THE NORTH CAUCASUS REMAINS RUSSIA’S PERPETUAL PROBLEM REGION
Mairbek Vatchagaev

Jamestown Foundation
Nov 30 2009

A Russian Interior Ministry forces soldier examines a police vehicle
in in Grozny.

The resounding speech made by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in his
annual address to the country’s parliament had no impact whatsoever
on the situation in the North Caucasus (, November 12).

While local officials are left guessing who will become the Kremlin’s
man in charge in the North Caucasus (, November 12), reports
of shootings and special security operations targeting members of
the armed resistance keep arriving from the region.

Nearly all the attacks on siloviki perpetrated by members of
Ingushetia’s Sharia Jamaat occur in the republic’s flatlands, which
refutes the established belief that the insurgents operate in the
mountains or woodlands. The attacks are more common on the Kavkaz
(Caucasus) federal highway, particularly in the stretch of highway
from the village of Ordzhonikidzevskaya to the city of Nazran.

According to local sources ( and
), several attacks on policemen were registered
recently in the area of the Ekazhevo settlement, which is in
Ingushetia’s Nazran district. On November 20, two policemen were
wounded inside their vehicle when it was fired on in broad daylight.

One of them, M. B. Shauhalov, subsequently died in the hospital. That
same night, unknown individuals shot up the courthouse of Ekazhevo
with assault rifles and then set it on fire. Meanwhile, armed attacks
on military motorcades and police stations no longer shock anyone
in Ingushetia (, November 14, 15). Since the
forced resignation of Ruslan Aushev, Ingushetia’s first president,
in April 2002, the kidnapping of young people by the siloviki remains
the most pressing problem in the republic.

Meanwhile, Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov has been losing count of
the militants he personally eliminated. Almost all siloviki operations
against militants in Chechnya are conducted under his personal
supervision. According to Russian news sources, 35 militants were
killed in October (, November 9). This figure
will likely be surpassed in November. For example, the authorities
reported on November 11 that five militants were killed in the area
of Serzhen-Yurt in the Shali district. On November 13, they reported
ten more militants had been killed during special operations in
Chechnya’s Achkhoi-Martan district of Chechnya, and that estimate was
subsequently increased to 20. Meanwhile, Kadyrov announced that Dokka
Umarov, the leader of the armed resistance in the North Caucasus,
might have been among those killed in the operation in Achkhoi-Martan
(, November 13). According to Chechen authorities,
Dokka Umarov was hiding in the very area where the operation took
place. It appears that these operations were meant to be a gift timed
for Medvedev’s annual address.

In Dagestan, one of the largest republics in the North Caucasus,
authorities have followed the lead of their Chechen colleagues and
begun setting the houses of militants’ relatives on fire. Among the
houses burned down was that of Emir Seifullah, the leader of Gubden
jamaat (, November 19). It is worth noting that the
Gubden and Khasavyurt jamaats have become the two most active cells
of Dagestan’s Sharia Jamaat. Meanwhile, on November 17, Magomedshamil
Shahbanov, the son of the head of Buinaksk administration, Mesterlu
Shahbanov, was kidnapped. Also, the mullah of the local mosque in
Starye Miatli in Dagestan’s Kizilyurt district, Ibragim Abakarov,
was shot at by unidentified individuals. It is worth noting that
religious leaders are frequent victims of attacks in the North
Caucasus. For example, on November 21, a blast rocked the private
house of the son of the mullah of one of Nazran’s mosques. The
bombing was aimed at pressuring the Sufis -who, according to the
insurgents, are cooperating with the authorities. That allegation
cannot be true because the very nature of Sufism practiced in Chechnya,
Ingushetia, and Dagestan rejects the notion of open cooperation with
any authorities. The Russian authorities at first skillfully used the
Sufis in their North Caucasus politics and then simply knocked the
Sufi element out of the game as Sufism became one of their biggest
problems of the last two hundred years. The belief that Sufis support
the authorities is inherently erroneous.

Reports of insurgent activity are arriving these days even from
the relatively quiet region of Kabardino-Balkaria. Unidentified
persons blew up an electrical substation and the "Azau-Krugozor"
cableway in the Adyl-Su Gorge in Kabardino-Balkaria’s Elbrus
region. Additionally, they fired on the "Azau" stationary road
police post located at the 54th kilometer of the Prohladnyi-Azau
federal highway at the Tyrnyauz city exit (, November
18). Moreover, according to Interfax, an act of terror was prevented
at the Aushigersk hydroelectric power plant located in the Chereksk
district of the republic. A weapons cache containing four kilograms
of plastic explosives, blasting caps and a concentrated charge (SZ-4)
was found in a forest 200 meters away from the plant. The contents
of the cache were sent for examination (, November 18).

There have been no recent news reports regarding the Karachai jamaat,
which suffered a major blow from numerous campaigns by the authorities
and siloviki in 2006-2007, when many of the jamaat’s members were
killed. However, on November 11, there was a report about a shootout
in Karachaevo-Cherkessia. An unidentified insurgent opened fire at
road policemen on duty on Mir Street in the city of Karachaevsk. Three
policemen were wounded in the attack (, November 18).

There has been some turbulence in the Republic of Adygea, where
President Aslan Thakushinov suggested creating a center of political
technologies in order to develop an information policy in the sphere
of terrorism prevention (, November 8). The
authorities there intend to pay more attention to the issues of Islam
and interethnic relations in this North Caucasus region.

The topic of the Pankisi (a gorge in the northeastern corner of Georgia
bordering Chechnya and populated by ethnic Chechens) has not been left
out of the picture in recent days. According to Armenian sources,
Tbilisi is ready to open its borders for transit between Russia and
Armenia in exchange for Russia refraining from pressuring Georgia
politically over the Pankisi Gorge (, November 19).

Generally, the arrival of winter results in a considerable slow
down in insurgent activity in the North Caucasus. However, this is
absolutely not the case this year. We may assume that this has to
do with the new tactics of the armed resistance as well as harsh
counterterrorist operations being conducted by regional authorities.