From: MSN Nicknamepsychoteddybear24  (Original Message)    Sent: 10/4/2007 12:43 PM
Chechnya Weekly - Volume VIII, Issue 38
October 4, 2007

IN THIS ISSUE:
* Twelve Die in Dagestan Violence
* Rights Activist Says FSB Controls Ingushetia’s Law-Enforcement Agencies
* Chechen Parliamentary Speaker Declares “Counter-Terrorist Operation” Completed
* Briefs
* The Kremlin Intensifies Reprisals against Muslims in the North Caucasus
By Andrei Smirnov
* Understanding the Roots of the Conflict in Ingushetia
By Fatima Tlisova

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Twelve Die in Dagestan Violence

Two police officers were killed in the town of Dagestanskiye Ogni in southern Dagestan, RIA Novosti reported on October 3. “A criminal fired from an assault rifle at a Lada car parked outside of the town’s interior department in Ulitsa Lenina on October 2,” a source in Dagestan’s Interior Ministry told the news agency. “A district police officer and an officer from the interior department’s convoy directorate were in the car at the time.” The district policeman reportedly died on the spot and the convoy directorate officer died later in the hospital, while the gunman escaped. Itar-Tass also quoted a local police official who gave an account of the attack. “The police officers came under attack in the town of Dagestanskiye Ogni near the local interior department at 22:20 on Tuesday [October 2],” the official said. “An unidentified man in sportswear ran up to district police officer Telman Kazikhanov and road policeman Magomedsalam Guseinov and opened fire with a pistol.” The news agency reported that Kazikhanov died on the spot and Sergeant Guseinov was rushed to the hospital with multiple wounds.

Itar-Tass reported on October 3 that four residents of the Dagestani village of Verkhneye Kazanishche came under automatic fire as they entered a forest to gather firewood. “Two men were wounded, one of them is in a hospital in critical condition,” a source in the republic’s law-enforcement bodies told the news agency. According to Itar-Tass, police are searching for the gunmen, whom investigators believe were members of the “so-called Buinaksk jamaat.”

The Associated Press reported on September 30 that gunmen had killed a policeman at his home in the Dagestani town of Kizylyurt on September 29. Kavkazky Uzel reported on September 30 that the victim was Magomedrasul Gasanov, the head of the criminal investigation department of the Kizilyurt police department, and that he was killed while traveling home from work. The website also reported that a security guard in the Dagestani town of Sergokala, Askhab Ibragimov, was killed when unidentified gunmen fired on his car from a wooded area.

Meanwhile, a shootout that erupted over a dispute about money on September 30 killed nine people in Dagestan, including a police officer. The Associated Press quoted Dagestani Interior Ministry spokesman Mark Tolchinsky as saying that the gunfire broke out after a group of gunmen came to the village of Gonoda to demand money allegedly owed to them by a resident. According to Tolchinsky, some of those killed in the Gonoda shooting were relatives of Dagestan Interior Minister Adilgerei Magomedtagirov, but it was not immediately known if the dispute was connected to his official activities. Reuters reported on September 30 that “a senior policeman” was among the nine killed in Gonoda, while Interfax said a “local police” officer was among the nine victims.

Kavkazky Uzel reported on September 30 that there was information that relatives of Adilgerei Magomedtagirov were among the victims of the shooting in Gonoda and that the Dagestani Interior Minister, who hails from Gonoda, went to the village following the incident. The website reported that villagers were certain the attackers were members of “illegal armed formations.” It also reported that Dagestani President Mukhu Aliev, republican Prime Minister Zainalov and Magomedtagirov had attended the funeral for the victims of the attack.

Interfax reported on September 29 that Nurmagomed Gadzhimagomedov, the kadi [Islamic judge] of a local mosque in the village of Gubden in Dagestan’s Karabudakhkentsy district was killed when unidentified gunmen fired on him with assault rifles as he was going to the mosque for morning prayers. The news agency, which cited a source in the Karabudakhkentsy police department, reported that the gunmen fled the scene. According to Interfax, “preliminary information” suggested that “members of illegal armed groups” murdered Gadzhimagomedov, who, according to the news agency, had “expressed sharp criticism of Islamic radicals and had spoken in favor of expelling the relatives of members of illegal armed groups from the villages where they live.”

