Moscow’s Plan to Delimit Republic Borders in North Caucasus Already Sparking Fear and Anger

Paul Goble

            Staunton, February 5 – Moscow’s plan to prevent conflicts over borders by its supervision of a process that will delimit and demarcate the borders of the republics of  the North Caucasus (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/02/problems-in-handing-over-ingush-land-to.html) is sparking anger and fears that deals made behind closed doors will harm the people.

            Akhmed Pogorov, the vice president of the World Congress of the Ingush People has sent a letter to Russian Procurator General Yury Chaika and Economic Development Minister Maksim Oreshkin complaining that the process is unfair, illegal and taking place behind closed doors (fortanga.org/2019/02/vkin-kadastrovyj-uchet-peredannyh-chechne-territorij-prohodit-s-narusheniyami-zakona/).

            Among the defects he complained of was the use by the commission of people without the necessary qualifications and who represent only one side on disputed areas and the use of map coordinates which do not correspond to those employed in December 2011 when the borders the republics have used up to now were put in place.

            As a result, Pogorov says, the entire process is illegal and must be stopped until all of its shortcomings can be corrected. 

                Meanwhile, residents of three Daghestani regions bordering Chechnya have called on the republic authorities to ensure that the procedure of delimiting and demarcating the border between the two republics take place in the most public way possible so that nothing will be done against the interests of the people (chernovik.net/content/lenta-novostey/zhiteli-neskolkih-rayonov-dagestana-prizyvayut-k-maksimalnoy-otkrytosti).

            Makhachkala officials have said that there are few disputed sections of the border, but “residents of a number of regions are concerned,” Kavkaz-Uzel says, “that the issue of drawing lines could be used for purposes of organizing a provocation.”  They ask that the members of the commission be identified and that the body’s deliberations be made public as soon as possible.

            Moscow is unlikely to agree because if the negotiations take place in public the odds are very great that the leaders of the republics will find it almost impossible to make any concessions anywhere – and consequently, the entire process will collapse even as suspicion of the intentions of those behind it increases.