Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 10 – A new
collective monograph prepared under the direction of the Moscow Institute of
Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences says that “an
absolute majority of the population of the North Caucasus does not see itself
otherwise than within the borders of the Russian Federation despite all the
mistakes” Moscow has made there.
Igor Kosikov, a senior scholar at
the institute who headed the collective of 18 authors, many from the North
Caucasus, presented the new book to the media yesterday. Entitled “The Republics of theNorth Caucasus:
The Ethno-Political Situation and Relation with the Federal Center” (in
Russian, Moscow: MAKS Press, 504 pages) (www.itar-tass.com/c9/617097.html).
According to the Moscow scholar, the
involvement of researchers from each of the North Caucasus republics provide a
broader and deeper assessment of developments in the region than is typically available
but one that “does not always coincide with the alarmist point of view that has
arisen as it is customary to say ‘within the Garden Ring’” – that is the Moscow
leadership.
On the one hand, many people in that
group think that Moscow is subsidizing the North Caucasus more heavily than it
is other regions. But in fact, the central government gives per capita
subsidies to Kamchatka Kray that are more than 20 percent higher than those it
provides to Ingushetia, the most subsidized of the North Caucasus republics.
And on the other, per capita GDP is
in fact rising in the North Caucasus, not falling as many believe. In 2008, per
capita GDP there stood at 79,500 rubles (2600 US dollars), but in 2011, it had
risen to “more than 112,000 rubles (3700 US dollars), an increase in percentage
terms similar to other regions in the Russian Federation.
While the new book’s basic
conclusion is that the majority of the population of the North Caucasus “does
not see itself otherwise than within the Russian Federation,” Kostikov
continued, no one should think that everything is fine. There are still forces
in the region seeking the establishment of “an independent Islamic state” and
thus those who “want to live within Russia do not feel themselves secure.”
That will change, he suggested, only
if Moscow develops and carries out “a long-term, systematic and strategic”
policy “directed toward the achievement of the specific goal of the gradual
resolution of the problems of the North Caucasus.
But with the Sochi Olympics less
than two years away, others say, Moscow has adopted a short-term approach, one
based on heavy use of the armed forces, throwing money at the problem, and
relying on local leaders who promise to be loyal to the Kremlin above all else.
Moreover, some in Moscow appear to be promoting the continuation rather than
the end of the conflicts in the region.
A lead article in the Swiss
newspaper “Tages Anzeiger” yesterday noted that Moscow has recently sent 30,000
troops to Daghestan alone and that the North Caucasus is eating up “a quarter”
of Russia’s military budget despite the fact that the region constitutes “only
one percent of the territory of the country” (www.tagesanzeiger.ch/ausland/asien-und-ozeanien/Russlands-Achillesferse/story/26653120;
www.inopressa.ru/article/09Jan2013/tagesanzeiger/caucase.html).
As
a result, tahe paper said, the region has become Moscow’s “Achilles’ heel,” an
interpretation that some Russian commentators have picked up on as well (kavpolit.com/kavkazskaya-politika-kak-sut-budushhego-rossii/).
And others are asking whether things are likely to deteriorate there in 2013.
According
to a report on the “Svobodnaya pressa” portal, some local activists say that
the cause of conflict in the North Caucasus lies not with the residents of that
region but with Moscow. Abas Kebedov, a
former member of the Social Chamber of Daghestan, says that some senior
Muscovites want the conflict to continue (http://www.rus-obr.ru/ru-web/22169).
Kebedov
says that a Daghestani professor told him about an encounter the latter had had
with a Russian general in a Moscow bathhouse in which the Daghestani had told
the officer that it was time to end the fighting in his republic. The general
reportedly responded: “Who will allow you to stop the war? Without it, I’d
still be a pathetic lieutenant colonel, but now I’m a general with five
apartments in Moscow.”
Former Ingushetian prime minister Akhmed
Malsagov also placed the blame on Moscow, arguing that its policies were
responsible for the problems. “If the federal center wants to establish order,
then it must choose normal leaders of the regions” who will do their job and
not simply demonstrate loyalty to the Kremlin and steal from the population.”
Avraam Shmulyevich, an Israeli
expert on the Caucasus who writes frequently for Moscow web portals, says that
the next 18 months could be explosive. Moscow
has decided on a “final pre-Olympic cleansing” of the region, using both
carrots and sticks to get its way (www.apn.ru/publications/article28079.htm).
On the one hand, he says, the
Russian authorities are prepared to come to terms with some Islamist groups and
are prepared to spend 800 million US dollars over the next 12 years to stabilize
the situation. But on the other, he suggests, they have decided to make no
concessions to the Circassians and their protests about the Olympics.
The result of these policies,
Shmulyevich says, will not work in Moscow’s favor. It will not only further “alienate
the Caucasus from the rest of the Russian Federation” but will lead to “a
growth in tensions among the North Caucasus peoples and the growth in the
number of internl conflicts.”
Those trends will make it “ever more
difficult” for Moscow to control the situation if it continues its current
course of “still greater financial infusions and the introduction of still
larger number of forces.” Only “a
complete shift of the paradigm of relations between Moscow and the national
borderlands,” one allowing peoples of
the entire Caucasus to decide on their own what their fate is to be.
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