From: MSN Nicknamepsychoteddybear24  (Original Message)    Sent: 10/11/2007 3:03 PM
Chechnya Weekly - Volume VIII, Issue 39
October 11, 2007

IN THIS ISSUE:
* Convoy Ambushed in Vedeno
* Two Policemen Murdered in Nazran
* Militants Killed in Makhachkala Shootout
* Kadyrov Turns 31
* Briefs
* Russification of the Ingush Police Continues
By Andrei Smirnov
* Putin’s Latest Reshuffling
By Mairbek Vatchagaev
---------------------------------------------------------------------Convoy Ambushed in Vedeno

A serviceman was killed and another wounded in a battle with a group of approximately 20 militants on the outskirts of the settlement of Zhani-Vedeno on October 9. Itar-Tass reported on October 10 that two militants were also killed in the battle while the rest escaped. Also on October 9, unidentified gunmen fired grenade launchers at soldiers who were returning to their base on the outskirts of the Shali district village of Agishty from a reconnaissance mission. Four servicemen were wounded in that attack. Meanwhile, soldiers engaged a group of six militants in a forest five kilometers from the Itum-Kala district center, wounding one.

The battle on the outskirts of Zhani-Vedeno on October 9 was clearly connected to an incident that took place in the area two days earlier. Four servicemen were killed and ten wounded in Chechnya’s Vedeno district on October 7 when rebels ambushed a convoy of vehicles as they were passing through a forest on the road from the village of Dargo to Vedeno. Itar-Tass on October 8 said the four slain servicemen included a contract policeman from Krasnodar Krai who headed a unit of Vedeno’s Interior Ministry department and three members of the Interior Ministry’s Yug (South) battalion. Kommersant reported on October 9 that 16 servicemen were wounded in the attack.

According to Kommersant, the ambush was carried out by militants led by rebel field commander Arbi Muntsigov, aka Shatral. The newspaper reported that local security forces had learned from a captured rebel collaborator that Arbi Muntsigov and his brother Usman (aged 20 and 28, respectively) were planning to visit their parents, who live in Dargo, on October 6. “Having decided that the liquidation of Muntsigov-the-elder and his gang would be a nice gift for the birthday of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov (who turned 31 on October 5), a large combined unit was set up in the district center to capture Shatral,” Kommersant wrote. Along with district policemen, the unit included members of the Chechen MVD’s Akhmat Kadyrov special regiment and the Yug battalion of Russian internal troops, both of which have sub-units based in Vedeno. A column consisting of ten army trucks and APCs entered Dargo late on the evening of October 6, after which security forces began to carry out document checks. Militants in the town began firing on them, but the security forces suppressed the rebel fire without sustaining casualties. The militants then managed to escape into the woods, leaving behind one dead fighter – identified as Khusein Khamaev, who was wanted for the murder of a Dargo resident.

On October 7, as the combined security force unit was heading back to Vedeno, it was ambushed near the village of Zhani-Vedeno. An unidentified member of the unit told Kommersant that the rebels fired at the vehicles in the convoy that were not armored – a UAZ and a KamAZ truck belonging to the Yug battalion. The drivers of those vehicles, Vedeno ROVD duty unit chief Sergei Narrated and a Yug battalion contract sergeant, were killed on the spot, and the KamAZ veered off a slope and crashed. Two other Yug battalion servicemen died as a result of the crash while 16 servicemen, including two officers, were seriously injured.

According to Kommersant, participants in the special operation are certain that Shatral and his brigade carried out the ambush. The newspaper also said that security officials in Vedeno describe Shatral as the “amir of the southeastern part of the Vedeno district” and “a commander from the new generation of militants” who is operating under the command of Chechen rebel leader Dokka Umarov. Shatral’s group, which consists of around two dozen young people who are relatives and fellow-villagers, has been unable to conduct large-scale operations but carried out a series of murders of Vedeno district officials and police this past spring.

