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Was Dagestan’s Amnesty a Fiction?
[01:26 pm] 14 April, 2007
Fighting between police and militants continues, despite
four-month-long amnesty.
Three months after an amnesty for armed militants expired in the North
Caucasus, experts are questioning whether the measure achieved
anything in the region’s largest republic, Dagestan, as violence
continues between local security forces and underground groups.
Reports about the killing of extremists are part of the daily diet of
news in Dagestan. In the last month, reports have been aired about the
killing of three extremist leaders, who apparently were planning to
carry out major terror operations.
While the level of political violence has declined recently in
neighbouring Chechnya, it has remained at around the same level in
Dagestan.
A Dagestani police official told IWPR that Khasavyurt region on the
border with Chechnya was an especially dangerous area. `We often find
arms caches and bases of fighters,’ he said.
Another source, who works for the FSB counter-intelligence service,
told IWPR, `We’ve established that the Shariat terrorist group which
the famous Dagestani fighter Makhach Rasulov used to belong to was
well financed from abroad. And certainly they weren’t doing charity
work. I’m struck that certain people come out in defence of these
people and suggest that they suffered for their religious
convictions.’
On September 21 last year, the lower house of the Russian federal
parliament, the State Duma, declared a new amnesty for the North
Caucasus, which covered crimes committed both by `illegal armed
formations’ and by federal soldiers. Serious offences such as
terrorism, banditry and murder were not covered by the amnesty.
`Basically it covers a category of people who have not committed
particularly grave crimes with the aim of returning them to civilian
life,’ Dagestan’s interior minister Adilgerei Magomedtagirov told a
press conference. `But we should note that not everyone understands
this and some treat the amnesty as a manifestation that a weak state
is forgiving everyone and return to their criminal activities.’
Official data says that across the entire region 546 people took up
the amnesty, which expired in January, of whom 470 were in Chechnya
and just 41 in Dagestan. In Dagestan, half of those who surrendered
were in the Khasavyurt region.
`On the whole, these people were from the circle of the fighters; they
sought out apartments for them; transported things,’ said Angela
Martirosova, head of the interior ministry press office. `Their
average age was between 20 and 45.’
In contrast to Chechnya, the amnesty in Dagestan was not hailed as a
big triumph. Local analysts have different explanations for why larger
numbers did not give themselves up.
`This amnesty is a measure, worked out exclusively in the interests of
[Chechen president] Ramzan Kadyrov,’ said human rights activist Geidar
Jemal. `It’s obvious that it’s changed nothing in the North
Caucasus. As for Dagestan, the fight between the interior ministry and
society has only intensified.’
Arslanali Murtazaliev, deputy head of Khasavyurt administration, says
that in his experience few people took up the amnesty because they did
not trust the authorities.
`No one wants to give firm guarantees to those who are ready to
return,’ he said. `And people simply don’t believe what some leaders
of law-enforcement agencies tell them.’
Makhachkala resident Magomed Akhmadov speculated, `Evidently
information about the amnesty did not reach all the fighters. After
all, fighters don’t walk the streets and read the newspapers.’
`Amnesties announced by the authorities are not capable of returning
fighters to peaceful life,’ said lawyer Karim Akhmednabiev. `I think
the only people who surrendered were people who had already given up
fighting and who had legalised themselves in towns and villages.’
Another Dagestani expert was more outspoken, calling the amnesty a
`fiction’.
Akhmednabi Akhmednabiev, investigations editor for Novoe Delo
newspaper, pointed out that the amnesty was not designed for people
who had blood on their hands. `Then who is it for?’ he asked. `For a
couple of dozen relatives of fighters, their wives or those who worked
as cooks or drove them to their safe-houses? Do these people pose a
real threat to Dagestan?’
`Recently several members of the jamaat [Islamic militant group] from
the village of Gimri appealed to the leadership of the republic,
asking the president to guarantee that if fighters from this village
repented and surrendered, they would not be persecuted. The president
rejected the offer.’
There have been a number of cases in the last couple of years where
Dagestanis have accused the law- enforcement agencies of falsifying
charges of militancy or terrorism against them.
They include the human rights campaigner Osman Boliev and Abas
Kebedov, brother of alleged terrorist Bagauddin Magomedov.
Recently, the federal Supreme Court in Moscow cleared a Dagestani,
Khanali Umakhanov, who had been wrongly convicted of taking part in an
act of terrorism in May 2002 in the town of Kaspiisk.
Dagestani president Mukhu Aliev, who took office last year with a
programme of reform, has made a sober assessment of the problems
facing the republic.
`Terrorism in the North Caucasus is with us for the long term,’ said
Aliev. `That is so particularly because there is high unemployment in
the region. Amnestied fighters will swell the ranks of the unemployed
because, in contrast to Chechnya, there are no presidential regiments
and security services in Dagestan designed for this part of the
population.’
Officials and experts in Dagestan even differ about the most
elementary information – how many militant fighters there are in the
republic. Estimates range of 20-30 to a thousand.
More precise is the number killed and detained. Last year, this was 60
and 145 respectively and for the first three months of this year it
was 13 and 28.
This shows that the Islamist underground is still relatively powerful
in Dagestan. The authorities hope that the amnesty has at least given
them greater knowledge about how to tackle it.
By Diana Alieva in Makhachkala
Diana Alieva is a correspondent for Svobodnaya Respublika newspaper in
Dagestan. She is a member of IWPR’s Cross-Caucasus Journalism Network
project. Institute for War and Peace Reporting’s Caucasus Reporting
Service
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
