian state. A group of benefactors resolved to pay for the university tuition and living expenses of 16 young Circassian refugees in Adygea. Overall there are 62 students from Syria studying in Adygea (http://www.yuga.ru/news/306391/). An estimated 156 families—708 people in all—have arrived in Adygea from Syria. The population of Syrian Circassian refugees in Adygea decreased to 134 families after some of them moved to Kabardino-Balkaria and Turkey (http://www.adigea.aif.ru/crime/article/37876).
With the approach of the 2014 Sochi Olympics, Moscow is indicating it may make some concessions to the Circassians, but no significant steps to accommodate Circassian interests are likely. Some Circassians are calling for a time of reckoning because the Circassian civil organizations in the North Caucasus have proven to be ineffective in defending the larger population. However, others think there is still time to try to press ahead with the Circassians’ demands on Moscow.
--Valery Dzutsev
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Russian Nationalists in Tatarstan Demand Deputy Prime Minister’s Resignation
On September 2, a key figure in the Russian government, Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, visited Tatarstan. After watching a presentation on the republic’s educational reforms, modeled on the Singapore school system that is renowned worldwide for its success, Shuvalov noted that “the benefits of foreign programs in the teaching of some disciplines should be combined with the traditionally strong Russian programs in the hard sciences.” He added that “everyone who lives in Tatarstan must speak Tatar, regardless of nationality” (http://www.regnum.ru/news/fd-volga/tatarstan/1701803.html#ixzz2etrjyqzU).
Shuvalov’s remark about Tatar language in Tatarstan produced a large public outcry among ethnic Russian activists in this Volga republic. Leaders of the Russian community in Tatarstan and Kazan published an open letter to President Vladimir Putin, asking him to fire Shuvalov. The authors of the letter wrote that the deputy prime minister broke the legal requirements of a Russian statesman that should promote inter-ethnic peace and understanding. “In this case he disregarded the special problems of the ethnic group RUSSIANS [sic], of which there are about 1.5 million in the Republic of Tatarstan and provoked the escalation of the long overdue language conflict.” The authors of the address complained that Tatar authorities made the learning of the Tatar language at the republic’s schools mandatory against the wishes of many ethnic Russians. Russian activists in Tatarstan expressed their fear that Tatarstan’s authorities “will perceive the deputy prime minister’s statement as direct approval of their language policies and that layoffs of the Russian population of Tatarstan due to their overwhelming lack of knowledge of Tatar language may ensue” (http://www.regnum.ru/news/1704807.html#ixzz2etuq9UCI).
Tatar language instruction in the republic’s schools has long antagonized Tatarstan’s Russian population. Both Tatar and Russian are legally considered the state languages of Tatarstan, and both must be taught in state schools. Russian nationalist activists regard the Tatar language as one of the cornerstones of Tatarstan’s sovereignty, which the republic declared back in 1990 and never fully retracted despite Moscow’s repeated demands that it do so (http://rus-rt.ru/main/rus-vopr.aspx). The head of the Russian organization of Tatarstan, Alexander Salagaev, emphasized the importance of language policy for Moscow’s control of the region. In an attempt to scare the Russian government, he compared Chechnya to Tatarstan: “In Chechnya, there was an ethnic balance—Ingush, Chechens, Russians. In this situation, the federal center could defend its own interests. But later, the Ingush were separated, Russians were massacred and displaced and, essentially, only Chechens remained in Chechnya. Now, the federal center practically has no room for maneuver. The same thing might happen here, because the ethnic balance has been broken in Tatarstan. For example, 85 percent of the commanding positions in the republic are occupied by the Tatars.” The Russian community leader also lamented the low fertility rate of ethnic Russians and high fertility of ethnic Tatars, which make the outlook for the Russians in the republic especially grim in Russian eyes (http://ruskultura.narod.ru/bolrus.htm).
The school language issue is an extremely hot one in another Volga region, the Republic of Bashkortostan. There, the republican authorities started to require that Bashkir be taught in the schools, outraging many ethnic Russians in the republic. Russian parents complain that schools in Bashkortostan expand school hours devoted to teaching the Bashkir language at the expense of Russian (http://www.regnum.ru/news/fd-volga/bash/1707462.html).
Moscow has frequently attacked Tatarstan and Bashkortostan for their purported separatist aspirations and the substantial economic prowess that could potentially sustain the two republics. Both of the republics’ constitutions were amended under pressure from Moscow to remove elements of state sovereignty, and the two republics’ oil industries were largely taken over by Russian oligarchs dispatched by Moscow. Still, they retain significant de-facto political and economic power.
Tatarstan and Bashkortostan are neighbors with many common features, and both republics are mutually strengthening each other’s resistance to pressure from Moscow. Both republics are relatively wealthy due to their large oil reserves and oil refining industries and military industrial base. Their material well-being positions the two republics favorably in their political struggles with Moscow. Both Tatar and Bashkir are Turkic languages and both ethnic groups are predominantly Muslim. The Tatars are the second largest ethnic group in Russia, with 150,000 Tatars residing in Moscow alone. Tatars comprise about 53 percent of Tatarstan’s total population, while ethnic Russians constitute nearly 40 percent of the total. In Bashkortostan, ethnic Bashkirs make up approximately 30 percent of the total population, while ethnic Russians comprise 36 percent of the total. Ethnic Tatars are 25 percent of Bashkortostan’s population, and they together with the Bashkirs outnumber the republic’s ethnic Russians (Russian State Statistical Service, 2010 census results).
With Russian nationalism on the rise in Russia, other nationalisms are inevitably following the lead. Language policy is one of the spheres crucial for the future of ethnic minorities in Russia. Unlike many other non-Russian minorities in the Russian Federation, both Tatarstan and Bashkortostan are well suited to dominate language policies in their respective regions, because they do not rely on funds from Moscow and are able to sustain their own educational programs. At the same time, ethnic Russians living in these republics have become increasingly galvanized over their Russian identity. The process of ethnic competition in the Volga regions is reminiscent of the same processes in the North Caucasus, where the ethnic Russians of Stavropol region are seeking affirmation of the region’s status as an ethnic Russian region (see EDM, September 9, 10).
--Valery Dzutsev
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Hundreds of North Caucasians Have Joined the Ranks of Syria’s Rebels
Following Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem’s September 9 visit to Moscow at the invitation of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (http://kommersant.ru/doc/2275019), the issue of the involvement of Chechens in the Syrian war once again came to the fore.
At a press conference, Muallem insisted that his country is fighting not against the opposition, but foreign terrorists—who, he claimed, are being armed and trained by Turkey. “People from the Caucasus and Chechnya are among the terrorists,” he said. “Turkey trains terrorists from 83 countries” (http://ru.apa.az/news/255100).
Then, at a meeting with State Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin, Muallem again alleged that people from the Caucasus were among those who had infiltrated Syria from Turkey (http://www.itar-tass.com/c303/871685.html). Against the backdrop of these statements, another irresponsible article appeared in the Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta, headlined “The Syrian Beachhead of the North Caucasian Militants” (http://www.ng.ru/world/2013-09-04/7_placdarm.html). The author of the article, citing the notorious head of the anna-news.info website, Marat Musin, asserted that the number of militants from Russia in Syria has reached 4,000. According to Musin, ethnic Kyrgyz meet the militants who arrive from Turkey, and the majority of militants arriving in Syria are Azerbaijanis. Thus, Shi’ite Azeris are putatively going to Syria to fight against Shi’ite Syrians. Reading Musin’s writings, one acquires the impression that the analyst is describing the military actions in the North Caucasus, not in Syria. The author uses the same rhetorical tools for Syria that the Russian government has used for the North Caucasus—“counter-terrorist operation against foreign terrorists,” “Syrian army and people’s militia,” “paid foreign mercenaries,” etc.
It was not an accident that during the Syrian minister’s visit, the Russian media announced that a Chechen militant, Aslan Sigauri, was located in Syria. Sigauri was once arrested by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) for an alleged attempt to blow up the main building of Moscow State University. In 2011, the Russian security services included Sigauri (a.k.a. Variev) on their list of the 52 most dangerous rebels in the North Caucasus capable of launching an attack in any part of Russia (www.rosbalt.ru/moscow/2013/09/02/1170915.html). This example was supposed to demonstrate the face of the foreign militants in Syria.
According to some estimates, the overall number of foreigners who traveled to Syria to fight the Assad regime is now 10,000 (http://newsland.com/news/detail/id/1232477/). The overall number of militants from the North Caucasus cannot exceed 1,000 (http://www.kavkazcenter.com/russ/content/2013/07/26/99507.shtml).
The Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar (Army of Emigrants and Helpers) brigade is made up of Chechens and North Caucasians, but, unsurprisingly, the group also contains a large number of local Arabs, so the total number of people in the brigade could be 1,500. An ethnic Chechen from Georgia, Abu Umar Shishani (a.k.a. Umar Gorgashvili), is the leader of this group. In the past, Gorgashvili fought in Chechnya and served in the Georgian special forces during the 2008 war with Russia (www.rosbalt.ru/main/2013/08/20/1166093.html). Since last summer, Gorgashvili has been elevated to the position of the commander of the northern sector of the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (http://shamcenter.info/news/92/134/obraschenie-komanduyuschego-severnym-napravleniem-islamskogo-gosudarstva-iraka-i-shama-amira-umara-ash-shishani/d,detail-de/). There are also other well-known Chechen commanders, such as Emir Muslim (Muslim Margoshvili), Emir Seifullah (Ruslan Machaliashvili), Emir Salakhdin and Emir Abu-Musaaba (Musa). Emir Seifullah was expelled from Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar for embezzlement and erroneous interpretation of Islamic values during a time of jihad and his actions during jihad (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yU6K1mq38jw). Another Chechen emir, Mussaba, became known after Kurdish groups captured him in the summer of 2013. In response, the Chechens captured over 500 Kurds and demanded that their commander be freed, which the Kurds did without delay (http://www.rbc.ru/rbcfreenews/20130723203058.shtml).
While the number of Chechens fighting in Syria may reach several hundred, according to sources close to the Dagestani interior minister, 126 Dagestanis are also believed to be fighting in Syria (http://kavkazpress.ru/archives/21454). The figure for the number of Dagestanis probably does not include individuals who left Dagestan prior to the start of the second Russian-Chechen war in 1999 and arrived in Syria from other Arab countries. So the figure of about 200 people, cited by the Dagestani branch of the FSB, is probably closer to reality (www.ekhokavkaza.com/archive/news/20130703/3235/2759.html?id=25035761). Emir Abu Banat (a.k.a. Magomed Abdurakhmanov) was among the most notorious individuals in Syria. An ethnic Dargin, Abdurakhmanov came from the village of Khajalmakhi in Dagestan’s Levashi district (http://www.alarab.qa/details.php?iss...8&artid=249862) and is accused of violence and robbing civilians. The Dagestani militant was also accused of the killing of two Catholic priests. Eventually, he had to leave Syria on the orders of Umar Shishani because of his controversial activities (http://www.sabah.com.tr/Dunya/2013/0...a-bogan-video/).
The first Chechen arrivals in Syria came from the Chechen student population in Arab countries, mainly Syria and Egypt. Later, Chechens who had received refugee status in various European countries also started to trickle in. Most of the Chechen volunteers from Europe came to Syria from Austria, whose parliament was even forced to query the country’s interior minister about the exodus of Chechen asylees from Austria to fight in Syria (www.parlament.gv.at/SUCH/?view=publicsppublished&mode=simple&s.sm.query=GZ%3A+BMI-LR2220%2F0581-II%2F2013. Moreover, as of 2009, Austria reportedly had over 25,000 Chechen refugees who arrived since the 1999 war (http://www.wienerzeitung.at/nachrichten/oesterreich/politik/230644_Tschetschenen-Asyl-wird-restriktiver.html). According to some unofficial estimates, those numbers have climbed to as high as 42,000, but this number is unconfirmed kavpolit.com/vena-i-groznyj-xotyat-vernut-chechencev-na-rodinu) During the first two years of unrest in Syria, few Chechens came from Chechnya itself. However, this subsequently changed. For example, it is known that not only men, but also some females have traveled to Syria from Chechnya, including the daughter of a top official in the government of Ramzan Kadyrov (http://kavkazpress.ru/archives/17132). To make matters worse, the Russian government makes it relatively easy to travel from the North Caucasus to Syria as the Kadyrov government in Chechnya, for example, offers a daily flight to Istanbul. There are two to three daily flights from the North Caucasus to Turkey, and Russian citizens do not need visas to visit Turkey.
Therefore, information that periodically surfaces about Chechens fighting in Syria indicates their numbers are growing. Meanwhile, there are growing conflicts within the leadership of the Syrian militants, who are divided over policies toward the local population, including the Kurds. The Chechens in the Syrian insurgency are attempting to navigate between the different factions of the Syrian opposition, trying to retain their complete independence. Regardless, the growing importance of fighters from the North Caucasus in the Syrian insurgency is now becoming such an issue that the Syrian foreign minister in Moscow was forced to recognize its impact on the war.
--Mairbek Vatchagaev
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North Caucasus Leaders Adopt Kadyrov Model to Dealing with Militants
Militants carried out two significant attacks in Chechnya and Ingushetia on September 16 and 17. The attacks took place in the districts that are adjacent to each other and have the same name—Sunzha. In the past, there was a single Sunzha district in Checheno-Ingushetia, but when Ingushetia seceded in 1992, Sunzha district was divided between Chechnya and Ingushetia, retaining its name in each.
At about 2 a.m. on September 16, a suicide attacker drove his car to the Sunzha district police station in Sernovodsk, Chechnya. After failing to drive onto the police station’s yard, the bomber blew himself up at the gate. Three people died on the spot and four others were wounded (http://www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/230143/). Two of the killed were police officers dispatched from the Chuvash Republic—Leonid Puchkov and Alexander Yegorov (www.cheboksary.ru/crimen/16092013/page24266.htm). The third slain police officer, Yuni Suleimanov, was from the local Chechen police force. The suicide bomber was identified as Isa Khildikhoroev of Sunzha district’s Assinovskaya village. Experts estimated the strength of the blast outside the Sunzha district police station at 60 kilograms of TNT (http://lifenews.ru/#!news/119368). It should be noted that this was the first suicide bomber attack in Chechnya since August 2012 (http://www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/230146/).
The suicide bomber in Sernovodsk was reportedly identified by Sulanbek (Salman) Machukaev, who also told police about another forthcoming attack. According to the Ingush police, Machukaev surrendered to the Sleptsovskaya district police on the morning of September 16. The Russian security services, however, said that Machukaev tried to infiltrate the district police station but was intercepted before he could detonate an improvised explosive device (IED) (http://www.interfax.ru/russia/txt.asp?id=329043). Following his arrest, Machukaev told the police that his brother Adam Machukaev was preparing another attack targeting police. According to the arrested militant, his brother was likely to be driving a stolen car.
Adam Machukaev was on the wanted list of the police in Ingushetia’s Sunzha district for participation in an illegal armed formation. The police finally located him in the Ingush Sunzha district near the village of Nesterovskaya. When Adam Machukaev realized that he could not escape, he rammed a police car. According to the police, the trunk of the militant’s car was full of explosives, and a blast that followed the collision killed one police officer and injured four others. According to the Russian National Anti-Terrorist Committee, Adam Machukaev detonated an IED when the police tried to arrest him, killing one police officer and seriously injuring three others (http://www.ingushetiyaru.org/news/36548/). Rebel news sources reported that two people died and three were wounded (http://kavkazcenter.com/russ/content/2013/09/17/100617.shtml).
According to the testimony of the arrested Sulanbek Machukaev, there were plans to attack police in several other locations. A counter-terrorism operation regime was introduced in Chechnya’s Sunzha district, which further dampened the militants’ resolve. However, while the police were able to foil the attacks, they failed to find the potential attackers (http://ria.ru/defense_safety/20130916/963476306.html).
The suicide bombers Adam Machukaev and Isa Khildikhoroev, as well as the captured militant Sulanbek Machukaev were members of a jamaat led by Beslan Makhauri that operates on both sides of the Chechen-Ingush border (http://www.itar-tass.com/c21/877972.html).
The reaction of the authorities in the two republics to the suicide attacks was peculiar. The press service of the head of Ingushetia reported that the republic’s police placed the blame for the terrorist attacks in the republic on the Chechen authorities, saying that the militants were infiltrating Ingushetia from Chechnya (http://www.ingushetia.ru/m-news/archives/019319.shtml).
Ramzan Kadyrov returned the favor, explaining on his Instagram account: “We cannot simply watch how guerrillas coolly load a car with explosives in the neighboring territory and then our people die” (http://news.mail.ru/inregions/caucasus/26/society/14795703/). Kadyrov then called on the Ingush authorities to cooperate in the fight against the militants. An unsuspecting reader would think that the leaders of two sovereign states were discussing security issues, whereas, in fact, both territories are just administrative units of the Russian state.