Meanwhile, an unnamed official in the headquarters of the counter-terrorist operation in Chechnya said that Chechen rebel leader Dokka Umarov plans to “pool” the “remaining criminal armed groups” under a single command in order to “get funding from international terrorists and to launch subversive actions,” Interfax reported on October 10. “Illegal armed groups have effectively been crushed and ‘decapitated,’” the official told the news agency. “Umarov and Yevloev [Akhmed Yevloev, a.k.a. Magas, the Ingush field commander who was appointed as the top rebel military commander this past summer] are the only surviving field commanders. They are little known beyond the North Caucasus. But Umarov wants to pool small groups under his command and portray himself as the leader of the militants in the Caucasus in the eyes of international terrorists and to win large rewards. Umarov wants to be in the news and to reap generous rewards, as [the late Chechen president and separatist leader Aslan] Maskhadov and [the late rebel commander Shamil] Basaev did. But the targeted sweep operations being conducted in Chechnya are producing tangible results.”

Just days ago, Dukvakha Abdurakhmanov, speaker of the People’s Assembly, the lower house of Chechnya’s parliament, claimed that the “counter-terrorism operation” in Chechnya had been successfully completed, that only several dozen militants were still active in the republic and that Umarov was possibly no longer 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 (Chechnya Weekly, October 4).

On October 8, the separatist Kavkaz-Center website published a decree signed by Umarov – who is president of the separatist Chechen Republic of Ichkeria - promoting Shamil Basaev, the top rebel military commander killed in 2006, to the rank of generalissimo. Another decree, dated October 3, promoted Abdul-Khalim Sadulaev, the rebel leader killed in July 2006, and Rappani Khalilov, who was killed this past September, to the rank of general. Yet another decree posthumously promoted Arbi Baraev, the notorious rebel field commander killed in 2001, to the rank of brigadier general. Umarov also renamed two Chechen districts after Basaev and Sadulaev and conferred the Honor of the Nation order on more than two dozen dead rebel commanders.

Two Policemen Murdered in Nazran

Two policemen were murdered on October 10 in a market in the center of Nazran, Ingushetia’s largest city. RIA Novosti, citing a source in the republic’s law-enforcement bodies, reported that a group of policemen were fired on with automatic weapons from a Mercedes after they stopped the vehicle and tried to check the documents of those inside. Because of the large crowd of people in the market, the policemen were unable to return fire and two of them were killed. The perpetrators managed to escape. According to RIA Novosti’s source, one of the slain policemen was a nephew of Nazran’s police chief, Ali Yandiev, who himself has been the target of several assassination attempts. This past August, Abu Yandiev, a police official who was also identified as a nephew of Ali Yandiev, was assassinated in a Nazran sauna by an unknown attacker (see Mairbek Vachagaev, The Ingush Jamaat: Identity and Resistance in the North Caucasus, Jamestown Foundation Occasional Paper, August 2007).

A police captain was murdered in the city of Malgobek on October 8. A source in Ingushetia’s Interior Ministry told Interfax that the incident took place at around 9:30 p.m., local time. Gunmen shot the captain from a VAZ-2110 automobile parked near his home as he was returning from work. According to Interfax, there was no “official confirmation” of the incident.

Meanwhile, Gazeta.ru reported on October 8 that three high-ranking officials in Ingushetia’s Interior Ministry have been replaced with official from other regions. According to the website, the reason for the personnel changes is that Ingushetia has become the primary “hot spot” in the North Caucasus, with more terrorist attacks taking place than in Chechnya.

Gazeta.ru reported that officials from the Interior Ministry branch in Moscow and possibly St. Petersburg have replaced Ingushetia’s first deputy Interior Minister in charge of the criminal police, the deputy Interior Minister in charge of the ministry’s headquarters and the deputy Interior Minister in charge of personnel. Magomed Gutiev was also named deputy Interior Minister for public security. Gutiev was the only ethnic Ingush among the four newly appointed officials.

As Gazeta.ru noted, more than a thousand Interior Ministry Internal Troops were sent to Ingushetia from other Russian republics around two months ago. Last year, operational groups each consisting of 25 police officers from other republics and under the direct command of the Regional Operational Headquarters (ROSH) based in Khankala, Chechnya, were set up in district and city police departments in Ingushetia. “An overwhelming majority of the kidnappings in Ingushetia are carried out by employees of the special services, who systematically present special ROSH identity cards [spetspropusk],” the website reported. “Ingush police are even prohibited from examining and checking the holders of such special identity cards or their vehicles. Therefore the fear and distrust of the inhabitants [of Ingushetia] toward the police [deployed from other republics] is not surprising.”

