Window On Eurasia: Assassination Attempt In Ingushetia Threatens Medvedev’s Broader Policies

TUESDAY, JUNE 23, 2009

Window on Eurasia: Assassination Attempt in Ingushetia Threatens Medvedev’s Broader Policies

Paul Goble

Vienna, June 23 – The assassination attempt against Ingush President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, an action that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev views as a direct challenge to his own cadres policy, has prompted him to change course in ways that point to more violence, instability, and human rights violations in the North Caucasus.
As Moscow commentator Tatyana Stanovaya pointed out today, it is “obvious” that Medvedev views the attempt as an attack on his policies, given that the Russian president had insisted on Yevkurov’s appointment despite opposition from Vladimir Putin who was reluctant to oust his unpopular chekist predecessor (www.politcom.ru/8379.html). 
Not only did Medvedev devote almost his entire working day yesterday to the Yevkurov case – summoning top security officials, ordering a harsh response to the perpetrators, and visiting the Ingush leader in a Moscow hospital – but the Russian leader took an action which casts doubt on his “liberal” reputation and points to a new harsher line in the Caucasus.
During a pre-scheduled meeting with Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, Medvedev directed him to go after militants both inside Chechnya and across the North Caucasus, something Kadyrov has frequently offered to do but a move Moscow until now has been unwilling to allow.
While Kadyrov has been relatively successful in creating the façade of stabilization in his own republic, the Chechen leader’s thuggish behavior, his inclusion of former militants in his own administration, and his Chechen nationalist pretensions with respect to other territories, Ingushetia’s in particular, help explain Moscow’s reluctance even under Putin to take this step.
But now Medvedev has done so, and consequently, each of these factors is likely to have explosive consequences. Kadyrov’s violent approach not only will guarantee more human rights violations across a larger region but drive more young people in the Caucasus into the arms of the anti-government militants.
His likely effort to create what can only be described as a simulacrum of stability in other republics by including some militants in their administrations will at best lead to a band of Kadyrov-style states across the region and at worst to a complete breakdown of government authority, forcing Moscow to introduce more of its own forces or withdraw.
And Kadyrov’s pretensions toward the territory of other regions are certain to create new problems in Ingushetia, which existed in a common republic with the Chechens at the end of the Soviet period and which Kadyrov has indicated in the past he would like to see combined with his own. Many Ingush, along with many others, are certain to resist any such move.
Why then did Medvedev make this choice in the wake of the assassination attempt on Yevkurov? The answer, Stanovaya suggests, is to be found in the way in which the Russian president sees his fate wrapped up with Yevkurov, an individual who reflects Medvedev’s views on what a regional leader in the North Caucasus should be like.
It is worth remembering that Yevkurov was installed in place of Zyazikov who, the Moscow commentator points out, “completely lost control over the republic” with actions that “provoked sharp protests from the opposition and attacks [by the increasingly numerous militants] on the force structures.”
According to Stanovaya, the Kremlin had three choices for solving the cadres problem in Ingushetia. Indeed, she suggests, one of the reasons that the sometimes apparently clueless Zyazikov remained in office for as long as he did was because senior officials in Moscow could not reach an agreement on which choice they should make.
The first option, she says, was “the appointment of an authoritative local leader who would be closely tied with the local elites and who could on account of his real influence hold the republic.” The problem with that approach, Stanovaya continues, is that Moscow might lose control over such a strong leader and then have to struggle to remove him.
The second option, the Moscow commentator argues, was to name “a new ‘Zyazikov’,” someone from the force structures with no ties to local elites but capable of working with the siloviki and relying on the federal center “to impose order.” But that approach, as Zyazikov’s tenure showed, carried the risk of having someone in office who was in control of nothing.
The third option was, as Stanovaya says, both “risky and untried,” but it was the one that Medvedev ultimately backed by choosing Yevkurov. The desired candidate, according to this variant, was someone who enjoyed some authority with local people because of his career “but was not connected too closely with the local elites.”
Yevkurov was in fact the second person of this type Medvedev had named to head a North Caucasus republic. Earlier, he had appointed Boris Ebzeyev to head Karachayevo-Cherkessia. But after Yevkurov was named, Stanovaya continues, “experts recognized that a certain Medvedev style of cadre policy was being formed.”
In their commentaries about this, she writes, “the main risk” they was the lack of administrative experience in such candidates. But, Stanovaya notes, “the main risk turned out to be something else: Yevkurov was making sufficient progress at least compared to Zyazikov that he became a target.
But there is an even larger risk on view now. If Medvedev shifts totally and completely into the camp of those like Putin who believe that force alone will be sufficient to defeat the militants, who support people like Kadyrov, and who back outsider siloviki to fill key posts, then what will be at risk is any possibility of stability in the North Caucasus anytime soon.
And that danger helps explain why some are saying “the Kremlin does not control the situation” (www.gazeta.ru/comments/2009/06/22_e_3214257.shtml), why others are speaking about the existence there of “an underground terrorist state” (www.mk.ru/incident/305687.html), and while still a third insists that what Ingushetia needs now are “not soldiers but ethnographers” (infox.ru/authority/state/2009/06/22/yevkurov_mysli.phtml).

