Ingush Border Crisis Resumes Amidst Violence

Paul Goble

            Staunton, January 13 – For most of the last month, the conflict that riled Ingushetia during the fall over the border agreement Yunus-Bek Yevkurov concluded with Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov had been relatively calm, at least in part because of the long Russian winter holiday.

            But in the last 48 hours, it has resumed in violence and with a series of moves by the Ingush authorities, the Ingush opposition, the Ingush mufti, and both the Chechen government and the Chechen people that suggests that there are likely to be more protests of various kinds about this accord in the coming months.

            The violence involved an attack on a police car in the disputed Sunzhen region. Three of the four occupants were seriously injured, and two attackers were killed in response. Officials described the attackers as “bandits” but it is not clear who they were. That this attack occurred in Sunzhen makes it suspicious (polit.ru/article/2019/01/13/fire_ingush/).

            This was the 11^th such attack on officials in that district since the start of 2018, an indication of the spread of violence into Ingushetia. It may very well have occurred because anti-Russian militants assume that they won’t be handed over as readily to Moscow forces given the border dispute.

            A second development in the region this weekend involves the failure of Kadyrov to get many Chechens to sign up to move to one of the areas he acquired from Ingushetia by means of the Septembeer 26 accord. The area had been part of Chechnya before the 1944 deportations but was under Ingush control.

            Kadyrov promised to develop the region but Chechens have expressed skepticism that there is any good reason to move into that district until they see evidence that real progress has been made on infrastructure and jobs rather than simply the kind of empty promises they have been given in the past (kavkazr.com/a/29703059.html).

            A third development this weekend likely to exacerbate conditions in Ingushetia in the future was a decision by the Coordinating Center of Muslims of the North Caucasus to suspend Ingushetia Mufti  Isa Khamkoyev from participation in its activities until he stops interfering in the activities of government organs (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/330244/).

            Khamkhoyev has supported the Ingush who oppose the border accord and called for the convention of a shariat court to rule on it.  The coordination center’s action is likely to backfire: it will highlight how much support the Ingushetia mufti has at home and further weaken that coordinating body (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/330170/).

            And yet a fourth event is also going to play a role in the coming weeks and months.  The Mashr human rights group in Ingushetia gave out twelve diplomas, including one posthumously, to other activists who have opposed the oppressive regime of Yevkurov (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/330234/  and fortanga.org/2019/01/v-ingushetii-nagradili-geroev-grazhdanskogo-obshhestva/).