Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 29 – Vladimir Putin’s
“Kadyrov problem” just got a lot larger, so large in fact that it may ultimately
cost Moscow control of the North Caucasus: Yesterday, Ramazan Abdulatipov, the
Putin-appointed head of Daghestan, said that he supports Ramzan Kadyrov’s
position in his conflict with the Russian interior ministry.
Abdulatipov said that if anyone
wants to cross into Daghestan, including those who identify themselves as
federal forces, he expects to be advised and then he will give the answer as to
whether these are “ours or not ours” (meduza.io/news/2015/04/28/glava-dagestana-podderzhal-kadyrova-v-konflikte-s-mvd).
There are at
least three reasons why the Daghestani leader’s declaration makes Putin’s
problem a great deal larger and far more complicated to resolve (For background
on Putin’s “Kadyrov problem,” see (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2015/04/putins-kadyrov-problem-coming-to-head.html).
First and most immediately, it means
that if Putin sacks Kadyrov in order to curry favor with the siloviki in
Moscow, he almost certainly will have to fire Abdulatipov and perhaps other
North Caucasus republic leaders as well, something that almost certainly would
in and of itself lead to the further destabilization of the region.
Second, and even more worrying from
Moscow’s perspective, it suggests that a united front may be emerging among
these republic leaders about how the Russian authorities are conducting
themselves in the North Caucasus. Abdulatipov normally is one of the most
cautious of the group. Consequently, if he is saying this, others likely feel
the same way.
And third, it shows that Moscow’s
ability to rely on its longstanding policy of divide and rule in the region may
be increasingly limited. If the center can’t isolate Kadyrov the way it
isolated Dzhokhar Dudayev, it loses one of the most important levers it has to
control Chechnya or any other part of the region.
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