The separatist Chechenpress website on October 2 posted a press release from the Sharia Jamaat, the armed underground Islamist group in Dagestan, claiming that two of its “mujahideen” had become “shaheeds” – martyrs – in a shootout with security forces in the center Shamilkala - the name the Islamic militants use for Makhachkala, the Dagestani capital. The press release claimed that three special forces commandos were also killed in the shootout, which it said lasted for 15 hours, and that five or six homes were burned to the ground. It should be noted that there were no reports in the Russian or Western press of such a gun battle taking place in Makhachkala. The Sharia Jamaat also claimed responsibility for the killings of Nurmagomed Gadzhimagomedov, the kadi of the mosque in the village of Gubden, and Magomedrasul Gasanov, the head of the criminal investigation department of the Kizilyurt police department.

Meanwhile, Kavkazky Uzel reported on October 1 that top Dagestani officials met to discuss the recent terrorist attacks in the republic. The website quoted Dagestani Interior Minister Adilgerei Magomedtagirov as saying that 37 members of “illegal armed formations” have been killed and 53 others have been detained so far this year.

Rights Activist Says FSB Controls Ingushetia’s Law-Enforcement Agencies

Magomed Mutsolgov, head of the Ingush human rights group Mashr, claimed in an interview with Sobkor.ru website published on October 3 that the Federal Security Service (FSB) has essentially taken control of the local law-enforcement bodies in Ingushetia. By way of evidence for his claim, Mutsolgov said that there have been numerous cases in which staffers of the republic’s police department and prosecutor’s office have been fired for trying to bring to justice federal siloviki who have committed murders and kidnappings in the republic.

Mutsolgov cited the example of the firing of Akhmed Murzabekov, the head of the GOVD (Main Department of Internal Affairs) in the city of Karabulak, who together with members of the local OMON special police unit had detained the killers of Apti Dolakov (Chechnya Weekly, September 6). The killers, who turned out to be FSB officers, were subsequently freed and Murzabekov lost his job. According to Mutsolgov, a similar case involved the inspector of the village of Sukhakhi, Tamerlan Izmailov, who lost his job after demanding that special services officers who were trying to detain a suspect present documentation authorizing the detention. Izmailov’s intercession prevented the extra-judicial abduction, Mutsolgov said. “The impunity of FSB employees increases the number of militants in the republic,” Mutsolgov told Sobkor.ru. “These [militants] are people who want to take revenge for their relatives. Practically every family in Ingushetia has members who were kidnapped or murdered.”

Mutsolgov said that the national media is presenting sanitized versions of what is taking place in Ingushetia, and that there is no longer any free media left inside the republic. He claimed that more than 500 people have been killed in Ingushetia over the year, and that not one of the 157 people who have been abducted has been found. “I understand that the leadership of the republic is building kindergartens, hospitals; that corn is growing in the fields; but it seems to me that a much more important topic is the unsolved murders of peaceful residents, yet nobody is reporting on it.”

Kavkazky Uzel on October 2 quoted an anonymous officer with one of Ingushetia’s “power structures” as confirming that officials had been recently ordered not to inform the media about “terrorist” incidents. “Of late, we have been forbidden to cooperate with the media and report to them information about incidents that are terrorist in nature,” the officer told the website. “I don’t know what this is connected to or where such an initiative originated from. Personally, I received such instructions from my boss.”

According to Kavkazky Uzel, official representatives of various power structures have been refusing to comment on reported attacks, claiming a lack of information. The website noted that not a single agency had confirmed reports of an attack by gunmen on an oil refinery located on the outskirts of Karabulak on the evening of September 21, an attack on an Interior Ministry armored personnel carrier in Ingushetia’s Sunzha district on September 26 or the attack on the headquarters of the Nazran GOVD on the evening of September 13.