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Window On Eurasia: Assassination Attempt In Ingushetia Threatens Medvedev’s Broader Policies

TUESDAY, JUNE 23, 2009

Window on Eurasia: Assassination Attempt in Ingushetia Threatens Medvedev’s Broader Policies

Paul Goble

Vienna, June 23 – The assassination attempt against Ingush President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, an action that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev views as a direct challenge to his own cadres policy, has prompted him to change course in ways that point to more violence, instability, and human rights violations in the North Caucasus.
As Moscow commentator Tatyana Stanovaya pointed out today, it is “obvious” that Medvedev views the attempt as an attack on his policies, given that the Russian president had insisted on Yevkurov’s appointment despite opposition from Vladimir Putin who was reluctant to oust his unpopular chekist predecessor (www.politcom.ru/8379.html). 
Not only did Medvedev devote almost his entire working day yesterday to the Yevkurov case – summoning top security officials, ordering a harsh response to the perpetrators, and visiting the Ingush leader in a Moscow hospital – but the Russian leader took an action which casts doubt on his “liberal” reputation and points to a new harsher line in the Caucasus.
During a pre-scheduled meeting with Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, Medvedev directed him to go after militants both inside Chechnya and across the North Caucasus, something Kadyrov has frequently offered to do but a move Moscow until now has been unwilling to allow.
While Kadyrov has been relatively successful in creating the façade of stabilization in his own republic, the Chechen leader’s thuggish behavior, his inclusion of former militants in his own administration, and his Chechen nationalist pretensions with respect to other territories, Ingushetia’s in particular, help explain Moscow’s reluctance even under Putin to take this step.
But now Medvedev has done so, and consequently, each of these factors is likely to have explosive consequences. Kadyrov’s violent approach not only will guarantee more human rights violations across a larger region but drive more young people in the Caucasus into the arms of the anti-government militants.
His likely effort to create what can only be described as a simulacrum of stability in other republics by including some militants in their administrations will at best lead to a band of Kadyrov-style states across the region and at worst to a complete breakdown of government authority, forcing Moscow to introduce more of its own forces or withdraw.
And Kadyrov’s pretensions toward the territory of other regions are certain to create new problems in Ingushetia, which existed in a common republic with the Chechens at the end of the Soviet period and which Kadyrov has indicated in the past he would like to see combined with his own. Many Ingush, along with many others, are certain to resist any such move.
Why then did Medvedev make this choice in the wake of the assassination attempt on Yevkurov? The answer, Stanovaya suggests, is to be found in the way in which the Russian president sees his fate wrapped up with Yevkurov, an individual who reflects Medvedev’s views on what a regional leader in the North Caucasus should be like.
It is worth remembering that Yevkurov was installed in place of Zyazikov who, the Moscow commentator points out, “completely lost control over the republic” with actions that “provoked sharp protests from the opposition and attacks [by the increasingly numerous militants] on the force structures.”
According to Stanovaya, the Kremlin had three choices for solving the cadres problem in Ingushetia. Indeed, she suggests, one of the reasons that the sometimes apparently clueless Zyazikov remained in office for as long as he did was because senior officials in Moscow could not reach an agreement on which choice they should make.
The first option, she says, was “the appointment of an authoritative local leader who would be closely tied with the local elites and who could on account of his real influence hold the republic.” The problem with that approach, Stanovaya continues, is that Moscow might lose control over such a strong leader and then have to struggle to remove him.
The second option, the Moscow commentator argues, was to name “a new ‘Zyazikov’,” someone from the force structures with no ties to local elites but capable of working with the siloviki and relying on the federal center “to impose order.” But that approach, as Zyazikov’s tenure showed, carried the risk of having someone in office who was in control of nothing.
The third option was, as Stanovaya says, both “risky and untried,” but it was the one that Medvedev ultimately backed by choosing Yevkurov. The desired candidate, according to this variant, was someone who enjoyed some authority with local people because of his career “but was not connected too closely with the local elites.”
Yevkurov was in fact the second person of this type Medvedev had named to head a North Caucasus republic. Earlier, he had appointed Boris Ebzeyev to head Karachayevo-Cherkessia. But after Yevkurov was named, Stanovaya continues, “experts recognized that a certain Medvedev style of cadre policy was being formed.”
In their commentaries about this, she writes, “the main risk” they was the lack of administrative experience in such candidates. But, Stanovaya notes, “the main risk turned out to be something else: Yevkurov was making sufficient progress at least compared to Zyazikov that he became a target.
But there is an even larger risk on view now. If Medvedev shifts totally and completely into the camp of those like Putin who believe that force alone will be sufficient to defeat the militants, who support people like Kadyrov, and who back outsider siloviki to fill key posts, then what will be at risk is any possibility of stability in the North Caucasus anytime soon.
And that danger helps explain why some are saying “the Kremlin does not control the situation” (www.gazeta.ru/comments/2009/06/22_e_3214257.shtml), why others are speaking about the existence there of “an underground terrorist state” (www.mk.ru/incident/305687.html), and while still a third insists that what Ingushetia needs now are “not soldiers but ethnographers” (infox.ru/authority/state/2009/06/22/yevkurov_mysli.phtml).

