Some 1,500 Balkars congregated
on July 25 at the monument near Nalchik to the victims of Soviet-era
political reprisals to discuss the impact and repercussions of the
"counterterror operation" conducted in the Elbruz district in the
extreme west of the Kabardino-Balkaria Republic (KBR) from June 30
until early on July 13.
That operation effectively isolated
the district, many of whose residents scrape a living from tourism, at
the start of the summer tourist season. The republican authorities
subsequently claimed to have secured large quantities of weaponry and
to have averted several planned terrorist acts, but there were no
reports of fighting, or of any militants being apprehended. The news
agency Regnum dubbed the exercise the "most mystifying counterterror
operation ever."
Participants at the July 25 meeting, which
was organized by the unofficial Council of Elders of the Balkar People,
adopted a statement, a copy of which was provided to Regnum, addressed
to Vladimir Serdyuk, who heads the KBR subsidiary of the Federal
Security Service (FSB). That statement threatened to lobby Russian
President Dmitry Medvedev to replace KBR President Arsen Kanokov if
Constitutional Court rulings that address long-standing Balkar
grievances are not implemented within one month.
That
statement claimed that the local prosecutor's office in Elbruz
announced after the counterterrorism operation ended that no
explosives, ammunition, or arms were found in Elbruz. The statement
claimed that the materiel shown on central television channels and
identified as having been confiscated during the operation in Elbruz
was in fact seized earlier near Nalchik (which lies in the extreme east
of the KBR).
The July 25 statement further explained that
Elbruz residents believe the counterterror operation was mounted in
retaliation for a protest staged by Balkar residents of Elbruz last
month against mass layoffs and salary arrears at a local cable-car
network; against the republican government's rejection of an investment
proposal that would have created 800 jobs; and against the confiscation
of individual plots of land.
On June 12, some 2,000 Elbruz
residents blocked the only federal highway leading to the district.
They refused to talk to KBR Prime Minister Andrei Yarin and Interior
Minister Yury Tomchak, who travelled to the region to meet with them,
and dispersed only after the arrival of Kanokov, who met individually
with 27 local residents and promised assistance in resolving their
various problems.
Kanokov travelled to Elbruz again on June 17
for a further meeting with disgruntled local residents. He explained to
them that 30 percent of investment within the republic goes to Elbruz,
most of it to the tourism sector. At the same time, he warned the
Balkars that "we must not let ourselves be drawn into endless
discussions of interethnic relations," meaning the grievances the
Balkar minority, which accounts for just 11 percent of the republic's
population, harbors against the Kabardian majority. Balkars came away
from an earlier meeting with Kanokov in October 2008 frustrated and complaining that "he didn't understand us [and] he doesn't want to understand."
The
statement adopted at the July 25 meeting ended with an ultimatum to the
KBR authorities to implement within one month Constitutional Court
rulings overturning legislation passed in 2005 that deprived residents
of access to mountain pastures and abolished the status as separate
municipalities of the settlements of Khasanya and Belaya Rechka on the
southwestern outskirts of Nalchik. Those villages were subsumed into
the Nalchik municipality.
The statement warned that if those
rulings are not implemented, the Balkars will lobby President Medvedev
to replace Kanokov as personally responsible for a "serious
deterioration" in the political and socioeconomic situation in the
republic.
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