Militants Killed in Makhachkala Shootout

Two militants were killed during a joint operation carried out by the Dagestani branch of the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the republic’s Interior Ministry in Dagestan’s capital, Makhachkala, Kommersant reported on October 10. According to the newspaper, Dagestani security officials learned that two members of the Makhachkala jamaat, headed by Shamil Gasanov, planned to carry out an attack in the city on October 8 and police went after them. One of the suspected rebels, Zalimkhan Musaev, was captured, but the second, Ulluby Balatkhanov, opened fire on police, wounding one policeman before escaping. Security forces tracked him down to an apartment building in the Dagestani capital where he and another militant were holed up and another shootout ensued, this one lasting several hours. Kommersant reported that the security forces refrained from using grenade launchers and flamethrowers, which have been used in other such security operations, but did fire from a heavy machinegun mounted on an armored personnel carrier into the apartment in which the militants were hiding. Ultimately, security forces drilled holes in the floor of the apartment in which the rebels were holed up and detonated plastic explosives.

Inside the apartment, security forces found the bodies of Balatkhanov and Yury Nesterov, a 17-year-old native of the Yamalo-Nenetsk autonomous district who moved to Dagestan several years ago and became a militant after converting to Islam. Law-enforcement officials believe the two were involved in the murder on October 4 of Edik Geraev, deputy commander of a special regiment of the Makhachkala police department’s traffic police unit, and the murder on October 6 of Nabi Gitinomagomedov, chief of the GIBDD (road safety inspectorate) of the Shamilsky district police department.

Itar-Tass on October 10 quoted the press office of Dagestan’s FSB branch as saying that the republic’s law-enforcement agencies had broken up a “criminal group with inter-regional ties” that had been illegally manufacturing firearms and ammunition and selling them both inside and outside of Dagestan.

Interfax reported on October 10 that unidentified gunmen opened fired on OMON officers near the village of Gubden in Dagestan’s Karabudakhkent district. “Police officers came under attack during a search operation: two police officers were wounded,” a law-enforcement source told the news agency, adding that a rifle, cartridges, and a portable radio were found on the scene. Interfax also reported that four people suspected of aiding militants were detained in Dagestan’s Khasavyurt district. The press service of Dagestan’s Interior Ministry told the news agency that the detainees were believed to have provided food to members of “illegal armed groups” and to have been involved in “agitation campaigns” among youth.

Kadyrov Turns 31

Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov turned 31 on October 5, and Newsru.com reported that day that Kadyrov had ordered that there be no “luxuriant” celebrations. Still, the website reported that “rites of sacrifice” would be held marking Kadyrov’s birthday, with religious figures calling on the Almighty to grant the republic prosperity and Kadyrov a long life. As Newsru.com reported, Kadyrov decided to mark his birthday not on October 5, but three days later, on October 8, with the opening in Gudermes of a “splendid modern racetrack.” “The opening of the complex, about which everyone has dreamed for a long time, will be a real gift for me,” Kadyrov said.

Rosbalt reported on October 6 that Kadyrov had celebrated his birthday “privately.” Still, the news agency reported that officials of the Chechen presidential administration and government, heads of republican ministries and agencies, deputies of the republic’s parliament and heads of the republic’s districts and cities, had all visited Tsentoroi, Kadyrov’s native village, to wish him a happy birthday. “Friends and colleagues” wished Kadyrov a happy birthday and gave him “a whole tray of gold coins,” wishing him “health, many years of work and also that the treasury of the Chechen Republic would always be filled with such money,” Rosbalt reported.

The website also reported that “guests from Iran” gave Kadyrov “a panel with suras from the Koran embroidered in gold thread.” “We are very glad that our visit to the Chechen Republic coincided with your birthday, and for us it is a great honor to give you this modest present,” Rosbalt quoted the unidentified Iranian guests as telling Kadyrov. “We hope that Iran and the Chechen Republic will cooperate and enjoy friendly relations in the future.”

Thanking his guests for their warm birthday greetings, Kadyrov then invited them to the “holy rite of the zikr” [the mystical Sufi dance] which, according to Rosbalt, Kadyrov himself participated in. After that, Kadyrov “treated all the participants and countrymen to the meat of two huge sacrificial bulls,” the news agency reported.

