Problems in Handing Over Ingush Land to Chechnya Force Moscow to Intervene

Paul Goble

            Staunton, January 30 – The process of turning over Ingush lands to Chechnya as required by the September 26 agreement between Yunus-Bek Yevkurov and Ramzan Kadyrov has slowed because of technical problems of defining with precision the new border. As a result, the Federal Land Registry has gotten involved but has clearly tilted toward Chechen positions.

            On the one hand, there are real problems in defining with precision the new border given that much of the land in the region hasn’t been carefully defined And on the other, Ingushetia’s Fortanga portal says, Moscow is talking only to Chechen representatives rather than including Ingush officials and experts in this conversation (fortanga.org/2019/01/u-chinovnikov-ingushetii-problemy-s-peredachej-zemli-chechne/).

                Unfortunately, the portal continues, Ingush officials aren’t doing anything to try to ensure that Ingushetia’s interests are defended in this process.  It ends its report on this situaiton by appealing to the taips whose family members are in the government to do something to stop those who are “trading away the motherland.”

            Other developments concerning the Chechen-Ingush border dispute and the situation in Ingushetia affecting it include:

·         The protest organizers are using the Internet to communicate with their followers all the texts of appeals they have made to senior Russian officials (fortanga.org/2019/01/pisma-predsedatelej-kongressa-ingushskogo-naroda-k-vysshim-dolzhnostnym-litsam-rossii/).

·         Local people say that the taips, the most important traditional organization of Ingush society, are now fully integrated into the opposition movement, a development that will make it far more difficult for Yevkurov to push through the border accord with Chechnya or even to survive politically (berdov-boris.livejournal.com/8072.html).

·         The Ingush government is having its own problems: the chief of staff of the militia has been arrested for extortion and corruption (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/331077/).

·         Russia’s Arbitrage Appeals Court has agreed to hear a case brought by Ingush Muslims seeking compensation for problems arising from the on-again, off-again construction of a mosque in Magas. The court will hold a session on this on February 27 (rapsinews.ru/judicial_news/20190129/294345829.html).

·         Meanwhile, the wave of telephone terrorism that has roiled Russia as a whole has now come to Ingushetia, setting people there on edge just as it has done elsewhere (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/331034/; cf. jamestown.org/program/telephone-bomb-threats-forcing-mass-evacuations-across-russia/).