Starting Points: Ingushetia

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Apr 18, 2010

2 Leaders Vie for Loyalty in the Caucasus - NYTimes.com

By ELLEN BARRY

MAGAS, Russia — Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, the president of the Russian republic of Ingushetia, was sitting in his gold-domed palace, a warren of cool, empty marble halls surrounded by rings of gunmen.

Bodyguards stood outside the door, and an aide delivered tea and honey. The place seemed sealed off from the muddy chaos of the Caucasus, to say nothing of the guerrilla war being staged in the wooded foothills to the southeast.

And yet he talked about Doku Umarov, who claimed responsibility for last month’s double bombing in Moscow’s subway, as if the rebel leader were standing in the room.

“His time will come,” said Mr. Yevkurov, 46, who is scarred from an assassination attempt last June that Mr. Umarov claimed to have organized.

“Whether it’s tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, whether he dies of natural causes in the woods or in a cave, whether he is blown up or shot up, or if he is caught and locked away in a death cell,” Mr. Yevkurov said. “If he is still alive and walking around, that does not simply mean he has managed to survive. The Almighty is giving him the chance to find the strength to acknowledge the evil he has brought to people.”

“But he is not using this chance,” he said. “Retribution will reach him sooner or later.”

Moscow suddenly focused on Mr. Umarov last month, after he announced that he had ordered the bombings that killed 40 people in the subway. Russian leaders scrambled to sever his links to the public by pressing Google to remove his video messages, and they circulated a bill in Parliament that would ban the media from quoting him.

But Mr. Yevkurov was addressing an old enemy. He and Mr. Umarov, 46, were born within months of each other, in closely related ethnic groups that share an archaic wariness toward Moscow. Both were in their 20s when the Soviet Union fell, forcing young men in the Caucasus to choose sides in a separatist war. There they diverged, and two decades later the loyal Russian soldier and the battered rebel are still fighting.

Now the prize is something more slippery than territory: the loyalty of a generation that grew up in the chaos of those wars.

“In the Caucasus, a leader’s personality really matters,” said Ramzan R. Ugurchiev, 29, the chairman of Ingushetia’s youth committee. “There is a saying: If the leader is a wolf, we will be a pack of wolves. If the leader is a jackal, we will be a pack of jackals.”

Mr. Ugurchiev, like any young man here, could reel off a list of acquaintances who had “gone to the forest,” or joined the rebels. He guessed that 15 percent of his classmates had done so, vanishing with so little warning that their parents could never accept that they left voluntarily.

In some cases, he said, a voice simply reached them at the right time. Rebel recruiters like Said Buryatsky, killed in a special forces operation last month, tapped into the sense of injustice seething beneath the surface here, where the official unemployment figure is around 50 percent and young men chafe at heavy-handed treatment by federal counterterrorism troops.

“The harder you press down, the more we will press up against you,” Mr. Ugurchiev said. “It’s the Caucasus. It was always this way.”

Mr. Yevkurov — one of 12 children born to a peasant family — seemed to address this resentment head-on. He refused a lavish inauguration, saying he preferred to greet the public at evening prayers, and combines the suit and tie of a Moscow-backed bureaucrat with a traditional skullcap. Though counterinsurgency operations continued, he won over much of the opposition with open-handed gestures like giving out his cellphone number and responding to complaints personally.

That was part of his strategy. A career military intelligence officer, he said he had long believed that counterterrorism was mainly a matter of soft power.

“The most severe punishment, that should make up 1 percent,” he said. “Ninety-nine percent should be persuasion, persuasion, persuasion.”

His project was interrupted by a roar of flames last June, when a suicide bomber swerved into his motorcade, killing two in his party and badly wounding his brother. Mr. Yevkurov was still in a coma when the rebel Web site Kavkaz Center published a letter saying the bombing was ordered by Mr. Umarov, a former separatist leader who has embraced global jihad as his new ideology.

The letter professed special hatred for Mr. Yevkurov because he fought for Moscow in the second Chechen war, calling him “the faithful dog of Russia.”

“From the moment Yevkurov came to power,” the letter read, “we wanted to kill him.”

The attack gave Mr. Yevkurov a reason to hate Mr. Umarov — but he had reasons already. The Ingush people share a religion and a language with Chechens but have traditionally been more loyal to the federal center; they bristle when Chechens try to take control of their territory, as Mr. Umarov has. He also attended school in Beslan, where in 2004 separatists took more than 1,000 children and teachers hostage.

Mr. Umarov, meanwhile, has good reason to fear Mr. Yevkurov and his experiment in persuasion, said Sergei M. Markedonov, a Caucasus expert at the Institute for Political and Military Analysis, in Moscow. To survive, the insurgents need the support of 15 or 20 percent of the public, combined with a mood of “passive neutrality,” he said. Mr. Yevkurov is bidding for this percentage — and, critically, for the allegiance of people in their teens and 20s.

“That is the main force, of course,” Mr. Markedonov said. “Whoever wins over the young generation will win.”

That competition goes on, invisibly, in the pauses between explosions. When a counterterrorism operation in February killed four civilians who were in the forest gathering wild garlic, Mr. Yevkurov expressed regret over the deaths. He said that 180 garlic pickers had been evacuated in a sincere attempt to avoid killing civilians and that 18 militants had been killed in the attack.