Meanwhile, the recently appointed head of Ingushetia, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov reacted by promising measures like those taken by the Israeli and Chechen authorities. “We will expropriate the homes of the people who are helping the bandit underground, (who) rent their houses, their territory to the bandits,” he said. “Instead, we will give the homes of the accomplices to those who need housing or will build public buildings on the sites of those houses” (http://www.ntv.ru/novosti/659717). Contemplating a large negative backlash across the country, Yevkurov the next day amended his comment, saying that he meant “abandoned, unused buildings, where members of illegal armed groups are finding refuge and plotting their dirty crimes” (http://magas.su/tera/yunus-bek-evkurov-snositsya-budut-te-domakotorye-ispolzuyutsya-zabrosheny-khozyaevami). He also proposed expanding work to raise public awareness to ensure that Ingushetia’s residents know that supplying food and other services to the militants was under a strict ban. Thus, Ingushetia’s leader has begun employing the same methods as Ramzan Kadyrov in Chechnya.
However, this is not a mere replication of his neighbor’s tactics. The Dagestani leader, Ramazan Abdulatipov, has chosen approximately the same tactics. So one can observe Moscow’s general strategy in the North Caucasus, when in exchange for a free hand at the local level, Moscow’s protégé should ensure well-being in his republic and provide favorable results during elections (http://ria.ru/analytics/20130515/937476998.html). Therefore, this is not a spontaneous reaction of a regional bureaucrat to the bomb attacks in the North Caucasus. Rather, it is essentially a colonial system that allows the central state to put part of the responsibility on the regional leaders, in exchange for the appearance of peace.
This system worked fairly well in the 19th century and even under Communism in the 20th century. However, there is no way for this system of governance not to backfire and result in Moscow’s loss of control over the region. Even fragile autonomy eventually makes people want complete sovereignty. The more Moscow relies on its regional henchmen, the more the region drifts away from Russia psychologically, toward complete independence.
--Mairbek Vatchagaev
A political movement in Stavropol region is gearing up for the establishment of a Russian republic in this ethnic Russian–majority territory, thereby emulating the ethnically non-Russian republics of the North Caucasus. The first conference of the Slavs of Stavropol, also known as the Russian People’s Assembly, is scheduled to take place on November 4 in the city of Stavropol. An estimated 500 delegates are expected to attend the gathering.
The principal issue that concerns Russian nationalists in Stavropol is the influx of ethnically non-Russian North Caucasians and the strategic retreat of ethnic Russians from Stavropol region, especially from its eastern and the southeastern areas. “No one asked the population of Stavropol region for their consent for the region’s withdrawal from the Southern Federal District and joining it with the North Caucasian republics,” one of the organizers of the conference, Sergei Popov, asserted. The activist emphasized that ethnic Russian people should therefore follow the example of the North Caucasians by organizing on an ethnic basis. Popov claimed Moscow is treating Stavropol region “like a reserve for the development of the neighboring [North] Caucasian republics and not as a separate entity” (http://www.ng.ru/regions/2013-09-06/6_stavropolie.html).
Stavropol region is the only ethnic Russian–majority region within the North Caucasian Federal District. Soon after the new district was established in 2010, various Russian groups started to demand that Stavropol be transferred back to the Southern Federal District. Moscow was reluctant to allow such a transfer because the borders of the North Caucasus Federal District without the Stavropol region would have resembled an international border, almost perfectly aligning with the distribution of ethnic groups. Stavropol region has nearly 3 million people and is about the same size as the largest republic of the North Caucasus, Dagestan. As Russian nationalists have failed to convince Moscow to separate the region from the North Caucasus, they now appear intent on establishing a Russian republic within the North Caucasus Federal District.
The organizers of the movement for the establishment of a Russian republic in Stavropol region include a loose coalition of Cossack and Russian nationalist groups. The two primary organizations are Russian Unity of the Caucasus and Novaya Sila (New Power). Russian Unity of the Caucasus was founded in December 2010 by Cossack groups that were not approved for government financing and Russian nationalist groups from the republics and southern Russian territories (http://www.regnum.ru/news/1358572.html). The officially unregistered Novaya Sila party is another driving force behind the conference (http://novayasila.org). The party has been very active in Stavropol region in the past year, organizing protests in the city of Nevinnomysk in December 2012 following the killing of an ethnic Russian by an ethnic Chechen (http://www.kp.ru/daily/26005/2931401/). The leader of Novaya Sila, Valery Solovei, who is a professor at Moscow State Institute of International Relations (a.k.a. MGIMO), is known for his right-wing nationalist views, while MGIMO has traditionally been known for its ties to the Russian security services.
Among the main causes of the popular discontent in Stavropol region is its economic backwardness and shifts in the population’s demographic structure. Having considerable natural and population resources, Stavropol region is doing significantly worse than its wealthy neighbors to the west and north, Krasnodar and Rostov-on-Don regions. In particular, foreign investment never took off in Stavropol despite expansive initial plans and opportunities.
So, on the one hand, ethnic Russians who live in Stavropol region are incentivized to leave for other Russian regions in search of better economic opportunities (http://kavpolit.com/polnyj-stabilizec/). On the other hand, Stavropol is attractive for the North Caucasians because its economy is still better relative to the North Caucasus. Also, the Stavropol region is the closest large region with a low population density, so the inflow of North Caucasians and the outflow of ethnic Russians have economic and geographic explanations.
The continuing efforts of ethnic Russian activists in Stavropol region to affirm the region’s ethnic Russian identity suggest that ethnic Russians believe the government’s efforts to ensure the unity of the Russian Federation are failing. They evidently perceive North Caucasians not as fellow Russian citizens, but rather as ethnic “others” and hostile invaders. Even more importantly, the push for creating a Russian republic in Stavropol region may have significant implications for Russia as a whole. The possible establishment of a Russian republic in Stavropol would have a far more profound effect on the current Russian political system than the earlier movements for separation from the North Caucasus Federal District. Indeed, if Stavropol were to succeed in creating a Russian republic, other Russian regions would certainly follow suit, especially the neighboring Russian-majority regions of Krasnodar and Rostov-on-Don. A proliferation of Russian republics would in turn undermine the highly hierarchical and centralized structure of political power in Russia.
True federalization of Russia would probably be the greatest revolution in the country to date, and would completely change it. This shows that Russian nationalism is one of the forces in Russia that may contribute to the country’s democratization. Even Russian liberal leaders, such as chess grandmaster and leading opposition figure Garry Kasparov, have warmed up to the Russian nationalist idea of separating the North Caucasus from Russia (http://www.kasparov.ru/material.php?id=5228308F4EA0E).
Admittedly, apart from democratization, growing Russian nationalism may also result in the separation of the North Caucasus from Russia, as Moscow may realize that it is better to part with the North Caucasus than face a proliferation of Russian republics throughout the country. Since ethnic non-Russians, particularly the North Caucasians, are seen as hostile and unwanted elements in the Russian-majority territories, the North Caucasians are increasingly likely to respond by building their own ethnic homes where they can survive with some level of comfort.
--Valery Dzutsev
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Cossacks Now Patrol Half of Stavropol Krai: Police Adjuncts or Something More?
Cossack units are now patrolling the streets in 12 of the 26 districts of Stavropol krai as well as in Moscow and other Russian regions. Their presence suggests they are simultaneously, as they claim, adjuncts to the local police—street forces the authorities can deploy in extra-legal ways with deniability for themselves—and a cradle of possibly more serious challenges to regional leaders and to Moscow itself.
The first role of the Cossacks, that of adjuncts to the police, is especially prominent in Stavropol, a majority ethnic Russian region in the North Caucasus. There, Terek Cossack Ataman Aleksandr Fal’ko last week told Stavropol Governor Valery Zerenkov that 162 Cossacks are working full time, and 80 more part time, on patrolling the streets of 12 of the krai’s districts. In making his report, Fal’ko said that the Cossacks need government financing if this is to continue because they are performing a public security role (nazaccent.ru/content/8984-kazaki-rasskazali-gubernatoru-stavropolya-kak-patruliruyut.html). While some officials appear willing to help, others oppose doing so, apparently because they fear creating a force structure they will not be able to completely control (nazaccent.ru/content/8558-vlastyam-stavropolya-ne-nravyatsya-pretenzii-kazakov.html).