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Window On Eurasia: Medvedev Tells Arabs Russia Is An ‘Organic Part’ Of Muslim World

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 24, 2009

Window on Eurasia: Medvedev Tells Arabs Russia is an ‘Organic Part’ of Muslim World

Paul Goble

Vienna, June 24 – In what many are certain to view as his response to US President Barak Obama’s Cairo address earlier this month, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told a meeting of the Arab League there yesterday that Russia is “an organic part” of the Muslim world and opposes Western efforts to promote democratic change in the Middle East.
“Islam,” Medvedev told his audience, “is an inalienable part of Russian history and culture, given that more than 20 million Russian citizens are among the faithful. Consequently, he said, “Russia does not need to seek friendship with the Muslim world: Our country is an organic part of this world” (www.i-r-p.ru/page/stream-event/index-23456.html).
But two other of the Russian leader’s comments were likely to be even more welcome by members of the Arab League. On the one hand, he said Moscow opposes Western efforts to promote democratic change in the region. And on the other, he called for creating a Palestinian state with a capital in East Jerusalem (www.interfax-religion.ru/?act=dujour&div=299). 
Because of its own history, Medvedev said, Russia is sympathetic to “the striving of Arab countries to combine in their development the most contemporary trends with respect for national and religious traditions.” That is the only way, he said, “to strengthen political stability and to achieve economic prosperity and social well-being in the region.”
The Russian president argued that the Arab world had much to “teach” others as the world struggles to overcome the global crisis, which Medvedev said, bears “a civilizational character” and consequently, “any efforts at mentoring, the promotion of democratization, or even more direct interference from outside here, in [his] view, are absolutely impermissible.”
Moreover and in what many will see as a direct response to Obama’s support for democracy and human rights and the American president’s criticism of authoritarianism, Medvedev said that “any attempts” to “create a universal model of development” and extend it “to the entire world will not work” or will “unfortunately” lead to a catastrophe.”
And with respect to the Palestinian issue, the Russian president said that “the chief task now is the rapid renewal of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations” because “the pause which has arisen in them has dragged out too long,” a development which he said is generating “ever greater concern.”
Medvedev suggested that the upcoming Moscow conference on the Near East could play an important role in leading to the creation of “an independent, sovereign and viable Palestinian state with a capital in East Jerusalem, living in peace and security with all the countries of the region, including Israel.”
During the same visit to Cairo, Medvedev and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak signed a strategic partnership agreement outlining the directions of bilateral cooperation between the Russian Federation and Egypt over the next ten years as well as a number of specific accords on a variety of questions (www.i-r-p.ru/page/stream-event/index-23454.html).
Medvedev’s remarks, which were only underscored by Moscow’s agreements with Egypt, were clearly intended to send a message to Arab and Muslim countries around the world that the Russian Federation is prepared to support their authoritarian regimes in the name of stability.
Moreover, the Russian president’s words were equally clearly intended to signal Western governments and especially Washington that Moscow is now prepared to actively oppose any moves to promote democracy and human rights in this region and to press Israel for concessions opening the way to the establishment of an independent Palestine.
But Medvedev’s argument may have the greatest resonance where he did not intend it: within the Russian Federation itself. Muslims there are certain to read his comments as the basis for making greater claims for their community and for opposing the newly intensified efforts of the Russian Orthodox Church to dominate the ideological scene there.

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Window On Eurasia: Rakhimov Remains — And Thus So Too Does His Challenge to Moscow

MONDAY, JUNE 22, 2009

Window on Eurasia: Rakhimov Remains — and Thus So Too Does His Challenge to Moscow

Paul Goble

