Paul
Goble
Staunton, August 6 – What is taking
place in Daghestan now, a “Vzglyad” journalist says, “can be compared with the
second Chechen war” in that as in Chechnya, Moscow wants to return the republic
to the Russian legal field just as it hoped to do in Chechnya. But as in Chechnya,
what Moscow intends for Daghestan and what it is likely to get may not
coincide.
On the one hand, Daghestan is
multi-national and at risk of fragmentation if the delicate balance among the
major nationalities there is undermined. And on the other, almost any strongman
Moscow might install would likely be forced to cut deals and behave
independently as Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov has and thus represent another kind
of problem for Russia.
In an article in “Vzglyad”
yesterday, Petr Akopov says that the wave of FSB attacks on and arrests of
Daghestani mafia leaders has already changed the balance of ethnic power in the
republic, something that may undercut Moscow’s hopes to restore popular trust
in the government in Makachkala (vz.ru/politics/2015/8/5/759515.html).
Two
of the four major nationalities of Daghestan, the Avars and Kumyks, have
suffered as a result, he continues; the third nationality, the Dargins, had
already been much weakened by earlier arrests.
That leaves as a target for the future the Lezgins who are a particular
problem because they live not only in Daghestan but also in Azerbaijan.
In
combatting corruption in Daghestan, Moscow will “consciously support the
principle of ‘national quotas’ lest it give Daghestanis an occasion for seeing
in the current purges some kind of national aspect,” Akopov says. But given
that these quotas are themselves the source of many of the problems,
accomplishing both goals at the same time will be difficult.
The
extraordinarily diverse national composition of the republic and the ways in
which ethnic conflicts are intermixed with land disputes both “frightens a Moscow
worried about interethnic conflicts” and “has allowed local clans to speculate
on this issue by setting up mafia-like, vertically integrated power structures
and in fact getting out from under federal control.”
An
additional complicating factor of what Akopov calls “the Daghestan disease” is
the region of that republic which borders Chechnya,” something that has allowed
Daghestan has a whole to avoid direct Moscow intervention until recently, first
because Moscow was too weak in the 1990s and more recently because it lacked
forces on the ground it could count on.
“The
local clans, cemented on the basis of ethnicity and territory, were thus able
to subordinate to themselves literally everything in Daghestan – the economy,
the state apparatus, cadres, and the social sphere,” he writes. Without some
kind of outside intervention, as with the FSB now, nothing was going to change.
“Of
course,” the Moscow journalist says, “there is and was corruption in other regions
of Russia, but nowhere did it acquire such a size or such a qualitative level.
But the main thing is not even in this – nowhere in Russia have such large and
stable criminal communities remained in power and in a republic with three
million people.”
They
constitute “a real mafia,” he says, and crime in all its forms has become “a
norm of life,” something “the leadership of the republic has not been able to
do anything about.” And Moscow’s resources are limited: the share of ethnic
Russians has fallen by half, and the center controlled “only part of the force
structures,” the FSB.
“Daghestan
has lived as a state within a state,” and that situation has been further
exacerbated by the appearance in this “largest North Caucasus republic” of “the
most powerful and massive armed underground,” one that includes both Islamists
and many, including highly placed officials, simply angry at Makachkala.
It
has become increasingly obvious that things could not continue in this way for
long: there would be “an explosion.” And as a result, Moscow decided that it
had to purge the upper reaches of the republic government. That led to the
appointment of Ramazan Abdulatipov in early 2013 as head of the republic.
An
ethnic Avar who left the republic decades ago for Moscow and unconnected “with
a mafia clan,” Abdulatipov was supposed to clean house. He has taken a number
of steps, but they are clearly insufficient and now Moscow has moved in.
Indeed, in May 2014, it sent a signal that it would do exactly that.
At
that time, Moscow named Sergey Melikov, a lieutenant general as the
presidential plenipotentiary for the North Caucasus. He is a Lezgin but someone
who has lived almost his entire life outside the republic and who has made a
career in the Soviet and then Russian interior forces.
Melikov
has clearly been deeply involved in the latest moves of the FSB in Daghestan,
Akopov says; but what has been done up to now is “completely insufficient.” There needs to be “a thoroughgoing cadres
revolution” in Makhachakala and Daghestan more generally, and the risks of that
sparking violence are all too real.
Some
in the expert community are already speculating that Moscow will replace
Abdulatipov with someone from the security services, but if it does, not only
will that offend the leaders of at least three of the four largest
nationalities there, but it will potentially lead to more violence (onkavkaz.com/posts/47-kreml-sdelaet-glavoi-dagestana-silovika-iz-moskvy.html).
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