“According to some information, the ban on the dissemination of ‘negative’ information was taken by local authorities, who have on more that one occasion expressed their displeasure over the fact that the media reports only negative information from Ingushetia, which contributes to inflaming the situation in the republic,” Kavkazky Uzel wrote. “According to other information, such an order came from Moscow.” The independent Ingushetiya.ru website claimed on September 24 that Ingushetian Interior Minister Musa Medov had given verbal orders to police not to record incidents of gun attacks, explosions and other “terrorist acts” (Chechnya Weekly, September 27). Kavkazky Uzel noted that Ingushetian President Murat Zyazikov has criticized the media for what he sees as “non-objective” reporting on events in the republic.

Meanwhile, the Aushev brothers – residents of the village of Surkhakhi in Ingushetia who were kidnapped in the Chechen capital of Grozny, taken to Ingushetia and subsequently freed after relatives led a protest demonstration in Nazran – have written a letter addressed to Russian officials, Russian human rights groups and international organizations, stating that they feared for reprisals from siloviki and asking for protection. Kavkazky Uzel reported on October 2 that in their letter, the Aushevs described their kidnapping and torture by security agents. According to the website, the brothers said that one of their kidnappers had warned that they would be killed if they went public about their ordeal. Given this threat, they wrote, “We earnestly ask you to protect us with all possible means from the unlawful actions of special services employees, from their outrages, and to take all possible measures to punish the people who committed this crime against us.”

However, Kavkazky Uzel quoted Aslambek Apaev, a North Caucasus expert with the Moscow Helsinki Group, as saying that not only do the authorities in Chechnya and Ingushetia have no plans to investigate the kidnapping of the Aushev brothers, but that the Ingushetian authorities may launch criminal proceedings against the people who participated in the demonstration in Nazran to protest their kidnapping. Several people were injured in that demonstration, which took place on September 19 (Chechnya Weekly, September 20).

Newsru.com on October 2 quoted relatives and neighbors of another pair of Ingush brothers, Said-Magomed and Ruslan Galaev, who were killed during a special operation conducted by republican and federal security forces in the village of Sagopshi on September 27, as saying that, contrary to official claims, the brothers had no links to the rebels and did not resist security forces. Officials claim that Said-Magomed Galaev was the emir of the militants in Ingushetia’s Malgobeksky district who went by the nom de guerre “Abdul-Malik” and say that two policemen were injured during the security operation in which the Galaev brothers were killed. Relatives of the dead brothers told staffers of the Memorial human rights group that their home was surrounded by more than 100 troops who arrived in two armored personnel carriers and ten trucks and who then burst into the home, killing the two brothers and hurling grenades.

Chechen Parliamentary Speaker Declares “Counter-Terrorist Operation” Completed

Dukvakha Abdurakhmanov, speaker of the People’s Assembly, the lower house of Chechnya’s parliament, said on October 2 that the “counter-terrorism operation” in Chechnya has been completed and claimed that only several dozen militants are still active in the republic. “We may now conclude that the operation is over,” Interfax quoted him as telling reporters in Moscow. “Some generals still want to go on with counter-terrorism, but this is not in our interest. Now everybody can walk freely in any Chechen village at any time of the day. Indeed, the counter-terrorism operation has come to an end.” He said that there are still 30-40 or perhaps a maximum of 70 militants in Chechnya and that Chechen rebel leader Dokka Umarov may no longer be in Russia. “Only Dokka Umarov is left now, and it is not even clear whether he is in the Chechen Republic or in another state,” Abdurakhmanov said.

Interfax also quoted Abdurakhmanov as saying that despite the strengthening of Russia’s regions, the issue of Chechnya’s unification with Ingushetia would not be considered in the near future. Quoting Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, Abdurakhmanov said that “we must build a life in our republic whose political stability and social security would attract other peoples.” He also denied that the murder of award-winning journalist Anna Politkovskaya could be traced back to Chechnya. “Traces must be searched for in the places where there are the most cries, the most shouts,” he said. “The West is where people are crying and shouting the most and that is where traces must be searched for.”

Meanwhile, Newsru.com reported on October 4 that a member of the group led by Chechen rebel leader Dokka Umarov had been captured in Grozny’s Staropromyslovsky district. The website also reported that unidentified gunmen had fired on a UAZ vehicle in Chechnya’s Vedeno district on October 3, wounding a police officer and three local residents who were in the vehicle. Also on October 3, an explosion took place in a café in Grozny, killing one policeman and wounding four others, Interfax reported. According to one account, the blast was caused by a bomb; according to another, it took place when a grenade launcher fired accidentally.

