Sale and Destruction of Building Used as Chechen Mosque in Dagestan Exacerbates Tensions There

Paul Goble

    Staunton, May 13 – The complexities of restoring buildings to their rightful owners after they have been used by more than one, the ways in which such disputes play into larger issues of the status of ethnic communities, and the impact of ethnic diversity in Dagestan on all issues are very much on public view in the pulling down of a building most recently used as a mosque.

    In Leninaul, a village in the Chechen portion of Dagestan which has been slated to get its own status as an official district later this year, officials sold off to the highest bidder a building that until a decade or so ago had been a store but more recently had been used as a mosque for the Chechen minority there (akcent.site/novosti/40875).

    The winning bidder who paid ten times the opening bid then announced he was tearing down the building in order to put up a new one. That outraged the Chechens who argued that he was destroying their mosque which they had been using since 2020 and thus not only attacking a religious facility but destabilizing the situation in the region.

    To outsiders, this may seem a small issue, especially as the authorities in Leninaul immediately offered the Chechens land for a new mosque. But that hasn’t calmed the situation, and it is quite likely that the dispute will escalate particularly if Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov chooses to support his co-ethnics in Dagestan as he has in the past.

    For background on the status of Chechens in Dagestan which this purchase puts at risk, see jamestown.org/program/groznys-support-for-ethnic-chechens-in-dagestan-destabilizing-north-caucasus/, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/10/plans-to-restore-chechen-district-in.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/10/banal-corruption-reason-dagestan.html.