Staunton, November 18 – A book first
published 10,000 copies in May 2019 and now about to appear in its third
edition by a pseudonymous Ingush writer from the Prigorodny District describes Ossetian
cooperation with the Germans during World War II. It has been denounced by Ossetian
parliament and Ingush police have confiscated some of the copies.
The author, writing under a pseudonym
that has still not been resolved, says he wrote the book to counter what he
describes as false accusations against the Ingush of collaboration the Germans.
He used archival documents and German studies (fortanga.org/2019/11/avtor-knigi-osetiny-na-sluzhbe-tretego-rejha-otvetil-osetinskim-deputatam/).
As described by Fortanga, the
book seems relatively objective and very similar to German, Soviet and Russian studies
on the same subject (For a discussion of these, see Rolf-Deter Müller, The Unknown Eastern Front: The Wehrmacht and
Hitler's Foreign Soldiers (London, 2012.)
But because the author is an Ingush
from the district that the Ingush claim but that is now part of North Ossetia, because
he chose to write under a pseudonym, and because tensions between the two,
always high since the 1992, are again rising, the appearance of this book and
its popularity are likely to make things worse.
Concerns about tensions between
Ingushetia and its neighbors also are behind a new declaration of the Ingush
Committee for National Unity that no one must make Ingush objections to the
September 2018 agreement handing over 26,000 hectares of Ingush land the
occasion for hostility between the two Waynakh peoples (fortanga.org/2019/11/obrashhenie-ingushskogo-komiteta-natsionalnogo-edinstva-k-ingushskomu-i-chechenskomu-narodu/).
The Ingush and Chechens are “two
fraternal peoples who together have passed through tests over the course not of
a century or two but over millenia,” the declaration says. The current dispute
between Magas and Grozny is about the actions of two Moscow-appointed leaders
not about any conflict between the two peoples.
Unfortunately, the Committee says,
some people on both sides have used the Internet and other media to say things
which inappropriately extend the dispute and threaten to make it impossible for
the two nations to live in peace and harmony in the future. That must end, the
Ingush organization says.
“We are Muslims and we are Waynakhs.
Any insult of a Chechen or an Ingush must be viewed as an insult against all of
us regardless of from whom it comes,” it concludes.
Meanwhile, Albert Balakhoyev, who
was arrested and then fined for his chance involvement in the March 2019
protests in Ingushetia, has appealed to the European Court for Human Rights
citing his over-long detention and the absence of both evidence against him and
proper judicial consideration (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/342508/).
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