Vienna, June 22 – After making the most withering critique of Moscow’s approach ever offered by an incumbent leader of a subject of the Russian Federation, Bashkortostan President Murtaza Rakhimov not only has extracted a promise from the center that he will remain in office until the end of his term in 2011 but also has left on the table all the criticisms he made.
And while “Vremya novostei’s” Kseniya Veretennikova is correct that, after some initially heated words, the central government and the party of power did not address Rakhimov’s critique, both his critique and perhaps even more the manner of his survival are certain to resonate with other regional leaders (www.vremya.ru/2009/107/4/231650.html).
Indeed, at least some of the latter are likely to assume that in the current economic environment, they may be able to turn the tables on the central government, given the anger many Russians feel about Moscow’s policies and given the reluctance of the center to create even more problems for itself by removing longtime leaders like Rakhimov.
To the extent that some of the heads of the federal subjects do reach that conclusion, the Rakhimov affair could represent another turning point in Moscow’s relations with the Russian Federation’s various republics, krays and oblasts and open the way for a more open and intense debate on center-periphery relations. 
At the very least, what Rakhimov has accomplished by surviving is to underscore a reality that many commentators in Moscow and the West have been inclined to ignore: Regional leaders even after Vladimir Putin’s centralization drive are more powerful, at least in the negative sense of being able to create problems if challenged, than is generally assumed.
By remaining in office and even more by forcing Moscow to dispatch the Kremlin’s Vladislav Surkov to Ufa rather than being called on the carpet at the center, Rakhimov demonstrated that at least some regional leaders may be able to speak and act more independently than even they had believed.
On June 4, Rakhimov issued a withering critique of the Russian political system denouncing both Moscow’s violation of federalism and the monopoly of power by the Kremlin’s United Russia party. At the time, commentators suggested that he was simply slamming the door through which he was going to be pushed (www.mk.ru/politics/293874.html). 
But two weeks to the day his interview appeared in “Moskovsky komsomolets,” Rakhimov was not only still in office but was hosting Vladislav Surkov, the powerful deputy head of the Presidential Administration who many describe as the chief ideologist and enforcer of the policies of the Medvedev-Putin tandem.
After their meeting, Surkov announced that it had been constructive. “We hve met with one of the most authoritative leaders of the subjects of the Federation, as member of the supreme council of United Russia, who was involved in its creation. We discussed current questions, and we were yet again convinced that we think alike.”
Rakhimov responded by saying that “we discussed all current questions and as always there was complete mutual understanding between us. We have very respectful relations with the federal center. We always have supported and support now President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister and United Russian Party head Vladimir Putin.”
Veretennikova writes that there are reports that when Surkov spoke before the Bashkortostan section of United Russia, he said that Rakhimov is “one of the best regional leaders in the country.”And Rakhimov himself “officially declared,” she writes, that he “does not intend to leave office until the end of his term, which finishes in 2011.” 
In the opinion of the “Vremya novostei” journalist, these exchanges mean that Rakhimov will remain in office only until then and not longer and that Moscow rather than Bashkortostan’s elite will decide on his successor. In that, she may be right, although three years in politics and especially Russian politics is a long time – and Rakhimov has won that much time.
Moreover, Veretennikova says, “not one of the sharp questions which [Rakhimov and the Bashkir section of United Russia] raised received a positive response” from Surkov or from the center. But at the same time, Surkov and by implication Moscow had to praise and retain in office someone who had denounced the policies of both, without forcing him to recant.
That is a very real kind of power, even if it is not all of what Rakhimov might want. And his demonstration of it in this case could matter far more in the newly bubbling discussion of the future of federalism and other issues in the Russian Federation. (For one example which explicitly references Rakhimov’s critique, see www.lgz.ru/article/9183/.)