That the Cossacks could get out of hand or that they could be disowned as such even if they do what the authorities want calls attention to the second possible role that Cossacks in Russia may play. Last week, in neighboring Krasnodar krai, Cossack units forced Chinese and other migrant workers to leave by blocking their access to water that the guest workers were supposedly using illegally (bigcaucasus.com/events/actual/04-09-2013/86076-china-0/).
The actions of the Cossacks in this case crossed the line as far as Russian law is concerned, but the steps they took were apparently very popular among the local population. Such illegalities by Cossacks are a reminder that these units may take action at the behest of the authorities who do not want to take such steps on their own or—even more dangerously—take actions that reflect their own interests or those of other groups in the population against the authorities (bigcaucasus.com/events/actual/04-09-2013/86076-china-0/).
As a result of such developments, there is a danger and even the possibility that the Cossacks will demand more deference and financial support from the Russian authorities, writes Anton Bredikhin, a political scientist at the Russian State Humanitarian University (gumilev-center.ru/kazachijj-separatizm-sovremennoe-sostoyanie/). He further warns that these consequences may lead to the establishment of separate Cossack districts in areas where they have long lived, but which are defined as belonging either to Russians or non-Russian groups, or even the formation of an independent Cossack state on the basis of secession from Russia or Ukraine.
The scholar says that his goal is to “consider contemporary separatist and autonomous tendencies on the territory of Russia in regions that have an autochthonous [indigenous] Cossack population and also to analyze their prospects” and to assess how realistic they are. After a brief discussion of Cossack autonomist ideas during the Russian Civil War, Bredikhin notes that in the fall of 1991, as the Soviet Union was disintegrating, there were proclaimed several Cossack “state formations”: the Don Cossack Republic, the Terek Cossack Republic, the Armavir Cossack Republic, the Upper Kuban Republic, the Zelenchuk-Urupsk Cossack Soviet Socialist Republic and the Batalpashin Cossack Republic. These came together to form a Union of Cossack Republics of the South of Russia.
In December 1991, Cossack groups, together with a part of the Krasnodar Soviet Army garrison even tried to take power. They failed, and these various secessionist “republics” were suppressed by “local regional elites, not by the weakening federal center.” But if the republics are gone and if Russian realities have changed, Cossack interest in autonomy, either genuine or as a tactic to extract resources from the Russian authorities, has continued, Bredikhin says.
Some Cossacks, he notes, still talk about self-determination and secession, with a few even saying that they plan to appeal to the United Nations. But most Cossacks, the scholar continues, support the Russian state and its efforts to establish and maintain order. That does not mean their agendas are not a problem, however. Cossacks overwhelmingly support “the maximum integration of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan,” he says—a Russian policy, but one that at least some Cossacks see as a step toward achieving their own desire for more funding and more autonomy.
A possible reason for concern, Bredikhin admits, is that the younger generation of Cossacks is very different from its predecessors. Unlike them, it is ambitious, media saavy, and is “attempting to reanimate separatist ideas and, by using them, receive necessary preferences.” He does not discuss how these young Cossacks might behave if they make demands but are rejected. But “in the current political situation,” such demands are “not only impossible but unrealizable in the near term.” Just how long “the near term” will last, however, is not a question the researcher addresses.
--Paul Goble
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Scholar Studies Relationship Between Religiosity and Extremist Behavior Among Dagestani Youth
In a study of the evolution of the Dagestani insurgency, Dagestani social scholar Zaid Abdulagatov explores the changing social landscape among young Dagestanis in relation to Islam and the state. Among the surprising findings of Abdulagatov, who based the study on extensive polling he conducted, is that the involvement of young people in the insurgency has not increased over the past several years, but has, rather, decreased slightly. He writes, for example, that 76 percent of the insurgents killed in 2005 were between 15 and 30 years old, while the number dropped to 71.2 percent in 2008 and 70.1 percent in 2009. Also, interestingly enough, the largest number of those who identified themselves as Islamic fundamentalists were in the 20-years-old and 49-to-60-years-old age brackets (http://www.isras.ru/files/File/Socis/2012_1/Abdulagatov.pdf). Young people, of course, still comprised the bulk of the insurgent forces, as these figures suggest.
Abdulagatov blames radicalization of Dagestani youth partly on the misconceived 1999 Dagestani law “On the Ban of Wahhabism [a.k.a. Salafism] and Other Extremist Activities.” According to the author, the law mixed two very different paradigms—“inclination to violence under religious and quasi-religious slogans” and “firm adherence to certain norms and lifestyles that the individual considers correct.” The author appears inclined to believe that the roots of the conflict in Dagestan are socio-economic, but that the conflict manifests itself as a religious one. According to Abdulagatov, a highly conservative approach to Islam has a long tradition in Dagestan. “The peculiarity of this conservative view of Islam is that during the years of stability of society, it did not unite the believers into religious sects, political organizations and did not demand that social and political life be modeled on Salafi norms,” he writes. However, he asserts that when the situation changed, including the official labeling of strict believers as extremists, the conservative branches of Islam started to turn violent (http://www.isras.ru/files/File/Socis/2012_1/Abdulagatov.pdf).
The incursion by armed Chechen and Dagestani groups from Chechnya into Dagestan under Islamic slogans in 1999 provoked a strong patriotic response from Dagestanis. Militias armed and trained by the Russian army quickly emerged in the republic to defend it from the militants. Ironically, just a few years after successfully repelling the incursion, civil violence spread to Dagestan itself. The conflict of 1999 in Dagestan, which was a prologue to the second Russian-Chechen war, apparently changed the situation in the republic drastically.
Abdulagatov’s findings show, quite astonishingly, that the indicators of religiosity among Dagestani youth—defined as “up to 29 years old”—gradually decreased from 85 percent in 1996 to 79 percent in the early 2000s. However, in 2004, the religiosity indicator rose again, to 81 percent, and reached a whopping 95 percent among youth aged 18–29 in 2010. The percentage of self-identified Islamic “fundamentalists” among youth rose from 54 percent in 2000 to 78 percent in 2010. In addition, 58 percent of the “fundamentalists” said that Sharia law is superior to secular laws, while 30 percent said they were ready to protest against the state if secular laws contradicted their beliefs.
Some observers have pointed out that the socio-economic and political situation in Dagestan is the major factor affecting the radicalization of society, especially among young people (http://www.regnum.ru/news/1376383.html). Abdulagatov writes that a significant number of disaffected young people join the insurgents not necessarily on the basis of religious issues, but based on other predilections. A survey of Dagestani youth in 2010 asked whether they could join the insurgency under certain circumstances. Seventy-four percent of the believers responded “never,” and only 67 percent of the non-believers gave the same response. Twelve percent of the believers and 22 percent of the non-believers said they might join the insurgency under life’s pressures (http://www.isras.ru/files/File/Socis/2012_1/Abdulagatov.pdf). The believers may have been withholding the truth out of fear for being persecuted by the government, but the willingness of non-believer youth to fight the state is quite telling.
The Dagestani scholar’s findings paint a complex picture of the republic’s social evolution. The research suggests that political and socio-economic factors may indeed be among the most important driving the violent trends in Dagestan. Rising adherence to Islam is also well-documented, although the relationship between Islam and violence is more nuanced than usually suggested. On the one hand, there is a long-held tradition of mobilization of Dagestanis under Islamic slogans when the political and socio-economic situation is unstable. On the other hand, there is also a long tradition of de-mobilization of conservative Islam in the republic when stability returns. The conclusions that can be drawn from Abdulagatov’s work may be that political and economic reforms in Dagestan are needed to stabilize the situation in the republic, while suppressing certain branches of Islam is not the way forward. Officials in the Russian government, however, believe that combatting “unwanted” forms of Islam is a cheaper way to solve the problem than implementing reforms, thereby exacerbating and perpetuating the problem of violence but ensuring that the Kremlin maintains a firm grip on power.
--Valery Dzutsev
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Ramazan Abdulatipov Confirmed as Dagestan’s President
While opposition candidates are allowed to run for office in Russian cities like Moscow and Yekaterinburg—and, in the case of the mayoral race in the latter, possibly even win—the situation in the North Caucasus remains quite different. Indeed, opposition candidates are completely excluded from running for the office of the governor of a North Caucasian republic (http://moidagestan.ru/blogs/41037/32176). The mechanism of exclusion primarily rests on the indirect vote. When the current leader of Dagestan, Ramazan Abdulatipov, was announced as the candidate for leadership in Dagestan at the beginning of 2013, he thought the republic was ready for direct elections for governor (http://kavpolit.com/dagestan-edinstvennyj-gotov-k-pryamym-vyboram-prezidenta/l). Abdulatipov’s opinion quickly changed after he became the acting governor of Dagestan. After he was appointed, Moscow soon decided not to take any risks and to leave the old system of appointing governors in Dagestan intact, even though the rest of Russia will elect their governors through a popular vote.
