Ingush Events Prompt Daghestan’s Chechens to Intensify Demand for Their Own Territorial Unit

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 1 – Chechens at in the 10^th Congress of the Akkintsy, a Chechen subgroup in Daghestan, said they were encouraged both by the recent events in Ingushetia and by the increased attention they have received from Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov and would now step up demands for the creation of a Chechen administrative-territorial unit within Daghestan.

              The meeting, which attracted some 200 delegates from the Novolak and Khasavyurt districts and from Khasavyurt itself was scheduled to focus on issues like the upbringing of youth and countering extremism; but it turned instead to the question of creating a territorial unit for the Chechens in Daghestan (ndelo.ru/politika/problema-v-otsutstvii-chechenskogo-rajona).

            The creation of such a territorial unit, speakers said, will require the resettlement of the Laks from the Novolak district and take the form at least in the first instance of the restoration of the Aukhov District which had been dominated by the Chechen-Akkintsy prior to the 1944 deportation.

            Duma deputy Buvaysar Saytiyev told the meeting that “the absence of a mon-ethnic district for the Akkintsy and Chechens living in Daghestan” had led to “the accumulation of problems” and that this ethnic group should have the same ethno-territorial arrangements that other basic nationalities of Daghestan have.

            The events in Ingushetia concerning the border with Chechnya show that changes are possible, and Grozny is clearly in favor of the creation of such a unit as evidenced by its posting on the Chechen government website of a map of Daghestan clearly designating Chechen areas and even suggesting that part of the territory they occupy should be part of Chechnya.

            To promote such changes, the congress elected a new public council of the Chechens of Daghestan and expressed the hope that the new group would be better able to reach an agreement with Makhachkala and thus achieve what the Chechen-Akkintsy have long wanted. 

                It is unlikely that the Daghestan government will satisfy their demands soon or completely. Doing so would create a territorial unit within that North Caucasus republic that Kadyrov would certainly use to spread his influence and could exploit to demand a change in the borders between Chechnya and Daghestan just like what occurred with Ingushetia.

            But it is probable that the Daghestan government will try to meet the Chechen-Akkintsy part way because if it doesn’t, recent experience suggests Kadyrov is prepared to ignore governments at all levels to get wah the wants and is prepared to stir up trouble in the republics neighboring his own.