Briefs

- Kadyrov Again Says Putin Should be President for Life

In the wake of President Vladimir Putin’s decision to head the pro-Kremlin United Russia’s party lists for this December’s State Duma election and his hint that he would consider serving as prime minister, Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov has said that Putin should be president for life. “Why can’t we be like Turkmenistan or Kazakhstan?” Newsru.com on October 2 quoted Kadyrov as saying. “As before, I want Vladimir Putin to remain [president] for a third term. The people should continue to ask Putin to remain, and then he will be obliged to submit to the people.” In an interview published in the weekly magazine Kommersant-Vlast this past June, Kadyrov spoke in similar terms about his desire to see Putin become Russia’s president for life (Chechnya Weekly, June 21).

- HIV/AIDS on the Rise in Chechnya

Prague Watchdog on October 3 quoted a health ministry official as saying that the situation regarding the spread of HIV in Chechnya is “a dangerous one.” The anonymous official told the website that 784 cases of HIV infection have been registered at the National Center in Grozny alone. “The spread of HIV has been observed in 98 of the country’s population centers,” the official said. “The highest number of AIDS cases was recorded in the city of Grozny, affecting 304 people, including 58 women and 10 children. It’s followed by Groznensky district, with 93 cases, including 21 women and 3 children, and Urus-Martanovsky district, with 74 patients, of whom 15 are women and 2 are children.” The official said that the mountainous part of the republic has the lowest number of AIDS cases, with only one person found to be infected with HIV in the Nozhai-Yurt district and two and three in the neighboring Itum-Kalinsky and Shatoi districts, respectively.

The Kremlin Intensifies Reprisals against Muslims in the North Caucasus
By Andrei Smirnov

Repression against practicing Muslims has significantly intensified in the North Caucasus this year. Disappearances or kidnappings of devout young Muslims have become more frequent in such Caucasian regions as Dagestan, Ingushetia, and Kabardino-Balkaria.

During an official conference in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, on June 6, the director of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) Nikolai Patrushev, expressed concern that radical Islam in the North Caucasus is pushing away more traditional forms of Islam. In his talk at the conference, Patrushev also pointed to the fact that a growing number of Caucasian Muslims are receiving religious education abroad. “During the last ten years, thousands of young men have gotten training in religious institutes abroad,” Patrushev said. “Some of these students have become active agitators of ideas that are alien to Russian traditional religious values” (Interfax, June 6).

Patrushev’s speech was a signal to security officials in the North Caucasus to intensify their activities in searching and detaining devout practicing Muslims in the Caucasus. Imams of regional mosques play a key role in this activity. They provide the police and the FSB with the names of those who visit a mosque too often or whose way of praying differs from the others. There is a difference in praying between Sufi Muslims (Sufism is the dominant school of Islam in some regions of the North Caucasus; the Russian authorities regard Sufism as a less dangerous branch of Islam than the other branches, especially Wahhabism or Islamic fundamentalism) and others. The noon prayer of a Sufi in the Caucasus lasts a little bit longer than the prayer of an ordinary Muslim. If a man regularly finishes his noon prayer a little bit earlier and then leaves the mosque, this could mean that he is not a Sufi, but an adherent of another branch of Islam, including Salafism or Wahhabism. It should be noted that the majority of the Muslims in the world do not have prayers that are as long as those of the Sufis of the North Caucasus, so if a man leaves the mosque earlier than the others do, this is not necessarily proof that he is an adherent of Salafism or Wahhabism.

All of the imams of the mosques in such Sufi dominated Caucasian regions as Dagestan, Ingushetia and Chechnya have special instructions from the police and the FSB to report on all those who leave the mosque before the end of the noon prayer. Arresting or kidnapping a man who is on an imam’s blacklist is a common thing in the Caucasus. At the end of the last year, a young man who had had arguments with an imam of a local mosque in Makhachkala over how to pray was detained by the police and found dead the day after his arrest. According to Lev Ponomarev, head of the For Human Rights movement, 18 men were kidnapped in Dagestan during April and May this year, all of them devout practicing young Muslims.