According to the rules, parties and movements are supposed to present their nominations to the Russian presidential administration, which then selects three candidates based upon the principles known only to the Kremlin and then offers them to the regional parliament (http://ria.ru/politics/20130819/957185269.html). The leadership of the Dagestani parliament literally indulged in twisting the arms of the deputies to force them to pass the Kremlin’s proposal for the procedure for appointing governors on April 18. The proposal failed to pass the Dagestani parliament three times in secret voting. Only after the speaker of the parliament, Khizri Shikhsaidov, decreed that the deputies should cast their ballots openly by raising their IDs did the deputies decide not to contradict the Kremlin: they voted to support the proposal that the head of Dagestan be appointed by the Russian president and confirmed by the republican parliament (http://www.gazeta.ru/politics/2013/04/18_a_5260641.shtml). Seventy-four deputies voted in favor of the proposal, nine voted against and three abstained (http://nsrd.ru/pub/sessii/prezidenta_vibiraet_parlament_dagestanskaya_p_19_04_2013).
Interestingly, even though the presidential party United Russia holds 60 of the Dagestani parliament’s 90 seats, it failed to pass the Kremlin-sponsored legislation during the secret voting. When the vote became open, however, few dared to show their opposition: even deputies from the parties formally opposed to the government voted for the Kremlin’s project.
There were no surprises in President Vladimir Putin’s nominations for the position of president of Dagestan—Ramazan Abdulatipov; the chairman of the Accounting Chamber of the Dagestani parliament, Malik Bagliev; and Dagestani human rights ombudsman Ummupazil Omarova (http://ria.ru/politics/20130819/957185269.html). Bagliev and Omarova were almost certainly put on the ballot just to give the impression of having contested elections and thereby to legitimize the Kremlin’s appointee, Abdulatipov.
The question is why Moscow retracted its initial proposal to hold direct elections for governors in the North Caucasus and specifically in Dagestan (http://www.ng.ru/politics/2013-04-22/1_vybory.html). Most likely, Moscow wanted to avoid inter-ethnic clashes in Dagestan that could accompany the election campaign. The resignation of the previous president of Dagestan, Magomedsalam Magomedov, an ethnic Dargin, and rise to power of Abdulatipov, an ethnic Avar, may have intensified the conflict between the Avars and the Dargins. Smaller ethnic groups would have supported the Dargins to oppose the Avars, who are the largest ethnic group in the republic. This was the main reason for the quick removal of the prominent Dargin politician, Said Amirov, as Makhachkala the mayor in July. The public’s hopes that Dagestan’s clan system would be dismantled, however, were not realized (http://expert.ru/expert/2013/23/kto-zdes-vlast/). While some Dargins were fired from their positions, other Dargins took over, so Abdulatipov’s promise to “break the system” has not yet materialized.
Abdulatipov was formally “elected” as Dagestan’s president by its parliament on September 8. Now he will have to prove to Moscow that even if he is not another Ramzan Kadyrov, he is at least very similar to the Chechen leader. Certain actions by Abdulatipov so strikingly resemble those of Kadyrov that it has become obvious both republics are supervised by the same person in the Kremlin (http://www.obzor-smi.ru/?com=articles&page=article&id=9997). The image of the new Dagestani leader was crafted the same way as that of the Chechen leader. For example, a week before the elections, relics of the Prophet Muhammad were brought to Dagestan (http://www.rg.ru/2013/08/26/reg-skfo/relikvia-anons.html). Earlier in the run-up to the elections, government forces killed a leader of the jamaat in Buinaksk, Bammatkhan Sheikhov (http://kavkaz-antiterror.ru/?p=news&id=436). This was presented as an achievement of Abdulatipov. Moreover, at a meeting with the Dagestani police force on September 6, two days before the elections, Abdulatipov announced that a purge of the republican police was necessary, as some of the police officers were “flirting with the militants” (http://u-f.ru/News/u20/2013/09/06/660994). At a meeting with the Federal Security Service (FSB) branch in Dagestan, Abdulatipov expressed concern about Dagestani ex-officials who had fled to the city of Yalova in Turkey and allegedly protected the family of the militant leader Ibragim Gajidadaev, who was reportedly killed in March (http://regnum.ru/news/polit/1703825.html). The day before the elections, the police carried out a security sweep on several streets in Makhachkala that were under suspicion (http://pravozashita05.ru/dorushev/).
The new Dagestani president is bound to hear about the armed resistance in the republic for a long time to come, since the resistance’s influence in the republic has grown stronger in recent years. Dagestan has become the base for the entire armed resistance movement of the North Caucasus. It is not surprising that even Russian converts to Islam who want to participate in the war against Russia move to Dagestan (http://ttolk.ru/?p=16963).
Thus, while Ramazan Abdulatipov has been officially confirmed as the new president of Dagestan, the old problems persist, such as the armed underground, the clan system, the division of the republic into spheres of influence by Dagestani millionaire, among others. Moscow is most concerned about the armed resistance movement, but Abdulatipov has no chance of improving the situation in this particular sphere in the next few years.
--Mairbek Vatchagaev
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North Caucasus Residents Increasingly Feel the Heat of the Approaching Olympics
Six months prior to the Winter Olympics in Sochi, which will be the most expensive games in the history of the Olympics, Russia has started to make arrangements to prevent terrorist attacks. It is estimated that the Sochi Olympics will cost over $54 billion (http://ria.ru/sport/20130904/960603898.html) and will take place in the subtropical climate zone of southern Russia from February 7 to February 28, 2014. On September 1, a decree signed by President Vladimir Putin came into effect, titled “On the Specifics of the Application of Heightened Security Measures During the Period of the 22nd Olympic Winter Games of 2014 in Sochi” (http://stadium.ru/News/Region/70?Alias=24-08-2013-prezident-rossii-vladimir-putin-podpisal-ukaz-o-merakh-bezopasnosti-v-sochi).
The decree outlines the list of security zones and maps the boundaries of the no-go zones. These zones are supposed to prevent the appearance of unwanted individuals near the Olympics sites–meaning adherents of the Caucasus Emirate. It is unclear, however, how the security services will find out who the radicals are. Those individuals on the wanted list will not travel to Sochi. The jamaats will dispatch people who will not raise the suspicions of the Federal Security Service (FSB). This is especially doable now, given that the time when only North Caucasians belonged to the Caucasus Emirate have passed: nowadays, ethnic Russians are fairly often found among the radicals (http://kavpolit.com/podryvnik-russkogo-dzhamaata/), which makes the Russian security services’ job far more difficult than it was two or three years ago.
At the same time, in order to fend off public protests by foreign visitors against rights abuses targeting certain categories of Russia’s population, all public gatherings and marches are banned under presidential decree. So, in the best traditions of the Soviet regime, any form of dissent will be suppressed.
Undoubtedly, this decree is just the tip of the iceberg. In practice, the interior ministry and the FSB will take drastic measures to limit the access all non-locals have to the security zones.
The organizers of the Olympics in Sochi face multiple hurdles (http://www.echo.msk.ru/blog/nemtsov_boris/1029646-echo/), but the threat from the militants is the primary irritation for the Russian government. Even when somebody simply writes about it, it annoys top Russian officials. On September 9, President Putin presided over a Russian Security Council meeting in Moscow. The situation in the North Caucasus was one of the topics publicly discussed at the meeting. Putin touched on the issue of regional elections in the North Caucasus, but he especially emphatically addressed information policies. The Russian president stated that the government should not overlook “biased accusations” of human rights breaches in the North Caucasus made by foreign media and organizations against the Russian authorities (http://www.kp.ru/daily/26130.5/3022093/).
Thus, Russia is likely to bar individuals who have made “biased accusations” against the Russian government from entering the country. Such people will include all individuals who break the information blockade about human rights abuses in the Russian Federation. This is a warning to all people who write about Russia. Since the government has deprived of foreign funding all domestic non-governmental organizations (NGO) working on human rights, the time has come to prevent even writing about human rights in Russia. All those who continue to do so will be accused of fueling separatism in the country.