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Window On Eurasia: Beyond Pikalevo – Urals Workers Seize Control Of Plant’s Finances

TUESDAY, JUNE 23, 2009

Window on Eurasia: Beyond Pikalevo – Urals Workers Seize Control of Plant’s Finances

Paul Goble

Vienna, June 23 – Inspired by the example of Pikalevo, where workers blocked a federal highway to call attention to their plight, employees at many other enterprises around the country are increasingly adopting the same tactic, apparently hopeful that someone from Moscow will intervene, as Prime Minister Vladimir Putin did in that company town, and solve their problems.
But now a group of workers at a factory in Sverdlovsk oblast have taken this protest movement a step further: They have formed a council to oversee the financial operations in the hopes of recovering back wages, boosting the factory’s sales, and saving their jobs, in the face of what they say is an indifferent group of owners (www.finansmag.ru/news/22564).
The action of the workers of the Baranichi Electro-Mechanical Factory reflects the historical radicalism of workers from the Urals, but what is most striking about this development is that their efforts are supported by the oblast government, the leaders of which have met with the council to discuss this “unprecedented financial-economic situation.”
According to Finansmag.ru, the factory, which employs more than 1,000 people and is the dominant firm there, is at the verge of bankruptcy. It owes some 208 million rubles to its workers, 38 million rubles for gas, 15.7 million for electricity, and 40 million to others. And as production has fallen by 75 percent in the last year, the firm has little hope of repaying anyone. 
The owners of the enterprise have sought to shift responsibility for what has happened on to others, the business news site continues. But the “ineffectiveness” of their operation is shown, the site says, by the fact that “certain factory workers have not received their pay since September 2008.”
Oblast Governor Viktor Koksharov supports the council of the labor collective, his office says, pointedly noting that he has called on “law enforcement organs to establish ties with the council,” a clear effort to prevent the owners from moving against the workers at least in this case.
One reason for his supportive approach, of course, may be the recent statement by President Dmitry Medvedev that governors who do not do everything possible in their republics, krays or oblasts to ensure the payment of wages and to keep unemployment from rising will be dismissed.
The actions of the Baranichi workers have attracted the attention not only of Moscow and regional news agencies but also of unions like the Electricians Union, an indication that what the Baranichi workers have done may spread to other factories and transform Pikalevo-type demonstrations into something even more serious.
At the very least, such actions carry with them the risk of a kind of backdoor re-nationalization of some Russian industries, a move that might address the country’s current economic difficulties but one that could threaten any future foreign investment there once the current crisis passes.
But even more seriously and certainly more immediately, moves like the ones the Baranichi workers have taken, a syndicalist nationalization from below as it were, could endanger the Russian powers that be, especially if the workers having gained this form of economic influence should try to convert it into political power.
Given that there are an estimated 200 to 400 company towns like Pikalevo, that unpaid back wages and unemployment are both increasing, and that worker anger against owners is growing, the spread of this post-Pikalevo problem appears likely to create far more problems than its namesake did, something Moscow does not appear to have recognized.