But he was not the only one who recognized a public-relations moment. Moscow was still reeling when Mr. Umarov announced that the bombings there were revenge for the garlic pickers, “mercilessly destroyed, killed by those bandit groups under the name of the F.S.B.,” Russia’s security service.

Mr. Yevkurov responded with disdain, saying Mr. Umarov “portrays himself as a kind of Robin Hood, who defends people.”

“An opponent is an opponent,” he said.

“Had he been some enemy who came from outside I might have valued him, respected him,” he continued. “But this is an enemy who kills his own people and covers it up with ideas. I have no respect for him, despite all his abilities to hide.”

Apr 7, 2010

Alexander Tikhomirov's life illustrates challenge radical Islam poses in Russia

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By Philip P. Pan
Wednesday, April 7, 2010; A08

MOSCOW -- He had been a bright but lonely child from a sleepy city near the Mongolian border, in a Buddhist region of Russia far from the nation's Muslim centers. But by the time he was killed last month, thousands of miles away in the volatile North Caucasus, Alexander Tikhomirov had become the face of an Islamist insurgency.

After two young women blew themselves up on the Moscow subway last week, killing 40 people in the city's worst terrorist attack in years, investigators said they suspected that Tikhomirov had recruited and trained them, and perhaps dozens of other suicide bombers.

How the schoolboy whom neighbors called Sascha became the tech-savvy militant known as Sayid Buryatsky remains a question wrapped in rumor and speculation. But the outline of Tikhomirov's journey from the Siberian steppes to the mountains of Chechnya provides a sense of the challenge that radical Islam poses in Russia and the speed with which the insurgency in the nation's southwest is changing.

In less than two years with the rebels, Tikhomirov became their most effective propagandist, drawing in young Muslims with his fluent Russian, colloquial interpretations of Islam and mastery of the Internet. When security forces gunned him down last month at age 27, the guerrillas immediately cast him as a martyr.

Even in death, he remains influential. The rebel leader Doku Umarov has vowed fresh attacks in the Russian heartland by the brigade of suicide bombers that Tikhomirov helped revive. And he remains a digital legend, with his writings and videos preserved on the Web and his DVDs sold outside mosques across the former Soviet Union.

Neighbors in Ulan Ude, capital of the Siberian province of Buryatia, remember Tikhomirov as an awkward boy from a troubled family. His father was Buryat, an ethnic minority related to Mongols, and died soon after he was born. His mother, said to be an ethnic Russian, struggled to make ends meet at a local market.

One resident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of police scrutiny, said Tikhomirov's interest in Islam came after he was forced to drop out of high school and attend vocational school. Others traced it to a stepfather from the Caucasus.

But in a letter posted on a rebel Web site, Tikhomirov's mother said he was simply drawn in by a library copy of the Koran when he was 17. "That same year, he started to search for people who could tell him anything about Islam," she wrote.

Tikhomirov may have had an early brush with Islamic extremism and Russia's heavy-handed efforts to stamp it out. An Uzbek preacher named Bakhtiyar Umarov moved to his city about the time he converted, and Tikhomirov studied with him, acquaintances said. After Umarov caused a stir by trying to build a mosque, Russia deported the preacher to Uzbekistan, where he was jailed on charges of "terrorist propaganda." But his defenders insist that he is a moderate and could not have radicalized Tikhomirov.

In his late teens, Tikhomirov moved to Moscow, where he attended an Islamic college that the authorities later closed in a crackdown on suspected extremism. He then traveled to Cairo, where he studied Arabic and attended lectures by Muslim scholars, one of whom he cited years later to justify violence in the name of Islam.

In 2003, he returned to Moscow, telling friends that the Egyptian authorities had kicked him out for his religious activities. He took the Muslim name Sayid, calling himself Sayid Buryatsky.

But he seemed far from ready to join the rebels in the North Caucasus. Investigators say he took a job as a low-level assistant to the Russian Council of Muftis, which unites the nation's Muslim spiritual boards.

Suppressed by the czars and the Communists, Islam has enjoyed a fitful rebirth in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union. Most of the nation's estimated 20 million Muslims are ethnic minorities who adhere to a moderate branch of the faith. But radical views have made inroads, fueled by foreign proselytizers and frustration with state-backed spiritual leaders.

Acquaintances say Tikhomirov embraced a movement known as Salafism, which argues that Islam has been corrupted over the centuries and urges a return to the stricter practices of the earliest Muslims. The movement is popular among young Muslims in Russia, but the security forces often target its adherents as extremists.

Russia's traditional Islamic leaders have tried to steer young people toward moderate views, but a severe shortage of mosques, due in part to state limits, has made that difficult. In Moscow, six mosques serve as many as 3 million believers, the largest Muslim population of any city in Europe.

Aslam Ezhaev, director of an Islamic publishing house, said Tikhomirov voiced frustration with Muslim officialdom and eventually returned to Buryatia, where he took a job as a warehouse guard and offered to translate Arabic books for him.

Ezhaev suggested that Tikhomirov start a podcast for his Web site, Radio Islam. Tikhomirov proved be a talented preacher; his lectures were an immediate hit.