The Russian government’s actions will reduce the flow of independent information from the North Caucasus, but in the era of the Internet, a complete ban will not be feasible. These moves will only cause people in the North Caucasus to lose trust in the authorities and their local puppets. Foreign journalists who reside in Moscow on a permanent basis will feel the consequences of both the presidential decree and the Security Council meeting.
In order to share responsibility for possible holes in the security net, at least to some degree, the FSB reached an agreement with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and European security services on joint efforts to thwart terrorist acts during the Olympics in Sochi (http://fedpress.ru/news/polit_vlast/news_polit/1378279656-putin-spetssluzhby-smogut-obespechit-bezopasnost-igr-v-sochi).
Arguably, the best news for Putin in this regard would be the killing of Caucasus Emirate leader Doku Umarov, who earlier this year threatened to disrupt the Sochi Olympics (http://www.svoboda.org/content/article/25035050.html). Ramzan Kadyrov, the president of Chechnya, hastily responded, stating that he would kill Umarov prior to the Sochi games (http://www.kommersant.ru/news/2225675). It is unclear what is stopping Kadyrov and the Russian security services from neutralizing Umarov now, prior to the Olympics.
There is also another concern for the Russian government. Having fueled anti-Caucasian sentiment in Moscow, the authorities are now encountering a new situation, in which the slogan “Stop Feeding the Caucasus!” is spinning out of control (http://mapax.ru/question/116). Many Russians increasingly think that ridding Russia of the North Caucasus is the solution to the country’s problems. For the first time since the occupation of the North Caucasus in the 19th century, Russians are indicating a desire to part with this region, viewing it as too heavy a burden on Russia’s resources, even though the region’s financial dependence differs somewhat from that described by Russian nationalists (http://businessmsk.livejournal.com/286270.html).
Therefore, the September 9 Security Council meeting was also a message to the nationalists, encouraging them to change their discourse. The authorities probably did not suspect that the confrontation between ethnic Russians and non-Russians would ensue so quickly. According to polls, one-third of Russians see Ukraine as part of Russia, while only 7 percent consider Chechens to be Russian citizens (Rossiyane) (http://podrobnosti.ua/society/2013/09/10/929258.html).
Thus, the Russian authorities are gearing up for a crackdown on rights activists under the pretext of preparing for the Olympics. The move against human rights activists who annoy the Russian government is going to be disguised as a step against terrorism, which will force Washington and European countries not to make an issue of it in their relations with Moscow.
--Mairbek Vatchagaev
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Syrian Circassian Refugees in Turkey Ask to Be Repatriated to Russia
The chairman of the Solidarity Committee of World Circassians, Nusret Bas, recently handed over a petition of Circassian refugees from Syria to the Russian consul in Istanbul, Alexei Yerkhov. The appeal was prepared on behalf of 146 Circassian refugees residing in the southern Turkish city of Nizip, which is close to the Syrian border. The refugees said in the petition that their ancestors were displaced from their homeland in 1864 and resettled in Syria. Despite the fact that they have not participated in the civil war in Syria, they have still lost their relatives, homes and property, and were given shelter in Nizip with the assistance of the Solidarity Committee of World Circassians. At his meeting with the Russian Consul, Bas outlined what the Circassians want from Russia. “From Russia we expect two things: first, the recognition of the genocide in the period of 1763–1864; second, preparing conditions for the unconditional, unequivocal return of the Circassians to their historical homeland.”
Bas further reassured Yerkhov that Circassians were not Russia’s enemies. “Radical religious movements do not correspond with the traditions and views of the Circassians,” he told the Russian consul. “Our opposition to the [2014] Olympic Games in Sochi is tied to Russia’s unhelpful policies toward the Circassians. If the policies are amended, there is no doubt that all Circassians will be side by side with Russia.” Yerkhov reportedly promised to give serious consideration to the Circassian activists’ proposals and hand over the petition to Moscow (http://aheku.org/page-id-3657.html).
A meeting of Circassian activists at the Russian Consulate in Istanbul indicates that Moscow may be willing to consider some limited friendly gestures toward the Circassians in the run-up to the Olympics in Sochi. The Syrian crisis and the plight of Circassian refugees present Russia with a convenient opportunity to display that it can accommodate the interests of Circassians. Few Circassians, however, believe that Russia will make actual moves to help refugees from Syria in a meaningful way. Only about 22 percent of the respondents in an Internet poll indicated that they believed Russia would help Circassian refugees from Syria, while almost 68 percent believed Russia would not help and the remaining 10 percent indicated they were not sure (http://aheku.org/polls-id-101.html).
Disbelief in Russia’s good intentions ensures that many Circassians will oppose the Olympics in Sochi. In the meantime, an internal conflict among Circassian civil organizations is intensifying. In July, the Coordination Council of Circassians in Russia called on Circassian organizations worldwide, especially those based in Turkey, to hold a world conference of Circassians dedicated to the situation in Syria. In September, the International Circassian Association (ICA) came out against the proposed conference. The Russian branch of the International Circassian Association is known for its ties to the Russian government and was created by the Russian security services following the Soviet demise in order to regulate contacts with Circassian diaspora groups in the West. The ICA probably influenced its opposition to the conference. One of the proponents of the conference in Turkey, Adam Bogus, who heads the Adygean organization Adyge-Khase/Circassian Parliament, told the Kavkazsky Uzel (Caucasian Knot) website that the Circassians in Syria were facing deadly danger. “There will be reprisals and bloodshed, it is obvious,” he said. “Essentially, our whole diaspora has been sentenced and is now awaiting execution. Whatever we have tried to do, we could not help them. We sent dozens of petitions to various state institutions, regional as well as federal ones, but we could not elicit any positive reaction.” The director of the Center for Ethno-Religious Problems of the Russian Union of Journalists, Sulieta Chukho-Kusova, stated that the feeble reaction of the Circassian organizations in Russia to the Syrian crisis showed they had no unity, robustness or strong leaders. In addition, he said that “the political leaders of the [Circassian] republics displayed complete national indifference” (http://www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/229687/).
It must be said that regional authorities have hijacked many of the Circassian organizations in the North Caucasus, while Moscow has put pressure on the regional authorities to suppress any genuine Circassian movement. In a way, this situation can be seen as a “soft” version of Ramzan Kadyrov’s rule in Chechnya. Moscow offers “sticks and carrots” to the regional authorities and they implement the policies that Moscow wants them to implement. Corruption and dependence on Moscow ensure that regional governments have no social support base among their respective populations and that the central government can thus easily manipulate them.
Circassian activists in Adygea have provided assistance to the families of Circassian refugees from Syria with little or no help from the Russian state. A group of benefactors resolved to pay for the university tuition and living expenses of 16 young Circassian refugees in Adygea. Overall there are 62 students from Syria studying in Adygea (http://www.yuga.ru/news/306391/). An estimated 156 families—708 people in all—have arrived in Adygea from Syria. The population of Syrian Circassian refugees in Adygea decreased to 134 families after some of them moved to Kabardino-Balkaria and Turkey (http://www.adigea.aif.ru/crime/article/37876).
With the approach of the 2014 Sochi Olympics, Moscow is indicating it may make some concessions to the Circassians, but no significant steps to accommodate Circassian interests are likely. Some Circassians are calling for a time of reckoning because the Circassian civil organizations in the North Caucasus have proven to be ineffective in defending the larger population. However, others think there is still time to try to press ahead with the Circassians’ demands on Moscow.
--Valery Dzutsev
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Russian Nationalists in Tatarstan Demand Deputy Prime Minister’s Resignation
On September 2, a key figure in the Russian government, Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, visited Tatarstan. After watching a presentation on the republic’s educational reforms, modeled on the Singapore school system that is renowned worldwide for its success, Shuvalov noted that “the benefits of foreign programs in the teaching of some disciplines should be combined with the traditionally strong Russian programs in the hard sciences.” He added that “everyone who lives in Tatarstan must speak Tatar, regardless of nationality” (http://www.regnum.ru/news/fd-volga/tatarstan/1701803.html#ixzz2etrjyqzU).
Shuvalov’s remark about Tatar language in Tatarstan produced a large public outcry among ethnic Russian activists in this Volga republic. Leaders of the Russian community in Tatarstan and Kazan published an open letter to President Vladimir Putin, asking him to fire Shuvalov. The authors of the letter wrote that the deputy prime minister broke the legal requirements of a Russian statesman that should promote inter-ethnic peace and understanding. “In this case he disregarded the special problems of the ethnic group RUSSIANS [sic], of which there are about 1.5 million in the Republic of Tatarstan and provoked the escalation of the long overdue language conflict.” The authors of the address complained that Tatar authorities made the learning of the Tatar language at the republic’s schools mandatory against the wishes of many ethnic Russians. Russian activists in Tatarstan expressed their fear that Tatarstan’s authorities “will perceive the deputy prime minister’s statement as direct approval of their language policies and that layoffs of the Russian population of Tatarstan due to their overwhelming lack of knowledge of Tatar language may ensue” (http://www.regnum.ru/news/1704807.html#ixzz2etuq9UCI).