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Window On Eurasia: Assassination Attempt In Ingushetia Threatens Medvedev’s Broader Policies

TUESDAY, JUNE 23, 2009

Window on Eurasia: Assassination Attempt in Ingushetia Threatens Medvedev’s Broader Policies

Paul Goble

Vienna, June 23 – The assassination attempt against Ingush President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, an action that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev views as a direct challenge to his own cadres policy, has prompted him to change course in ways that point to more violence, instability, and human rights violations in the North Caucasus.
As Moscow commentator Tatyana Stanovaya pointed out today, it is “obvious” that Medvedev views the attempt as an attack on his policies, given that the Russian president had insisted on Yevkurov’s appointment despite opposition from Vladimir Putin who was reluctant to oust his unpopular chekist predecessor (www.politcom.ru/8379.html). 
Not only did Medvedev devote almost his entire working day yesterday to the Yevkurov case – summoning top security officials, ordering a harsh response to the perpetrators, and visiting the Ingush leader in a Moscow hospital – but the Russian leader took an action which casts doubt on his “liberal” reputation and points to a new harsher line in the Caucasus.
During a pre-scheduled meeting with Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, Medvedev directed him to go after militants both inside Chechnya and across the North Caucasus, something Kadyrov has frequently offered to do but a move Moscow until now has been unwilling to allow.
While Kadyrov has been relatively successful in creating the façade of stabilization in his own republic, the Chechen leader’s thuggish behavior, his inclusion of former militants in his own administration, and his Chechen nationalist pretensions with respect to other territories, Ingushetia’s in particular, help explain Moscow’s reluctance even under Putin to take this step.
But now Medvedev has done so, and consequently, each of these factors is likely to have explosive consequences. Kadyrov’s violent approach not only will guarantee more human rights violations across a larger region but drive more young people in the Caucasus into the arms of the anti-government militants.
His likely effort to create what can only be described as a simulacrum of stability in other republics by including some militants in their administrations will at best lead to a band of Kadyrov-style states across the region and at worst to a complete breakdown of government authority, forcing Moscow to introduce more of its own forces or withdraw.
And Kadyrov’s pretensions toward the territory of other regions are certain to create new problems in Ingushetia, which existed in a common republic with the Chechens at the end of the Soviet period and which Kadyrov has indicated in the past he would like to see combined with his own. Many Ingush, along with many others, are certain to resist any such move.
Why then did Medvedev make this choice in the wake of the assassination attempt on Yevkurov? The answer, Stanovaya suggests, is to be found in the way in which the Russian president sees his fate wrapped up with Yevkurov, an individual who reflects Medvedev’s views on what a regional leader in the North Caucasus should be like.
It is worth remembering that Yevkurov was installed in place of Zyazikov who, the Moscow commentator points out, “completely lost control over the republic” with actions that “provoked sharp protests from the opposition and attacks [by the increasingly numerous militants] on the force structures.”
According to Stanovaya, the Kremlin had three choices for solving the cadres problem in Ingushetia. Indeed, she suggests, one of the reasons that the sometimes apparently clueless Zyazikov remained in office for as long as he did was because senior officials in Moscow could not reach an agreement on which choice they should make.
The first option, she says, was “the appointment of an authoritative local leader who would be closely tied with the local elites and who could on account of his real influence hold the republic.” The problem with that approach, Stanovaya continues, is that Moscow might lose control over such a strong leader and then have to struggle to remove him.
The second option, the Moscow commentator argues, was to name “a new ‘Zyazikov’,” someone from the force structures with no ties to local elites but capable of working with the siloviki and relying on the federal center “to impose order.” But that approach, as Zyazikov’s tenure showed, carried the risk of having someone in office who was in control of nothing.
The third option was, as Stanovaya says, both “risky and untried,” but it was the one that Medvedev ultimately backed by choosing Yevkurov. The desired candidate, according to this variant, was someone who enjoyed some authority with local people because of his career “but was not connected too closely with the local elites.”
Yevkurov was in fact the second person of this type Medvedev had named to head a North Caucasus republic. Earlier, he had appointed Boris Ebzeyev to head Karachayevo-Cherkessia. But after Yevkurov was named, Stanovaya continues, “experts recognized that a certain Medvedev style of cadre policy was being formed.”
In their commentaries about this, she writes, “the main risk” they was the lack of administrative experience in such candidates. But, Stanovaya notes, “the main risk turned out to be something else: Yevkurov was making sufficient progress at least compared to Zyazikov that he became a target.
But there is an even larger risk on view now. If Medvedev shifts totally and completely into the camp of those like Putin who believe that force alone will be sufficient to defeat the militants, who support people like Kadyrov, and who back outsider siloviki to fill key posts, then what will be at risk is any possibility of stability in the North Caucasus anytime soon.
And that danger helps explain why some are saying “the Kremlin does not control the situation” (www.gazeta.ru/comments/2009/06/22_e_3214257.shtml), why others are speaking about the existence there of “an underground terrorist state” (www.mk.ru/incident/305687.html), and while still a third insists that what Ingushetia needs now are “not soldiers but ethnographers” (infox.ru/authority/state/2009/06/22/yevkurov_mysli.phtml).

