‘Land in the North Caucasus Chief Resource’ and Thus a Source of Conflict, Yarlykapov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 12 – Conflicts in the North Caucasus between republics over borders and fights within these republics between members of different ethnic groups over pasturage are so serious because “up to now, land is viewed as the main resource” by the people of the region, according to Akhmed Yarlykapov of MGIMO’s Center for Problems of the Caucasus.

            He tells Sergey Teplyakov of the MBK news agency that as a result, the new head of Ingushetia, Makhmud-Ali Kalimatov, will face extraordinary difficulties in calming the situation after the border change with Chechnya. That he is an Ingush is helpful, Yarlykapov says; that he is Moscow’s man is not (mbk-news.appspot.com/suzhet/intervyu-po-severnomu-kavkazu/).

            Land has long been in short supply across the North Caucasus as a result not only of deportations and returnees but also because of rapid population growth, the Moscow scholar says. It can be dealt with in various ways: renting land, purchase and so on. But because land is viewed as “the main resource,” people there don’t want to see it handed over to another group.

            That is because in Soviet times, borders were very much part of the projects to form ethnic nations, Yarlykapov says. “The latest conflict over the border between Chechnya and Ingushetia is to a certain extent a conflict between two ethnic ‘national projects’” with the titular nationality in each viewing the land as part of their ethnic patrimony.

            A major reason that these conflicts are breaking out with renewed force now, he continues, is that Moscow has promoted development within each republic rather than development of the North Caucasus as a whole.  People in each link their future with the borders of their republic as a result, rather than recognizing that they could achieve more by cooperating.

            Moscow has missed the boat on this, Yalykapov suggests. It could promote cooperation between republics in the North Caucasus just as it does between Moscow city and Moscow oblast; but instead, it has done just the reverse, intensifying the links between land, ethnicity and development with its policies.

            A good place for the center to start to make a change would be in the 26,000 hectares that Yunus-Bek Yevkurov agreed to transfer to Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov. Few people live in that area. If Moscow took the lead in the joint development of it economically, the situation might be improved. But so far there appears little interest in that.

            And a major reason for that is the power differential between Kadyrov and the leaders of Ingushetia. The Chechen leader sees himself as the ingatherer of Chechen lands much as Russian leaders have historically as the ingatherers of Russian lands.  In this situation, the Chechen head has little interest in such cooperative ventures.