Tatar language instruction in the republic’s schools has long antagonized Tatarstan’s Russian population. Both Tatar and Russian are legally considered the state languages of Tatarstan, and both must be taught in state schools. Russian nationalist activists regard the Tatar language as one of the cornerstones of Tatarstan’s sovereignty, which the republic declared back in 1990 and never fully retracted despite Moscow’s repeated demands that it do so (http://rus-rt.ru/main/rus-vopr.aspx). The head of the Russian organization of Tatarstan, Alexander Salagaev, emphasized the importance of language policy for Moscow’s control of the region. In an attempt to scare the Russian government, he compared Chechnya to Tatarstan: “In Chechnya, there was an ethnic balance—Ingush, Chechens, Russians. In this situation, the federal center could defend its own interests. But later, the Ingush were separated, Russians were massacred and displaced and, essentially, only Chechens remained in Chechnya. Now, the federal center practically has no room for maneuver. The same thing might happen here, because the ethnic balance has been broken in Tatarstan. For example, 85 percent of the commanding positions in the republic are occupied by the Tatars.” The Russian community leader also lamented the low fertility rate of ethnic Russians and high fertility of ethnic Tatars, which make the outlook for the Russians in the republic especially grim in Russian eyes (http://ruskultura.narod.ru/bolrus.htm).
The school language issue is an extremely hot one in another Volga region, the Republic of Bashkortostan. There, the republican authorities started to require that Bashkir be taught in the schools, outraging many ethnic Russians in the republic. Russian parents complain that schools in Bashkortostan expand school hours devoted to teaching the Bashkir language at the expense of Russian (http://www.regnum.ru/news/fd-volga/bash/1707462.html).
Moscow has frequently attacked Tatarstan and Bashkortostan for their purported separatist aspirations and the substantial economic prowess that could potentially sustain the two republics. Both of the republics’ constitutions were amended under pressure from Moscow to remove elements of state sovereignty, and the two republics’ oil industries were largely taken over by Russian oligarchs dispatched by Moscow. Still, they retain significant de-facto political and economic power.
Tatarstan and Bashkortostan are neighbors with many common features, and both republics are mutually strengthening each other’s resistance to pressure from Moscow. Both republics are relatively wealthy due to their large oil reserves and oil refining industries and military industrial base. Their material well-being positions the two republics favorably in their political struggles with Moscow. Both Tatar and Bashkir are Turkic languages and both ethnic groups are predominantly Muslim. The Tatars are the second largest ethnic group in Russia, with 150,000 Tatars residing in Moscow alone. Tatars comprise about 53 percent of Tatarstan’s total population, while ethnic Russians constitute nearly 40 percent of the total. In Bashkortostan, ethnic Bashkirs make up approximately 30 percent of the total population, while ethnic Russians comprise 36 percent of the total. Ethnic Tatars are 25 percent of Bashkortostan’s population, and they together with the Bashkirs outnumber the republic’s ethnic Russians (Russian State Statistical Service, 2010 census results).
With Russian nationalism on the rise in Russia, other nationalisms are inevitably following the lead. Language policy is one of the spheres crucial for the future of ethnic minorities in Russia. Unlike many other non-Russian minorities in the Russian Federation, both Tatarstan and Bashkortostan are well suited to dominate language policies in their respective regions, because they do not rely on funds from Moscow and are able to sustain their own educational programs. At the same time, ethnic Russians living in these republics have become increasingly galvanized over their Russian identity. The process of ethnic competition in the Volga regions is reminiscent of the same processes in the North Caucasus, where the ethnic Russians of Stavropol region are seeking affirmation of the region’s status as an ethnic Russian region (see EDM, September 9, 10).
--Valery Dzutsev
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Hundreds of North Caucasians Have Joined the Ranks of Syria’s Rebels
Following Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem’s September 9 visit to Moscow at the invitation of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (http://kommersant.ru/doc/2275019), the issue of the involvement of Chechens in the Syrian war once again came to the fore.
At a press conference, Muallem insisted that his country is fighting not against the opposition, but foreign terrorists—who, he claimed, are being armed and trained by Turkey. “People from the Caucasus and Chechnya are among the terrorists,” he said. “Turkey trains terrorists from 83 countries” (http://ru.apa.az/news/255100).
Then, at a meeting with State Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin, Muallem again alleged that people from the Caucasus were among those who had infiltrated Syria from Turkey (http://www.itar-tass.com/c303/871685.html). Against the backdrop of these statements, another irresponsible article appeared in the Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta, headlined “The Syrian Beachhead of the North Caucasian Militants” (http://www.ng.ru/world/2013-09-04/7_placdarm.html). The author of the article, citing the notorious head of the anna-news.info website, Marat Musin, asserted that the number of militants from Russia in Syria has reached 4,000. According to Musin, ethnic Kyrgyz meet the militants who arrive from Turkey, and the majority of militants arriving in Syria are Azerbaijanis. Thus, Shi’ite Azeris are putatively going to Syria to fight against Shi’ite Syrians. Reading Musin’s writings, one acquires the impression that the analyst is describing the military actions in the North Caucasus, not in Syria. The author uses the same rhetorical tools for Syria that the Russian government has used for the North Caucasus—“counter-terrorist operation against foreign terrorists,” “Syrian army and people’s militia,” “paid foreign mercenaries,” etc.
It was not an accident that during the Syrian minister’s visit, the Russian media announced that a Chechen militant, Aslan Sigauri, was located in Syria. Sigauri was once arrested by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) for an alleged attempt to blow up the main building of Moscow State University. In 2011, the Russian security services included Sigauri (a.k.a. Variev) on their list of the 52 most dangerous rebels in the North Caucasus capable of launching an attack in any part of Russia (www.rosbalt.ru/moscow/2013/09/02/1170915.html). This example was supposed to demonstrate the face of the foreign militants in Syria.
According to some estimates, the overall number of foreigners who traveled to Syria to fight the Assad regime is now 10,000 (http://newsland.com/news/detail/id/1232477/). The overall number of militants from the North Caucasus cannot exceed 1,000 (http://www.kavkazcenter.com/russ/content/2013/07/26/99507.shtml).
The Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar (Army of Emigrants and Helpers) brigade is made up of Chechens and North Caucasians, but, unsurprisingly, the group also contains a large number of local Arabs, so the total number of people in the brigade could be 1,500. An ethnic Chechen from Georgia, Abu Umar Shishani (a.k.a. Umar Gorgashvili), is the leader of this group. In the past, Gorgashvili fought in Chechnya and served in the Georgian special forces during the 2008 war with Russia (www.rosbalt.ru/main/2013/08/20/1166093.html). Since last summer, Gorgashvili has been elevated to the position of the commander of the northern sector of the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (http://shamcenter.info/news/92/134/obraschenie-komanduyuschego-severnym-napravleniem-islamskogo-gosudarstva-iraka-i-shama-amira-umara-ash-shishani/d,detail-de/). There are also other well-known Chechen commanders, such as Emir Muslim (Muslim Margoshvili), Emir Seifullah (Ruslan Machaliashvili), Emir Salakhdin and Emir Abu-Musaaba (Musa). Emir Seifullah was expelled from Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar for embezzlement and erroneous interpretation of Islamic values during a time of jihad and his actions during jihad (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yU6K1mq38jw). Another Chechen emir, Mussaba, became known after Kurdish groups captured him in the summer of 2013. In response, the Chechens captured over 500 Kurds and demanded that their commander be freed, which the Kurds did without delay (http://www.rbc.ru/rbcfreenews/20130723203058.shtml).