Ezhaev said he opposed violence and forbade Tikhomirov to discuss jihad. "It was easy for him to stay within the limits," he said. "I didn't see any signs of fanaticism."

On the Web, radicals criticized Tikhomirov for refusing to talk about Russia's brutal efforts to crush the insurgency in the Caucasus, where rebels in 2007 declared jihad to establish an Islamist emirate.

In the spring of 2008, Tikhomirov received a recruitment video from a senior rebel commander. "I considered it probably three or five seconds," he recalled in a video of his own, then concluded that God was challenging him to back up his sermons with action.

Because of his mixed ethnicity, he quickly became a powerful symbol for an insurgency trying to expand beyond Chechnya to the rest of the Caucasus. His sermons, which he filmed in combat gear, weaved scripture with sarcasm, striking a chord in an impoverished Muslim region brimming with resentment against the security forces.

Tikhomirov called the screams of injured enemies "music for the ears" and detailed his central role in the campaign of suicide bombings that began last summer with the revival of Riyad-us Saliheen, a brigade that once staged attacks across Russia.

"While I am alive," he wrote in December, "I will do everything possible so that the ranks of Riyad-us Saliheen are broadened and new waves of mujaheddin go on to martyrdom operations."

On March 2, when security forces surrounded him and other fighters in a village in Ingushetia, Tikhomirov recorded a final sermon on his mobile phone, officials said. The authorities recovered the phone, along with a 50-liter barrel of explosives.

Apr 5, 2010

Masha Lipman - How Russia nourishes radical Islam - washingtonpost.com

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By Masha Lipman
Monday, April 5, 2010; A11

MOSCOW

After the bombings in this city's subway system last week, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton noted that we all "face the same enemy." No one -- whether in Moscow, London, Madrid or New York -- can be fully secure against acts of terrorism. In Russia, however, the problem of terrorism is arguably more difficult than in Europe or the United States. We have radical Islam right inside our borders, in the North Caucasus. There is no getting away from it: People who live in this territory are Russian citizens; its provinces are financed by the Russian federal budget. It is as though Afghanistan, with its insurgent activity, were a U.S. state within the borders of the Lower 48.

But while the challenge of terrorism cries for long-term, consistent strategy, Russia's system of heavy-handed and unaccountable governance precludes strategic thinking.

In the early 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Boris Yeltsin's government responded to armed secessionists in Chechnya by waging a full-scale war. Russia's armed forces were undertrained and undersupplied; horrific atrocities ensued on both sides. The 1996 peace agreement was evidence of Russia's humiliating weakness: A former superpower failed to subdue its own tiny region.

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"Peace" in Chechnya entailed frequent kidnappings for ransom, hostage-taking and terrorist attacks. In 1999, a Chechen force invaded the neighboring province of Dagestan, about the same time explosions of apartment buildings in three Russian cities famously took the lives of roughly 300 people.

When Vladimir Putin became president in 2000, his solution was a new war. With it came more atrocities, deeper brutalization and, in Russia at large, growing xenophobia against "those from the Caucasus." This time federal forces defeated the Chechen fighters, but terrorist attacks continued through 2004. The most horrific of these was the seizure of Beslan school where more than 330 hostages, over half of them children, were killed that September.

By the mid-2000s, secession was no longer the issue in Chechnya, but a new problem was building: Militant Islam was on the rise all over the North Caucasus. In the early '90s Islam had still been weak in this traditionally Muslim territory; adults had secular Soviet educations, and the attraction of Russian culture was still strong. But the new generation growing up in the Chechnya devastated by the Russian army, and in neighboring provinces such as Dagestan and Ingushetia, were increasingly influenced by Islamic culture and Islam, not infrequently its radical strains. Clandestine extremist groups called for jihad across the territory of Russia. Training centers for suicide bombers reportedly operate in the North Caucasus.

The Kremlin shifted tactics a few years ago, installing pro-Moscow leaders in these Muslim provinces and reducing the federal government's mission to allocating funds and occasional anti-terrorist operations. It turned a blind eye to subversive attacks, explosions, and assassinations of area police and local administrators, which have become routine in Ingushetia and Dagestan. The central government also ignored the brutal practices local leaders used against Islamic radicals and other criminal or extremist groups. As long as violence was contained within the North Caucasus, the thinking went, the bulk of Russia remained relatively safe. But last week's attacks underscore just how flawed and shortsighted this policy is.

Today, the rise of radical Islam in the North Caucasus is inevitable, especially with such forces active in many parts of the world. Russia's only strategic option is a long-term and multi-pronged government commitment to the problem. It is critical that the Russian government and the nation treat the people of the North Caucasus as their fellow countrymen -- no easy task given that today they are seen as a suspect culture or simply unwanted intruders. Other urgent needs are to improve security in Russia at large as well as to increase the efficiency of anti-terrorism practices. But these missions will be next to impossible in a country where the violent behavior of police officers makes them a threat to the people, rather than a force from which citizens can draw protection.

Strains of official rhetoric echo the language of 1999: After the infamous blasts of Moscow apartment buildings, Putin pledged to wipe out terrorists in outhouses. Now he vows "to drag them out of the sewer and into broad daylight." But large-scale use of force is not an option. As happened in the '90s, it is bound to start another vicious circle of punitive measures and extremists' efforts to exact revenge.