Sobkor.ru reported on October 8 that all of the heads of the republic comprising the Southern Federal District were invited to the opening of the racetrack in Gudermes, which took place that day. The website quoted an anonymous source in Kadyrov’s inner circle as saying that more than $22 million had been spent on celebrating the Chechen president’s birthday. According to Sobkor.ru, the lion’s share of that money was collected in a “compulsory” manner from “enterprises, agencies and private individuals.”

Briefs

- Sarkozy Meets with Rights Activists

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, on his first visit to Russia as president, met on October 9 with leaders of the Memorial human rights group, Agence France Presse reported on October 10. Katya Sokiryanskaya, who works for Memorial in Chechnya and Ingushetia, said she had told Sarkozy that some things were getting better in Chechnya but that there were “new forms” of violence in neighboring Ingushetia. “We said that we understand that the state fights terrorism but that it must be done within the law,” she said. Memorial’s Oleg Orlov said that by simply meeting with a non-governmental organization - unlike his predecessor Jacques Chirac - Sarkozy was “sending a message.” As AFP noted, Sarkozy stands out among Western leaders for his firm criticism of human rights abuses in Russia. The French leader met with President Vladimir Putin on October 9 prior to his meeting with the Memorial representatives.

- Strasbourg Court Orders Compensation for Three Chechen Women

The European Court of Human Rights ruled on October 4 that the Russian government should pay almost 200,000 euros (more than $280,000) to three women from Chechnya who had survived zachistka, or mopping-up operation, by federal forces in Grozny in 2000. The Moscow Times, citing Ekho Moskvy radio, reported on October 5 that two of the plaintiffs barely survived the operation in January 2000, while the third witnessed the execution of her relatives by soldiers. The ruling lambasted the Chechen authorities for being sluggish and unprofessional in their investigations of the killings in a Grozny suburb in January and February 2000. Chechen prosecutors investigated the killings only after journalist Anna Politkovskaya wrote about them.

- Memorial Service for Politkovskaya held in Ingushetia

A memorial service for the award-winning journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was murdered in Moscow on October 7, 2006, was held in the “Kristall” camp for internally displaced persons in Nazran, Ingushetia, on October 9. The event was organized by Aslambek Apaev, a North Caucasus expert with the Moscow Helsinki Group. Kavkazky Uzel reported on October 9 that children of internally displaced persons took part in the memorial, reading poems written in Politkovskaya’s honor, staging a short play and singing songs.

Russification of the Ingush Police Continues
By Andrei Smirnov

Despite Ingushetia’s relative calm, the Russian authorities have not stopped looking for new ways to fight the insurgency in the republic. The Kremlin understands that this calm is just a strategic break by the rebels and not a result of effective countermeasures by the law-enforcement bodies. It is likely that the number of rebel attacks decreased because of the month of Ramadan (Muslim fasting), which ends on October 13. According to the main source of news from the republic, the independent Ingushetiya.ru website, military posts reinforced with armored personnel carriers and machine-gun nests were set up all around the Ingush capital of Magas a week ago. On October 4, the site reported that tents with soldiers had been set up around Magas, including in the area in front of the Parliament Palace. Rumors are now circulating in Ingushetia that the rebels are preparing for an attack on Magas and other large regional settlements just after the end of Ramadan.

At the same time, the Ingush branch of the Federal Security Service (FSB) and Ingushetia’s police force have nothing to boast about. During the summer and early fall, the militants conducted about 50 attacks in Ingushetia, including ones on large military garrisons and the FSB headquarters, and lost only one man and not a single commander. Unlike Dagestan and Chechnya, where officials managed to find and eliminate many rebel groups and field commanders this year, despite heavy casualties and problems with intelligence, all attempts to stop the rise of the insurgency in Ingushetia have thus far failed. Clearly, the FSB has a serious problem with intelligence in the region and without it, reconnaissance raids conducted by Russian troops in Ingushetia’s mountains or security seeps on the plains have thus far failed to yield any positive results. The murder of Ali Kalimatov, an Ingush FSB colonel from the Central Directorate who had been sent to Ingushetia to enlist agents inside the insurgency, was a serious blow to the FSB (see Chechnya Weekly, September 27). Following Kalimatov's murder, the FSB tried to use technical means to search for the rebels. A radio reconnaissance specialist from the Defense Ministry was sent to Ingushetia, but he was shot on the day of his arrival while driving from Chechnya together with senior police officers from Moscow (Vesti-Severny Kavkaz, September 22).

