Paul Goble
Staunton, Oct. 19 – Moscow and Makhchkala have committed themselves to restoring the Chechen district in Dagestan by 2025, something that would be possible only if most of the ethnic Laks now populating that region are resettled elsewhere. But plans for that have run into difficulties because Lak property owners are insisting on compensation for any takings.
That district, which runs along Dagestan’s border with Chechnya, existed until 1944 when Stalin deported the Chechens. When the Chechens were permitted to return, the Aukh District was not restored. Instead, it has remained the Novo-Lak district named for the ethnic Laks who had moved there in place of the Chechens.
After the demise of the USSR, the Chechens were promised both by Moscow and Makhachkala that they would be allowed to restore the Aukh district, that property they had owned there earlier would be restored to them, and that the Laks would be resettled elsewhere in Dagestan.
But the Laks don’t want to leave unless all of their property claims are satisfied, they are fully compensated for any property they give up, and are provided with equivalent housing and land elsewhere in Dagestan. Not surprisingly, these competing claims are in the courts, with both Chechens and Laks saying they will carry their cases to the highest Russian courts they can.
That makes it unlikely that this issue can be resolved anytime soon and quite possibly not before 2026 or even later. And it also means that these cases and the human tragedies they reflect will spark more serious conflicts between the Laks and the Chechens, the latter of whom have the backing of Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov.
(For the complicated history of this dispute and its growing potential for violence, see kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/346298/, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/10/banal-corruption-reason-dagestan.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/03/moscow-and-makhachkala-risk-violence.html.)
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