Reasonable calls have also been heard. President Dmitry Medvedev spoke last week about the need to create in the North Caucasus "the right kind of modern environment for education, for doing business, for overcoming cronyism . . . and, of course, for confronting corruption." But corruption plagues more than the North Caucasus; it's the texture of the Russian system of governance, which is built on political monopoly and unaccountability. Unless Russia makes systemic reforms, good intentions will not translate into stronger policies.

Masha Lipman, editor of the Carnegie Moscow Center's Pro et Contra journal, writes a monthly column for The Post.

Nov 12, 2009

The softer hand - washingtonpost.com

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Ingushetia's president pledged to stop abuses against rebels, but violence on both sides persists

By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, November 12, 2009

MAGAS, RUSSIA -- When the Kremlin appointed him president of Ingushetia, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov promised a new approach to fighting the Islamist insurgency that has made this splinter of land the most volatile of Russia's Muslim republics.

His predecessor tried to crush the rebels with a campaign of torture, abductions and killings. But Yevkurov pledged to rein in the government's security forces, saying their abuses were helping the rebels attract recruits. He reached out to human rights groups and his pro-democracy critics. And he offered a limited amnesty to the militants.

Now, a year after taking office, Yevkurov and his experiment in moderation are at a crossroads. Instead of retreating, the insurgents have stepped up their attacks, while the security services continue to kidnap and kill with impunity, activists say. With the assassination of a leading opposition figure last month, public anger is climbing toward a boiling point.

There's a lot riding on Yevkurov, who represents an alternative to Moscow's traditional emphasis on heavy-handed security tactics in the troubled North Caucasus. If he falters, the government is likely to clamp down again, strengthening local autocrats such as Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin's strongman in neighboring Chechnya, and risking a full-scale war. But if he succeeds, Russia's leaders might see a way to end the cycle of violence that has made the region a human rights disaster zone and an obstacle to serious reform of the nation's security services.

Yevkurov himself acknowledges that he has yet to make much of a difference. "There is nothing special to boast of," he said at a news conference Tuesday devoted to his first year in office. "Everybody hoped that Yevkurov would come and it would all be settled. But, as we can see, this has not happened."

A career soldier, war hero and native son of Ingushetia, Yevkurov, 46, is one of the few regional governors in Russia appointed by President Dmitry Medvedev, who has struggled to set himself apart from his powerful patron and predecessor, Vladimir Putin, now the prime minister.

Hopes soared when Yevkurov took office, in part because his predecessor, Murat Zyazikov, a former KGB official with ties to Putin, was so unpopular. Yevkurov promised to attack rampant corruption, resettle refugees from the region's wars and investigate crimes by the security forces.

But in June, a suicide bomber struck Yevkurov's motorcade, putting him in a coma. Two months later, as he prepared to leave the hospital, another suicide attack leveled a police station, killing at least 24 people and injuring 200 others. The fate of his effort to defeat the insurgency by wooing the public suddenly seemed uncertain.

In an interview at his heavily guarded presidential palace, Yevkurov covered burns on his hands as he vowed to stay the course. "I don't have any anger or wish for revenge," he said softly. "On the contrary, I want to continue a dialogue with the public, including the criminals, so that they realize what they are doing and take the right track."

He said he will continue "doing things completely differently" from his predecessor, who employed harsh security measures and was fired by Medvedev after a public outcry over the killing of a prominent opposition figure.

After the slaying of another opposition leader, Maksharip Aushev, last month, though, critics are asking whether Yevkurov has the clout to stand up to the security structures, which even he has acknowledged may have been involved.

"The situation isn't getting any better. In fact, it's getting worse," said Magomed Mutsolgov, director of the human rights group Mashr, which assists people whose relatives have been kidnapped or killed by the authorities. He said killings and abductions have continued, but he praised Yevkurov for meeting regularly with activists and allowing them to publish newspapers critical of the government.

"I can see he wants to change things," Mutsolgov added. "Unfortunately, he doesn't have full control over the security forces, because they report to federal structures, to Moscow." Some also answer to Kadyrov, whose Chechen units are increasingly active in Ingushetia, he said.

Yevkurov has gone out of his way to meet with families whose loved ones have disappeared, but many have given up on him. "I've met with him four times and spoken on the phone with him twice. He's always warm, but there have been zero results," said Ilyas Malsagov, 38, whose brother, an architect and devout Muslim, was seized by uniformed men wearing masks in December and has not been seen since.

Yevkurov insisted he has full authority over the security forces and agreed that more needs to be done to limit and punish their excesses. But he accused families of not being honest about why the security forces might have targeted their relatives and suggested that harsh tactics against "terrorists and bandits violating the law with weapons in their hands" are sometimes justified.

Yevkurov appeared most frustrated by his failure to stamp out corruption. He said the officials who steal state funds are making protection payments to the rebels, strengthening the insurgency with money intended to defeat it. Meanwhile, his efforts to crack down have been stymied by corrupt courts, he said.

Musa Pliyev, an aide to Yevkurov who resigned after Aushev's death, said the governor is surrounded by corrupt officials trying to sabotage him. Aushev was among many who urged him to begin cleaning house by firing the province's top prosecutor, judge and security officials.