While the number of Chechens fighting in Syria may reach several hundred, according to sources close to the Dagestani interior minister, 126 Dagestanis are also believed to be fighting in Syria (http://kavkazpress.ru/archives/21454). The figure for the number of Dagestanis probably does not include individuals who left Dagestan prior to the start of the second Russian-Chechen war in 1999 and arrived in Syria from other Arab countries. So the figure of about 200 people, cited by the Dagestani branch of the FSB, is probably closer to reality (www.ekhokavkaza.com/archive/news/20130703/3235/2759.html?id=25035761). Emir Abu Banat (a.k.a. Magomed Abdurakhmanov) was among the most notorious individuals in Syria. An ethnic Dargin, Abdurakhmanov came from the village of Khajalmakhi in Dagestan’s Levashi district (http://www.alarab.qa/details.php?iss...8&artid=249862) and is accused of violence and robbing civilians. The Dagestani militant was also accused of the killing of two Catholic priests. Eventually, he had to leave Syria on the orders of Umar Shishani because of his controversial activities (http://www.sabah.com.tr/Dunya/2013/0...a-bogan-video/).
The first Chechen arrivals in Syria came from the Chechen student population in Arab countries, mainly Syria and Egypt. Later, Chechens who had received refugee status in various European countries also started to trickle in. Most of the Chechen volunteers from Europe came to Syria from Austria, whose parliament was even forced to query the country’s interior minister about the exodus of Chechen asylees from Austria to fight in Syria (www.parlament.gv.at/SUCH/?view=publicsppublished&mode=simple&s.sm.query=GZ%3A+BMI-LR2220%2F0581-II%2F2013. Moreover, as of 2009, Austria reportedly had over 25,000 Chechen refugees who arrived since the 1999 war (http://www.wienerzeitung.at/nachrichten/oesterreich/politik/230644_Tschetschenen-Asyl-wird-restriktiver.html). According to some unofficial estimates, those numbers have climbed to as high as 42,000, but this number is unconfirmed kavpolit.com/vena-i-groznyj-xotyat-vernut-chechencev-na-rodinu) During the first two years of unrest in Syria, few Chechens came from Chechnya itself. However, this subsequently changed. For example, it is known that not only men, but also some females have traveled to Syria from Chechnya, including the daughter of a top official in the government of Ramzan Kadyrov (http://kavkazpress.ru/archives/17132). To make matters worse, the Russian government makes it relatively easy to travel from the North Caucasus to Syria as the Kadyrov government in Chechnya, for example, offers a daily flight to Istanbul. There are two to three daily flights from the North Caucasus to Turkey, and Russian citizens do not need visas to visit Turkey.
Therefore, information that periodically surfaces about Chechens fighting in Syria indicates their numbers are growing. Meanwhile, there are growing conflicts within the leadership of the Syrian militants, who are divided over policies toward the local population, including the Kurds. The Chechens in the Syrian insurgency are attempting to navigate between the different factions of the Syrian opposition, trying to retain their complete independence. Regardless, the growing importance of fighters from the North Caucasus in the Syrian insurgency is now becoming such an issue that the Syrian foreign minister in Moscow was forced to recognize its impact on the war.
--Mairbek Vatchagaev
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North Caucasus Leaders Adopt Kadyrov Model to Dealing with Militants
Militants carried out two significant attacks in Chechnya and Ingushetia on September 16 and 17. The attacks took place in the districts that are adjacent to each other and have the same name—Sunzha. In the past, there was a single Sunzha district in Checheno-Ingushetia, but when Ingushetia seceded in 1992, Sunzha district was divided between Chechnya and Ingushetia, retaining its name in each.
At about 2 a.m. on September 16, a suicide attacker drove his car to the Sunzha district police station in Sernovodsk, Chechnya. After failing to drive onto the police station’s yard, the bomber blew himself up at the gate. Three people died on the spot and four others were wounded (http://www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/230143/). Two of the killed were police officers dispatched from the Chuvash Republic—Leonid Puchkov and Alexander Yegorov (www.cheboksary.ru/crimen/16092013/page24266.htm). The third slain police officer, Yuni Suleimanov, was from the local Chechen police force. The suicide bomber was identified as Isa Khildikhoroev of Sunzha district’s Assinovskaya village. Experts estimated the strength of the blast outside the Sunzha district police station at 60 kilograms of TNT (http://lifenews.ru/#!news/119368). It should be noted that this was the first suicide bomber attack in Chechnya since August 2012 (http://www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/230146/).
The suicide bomber in Sernovodsk was reportedly identified by Sulanbek (Salman) Machukaev, who also told police about another forthcoming attack. According to the Ingush police, Machukaev surrendered to the Sleptsovskaya district police on the morning of September 16. The Russian security services, however, said that Machukaev tried to infiltrate the district police station but was intercepted before he could detonate an improvised explosive device (IED) (http://www.interfax.ru/russia/txt.asp?id=329043). Following his arrest, Machukaev told the police that his brother Adam Machukaev was preparing another attack targeting police. According to the arrested militant, his brother was likely to be driving a stolen car.
Adam Machukaev was on the wanted list of the police in Ingushetia’s Sunzha district for participation in an illegal armed formation. The police finally located him in the Ingush Sunzha district near the village of Nesterovskaya. When Adam Machukaev realized that he could not escape, he rammed a police car. According to the police, the trunk of the militant’s car was full of explosives, and a blast that followed the collision killed one police officer and injured four others. According to the Russian National Anti-Terrorist Committee, Adam Machukaev detonated an IED when the police tried to arrest him, killing one police officer and seriously injuring three others (http://www.ingushetiyaru.org/news/36548/). Rebel news sources reported that two people died and three were wounded (http://kavkazcenter.com/russ/content/2013/09/17/100617.shtml).
According to the testimony of the arrested Sulanbek Machukaev, there were plans to attack police in several other locations. A counter-terrorism operation regime was introduced in Chechnya’s Sunzha district, which further dampened the militants’ resolve. However, while the police were able to foil the attacks, they failed to find the potential attackers (http://ria.ru/defense_safety/20130916/963476306.html).
The suicide bombers Adam Machukaev and Isa Khildikhoroev, as well as the captured militant Sulanbek Machukaev were members of a jamaat led by Beslan Makhauri that operates on both sides of the Chechen-Ingush border (http://www.itar-tass.com/c21/877972.html).
The reaction of the authorities in the two republics to the suicide attacks was peculiar. The press service of the head of Ingushetia reported that the republic’s police placed the blame for the terrorist attacks in the republic on the Chechen authorities, saying that the militants were infiltrating Ingushetia from Chechnya (http://www.ingushetia.ru/m-news/archives/019319.shtml).
Ramzan Kadyrov returned the favor, explaining on his Instagram account: “We cannot simply watch how guerrillas coolly load a car with explosives in the neighboring territory and then our people die” (http://news.mail.ru/inregions/caucasus/26/society/14795703/). Kadyrov then called on the Ingush authorities to cooperate in the fight against the militants. An unsuspecting reader would think that the leaders of two sovereign states were discussing security issues, whereas, in fact, both territories are just administrative units of the Russian state.
Meanwhile, the recently appointed head of Ingushetia, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov reacted by promising measures like those taken by the Israeli and Chechen authorities. “We will expropriate the homes of the people who are helping the bandit underground, (who) rent their houses, their territory to the bandits,” he said. “Instead, we will give the homes of the accomplices to those who need housing or will build public buildings on the sites of those houses” (http://www.ntv.ru/novosti/659717). Contemplating a large negative backlash across the country, Yevkurov the next day amended his comment, saying that he meant “abandoned, unused buildings, where members of illegal armed groups are finding refuge and plotting their dirty crimes” (http://magas.su/tera/yunus-bek-evkurov-snositsya-budut-te-domakotorye-ispolzuyutsya-zabrosheny-khozyaevami). He also proposed expanding work to raise public awareness to ensure that Ingushetia’s residents know that supplying food and other services to the militants was under a strict ban. Thus, Ingushetia’s leader has begun employing the same methods as Ramzan Kadyrov in Chechnya.
However, this is not a mere replication of his neighbor’s tactics. The Dagestani leader, Ramazan Abdulatipov, has chosen approximately the same tactics. So one can observe Moscow’s general strategy in the North Caucasus, when in exchange for a free hand at the local level, Moscow’s protégé should ensure well-being in his republic and provide favorable results during elections (http://ria.ru/analytics/20130515/937476998.html). Therefore, this is not a spontaneous reaction of a regional bureaucrat to the bomb attacks in the North Caucasus. Rather, it is essentially a colonial system that allows the central state to put part of the responsibility on the regional leaders, in exchange for the appearance of peace.
This system worked fairly well in the 19th century and even under Communism in the 20th century. However, there is no way for this system of governance not to backfire and result in Moscow’s loss of control over the region. Even fragile autonomy eventually makes people want complete sovereignty. The more Moscow relies on its regional henchmen, the more the region drifts away from Russia psychologically, toward complete independence.
--Mairbek Vatchagaev