One Border Village Wants Land from Both Chechnya and Daghestan

Paul Goble

           

            Staunton, February 12 – Land disputes in the North Caucasus are not just between Chechnya and its neighbors over where to draw the borders but around villages who want to get back pasture lands that they say were illegally or at least inappropriately taken from them in the past. Such disputes usually but not always within republics, especially now.

            Instead, villages living near republic or district borders are beginning to make demands for the return of land to their control not only from the republic of which they are a part but from the neighboring republic as well, yet another way in which Moscow’s willingness to allow Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov to pursue his aggrandizement is opening a can of worms.

            Residents of the village of Kedi in Daghestan’s Tsumadin district have appealed to the Chechen and Daghestan parliaments to restore to their village lands like from their ancestors beginning in the 19^th century (chernovik.net/content/lenta-novostey/zhiteli-cumadinskogo-rayona-prosyat-u-chechenskih-i-dagestanskih-deputatov).

                Some of those pasture lands now lie in Daghestan while others are beyond the republic border in Chechnya. But the villagers say that these lands should be combined and given back to them. They note that they asked for this in tsarist times and in Soviet times but without result. Nonetheless and despite the passage of time, they remember and hope for justice. 

            Appeals of this type are yet another indication of just how problematic the borders in the North Caucasus are and how opening the question of border rectification will bring to the surface anger that had largely been kept in check earlier because local people assumed that borders wouldn’t be changed. Now, they see that they can; and they are acting on that assumption.

            Meanwhile, Kavkaz-Uzel reports, local people in other segments of the Chechen-Daghestani border are stepping up their activities, fearful that their lands will be handed over to Chechnya without their consent. Their concerns have been exacerbated by Chechen statements and Makhachkala’s silence (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/331571/).

                If there is any significant change in the border, it is likely that some local people will protest, possibly with violence, and that even if the authorities succeed in suppressing this for a time, the problems of borders will not go away. The Kedi villagers, after all, are still upset more than 150 years after Russians drew lines without concern for their interests and desires.