"I feel sorry for Yevkurov," the opposition leader said in an interview before he was killed last month. "He's an honest person. He's making enemies among both the guerrillas and the corrupt officials.

"He's working hard, but he can't do it alone."

Oct 25, 2009

Opposition figure Maksharip Aushev gunned down in Russia's North Caucasus - washingtonpost.com

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By Philip P. Pan
Sunday, October 25, 2009 4:58 PM

MOSCOW -- A popular opposition figure in Russia's restive Ingushetia province was gunned down Sunday morning in the latest killing of a government critic in the North Caucasus, prompting outrage from human rights groups and raising fears of further violence in the region.

Maksharip Aushev, a businessman who had led mass protests against abuses by the government's security forces, was driving on a major highway in the neighboring province of Kabardino-Balkaria when a passing vehicle sprayed his car with more than 60 bullets, authorities said. The attack also seriously wounded a passenger.

Colleagues condemned the slaying as an attempt to silence voices critical of the authorities, and said it sent an especially chilling message because Aushev held a post on a human rights council established by Moscow and enjoyed the support of Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, the local governor appointed by President Dmitry Medvedev last year.

Yevkurov has reached out to human rights activists and the opposition, offering them a degree of protection, but Aushev's killing suggests that he, and by extension the Kremlin, may be losing control over the overlapping law enforcement agencies fighting an growing Islamist insurgency in the region.

In an interview with The Washington Post this month, Aushev accused the security forces of conducting an indiscriminate campaign of abductions, torture and killings in Ingushetia that had only strengthened the rebels. He singled out the powerful Federal Security Service, one of the successors of the KGB, as well as local police controlled by Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin's strongman in neighboring Chechnya.

"I don't consider them officers. I consider them bandits," he said, over dinner during the wedding of one of his sons.

Two years ago, another son and a nephew were abducted, taken to Chechnya and tortured. Aushev blamed the FSB and won their release by organizing huge street protests, emerging as one of the most outspoken leaders of the opposition to Ingushetia's governor at the time, Murat Zyazikov, a former KGB officer and an ally of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

After another opposition figure, Magomed Yevloyev, was shot to death in police custody last year, Aushev agreed to take over his Web site, a news operation that infuriated the authorities with its reports on corruption and human rights violations. He later led protests that helped persuade the Kremlin to fire Zyazikov and bring in Yevkurov.

In a show of support for the new governor, Aushev said he retired from politics and no longer considered himself a member of the opposition. But he had no illusions about the new governor's ability to rein in the security forces. "From day one, they've been sabotaging him, undermining his authority and continuing with the illegal executions and torture," he said.

Aushev added that the FSB still considered him "enemy number one."

A month ago, the security forces stopped his car and attempted to take him into custody after he left a meeting with the government. He escaped only because a crowd of motorists, including an aide to the governor, surrounded him.

"If I had been a half-meter closer, they would have tied me up and I would have disappeared without a trace," he told Caucasian Knot, a Web site that covers the region.

In a statement Sunday, Yevkurov described Aushev's slaying as a "heinous crime intended to destabilize the region" and vowed to do everything in his power to punish the killers.

One of the governor's aides, Musa Pliyev, a former member of the opposition who had worked closely with Aushev, said there was little doubt "the murder was a political one" but stopped short of blaming the security services.

"If the authorities who should guarantee the freedom and safety of their citizens fail to do this, then they must be blamed for Aushev's death and many other human rights activists and journalists who have been killed recently," he added.

The shooting follows the execution-style killings of two charity workers in the Chechen capital of Grozny in August and of Natalya Estemirova, Chechnya's most prominent human rights activist, whose body was found in Ingushetia in July.

Aug 26, 2009

Boris Nemtsov: Putin Failed to Pacify the North Caucasus

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By Boris Nemtsov

One of the biggest myths perpetrated by Vladimir Putin’s propaganda machine is that during his 10-year rule over Russia, the former president and current prime minister succeeded in “pacifying” the North Caucasus. Nothing could be further from the truth. What we are witnessing today is the start of the third Caucasus war in 15 years, following the two Chechen wars of 1994 and 1999.

There was the June 22 attack on Ingushetia's President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, the recent murders of Chechen human-rights activists Natalia Estemirova and Zarema Sadulaeva, and last week's terrorist attack in Nazran, which killed scores and maimed hundreds. Add to these the near-daily attempted murders of police officers in Dagestan (according to the local interior ministry, there have been 128 murder attempts against law-enforcement officials since the beginning of this year alone) and the constant kidnappings in Chechnya (Russian human-rights watchdog Memorial documented 74 kidnappings and 16 killings of Chechen residents between January and June). And this is only an abridged catalogue of the blood spilled in the North Caucasus during the past few months.

There are several reasons why the "pacification" of the region has failed. Vladimir Putin committed a fateful mistake when he struck cynical deals with influential clans in the North Caucasus to keep the region under Moscow's formal control: Federal money and blank checks on lawlessness to often criminal and corrupt local leaders were exchanged for their personal loyalty and support during so-called elections. The result of such deals is that the laws of the Russian Federation no longer apply in the North Caucasus, which is ruled by increasingly repressive regimes.

