Kiev - With fanfare and press conferences, the Kremlin on
April 16 declared victory in its long-running war in Chechnya against
separatism and Islamic fundamentalism.
But it seems that announcement might have come too soon. For,
while the fighting might be temporarily under control in Chechnya,
members of the Chechen insurgency seem to have diverted their efforts
into Ingushetia, a district adjacent to Chechnya and beyond the
control of Chechnya's brutal secret police
Operations in Ingushetia and nearby regions have taken the form of
an assassination campaign that sharply ramped up during the first
three weeks of June.
The most spectacular, a June 22 suicide bombing in Ingushetia's
largest city, Nazran, left a bodyguard dead and Yunus-bek Yevkurov,
the Moscow-appointed president of Ingushetia, hospitalized and in
critical condition.
Gunman ambushed a police major in Makhachkala, the capital of the
Caucausian province Dagestan, on June 12. Russia's ORT television
attributed the attack to 'bandits,' a term usually used by Russia's
state-controlled media to describe ethnic Chechen or Ingush
insurgents fighting Kremlin rule.
Additionally, Ingushetia supreme court justice Aza Gazgireyeva was
shot dead June 10 in front of her children as she dropped them off at
school. Five others were injured in the attack. The attackers remain
at large. The incident came 18 months after her predecessor had been
shot dead.
Next door in Dagestan, a sniper fatally injured Adilgerei
Magomedtagirov, interior minister of the Caucausian region Dagestan,
during a June 5 wedding reception in Makhachkala. As the district's
top investigator his job had been, largely, to hunt down insurgents
fighting Russian forces.
The Jamaal Shariat, an Ingushetia-based insurgent group that wants
a fundamentalist Islamic state that would include Chechnya,
Ingushetia, and portions of Dagestan, claimed responsibility.
'The Chechnya war isn't over,' said Zurab Maisuradze, a Tbilisi-
based security analyst. 'It's moved.'
To the outsider, of course, it is not so easy to see the
differences between Ingushetia, where violence has been on the rise
since 2004, and adjacent Chechnya, where Russia's army ended combat
operations in 2000. By 2008, it had built a police state headed by
Chechnya President Razman Kadyrov.
Both districts are mountainous, destitute, and largely populated
by speakers of the Nakh language who are adherents of Sunni Islam.
The two districts suffered equally and severely under the rule of
Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. Both saw wars gut their populations
after the break-up of the Soviet Union. Unemployment is high in both
districts, affecting around 50 per cent of working age men.
Former Chechen freedom fighter Kadyrov is the difference, analysts
agreed.
Installed in 2007 as Chechnya's effective dictator, Kadyrov has,
according to independent observers, implemented brutal police state
rule on Chechnya. Amnesty International has accused the Kadyrov
regime of murdering hundreds of its opponents, and kidnapping and
torturing thousands more - all part of a Moscow-approved campaign to
stamp out Chechen resistance.
Tens of thousands of Chechen refugees now live in Ingushetia as
displaced persons, according to UN estimates. As many as one quarter
of Ingushetia's registered population of 450,000 is ethnic Chechen,
not Ingush, making the ethnic Chechens a powerful and often well-
armed player in poorly-policed Ingushetia, area experts said.
'In Ingushetia you have a mixed population, meaning there is no
way to establish a single head man, like in Chechnya. And both the
Ingush and Chechen have a warrior culture,' explained Ruslan
Marchenko, a Kiev-based security analyst. 'There is no rule of law,
so the only security is in the clan - and that means violence against
whatever clan controls the government.'
The Kremlin is worried about rising violence in Ingushetia and
pleased with Kadyrov's iron-fisted rule in Chechnya, according to
regional experts. Thus, it has hit on a solution: use Kadyrov's
tactics elsewhere.
Raids by Kadyrovtsi, a local term describing ethnic Chechens hired
by Kadyrov's government to fight on the Russian side, first started
spilling into Ingushetia in the mid 2000s. A telling incident came in
2006, when hundreds of Kadyrovtsi police drove into Ingushetia from
Chechnya, shooting up Ingush border police attempting to prevent it.
An ethnic Ingush, Akhmed Yevloyev, is thought by Russian security
experts to be the current leader of Ingush Jamaat, the Caucasus
region's anti-Russian resistance. The guerilla group calling for the
creation of a fundamentalist Islamic republic including Ingushetia
and Chechnya.
Jamaat propaganda names Kadyrov's ethnic Chechen hit squads, along
with the Russian army, as the main enemies of the jihad.
Kadyrov, in June 23 television remarks, singled out Yevloyev as
the probable brains behind Ingushetia's latest wave of killings and
attempted murders. He vowed his paramilitary police would track down
those responsible.
'The international terrorists that did this, we will destroy
them,' Kadyrov said after meeting with Russian President Dmitry
Medvedev. 'Our revenge will be terrible.'
Hours later, in the tiny Ingushetian village of Dattykh, a police
officer was injured in a bomb blast. He survived, but a day later
police were still searching for suspects.
USA
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