Only Joint Ingush-Ossetian Administration of Prigorodny District Can Reduce Tensions, Sokiryanskaya Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 2 – The only way to overcome the wounds that are still open as a result of the 1992 war between Ingushetia and North Ossetia over the Prigorodny District which before 1944 belonged to Ingushetia but since then has been part of North Ossetia is to establish joint administration of the region, Yekaterina Sokiryanskaya says.

            The director of the Center for the Analysis and Prevention of Conflicts says that in her view, when there is a dispute like the one between the two republics over lad, neither people should have the exclusive right to the land. Instead, “individual citizens should have the right to live on their land” (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/341905/).

            “In such places,” Sokiryanskaya says, “there should be joint administration of the territory. In order to guarantee the absence of discrimination, both sides must be represented on a parity basis in the organs of power. There must not be segregated education … and what is most important, both the one and the other must be represented in the police.” 

            Sokiryanskaya’s unusual suggestion reflects how tense the situation there now is. Otherwise she would not have advanced it. But at the same time, it is certain to exacerbate conditions with the North Ossetians viewing it as a threat to their sovereignty and the Ingush seeing it as recognition that North Ossetia must not have exclusive right to the disputed district.

            Svetlana Gannushkina, head of the Civic Support committee, offers an alternative but one that would require enormous state investment and take a long period of time – organizing camps and trips for young people from Ingushetia and North Ossetia so that they could get to know one another and stop thinking in negative stereotypes (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/341905/).

            She says she has had good experience with one such visit to Moscow by young people from these two republics. But she acknowledges that overcoming the past will be hard: “Every conflict gives birth to an enormous tail of consequences both psychological and mythological.” Over time, myths grow to the point that they overwhelm the facts.

            Meanwhile, in a development that has attracted more attention than almost any Ingush-related one in the past 18 months, Ibragim Eldzharkiyev, the chief of the Center for Countering Extremism in the republic, was shot in the streets of Moscow (akcent.site/eksklyuziv/6356  and zamanho.com/?p=14571).