A Muslim who simply goes to mosque too often can also be regarded as a suspicious person. During the last two years, the police carried out several raids on mosques in Makhachkala in the early morning, during morning prayer. Security officials believe that only a true Muslim can attend a mosque so early, and they regard all true Muslims as potential rebels.

The hunt for practicing Muslims is currently under way in Ingushetia. As the Ingushetiya.ru website reported, during a recent meeting of police officers, Musa Medov, the republic’s interior minister, declared that the lists of the names of those who leave mosques at noon earlier than others had been coordinated with the Spiritual Directorate of Muslims of Ingushetia (the official Muslim organization). Medov added that persons on the lists were Wahhabis and should be eliminated.

The Galaev brothers from the Ingush village of Sagopshi are the first victims of this new campaign in Ingushetia to eliminate those who pray “in a wrong way.” On September 27, Said Galaev and Ruslan Galaev were killed by a squad of special forces who had raided their house. The policemen said that the brothers tried to resist and shoot at them, but Bamatgiri Mankiev, head of the Human Rights Commission of the Ingush parliament, told the newspaper Kommersant that the Russian policemen shot them while they were still in bed. Mankiev insists that the only thing the Galaevs were guilty of was being on the blacklist (Kommersant, September 28).

Sometimes the hunt for the “wrong Muslims” becomes so absurd that young men who simply have a healthy lifestyle also become victims. As the Chechen journalist Ruslan Sultanbekov told Jamestown, his friend in Chechnya had been arrested and called a Wahhabi simply because he did not smoke or drink alcohol.

In the western part of the North Caucasus - Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachaevo-Cherkessia, and Adygeya - where there are practically no Sufis and Islam does not have such deep roots as in the East, Muslims who do nothing more than pray in public and go to the mosque can be added to the blacklist. After a period of relative calm that lasted for about one year, repression against practicing Muslims has again intensified in the western part of the North Caucasus. According to the “For Human Rights” movement, this past summer, the anti-organized crime unit of the police in Karachaevo-Cherkessia detained dozens of practicing Muslims. Human rights activists say that all of the criminal cases that were initiated against the detained Muslims were fabricated with only one aim: to send as many local Muslims as possible to prison for a long time and thus secure the region before the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi in 2014 (Karachaevo-Cherkessia is adjacent to Sochi).

As for Kabardino-Balkaria, the reprisals in the region are even worse, because practicing Muslims are not only arrested, but are often kidnapped and disappear without a trace. On September 26, the separatist Daymokh website reported the disappearance in Kabardino-Balkaria of two young businessmen known in the republic as devout Muslims.

The aim of such reprisals is clear: in detaining practicing Muslims, the security officials are trying to neutralize potential rebels and sympathizers of the insurgency. It is likely, however, that even the FSB leadership is not absolutely certain that these reprisals will work. The lack of other effective methods is forcing the FSB to resort to the dubious practice of targeting young Muslims.

Andrei Smirnov is an independent journalist covering the North Caucasus. He is based in Russia.


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From: MSN Nicknamepsychoteddybear24    Sent: 10/4/2007 12:44 PM

Understanding the Roots of the Conflict in Ingushetia
By Fatima Tlisova

Ingushetia today is quite clearly a republic at war. First of all, it has been declared a counter-terrorist operation zone - an ominous sign, given that both Chechen wars are still officially referred to as “counter-terrorist operations” by the Russian government. Secondly, additional divisions of army and security personnel have been moved to its territory. Finally, Ingushetia is the site of regularly occurring armed confrontations that result in the deaths not only of the actual participants, but also the civilian population, with unexpected disappearances becoming a widespread phenomenon.