According to a recent Human Rights Watch report, Chechen authorities practice extrajudicial killings and punitive house-burnings against the relatives of suspected insurgents. Memorial workers and other rights activists in Chechnya point to constant surveillance of their activities by the local authorities. Before she was herself kidnapped and murdered, Estemirova, who worked for Memorial, was investigating the "disappearances" of people in Chechnya.

Meanwhile, the Moscow-installed Chechen leader, Putin friend and former militant Ramzan Kadyrov, has built a veritable personality cult around himself since coming to power in 2007. Moscow continues to supply 70%-90% of the revenue to the regional governments there, but it has failed to extend the writ of Russian law to the Caucasus.

Another important reason for the Kremlin's Caucasus failure is the elimination of democratic procedures. "Elections" in which Mr. Putin and his party receive 100% of the vote on a 100% turnout in Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan are a throwback to Soviet times. They have left citizens without any real influence over their governments. The Kremlin's stubborn insistence on retaining former KGB Gen. Murat Zyazikov as president of Ingushetia despite overwhelming local opposition has no doubt greatly contributed to the recent upsurge in violence in that region.

Finally, Russia's recognition of the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia (cheered on by separatists in the North Caucasus) after last year's Georgian war could come back to haunt Moscow. With this action, Mr. Putin and his successor in the Kremlin, Dmitry Medvedev, signaled that threats and blackmail can go a long way in achieving the separatists' goals. If and when the federal government, crippled by the economic crisis, stops its generous flow of money to the corrupt North Caucasus elites, Chechnya, Ingushetia and other republics of the Russian Caucasus may be tempted to follow the path of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

The main lesson of recent tragedies is surely that cynicism, brutality and propaganda will not solve the very real political, economic and security problems of the North Caucasus. These problems can only be solved with honest policies based on the rule of law, democracy and respect for the rights of citizens.

—Mr. Nemtsov was deputy prime minister of Russia (1997-1998) and is a leader of the Solidarity opposition movement.

Aug 17, 2009

Many Killed in Russia Bomb Attack

At least 20 people have been killed by a bomb at a police station in Russia's southern republic of Ingushetia.

The suspected suicide attack in Nazran, Ingushetia's main city, injured more than 60 people, including children.

The republic borders Chechnya and has seen a spate of shootings, bombings and other attacks on police and government.

The Ingush leader blamed militants, but Russian President Dmitry Medvedev sacked Ingushetia's interior minister, saying the attack had been preventable.

"The police must protect the people and the police must also be able to defend themselves," Mr Medvedev said.

Escalating clashes

Monday's bomb attack was described as the deadliest strike in months in Ingushetia.

The explosion gutted the building as police lined up for a shift change.

ANALYSIS
Sarah Rainsford, BBC News This attack is part of a recent surge in violence in the mainly Muslim North Caucasus region of Russia. The large-scale separatist conflict that ravaged Chechnya has now ended after 15 years. In April, the Russian president declared Chechnya to be stable enough to ease security restrictions, and lower the number of Russian troops.

But the insurgency in the Caucasus has gradually changed form into an Islamist uprising, and spread beyond Chechnya's borders. Militants have targeted government officials and the security forces in particular, with a combination of deadly gun battles and suicide attacks.

President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov was appointed by the Kremlin to head the autonomous republic of Ingushetia - and arrived vowing to end the violence and combat serious corruption. He's still recovering from an attempt on his life.

Images from Nazran showed scenes of devastation within the compound, with nearby homes also badly damaged and burned-out cars strewn nearby.

The bomber was reported to have rammed his vehicle into the gates of the police compound as officers were reporting for inspection, government spokesman Kaloi Akhilgov said.

"Practically all the cars and buildings in the yard of the police headquarters were completely destroyed," Reuters quoted him as saying.

The bomber was assumed to be among the dead, although this could not be confirmed.

Mr Akghilov told the AFP news agency that all of the dead were police, but 11 children were among those injured. Many of those hurt were living in residential buildings adjacent to the police station, he said.

Many of the injured were said to be in a serious condition. They were taken to hospitals in Nazran, but Mr Akghilov said the authorities were struggling to cope with the casualties.

"We have not had such an attack for a long time," he said, adding that hospitals did not have enough blood to treat the injured.

Much of the violence in Ingushetia has echoed the continuing unrest in Chechnya, with escalating clashes in the past year between pro-Russian security forces and armed militants.

Human rights activists and opposition politicians in Ingushetia told the BBC last year that the republic was now in a situation of "civil war".

In the most high-profile recent attack, Ingush President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov was severely wounded when a suicide bomber attacked his motorcade in June. He has not yet returned to work but is said to be recovering.

In a statement, he blamed Monday's attack on militants angered by recent security operations along the border with Chechnya.

"It was an attempt to destabilise the situation and sow panic," he said.

Less than a week ago, Ingushetia's construction minister was shot dead by masked gunmen.

That followed the shooting dead of three employees of Russia's emergencies ministry.

In Chechnya, Russian forces were engaged in heavy fighting with separatist rebels until a few years ago, though the fighting has become much less intense recently.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/8204670.stm

Published: 2009/08/17

Aug 15, 2009

Finding Those Behind Chechen Killings Â‘Paramount,' Russian President Says

By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, August 15, 2009

MOSCOW, Aug. 14 -- Russian President Dmitry Medvedev declared Friday that the capture of those responsible for the recent killings of three Chechen human rights workers should be the "paramount task" of the nation's security services.

