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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| The Ossetian-Ingush tinderbox |
| 2006-05-03 |
| Last week there was a minor shoot-out between the security forces of Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov and President Alu Alkhanov's men. All the free mass media in Russia reported this incident, which was actually nothing out of the ordinary. But not long ago, Bibo Dzutsev, considered a hero in Abkhazia and South Ossetia for fighting for their separatist causes, was killed in North Ossetia, and his death went unmarked in the national media. This is a telling example: The mass media typically pay attention to Dagestan and Chechnya -- that is, to the East Caucasus. But the tinderbox in the Caucasus is moving to the West Caucasus. Moscow has already committed a number of errors in the West Caucasus, all the more vexing since they were acts of idiocy, not conspiracy. Without any cause whatsoever, the Moscow authorities "cleaned up" peaceful Adygeya, threatened to oust President Khazret Sovmen and merge the republic with the Krasnodar region. They drove a small number of Wahhabis up against the wall in peaceful Kabardino-Balkaria and essentially provoked their uprising. Ingushetia and North Ossetia are perhaps becoming Russia's two most serious problems in the Caucasus. In Ingushetia, the number of people who have been kidnapped and not found is increasing as real control is decreasing. Shamil Basayev gave an interview to Andrei Babitsky with impunity, and the camp of the Beslan terrorists was a few hundred meters from the Ingush village of Psedakh. The kidnapping of the elderly father-in-law of Ingush President Murat Zyazikov had the same impact as the kidnappings of General Gennady Shpigun or presidential envoy Valentin Vlasov in the late 1990s. How could this happen on "controlled" territory? The situation in North Ossetia is as grave. Ossetia is doomed to be the Russian outpost in the Caucasus forever -- although Beslan, the "350 hostages" and the grenade launcher that, according to the version of events established by Ella Kesayeva's Voice of Beslan organization, hit the roof of the gymnasium just before it was stormed may change that. It appears that President Vladimir Putin has not forgiven either the women of Beslan for their harsh words during their 2005 meeting or the Ossetian men for their reluctance to shut their women up. Deputy Prosecutor General Vladimir Kolesnikov, sent to investigate the Beslan terrorist act, has for some reason been detaining Ossetian officials who don't want to hush up the investigation. Today armed policemen fill North Ossetia, and Kolesnikov is as popular in Ossetia as the notoriously brutal 19th-century General Alexei Yermolov is in Chechnya. In these circumstances, a number of Kremlin actions seem like direct provocations, especially the arrest of the North Ossetian leader's respected chief of staff Sergei Takoyev; the repressions against the Alania football club (yet another blow to national pride); and Valery Gizoyev's call for Putin's re-election to a third term on behalf of a previously unknown nongovernmental organization. Other actions may have been taken by the Kremlin with the best intentions (for example, returning Ingush refugees to the Prigorodny region), but turned into provocations. Most dangerously, even actions not arranged by the Kremlin (as Dzutsev's death seems not to have been) are believed to be provocations anyway. Just a couple of lit matches would redirect the Ingush and Ossetians' hostility away from the Kremlin and toward each other. Then Moscow would be able to justify additional troops in Ingushetia or a change of power in North Ossetia. The most horrifying thing is that such a decision might not by made at a high level. As the experience of Karbadino-Balkaria has shown, decisions about the Caucasus are made not by the Kremlin, but by local cops. But the fire of a new Ossetian-Ingush conflict would blaze so strongly that no one would be able to tell if the lit match was arson or an accident. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #1 The ghost of Josef Vissarionovitch smiles knowingly... |
| Posted by: borgboy 2006-05-03 13:33 |