At the same time, the information coming out of the republic, as relayed by the Russian media, provides no clues as to the reality of the situation, with the truth being deliberately warped in order to the benefit the government. The main theories widely discussed in connection with the current situation in Ingushetia are tied to the so-called “Chechen trail” found in the republic. The “official theory” states that the hostilities in Ingushetia are organized by al-Qaeda terrorists with the help and direct participation of the Chechen separatist underground. The “semi-official theory” suggests that the current tensions are tied to Ramzan Kadyrov’s attempt to reunite Ingushetia and Chechnya. In light of the obvious helplessness of the Ingush leadership and the federal forces sent in as reinforcements, an appeal can be made to the experienced neighbor to the east, which has been successful in pacifying and stabilizing a problematic region. Such an outcome would uphold the image of a Vainakh and Muslim leader that Kadyrov has sought to cultivate. Another explanation used in the official declarations coming out of Magas and Moscow is the suggestion that the opposition is using these hostilities as a way of pressuring the Kremlin into removing [Ingushetia’s president Murat] Zyazikov from power.

Unofficial explanations vary widely, and include the theory that recent events are a provocation staged by the security services in order to “discredit the Ingush nation and to physically liquidate Ingush youth.” A common notion holds that there is an “Ossetian trail” to be found behind the whole affair, showing just how much tension remains in Ossetian-Ingush relations even a decade after the swift, but bloody ethnic conflicts of 1992. Both of these ideas are widely discussed on Ingush internet forums.

Today’s Ingushetia is undoubtedly a tangle of many different problems. In order to answer the question of what exactly is going on in the republic, however, it is necessary to properly sort out the conflicting sides. Who exactly is attacking non-Ingush civilians? Who is attacking members of the security services and the military? Are all those killed by the security services actually mujahideen?

These are not easy questions to answer, since a wartime situation partially obscures the usually clear-cut moral differences between murder and a military operation. For example, the recent murders of non-Ingush persons looked like the handiwork of the guerrillas, since they had frequently stated that they would not tolerate the presence of “Russkies” in the Caucasus. But the murders have now expanded to encompass members of other ethnic groups, not just Russians, making the participation of the separatist underground far less likely. This is especially true after three officers of the Russian army were identified and arrested for the murder of a Russian family, but then later freed and transferred to another unit in Ossetia. The total lack of coverage of this incident by the Russian media clearly fits the information policy of the Kremlin. By making Russian society focus on the certainty that Ingush guerrillas are carrying out ethnic and religious cleansing, a solid rationale is provided for the military to begin mass repressions. Inside Ingushetia, however, the suspicion that Russian security services are responsible for non-Ingush murders has grown. Such ideas have been confirmed by the shooting death of an Ingush police officer immediately following the release of information regarding his investigation into the role of Russian military personnel in recent murders.

When discussing the killings of Russian military personnel, as well as the killings of officials from the prosecutor’s office, the Ministry of Internal Affairs or the FSB, it is hard to be sure whether the guerrillas are to blame. Many so-called “death squads” – secret mobile groups from the FSB, Interior Ministry and GRU – disguise themselves as guerrillas when undertaking missions aimed at the physical destruction of persons suspected of assisting or sympathizing with the underground. Information about such groups is known only to a few high-ranking officials. Since Ingushetia is the zone of a counter-terrorist operation, there is a very high concentration of such groups from various jurisdictions. This makes it almost impossible to determine who – the guerrillas, the FSB, the GRU or the Interior Ministry – disposed of a particular individual. Everyone suspects everyone else, with confrontations between different governmental services a reality, since the insurgents are known to disguise themselves as security personnel.

The Ossetian factor also cannot be ignored and is not simply a myth. Since the hostage crisis in Beslan, the disappearance of Ingush has become a mass phenomenon in the areas that border Ossetia. Ingush human rights activists maintain that an Ossetian group dedicated to vengeance, called the “Lesnyi bratia” (the “Forest brotherhood”), exists in the neighboring republic. It is purportedly made up of Ossetians from all social groups and even receives support from the government and the security apparatus of North Ossetia.

On the other hand, the frequency and severity of the attacks on security personnel makes it hard to dispute that a powerful underground is actually present in Ingushetia. This raises questions about the resources that this underground possesses, how well organized it is and whether is has a unified leadership. When discussing who would be a member of such a resistance, it should be understood that given the current sustained crisis, almost any resident of the republic, regardless of his social or political status, has a reason to be dissatisfied with the local government.