Local police cadres and village and district chiefs are usually the main sources of information for the FSB in the North Caucasus. After the massive rebel raid in Ingushetia on June 22, the local police structure almost collapsed and has yet to recover fully. Now, imams of local mosques who provide name lists of “Wahhabists” are in fact the only real sources for the FSB in Ingushetia. Special forces units kill or kidnap those who are on the list (see Chechnya Weekly, October 4). Therefore, one of the primary tasks of the Russian authorities in Ingushetia is to make the Ingush police at least as effective as the police in Dagestan. The Kremlin believes that the only way to strengthen the police in the region is to Russify it. Already, in October 2006, “temporary police departments” were established in the republic (EDM, October 19, 2006).

However, this strategy has failed to work. The temporary police departments had already demonstrated their ineffectiveness in Chechnya. Last year, they were disbanded there and Russian policemen were incorporated into the local Chechen police structure. A senior police officer of Russian origin, Nikolai Simakov, from Krasnodar Krai, became the Chechen Deputy Interior Minister (see Chechnya Weekly, November 9, 2006). The Russian authorities appear to be using the same strategy in Ingushetia. On October 10, four Russian police officers from Moscow and St. Petersburg were appointed to the position of Deputy Ministers of Interior Affairs of Ingushetia by Rashid Nurgaliev, the federal Interior Minister. Colonel Sergei Selivestrov was sent from Moscow to head the Ingush criminal police, Vadim Selivanov became the Chief of Staff of the Ingush police and Colonel Sergei Shumilin was named as the head of its personnel department. After these appointments, Musa Medov, the Ingush Interior Minister, has only one Ingush deputy, Magomed Gudiev. Gudiev was most likely kept on as a deputy Interior Minister only because he is responsible for fighting the insurgency (“anti-terrorist activity”), and the Russian officers simply needed somebody from among the locals whom they could trust.

It should be noted that these newly appointed officers have already been working in Ingushetia since last August. On August 8, Sergei Shumilin and 60 other policemen from different district departments of St. Petersburg were sent to Ingushetia “to assist local police cadres,” according to the website of the St. Petersburg traffic police.

It is hard to say if Russian policemen can really change the situation in Ingushetia, but the FSB leadership hopes that they will help to establish an intelligence network in the region and will become mediators between the FSB officers and Ingush policemen who dislike and do not trust each other. Whether they become such mediators, the Kremlin hopes that the further Russification of the Ingush police will at least prevent it from entirely collapsing.

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

Putin’s Latest Reshuffling
By Mairbek Vatchagaev

As is typical for Russia, long expected news is being presented to the public as something sensational and surprising. Vladimir Putin, having sworn that no one would be able to convince him to remain in power, has finally declared that he will in fact remain in power. At a convention of the “Edinaia Rossia” party, he agreed to stay in power, citing the “requests of the workers and for the benefit of the country.” Putin's justification is exactly what the General Secretaries of the Communist Party had done in the past, since they had to be pleaded with in the name of the people in order to remain in power. While everyone had expected Putin to find a way to remain in power even after stepping down, no one knew exactly how he would do so. The current approach suggests that the constitution will eventually be changed in order to give more power to the Prime Minister, leaving the President as merely a titular head of the country and unable to effectively compete with Vladimir Putin in his newly chosen post.

At the same time, Putin continues to strengthen his position by appointing former intelligence officers to high political posts. The new Executive Secretary of the CIS, for example, is the former Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) director Sergei Lebedev (RIA Novosti, October 6). The director’s post has been given to former Prime Minister Fradkov, an appointment that says much about the apparent lack of qualified candidates for high posts and also the rewards that may be earned by those who have demonstrated their loyalty to the head of the Russian state (www.gazeta.ru, October 6). Dmitry Kozak has been quickly replaced after leaving his old post for the position of vice-Prime Minister in the new Cabinet of Ministers (www.svoboda.org, September 24), with Georgi Rapota, a lieutenant general with 32 years in the intelligence services, taking over in the Southern Federal District (www.kavkaz.memo.ru, October 6).

