CAUCASUS KNOT
by Aleksei Makhlai
WPS Agency
DEFENSE and SECURITY
March 27, 2009 Friday
Russia
WHAT PROMOTES TERRORIST ACTIVITY IN THE CAUCASUS, PARTICULARLY IN
INGUSHETIA AND DAGESTAN?; Russia needs a precise strategy of security
in the Caucasus.
Problems existing in the Caucasus might be divided into two categories:
events in the Russian Caucasus and sources of threats and tension in
Moscow’s relations with foreign countries of the southern part of the
region. One might recall August 2008, the Georgian-Ossetian conflict
and its aftermath and corollaries. All of that affects the strategy of
Russia’s relations with foreign countries of the region. This strategy
is also affected by the complicated situation in the Caucasus itself,
a situation that never shows any turns for the better. The increase
of terrorist activity in the region and particularly in Dagestan and
Ingushetia compels the Russian leadership to design new approaches
to the situation.
The Caucasus remains an area of never-ending hostilities. Terrorism
against major objects in the region gave way to terrorism against
individuals but it remains a tragic fact of life all the same.
This state of affairs is fomented by several factors like
– low living standards;
– chronic unemployment;
– corrupt ethnic elites; and
– low level of education.
Also importantly, federal laws are barely paid lip service in the
region.
The Caucasus is in a deep economic decline. What remnants of the
local economic infrastructure are still functioning were seized by
the ruling clans for their own. Small businesses in the Caucasus are
rarer than they are elsewhere in Russia.
The lack of stability is also bred by exodus of the Russian-speaking
population from the region. It is Russian-speakers who served as a
social and political "absorber" before the 1990s. The Russians were the
fifth largest ethnic group in Dagestan in the early 1990s. In early
2000, they amounted to only one half of their numerical strength in
this republic a decade ago. These days, the Russians account for only
3.5% of the population (80,000 men).
Performance and skills of local law enforcement agencies do not
entitle the Russians to hopes for adequate defense of their lives and
worldly assets. Islamic jamaats as parallel power structures mushroom
in the region. Granted that not all of them promote terrorism or
fundamentalist Islam, each and every one of them creates social and
legal norms that challenge the officially existing ones.
Dagestan in the meantime is Russia’s gateway to the Caspian region and
key to stability in all of the Caucasus. Dagestani ports harbor the
Caspian Flotilla, Moscow’s principal instrument of military-political
clout with all of the region. Dagestani coast with its infrastructure
constitutes a considerable resource of influence with the Central
Asian region.
Subjectively and objectively, the Caucasus is a region where Russian
statehood and Russia as such are put to test, inadvertently or
deliberately. Volatile in itself, the factor of the northern part of
the Caucasus is augmented by the influence of the no less destructive
factor of the southern part of the region.
There is one other potential source of threats and tension in Russia’s
relations with countries of the southern part of the region. The
matter concerns the still unsettled Azerbaijani-Armenian conflict over
Nagorno-Karabakh. Serious politicians in both capitals understand all
too well that any effort to settle the problem of Nagorno-Karabakh by
sheer strength of arms may and probably will spark an all-out war in
the region. All the same, negotiations invariably fail to produce a
coveted result because neither warring party wants to make successions
in so serious a matter.
Foreign countries of the southern part of the Caucasus are interested
in advancement of relations with Russia. It is also clear on the
other hand that the shooting war last August did create some negative
phenomena. The question that really matters is this: will Russia
manage to return its relations with the Western partners to the plane
of advancement of cooperation with interests of every state of the
region taken into account?
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
