Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 3 – Ingushetia
President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov is quietly setting up committees of soldiers’
fathers to help Ingush draftees cope with the rigors of the Russian military and
a network of republic representations to smooth relations between Ingushetianss
working in Russian cities and regions.
In a 4500-word interview posted
online yesterday and more likely to attract attention for his remarks about
possible links between his officials and militant groups, Yevkurov elaborates
about these two new sets of arrangements that, if successful, are likely to be
copied by other North Caucaus leaders (scienceport.ru/news/Intervyu-prezidenta-respubliki-Ingushetiya-YUnus-Beka-Evkurova-korrespondentu-portala-Nauka-i-obrazovanie-protiv-terrora-7764.html).
Like his counterparts, the
Ingushetia president has been pushing hard for the Russian army to re-open its
ranks to more men from his republic despite opposition of Russian commanders
because of the reputation that North Caucasians currently have for causing problems
there.
Yevkurov said that he had met with the chief
of the Russian General Staff in order to press his case in this regard and had
agreed to create “committees of soldiers’ fathers” in all garrisons where
Ingush draftees would serve to assist commanders of Ingush troops by ensuring that
the latter live within the rules.
Such committees, he suggested, would
go a long way to reassure Russian officers about Ingush soldiers and, by
smoothing relations, allow the army to help prepare them to return to civilian
life with the skills necessary to become policemen or workers in variouis
construction trades.
The role of the army in preparing
policemen is especially critical for the republic, Yevkurov said. In Soviet
times, militiamen put on their civilian uniforms only after learning the
meaning of discipline in the military, but now “many come into the police
without understanding in general what service is and what epilettes mean.”
The republic president added that he
also was supporting efforts by Ingush to become officers in the military. And
he said that “if even 50 percent of
those young men who have initially expressed a desire” to go ito the service “do
so” and achieve their goals,”this will be a big plus for the republic and we
will thereby fulfill a complex of tasks.”
Yevkurov said the bad reputation
that Ingush and other North Caucasians have in the Russian military is almost
entirely undeserved. The few individuals
who have created problems have become the basis for an image in which all of
them “do not serve” but only fight with other soldiers, one that is “a catastrophe
for the entire Caucasus.”
When he served in the Soviet army,
Yevkurov continued, there were indeed problems with discipline, but 90 percent
of these problems were caused by soldiers from other regions of the country –
and that even those were the result of the brutality of officers toward those
in the ranks.
He said his republic is doing
everything it can to make sure that Ingush draftees are not a source of any
problems, first by screening potential draftees itself even before the military
commissions do in order to weed out those who should not serveand then helping
commanders by creating committees of soldiers’ fathers to travel to bases where
Ingush men are serving.
These committees, Yevkurov
suggested, represent the military counterpart to an arrangement he has promoted
on the civilian side. Like other
non-Russian republics, Ingushetia has a permanent representation office, a kind
of embassy in Moscow to represent its interests, but it now performs a broader
task as well.
Officials at the representation not
only travel to various regions of the Russian Federation where Ingush are
working to help smooth relations between the North Caucasians and local
governments, businesses, and populations but are setting up unofficial
counterparts of the Moscow representation to ensure that such cooperation
continues.
Yevkurov said these bodies offer
consular-type services to the Ingush when there are difficulties – difficulties
he suggested were far smaller than the media often suggests – and added that he
is doing what he can to reward those in the diasporas who help with this task
for their “colossal assistance.”
This system has already proven its
worth in Russian regions, the Ingush president said, and he is extending it to
other places where people from his republic are working, including Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan and in certain unnamed “European states, where our citizens [now]
live and work.
These twin institutional innovations
are likely to prove more effective than the much-ballyhooed Chechen code of
conduct that Ramzan Kadyrov has come up with, but they are likely to have
another consequence as well, one that may cause some in the Russian capital to
worry about the future.
In Soviet times, the permanent
representations of the union republics served and were known to serve as their de
facto embassies to Moscow. They were often featured in non-Russian fiction,
visited by republic leaders – most famously by Heydar Aliyev after the Black
January events in Baku in 1990 – and became the foundations for real embassies
in 1992.
While Yevkurov is entirely sincere
that his new set of arrangements is intended to ensure the integration of
Ingush in the Russian army and Russian life more generally, other Ingush and
other North Caucasians may view such institutions as something that can promote
an entirely different and more independent future for themselves.
No comments:
Post a Comment