Medvedev also appeared to signal dissatisfaction with Chechnya's Kremlin-appointed strongman, Ramzan Kadyrov, a former rebel warlord who has been accused of terrorizing the population.

"I think this is a challenge for the Chechen leadership," Medvedev said at a news conference in the Black Sea resort of Sochi after talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "The Chechen president must do everything he can to find and apprehend these murderers."

His demand came amid a surge of violence in Chechnya and two neighboring provinces, Dagestan and Ingushetia, that left 23 people dead. The bloodshed underscored the Kremlin's struggle to maintain control of the region against an Islamist insurgency that appears to be gaining momentum.

In the deadliest incident, militants burst into a bathhouse Thursday night in the city of Buynaksk in Dagestan and gunned down seven women, authorities said. The attack occurred after the rebels sprayed a nearby police post with gunfire, killing four police officers.

Six other police officers and five suspected rebels were reported killed in gun battles in Chechnya and Dagestan on Thursday and Friday. In Ingushetia, authorities said a woman who made a living telling fortunes was shot to death Thursday by militants who consider the practice a grave sin.

An American expert on the region warned in an article this week that Russia's repressive policies in the North Caucasus had created "fertile ground for terrorist recruiters" and represented a threat to U.S. security interests.

"Getting targeted assistance to the region, including job creation, should be of the highest importance to the White House and the State Department, as well as European governments," wrote Sarah Mendelson, human rights and security initiative director at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Referring to the unsolved killings of several human rights activists and journalists, Mendelson urged President Obama and European leaders to make clear to Medvedev that "impunity will not be tolerated" while pressing him to accept international help to address lawlessness in the region.

Chechnya's most prominent human rights activist, Natalya Estemirova, was abducted and executed last month, and a couple who ran a center for children traumatized by Russia's two wars against Chechen separatists was found shot to death in the trunk of their car Tuesday.

A day later, the Ingush construction minister was gunned down in his office. The Ingush leader, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, returned to work this week after recovering from an assassination attempt in June that killed four of his bodyguards.

Medvedev linked the attacks on the human rights workers to those on government officials, and said they were "aimed at destabilizing the situation in the Caucasus" and carried out by militants with foreign support.

"I have given all necessary orders," he said, according to the Interfax news agency. "Finding, prosecuting and punishing these murderers is the paramount task for all law enforcement authorities, for the office of the prosecutor general, for the Investigation Committee, and for other special services."

Merkel told reporters she condemned the recent killings "in the strongest terms" during a summit meeting that focused on trade and investment. "This is unfortunately a serious subject which we have to deal with time and again at many meetings," she said.

Human rights activists argue that the most likely suspects in the slayings of their colleagues are not the rebels but members of the Russian security services. Some accuse Kadyrov of engaging in "state terrorism" against his critics with the tacit support of his patron, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, and a group of Russian lawyers has called for an international tribunal to prosecute war crimes committed in Chechnya.

Medvedev last month dismissed allegations that Kadyrov was behind Estemirova's death, but his remarks Friday suggest that he may be losing patience with the Chechen leader, a former separatist fighter whom Putin entrusted with unusual autonomy over the region in 2007 in return for his loyalty.

Kadyrov has condemned the killings and vowed to solve them, but he has also repeatedly derided Estemirova, saying she "never had any honor or sense of shame" and "was misleading society and writing lies."

Aug 14, 2009

Ingush Minister Shot Dead at Work

Two masked gunmen have shot dead the construction minister of the volatile Russian republic of Ingushetia, local officials say.

Ruslan Amerkhanov was killed in his office in the town of Magas on Wednesday. The gunmen then fled by car.

Attacks on government officials have become more common in the troubled, mainly Muslim North Caucasus republic.

In June, Ingushetia's President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt.

The Ingush interior ministry said the gunmen shot and killed Mr Amerkhanov at point-blank range in his office.

His assistant, Magomed Amerkhanov, was wounded in the attack.

Ingushetia has seen escalating clashes between security forces and armed militants in the past year, similar to the violence that continues in neighbouring Chechnya.

Ingush security officials quoted by Itar-Tass news agency said Wednesday's killing might be linked to a recent review of construction projects in the republic. Ingushetia is plagued by corruption, including in the construction sector.

Three employees of Russia's emergencies ministry were shot dead in Ingushetia ten days ago.

In Chechnya, Russian forces were engaged in heavy fighting with separatist rebels until a few years ago, though the fighting has become much less intense recently.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/8196689.stm

Published: 2009/08/12

Gang Kills Seven in Russian Sauna

Russian police are hunting gunmen who killed seven women at a sauna and four policemen at a checkpoint in the troubled southern region of Dagestan.

The attack happened on Thursday in the town of Buynaksk, 41km (25 miles) from the regional capital Makhachkala.

Police say they know the identities of some of the gunmen, who fled into a forest after the attack.

Separately, four policemen and two militants were killed in a clash near Grozny, in neighbouring Chechnya.

Moscow has been keen to portray Chechnya and the region as an area returning to normal after years of unrest.

