RFE/RL: Ingushetia Plans to Beef Up Police Strength
posted by circassiankama on August, 2009 as INGUSHETIA
July 24, 2009
Ingushetia Plans To Beef Up Police Strength
The Ingushetian leadership has formally asked the Russian Interior
Ministry to increase the manpower of the republic's police force by 50
percent, and to create additional sub-departments within the ministry,
Ingushetian Prime Minister and acting President Rashid Gaysanov announced on July 21. He did not specify how many new sub-departments are envisaged, or what each one would do.
Gaysanov said Russian President Dmitry Medvedev expressed support for that proposal during their meeting last week near Sochi, and that he has also discussed it with Russian Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev.
Gaysanov
explained on July 21 that the republican Interior Ministry's current
strength is predicated on a total population of just 340,000, while the
population of Ingushetia is now more than double that figure. He added
that the manpower shortage would not be so acutely felt but for the
upsurge in recent years of attacks on police by the North Caucasus
resistance.
Last year more than 80 police and other security
personnel were killed in Ingushetia, and 167 injured; during the first
six months of this year, there were 58 attacks on police which left 37
uniformed personnel dead and 79 wounded.
But Gaysanov
apparently failed to mention a second trend that has depleted police
ranks even more dramatically. Between early July and early August 2008,
more than 1,300 officers reportedly resigned from the police force to
protest the ministry's refusal to pay them overtime and other special
allowances.
That wave of resignations continued through
September, but apparently stopped following President Medvedev's
decision in late October to fire Ingushetian President Murat Zyazikov.
It
is not clear how the decision to increase the strength of the
Ingushetian Interior Ministry meshes with the division of
responsibilities between the various "power" agencies outlined by
President Medvedev at a meeting with senior personnel on July 20.
On that occasion, Medvedev characterized the situation in the North Caucasus as a whole as "very, very complicated." At
the same time, he specified that the law-enforcement organs (meaning in
the first instance the police) should concentrate on protecting
citizens' rights and freedoms, combating corruption, and ensuring
public and economic security.
Medvedev called on the Interior
Ministry to intensify its efforts to counter "extremism," while the
task of fighting terrorism was identified as a key task for the Federal
Security Service (FSB).
How effective the larger police force
will prove to be in containing the low-level insurgency in the North
Caucasus remains to be seen, especially in light of Ingush
oppositionist Magomed Khazbiyev's July 24 claim that most government
officials and businessmen in Ingushetia pay a regular "tribute" to the
resistance in return for immunity from attack.
The
planned expansion of the police may, on the other hand, be intended to
serve an entirely different purpose: either as a warning to Chechen
Republic head Ramzan Kadyrov not to attempt a power-grab in Ingushetia
in the course of the ongoing joint operation against the resistance in
the area along the border between the two republics, and/or to ensure
the Ingushetian Interior Ministry is better able to counter any such
attempt.
The Chechen police alone numbers some 14,000 men, not counting other security bodies directly subordinate to Kadyrov.
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