Magas Creates Council of Elders as Alternative to Council of Teips

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 20 – Even before the Council of Teips came out in support of protests against the 2018 deal in which Ingushetia handed over 10 percent of the territory of that republic to Chechnya, the republic government has sought ways to limit its influence or even destroy it via criminal charges.
    But now Magas has adopted a new tactic: it has created its own pocket Council of Elders, selected by itself, as an alternative to the council which includes the leaders of the heads of the family groups that have long dominated Ingush society (fortanga.org/2024/11/v-ingushetii-sozdan-sovet-starejshin-pri-glave-respubliki-alternativa-sovetu-tejpov/).
    Although a primordial group which many analysts do not count as an NGO, the Ingush Council of Teips again and again has played the role of a civil society actor; and this latest move is an effort by Magas to suppress it by replacing it with a group that had a similar name but won’t play that role.
    What is especially intriguing about this latest act of repression in Ingushetia is that in making the announcement of this new group, Magas says that the new council will get involved in evaluating inter-ethnic relations in other republics and thus may serve as a model for what the authorities elsewhere might do.  
    For background on the teips and reasons why Magas may have created “an alternative” on paper, it is unlikely to be able to suppress this group and the role of extended families in Ingush society, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/03/islam-and-customary-law-again-more.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/08/ingush-authorities-view-all-ngos-as.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/07/after-crackdown-on-ngos-primordial.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/05/teips-playing-key-role-in-getting.html.