But these latest attacks form part of a wider pattern: a growing anti-Kremlin, Islamist insurgency that appears to be spreading across the North Caucasus, the BBC's Gabriel Gatehouse reports.

On Friday police shot and killed three militants near a village in Dagestan's Derbent district, officials say.

In Thursday's attack in Dagestan, at least 15 gunmen opened fire on a traffic police checkpoint on the edge of Buynaksk, Russian media quoted local police as saying.

The gunmen are reported to have hijacked a minibus, which they later abandoned.

They went on to attack a sauna at a nearby health complex, killing seven women workers there.

Dagestan has been plagued by violence in recent years, much of it linked to the conflict between security forces and separatist rebels in Chechnya, a mainly Muslim Russian republic.

Russian forces have fought two wars against Islamist rebels in Chechnya since 1994. The conflicts claimed more than 100,000 lives and left it in ruins.

Clashes with militants are also common in Ingushetia, which borders on Chechnya to the west.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/8201054.stm

Published: 2009/08/14

Jul 25, 2009

Chechen Separatist in Rare Talks

A Chechen separatist envoy and a regional government representative say they have held talks on bringing stability to the south Russian region.

The prime minister of the government-in-exile, Akhmed Zakayev, and Dukuvakha Abdurakhmanov, chairman of the Chechen parliament, said they had met in Oslo.

Mediators said the talks were the first between the two sides in eight years.

Russian forces have fought two wars against separatists in the mainly Muslim republic since 1994.

The conflicts claimed more than 100,000 lives and left it in ruins.

Mr Zakayev represents the separatists' political wing, not the military wing that is leading the insurgency in Chechnya.

He said the two sides had "discussed political issues being solved not by force but by political means".

"I would like to express delight that this has taken place," he added. "I'm strongly convinced every Chechen person should be well aware of the processes taking place, and should take part in them."

“ This meeting has been authorised not only by [Chechen President Ramzan] Kadyrov himself... It has been happening in perfect co-ordination with the highest leadership in the Kremlin ”
Ivar Amundsen Chechnya Peace Forum

Mr Abdurakhmanov meanwhile said the talks had centred on "the total political stabilisation of the Chechen Republic and the final consolidation of Chechen society".

Norwegian mediator Ivar Amundsen, the director of the human rights group, Chechnya Peace Forum, said it was the first time there had been "a serious political dialogue between the Russian-installed regime in Chechnya and the government-in-exile".

"This meeting has been authorised not only by [Chechen President Ramzan] Kadyrov himself... It has been happening in perfect co-ordination with the highest leadership in the Kremlin," he said, adding that further talks would be held in London in 10 days' time.

Six months ago, Mr Kadyrov declared that political normalisation could not be achieved without the involvement of Mr Zakayev.

He repeated the offer of reconciliation last month, telling Russian television that there would be no point in imprisoning him and that he would like the former actor to play a role in reviving Chechen culture.

When asked on Friday if he would take up offer, Mr Zakayev told BBC Russian: "I will definitely return to the Chechen Republic and there are no conditions that I would impose on this."

Spreading insurgency

Mr Zakayev was a leading rebel in Chechnya until 2000, but fled and sought asylum in the UK when Russia regained control.

In 2003, a British court rejected Moscow's request for his extradition on kidnapping and murder charges, saying that there was substantial risk of him being tortured by the authorities.

Two years ago, Mr Zakayev declared himself prime minister of the rebel Republic of Ichkeria after the President, Doku Umarov, described Western countries as the enemies of all Muslims, and announced his intention to install shariah across the region.

Any statement of support from him for the Kremlin-backed government in Chechnya would aid Moscow, analysts say.

Chechnya has in recent years been more peaceful. In April, President Dmitry Medvedev ordered the end of a decade-long "counter-terrorism operation", intended to pave the way for the withdrawal of thousands of troops.

But since then several attacks have taken place. Earlier this month, two police officers and two soldiers were killed in a gun battle with militants in southern Chechnya.

Fighting has also spread to neighbouring Dagestan and Ingushetia, where correspondents say a violent Islamist insurgency is growing.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/8167526.stm

Published: 2009/07/24

Jul 4, 2009

Chechen Police Die in Ingushetia

Chechen police die in Ingushetia

Nine Chechen policemen have been killed when militants attacked their vehicle in Russia's neighbouring republic of Ingushetia, officials say.

Another nine police were injured near the village of Arshty, in one of the deadliest recent attacks.

The Chechen police were conducting joint operations against militants in the volatile region.

Last month, Ingushetia's leader was seriously wounded in an apparent assassination attempt.

Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov has vowed a "cruel" revenge on those who tried to kill Inghushetia's President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov.

Convoy ambushed

The vehicle the Chechen police travelling in came under grenade and gun fire at about 0840 local time (0540 GMT) on Saturday, officials say.

The militants opened fire from a nearby forest.

The Chechen police were travelling in a convoy of five vehicles.

It was not immediately known if there were any casualties among the attackers.

Islamist militants have been battling pro-Kremlin authorities and Russian security forces in a low-level insurgency in Ingushetia, Chechnya and also Dagestan in the Caucasus region.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/8134193.stm

Published: 2009/07/04