Ingushetia is the only region of Russia that does not have its own defined borders. The status of the “republic” is a fiction when paired with the lack of officially determined and established borders. The problem here is not only the Prigorodny district – that part of Ingushetia that Joseph Stalin transferred to Ossetia when the Ingush were deported to Central Asia. This territory, along with Ingush homes, remained part of Ossetia following the return of the Ingush to their homeland under Khrushchev. This unresolved issue sparked the bloodletting of the early 1990s and remains a source of tension to this day. But the Ingush have not only lost lands in the west, but significant territories are still in dispute with Chechnya in the east. The unending discussions about resurrecting a unified Chechen-Ingush republic also hint at the possibility of Ingushetia completely losing its independence. The views of the two sides are diametrically opposed, with public debates of the issue showing the categorical opposition of the Ingush and the lively interest of the Chechens. The loss of territory became especially painful in 2006, when the FSB gained control over the holiest land of the Ingush people, the Dzheirakh district, which lies in the 25-kilometer “border” area placed under the special control of the Russian border patrol. In this fashion, the territory of Ingushetia has shrunk notably, even though the republic has one of the largest population growth rates in the Russian Federation.

In the Caucasus, the issue of territorial loss cannot be separated from the ideas of ethnic and political self-identification. The bad blood caused by the loss of lands contributes to the overall self-image of an ethnic group and also shapes its view of the neighboring republics and Russia as a whole, since the country seems to have given more rights and independence to other ethnic groups. The obvious weakness of President Murat Zyazikov, an FSB general with only a ten percent approval rating, a man that was forced down Ingushetia’s throat instead of the well-respected Rosalyn Aushev, has also negatively affected the situation. The persistent feeling that the government is unjust, and that this injustice continues regardless of any political changes, has brought Ingushetia to its current state.

Despite the Kremlin’s claims, Russia does not face a small group of bandits financed by Arab emissaries in Ingushetia. Events suggest that the Ingush “underground” consists of almost the entire republic. The real underground, the actual guerrillas, suffered severe losses in 2005 and 2006. In 2005, Ilyes Gorchkhanov, the emir of Ingushetia, a man always in close contact with Shamil Basaev, was killed in Nalchik. In 2006, Basaev himself was killed, along with most of the Ingush insurgent leaders. The guerrillas were leaderless and confused, connections to other groups in the region were lost and no real centralization was possible. Despite these conditions, the resistance continued to fight, with disparate groups doing what they saw as their duty – blowing up military and police cars and carrying out as many attacks as they could.

It was at this time that Moscow took a step that went unnoticed by the media and the analysts. In 2006, duplicates of all governmental agencies and security services were created within the republic. Simply put, alongside the Interior Ministry, FSB, and prosecutor’s office of Ingushetia, there exist replicas of these organization fully staffed by persons from outside the republic. The level of mistrust for Ingush institutions by the Russian government has reached an all-time high. It was this unique situation that led Ingush society to overcome its internal divisions and pushed members of the local government and the even the security apparatus to support the underground. Four separate instances of armed Ingush OMON or other comparable security organizations confronting federal forces in defense of the local population have been recorded in the past three months.

After a peaceful demonstration was fired upon last week, the Kremlin declared that the Ingush crisis has been resolved. This declaration is, given everything discussed above, completely irresponsible. War cannot be “resolved” and Russia already has experience with such a “resolution” in Chechnya. While the Kremlin claimed that the Chechen resistance had been destroyed, war spread to the entirety of the North Caucasus.

Fatima Tlisova is a National Security and Human Rights Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. She has worked for ten years as a correspondent for a number of independent Russian papers as wells and international media, including the Associated Press, "Novaya Gazeta", RFE/RL, BBC and has also served as chief of the North Caucasian bureau of the Russian news agency Regnum. Fatima is a regular writer for IWPR (London) and for the Jamestown Foundation (Washington DC).

The author would like to thank her sources in Ingushetia and must maintain their anonymity in order to insure their safety. Materials from www.ingushetia.ru, www.gazeta.ru, www.gzt.ru, www.rutv.ru, www.kavkaz.memo.ru and the television station “Severnyi Kavkaz” have been used in writing this article.
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