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Prague Watchdog: An Attempt On Russia’s Life

June 23rd 2009 · Prague Watchdog / Andrei Babitskyز ALSO AVAILABLE IN: RUSSIAN 

An attempt on Russia’s life

By Andrei Babitsky, special to Prague Watchdog

“And fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is for Allah.” (The Cow, 193)

The attempted assassination of Ingushetia’s President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov stands out sharply from the series of sensational and widely publicized series of physical attacks on senior North Caucasus officials in recent months. And the problem here lies not in the victim’s rank, regalia or service record. While it goes without saying that a bomb attack on a regional leader is in itself a scandalous and outrageous incident, an earlier attack carried out on President Murat Zyazikov in 2004 which bore many detailed similarities to this one was a less serious challenge to the power of the Russian state.

The fact is that the government officials fall into two categories, regardless of the posts they occupy. There are simple functionaries, who form the majority, and there are bearers of statehood, who fulfil the role of symbols. Yevkurov is one of the latter. His appointment to the post of the republic’s governor was the Kremlin’s deliberate and long-prepared reply to the threat of a new war which is slowly but surely unfolding in the North Caucasus. It has little to do with ethnic separatism, which though by and large defeated is a fundamentally different phenomenon: a religious war declared by a new breed of Caucasus insurgents who have arrived to replace the respectable fighters for the independence of Ichkeria.

Perhaps because of the explosive increase in the hostilities which have taken place in recent years, Ingushetia has become objectively the epicentre of the North Caucasus jihad. It was not through lack of professionalism, determination or other merits that the republic’s previous leader, Murat Zyazikov, found himself unable to cope with the situation, though this also played a part. For various reasons he was simply unable to assess the extent and character of the events that were unfolding, to identify their true nature. It is also not entirely clear whether today the federal centre really understands the seriousness of what is taking place. The mantras of the “fight against international terrorism and the ideologists of North Caucasus caliphate” which nowadays have been somewhat forgotten, were once used as propaganda tools to fit the criminal war in Chechnya into the worldwide front against global jihadism.