Even though Kozak did not receive a significant promotion as a result of the transfer, it has allowed him to leave a region in which he had failed to implement any significant changes. During his tenure, the North Caucasus had become more unstable and explosive, with Dagestan, Ingushetia and Kabardino-Balkaria moving closer to war. Karachaevo-Cherkessia remains unsettled, with the “president versus the opposition” conflict remaining unresolved. The issue of Ingush refugees has not been addressed in North Ossetia, with local authorities afraid of mentioning the possibility of allowing the Ingush that had left their homes and apartments during the 1991 conflict to return. Chechnya, long considered a pacified territory by Putin, has been controlled by the policies of Ramzan Kadyrov and has not been affected by the Kozak administration. This is especially true because Dmitry Kozak was always hostile to the Kadyrov clan, both the father and the son, and his attempts to somehow rein in the young Ramzan were always curtailed by Vladislav Surkov, Kadyrov’s patron in the Kremlin. Kozak’s new post is undoubtedly inferior to his old one, but it is far calmer. Moreover, with his post permanently located in Moscow, Dmitry Kozak will be able to effectively maneuver between the high-ranking officials of the Russian government.

It is probable that the new Cabinet remains a transitional one and was deliberately created without any new, sensational figures. The way in which it was formed does much to bolster the idea that it is intended solely to be a temporary, transitional entity. A special note should be made of the fact that the new government includes two pairs of relatives, a phenomenon completely atypical of Russian politics. The first pair is Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov and his son-in-law Anataly Serdukov. The other is Viktor Khristenko, head of the Energy Ministry, and his wife Tatiana Golikova, who was recently appointed to the post of Minister of Health and Social Development (ITAR-TASS, September 25).

The changes in Moscow have automatically led to changes in the regions. In Chechnya, the list of candidates submitted by the “Edinaia Rossia” party was a true sensation, since it failed to include parliamentary speaker Dukuvakh Abdurakhmanov, long considered the most loyal follower of Ramzan Kadyrov among the local politicians. Adam Demilhanov, on the other hand, a member of the security services and a man who is hardly a “second ranker” within the republic, made the list. Another individual included on the list was Magomed Vakhaev, the head of the republic’s Constitutional court, a completely unimportant post in the current scheme of Russian governance. Ziad Salsabi, a former Iraqi communist of Chechen extraction and the current head of the Chechen mission in Moscow, is yet another new face on the party list (www.skavkaz.rfn.ru, October 3).

In Ingushetia, the list of “Edinaia Rossia” candidates omitted the very president of the Republic, with Belan Khamchiev, the head of the Department of Plants, Fertilizers and Crop Protection from the Ingush ministry of agriculture heading up the nominees (www.regnum.ru, October 3). This is undoubtedly a black mark for Murat Zyazikov, the current president.

In Dagestan the most surprising news was the absences of Avar leader Khadzhi Makhachev and businessman Suleiman Kerimov (head of “GNK Nafta-Moskva”), one of the richest men of the republic, from the list. This may indicate that the Kremlin had applied pressure in order to remove Makhachev, a man with a criminal past, as well as Kerimov, a potential competitor in the oil industry.

The president of Karachaevo-Cherkessia, Mustafa Batdyev, managed to squeeze two of his classmates and close friends onto the party lists (www.regnum.ru, October 3). Kozak’s exit from the region is a blow to Batdyev’s authority, and his unwillingness to accept any candidates from Moscow may lead to a quarrel with his former boss, Anatoly Chubais, thus weakening his position further.

Simultaneous with these ongoing changes in the corridors of power is an additional point of contention that has arisen in the North Caucasus. The decision to hold the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi has been a severe blow to the millions of Circassians around the world, since they see this event as legitimizing their expulsion from the region. The last Ubykh and Shapsug remaining near Sochi will be forced out during the construction of infrastructure for the Games. This may come as a boon to the resistance movement in the North Caucasus as they use this opportunity to strike against Russian interests in the region.

Given all of these factors, it is possible to predict that in the short run, the current distribution of political forces will do nothing to stabilize the region and may even worsen the situation in Ingushetia and Karachaevo-Cherkessia.

Mairbek Vatchagaev is a PhD candidate in Social Sciences at the University of Paris. He is the author of the book, "Chechnya in the 19th Century Caucasian Wars."
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