On October 31, 2008, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev named Yunus-Bek
Yevkurov, a colonel in military intelligence, to succeed Murat Zyazikov
as president of Ingushetia.
Yevkurov's
greatest achievement over the past year is arguably that he is still
alive, having made a remarkable recovery from injuries sustained in an
assassination attempt on June 22.
But
he also secured a huge financial aid package from Moscow intended to
kick-start the republic's moribund economy, reduce unemployment, and
alleviate social problems. And he has made every effort to reach out
to, and win the trust of, a population alienated and disgusted by the
corruption and inefficiency that flourished under Zyazikov.
Yevkurov
has been less successful, however, in improving the efficiency of the
republic's government, tackling economic stagnation and unemployment,
and stemming the ongoing attacks by the Islamic resistance on police
and security personnel. The October 25 murder of respected moderate
oppositionist Maksharip Aushev led several observers to question
whether and to what extent Yevkurov is in control of developments in
Ingushetia.
Shaking Up GovernmentYevkurov's
initial moves following his appointment as president were encouraging.
He immediately dismissed the entire cabinet, vowing that the sole
criteria for selecting new ministers would be professional competence
and honesty.
He duly named as his new prime minister a young
economist, Rashid Gaysanov, who had served as economy minister under
Zyazikov's predecessor, retired army General Ruslan Aushev. And he
proposed
that ministers should serve a probation period of one year, during
which they would be required to draft a detailed program for developing
the specific sector for which they were responsible.
Within days of his appointment, Yevkurov met with the parents of
Magomed Yevloyev,
the Moscow-based owner of an opposition website who was detained by
police and shot dead two months earlier on his arrival at Magas
airport. Yevkurov also convened a meeting with representatives of the
republic's small but vocal opposition, some of whom, including
Maksharip Aushev, subsequently agreed to join his team.
Yevkurov
launched an energetic crackdown on corruption, even making public the
number of his mobile phone and encouraging citizens to call him
directly to report cases of unfair dismissal or failure to pay salaries
on time. He met regularly with members of the public to discuss their
grievances. Several weeks ago, he established an informal council
comprising the heads of Ingushetia's various teyps (clans) in the hope
of mobilizing their help and support in his struggle against corruption
and to halt the steady flow of disenchanted young men to join the
resistance ranks.
But Yevkurov's twin objectives of political
stability and national reconciliation were undermined by ongoing daily
shootings and explosions, on the one hand, and by a combination of
inefficiency and passive resistance within the republic's government,
on the other. Possibly the most fateful example of that incompetence
was the failure of the Interior Ministry to prevent the suicide
car-bomb attack on August 17, despite reports that a terror attack was
imminent.
In early October, Yevkurov dissolved the government,
citing as his rationale for doing so the failure of unnamed ministers
to resolve pressing social and economic problems, and corruption. He
then selected to succeed Gaysanov as prime minister a Russian career
Federal Security Service (FSB) officer,
Aleksei Vorobyov, whom he had named Security Council secretary in January.
Reuters
in late January quoted medical personnel as saying that during
Yevkurov's first months in office, there had been a noticeable drop in
the incidence of attacks by Islamic militants on law enforcement
personnel. But that trend proved only short-lived. During the first six
months of this year, there were no fewer than 58 resistance attacks on
members of the police and security services, of whom 37 were killed and
79 wounded. In addition, more than 39 civilians were killed, and of 10
people abducted, four were found dead.
As in Chechnya and Daghestan, there has been an increase in the number of civilians
abducted, killed and subsequently branded
without any evidence as resistance fighters. The argument, adduced
repeatedly by human rights activists and by Ingushetian oppositionist
Magomed Khazbiyev in a May 10 interview with Ekho Moskvy, that such
arbitrary reprisals only drive more young men to join the resistance,
is clearly lost on those officials in Moscow with the authority to
order a halt to such tactics.
Chechen FactorWhether
and to what extent meddling by security organs in neighboring Chechnya
has fuelled instability in Ingushetia remains unclear. Following a
suicide bombing in Grozny in mid-May, Chechen Republic head Ramzan
Kadyrov secured Yevkurov's support for a counterterrorism operation by
Interior Ministry forces from both republics in the region that
straddles the border between them.
Some observers construed
Kadyrov's move as the first step in a campaign to undermine Yevkurov
and thereby bolster the argument, floated at intervals by Kadyrov's
subordinates over the previous three years, that Chechnya and
Ingushetia should again be combined into a single republic (of which
Kadyrov would be named head).
In the wake of the attempt to kill
Yevkurov in late June, Kadyrov announced that Medvedev had transferred
to him sole responsibility for coordinating the joint counterterrorism
operation, but Ingushetian Interior Minister Ruslan Meyriyev reportedly
refused to take orders from Kadyrov.
Chechen
involvement in the killing of Maksharip Aushev just days before the
first anniversary of Yevkurov's appointment as president cannot be
excluded, for two reasons. First, it would serve Kadyrov's imputed
desire to discredit, sideline, and then supplant Yevkurov.
And
second, Aushev had incurred the enmity of police and security forces in
Chechnya by making public the involvement of Chechen Interior Ministry
forces in the abduction two years ago of his son and nephew. When
police in Ingushetia claimed it was impossible to locate the two men,
Aushev launched a private investigation and finally managed to
rescue them from an unregistered prison in Chechnya's Urus Martan Raion. "
Novaya gazeta" has pointed out that such a facility could not have existed without Kadyrov's knowledge and approval.
In one of his last
interviews,
Aushev argued that Kadyrov shares the blame for the deterioration of
the situation in Ingushetia in recent years because Chechen security
forces under his control participated in the wave of abductions and
killings of young men known to be practicing Muslims. Aushev said that
"the whole of Ingushetia is against Kadyrov.... I shall be the first to
oppose him if he enters Ingushetia."
Yevkurov
praised
Aushev on October 27 as having been "a real help," most recently in
ensuring that the October 11 local government elections passed without
incident. He said Aushev's murder "dealt a blow to my authority." At
the same time, Yevkurov vowed that "I will not step down as president
and return to Moscow...because to do so would be an act of cowardice."
http://www.rferl.org/content/Violence_Pervades_Ingushetian_Presidents_First_Year_In_Office/1865178.html