Kabardian public organizations are serious in their plans to campaign
for the annulment of the draft law adopted by the Kabardino-Balkaria
Republic (KBR) parliament in the first reading on October 30, which
transfers some 200,000 hectares of mountain grazing grounds to 16
Balkar-populated villages. Loss of access to those pastures was one of
the issues that drove the Balkars to plan a march on Moscow last month.
The
draft law was intended to put an end to the long-standing dispute
between the Kabardians and Balkars over access to the grazing grounds
that until 2005 were public property. But while the Balkars have hailed
the draft law as the first step to righting a historic injustice, it
has triggered a storm of protest by Kabardian public organizations.
"We
found ourselves in a very odd situation. Most key positions in the
parliament and the government are held by Kabardians, and the president
too is one of ours, but they still adopt laws that blatantly infringe
on our rights," Ruslan Keshev, head of the Circassian Congress of
Kabardino-Balkaria, said at a meeting of Kabardian groups in Nalchik on
November 17. "If the authorities ignore the demands put forward at the
meeting, we shall convene larger-scale protest actions."
In an
interview with RFE/RL's North Caucasus Service, Ibragim Yaganov,
chairman of the recently founded public organization Khase (Council) in
Nalchik, similarly stressed that the meeting participants will not back
down. "If our demands are not taken into account and the draft is not
annulled, we shall declare an open-ended protest and demand that the
president, the government and the parliament all resign."
The
Balkars by contrast consider the parliament decision fair, if belated.
"That decision could have been taken earlier. The present conflict
would not have arisen if the local authorities had implemented the
relevant federal and republican laws in a timely fashion," Ruslan
Babayev told RFE/RL's North Caucasus Service. Babayev is deputy head of
Balkaria, a public organization that unites Balkars from various North
Caucasus republics, and one of the leaders of the unofficial Council of
Elders of the Balkar People, which over the past two years has been
subjected to systematic pressure by the republic's authorities.
Babayev
cited as an example the 1991 Soviet law on the rehabilitation of those
ethnic groups, including the Balkars, the Chechens, the Crimean Tatars
and the Ingush, who were deported to Central Asia on Stalin's orders in
1943-44. He pointed out that in line with that law, the Balkars should
have had restored to them everything that they lost at the time of the
forced deportation, including the lands historically populated by
Balkars that are the focus of the current dispute.
Those
grazing grounds on the lower slopes of the Caucasus mountains lie right
on the border with Karachayevo-Cherkessia. This is what makes the
Kabardians so nervous, given that the Karachais and Balkars are ethnic
cousins. Some participants at the November 17 protest meeting even went
so far as to argue that "the Balkars want that land so they can secede
and create a Karachayevo-Balkar republic."
The Balkars dismiss
that alarmist reasoning as unserious, to say the least. "Not a single
Balkar has ever dreamed of creating such a republic, and none of us
ever will," Babayev told RFE/RL. "The Balkars and the Karachais are
separate ethnic groups, each with its own culture and mentality. It
would be a case of 'out of the frying pan into the fire,' and no one
wants that."
The pastures that are to be handed over to Balkar
villages in line with the parliament decision used to be freely
accessible to all village communities, both Kabardian and Balkar, until
the new law on municipalities was passed in 2005. Some observers had
anticipated that KBR President Arsen Kanokov would either sign it into
law or veto it as early as November 24. But parliament first deputy
speaker Ruslan Zhanimov said on November 20 the draft will be discussed
again in detail and revised to take into account comments by "all
public organizations," meaning Kabardians and Balkars alike, before it is passed in the second and final reading.
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