Paul
Goble
Staunton, November 1 – Daghestani President
Magomedsalam Magomedov has issued a decree calling on officials in the cities there
to set up druzhinniki units to aid law enforcement. But if any of them do so, that step almost
certainly will exacerbate ethnic tensions and further destabilize Russia’s most
multi-ethnic republic.
Magomedov’s plan, which has
attracted more attention this week since he talked about it at a meeting with
Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev, almost certainly was
based on the appearance of such groups in neighboring Chechnya under Ramzan
Kadyrov (u-f.ru/News/magomedov-magomedsalam-magomedalievich/647351).
In Chechnya, these units, which have
proved themselves in practice subordinate to no one, have helped build Kadyrov’s
authoritarian and arbitrary regime in a republic which is ethnically
homogenous. But in Daghestan, where no
nationality forms a majority and where there are more than 30 different indigenous
nations, the situation is very different.
The creation of such druzhinniki
almost certainly would follow ethnic lines and that in turn would give each
mayor or district head his own “legal armed force,” something he would be far
more likely to use to promote himself and his specific ethnic group than to
ensure that Daghestani laws, let alone Russian ones were enforced.
In reporting this idea, the F.ru
news portal asked rhetorically, “just how great is the probability that the ‘local
druzhinniki’ of Daghestan will go along that path of development? Will it not
turn out that the [already] unsettled republic will hand over plenipotentiary
power into the hands of legalized armed formations?”
And those questions lead to another,
not asked by F.ru: will the existence of such “legalized” force structures
merge with rather than oppose the growing number of anti-regime militants not
just in the rural areas of Daghestan but increasingly in the urban areas of
that republic as well?
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