But now these approaches are more relevant than ever. The ideology of the new Caucasus war is potentially disastrous for Russia. The Caucasus mujahedin are not only waging their struggle for the establishment of a Sharia state in the North Caucasus – they deny Russia’s very right to exist, deprecating it as a criminal system of Kufr, and they will not agree to anything less than its complete dismantling. Estimates of the Caucasus Emirate’s military strength and fighting capacity are of no consequence. Today their numbers are in the hundreds, tomorrow they will be in the thousands, and the day after that they will be in the tens of thousands. The area within which the doctrine of “holy war” is spreading has been steadily increasing and has long left the borders of the North Caucasus behind. Not that all the opponents of the current Russian government are able to unite under the green banners of jihad, but many of them now look more favourably on the efforts and struggle of the Islamist underground, believing that they will bring closer the ultimate downfall of the Putin regime. Thus at one time did wealthy Russian industrialists like Savva Morozov sympathize with the fighters against autocracy, gladly supplying them with money. Who at the start of the twentieth century ever thought that the Bolshevik faction of the Social Democratic Party would be able to seize power in Russia, and then hold on to it for seven decades?

It is hard to say whether Vladislav Surkov and his like are aware that in the Caucasus the Russian state is confronted not by a handful of bandits, but by a complex system of views that is rooted in the tradition of many centuries. Perhaps the Kremlin has simply been frightened by the spread of the fighting. At any rate Yevkurov was sent to Ingushetia in order to bring order to a system of government which was riven by discord and had become an object of rejection and ridicule.

The attempt on the life of Ingushetia’s leader can therefore be compared with the assassination of Akhmat-Khadzhi Kadyrov, who at one time was also the personification of Russian power in Chechnya. A Chechen who restores Russia’s territorial integrity – that is not some mechanical reliance on collaboration, it is a concept based on the idea of a happy and centuries-old community of ethnic groups and nations that represent the multi-ethnic people of the Russian Federation. The death of Kadyrov Senior spun the flywheel of domestic Chechen terror that was unleashed by his son Ramzan. It very much looks as though a similar change of strategies and approaches is taking place in Ingushetia. To put it plainly, having survived the attempted assassination, Yevkurov is going to give up playing at democracy and turn into a merciless and unflinching tyrant like his Chechen colleagues. Perhaps the tyrant may not even be Yevkurov himself, but some freshly appointed messenger. Alas, however, the problems that will have to be solved by any emissary of the Kremlin are very different from those that the Russian authorities face in Chechnya.

Kadyrov’s “normalization” has achieved its success not only through repression, as many suppose. The basis of the success has been the fact of the capitulation of the army of Ichkerian fighters, who have laid down their arms in their thousands and gone over to Kadyrov’s side. These astonishing results have been obtained due to the fact that the idea of an independent Ichkeria fell between two stools – true independence on the one hand, and national revival on the other. While the progenitors of the ethno-separatist project were absolutely certain that one was impossible without the other, Kadyrov found it easy to demonstrate to the rank-and-file Ichkerians one simple truth: rampant and aggressive nationalism (for that is how the dream of the revival of the great traditions of the past was sung by the poets and adopted by the man in the street) is also possible within the body of Russia, under the direct supervision and patronage of the Kremlin. Those for whom the value of independence was linked not with a nationalist bacchanalia but with the right to live within the boundaries of a separate state turned out to be a pitiful minority and were either destroyed or left the country altogether.

Yevkurov has none of these components of success, nor can he. The new partisans of the Caucasus do not need military victory, nor do they need the Ingush or any other national idea. They desire no amnesty, for they seek paradise, and love to repeat that they “want to die more than others want to live.” The mujahedin want the establishment of the true faith, of Sharia law, of a state that is defined not by a single ethnos, but by the whole of the Ummah, the necessary precondition for the triumph of Islam and a comfortable existence. They believe that when Allah wills it they will be able to overthrow the criminal regime of the kafirs and reduce it to dust. It was one of the representatives of that regime whom they attempted to eliminate in the Vilayat of Ghalghai in the great Pan-Caucasian State of the Caucasus Emirate.
 

Photo: KavkazChat.com.

(Translation by DM)


http://www.watchdog.cz/?show=000000-000024-000004-000006〈=1

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